Jose Figueres Ferrer

Jose Figueres won a civil war in Costa Rica and then abolished the army that had won it. He was a coffee and hemp farmer, largely self-taught, exiled in 1942 for a radio broadcast attacking the government. When the 1948 election result was annulled by a congress that did not like the winner, he led a rising from his farm that took six weeks and killed some two thousand people, the bloodiest event in modern Costa Rican history. What he did with the victory is the reason he is remembered. As head of a junta for eighteen months he nationalised the banks, taxed capital, gave women the vote and citizenship to the Afro-Caribbean population of the Atlantic coast, outlawed the communist party, and on 1 December 1948 took a sledgehammer to a wall of the Bellavista barracks to mark the abolition of the standing army, which was written into the 1949 constitution. Then he handed power to the man who had won the annulled election. He was elected president twice himself, in 1953 and 1970. Costa Rica has had no army since, spends the money on schooling and health, and has the political stability in the region that the comparison usually turns on. His son Jose Maria Figueres was president in the 1990s and his family remains prominent. The abolition is commemorated every 1 December, and the barracks he struck is now the national museum. He also allowed the CIA to use Costa Rica against Nicaragua and Guatemala, which sits awkwardly with the pacifist reputation and is part of the record.

• Lived: 1906 CE – 1990 CE
• Nationality: Costa Rican
• Roles: head_of_state