![]() In 1928, he returned to Costa Rica to become a farmer-entrepreneur on a finca (ranch) he named La Lucha Sin Fin (The Endless Struggle), where he raised cabuya (a Central American agave) and built a factory to manufacture rope and bags from the homegrown fiber. Instead, with the Boston Public Library as his classroom, he acquired the social democratic philosophy that guided his future political career. He went to the United States in 1924 intending to study electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he never matriculated. Moreover, during the 1950s and 1960s, he stood almost alone as the champion of democracy and economic and social reform in Central America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.īorn in rural San Ramón shortly after his parents had emigrated from Spain, Figueres had little formal education beyond the secondary level. He was one of Costa Rica's most important political figures, setting the economic and social course of his country following the 1948 civil war and creating the National Liberation Party (PLN), Costa Rica's dominant political party after 1953. José Figueres, "Don Pepe," presided over the Costa Rican nation on three separate occasions: once as head of a junta government ( to 8 November 1949) and twice as constitutional president (1953–19–1974).
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