Skip to main content

Jose Maria Figueres Olsen Biography

José María Figueres Olsen

(San José, 1954) Costa Rican politician who was President of the Republic (1994-1998).Jose María Figueres Olsen was the son of Karen Olsen Beck and José Figueres Ferrer, a leader of Catalan origin considered the father of modern Costa Rica, founder of the National Liberation Party (PLN) in 1951 and president of the country three times.

José María Figueres Olsen

He completed his primary studies at the La Lucha school and at the Humboldt school and secondary at Lincoln School.He graduated from West Point Military Academy with a degree in industrial engineering, and later expanded his studies at Harvard.At the end of his studies, he joined the companies founded by his father, which at that time were going through difficult times, mired in the economic crisis that devastated Costa Rica at the beginning of the eighties of the 20th century.José María Figueres managed to save family businesses and also created new ones that considerably increased the family fortune.

During the first term of President Óscar Arias (1986-1990), Jose María Figueres Olsen held the position of director of the Instituto Costarricense de Ferrocarriles (INCOFER), with which he began his political activity.Subsequently, he was director of the Board of Administration and Development of the Atlantic Slope (JAPDEVA), Minister of Foreign Trade and Minister of Agriculture.

After the death of his father in 1990, sectors of the PLN proposed that promote his candidacy for the presidency, to which he dedicated himself for some time, except for a brief hiatus in 1991 to do a master's degree at Harvard University.The official designation was reached in June 1993, after defeating other candidates in a national convention, including Óscar Arias's wife, Margarita Peñón.In the elections held on February 6, 1994, he was elected President of the Republic of Costa Rica by defeating by few votes the official candidate of the Christian Democratic Unity Party (PUSC), Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría, of Christian Democratic tendency.They were the closest elections in the history of the country, which were defined by only two points of difference.

After his victory in the elections, Figueres Olsen reiterated his commitments made during the electoral campaign to improve education and health and boost the country's progress.Thus, during his tenure, the health care program based on the so-called EBAIS (Basic Equipment for Comprehensive Health Care) was designed and developed, which was very effective in improving health indices.

Important investments were also made in science and technology, telemedicine and environmental conservation programs and strategies, in order to create the foundations to advance towards the information society and sustainable development.With this, it was possible to attract high-tech companies such as Intel and many others.He also applied a plan to reduce public debt that included higher taxes and a privatization policy.He was succeeded in the presidency by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría, winner of the 1998 presidential elections.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

green Day Biography

Green Day American rock music group reminiscent of punk, formed in 1988 in Berkeley and made up of Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals, guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass) and Tre Cool (drums).Billie Joe Armstrong (born 1972 in California) and Mike Dirnt (whose real name is Mike Pritchard, born 1972), residents of the Californian town of Rodeo, formed the band in the late 1980s. Green Day Billie Joe Armstrong had grown up in a family of six siblings, whose father, a trucker and jazz musician, passed away when Billie Joe was ten years; Her mother, a waitress and country fanatic, gave her a year later a guitar that she still owns and plays.For her part, Mike Pritchard was the son of a heroin addict, which led to her being adopted by a couple who, in turn, divorced when Mike was seven.At the age of fifteen, Mike rented a room in Billie Joe's house. Tre Cool, whose real name was Frank Edwin Wright III, was born in 1972 in Germany, and grew up in Wilitis, a town north of San Francisco.Soon he ...
Post a Comment
Read more

José Sarmiento and Valladares Biography

José Sarmiento y Valladares (17th-18th centuries) Spanish colonial administrator.He was viceroy of New Spain (1696-1701), a position he left after the death of Carlos II and the change of dynasty.During his tenure, he managed to reactivate mining activity, suspended for lack of quicksilver, and trade in the colony.He held the titles of Count of Moctezuma and Tula.
Post a Comment
Read more

Harry Lloyd Hopkins Biography

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (Sioux City, 1890-New York, 1946) American politician.He was a Roosevelt collaborator from his time as governor of New York.During his presidency he was one of the promoters of economic recovery and its representative in Europe during World War II.
Post a Comment
Read more

