Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia

Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (1940)

Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (born March 10, 1900 in San José , † June 9, 1970 ibid) was a Costa Rican doctor and politician. He was president of his country from 1940 to 1944 and founder of the political movement of Calderonismo .

Life

His parents were Ana María Guardia Mora and Rafael Calderón Muñoz . His father was also a doctor and politician, and President of Congress from 1931 to 1932. His maternal great-grandfather was the President Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez .

Calderón studied medicine in France and at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. There he came into contact with the political doctrine of social reform Catholicism based on the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum . In 1927 he married Yvonne Clays Spoelders , who was born in Belgium and became the first woman in the diplomatic service of Costa Rica. On his return he worked as a surgeon at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. He was also drawn into politics, he became mayor of San José and several times a member of Congress. In 1939 he became President of Parliament.

Calderón was a member of the Partido Republicano Nacional , which under his leadership adopted a Christian-social orientation.

Presidency

In the presidential election in 1940 he won 84.5% of the vote. He initially had the support of his conservative predecessor León Cortés Castro , who could not stand for election due to the prohibition of immediate re-election in the Costa Rican constitution and saw Calderón as a “placeholder” until the next election, as well as the oligarchy of coffee plantation owners. Calderón, however, embarked on a populist and reformist course from which the lower classes in particular benefited.

During Calderón's tenure, the Universidad de Costa Rica was founded in 1940 , which gave broader classes access to higher education. Based on Rerum Novarum and the related encyclical Quadragesimo anno Pope Pius VI. From 1931 he introduced a compulsory social security fund and minimum wages , the eight-hour day , freedom of association and the right to strike , minimum guarantees of occupational health and safety and industrial hygiene as well as the right to decent living space.

He was supported by an alliance of the Catholic Church, which was then headed by the social reformist Archbishop Manuel Mora Valverde , trade unions and even the communist party Vanguardia Popular . Sections of the middle class, entrepreneurs and intellectuals who gathered around the social democratic opposition politician José Figueres Ferrer criticized him against it. He also made enemies in his own party, and above all in the powerful coffee oligarchy, which feared for their economic interests.

During World War II , Costa Rica declared war on the German Reich before December 6, 1941. Numerous people of German origin were interned and their property confiscated. Some of them later found themselves in the ranks of Calderón's opponents. His opponent Figueres was forced into exile because he sharply branded this practice as injustice. From this time on he drove the overthrow of Calderón, who was a dictator for him. As a result of the war, Costa Rica's economy had high growth rates, which on the one hand enabled social benefits and on the other hand also favored corruption .

Although he was a civilian, Calderón is often referred to as a caudillo because of his charisma and popularity, as well as his personalistic leadership style . Because of the ban in the constitution, Calderón could not run again in 1944. His far less charismatic partisan Teodoro Picado Michalski was elected his successor with 75.1%. Former President Cortés Castro, who was supported by the conservative trade and coffee elite as well as by the reformist social democratic intellectuals around Figueres, was far behind. However, there were allegations of electoral fraud.

Calderón divorced his first wife and married María del Rosario Fournier Mora in 1947. From this marriage the son Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier emerged, who later also became president.

Civil war

In the 1948 presidential election, Calderón ran again as a candidate. According to the electoral authority Tribunal Nacional Electoral (TNE), it came to 44.7%, the conservative opposition candidate Otilio Ulate Blanco, however, to 55.3%. Calderón Guardia alleged electoral fraud and on March 1, 1948, had the election invalidated in parliament, in which his party and the communists had a majority. This led to a forty-day civil war, in the course of which the government troops, supported by paramilitary units of the communists, were defeated by the also paramilitary Ejército Liberación Nacional (ELN) of the supporters of José Figueres Ferrer and the Caribbean Legion . Almost 2,000 people died in the process. Calderón fled to the Somoza clan's Nicaragua . In December 1948 he tried to invade Costa Rica with the support of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García , but failed.

After the civil war

Calderón moved with his family to Mexico, where he worked as a surgeon again. In 1958 he tried again with the support of Anastasio Somoza García and the benevolence of the dictators of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo , and Venezuela's Marcos Pérez Jiménez , to attack Costa Rica and failed again.

In 1958 Calderón returned to Costa Rica and received parliamentary allowance under the government of Mario Echandi Jiménez . In 1962 he ran again as a presidential candidate, but lost 35.3% to the PLN candidate Francisco Orlich Bolmarcich , a friend of Figueres'. From 1966 to 1969 he was the Costa Rican Ambassador to Mexico.

The political camp of the followers of Calderón (Calderonistas) was also in the following decades, next to the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) founded by his rival Figueres , a significant force in Costa Rica. From 1966 to 1978 it was represented by the Partido Unificación Nacional (PUN), then until 1983 by the Partido Republicano Calderonista (PRC) and since then by the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC). Calderón's son, who shares his first name, was president from 1990 to 1994.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Margaret Tyler Mitchell, Scott Pentzer: Costa Rica. A Global Studies Handbook. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara CA 2007, p. 79.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Mitchell, Pentzer: Costa Rica. 2007, p. 80.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Mitchell, Pentzer: Costa Rica. 2007, p. 83.
4. ↑ Mitchell, Pentzer: Costa Rica. 2007, p. 84.
5. ^ Ian Holzhauer: The Presidency of Calderón Guardia

predecessor	Office	successor
León Cortés Castro	Presidents of Costa Rica May 8, 1940 - May 8, 1944	Teodoro Picado Michalski