MANUEL MORA VALVERDE
San José (Costa Rica), 1909 – San José (Costa Rica), 1994
By Jorge Rovira Mas
Costa Rican, born in 1909. He graduated as a lawyer. In June 1931, he founded the Communist Party of Costa Rica (PC). The Party’s initial name, since the founders’ proposal was vetoed by the political authorities of the time, was the Workers and Peasants’ Bloc (BOC).
A characteristic feature of communist thought and political action in Costa Rica has been its inspiration from the Marxist-Leninist tradition stemming from the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, while also being nourished by the country’s own anti-imperialist and democratic traditions.
He served several terms as a Congressman during the 1930s and 1940s, the first in 1934 at the age of twenty-five, and again in the 1970s. His arrival in Congress, together with the Banana Strike (also in 1934), gave the Communist Party political recognition and enabled it to consolidate itself among the Costa Rican working class. Part of the demands of the agricultural proletariat in that strike, led by the Communist Party and won against the United Fruit Company (UFCo), included wage increases and cash payment of salaries (instead of tokens and coupons redeemable only in the Company’s commissaries); the establishment of clinics to fight malaria that decimated workers; hygienic housing; and payment in dollars to national banana producers who supplied the UFCo. Carlos Luis Fallas (Calufa), Communist Party leader, was the main organizer of the strike. He later authored the novel Mamita Yunai, a sharp work of social criticism.
From 1940 onwards, when Dr. Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia became President (1940–1944), political life grew intense, and emerging forces in confrontational alignment led the country to the 1948 civil war. Influenced by Catholic Social Doctrine, Calderón Guardia promoted significant social reforms: the creation of health and social insurance through a crucial institution in Costa Rican society, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS); the introduction of a chapter on social guarantees in the Constitution; and the approval of the first Labor Code. This caused the coffee oligarchy, which had initially supported him in reaching the Presidency, to distance itself from his government and begin considering a coup. In need of allies, Calderonism agreed to seal an alliance with the communists, who seized this historical opportunity to support a bourgeois government inclined toward social reforms while also deepening some of them. At the time, the Catholic Church was led by a progressive-minded figure, Monsignor Víctor Sanabria Martínez, who supported Calderón’s reforms. To facilitate alliances and avoid resistance, the communists modified parts of their program and renamed the Party, which went from being the BOC to the Popular Vanguard Party (PVP). On September 15, 1943, Independence Day, in a historic parade, Calderón Guardia, Mora Valverde, and Sanabria Martínez marched together in a car, marking the promulgation of the Labor Code.
The 1940s were the golden years for the communists. Not only because of the number of congressmen they brought into Parliament, but also due to their political influence. When Figueres, following the annulment of the 1948 elections by the Congress controlled by the communists and Calderonists—elections in which Ulate had defeated Calderón—took up arms and unleashed a civil war lasting almost six weeks, the communists were one of the main supports of President Picado’s government. Picado, like Calderón, came from the same political background. Facing Figueres’ imminent victory and that of the National Liberation Movement, and in order to avoid an even bloodier conflict, negotiations led to the departure of Picado, Calderón, and Mora from the country. But before leaving, Manuel Mora met with Figueres to agree on the terms for ending the civil war. Mora feared a U.S. military intervention from Panama within the context of the Cold War and understood the blow this would deal to national sovereignty—something unprecedented in Costa Rica. The meeting between Mora and Figueres, remembered as the Pact of Ochomogo (named after its location), concluded the civil war and secured Figueres’ guarantee that the social reforms of the 1940s would remain intact, which they did.
Mora was sent into exile in Cuba and Mexico, where he lived for some time before returning to Costa Rica. The 1950s, in the aftermath of the civil war and amid the Cold War, were difficult for Costa Rican communists: their party was outlawed, and they had to lead a very discreet life.
During the 1960s, circumstances improved, though they did not aim for congressional representation until the 1970s, when Mora was once again elected as a Congressman. In 1975, constitutional restrictions on the open ideological participation of communism in national politics were finally lifted. In this decade, new left-wing parties emerged, influenced by the Cuban Revolution (the Costa Rican Socialist Party and the People’s Revolutionary Movement). From 1978 onwards, a coalition between them called Pueblo Unido (“United People”) was formed. Its greatest success, far from that of the communists in the 1940s, was electing four congressmen (7% of the Legislative Assembly) in 1982–1986. During these same years, in the context of the national economic crisis of 1980–1982 and the Central American political crisis of the 1980s, disagreements over political tactics and strategies, both domestic and regional, weakened Pueblo Unido, split the PVP, and plunged Costa Rican left-wing politics into a steep decline, leading to its near disappearance.
Manuel Mora Valverde died in 1996. His extraordinary political career and exceptional patriotic spirit are almost unanimously recognized. In 1998, he was named Benemérito de la Patria (Meritorious of the Homeland) by the Legislative Assembly. However, the Communist Party of Costa Rica, which he had helped found in 1931, disappeared along with him.
Author: JRM
