Otilio Ulate and the Traditional Response to Contemporary Political Change in Costa Rica

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1977 Otilio Ulate and the Traditional Response to Contemporary Political Change in Costa Rica. Judy Oliver Milner Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Milner, Judy Oliver, "Otilio Ulate and the Traditional Response to Contemporary Political Change in Costa Rica." (1977). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3127. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/3127 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR I !I I 77-28,692 MILNER, Judy Oliver, 1942- OTILIO ULATE AND THE TRADITIONAL RESPONSE TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL CHANGE IN COSTA RICA. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1977 History, Latin America Xerox University Microfilms,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 @ 1 9 7 7 JUDY OLIVER MILNER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED OTILIO ULATE AND THE TRADITIONAL RESPONSE TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL CHANGE IN COSTA RICA A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History Judy Oliver Milner B.A., University of Alabama, 1964 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1968 August, 1977 TABLE OP CONTENTS ABSTRACT...................................... INTRODUCTION ........................... Chapter 1. DEVELOPMENT OP THE NATION........... .. 2. ULATE’S EARLY YEARS................. , CHALLENGES TO THE TRADITIONAL SYSTEM..... b. THE ULATS ADMINISTRATION: THE PRESIDENTIAL PROGRAM .......... 5* THE ULATE ADMINISTRATION: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICY ........ 6. THE ULATS ADMINISTRATION: POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS....... ........... 7. EPILOGUE ........................... 3’. PERSPECTIVES............................ BIBLIOGRAPHY........ ..... VITA .......... ........... .............. ABSTRACT Largely due to colonial experiences and the nature of the country's geography and population, Costa Rica had a fairly high level of social cohesiveness in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . There was a degree of consensus on fundamental questions which was unusual in Latin America and, partly for this reason, modern political parties, repz'esenting the interests of identifiable social groups and fostering partisan politica goals, did not emerge<> Thus, Costa Rica, paradoxically had a more personalistic political tradition than Latin countries whose political systems were, in other ways, less mature. Allowing for the many defects in the country's political system, Costa Rica nevertheless was one of the more democratic countries in Latin America or anywhere in the tropics* The political system was one of representa tive, rather than direct, democracy, and it emphasized civil liberties and formal participation in the political process while tending to restrict actual decision-making to a small group. The system v/as maintained intact both by the cohesive nature of society and by a considerable level of legitimacy resting on a view of national history to which many, probably a majority, of Costa Ricans subscribed. According to this view— which was part fiction and part reality— Costa Rica was a tranquil democracy, superior to its neighbors in political develop ment and in general social well-being. This traditional system was challenged in the 1940's by two separate groups, each representing a view of society and government different from that of the tradi tional system. The first group, headed by President Calderon, was dedicated to social reform and, in order to further it, resorted to some undemocratic practices. In 1948 a calderonista-dominated congress nullified the presidential election of Otilio Ulate, an influential journalist who was the leader of the traditional forces. Forced to choose, as he saw it, between two of Costa Rica's basic values— peaceful stability and democracy— Ulate hesitated and allowed the momentum to pass to -Jos§ Figueres who launched a revolution. Ulate acquiesced in the ouster of Calder5n but then discovered that Figueres, who set up an extra-legal government and enacted his own reform program by decree, was also a challenge to the traditional order. In November, 1949 Ulate finally assumed the presidency along with a congress controlled by members of his party, and Costa Rica's traditional forces appeared to have a chance of reasserting themselves. Ulate, however, tended to work with, rather than against, iv existing legislation when he came to office and thus declined the opportunity to undermine the reform movement. Little additional progress was made in the field of social legislation but Ulate restored a faltering economy and began programs designed to spread the new prosperity„ The watchwords of his administration were pragmatism, conciliation and democracy, and he worked effectively to close social schisms opened in the 19^0's and to rebuild confidence in the government. Despite a generally successful administration, however, Ulate and the traditional system he headed were unable to meet the challenge presented by Figueres who, by the end of Ulate's administration in 1953» had created a modern effective political party and used it to change the workings of the political system in Costa Rica. Since 1953 this new party has been the dominant force in national politics and traditional leaders seeking office have had to rely on the support of widely divergent groups lacking the consensus on which the traditional system rested. Repre senting the last real chance to restore the old order, Ulate1s administration offers an opportunity to study the dilemma of a conservative in a period of great change. v INTRODUCTION i The role of conservatives in recent Costa Rican history first interested me in 196? when I spent three months in Costa Rica doing research for an M.A. thesis on the Junta de Gobierno formed after the revolution of 1948. In the course of my research, I came to realise how significantly both the Junta and the CalderSn-Picado administration it replaced differed from the political pattern of the past. Costa Rica's traditional political system placed greater emphasis on social harmony than on progress and assumed that the government would maintain a low profile in the lives of the people. Sy contrast, both CalderSn and Jose Figueres, leader of the Junta, were determined men, advocating activist roles for the government in support of controversial reform programs. I wondered how Costa Rican traditional political forces, led at that time by Otilio Ulate, had reacted to these back-to-back challenges to the established order, but no writer, Costa Rican or foreign, had given more than passing_attention to the question. In fact, there seems to be little scholarly work on the general subject of true Burkean conservatives in Latin America. The word "conservative" is often used to refer to strongmen 1 who in reality are reactionaries or, as used in John Mander's The Unrevolutionary Society, to describe members vi of a wealthy elite lacking in social consciousness and interested only in perpetuating

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