Download Democratic Model in Jeopardy

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL
Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 1986), 301-315
Costa Rica
Democratic Model in Jeopardy
By Andrew Reding
From its inception as an independent state in 1838, Costa Rica has stood out from its
neighbors. Though originally the poorest of the five Central American provinces of the
Captaincy-General of Guatemala, it has evolved into the country with the highest, and
best distributed, standard of living in the region. What is most remarkable is that this has
occurred without the discovery of valuable natural resources, such as the oil windfall that
has transformed many Persian Gulf economies. In fact, Costa Rica remains a country of
very limited means—with a per capita income of $1,730 in 1983—yet its population
enjoys a life expectancy comparable to that in the United States, access to higher
education equal to that in France or Norway, and the benefits of one of the world’s most
long-standing and genuinely representative democracies.
How has Costa Rica achieved this distinction in one of the world’s poorest and most
conflict-ridden regions? The key to Costa Rica’s success is the high priority its leaders
have historically given to social and economic development. Primary education was
made free and compulsory as early as 1869, and capital punishment was banned in 1882.
In addition, the relative weakness of its armed forces has contributed to the strength of
Costa Rica’s democratic processes. Except for two brief interludes, Costa Rica has been
governed by an elected president and national legislature since 1889. Labor unions
emerged during the economic crisis of the 1930s, and the Communist party, which
organized them, was allowed to seek and obtain representation in the legislature. That
representation played a crucial role in the passage of New Deal-style social legislation in
the 1940s. By 1949, the government felt secure enough from domestic rebellion to
abolish its small standing army, leaving only a modest police force.
The contrast with El Salvador is particularly striking. There, impoverished peasants and
communists were barred from political participation during the 1930s. When they
rebelled, at least 30,000 were slaughtered by the troops of General Maximiliano
Hernández Martínez, foreboding the grisly work of today’s death squads. The result of
such policies has been a regime in a permanent state of civil war—a regime that, even
with massive U.S. military assistance, spent 12 percent of its 1982 budget on its armed
forces, while spending only 7 percent on the health of its people. Costa Rica, on the other
hand, spent 33 percent on health and only 3 percent on armed forces.1 With its resources
thus dissipated in carnage, El Salvador has become the second poorest country in the
hemisphere, after Haiti.
A parallel can be drawn between Costa Rican economic development and the familiar
story of the Japanese and German economic recoveries following the devastation of
World War II. Barred by the victors from investing in military reconstruction, Japan and
Germany channeled their investment toward economic objectives, thereby attaining a
comparative advantage over their conquerors. Though lacking the formidable economic
and organizational resources of these advanced industrial states, Costa Rica has
nonetheless managed to carry out a similar “miracle” in Central America by favoring
investment in human development over investment in human repression.
For the past six years, however, the current U.S. administration has been collaborating
with segments of the Costa Rican upper classes in trying to undermine the four main
pillars of Costa Rica’s social peace: the social democratic welfare state created by the
National Liberation party (PLN) between 1948 and 1978; the right of workers to organize
in unions of their own choosing; the representation of leftists in the national legislature;
and the absence of armed forces. In pursuing this course, Washington’s objectives seem
to be twofold: first, to reshape Costa Rica in the image of Ronald Reagan’s United States
by slashing social spending in favor of new military spending and by giving carte
blanche to domestic and foreign private enterprise; and second, to obtain Costa Rican
cooperation in more firmly encircling Nicaragua with a strengthened southern front.
