Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia
Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia was president of Costa Rica from 1940 to 1944, the Louvain-trained physician of the coffee oligarchy who gave the country its social security, its labour code and its university, in alliance with the Communists and the archbishop at once. His attempt to take the presidency back in 1948 by annulling the election he had lost produced the civil war that Figueres won and the republic the country has had since. The four years were the social guarantees. There was the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social founded in 1941, the compulsory health and pension insurance the region had not seen. There was the University of Costa Rica opened in 1940 after fifty years without one. There were the chapter of social guarantees written into the constitution in 1942 and the labour code of 1943, the eight-hour day, the minimum wage and the right to strike. All of it was passed by the votes of Manuel Mora's Communists, whom he had brought into the coalition, and blessed by the archbishop Sanabria, who had read the encyclicals. That was the alliance of Christ, Marx and the coffee-planter that the coffee-planters did not forgive. The war was declared on Japan the day after Pearl Harbor and on Germany two days later, before the United States had. The country's Germans and Italians were interned and their properties taken, which some of the families of the oligarchy were. He handed over in 1944 to Picado, his own man, after an election the opposition called a fraud. He stood again in February 1948 against Ulate and lost by ten thousand votes. He had the Congress his party controlled annul the election on 1 March. That was the signal Figueres had been waiting for on his farm. The war of six weeks that followed, two thousand dead, ended with the government's surrender in April and the exile of Calderón to Nicaragua, whose Somoza lent him Guardsmen for the invasions of December 1948 and January 1955, both of which failed at the border. He was born in San José, the son of a doctor. He came home from Belgium in 1927 and practised among the poor of the capital, which was where his politics came from. He was allowed back in 1958. He stood a third time in 1962 and lost to Orlich, and was ambassador in Mexico. He died in San José in June 1970, at seventy. He was buried with the honours of a former president by the republic that had fought him, whose social security was his and whose army was not. His son Rafael Ángel was president from 1990 to 1994.
- Lived: 1900 CE – 1970 CE
- Nationality: Costa Rican
- Roles: president, physician, politician
