Costa Rica

Costa Rica has grown and prospered in a manner so distinct from that of other Latin American nations that its history warrants more extensive study than its small size and population would suggest. From an isolated and generally ignored colony of some sixty thousand inhabitants at the time of independence, it has developed into one of the most prosperous, educated, healthy, and democratic nations in Latin America. Its progress has been sustained and profound, without any great economic windfalls occasioned by the discovery and exploitation of such resources as petroleum or precious metals or precious stones. Its progress has come from the creativity, imagination, and common sense of its people, who have worked with a limited resource base and from a scant colonial material legacy of such items as infrastructure, wealth, roads, port facilities, and homes.

GEOGRAPHY

Costa Rica is the third smallest of the Central American republics (El Salvador and Belize have less land area) and is located wholly within the tropics (between 8 and 11 latitude). Despite its limited area of 19,575 square miles, Costa Rica contains a great variety of hot to moderate climatic zones because of its enormous variety of topography, coastlines on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and variations in seasonal and annual precipitation.

The prevailing winds from the northeast that pass over the warm Caribbean waters account for the high annual rainfall along the Caribbean coast and the eastern slopes of the mountainous interior. Although there is a distinct rainy season in the humid tropical zone on the Caribbean side, it might be better designated the rainier season because there is substantial precipitation throughout the year. Much of the lowland area is tropical rain forest; at higher elevations dense vegetation and swift-flowing mountain streams are the norm. Along the Pacific coast and the western slopes of the mountains, there are pronounced rainy and dry seasons. The amount of precipitation increases as one moves from the northwestern region to the southwest. Guanacaste Province is a region of tropical dry forest and semiarid areas, whereas in the area around Golfito there is sufficient rainfall to sustain economically viable banana plantations.

Historically the country's most significant geographic feature has been the mountain ranges that run from the border with Nicaragua in the north to the southern border with Panama. The volcanoes not only add a dramatic element to the landscape but, when active, have had devastating effects on the surrounding areas. They also have benefited agricultural development by depositing rich volcanic soil at unpredictable intervals. The highest peaks are in the Talamanca Range in the southwestern part of the country.

The mountain valleys constitute the third major climate zone, which enjoys a moderate climate (clima templada). These valleys occur between 2,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level.

The heartland of Costa Rica is the great Central Valley and the Central Plateau (meseta central) within that valley. The principal cities of the early independence period, San José, Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela, were all on the meseta central, and the vast majority of the colonial population lived in these cities and their environs. The national culture, character, and values emanate from this central region. The Costa Ricans, then, are a mountain people who, in over a century and a half of independence, have gradually moved out from the heartland to occupy and develop the other regions of the nation. As they have adjusted to different climates and embraced other environments, their national culture has remained essentially that of the meseta. The national values of democracy, individual liberty, egalitarianism, peace, and universal education were fostered and inculcated in the meseta and then spread throughout the nation.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION

With the triumph of San José over Cartago in 1823, Costa Rica turned its back on Mexico and Agustín Iturbide's imperial model for independence and embraced republicanism and the Central American Federation. It was still too early to clearly discern the emergence of a distinct Costa Rican nation, but the victory at Ochomogo by the combined forces of San José and Alajuela over those of Cartago and its ally, Heredia, marked an important milestone along the path to nationhood. Future development became more predictable with San José's victory in the War of the League (1835) over the other three cities of the meseta. San José became the undisputed capital of an emerging nation soon to break with the Central American Federation.

Costa Rica's relative stability was the reason that the province of Guanacaste aligned itself with Costa Rica rather than Nicaragua in 1824. The Federation approved the annexation. Juan Mora Fernández's long tenure as head of state (1824–1833) also reflected a growing cohesiveness in contrast to conditions elsewhere in Central America.