These are not easy objectives to achieve in Costa Rica, a country with a long history of
self-government and a relatively well-educated population. Yet the Reagan
administration’s greatest strength lies in its ability to exploit Costa Rica’s greatest
weakness: its mass media. The press is the one institution that was left virtually
untouched in the social transformations of the past half-century, and has remained the
preserve of the Costa Rica upper classes. It was their newspaper, La Información, whose
agitation led to the military dictatorship of 1917-19 after President González Flores tried
to establish an income tax. A popular movement eventually restored democratic rule,
burning down La Información in the process. But the families that had owned it
regrouped to found La Nacíon, the newspaper that has dominated the country’s press ever
since. The other two major papers, La República and La Prensa Libre, have a similar
ownership pattern, as do most of the major radio stations and all the commercial
television stations. The government, on the other hand, has only one television channel,
and—in order to preserve its relations with some of the country’s major businessmen—
deliberately avoids offering a news program that would compete with those offered by
commercial television. The result is that a class of people who have for the most part not
accepted the social-democratic reforms of the past half-century have a virtual monopoly
on the provision of news.
Until recently, the best the right-wing business community could achieve through its
control of the media was to brake the speed of social reform. The picture changed
rapidly, though, after the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979 and the April 1980 resignation of
businessman Alfonso Robelo from Nicaragua’s Junta of National Reconstruction. In that
month, executives from Costa Rica’s major broadcast and print media began meeting
together to plan common editorial strategies for dealing with Nicaragua, El Salvador, and
other areas of common concern. Then, following Ronald Reagan’s 1980 electoral victory,
representatives of the U.S. embassy began playing a more active role in these meetings—
a sign of the natural convergence between the Costa Rican private sector’s desire to
insulate itself from the possible influence of revolutionary ideas on labor and the landless
peasantry, and the Reagan administration’s desire to remove the Sandinistas from power.
The outcome has been a concerted propaganda and disinformation campaign. Now
entering its seventh year, this campaign is designed to scare Costa Ricans into a hostile
attitude toward Nicaragua, thereby increasing their receptivity to U.S. intervention, Costa
Rican rearmament, and persecution of real and supposed domestic leftists. A sense of the
magnitude of this effort is conveyed by an example of its methods. On July 3, 1982, a
bomb went off in the offices of the Honduran national airline in San Jose. That day’s
edition of La Nación reported that witnesses had said they had been warned away from
the bomb site by the occupants of a car with Nicaraguan license plates—to which La
Prensa Libre added that it was a red car with diplomatic plates, and that it had later been
intercepted by the police. A Colombian citizen was arrested for the terrorist act on July
22. Then, on July 27, La Nación reported the detention of a Nicaraguan diplomat for
involvement in the affair. Three Nicaraguan diplomats were expelled from the country on
that day. The Colombian then dutifully reiterated the story of the red car, and described
how the plastic explosives had been placed in the airline offices. Yet the supposed
witnesses never materialized; the explosive used was determined by the Judiciary Police
to have been dynamite, not plastic; and the Colombian was quietly released in April
1983. The Costa Rican press, however, failed to adequately report these findings: while it
gave front-page coverage to the false accusations, it buried later revelations deep inside
the papers, without indicating their significance. Thus did the press accomplish its
objective of portraying the Sandinistas as terrorists.
Economic Blackmail
To understand why the PLN government of President Luis Alberto Monge (1982-1986)
put up with such gross distortions of events in a democratic country, one has to bear in
mind what happened to his predecessor. When former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick insisted in 1981 that Costa Rica accept “security assistance” as
a condition for further economic aid, President Rodrigo Carazo instead demanded an
apology.2 In response, Washington let him languish in the economic crisis that had
overtaken his administration as the world price of coffee, Costa Rica’s primary export,
fell sharply in 1978, followed by a steep increase in the price of oil in 1979. Carazo’s
refusal to accept the ensuing demands of international lending institutions (as described
in the following interview) served only to further seal the U.S. verdict on his
administration. U.S. Ambassador Curtin Winsor was to later describe him as “a man who
should have been declared insane.”
