San Ramón (Costa Rica), 1906 – 1990

By Jorge Rovira Mas

He was born in the village of San Ramón (Alajuela), Costa Rica, in 1906. His immediate Catalan ancestry, on both sides of his family, shaped some of his most prominent character traits. Entrepreneurial and hardworking, multifaceted with a strong practical inclination, impulsive yet also reflective and free from intellectual constraints, he was an avid reader, always independent, and at times overly bold and even provocative towards Costa Rican elites.

After completing his secondary education, he lived in the United States (Boston and New York) between 1923 and 1938. There, he attended open courses and studied electrical engineering, although he never completed his degree. In both cities, he was a regular nighttime visitor to the major libraries.

In 1929, he bought a farm in San Marcos de Tarrazú, which he named “Endless Struggle.” It became his main asset, and throughout his life, he engaged in various agricultural and forestry activities on the property.

In 1942, during the administration of Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (1940-1944), after delivering a highly critical radio speech against the government, which he was unable to finish due to police intervention, he was arrested and expelled from the country. He lived in Mexico until 1944, developing a deep animosity towards Calderón during that period.

In 1945, he helped found the Social Democratic Party (PSD). In 1947, he participated in the convention of opposition sectors to Calderonismo. He was defeated by Otilio Ulate, who became the presidential candidate of the coalition with the National Union Party (PUN) for the February 1948 elections, against Calderón Guardia, who was seeking the presidency for a second time.

When the elections won by Ulate were annulled by the Calderonist and communist-dominated Congress, Figueres seized the historical opportunity: he refrained from participating in the ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a compromise to avoid a greater conflict, and instead took up arms on March 12. This sparked a civil war that lasted nearly six weeks. The National Liberation Movement, led by Figueres, emerged victorious, with support from the Caribbean Legion—a group of Central American and Caribbean leaders eager to eradicate the region’s dictatorships, including those of Somoza in Nicaragua and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. While the fight to uphold the election results was the most apparent justification, a more significant motive lay behind it: Figueres’ desire to break into political life with an ambitious modernization project that would alter the prevailing agro-export social order. This order had already seen some social reforms in the 1940s, including the creation of social security and labor laws, all spearheaded by Calderón Guardia.

The Ulate-Figueres pact of March 1, 1948, allowed Figueres to lead a governing junta for eighteen months. Before the civil war ended, Figueres had committed to the communists to uphold Calderón’s social reforms, much to the frustration of the coffee oligarchy. The junta established state control over bank deposits and nationalized the banks. In December 1948, it abolished the army, a measure enshrined in Article 12 of the Constitution of November 8, 1949, which remains in force today, with amendments. That same year, Figueres founded the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE), which monopolized the generation and distribution of electricity and telecommunications services. The junta handed power over to Ulate on the day the new Constitution came into effect.

On October 12, 1951, in San Ramón, Figueres, along with other prominent figures of the National Liberation Movement, such as Orlich, Daniel Oduber, and Luis Alberto Monge, founded the National Liberation Party (PLN).

Don Pepe’s core political ideology—he was affectionately called “don Pepe” by his supporters—came from diverse sources, including the influence of Keynes. It was clearly social democratic in its post-war form: a respect for individual freedoms and private property, admiration for entrepreneurship and economic innovation, but rather than a strong state, it envisioned one whose primary role was to foster a solidary society with a strong middle class. In short, a mixed economy under a representative democratic political regime. Figueres also developed new economic ideas to reduce poverty on a global scale and diminish inequality between nations.

In 1953, the PLN participated in general elections for the first time, with Figueres as the presidential candidate, achieving the party’s best historical result (66% of the votes for deputies), although Calderón Guardia was in exile, and his party did not compete. Figueres governed the country from late 1953 to 1958. During his first constitutional term, he pursued economic policies aimed at improving wages, stimulating demand and domestic production, creating numerous state entities primarily focused on the economy, advocating internationally for coffee prices, increasing productivity in the export sector, raising taxes on the profits of the United Fruit Company, and promoting international democracy. All of this was done while maintaining good relations with the United States, and positioning himself, in the context of the Cold War, as an ally of the U.S. against communism. At the end of his presidency, he handed power over to the anti-liberationist (anti-PLN) opposition, which won the election. This cemented electoral democracy as the means to achieve political power in Costa Rica, favoring the immediate consolidation of this regime after Calderón’s failed attempts to regain power through armed conflict in late 1948 and 1955, both times supported by Somoza García of Nicaragua and repelled by Figueres’ governments.

From 1958 onwards, after leaving office, Figueres was elected president of the PLN’s national executive committee, a position he would hold for most of his life, except during his return to power in 1970. He traveled extensively throughout Latin America, fostering political collaboration with democratic parties and leaders (such as Rómulo Betancourt, Juan Bosch, Luis Muñoz Marín, and many others). Although he initially supported the Cuban Revolution in 1959, he later criticized the communist influence on it publicly in Havana and became openly opposed to it from 1962 onwards.

In 1962, after four years out of power, the PLN returned to the presidency with Francisco J. Orlich, maintaining a strong parliamentary majority. In 1968, Figueres reasserted his leadership within the PLN and became the party’s presidential candidate for the 1970 elections, provoking a reaction from a faction of the party that proposed a renewal plan through the “Democratic Manifesto for a Social Revolution,” better known as the “Pátio de Agua Manifesto,” which Figueres ignored.

In 1970, the PLN won the elections again, and Figueres assumed the presidency for the third and final time (two of them through constitutional means). This victory and the subsequent PLN victory in 1974, with Daniel Oduber Quirós as president, accelerated and deepened the party’s interventionist approach in economic and social management. Many new public institutions were created, including the Costa Rican Development Corporation (CODESA), intended as a state-run entity to participate in various sectors of the economy, sparking mistrust and discontent within the business community.

From 1978 onwards, Figueres supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in their struggle against the last Somoza in power (in Nicaragua), continuing his long-standing anti-dictatorial stance. In 1986, the Nicaraguan government awarded him the highest rank of the General Augusto César Sandino Order.

The PLN won the 1982 elections, bringing Luis Alberto Monge to the presidency, marking the party’s second most significant victory. Monge quickly and successfully addressed the economic crisis of 1980-1982, which had worsened under the Carazo administration (1978-1982). The PLN also triumphed in 1986 with Óscar Arias Sánchez, achieving parliamentary majorities in both elections.

In 1983, when Figueres was already 77 years old, Monge appointed him Costa Rica’s itinerant ambassador. During the 1980s, Figueres was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize for abolishing the army in 1948. However, it was Óscar Arias Sánchez who won the award in 1987 for his contribution to Central American peace, thanks to the agreement signed by Central American presidents in Esquipulas (Guatemala) in August that year.

Among Figueres’ works are Gastadas Palabras (1943), Cartas a un ciudadano (1956), and La pobreza de las naciones (1973).

The last PLN government of the 20th century was led by one of his sons from his second marriage to Danish Karen Olsen, José María Figueres Olsen (1944-1998). In 2004, Figueres Olsen faced questions from lawmakers and various political sectors over allegations that he had received money from a transnational company participating in state tenders after leaving office. From then until mid-2005, he did not return to the country, despite calls for him to clarify his role in the matter personally.

Only two Costa Ricans served as president on three occasions during the past century: Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno (1910-1914, 1924-1928, and 1932-1936) and José Figueres Ferrer (1948-1949, 1953-1958, and 1970-1974), the two most influential political figures in Costa Rica in the first and second halves of the 20th century, respectively.

Figueres Ferrer died in 1990, shortly before turning 84.