Braulio Carrillo Colina provided effective if somewhat arbitrary leadership for the consolidation of Costa Rican nationhood during his two periods as head of state (1835–1837 and 1838–1842). Carrillo took the lead in establishing San José as the permanent capital and in separating Costa Rica from the Federation (1838). He also fostered the cultivation of coffee, which became the principal national export and the mainstay of the national economy. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of coffee in Costa Rica's economic development and modernization. The manner in which Carrillo promoted the new crop also served to reinforce the existing positive land-tenure pattern in the meseta. He distributed coffee saplings to the peasant farmers as a means of providing them with a cash crop and the nation with its most significant export as of 2007. This success confirmed in practice one of the major tenets of early liberal and republican dogma, that is, that more open trade and foreign capital—British capital was involved in the commercialization and shipping of coffee and in supplying trees—would contribute significantly to economic development and should be encouraged.

The liberal-conservative conflict that raged throughout the rest of Central America afflicted Costa Rica in a very attenuated form. National leadership placed Costa Rican interests above party or ideological interests so that the country did not suffer from the same deep divisions as other Central American countries, and remained on the sidelines in inter-Central American conflicts.

The ultimate fate of the great liberal leader from Honduras, Francisco Morazán, was determined by Costa Rican reluctance to be party to these inter-Central American disputes. After the disintegration of the Federation, Morazán attempted to use Costa Rica as his base for military operations to reclaim his presidency and restore the Federation. Morazán's ascendancy in Costa Rica lasted less than six months and ended with his execution there in September 1842.

Throughout the Carrillo period and the 1840s, coffee production expanded at a prodigious rate, and the road building that he initiated continued apace. The most important advances were related to the exportation of this new crop, particularly the improvement of the cart road to the major Pacific port, Puntarenas.

The expansion of coffee production in Costa Rica can be attributed to the initiative of those involved in the trade but also to the propitiousness of the setting. The moderate temperatures of the Central Valley together with rich volcanic soil and tropical sun without excess heat made for nearly ideal growing conditions. The predictability of the dry season provided a natural means of drying the husked beans in beneficios (processing plants) and made the trails to Puntarenas passable at the time that the dried beans were ready for market.

As coffee production expanded to meet the increasing external demand, there emerged a new coffee elite, which also manifested distinct Costa Rican traits. It was not a mere carryover from a colonial landholding oligarchy that introduced coffee production to its large estates, which was the case in several other Latin American nations. The coffee elite in Costa Rica was more commercial in origin and developed from early investment in processing, transporting, and marketing the bean. Some of its members were descendents of the colonial elite; others were foreign nationals who became involved in the trade and later invested in land and production (hence such surnames as Dent and Rohrmoser). Some were Costa Ricans of relatively humble background who prospered with the coffee boom in ancillary enterprises and then invested in land for coffee production.

Members of the coffee elite extended their land holdings and created relatively large estates. However, they did not do so to the exclusion of the peasant producers. The general scarcity of workers made the bargaining position of agricultural labor stronger than elsewhere in Central America. The larger-scale producers were dependent on the independent peasant farmers who would work for wages at harvest time. The patron-peon relationship did not involve the extreme exploitation common in so many other areas of nineteenth-century Latin America. Nonetheless, the new elite based on coffee became the dominant socioeconomic group and, as such, played a major role in the social, cultural, political, and economic development of the nation.

The political situation after the execution of Morazán was fluid until the presidency of Juan Rafael Mora Porrás (1849–1859), who reestablished republican forms despite being something of a caudillo. As chief executive, Mora emphasized order and had the support of much of the emerging coffee elite.

THE NATIONAL WAR AND THE SENSE OF NATIONHOOD

The most dramatic events of Mora's presidency revolved around the military campaigns to repulse William Walker's (1824–1860) invading forces. For Costa Ricans, this war against the filibusters contributed to their sense of nationhood in much the same way as the struggle for independence did in many other countries. In a sense, the National War filled the void created by the absence of a war for independence and engendered the great national heroes, particularly the figure of Juan Santamaría (1831–1856).

Walker's ascendancy in Nicaragua (1855–1857) and his subsequent advance into the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica led President Mora to issue a call to arms to repel the invading forces. The Costa Rican forces that were organized on the meseta joined troops in Guanacaste and defeated the invading forces at Santa Rosa. The filibusters retreated to Nicaragua and were again defeated at Rivas (11 April 1856).