Eager to avoid a similar experience, Monge took a less confrontational approach in
dealing with the United States and its Costa Rican allies. While not sharing Reagan
administration views, he appointed right-wingers closely associated with the U.S.
embassy to two key ministries. Fernando Volio was made foreign minister, and Alfonso
Carro was made minister of the interior, in charge of the Rural Guard, a police force
charged with keeping order in the hinterlands, including the northern areas where the
Nicaraguan contras maintain their bases.3 To a point, Monge also heeded Ambassador
Kirkpatrick’s advice. In 1985, “security assistance” for the country’s police forces rose
from nothing to almost $10 million. In return, the United States has supplied about $200
million per year in direct economic aid (second in the hemisphere only to El Salvador),
which has kept Costa Rica’s economy from collapsing under the weight of its almost
$2,000 per capita foreign debt, among the world’s highest.
Costa Rica’s abject dependence on U.S. dollars has provided the Reagan administration
with an important source of leverage in its quest to bring the Costa Rican economy into
line with “supply-side” policies. According to U.S. policymakers, it is the inherent
inefficiency of its state enterprises that has caused Costa Rica’s economy to stagnate.
Washington has therefore urged San José to implement drastic cutbacks in public
controls, to limit government participation in the economy, and to turn capital and
investment over to private enterprise.
Yet this begs a question that is seldom asked: by what criteria is the efficiency of a state
enterprise to be measured? By its monetary profitability, or by the quality and reach of
the social service it performs? This is far from an academic question in Costa Rica, where
the state enterprises set up by PLN governments over the past 30 yearshave played such a
central role in raising the country’s standard of living. Thanks to the Costa Rican Institute
of Electricity, the country produces almost all of its electricity from hydropower, and has
Latin America’s most highly developed telephone system—with 99 percent automation,
12 phones per 100 inhabitants, and access by 80 percent of the population in 1983.4 The
nationalized railroads feature Central America’s only electric service, complete with
modern continuous welded rail and concrete ties. The Insurance Institute, Social Security
Institute, and national health service ensure high quality health care to the entire
population—as reflected by the 1.8 percent infant mortality rate, which ties Cuba’s for
the lowest in Latin America.
The PLN has also emphasized cooperatives as an important element of Costa Rica’s
system of economic democracy. Between 1959 and 1963, the number of cooperatives
rose from 42 to 218. Following his election to a second presidential term in 1970, José
Figueres proposed the creation of an autonomous institute to promote the development of
cooperatives. In 1973, with the help of Legislative Assembly President Daniel Oduber
and Vice President Luis Alberto Monge, he established the National Institute for
Cooperative Development (INFOCOOP) to provide credit and technical assistance to
existing and new cooperatives. To ensure democratic control, four of the seven officials
on INFOCOOP’s governing council are elected by the cooperatives themselves; the three
remaining seats are allocated to representatives of the Central Bank and the Ministries of
Agriculture and Labor. In 1982, President Monge elevated INFOCOOP Director Rafael
Rojas to cabinet rank as Minister of Cooperative Development, making Costa Rica the
only Latin American country besides Colombia to have given such weight to the
cooperative movement. At the same time, Monge obtained passage of a law establishing
cooperatives operated and controlled solely by workers. These worker cooperatives are
now a policy priority at INFOCOOP. By February 1985, the number of cooperatives in
Costa Rica had risen to 464, of which 83 were worker-run. The output of all these
cooperatives accounts for 11 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and 15
percent of its exports.
Crucial to the success of cooperatives and other state programs is the Central Bank,
which has channeled savings and scarce foreign exchange into such ventures.
Government control of the Costa Rican banking system is therefore the main target of the
U.S. embassy’s privatization drive. Washington’s methods have been neither subtle nor
respectful of Costa Rican democratic institutions. In 1982, as U.S. economic assistance
rose to $51.7 million, the United States began pressing Costa Rica to alter its banking
laws to allow U.S. aid to flow directly into private financial institutions, where
calculations of private profit would override public priorities in the allocation of credit.
