THE MODERN ERA
Foundation of the Modern State
Don Pepe became head of the Founding Junta of the Second Republic of Costa Rica. As leader of the revolutionary junta, he consolidated Calderón's progressive social reform program and added his own landmark reforms: he banned the press and Communist Party, introduced suffrage for women and full citizenship for blacks, revised the Constitution to outlaw a standing army (including his own), established a presidential term limit, and created an independent Electoral Tribunal to oversee future elections. Figueres also shocked the elites by nationalizing the banks and insurance companies.
On a darker note, Don Pepe reneged on the peace terms that guaranteed the safety of the calderonistas: Calderón and many of his followers were exiled to Mexico, special tribunals confiscated their property, and, in a sordid episode, many prominent left-wing officials and activists were abducted and murdered. (Supported by Nicaragua, Calderón twice attempted to invade Costa Rica and topple his nemesis, but was each time repelled. Eventually he was allowed to return, and even ran for president unsuccessfully in 1962.)
Then, by a prior agreement that established the interim junta for 18 months, Figueres returned the reins of power to Otilio Ulate, the actual winner of the '48 election. Costa Ricans later rewarded Figueres with two terms as president, in 1953-57 and 1970-74. Figueres dominated politics for the next two decades. A socialist, he used his popularity to build his own electoral base and founded the Partido de Liberación Nacional (PLN), which became the principal advocate of state-sponsored development and reform. He died on 8 June 1990, a national hero.
The Contemporary Scene
Social and economic progress since 1948 has helped return the country to stability, and though post-civil war politics have reflected the play of old loyalties and antagonisms, elections have been free and fair. With only two exceptions, the country has ritualistically alternated its presidents between the PLN and the opposition Social Christians. Successive PLN governments have built on the reforms of the calderonista era, and the 1950s and '60s saw a substantial expansion of the welfare state and public school system, funded by economic growth. The intervening conservative governments have encouraged private enterprise and economic self-reliance through tax breaks, protectionism, subsidized credits, and other macroeconomic policies. The combined results were a generally vigorous economic growth and the creation of a welfare state which had grown by 1981 to serve 90 percent of the population, absorbing 40 percent of the national budget in the process and granting the government the dubious distinction of being the nation's biggest employer.
By 1980, the bubble had burst. Costa Rica was mired in an economic crisis: epidemic inflation, crippling currency devaluation, soaring oil bills and social welfare costs, plummeting coffee, banana, and sugar prices, and the disruptions to trade caused by the Nicaraguan war. When large international loans came due, Costa Rica found itself burdened overnight with the world's greatest per-capita debt. In addition to tens of thousands killed, a decade of war in the region (and Monge's support for U.S. policy) had eroded international confidence in Costa Rica. Regional trade had declined 60 percent. There had been a capital flight from the country; by 1984, the national debt had almost quadrupled. And as many as 250,000 Nicaraguan exiles and refugees fled into Costa Rica, whose political stability had been seriously undermined.
In May 1984 events took a tragic turn at a press conference on the banks of the Río San Juan held by Edén Pastora, the U.S.-backed leader of the Contras. A bomb exploded, killing foreign journalists (Pastora escaped). A general consensus is that the bomb was meant to blame the Sandinistas; the CIA has been implicated.
In February 1986, Costa Ricans elected as their president a relatively young sociologist and economist-lawyer, Oscar Arias Sánchez. Arias' electoral promise had been to work for peace. Immediately, he put his energies into resolving Central America's regional conflicts. Arias' tireless efforts were rewarded in 1987, when his Central American peace plan was signed by the five Central American presidents in Guatemala City--an achievement that earned the Costa Rican president the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize.
In February 1990, Rafael Angel Calderón Fournier, a conservative lawyer and candidate for the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), won a narrow victory with 51 percent of the vote. He was inaugurated 50 years to the day after his father, the great reformer, was named president. Restoring Costa Rica's economy to sound health was Calderón's paramount goal. Under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Calderón initiated a series of austerity measures aimed at redressing the country's huge deficit and national debt. Indications were that the attempts were succeeding, although not without social cost.
In March 1994, in an intriguing historical quirk, Calderón, son of the president ousted by Don Pepe Figueres in 1948, was replaced by Don Pepe's youthful son, José María Figueres, a graduate of both West Point and Harvard. The Figueres period was bedeviled by problems, including the collapse of the Banco Anglo Costarricense in 1994, followed in 1995 by inflation, a massive teachers strike, and an antigovernment demonstration of 100,000 people. A slump in tourism and Hurricane César, which ripped through the Pacific southwest in July 1996 causing $100 million in damage, worsened the country's plight. A month later the nation was rocked when a female German tourist and her tour guide were kidnapped, generating heaps of unwanted media exposure. Tourism from Europe plummeted. The kidnappers were caught, but the affair took a strange twist when photographs appeared showing the woman French-kissing one of her captors. Ticos took solace in the gold medal--the first ever for the country--won at the 1996 Olympics by Costa Rican swimmer Claudia Poll. And President Clinton's visit to Costa Rica in May 1997 during a summit of Central American leaders heralded a new era of free trade and enhanced regional accord.
The Figueres administration was considered a bit of a flop by a majority of the electorate, who in February 1998 voted for the Social Christian Unity Party. Figueres was replaced by Miguel ángel Rogríguez, a wealthy businessman and economist whom Figueres had defeated in a run for president in 1994.
Talks with Nicaragua in 1999-2000 to resolve a flare up over their ongoing border dispute (Nicaragua denies Costa Rica's claim that existing treaties give them rights of usage to the Río San Juan, which is wholly Nicaraguan) proved futile. In April 2000, a series of strikes by government employees erupted into the worst civil unrest since the 1970s, as an attempt by the government to break up the country's 50-year-old power and telecommunications monopoly resulted in nationwide street protests, some violent, that lasted two weeks brought the country to a halt. That summer, the government sold rights to oil companies to explore along the Caribbean coast, including in the ocean bordering Cahuita and Gandoca-Manzanillo National Parks. And two days of mob riots broke out between gangs of youth thugs and the police in October 2000 in San José's drug- and crime-riddled working class Rincón Grande barrio.