It was at Rivas that a simple soldier, Juan Santamaría, lost his life in a heroic and successful one-man attack that resulted in the fiery destruction of the filibusters' stronghold. Santamaría's sacrifice, coupled with his humble origin, made him a fitting hero for a nation that sought democratization and a greater spirit of equality among its people.

After the battle for Rivas, a cholera outbreak struck the Costa Rican forces, which then sought refuge in the Central Valley. The epidemic resulted in an estimated ten thousand deaths in a nation of approximately one hundred thousand inhabitants. This tragedy added to the indelible impression the National War left on Costa Rica and its people.

THE NEW LIBERALISM AND THE OPENING TO THE CARIBBEAN

After a decade of military-political instability, then colonel and later general Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez (1831–1882) seized power (1870). He remained the dominant figure in government until his death in 1882. Guardia, like several other Latin American presidents of the period, rationalized his departure from liberal principles by embracing positivist concepts. These authoritarian presidents maintained, and in the case of Guardia, even enhanced the mechanisms of republicanism, but they ruled by force of arms and personality. They placed great emphasis on economic development through modernization, particularly transportation infrastructure and trade expansion. Guardia's presidencies are somewhat ambivalently honored in Costa Rica because he contributed to political and economic development even though he relied on military power to govern.

He introduced the Constitution of 1871, which remained the fundamental law for over three-quarters of a century and in a sense beyond. When the Constituent Assembly met to write a new constitution following the 1948 revolution, it decided to discard the draft constitution presented by the revolutionary junta. The assembly chose to simply modify the 1871 Constitution. As a result, the 1949 Constitution bears a close resemblance to that formulated under Guardia.

The outstanding material achievement of Guardia's initiatives proved to be railroad construction. The project inspired and initiated but not completed by Guardia had immense implications for the future of the country. The major goal in contracting with the Keith brothers and Henry Meiggs to build a railroad from the Central Valley to the Caribbean or Atlantic coast was to have a more direct, quicker, and less costly means of exporting coffee to European and North American markets. With the death of his brother, Minor Cooper Keith emerged as the driving force for the project. The railroad, which finally became operational around 1890 after great expense and loss of life, brought several profound changes to Costa Rica. The most obvious difference was the connection between the heartland and the Atlantic coast, which facilitated new development along the whole course of the railway. In the space of just a few years, Puerto Limon on the Caribbean became the principal port.

The prevalence of endemic diseases, particularly yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery, in the hot, humid tropical lowlands created problems for the railroad builders that were as difficult to overcome as the mountainous and heavily forested terrain. The Costa Ricans living in the Central Valley and along the Pacific side of the mountains were reluctant to live and work along the notoriously unhealthy railroad route.

Minor Cooper Keith experimented with importing workers from Italy and China before finally finding the desired labor supply in the British West Indies, principally Jamaica. The Chinese and Italians became small but significant ethnic groups that contributed disproportionately to subsequent national development. The West Indian population became the principal population component of the Caribbean coastal area. This importation of workers gave the whole region a distinct character that has only been modified since 1945 with greater internal migration by the Afro-Costa Ricans to other regions and by people from other regions into Limon and the coastal area.

THE BANANA TRADE

The projected railroad from San José to Limon met many obstacles, not the least of which was the increasing financial burden. Keith came up with an idea that had long-term consequences of political, social, and economic importance: He began to cultivate bananas for export to the U.S. market.

The banana trade provided a means for exploiting the land grants conferred on Keith's railroad construction enterprise in order to subsidize the project. Banana production also provided a cargo for the ships that brought supplies for the railroad construction crews. In this way it partially resolved one of the problems inherent in building a railroad to connect the Central Valley to the Atlantic coast: construction had to proceed primarily from the coast inward because essential materials had to be imported. The principal potential export, coffee, could not reach the coast until the railway reached the Central Valley.

Keith's solution consisted of planting bananas along the right of way and then exporting them to an expanding U.S. market. The banana, which had elicited a favorable popular response from U.S. consumers at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, needed only refrigerated ships and regular sailings to reach a U.S. port from which the fruit could enter the already technologically advanced U.S. transportation system. By 1880 Costa Rica was developing a second major export that proved to be a consistent and significant source of revenue and foreign exchange from the late nineteenth century to the present.