Not surprisingly, the PLN-dominated Legislative Assembly dragged its feet. By January
1983, U.S. Ambassador Winsor was warning that “the National Liberation Party should
show a little willingness and pragmatism so that Costa Rica can enter the 21st century as
a developed country.”5 Finally, in mid-1983, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) put the screws on the legislature, making that year’s $2l4.1million economic assistance package contingent on prompt passage of the proposed
legislation. After a marathon 20-hour session, the majority caved in to the overwhelming
pressure—and took the first step toward dismantling the country’s social edifice. With
the Central Bank breached, the state enterprises it supported have become vulnerable;
Washington is now urging that they be sold to the private sector. The National Liberation
party has countered that they should instead be cooperativized, to decentralize ownership
among the people instead of concentrating it in the hands of the oligarchy.
Labor and the Left
Just as state enterprises are now coming under attack, so is the traditional bulwark of
Costa Rican workers: the labor movement. Spearheading this drive is a right-wing
Catholic priest who—with generous funding from dominant sectors of the Costa Rican
business community, as well as from the governments of Guatemala, Israel, Chile, and
(by way of USAID) the United States—is successfully dismantling the country’s labor
unions. The priest, Father Claudio Solano Cerdas, attracts this money through his own
reading of the Church’s social teaching, which he claims associates labor unions with
class hatreds. He instead advocates “solidarity” between labor and management, a notion
that has acquired great support among anticommunists throughout Latin America.6
The achievements of this anti-labor campaign are impressive. Between 1979 and 1985,
the number of labor unions in Costa Rica dropped from 325 to 191, while over the same
period the number of employer-controlled “solidarity associations” increased from 98 to
649. These “solidarity associations” are joint labor-management organizations, to which
the company typically contributes 5 percent of the workers’ salaries, to be matched by
another 5 percent from the workers themselves. These funds are then used to offer the
workers such fringe benefits as transportation and low-interest loans for housing. But
despite appearances, these associations provide workers few real advantages. The 5percent management contribution is drawn from a fund that the company is required by
the constitution to set aside for payment to workers who are fired or laid off. What is
more, the arrangement precludes labor unions, strikes, and attendant wage increases.
Even more significant has been Father Solano’s assault on the Standard Fruit and United
Fruit banana enclaves on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, longtime strongholds of
communist unions. These unions have now been debilitated, and, as a result, communist
representation from those areas in the Legislative Assembly has been eliminated. In the
recently concluded elections, Vanguardia Popular (Costa Rica’s Communist party) lost
its traditional seats from Limón and Puntarenas, leaving it with only a single seat from
San José.
Though welcomed by some, this drive against Costa Rica’s communists may have
adverse consequences for the country’s stability. A major reason for Costa Rica’s long
history of social peace in the midst of a turbulent region is that communists have gained a
higher level of acceptance and inclusion there than anywhere else in Central America.
Thanks to Costa Rica’s relatively open, unrepressive society, its respect for democracy,
and its system of proportional representation, the Costa Rican Communist party has had a
voice in the national legislature virtually since its founding in 1931. Since then, the
communists have played a pivotal role in the peaceful evolution of Costa Rican society
and the adoption of policies to benefit the lower classes. In the 1940s, for example, the
communists joined forces with National Republican (Christian Democratic) President
Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia to achieve the passage of important social legislation,
including the Labor Code and Social Security.
Not coincidentally, there has been no armed communist rebellion in Costa Rica, or even a
serious prospect of one. Under the leadership of Manuel Mora Valverde, Vanguardia
Popular has become as Costa Rican as any other party, supporting its country’s
distinctive values as its own. Having been treated with the same respect accorded citizens
of other political persuasions, Costa Rica’s communists have become some of the most
passionate defenders of their country’s humane traditions.7 Much like the Italian
communists and (at least until the military overthrow of socialist Salvador Allende) the
Chilean communists, Costa Rican communists have come to respect democratic
institutions in the measure that these have been open to them.
