Don Pepe's Return

There is no denying that Costa Rica is a republic, or that it grows a lot of bananas. But the tiny Central American country (19,650 sq. mi. and 1.700,000 people) is a far cry from a banana republic. It is not run by a gaudily uniformed strongman backed by a well-equipped little army. It does not even have an army; the last one was disbanded in 1948. When Lyndon Johnson visited the country in 1968. the Costa Ricans had to borrow a cannon from Panama so that they could give him the customary 21-gun salute.

What Costa Rica does have, however, is the highest literacy rate (85%) and the second highest per capita annual income in Central America ($450 v. an average $300). It also has an enviable record--not quite unbroken but still impressive--of free and democratic elections. Last week, for the fourth time in a row, the Costa Rican electorate peacefully voted out the party in power. As usual, the 2,000-man police force stayed quietly in the background; the most noteworthy figures at polling places belonged to pretty girls in miniskirts who were on hand to assist voters.

The Dwarf. In a region increasingly dominated by dictatorship and plagued by the sort of border skirmishes that broke out anew between El Salvador and Honduras last week, what makes Costa Rica different? Partly, there is its enduring system of small landholdings --caused by the absence of a large Indian labor force--which from the earliest colonial times produced a strong, propertied middle class. (Large landholdings did not come into being until the second half of the 19th century, when coffee became the major export crop.) Then, too, there is Costa Rica's historical preoccupation with education, which resulted in a free primary school system as early as 1853. This continuing commitment is reflected in a national budget that currently devotes more than 33% of its $132 million total to schooling, v. only 4% to the police and defense. Border problems have been few--thus there is little need for an army. Finally, there is the character of the man who last week emerged as Costa Rica's once and future President: Jose Figueres Ferrer, 63.

"Don Pepe" Figueres--sometimes called El Enano (the dwarf) because he stands only 5 ft. 3 in.--is the grand old man of Latin America's democratic left. In the small band of democratic reformers (including Venezuela's Romulo Betancourt. the Dominican Republic's Juan Bosch, Peru's Raul Haya de la Torre) who only recently seemed to be Latin America's best hope for nonviolent change, he remains one of the few effective survivors.

Divided Road. A onetime M.I.T. student whose heroes range from Bolivar and Lincoln to Don Quixote, Don Pepe has led his country twice before. In 1948, when the Costa Rican army and Communist-led commandos sought to prevent a newly elected government from assuming power, Don Pepe routed them with a ragtag 700-man army. He took control at the head of a junta, and in the next 18 months he dissolved the army, expanded social-welfare programs, gave women the vote and nationalized the banks. Then, by prior agreement, he stepped aside in favor of the man whose election had led to the attempted coup in 1948, Otilio Ulate. Four years later, Figueres was elected to a presidential term of his own. In 1958, he retired to his ranch-style home near San Jose, where he still lives with his blonde U.S.-born second wife Karen and their four children.

In his comeback attempt, Don Pepe delivered 805 speeches in eleven months and visited every town in the country. That performance was a wholly convincing reply to the young critics who questioned his vigor. Of his four opponents, his chief adversary was Mario Echandi Jimenez, another ex-President (1958-62), who accused Don Pepe and his National Liberation Party of Communist leanings. "I am not going to take anything from anybody who has struggled up the economic ladder," said the conservative Echandi. By contrast, Don Pepe directed his campaign to the problems of "the submerged third"--the urban unemployed and rural poor suffering from eleven years of depressed coffee prices. "Listen to me," Don Pepe warned his countrymen. "We are going to be another Guatemala if we don't do something now. We stand where the road divides; we head for true democracy, social democracy, or chaos." Costa Ricans listened. Don Pepe received 294,000 votes against a total of 221,000 for all four of his opponents.

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