The opening of the Atlantic coast area to banana cultivation intensified immigration from Jamaica. U.S. private investment and management coupled with a Jamaican labor force created an English-speaking enclave in the banana zone. Because the whole zone had previously been unexploited, the banana and railroad companies ultimately built the infrastructure, from hospitals and schools to wharfage and water-treatment facilities. This led to an impressive upsurge in Costa Rican contact with the outside world as these companies served as the catalysts for more rapid and predictable transportation to the coast and from Limon to Europe and North America. They introduced new technologies in communications as well.

Although the nation welcomed the material progress, the increased access to the outside world, and the new sources of revenues and foreign exchange, the fact that banana production led to an outwardly oriented, English-speaking enclave became a major political issue in the twentieth century. First, such reformers as Jorge Volio Jiménez (1882–1955) protested the enclave, and then mainstream political leaders such as Ricardo Jimé-nez Oreamuno (1859–1945) and José Figueres Ferrer (b. 1906) eventually enacted measures to integrate the enclaves into national life.

DEMOCRATIZATION AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM

When Costa Rica celebrated one hundred years of democratic government in 1989, it commemorated the watershed election in which President Bernardo Soto Alfaro (1885–1889) and his hand-picked successor, Ascensión Esquivel Ibarra, accepted electoral defeat. The victor, José Joaquín Rodríguez Zeledón (1890–1894), and subsequent governments sometimes deviated from the democratic norm, but the all-important transfer of power based on a free election had taken place.

Soto, through his revered education minister, Mauro Fernández Acuña (1843–1905), made one of the most important advances for the consolidation of the democratic tendencies that had been present in Costa Rica since its beginnings. They established a system of free, compulsory public education in practice, not just in theory. The commitment to universal literacy has endured from the time of Fernández and contributed to sustained cultural, political, and economic progress in the twentieth century. Fernández's democratic proclivities manifested themselves when on the grounds that it was an unjustifiable expense for the benefit of the elite he closed the university until the state first had provided an elementary education for all.

THE AGE OF DON CLETO AND DON RICARDO

The period from 1906 to 1936 was dominated by two civilian presidents of unusual dedication and ability: Cleto González Víquez (1906–1910 and 1928–1932) and Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno (1910–1914, 1924–1928, and 1932–1936). Although personalism and ephemeral party organizations characterized political activity, it remained civilian, peaceful, and civil throughout the period except for the Federico Tinoco Granados (1870–1931) dictatorship (1917–1919).

González Víquez and Jiménez Oreamuno consolidated the civilian tradition. Both governed within the Constitution and presided over progressive, fiscally responsible administrations that continued to support popular education, civil rights, and economic expansion. During this period Costa Rica served as the site for the Central American Court of Justice and gained international recognition for its progressive and orderly ways.

Under the surface, however, there were growing problems of increased class distinction, rural poverty, and the concentration of economic power in the hands of the coffee elite and foreign enterprise. The United Fruit Company, which administered a virtual state within a state along the Caribbean coast, interfered less in Costa Rica than in several other Central American nations. However, the presence of an English-speaking enclave dominated by a foreign corporation met with increasing ambivalence despite its recognized contributions to national progress and well-being.

Alfredo González Flores's presidency (1914–1917) and the organization of Jorge Volio Jiménez's (1882–1955) Reformist Party in the 1920s served as precursors of the social reform movements that would transform the national agenda for two decades beginning in 1940. Both recognized that the emerging middle sectors, the urban laborers, and peasants suffered from social injustice and lack of economic opportunity.

Congress chose González Flores as president after the 1914 election failed to produce a clear victor. Despite assuming power without a substantial political base, he attempted a fundamental reform by successfully sponsoring an income tax that placed a heavier burden on those of greater wealth. His position was further weakened by an attempt to control the off-year elections in order to secure greater congressional support for his economic reform program. When economic crisis struck as a result of market disruptions occasioned by World War I in Europe, González Flores was overthrown by his war minister, Federico Tinoco Granados.

