Laura Fernández Delgado is sworn in as president of Costa Rica, giving us the perfect excuse to explore the most surprising story in Central America: how a small country decided to abolish its army in 1948 and what happened next. Fletcher and Octavio discuss civil wars, democracy, and why Costa Rica remains an anomaly that still surprises experts.
Laura Fernández Delgado asume la presidencia de Costa Rica, y eso nos da la excusa perfecta para explorar la historia más sorprendente de América Central: cómo un país pequeño decidió abolir su ejército en 1948 y qué pasó después. Fletcher y Octavio hablan de guerras civiles, democracia, y por qué Costa Rica es una anomalía que todavía sorprende a los expertos.
5 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| apuesta | bet, wager (also used for bold real-life commitments) | Abolir el ejército fue la apuesta más importante de la historia de Costa Rica. |
| abolir | to abolish | En 1948, Costa Rica decidió abolir su ejército. |
| junta | junta, governing council (often military) | Figueres gobernó primero como una junta antes de dar el poder a las elecciones. |
| reforestar | to reforest | Costa Rica reforestó gran parte del país después de los años ochenta. |
| democracia | democracy | Costa Rica es una de las democracias más estables de América Latina. |
There's a country in Central America that, in 1948, did something so counterintuitive that political scientists are still arguing about whether it was genius or just extraordinary luck.
And yesterday, that country inaugurated a new president.
Sí.
Yes.
Laura Fernández Delgado es la nueva presidenta de Costa Rica.
Laura Fernández Delgado is the new president of Costa Rica.
Tomó el poder ayer.
She took power yesterday.
Pero la historia que quiero contar hoy es más antigua y, la verdad, mucho más interesante.
But the story I want to tell today is older and, honestly, much more interesting.
Costa Rica abolished its military.
Permanently.
In 1948.
And then it became one of the most stable, educated, and healthy countries in the entire Western Hemisphere.
That's the story.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y cuando dices 'en 1948', tienes que recordar el contexto.
And when you say 'in 1948', you have to remember the context.
En ese momento, Guatemala tenía un golpe de estado.
At that moment, Guatemala was experiencing a coup.
Nicaragua tenía una dictadura brutal.
Nicaragua had a brutal dictatorship.
El Salvador también.
El Salvador too.
Costa Rica era diferente, pero nadie sabía por qué.
Costa Rica was different, but nobody knew why.
So before we get to the army question, we need to talk about how Costa Rica arrived at that moment.
Because there was actually a civil war first.
A short one, but real.
Correcto.
Correct.
En 1948, el gobierno anuló las elecciones.
In 1948, the government annulled the elections.
El candidato ganador se llamaba Otilio Ulate.
The winning candidate was called Otilio Ulate.
El gobierno dijo que las elecciones no eran válidas.
The government said the elections were not valid.
Y eso fue un error muy grande.
And that was a very big mistake.
And into that vacuum stepped a man with a coffee plantation, a strong opinion about democracy, and apparently no particular hesitation about starting an armed uprising.
José Figueres Ferrer.
Figueres era un hombre muy interesante.
Figueres was a very interesting man.
Estudió en el MIT, en Boston.
He studied at MIT, in Boston.
Volvió a Costa Rica y empezó a hablar de política en la radio.
He returned to Costa Rica and started talking about politics on the radio.
El gobierno lo expulsó del país por eso.
The government expelled him from the country for that.
An MIT engineer who gets kicked out of his own country for talking too much and then comes back with guns.
That's a biography.
La guerra civil duró solo cuarenta y cuatro días.
The civil war lasted only forty-four days.
Figueres ganó.
Figueres won.
Pero entonces hizo algo que nadie esperaba.
But then he did something nobody expected.
Tomó el poder y dijo: 'Voy a dar el poder al ganador de las elecciones, Ulate.'
He took power and said: 'I am going to hand power to the election winner, Ulate.'
He won a war and then gave away the presidency.
Which, if you look at the history of Latin American strongmen, is not exactly the standard playbook.
No.
No.
Figueres tuvo el poder durante dieciocho meses, como una junta.
Figueres had power for eighteen months, as a junta.
En ese tiempo hizo tres cosas muy importantes.
In that time he did three very important things.
Abolió el ejército, dio el voto a las mujeres y a los afrocostariqueños, y creó un banco nacional.
He abolished the army, gave the vote to women and Afro-Costa Ricans, and created a national bank.
