Óscar Arias
Óscar Arias was president of Costa Rica twice, from 1986 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2010, and the author of the Central American peace plan that the five presidents of the isthmus signed at Esquipulas in August 1987 over the objections of the Reagan administration, which wanted the war in Nicaragua fought to a finish; the plan traded ceasefires, amnesties, elections and an end to foreign support for insurgents across the region, it ended the Contra war and led to the Nicaraguan election of 1990 and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan settlements after, and it won him the Nobel Peace Prize of 1987, the money from which he put into a foundation for demilitarisation. He was born in Heredia in 1940 into a coffee family, studied law and economics in Costa Rica, took a doctorate at Essex on the Costa Rican political class, and was planning minister at thirty-two. He won the National Liberation party's nomination in 1985 against its old guard and the election of February 1986 on the promise to keep Costa Rica, which had abolished its army in 1948, out of the war on its northern border. The Contras were using Costa Rican territory with American money and the previous government's consent, and he closed the airstrip and told Washington so. The plan he put to the other four presidents in February 1987 was the Contadora process without its sponsors, and the signature at Esquipulas in Guatemala on 7 August, with Ortega of Nicaragua signing, was the surprise. The Nobel came in October, and the United States Congress cut off the Contras' military aid in February 1988. His second term was won in 2006 after a constitutional court had reopened re-election, by a margin of eighteen thousand votes over Otton Solis, and was spent getting the Central American free trade agreement with the United States through a referendum in 2007, which he won by fifty-one per cent, and opening relations with China. He mediated the Honduran crisis of 2009 without success. Accusations of sexual harassment by several women in 2019 ended his public role. A prosecutor dropped the cases in 2020.
- Lived: 1940 CE – ?
- Nationality: Costa Rican
- Roles: president, politician