Tinoco's repressive ways and the nonrecognition of his government by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) led to ever more vociferous protest and armed rebellion. He resigned and went into exile in 1919.

Jorge Volio Jiménez became a "general" in the armed struggle against the Tinoco dictatorship after having been a reform-minded priest who identified with the plight of small, independent, but poor farmers. After his fall Tinoco turned his talents to politics and organized the Reform Party, which championed popular causes. His ideas strongly influenced future generations. In exchange for the inclusion of some of his program in the platform of the National Republican Party (PRN), he supported the victorious candidacy of Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno in 1924.

The more educated and better informed electorate searched for government programs that would improve their standard of living. Jiménez, with the support of Volio, advocated reforms in 1924, but his second term, like his first, was characterized by profound respect for democratic traditions and a concern for public works, but without major advances in social reform. He did, however, create a National Insurance Bank. In his third term Jiménez successfully sponsored the nation's first minimum wage and carried out a very modest program of land distribution in the Caribbean lowlands.

The Great Depression and the void left by the disappearance of the Reform Party presented an opportunity for the development of a new political movement that had profound impacts on the nation for decades to come. In 1931 a young law student, Manuel Mora Valverde organized a communist party, the Farmers and Workers Bloc (Bloque de Obreros y Campesinos). Mora and like-minded leaders such as the novelist Carlos Luis Fallas Sibaja and Jaime Cerdas Mora capitalized on the growing discontent and occupied a significant political space as an influential minority party. The communists' program emphasized realizable reforms, many of which were already commonplace in contemporaneous Europe and North America. By the mid-1930s they had demonstrated sufficient strength to have led a successful strike in the banana zone (1934) and to have two representatives in Congress. By 1930 the population had reached one-half million and the personalistic politics of the period no longer commanded the allegiance of all the voters. The more organized and ideologically defined Bloque had demonstrated its growing appeal.

The National Republicans met the challenge presented by the communists by electing a no-nonsense anticommunist, León Cortés Castro, in 1936. Cortés won high marks as an administrator and for extending public works. However, his record on civil rights was widely questioned as were his allegedly pro-German sympathies. The protest against his high-handed dissolution of the Electoral Tribunal to deny the communists a seat in Congress extended far beyond the aggrieved party and included much of the political and intellectual leadership.

In 1940, the National Republican Party's candidate was Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia (1940–1944). The opposition experienced difficulties in organizing behind a viable candidate when Ricardo Jiménez, elder statesman and three-time president, withdrew his candidacy charging President Cortés with obstructing the electoral process. The opposition finally supported Mora Valverde's unsuccessful candidacy.

SOCIAL REFORM AND POLITICAL REACTION

With the opposition in disarray and without a viable candidate, Calderón won an overwhelming victory that seemed to confirm the continuance of Cortés's policies. Calderón, however, broke sharply with the past and initiated a sweeping program of change and social progress and set in motion the conflicts that culminated in the 1948 civil war.

Calderón's inauguration marked the beginning of a tumultuous and decisive decade in Costa Rica. The events of the 1940s resulted in a new Costa Rica in which the democratic and egalitarian tendencies of the past reached a new level of definition and effectiveness; in which sustained economic development through diversification and modernization reached ever higher levels; and in which a national conscience formed in support of social justice. The decade of the 1940s served to break with the past and yet build on the very positive achievements of that past. The reform program elicited strong reactions that shook the nation to its very foundations.

There were many factors involved in shaping the Calderón administration. The president leaned on his friend and advisor, Víctor Manuel Sanabria Martínez, who ascended to the post of archbishop of San José in 1940. The two shared the conviction that the best answer to the communists' promise of a more just society was to be found in the social encyclicals of the Roman Catholic Church. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the United States (the hegemonic power in Central America) favored welfare capitalism and assiduously courted the Latin American nations with the expectation of establishing Western Hemisphere solidarity for the Second World War. In response to the elite reaction against his reform program, Calderón took advantage of the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union to enlist the support of a renamed and supposedly democratic communist party (Popular Vanguard Party—PVP), which ostensibly accepted his social Christian approach to reform.