Eighteen months.
Let that sit for a second.
Eighteen months to reshape a country's entire trajectory.
And the army thing, Octavio, walk me through the logic there, because on the surface it seems insane.
La lógica era sencilla pero también muy valiente.
The logic was simple but also very brave.
Figueres pensaba que un ejército no protege a los ciudadanos de un gobierno malo, sino que ayuda al gobierno malo a controlar a los ciudadanos.
Figueres thought that an army doesn't protect citizens from a bad government, but rather helps the bad government control its citizens.
Which, given what was happening in every neighboring country at that exact moment, was not a theoretical observation.
It was what he was watching in real time.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y también pensaba en el dinero.
And he also thought about money.
Un ejército cuesta mucho.
An army costs a lot.
Si no tienes ejército, puedes usar ese dinero para escuelas y hospitales.
If you don't have an army, you can use that money for schools and hospitals.
Esa fue la promesa.
That was the promise.
Y la cumplieron.
And they kept it.
And this is where the story gets genuinely strange, because it worked.
Costa Rica today has literacy rates above ninety-seven percent.
Life expectancy around eighty years.
A functional judiciary.
I've covered a lot of countries, and that combination is rare.
Sí, pero hay que ser honesto.
Yes, but we have to be honest.
No fue solo el dinero del ejército.
It wasn't just the army money.
Costa Rica tuvo otras ventajas históricas.
Costa Rica had other historical advantages.
Por ejemplo, en la época colonial, era una región muy pobre.
For example, in the colonial era, it was a very poor region.
Los españoles no tenían mucho interés en ella.
The Spanish weren't very interested in it.
Right, no gold.
No silver.
No massive indigenous labor force to exploit.
So the colonial economy there developed differently, with smaller landholders rather than the plantation oligarchy you saw almost everywhere else.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y eso es muy importante.
And that is very important.
En Guatemala o El Salvador, había familias muy ricas con mucho poder y trabajadores muy pobres sin derechos.
In Guatemala or El Salvador, there were very rich families with a lot of power and very poor workers with no rights.
En Costa Rica, la diferencia entre ricos y pobres era menor.
In Costa Rica, the gap between rich and poor was smaller.
Eso hace la democracia más fácil.
That makes democracy easier.
I want to push back on that slightly, because it risks becoming a kind of fatalism.
Like, Costa Rica was going to be fine regardless.
But plenty of countries with a similar colonial history ended up with military coups and authoritarian governments.
Tienes razón.
You're right.
Las decisiones de personas concretas importan mucho.
The decisions of specific people matter a lot.
La decisión de Figueres de abolir el ejército fue una decisión personal, una apuesta.
Figueres's decision to abolish the army was a personal decision, a bet.
No era inevitable.
It was not inevitable.
And the Cold War context matters here enormously.
The U.S.
was backing military governments across Central America in the name of fighting communism.
Costa Rica managed to navigate that pressure without becoming a client state.
Sí.
Yes.
Y eso fue complicado.
And that was complicated.
Los años cincuenta, sesenta y setenta fueron muy difíciles para Costa Rica.
The fifties, sixties, and seventies were very difficult for Costa Rica.
Nicaragua, al lado, tenía la dictadura de Somoza.
Nicaragua, next door, had the Somoza dictatorship.
Y los Estados Unidos apoyaban a Somoza.
And the United States supported Somoza.
I was in Central America in the eighties, covering the Contra war.
Costa Rica was this strange island of calm in the middle of a region that was genuinely on fire.
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, all of them violent, all of them polarized.
Y Costa Rica hizo algo muy importante en esos años.
And Costa Rica did something very important in those years.
El presidente Óscar Arias propuso un plan de paz para toda la región.
President Óscar Arias proposed a peace plan for the entire region.
En 1987, ganó el Premio Nobel de la Paz por ese trabajo.
In 1987, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for that work.
A country with no army becoming the region's peacemaker.
There's something almost poetic about that, and I don't mean that as a cliché.
It's a genuine strategic insight.
You can play a different role when you're not perceived as a military threat.
Completamente.
Completely.
Pero también hay que hablar de los problemas.
But we also have to talk about the problems.
Costa Rica no es perfecta.
Costa Rica is not perfect.
En los últimos veinte años, tuvo problemas de deuda, de crimen organizado, de narcotráfico.
In the last twenty years, it had problems with debt, organized crime, drug trafficking.
