Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
|||||||||||||||||||
Rafael Ángel del Socorro Calderón Guardia was the president of Costa Rica from 1940 to 1944.
[edit] Early life
He was born on 10 March 1900 in San José. In his youth, Calderón studied in Costa Rica and Belgium, where he married Yvonne Clays Spoelders, who was later to be the first woman diplomat of Costa Rica. After finishing his studies, he became a practicing physician, which he would remain for most of his early career.
[edit] Presidency
In 1940, he won elections and became President of Costa Rica. During his presidency he established the Work Code, which introduced the minimum wage, regulated the rights for the work meetings and the social insurances.
As president, he brought Costa Rica into World War II on the Allied side and cooperated closely with the United States. During the war his government confiscated many German assets in the country including large coffee plantations and banking businesses, mostly belonging to German immigrants or Costa Ricans of German descent. This made him very unpopular with the strong German community in the country. This proved to be a mistake in the long run because these German families and their descendants would become backers of José Figueres Ferrer during the 1948 revolution and of his political party PLN.
He founded the CCSS (social security) and health administrations for Costa Rica. In education, he established the University of Costa Rica. He developed strong ties with labor organizations, certain important figures of the Catholic Church, such as Archbishop Víctor Sanabria, and the Communist Party, led by Manuel Mora. This unlikely alliance was strong enough to transform the country's labor laws, its health and education systems, and its economic structure. He enjoyed wide support among the poor, but a growing coalition of land owners, industrialists, military leaders, and conservative Church officials strongly opposed him, polarizing society and paving the way for the civil war of 1948.
[edit] After the Presidency
In 1944 was followed by Teodoro Picado Michalski. In 1948, Calderón ran again as a presidential candidate. Otilio Ulate Blanco defeated him by 10,000 voted and was proclaimed winner by the Electoral Board, but the Congress, in which Calderon had majority and attending his request, declared the votes for President to be null and void, while the votes for congressmen were not questioned by Calderon. José Figueres Ferrer led a military campaign, and the government was overthrown.
Calderón fled to Nicaragua (where he launched failed invasions of Costa Rica in December, 1948 and 1955), then fled to Mexico. In 1958, Calderón Guardia returned to Costa Rica and was elected as congressman, but he didn't serve as such. He even ran for the presidency again in 1962 but lost. He was also named ambassador to Mexico (1966-1970). He died in 1970.
His son, Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier, was president from 1990 to 1994.
