Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
organized the hundreds of laborers on his farm into a utopian socialist community and ap-
propriately named the property La Luz Sin Fin (The Struggle Without End).
In the 1940s Figueres became involved in national politics as an outspoken critic of
President Calderón. In the midst of a radio interview in which he badmouthed the presid-
ent, police broke into the studio and arrested Figueres. He was accused of having fascist
sympathies and was banished to Mexico. While in exile he formed the Caribbean League,
a collection of students and democratic agitators from all over Central America who
pledged to bring down the region's military dictators. When he returned to Costa Rica, the
Caribbean League, now 700 men strong, went with him and helped protest against the
powers that be.
When government troops descended on the farm with the intention of arresting Figueres
and disarming the Caribbean League, it touched off a civil war. The moment had arrived:
the diminutive farmer-philosopher now played the man on horseback. Figueres emerged
victorious from the brief conflict and seized the opportunity to put into place his vision of
Costa Rican social democracy. After dissolving the country's military, Figueres quoted HG
Wells: 'The future of mankind cannot include the armed forces'.
As head of a temporary junta government, Figueres enacted nearly a thousand decrees.
He taxed the wealthy, nationalized the banks and built a modern welfare state. His 1949
constitution granted full citizenship and voting rights to women, African-Americans, indi-
genous groups and Chinese minorities. Today Figueres' revolutionary regime is regarded
as the foundation of Costa Rica's unarmed democracy.
Thirty-three out of 44 Costa Rican presidents prior to 1970 were descended from just
three original colonizing families.
The American Empire
Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the sovereignty of the small nations of Central America
was limited by their northern neighbor, the USA. Big sticks, gunboats and dollar dip-
lomacy were instruments of a Yankee policy to curtail socialist politics, especially the mil-
itary oligarchies of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
In 1979 the rebellious Sandinistas toppled the American-backed Somoza dictatorship in
Nicaragua. Alarmed by the Sandinistas' Soviet and Cuban ties, fervently anticommunist
