Tomas Guardia Gutiérrez came to power in 1870 after overthrowing the recently elected president Bruno Carranza Ramírez in another successful military coup. He ruled on and off until 1882, somewhat paradoxically as both unelected authoritarian dictator and ‘benefactor of the people’, a ‘benevolent dictator’.
His reign is now perceived as a ‘watershed for the nation,’ 14 setting in motion forces that would shape the modern democratic state and announcing the shift towards representative politics and more peaceful transitions of power.
Guardia was a real reformist, expanding public administration and creating a strong, centralized government to back him up, he used coffee earnings and demanded high taxes to finance social programs, investing in public health, education and particularly transport infrastructure, aiming to increase efficiency for the coffee industry.
He abolished capital punishment, and, in a landmark revision to the Constitution of 1869, made primary education for all, ‘obligatory, free and at the cost of the nation.’
By strengthening public institutions and thereby increasing political authority he managed to initiate a decline in the role of militarism and to curb the power of the cafetalero oligarchy. He convinced them that a secure and stable regime was better for business interests than the inherently unstable reliance on military intervention to resolve power struggles. Instead he believed in raising the consciousness of the ‘masses’ through education and ideological means, encouraging political participation and eventually, peaceful, if still fraudulent, elections.
Guardia’s reforms made him the true ‘founder of the Liberal Order’ in Costa Rica. His rule, and those of his successors, Prospero Fernández and Bernardo Soto, saw the real consolidation of the Liberal agenda and the rise of a group of young intellectuals – teachers, journalists, lawyers and politicians – known as the ‘Olympians’, or the ‘Generation of 1888’. These ‘priests of progress’ 15 had a clear plan of reform, aiming to create a modern nation state, based on a capitalist agricultural-export system.
Taking cues from their predecessors, they promoted a doctrine of progress, liberty and democracy, espousing principles of economic and intellectual freedom, land privatization and independence. Believing that a free-market, capitalist economy would lead to prosperity for all, their ‘Project’ of social reform was intended to transform all material, legal and political bases of society.
The ‘Olympians’ saw themselves as pioneers, leading a backwards, rural nation into the ‘Modern Age’. The expansion of education was part of a mission to ‘civilize’ and instruct the campesino masses, to incorporate these lower classes into the nation through legal and political relations and to install in them new skills and values in accordance with their particular agenda. Despite their ‘democratic’ rhetoric they were members of the elite and their policies were aimed at preserving the dominant social and economic framework and maintaining oligarchic control in the political arena. Electoral fraudulence and corruption were accepted as inevitable within this paternalistic approach to government.
The Olympian’s efforts culminated in 1889 with what was widely perceived to be the first ‘democratic’ election in the country. Ironically, their attempts at raising political consciousness had worked so well that the public voted in the opposition candidate. The liberals, in true oligarchic fashion, failed to recognize the new president until 10,000 protestors took to the streets of San Jose and they finally had to accept him as rightfully elected. The election process may not have been entirely ‘democratic’ on this occasion, but the subsequent protests and their result were certainly the first democratic manifestation of public power in Costa Rica.
True parliamentary democracy would not arrive until 1948, although the direct vote, for men, was approved in 1913.
Guardia was a real reformist, expanding public administration and creating a strong, centralized government to back him up, he used coffee earnings and demanded high taxes to finance social programs, investing in public health, education and particularly transport infrastructure, aiming to increase efficiency for the coffee industry.
He abolished capital punishment, and, in a landmark revision to the Constitution of 1869, made primary education for all, ‘obligatory, free and at the cost of the nation.’
By strengthening public institutions and thereby increasing political authority he managed to initiate a decline in the role of militarism and to curb the power of the cafetalero oligarchy. He convinced them that a secure and stable regime was better for business interests than the inherently unstable reliance on military intervention to resolve power struggles. Instead he believed in raising the consciousness of the ‘masses’ through education and ideological means, encouraging political participation and eventually, peaceful, if still fraudulent, elections.
Guardia’s reforms made him the true ‘founder of the Liberal Order’ in Costa Rica. His rule, and those of his successors, Prospero Fernández and Bernardo Soto, saw the real consolidation of the Liberal agenda and the rise of a group of young intellectuals – teachers, journalists, lawyers and politicians – known as the ‘Olympians’, or the ‘Generation of 1888’. These ‘priests of progress’ 15 had a clear plan of reform, aiming to create a modern nation state, based on a capitalist agricultural-export system.
Taking cues from their predecessors, they promoted a doctrine of progress, liberty and democracy, espousing principles of economic and intellectual freedom, land privatization and independence. Believing that a free-market, capitalist economy would lead to prosperity for all, their ‘Project’ of social reform was intended to transform all material, legal and political bases of society.
The ‘Olympians’ saw themselves as pioneers, leading a backwards, rural nation into the ‘Modern Age’. The expansion of education was part of a mission to ‘civilize’ and instruct the campesino masses, to incorporate these lower classes into the nation through legal and political relations and to install in them new skills and values in accordance with their particular agenda. Despite their ‘democratic’ rhetoric they were members of the elite and their policies were aimed at preserving the dominant social and economic framework and maintaining oligarchic control in the political arena. Electoral fraudulence and corruption were accepted as inevitable within this paternalistic approach to government.
The Olympian’s efforts culminated in 1889 with what was widely perceived to be the first ‘democratic’ election in the country. Ironically, their attempts at raising political consciousness had worked so well that the public voted in the opposition candidate. The liberals, in true oligarchic fashion, failed to recognize the new president until 10,000 protestors took to the streets of San Jose and they finally had to accept him as rightfully elected. The election process may not have been entirely ‘democratic’ on this occasion, but the subsequent protests and their result were certainly the first democratic manifestation of public power in Costa Rica.
True parliamentary democracy would not arrive until 1948, although the direct vote, for men, was approved in 1913.
