Language/Spanish/Culture/Costa-Rica-Timeline

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1850 to the Present Day Costa Rica History Chronology
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World Timelines

In this article, I present to you the great stories of the life of our last generations. It will be about liberalism, democracy and civil war, but I invite you before that to read the two articles which summarize the history of Costa Rica and the discovery of this country with before Christopher Columbus and after.

As usual, I will try to tell you this story in a few lines, summarizing to avoid it being too long (especially when I start writing for you, I have a lot of trouble stopping like you have seen it, I imagine). But I will try not to forget anything all the same.


Liberalism, Democracy and Civil War

  • I start with liberalism. It is important to know that from 1880, the Costa Rican political classes sought to emancipate themselves, to withdraw from the clerical conservatism that had always reigned. And in 1884, the bishop was even expelled from Costa Rica.
  • In 1889, a hundred years before my birth, the first democratic elections with popular participation were organized by the liberals, who were not elected! They were still the first in Central America. Thereafter, only one president, thus elected, will betray the confidence of the people in 1917: the president Joaquín Tinoco. In fact, he had instituted a dictatorial regime immediately after the elections, but he was quickly driven out of the country.
  • We arrive in 1940, and it is on this date that Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia was elected President of the Republic. He put in place the social assistance system, the right of workers to regroup, land reform and a guaranteed minimum income, as well as the creation of the University of Costa Rica.
  • In 1944 was elected Teodoro Picado, “puppet of Calderón”, who himself will be beaten in 1948 by Otilio Ulate; only, he refused to leave his place. There will be muddy controversies over the elections, but coffee producer Pepe Figueres has long been planning his offensive. He used El General's San Isidro airport as a transit base for weapons he had of course purchased before, but Picado declared a state of siege and called for the rescue of Nicaraguan soldiers and Communist banana workers. . It will take forty days of clashes and still two thousand dead for Picado to cede power to José Figueres.

History of Costa Rica, Modern times

Here we are. Modern times will begin with José Figueres, in 1948, who will govern only 18 months but who will develop a new constitution, one which is still valid in the country. It begins with the ban on immediate re-election to the presidency. He declared illegal the Communist Party (still officially banned) and the workers' unions that followed it, abolished the army, granted the right to vote to women and blacks.

It is also nationalizing the banks, 10% of which are to be used for reconstruction. He also founded the ICE (the electricity company, still unique in the country for electricity, landlines and mobile phones ...). Otilio Ulate will succeed him, and will also be re-elected as President in 1954 and 1970.

But the country went through major difficulties in the years 1960-1970. The government was aiming for agricultural and then industrial self-sufficiency: purchase of high-performance equipment, construction of factories, generalization of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As we are well aware, this is all expensive and the debts are mounting. Since Costa Rica is dependent on oil, it suffered the full force of the 1970 oil crisis.

  • In 1974, the fall in prices for the three basic products (bananas, coffee and sugar cane) was catastrophic. And in 1979, the collapse of the coffee market was almost fatal for the country. In addition, Costa Rica is plunged into insecurity and economic slump.
  • In 1978, the country took a stand in the civil war in Nicaragua (a very agitated country with political precariousness) by welcoming Sandinista bases. It also refuses to pay its debt to the IMF (thus being the first Central American country to stand up to the IMF) under the presidency of Rodrigo Carazo.
  • It was not until 1986 that Arias Sánchez, economist and lawyer elected to the presidency, respectful of the principles of neutrality, stepped up the peace effort in Central America. He will put in place basic bans established in the north of the country and will arrive at a peace plan: Esquipulas II (peace plan for Central America).
  • In 1987 Arias Sánchez received the Nobel Peace Prize for having initiated this peace process in Central America. This ultimately encouraged the country's economic take-off of Costa Rica.
  • In 1998, the new president (moderate right), Miguel Angel Rodríguez, was confronted with very strong and very high expectations of the population, and he chose to revive the economy and the social by putting forward new technologies. A democratic tool par excellence, it made it possible to build a consensus which helped the country's economic recovery. But we should not be deluded, the debt still weighs heavily on the economy and social issues remain the poor relatives of the Costa Rican recovery.
  • On April 7, 2002, new president: “gift” Abel Pacheco takes over. Coming from the party of Christian social unity, much appreciated by the population, his task is understood by all but the expectations are immense. In his actions, he must take care of a very heavy file, that of drugs, which passes through the territory a lot (from the Colombian sector), but also of money laundering, drug-dollars, the fiscal deficit, agricultural modernization and privatization of public services. Time goes by, and two years later, the population is very disappointed by the positions taken by the president - who in 2003 supported the United States - and discovered financial scandals every day.
  • In 2006, Oscar Arias Sánchez (remember, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1987) was elected President of the Republic for a second term. And in 2007, following a referendum on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the "yes" narrowly won. But Costa Rica has yet to ratify it.


I am going to end this article on this agreement, which is very divided… Because of course, the president is for this treaty but Otton Solis, who was defeated in the elections by 39.8% against 40.9% by Arias Sánchez, has a whole another version: he says he is not totally against it, but he wants to negotiate it with Washington. He declared on this subject: "The law of the Jungle benefits large animals, we are only insects", and he criticizes in particular this treaty for opening the way to the privatization of state monopolies and to beautiful to subsidized agricultural exports from the United States. But the President rules, and to rule is to decide. And a year and a half after the elections, the ratification is carried out. Not without criticism from its detractors who see in this treaty the death of small farmers and certain industrial sectors who will not be able to face increased competition.

Laura-Chinchilla - President in Costa Rican History

Today, for the first time in Costa Rican history, a woman is president. Her name is Laura Chinchilla Miranda, born March 28, 1959 in San José, member of the National Liberation Party (PLN), elected in 2010 President of the Republic of Costa Rica in the first round with 47% of the vote.

Source

https://www.vert-costa-rica.fr/decouverte/temps-modernes-du-costa-rica

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