It is from this perspective that former President José Figueres, in the following interview,
calls the 1954 overthrow of Guatemelan President Jácobo Arbenz one of the United
States’ “worst blunders.” Much like Calderón Guardia in Costa Rica, Arbenz—a former
army officer and a political moderate—lacked sufficient parliamentary backing to carry
out his program of socioeconomic reforms designed to build a grassroots base for the
country’s newly attained political democracy. Again like Calderón, he joined his forces
with those of the communists to form a working majority. The most important result of
this collaboration was a land reform law that redistributed idle lands to the landless (and
mostly Mayan) peasantry.
It is here that the analogy ends, however, for the Eisenhower administration’s reaction to
developments in Guatemala contrasted sharply with the Roosevelt administration’s
earlier policies toward Costa Rica. Clearly rejecting Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor
Policy,” the Eisenhower administration denounced Arbenz’s government as
“communist,” and overthrew it in a CIA coup.8 The Guatemalan Communist party was
banned, its leaders slaughtered, and the country plunged into a reign of terror, in which
the army and death squads have since murdered at least 50,000 citizens—forcing the
communists away from legislative reform into armed insurrection. Thus, policies that
drive communists underground, while perpetuating the grievances and injustices to which
they respond, are a recipe for destabilization, as well as an affront to genuine democratic
values.
Political Neutrality
The fourth, and most important, pillar of Costa Rican society has traditionally been its
strong antimilitarism. But in recent years, as fighting between the Sandinistas and the
U.S.-supported contra forces has escalated along the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border, this
pillar has been slowly eroded. Within Costa Rica, the press has waged a far-reaching
media campaign against Managua in the hope of igniting anticommunist sentiments. In
addition, the Reagan administration has been pressuring Costa Rica to take a more active
role in the covert war against Nicaragua.
A key target of both the press and the Reagan administration has been President Monge’s
Proclamation of Neutrality. Issued on November 17, 1983, the proclamation formalized
what had been Costa Rica’s long-standing practice. It was welcomed by 83 percent of the
Costa Rican people, by the Catholic Church, and by virtually every country in the world,
with the prominent —exception of the United States. U.S. Ambassador Winsor did not
attend the ceremony.
Though the United States issued no formal response, it appears to have had a hand in a
kind of informal response. On September 28, 1983, Edén Pastora’s contra forces—then
financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency—attacked and demolished the
Nicaraguan customs post at Peñas Blancas on the Pan-American Highway. In the ensuing
battle, the Costa Rican customs post, which had been evacuated even before the attack
began, received some slight damage. Though Pastora’s forces attacked from, and returned
to, Costa Rican soil, La Nación turned the picture upside down by portraying the incident
as a Nicaraguan assault on a Costa Rican border post. Perhaps revealing the major target
of the attack, it asserted in a September 30 editorial that “Wednesday’s events should
make President Monge reconsider the appropriateness of proclaiming a State of
Neutrality…Costa Rica has never been so needful of the support of its traditional allies.”9
Failing to forestall the Proclamation of Neutrality, the groups associated with the U.S.
embassy—including the Interior Ministry, the Chambers of Industry and Commerce, and
the mass media—organized a witch-hunt aimed at removing the proclamation’s key
supporters. The prime target was Public Security Minister Angel Edmundo Solano,
whose wholehearted enforcement of neutrality was becoming a serious threat to U.S.
intentions in the area as he cracked down on contra operations on Costa Rican soil,
exposed as untrue media accounts of a Sandinista attack on the Costa Rican hamlet of
Pocosol, and even met with Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomás Borge to minimize the
possibility of border incidents. For this, the media branded him “pro-Sandinista” and
mounted a campaign to force him and other supposed Sandinista sympathizers out of the
government. La Nación called for Solano’s resignation. The Chambers of Industry and
Commerce went further, demanding the severance of diplomatic relations with Managua,
and threatening a businessmen’s strike if action was not taken by the end of August. No
doubt emboldened by the support of the U.S. embassy, Interior Minister Alfonso Carro
suggested in an August 5, 1984 interview in La Nación that if Monge felt reluctant to act
promptly on these recommendations, the president should step aside in favor of First Vice
President Armando Aráuz.
