Rodrigo Carazo Odio

Rodrigo Carazo Odio

Rodrigo José Ramón Francisco de Jesús Carazo Odio (born December 27, 1926 in Cartago ; † December 9, 2009 in San José ) was a Costa Rican politician ( Unidad ) and president from 1978 to 1982.

Life

Carazo holds a degree in Economics from the University of Costa Rica. He was the founding director of the National Housing and Urban Development Agency from 1954 to 1959, and director of the Central Bank of Costa Rica from 1960 to 1965 . From 1966 to 1967, his first year as a Member of Parliament, he served as President of Parliament, to which he was a member until 1970. After his successful candidacy in the presidential elections on February 5, 1978, after a first defeat in 1974, his term of office as head of state ran from May 8 , 1978 to May 7, 1982. Under his supervision, the UN Peace University was founded in Costa Rica in 1980, which he himself was the founding rector until 1989. As the first head of state in Latin America, he opposed structural adjustment measures by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His foreign policy was largely determined by the fall of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and the subsequent Sandinista revolutionary government in neighboring Nicaragua. In 1981, his government broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been resumed only four years earlier : Carazo granted asylum to the prominent former political prisoner Huber Matos as early as 1979, and in 1980 took in the first Cuban embassy refugees from the Mariel crisis .

Carazo won the 1982 elections by a wide margin and was able to form a conservative government for the first time in a long time. At the beginning of the term of office there was an economic crisis in Costa Rica , the country was over-indebted . Carazo Odio's predecessor Daniel Oduber Quirós had received a loan for the country on condition that the successor government undertook a comprehensive structural reform of the Costa Rican economic system . Until then, the economic system was characterized by strong nationalization and pursued the development policy of import-substituting industrialization . The Carazo Odios economic program was then heavily dictated by the IMF. Under his government the prices were released. Carazo Odio's government gave up the currency parity of the Costa Rican Colon to the dollar on December 26 , 1978. The aim of this measure was to promote exports by making them cheaper and to make imports more expensive. The subsequent currency speculation led to a devaluation of the Colón by 500% relative to the dollar within just one year . The IMF pushed for cuts in all government spending. Carazo Odio resisted this and eventually resigned from the IMF. This then had the cheap loans from the World Bank blocked, which is why Costa Rica had to take out more expensive personal loans . As a result, the recession worsened, considerable inflation set in, the Colón continued to lose value and important imported goods became scarce. Due to the negative effects of his economic policies, Carazos' initial popularity had drastically decreased by the end of his tenure. Due to the existing term of office, he could not stand for re-election. His defeated opponent from 1978, the Social Democrat Luis Alberto Monge, succeeded him in May 1982.

After his death on December 9, 2009, President Oscar Arias declared three days of national mourning.

Publications

• Carazo: Tiempo y marcha. (Autobiography), Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, San José 1989 (Spanish)

Web links

• Rodrigo Carazo Odio, ex presidente de Costa Rica, obituary in: El País of December 11, 2009 (Spanish)

predecessor	Office	successor
Daniel Oduber Quirós	Presidents of Costa Rica May 8, 1978 - May 8, 1982	Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez