Crisis In Costa Rica: The 1948 Revolution - John Patrick Bell

Bell doesn't focus strictly on the 1948 revolution; that's only the last chapter before the epilogue. Most of this is about the years leading up to the revolution. The politicians and groups on both sides, the issues of contention, the steady preparation of Jose Figueres Ferrer, and the disputed 1948 presidential election that ultimately leads to armed conflict.

It's about 160 pages, originally published in the '70s as part of a Latin American Monographs series at the University of Texas. Bell spends the first few chapters establishing the situation and history of Costa Rica entering the 1940s. Then he spends the next 5 chapters looking at the issues the divided the political parties, with the National Republicans and Vanguardia Popular on one sides, and the Centro and the Social Democrats the primary parties on the other side, eventually forming The Opposition, and how each side responded.

This includes several tactics which are very familiar to our current situation here in the U.S. Like one party consisting of the wealthy, who want to return things to some idealized golden age when they could do as they pleased. Or one group insisting that the only way you'll know free elections exist was if their party won. Attempts to try and block people from voting on both sides.

It's only the last chapter that actually addresses the revolution itself, since that didn't last more than a couple of months. It's what leads up to it that interests Bell. The book seems well-researched, although I'm sure there's been a wealth of new information that's come out in the nearly fifty years since it was published. Bell's a little partisan towards Calderon Guardia and the National Republicans. There are times he'll spend several pages dogging the Opposition for voter intimidation, then throw in one paragraph that notes similar activities by the National Republicans in an earlier election that was within the scope of this book.

I felt most sympathetic to Vanguardia Popular, the country's Communist Party. They gained a certain amount of leverage when the Opposition basically took their ball and went home, and they used it. But the fact they were Communists meant they were something else the Opposition could use against the National Republicans, both within Costa Rica, and internationally. It's notable the U.S. only decided to get involved in the revolution when Vanguardia Popular stations their forces in the capitol city and vow to resist the Opposition (who are rebels, and had tried to assassinate the party's leader). Because they're Communists. Credit to Jose Figueres Ferrer and The Opposition for knowing how to play the U.S. like a fiddle, I suppose.

I finished the book feeling like I had a better grasp of the conflict than I had before, but wondering if I wasn't getting only one side of the story.

'Calderon Guardia had largely replaced the Communists in the popular mind as the proponent of reform and transformation. His great following enabled him to threaten the privileges of the oligarchy far more ominously than did the minuscule and vulnerable Vanguardia Popular. His rise in popularity also threatened those segments of his opposition whose hopes of political power rested on their own programs for reform and transformation. Accion Democrata and the Centro therefore sought to discredit him, not by criticizing his reform program, but by charging him with fraud.'