Figueres Ferrer, José

born Sept. 25, 1906, San Ramón, Costa Rica
died June 8, 1990, San José

Figueres Ferrer, 1953moderate socialist Costa Rican statesman who served as president in 1948–49, 1953–58, and 1970–74.
Figueres was educated in universities in Costa Rica and Mexico and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He returned to Costa Rica and engaged in coffee planting and hemp production. His criticism of the right-wing government of Rafael Ángel Calderón in July 1942 brought him exile in Mexico for two years.
When Calderón was defeated by Otilio Ulate for reelection in 1948, the Legislative Assembly tried to annul the election and reinstall Calderón. Figueres, who had hidden arms and ammunition on his plantation near Cartago, led an uprising in support of Ulate. The two-month civil war ended when Calderón's forces, despite being backed by Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza, capitulated. A junta dominated by Figueres wrote a new constitution that, among other reforms, abolished the army and granted women the right to vote. The government was turned over to Ulate in 1949.
Elected president by a landslide in 1953, Figueres pledged his government would follow a “pro-United States” policy and described the 1948 uprising as a “revolution of the middle class.” Figueres was a firmly anticommunist social democrat, and during this period he instituted many social and economic reforms. When an invasion force crossed the border from Nicaragua in 1955, Figueres appealed to the Organization of American States (OAS) for assistance. With material assistance from the United States, Costa Rica successfully repelled the invasion.
Figueres' National Liberation Party candidate for president lost the election in 1958. Figueres worked in several UN agencies, wrote numerous articles on Costa Rican and Caribbean politics, and served as visiting professor at Harvard University (1963–64) and the State University of New York (1967). Elected to his second term in 1970, he was charged with having received financial support from Robert Vesco, a fugitive American financier who settled in Costa Rica in 1972. Figueres was a relentless opponent of dictatorship and became a symbol of the “democratic left” in Latin America. From 1948 Figueres' party dominated the politics of Costa Rica, which became known as the most stable and democratic country in the region.