In this atmosphere of change, and with the disruptions and initiatives of wartime (price controls, intervention of enemy properties, financial and trade agreements with the Allies, a military training unit and intelligence operations from the United States), Calderón secured passage in Congress of his extensive reform program. Congress amended the Constitution to include social guarantees. The social security system included national health insurance as well as provisions for retirement and disability pensions. The labor code provided for the creation of a ministry of labor and a series of guarantees for workers, including the right to organize and strike, a minimum wage, protection against arbitrary dismissal, and obligatory collective bargaining.

Calderón, with support in Congress from his own majority National Republicans and the Popular Vanguard, passed extensive social legislation. The University of Costa Rica, the nation's first university in the twentieth century, was founded. Another bill provided for the distribution of uncultivated land to those who brought it under cultivation and for compensation if the land was privately held. Another program distributed shoes to school children.

This set of social programs, along with graft and mismanagement, elicited a strong response from much of the national elite, many of whom considered Calderón a traitor to his class. It also served to activate increasingly politicized members of the middle class who opposed Calderón because he was an oligarch and because his administration was fiscally irresponsible. They also opposed the communists because they were inherently undemocratic. These middle-class dissidents formed the Center for the Study of National Problems (1940) and Democratic Action (1944), which later coalesced to form the Social Democratic Party (1945).

In the 1944 election, the governing party selected Teodoro Picado Michalski (1944–1948) to confront the Democratic Party, newly reorganized to advance the candidacy of former president León Cortés. The campaign was vigorous, vehement, and sometimes violent. Picado won amid widespread charges of fraud and intimidation. Although he was on the defensive from the very beginning, Picado passed a progressive income tax. He hoped that electoral reform would diminish the growing discontent. It did seem to have a beneficial effect on the off-year election in 1946, but that proved to be little more than the calm before the storm.

During the next two years, Costa Rica suffered from acrimonious political confrontations that ran the gamut from street protests and gang clashes through press excesses and terrorism to attempts at and preparations for armed uprisings. On the electoral front, the opposition united behind the figure of the prominent liberal journalist Otilio Ulate Blanco, leader of the National Union Party (PUN).

Among the dissidents who doubted the efficacy of the electoral reforms was José Figueres Ferrer, who became more prominent and sought support nationally and internationally for arms to overthrow the Calderónist-communist regime. Upon entering into an alliance to overthrow dictatorship in the region by signing the Pact of the Caribbean, Figueres received assurance from the Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo Bermejo (1944–1948) that arms and men would be made available to him in the future.

When the election held on 8 February 1948 resulted in a provisional count showing Ulate victorious over Calderón, the governing coalition maintained its unity in Congress and voted to annul the presidential election. Both sides charged fraud; the flawed electoral apparatus had failed.

CIVIL WAR AND REVOLUTIONARY JUNTA

Although Archbishop Sanabria, along with business and political leaders, continued to seek a compromise to avoid armed conflict, events moved quickly to a bloody confrontation. Government forces repressed opposition leaders. Figueres, from his estate in the south, called on the opposition to mobilize for revolution. As Figueres's forces mustered at his estate, La Lucha, he called on Arévalo to send arms and men from Guatemala. On 10 March 1948, Figueres's Army of National Liberation seized several strategic objectives in the south. Picado, unaware of Figueres's international connections and therefore of his potential strength, reacted reluctantly and somewhat ambivalently to the uprising. He did not maintain decisive control over the small army under his command so that the initiative remained with the insurgents. As a consequence, the major force that confronted the rebels was made up of PVP volunteers.

After several bloody battles, the rebels were poised to move on San José. At this crucial juncture the pro-government forces, now split by mutual suspicions and distrust, welcomed the intervention of the diplomatic corps to bring about a negotiated peace. At this point Mora, who controlled the most numerous and reliable progovernment forces, met in secret with Figueres at the Alto de Ochomogo, just outside Cartago. With assurances from Figueres that the National Liberation would respect the social legislation and that there would be no reprisals against the progovernment supporters, Mora agreed to abide by the peace treaty negotiated by Picado with Figueres's representative Father Benjamin Núñez Vargas.