But before leaving on a trip to Europe, Monge took the highly unusual step of delegating
authority to Second Vice President Alberto Fait, another neutrality advocate, instead of to
Aráuz, the favorite of the U.S. embassy.10 Then in mid-August, Monge pulled off another
of his masterful political maneuvers. Though succumbing to the pressure to remove
Solano, he at the same time removed Carro. To diminish the pressure from the right wing,
he turned over the Public Security Ministry to Benjamín Piza, a founder of the Free Costa
Rica Movement, a John Birch-type organization affiliated with General John Singlaub’s
World Anticommunist League. But he appointed Enrique Obregón, of the PLN’s
progressive wing, to head the Interior Ministry, and Danilo Jiménez, also a neutrality
advocate, to the position of Minister of the Presidency. In this way, he thwarted
Washington’s intentions to bring both major police forces, to say nothing of the entire
cabinet, under its direct influence.
The United States retaliated when Monge’s back was turned. While the president was on
a trip abroad, and without his knowledge, Public Security Minister Piza invited U.S.
Special Forces instructors into the country. In open defiance of the Costa Rican
constitution, 750 Civil Guards were transformed into Batallones Relámpagos (Lightning
Battalions), special army units in full combat gear, trained in the use of M-16s, M-60
machine guns, M-2 and M-3 grenade launchers, mortars, and helicopters.11 But for all the
suddenness with which these battalions appeared, it should be understood that the United
States had been paving the way for them. Over the preceding couple of years, it had
donated “police equipment” olive-drab jeeps as “police vehicles, ” marine-style combat
fatigues as “police uniforms,” and M-16s as “police weapons” transforming the
appearance of downtown San José, where the police not long ago patrolled unarmed, in
ceremonial uniforms. Washington’s intent was crystal clear: to gradually accustom the
Costa Rican people to an army they did not want.
The neutrality issue played a major, and perhaps decisive, role in Costa Rica’s 1986
presidential and legislative campaign. Since the constitution limits presidents to a single
four-year term, the PLN nominated Oscar Arias Sánchez, a moderate likely to pursue the
popular policies of the Monge administration, to head its ticket. The opposition Social
Christian Unity party (PUSC) nominated Rafael Angel Calderón Fournier, son of the
former president who had annulled the presidential election of 1948 when the results
favored his opponent. Calderón, a godson of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio
Somoza García, is a right-winger who attended Ronald Reagan’s renomination at the
1984 Republican National Convention. During the course of the campaign, he argued
against neutrality, for a rupture of diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, for improving
Costa Rica’s defense capabilities, and for close ties with the Reagan administration. At
one point he went so far as to say that if war broke out between Nicaragua and Honduras,
he would send Civil Guard units to fight alongside the Hondurans.
Calderón’s bellicose posturing received an early boost from a border incident that was
typically fanned into hysteria by the media. In March 1985, two Costa Rican border
guards were killed at Las Crucitas in the aftermath of an attack by Costa Rican-based
contras against Sandinista troops over the border. An Organization of American States
commission was unable to affix responsibility in view of the complicated circumstances,
and recommended bilateral talks to preclude further problems. But the media presented
the incident as an indication of Sandinista intentions to invade Costa Rica, provoking a
mob attack on the Nicaraguan embassy in San José and the withdrawal of the Costa
Rican ambassador from Managua.12 (It was in this tense atmosphere that former President
José Figueres undertook his peace mission described in the interview that follows.)
With the media fanning the flames of national indignation, and with generous support
from the business community and the media, Calderón took a strong lead in early opinion
polls. Yet the same polls revealed that one-third of the electorate remained undecided.
Further polling conducted for the Arias campaign found that the undecided were
primarily from the lower classes, and that they were more interested in peace, jobs, and
housing than in the media-generated issue of which candidate was more anti-Sandinista.
