Costa Rica: The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

The orderly pattern was broken in 1917, when Federico Tinoco overthrew the elected president, Alfredo González. The majority of Costa Ricans, as well as the United States, opposed Tinoco, and he was deposed in 1919. Costa Rica cooperated with the United States during World War II and after the war joined the United Nations and other international organizations. Following the war, United Fruit started new plantations on the Pacific coast.

In 1948 there was a second breakdown of the political system. In a close presidential election Otilio Ulate appeared to have defeated a former president, Dr. Rafael Calderón. But the incumbent, Teodoro Picado, accused Ulate's supporters of fraud and obtained a congressional invalidation of the election. A six-week civil war ensued, at the conclusion of which a junta led by José Figueres Ferrer, a backer of Ulate, assumed power. Picado was exiled and the armed forces were disbanded, to be replaced by a civil guard. Forces from Nicaragua backed Picado, and the Organization of American States (OAS) was called upon to mediate between the two countries.

In 1949 a new constitution was adopted, and the junta transferred power to Ulate as the elected president. Figueres was elected his successor in 1953. In UN-supervised elections in 1958, Mario Enchadi Jiménez defeated Figueres's candidate. Politics remained stable in the 1960s. The Irazú volcano erupted in 1963–64 and caused serious damage to agriculture; another volcano, Arenal, erupted in 1968 for the first time in hundreds of years, killing many. Figueres was again elected president in 1970, and Daniel Oduber Quiros was elected president in 1974, but the ruling National Liberation Party (PLN) lost its majority in the legislature for the first time in 25 years. In the late 1970s the country entered a recession and found itself surrounded by increasingly unstable neighbors.

In the early 1980s the PLN returned to power. Oscar Arias Sánchez, the PLN candidate elected in 1986, worked to preserve his nation's neutrality. The economy continued to worsen, however, and in 1990 Rafael Angel Calderón Fournier of the Social Christian Unity party (PUSC) was elected to the presidency by a 3% margin. José María Figueres Olsen, the PLN candidate and son of José Figueres Ferrer, was elected president in 1994. In 1998, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría of the PUSC won the presidency; he was succeeded by fellow party member Abel Pacheco de la Espriella in 2002.

The country was shaken in 2004 by charges that Presidents Calderón and Rodríguez had received illegal kickbacks from government contracts and that, after leaving office, President Figueres had received large consulting fees relating to government contracts. Calderón was convicted of embezzlement in 2009; Rodríguez was convicted of instigating corruption in 2011, but his conviction was overturned in 2012. Former president Oscar Arias Sánchez was elected to a second term in 2006. In Oct., 2007, Costa Ricans approved joining the Central American Free Trade Agreement (signed in 2004), but its accession was delayed until after legislation was enacted (Nov., 2008) that brought the nation into compliance with the accord.

In Feb., 2010, Arias Sánchez's vice president, Laura Chinchilla Miranda, was elected president. A center-leftist who is conservative on many social issues, Chinchilla was Costa Rica's first woman president. Tensions flared with Nicaragua in late 2010 over a disputed island at the San Juan River's mouth when Nicaraguan troops were sent there; the troops were not removed despite the Organization of American States' call for both sides to withdraw. Costa Rica subsequently brought the issue before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Nicaragua then countersued; a 2011 interim ruling called on both sides to avoid the disputed area. In 2015 the ICJ ruled that Nicaragua had violated Costa Rica's sovereignty and the ICJ's 2011 interim ruling as well and called for compensation to be paid, but it also ruled the Costa Rica had failed to fulfill obligations it had with respect to road construction. A further ruling in 2018 assigned the disputed island to Costa Rica, awarded it damages, and defined the sea borders between the two nations in the Caribbean and Pacific.

In the 2014 presidential election, Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera was elected unopposed after the second place finisher withdrew from the April runoff; a historian and former diplomat, Solís was the Citizen Action party candidate. In the early 21st cent. Costa Rica has found itself increasing beset by Mexican drug gangs that have used the country as a transfer point between Colombia to the south and Mexico and the United States to the north. The resulting increase in crime has led to a closer relationship between Costa Rican security forces and U.S. law enforcement agencies and military. Carlos Alvarado Quesada, the Citizen Action party candidate and a former minister of labor and social security, was in Apr., 2018, elected president, after a runoff.

Sections in this article:

Introduction
The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
Early History through the Nineteenth Century
Economy and Government
Land and People
Bibliography

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Costa Rican Political Geography