Jorge Rovira Mas
COSTA RICA: Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia
Born in San José, Costa Rica, in 1900. Son of a well-known physician of the time, Dr. Rafael Ángel Calderón Muñoz, who also participated in national politics. Descendant of General Tomás Guardia, a key figure in the construction of the national state and ruler from 1870 to 1882.
He studied medicine in Europe, like his father, first at the Catholic University of Louvain and later at the Free University of Brussels, graduating in 1927.
He was strongly influenced by the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, based on the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) and the Cardinal Mercier’s Malines Social Code. From these sources, he rejected economic liberalism and individualism, as well as their social consequences: the acute opposition between capital and labor and the misery and injustice suffered by the working class. He also rejected socialism, focusing on improving the economic and social conditions of the working class through basic laws and institutions, without replacing individual and collective initiative.
Upon returning to Costa Rica, he entered politics, being elected councilman of San José in 1930 and deputy in 1934 and 1938. He became President of the Republic (1940-1944) as a candidate of the National Republican Party (PRN), with more than 80% of the vote.
Recognized as “Costa Rica’s social reformer”, he founded the University of Costa Rica (1940), settled the border with Panama, created the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) in 1941, introduced a chapter of social rights and guarantees in the Constitution, and approved the first Labor Code in 1943. During his government, he sought support from the Communist Party and the progressive Catholic Church after losing backing from the coffee oligarchy. On September 15, 1943, Calderón Guardia, Manuel Mora Valverde, and Víctor Sanabria Martínez marched together to commemorate the official enactment of the Labor Code.
He was succeeded by Teodoro Picado M. (1944-1948). In the 1948 elections, Calderón was defeated by an opposition alliance that nominated Otilio Ulate; the Congress annulled the elections, triggering a six-week civil war that began on March 12, 1948. Figueres guaranteed the communists the protection of the social achievements of the 1940s, but Calderón, Picado, and Mora went into exile. The Government Junta led by Figueres handed power to Ulate on November 8, 1949, when the current Constitution took effect.
Calderón Guardia returned to the country in 1958 after the governments of Figueres (1953-1958) and Mario Echandi of the PUN. He ran in the 1962 elections with the PRN and sought coalitions from 1966, while the PLN returned to power in 1970-1978. He died in 1970. His son, Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier (1949), consolidated calderonism and founded the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) in 1983, eventually becoming president in 1990-1994. He was judicially prosecuted between 2008 and 2011, serving a conditional sentence after the reclassification of his crime.
Author: JRM