Arias promptly shifted his campaign emphasis, backing Monge’s neutrality stance and
promising 20,000 new housing units and 25,000 new jobs per year.
Prohibited by law from participating in Arias’s campaign, Monge meanwhile
commemorated the second anniversary of the Proclamation of Neutrality with a
ceremony in which he announced his intention of having the Legislative Assembly turn
the proclamation into a Law of the Republic. Clearly visible at Monge’s side was San
José Archbishop Román Arrietta, while U.S. Ambassador Arthur Lewis Tambs was
conspicuously absent. In an extended television interview five days earlier, Tambs had
emphasized the supposed Sandinista menace to Costa Rica. Falsely accusing the
Sandinistas of having said they intended a “revolution without borders,” Tambs added
that they wore harboring Basque, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Colombian terrorists, and
that Cuba and the Soviet Union had already intervened north of the border. Despite U.S.
displeasure, the anniversary was also marked by a group of former government ministers,
artists, and writers, organized as the Committee in Defense of Freedom of Information
(CODELI), who bought space on television and in the newspapers to express support for
neutrality, and for “conserving our democratic system, making our independence and
sovereignty effective, and preserving all our national values.”
Five days later, the media struck back against both CODELI and former President
Figueres, representing their efforts on behalf of neutrality as having been orchestrated by
“international communism.” La República, the nation’s second largest newspaper, printed
a supposedly leaked copy of a letter from Nicaraguan Ambassador Leonor Argüello to
Figueres. The letter purported to thank him, along with his “political and artistic
compatriots” (in clear reference to CODELI), for his involvement in a so-called Swiss
Plan, and concluded that his efforts “have been and continue to be highly regarded by my
superiors in Managua, as well as by our Cuban compañeros, who have contributed so
much to the development of the Plan.”13 Though the letter contained one obvious flaw—
the Nicaraguan government was referred to as the Government of National
Reconstruction, which had disappeared with the inauguration of a newly elected
government in January 1985—it nonetheless became the basis of editorials, debates, and
campaign ads on all the major communications media aimed at linking Figueres and
CODELI to the Sandinistas, the Cubans, and “international communism.” Not until the
end of the campaign period was it revealed that the Judiciary Police had determined that
both the seal and the signature on the document had been forged. Characteristically, La
Nación printed the news under a headline announcing the acquittal of the editor of La
Republíca. (Charges had been dropped due to lack of evidence that he had known the
letter was a fraud.)14
The results of the February 2 election were all the more remarkable in view of the
magnitude of this disinformation campaign against neutrality: Oscar Arias took 52.3
percent of the vote to Calderón’s 45.8 percent, and the PLN secured 29 of 57 seats in the
Legislative Assembly. This succession of one PLN government by another is no small
accomplishment in Costa Rica, given its people’s deep-seated preference for alternating
not only the people, but also the parties in power. (Presidents and legislators alike are
barred from running for reelection.) On only one other occasion since 1949 has the
incumbent party won: in 1974, when Daniel Oduber succeeded José Figueres. As Oscar
Arias acknowledged on the night of his victory, much of the credit was due to outgoing
President Monge’s enormous popularity, earned by his relative success in preserving
Costa Rican neutrality, while at the same time keeping U.S. dollars flowing into the
country. But the results also reflected widespread reluctance to entrust the country’s
governance to a man and a party too closely identified with the policies of the current
U.S. government.
The message was not lost on the president-elect, who promptly delivered an unwelcome
message to the contras and their backers. While reaffirming Costa Rica’s liberal policy of
welcoming refugees from other countries, he insisted that all such guests must respect
Costa Rican sovereignty and civil traditions by leaving their weapons behind. President
Monge then seized the moment to return the Costa Rican ambassador to Managua and
propose that an international team of observers keep watch on the border. Monge’s
initiative was welcomed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has long advocated
the even stronger measure of establishing an internationally-supervised demilitarized
zone along the border. On February 24, the two countries agreed to set up a bilateral
“inspection and vigilance” commission, with the assistance of other Latin American
countries in the Contadora group and its support group.
