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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Joseph Bramah Biography

Joseph Bramah (Stainborough, 1749-London, 1814) British inventor.A mechanic by profession, he carried out numerous practical inventions: a security lock, a hydraulic press, the water-closet or toilet system, a printer to number banknotes, etc.

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).

Jose Mauri Biography

José Mauri (Valencia, 1856-Havana, 1937) Spanish composer.Installed in Cuba for most of his life, he founded the conservatory that bears his name there (1914).His work includes numerous songs and the opera The Slave (1921).

Joseph H. Maclagan Wedderburn Biography

Joseph H.Maclagan Wedderburn (Forfar, 1882-Princeton, 1948) British mathematician.Professor at Princeton University, he was editor of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh mathematical society (1905-1909) and the Annals of mathematics (1912-1928).He stated a theorem ( Wedderburn's theorem ) according to which every finite field is commutative.

Jose Triadó Mayol Biography

José Triadó Mayol (Barcelona, ​​1870- id ., 1929) Spanish draftsman, former bookseller and painter.He collaborated with his drawings in the magazines El gato negro (1898), Album Salón (1898-1899) and Hispania (1899-1902).Outstanding author of ex libris, as a painter he made the triptych Las Cortes de Manresa for the Sant Jordi room of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

Josef Hoffmann Biography

Josef Hoffmann (Pirnitz, 1870-Vienna, 1956) Austrian architect, decorator and urban planner.He was a disciple of O.Wagner and participated, along with J.M.Olbrich and other architects, in the creation of the avant-garde movement of the Secession (1897).His work is characterized by the careful treatment of the surfaces achieved through geometric decorations; The Stoclet Palace in Brussels stands out for its calculated elegance of style (1905-1911).

Joseph Reinach Biography

Joseph Reinach (Paris, 1856-1921) French journalist.He started in the journalistic profession through the Parisian newspaper La République Française , where from 1877 he began to publish interesting political analyzes that placed him at the epicenter of French public life in the last quarter of the century XIX.He acquired such importance in such a short space of time that in 1881, following the proclamation in France of the Third Republic, President León Gambetta called him to his side to place all his trust in him and appoint him head of his secretariat. At only thirty years old (1886), he became editor-in-chief of La République Française .Once this position was released, he directed a noisy journalistic campaign from the pages of the newspaper against the nationalist and populist politics of Georges Boulanger (the " General Revanche ").With this and other similar matters of maximum national interest, Joseph Reinach continued to rise in French public life and, in 188...

Jose Maria Galvez Alonso Biography

José María Gálvez Alonso (Matanzas, 1834-Havana, 1906) Cuban lawyer and politician.After studying law at the University of Havana, he sympathized with the independence movement of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes that led to the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), and served their cause from New York, taking charge of the leadership of the newspaper The Revolution .Due to the complaints and appeals that he published on its pages, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish authorities, and released with the amnesty that was granted once the war ended. José María Gálvez Alonso then founded the Partido Liberal Autonomista (1881), formation that during the following years competed for power with the Conservative Party.Gálvez, who advocated bringing Cuban society and institutions to a point of maturity and sufficient stability as a step prior to independence, also directed the Economic Society of Friends of the Country.He was president of the short-lived autonomous government of Cuba (1897-18...

Hernan Cortes Biography

Hernán Cortés (Medellín, Badajoz, 1485-Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville, 1547) Spanish conqueror of Mexico.Few times has history attributed the conquest of a vast territory to the determination and determination of one man; In this reduced list is Hernán Cortés, who always preferred to burn his ships to retreat.With little means, with little more support than his intelligence and his military and diplomatic intuition, he managed in just two years to reduce the splendid Aztec Empire to Spanish rule, populated, according to estimates, by some fifteen million inhabitants. Hernán Cortés It is true that various favorable circumstances accompanied him, and that, driven by ambition and the thirst for honors and riches, he committed abuses and violence, like other conquerors.But, of all of them, Cortés was the most cultured and capable captain, and although this does not serve as a mitigating factor, he was also impelled by a great religious fervor; his moral conscience came to ask him ...

Jose Sanchez Guerra Biography

José Sánchez Guerra (Cabra, 1859-Madrid, 1935) Spanish politician.A member of the Cortes for the Liberal Party, he supported Maura.Minister of the Interior (1903-1904) and Development (1908-1909), he held the leadership of the Government (March-December 1922), but had to resign as a result of the Annual disaster.When the dictatorship was proclaimed, he went into exile (1927) to France.In 1929 he returned to Spain to lead an uprising against the dictatorship, which failed.After the fall of Berenguer, he tried to save the monarchy, unsuccessfully, meeting with the Revolutionary Committee.Shortly after, he left politics.