Edouard Manet Biography

Édouard Manet (Paris, 1832-id., 1883) French painter and printmaker.Son of an important civil servant of the Ministry of Justice, Édouard Manet was a mediocre student interested only in drawing.Faced with paternal resistance to starting an artistic career, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Naval Academy until, after a second failed attempt, his family reluctantly agreed to finance his artistic studies, which began in 1850 in the workshop of the classical painter Thomas Couture. Édouard Manet After six years of apprenticeship, Édouard Manet established himself in his own studio.In those early days he established a relationship with artists and writers such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Edgar Degas and Charles Baudelaire.At the beginning of 1860 some of his works began to be recognized, which deserved, among others, the warm reception of the critic and writer Théophile Gautier. In his production at the end of the 1870s he accentuated the naturalism of his subject matter, to give th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hans Holbein the Elder Biography

Hans Holbein the Elder (Augsburg, c .1465-Issenheim, 1524) German painter and draftsman.An exponent of the transition from late Gothic to the Renaissance in southern Germany, the relationship with contemporary Flemish painting allowed him to overcome the incipient archaism of his early works.Apparently he trained in Ulm, later settling in his hometown.From 1490 he carried out intense activity through his Augsburg workshop.In 1517 he settled in Isenheim, where he spent the last years of his life. The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (c.1516), of Hans Holbein the Elder Influenced by Dutch art (especially by Rogier Van der Weyden) and Italian painting, his late Gothic style was characterized by compositional balance and bright colors.He painted portraits (among them, several portraits of women and those of his sons Ambrosius and Hans, known as Hans Holbein the Younger) and, above all, altarpieces: the one in the Weingarten convent, the one of the Dominicans in Frankfurt, Kaisheim Ab...
Post a Comment
Read more

James oswald Biography

James Oswald (Dunnikier, 1727-Hammersmith, 1793) Scottish philosopher who was part of the so-called Scottish School (or "Philosophy of common sense").Like other members of this school, he fought the doctrines of Hume and other empiricists.His presbytery led him to strive to apply Thomas Reid's first principles doctrine in defense of Christian truths.Thus, in his work Appeal to Common Sense in Favor of Religion , Oswald denies the value of metaphysics and defends the existence of religious principles that are evident to meaning.According to him, for example, "the existence of the Divine Essence is a fact absolutely founded above all reasoning and doubt, and that common sense apprehends with immediate certainty."
Post a Comment
Read more

Jean harlow Biography

Jean Harlow (Harlean Carpenter; Kansas City, 1911-Hollywood, 1937) American film actress.At sixteen, she eloped with a businessman and settled in Los Angeles, where she found work as a film extra.Already by then he adopted the stage name of Jean Harlow, under which he appeared in the credits of various feature films and, prominently, of comic shorts.Divorced in 1929, she was hired as the lead in Hell's Angels (1930), a film that the eccentric billionaire and filmmaker Howard Hughes was transferring to the new sound format. Jean Harlow His first steps with other studios were not brilliant.He was a target of the press and his performances were called mediocre, but the public began to respond to his somewhat vulgar charm.The great opportunity came in 1932, when he signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: now he had a studio behind him, interested in promoting it and boosting his career. Within a few months, the ostentatious erotic symbol morphed into a subtle actress, qu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Giorgio vasari Biography

Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, present-day Italy, 1511-Florence, 1574) Italian architect, painter and art theorist.An outstanding personality of his time, he worked as an architect and as a painter and received important commissions.However, with the passage of time, his practical achievements have been largely overshadowed by his work as a theorist, particularly as a biographer of the leading figures of the Italian Renaissance. Vasari's self-portrait In 1550 he published the first edition of his Lives of the most excellent Italian architects, painters and sculptors , of which a second, greatly expanded edition appeared in 1568.This work, known simply as the Lives , constitutes an incomparable document for the knowledge of the artistic period to which it refers and is, at the same time, a pleasant work, written with ease and dotted with numerous anecdotes. The artistic judgments that he makes maintain their validity in almost all cases, and the main reproach that can be made is...
Post a Comment
Read more