But since such an arrangement would be disastrous for U.S. plans to develop a southern
front against Nicaragua—to say nothing of U.S. efforts to portray the Nicaraguan
government as belligerent and uninterested in serious negotiations—it remains to be seen
how far Monge and Arias can go without serious reprisals from the Reagan
administration. Attempts to undermine the new opening began as soon as it was
announced, as Nicaraguan helicopters were fired upon from Costa Rican soil, and as 186
U.S. Army engineers arrived in Costa Rica to renovate airstrips along the Nicaraguan
border. More recently, U.S. Ambassador Tambs was recalled to Washington the day
before he was to present his credentials to the president-elect.
The Tragedy
Although Costa Rican democracy has shown an amazing resiliency in the face of the
Reagan administration’s concerted efforts to undermine its foundations, this small
country is nonetheless suffering damage.
Its government’s ability to channel scarce investment funds into vital national
development projects has been hampered by the breach in its national banking system. Its
channels of social communication have been poisoned with disinformation campaigns,
and its government has been permeated with embassy intrigue. A small army has been
established in violation of its constitution.
To be sure, the United States is spending about $200 million a year on economic
assistance to Costa Rica. But the vast majority of it—$160 million of the 1985 Economic
Support Funds—is really a gift of interest to U.S. bankers saddled with loans Costa Rica
cannot possibly repay. While this money keeps the government from sliding into
bankruptcy, it in no way addresses the underlying structural economic problems—a point
emphasized in the following conversations with former president Rodrigo Carazo and
newly-elected legislator Javier Solís. This is another dimension of the tragedy of U.S.
policy.
Thus, to the extent that we in the United States truly believe our own accolades of Costa
Rican democracy as the “model” in Latin America, and our own public pronouncements
of respect for the self-determination of our continental neighbors, we need to begin
listening to our Costa Rican friends themselves, who would have us act much differently
toward them and other countries in the region.
Andrew Reding is a fellow of the World Policy Institute and writes frequently on Latin
American issues.
Notes
1
World Development Report 1984 (New York: Oxford University Press for the World
Bank, 1984), p. 224.
2
“From Democracy to…?” Mesoamerica, Vol. 5, No. 1 January 1986), p. 3.
3
Volio later resigned after President Monge insisted on casting Costa Rica’s vote in the
United Nations against the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Volio was the only Latin American
foreign minister besides El Salvador’s that favored siding with the United States on that
issue.
4
Luis Alberto Monge, Comunicación Para la Democracia (San José: Ministry of
Information, 1984), p. 42.
5
“Administration’s Designs in Costa Rica,” Congressional Record, October 11, 1984.
6
For more on the solidarismo movement, see Gustavo Blanco and Orlando Navarro, El
Solidarismo: Pensamiento y Dinámica Social de un Movimiento Obrero Patronal (San
José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1984).
7
For a detailed historical account, see Jorge Mario Salazar, Política y Reforma en Costa
Rica: 1914-1958 (San José: Editorial Porvenir, 1982).
8
For a detailed account, see Stephen Schlessinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The
Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982).
9
La Nación, September 30, 1983, p. 8.
10
Envío Year 4, No. 40 (October 1984), pp. 1c-13c.
11
“The Murciélago Ranch Training Center,” Mesoamerica, Vol. 4, No. 7 (July 1985), p.
6.
12
In its coverage of the attack on the Nicaraguan embassy, La Nación doctored
photographs to remove the trident insignia of the Free Costa Rica Movement from the
shirts of the assailants. (La Universidad).
13
“Gobierno nica agradecida par la ayuda de Figueres,” La República, November 22,
1985, p. 3.
14
“Dictan falta de mérito a favor de Vargas Gené,” La Nación, January 30, 1986, p. 4A.