El país cambió.
The country changed.
The geography problem is brutal and it has nothing to do with policy choices.
Costa Rica sits directly on the trafficking routes from South America to Mexico and the United States.
You can have the best institutions in the world and still have that problem.
Sí.
Yes.
Y los últimos presidentes tuvieron escándalos de corrupción.
And the last presidents had corruption scandals.
Rodrigo Chaves, el presidente que terminó ayer, fue muy controvertido.
Rodrigo Chaves, the president who finished yesterday, was very controversial.
Tenía conflictos con la prensa, con el parlamento, con muchas instituciones.
He had conflicts with the press, with parliament, with many institutions.
Which brings us back to Laura Fernández.
What do we know about her, and what does she represent in this longer arc?
Fernández viene del Partido Liberación Nacional, el partido que fundó Figueres en 1951.
Fernández comes from the National Liberation Party, the party Figueres founded in 1951.
Entonces hay una conexión directa con esa historia.
So there is a direct connection with that history.
Fue alcaldesa de Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí.
She was mayor of Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí.
Una región muy pobre y muy verde.
A very poor and very green region.
The environmental piece is actually central to understanding modern Costa Rica.
They've reforested more than half the country since the 1980s, when it was being cut down at an alarming rate.
They now generate almost all their electricity from renewables.
That didn't happen by accident.
No.
No.
Fue una decisión política y económica.
It was a political and economic decision.
El turismo es muy importante para Costa Rica.
Tourism is very important for Costa Rica.
Si destruyes los bosques, destruyes el turismo.
If you destroy the forests, you destroy tourism.
Pero también hay una idea más profunda: que la naturaleza tiene un valor en sí misma.
But there is also a deeper idea: that nature has value in itself.
The Figueres logic applied to the environment.
Don't extract everything now;
invest in something that compounds over time.
Whether it was schools instead of tanks or forests instead of cattle ranches, the underlying bet is the same.
Eso es exactamente correcto.
That is exactly right.
Y por eso la inauguración de Fernández importa más allá de la política diaria.
And that is why Fernández's inauguration matters beyond day-to-day politics.
Costa Rica tiene una historia de tomar decisiones difíciles con visión a largo plazo.
Costa Rica has a history of making difficult decisions with a long-term vision.
La pregunta es si puede continuar esa tradición.
The question is whether it can continue that tradition.
For any listener trying to place this in a broader frame: what Costa Rica represents is a kind of proof of concept.
That the choices a small, poor country makes in a moment of crisis can determine its character for generations.
That's not a guarantee, but it's not nothing either.
Sí.
Yes.
Y para nosotros, que vivimos en países grandes con mucha historia complicada, Costa Rica es un recordatorio interesante.
And for us, who live in large countries with a lot of complicated history, Costa Rica is an interesting reminder.
A veces, los países más pequeños pueden experimentar con ideas que los países grandes tienen miedo de probar.
Sometimes, smaller countries can experiment with ideas that larger countries are afraid to try.
Octavio, one thing that stopped me earlier when you were describing Figueres, you used this construction, 'la apuesta más valiente,' and I want to understand 'apuesta' better, because it kept coming back.
Bueno, 'apuesta' viene del verbo 'apostar', que significa hacer una apuesta en el juego.
Well, 'apuesta' comes from the verb 'apostar', which means to place a bet in a game.
Pero en español usamos 'apostar' también para las decisiones de la vida real.
But in Spanish we also use 'apostar' for real-life decisions.
Por ejemplo: 'Apostar por la educación' significa creer en la educación, invertir en ella.
For example: 'Apostar por la educación' means to believe in education, to invest in it.
So it carries the weight of risk.
You're not just choosing education, you're betting on it.
It's almost like there's a gamble baked into the word that English doesn't capture as neatly with 'commitment' or 'investment.'
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Apostar' implica que puedes perder.
'Apostar' implies you can lose.
Y eso es importante.
And that is important.
Figueres podía perder.
Figueres could have lost.
La democracia podía fallar.
Democracy could have failed.
Era una apuesta real, con un riesgo real.
It was a real bet, with a real risk.
La palabra lo dice todo.
The word says it all.
That's a word I'll carry out of this conversation.
Costa Rica itself is one long 'apuesta.' And maybe that's the best way to end this, because it's also how Fernández starts her term: inheriting a bet that's been running for seventy-eight years, and deciding whether to keep playing.