Montealegre Fernández, José María (1815–1887)

José María Montealegre Fernández (b. 19 March 1815; d. 26 September 1887), president of Costa Rica (1859–1863). Montealegre was brought to the presidency as a consequence of the overthrow of his former brother-in-law, Juan Rafael Mora Porrás. He served until 1863 as the representative of the wealthiest coffee planters and traders. His father, Mariano Montealegre Bustamante, had been the colonial-era tobacco administrator and one of the first coffee planters. The younger Montealegre continued the large-scale development of coffee plantings begun by his father, in the 1830s, to the west of San José in former municipal lands. One of the largest coffee producers of the day, he was also a leading export merchant and processor, as was common among the wealthiest growers of the time.

As part of a long political career Montealegre was deputy from the province of Guanacaste (although he never lived there) seven times (Chamber of Representatives, 1846–1848; Senate, 1863–1868). His partisan activities eventually led to his exile by strongman Tomás Guardia in 1872. He died in San José, California, 26 September 1887.

Montealegre was the son of Jerónima Fernández Chacón and Mariano Montealegre Bustamante. He was the first Costa Rican to study medicine in the United Kingdom (1827–1838), graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 1838. He returned home in 1839 and married Ana María Mora Porrás in 1840; they had ten children prior to her death in 1854. He then married the tutor of his children, Sofía Matilde Joy Redman, with whom he had two children.

See alsoGuardia Gutiérrez, Tomás; Mora Porrás, Juan Rafael.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The essential source for Montealegre is the biography by Carlos Meléndez Chaverri, Dr. José María Montealegre (1968). Further details are in Lowell Gudmundson, Costa Rica Before Coffee (1986); and Samuel Z. Stone, La dinastía de los conquistadores (1975).

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Arias, David. Construcción de un estado moderno: Política, estado, e identidad nacional en Costa Rica, 1821–1914. San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2005.

Fallas Santana, Carmen María. La política y la elite cafetelera en la década de Mora Porras, 1849–1859. Ciudad Universitaria, Costa Rica: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, 1994.

                                         Lowell Gudmundson