José Figueres Ferrer
| José Figueres Ferrer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 32nd President of Costa Rica | |
|
In office 8 May 1948 – 8 November 1949 |
|
| Preceded by | Teodoro Picado |
| Succeeded by | Otilio Ulate Blanco |
| 34th President of Costa Rica | |
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In office 8 November 1953 – 8 May 1958 |
|
| Preceded by | Otilio Ulate Blanco |
| Succeeded by | Mario Echandi |
| 38th President of Costa Rica | |
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In office 8 May 1970 – 8 May 1974 |
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| Preceded by | José Joaquín Trejos Fernández |
| Succeeded by | Daniel Oduber |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer 25 September 1906 San Ramón, Alajuela |
| Died | 8 June 1990 (aged 83) San José |
| Political party | PLN |
| Spouse(s) |
Henrietta Boggs Long Karen Olsen Beck |
| Profession | landowner, politician |
José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer (25 September 1906 – 8 June 1990), served as President of Costa Rica on three occasions: 1948–1949, 1953–1958, and 1970–1974.
During his first term in office, he abolished the country's army, nationalized its banking sector, and granted women and blacks the right to vote. He was a good friend of the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, praising his political achievements in one of his essays.
Figueres was born on 25 September 1906 in San Ramón in Alajuela province. The locations are significant, according to his best biographer, because his parents came from a world of wide ambition that most Costa Ricans envied, and he was born in a nation that put a high value on his impeccable Spanish background. Figueres was the eldest of the four children of a Catalan doctor and his wife, a teacher, who had recently immigrated from Catalonia to San Ramón in west-central Costa Rica.
Figueres first language was Catalan, as he talked to his parents in this language.
After four years of work and study in the United States, Figueres returned to the country in 1928 and bought a farm in Tarrazú. He named the farm, with a certain degree of foresight, La Lucha sin Fin (the struggle without an end).10
Figueres became a successful coffee grower and rope manufacturer, employing more than 1,000 sharecroppers and factory laborers. Describing himself as a "farmer-socialist", he built housing and provided medical care and recreation for his workers and established a community vegetable farm and a dairy with free milk for workers' children.3
His sharecroppers could either sell hemp grown on his plantation to him at market price for use in his rope factory, or sell it elsewhere if they were offered a better price.3
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