Since the pretext for the rebellion had been Congress's annulment of the 1948 election, it was incumbent on the triumphant forces to recognize Ulate as president-elect. On 1 May, Ulate reached an agreement with Figueres under which he accepted that title. Figueres, who took the title of president of the Founding Committee of the Second Republic (Junta), organized the junta along the lines of a presidential cabinet, which then governed the nation for the next eighteen months. The victors recognized only the results of the 1948 presidential election; all other results remained annulled.

To the surprise of many within the former opposition, the junta consolidated rather than overturned the reforms of the previous eight years. It persecuted the PVP and Calderónist leadership, but enhanced their programs. However, Figueres gave them a social democratic orientation.

The most profound changes instituted by the junta were contained in the 1949 Constitution. The armed forces were abolished in favor of a national police force. The banking system was nationalized. The creation of an electoral tribunal as a fourth power within the government allowed Costa Rica to develop one of the world's fairest and most transparent systems for guaranteeing the validity of the exercise of suffrage. The junta also gave new impetus to the creation of cooperatives, the modernization of education, the extension of higher education, and the creation of autonomous institutions, such as the Costa Rican Insurance Institute (INS), which were created by the state but governed by an independent board of directors.

The social democratic orientation of the junta met with a strong negative response from Ulate's followers, the numerically dominant PUN members of the victorious coalition that had opposed Calderón. This political dissent even led to an abortive armed uprising headed by Figueres's defense minister, Edgar Cardona Quiros. PUN elected a clear majority in the Constituent Assembly, which then declined to ratify the draft document prepared for the junta, but instead updated the liberal constitution that had served the nation since 1871. The reformed constitution fell far short of the reforms that the junta espoused.

POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

After Ulate served his term, a new party committed to the ideals of the revolution, the National Liberation Party (PLN), successfully supported Figueres's candidacy. As the first president (1953–1958) elected under the new constitution, Figueres interpreted the great margin of victory that carried him to office as a popular mandate to implement the new party's social democratic program. From this election forward, the PLN has been the dominant political force in the nation and its principles have profoundly affected many aspects of national life. Its greatest strength has been a burgeoning, self-conscious middle class that transformed Costa Rica over the next generation into an unusually well-developed country, given its small population and limited resource base.

During the postwar period, Costa Rica sustained a remarkable rate of cultural and economic growth. Education on all levels reached all areas of the country; the arts flourished. Economic growth was fueled by increased productivity in traditional crops and by diversification into new crops and light industry. The expanding delivery system of medical care is rivaled in Latin America only by that of post-revolution Cuba. In the twenty-first century, telecommunications, manufacturing, services, and tourism rival primary exports. The rate of increase in living standards brought the nation nearly to the level of the industrialized nations in many areas, such as literacy and life expectancy. However, despite strong social indicators, geographic disparities persist.

The nation's remarkable growth was accomplished in the face of rapid population increase. By 1960 Costa Rica had one of the highest rates of population increase in the world (estimated to be nearly 4 percent). It declined to somewhere between 2 and 2.5 percent by 1970 and has remained within that range since then. From an estimated population of 1 million in 1956, it soared to 1,871,780 by the census of 1973, reached just over 3 million in 1990, and increased to an estimated 4.3 million in 2007. Some 500,000 to 1 million immigrants from Nicaragua, many undocumented, add to the population.

The PLN provided the nation with vital and viable alternatives for social, economic, and political development that were neither communistic nor dominated by an oligarchy. It provided the country with a stable political environment that permitted it to survive the cold war with its political democracy intact as well as to sustain a high rate of economic development and diversification.

The permanent, highly organized, and ideological nature of the PLN also marked a turning point in political development. In the face of the PLN challenge, the ephemeral, personalistic groupings of the past could no longer compete. For the generation following Figueres's election, political contests pitted the PLN against anti-PLN coalitions supported by the hugely successful daily newspaper La Nacíon (founded in 1946). The Liberationists controlled the legislature for the most part, but the presidency alternated between them and the opposition. After Figueres's term, a PUN leader, Mario Echandi Jiménez (1958–1962), was elected with support from the still potent National Republicans. He was followed in office by Francisco Orlich Bolmarcich (1962–1966), one of the leaders in the 1948 uprising and a contemporary and close friend of Figueres. Continuing this alternation in power, José Joaquín Trejos Fernández (1966–1970), a National Republican and longtime supporter of Calderón, was elected to the presidency in 1966 as the wounds from the confrontations of the 1940s began to heal. The PLN recovered the presidency in 1970, when Figueres won his second term. (The Constitution had been amended to prohibit second terms, but the prohibition did not apply to Figueres or Echandi.) When Daniel Oduber Quirós was elected (1974–1978) to succeed him, Costa Rican pundits began to speculate about the possible creation of a oneparty state similar to Mexico.

However, in the 1978 campaign the PLN candidate, Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez, met a revived coalition which demonstrated greater internal coherence than the previous challenges to its continued dominance. Calling itself simply Unidad, the anti-Liberation coalition nominated Rodrigo Carazo Odio (1978–1982), a former PLN leader, and won the election.

The Carazo presidency, however, did not live up to its promise. Concerns about the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, low coffee prices, and high petroleum costs plagued the administration. Cararzo failed to react quickly enough to the crisis, and the resultant inflation and excessive national debt broke the pattern of rapid and sustained development that had characterized Costa Rica for a generation. The Unidad coalition, however, laid the foundation for a second major party based on social Christian principles and less state intervention in the economy.

The PLN's Monge (1982–1986) defeated the discredited Unidad in the 1982 election but faced daunting tasks. Heavy debt coupled with American pressure to play a more active role in the U.S.-directed effort to bring down the Sandinista government in Nicaragua seriously crippled Monge's efforts to revive the economy and maintain political democracy and peace. Although avowing neutrality, the Monge adminstration was only partially able to avert U.S. and internal pressures to aid the contras. The continual influx of Central American refugees, particularly from Nicaragua, placed an added economic and social burden on the Monge administration and those of his successors.

After leading a generational revolt within the PLN that culminated in his nomination, Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986–1990) defeated the leader of the unified party that had emerged from the Unidad coalition, Rafael Angel Calderón Fournier. As president, Arias brought renewed vigor and vision to his party and nation. He went beyond Monge's neutrality to become the most prominent and successful leader seeking peace in Central America. He decreased the national debt through a series of initiatives. He asserted national interests despite American pressure and largely eliminated Costa Rica as a base for anti-Sandinista activities. His growing international stature, a result of being awarded the Nobel Prize for peace, helped Arias maintain an independent, pro-negotiations stance that greatly contributed to increased stability in Central America.

The election of Calderón Fournier in 1990 marked a new milestone in national political development. Calderón Fournier and Arias represented the rise of a new generation of political leaders who were not involved in the 1948 civil war. They are the beneficiaries of the reforms that transformed the nation between 1940 and 1970, but they do not carry the scars and rancor of many of their predecessors. Calderón Fournier brought a more internally coherent major party to power, the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC), which was based on the social Christian principles that had inspired the reforms of the early 1940s. The earlier insistence by the Center for the Study of National Problems on the need for permanent, ideologically based political parties led to the formation of the PLN. The PLN's success had created the necessity for a similarly coherent rival. As of the election of 1990, that necessity seemed a reality.

In the twenty-first century, the PUSC and PLN continue to dominate, though new and viable political parties have emerged. In 2002 the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC; Citizens Action Party) captured 26 percent of the vote in the presidential elections, thereby forcing the country to hold its first-ever runoff. Again in 2006, the PAC proved strong. The party's presidential candidate, Ottón Solis Fallas, won enough votes against former President Oscar Arias Sanchez to require an unexpected manual recount. Arias, by a very slim margin, emerged the victor.

See alsoCosta Rica, Constitutions; Costa Rica, National Liberation Party; Costa Rica, Second Republic.

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                                      John Patrick Bell