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Class Conflict, Political Crisis and the Breakdown of Democratic Practices in Costa Rica: Reassessing the Origins of the 1948 Civil War*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq
Fabrice Edouard Lehoucq
Affiliation:
Graduate Instructor of Political Science at Duke University.
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Extract

The 1948 Costa Rican civil war stands as the most significant breakdown of emerging democratic practices in what many believe is a country with a democratic destiny. No other political conflict has so polarised the country and cost so many lives. Nor has any other civil war so influenced the way analysts view and understand the development of democratic institutions in Costa Rica. Why political actors in Costa Rica settled their disputes on the battlefield, however, is a question that has yet to generate a satisfactory response.

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1991 , pp. 37 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 For an evaluation of alternative explanations of the democratisation of Costa Rican politics, see my ‘Explicando los orígenes de los regímenes democráticos: Costa Rica en perspectiva teórica’, Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (San José, Costa Rica), Vol. 16, Fasc. 1 (1990).Google Scholar

2 This period remains unstudied, except for Gardner, John W., ‘The Costa Rican Junta of 1948–49’, unpubl. PhD dissertation, St John's University, 1971.Google Scholar

3 Studies of the National Constituent Assembly are: Bulgarelli, Oscar Aguilar, La constitución de 1949: antecedentes y proyeccions (San José, 1973Google Scholar) and Jiménez, Mario Alberto, Historia constitucional de Costa Rica (San José, 1979), pp. 154–69Google Scholar. A detailed account of each of the Assembly's sessions can be found in Poveda, Ruben Hernández, Desde la barra: como se discutió y emitió la Constitución Política de 1949 (San José, 1953)Google Scholar. Hernández Poveda covered Assembly debates as a reporter for the daily evening paper, La prensa libre (San José, Costa Rica).

4 For an overview of the political debate about the meaning of the 1940s, see Vargas, Mariana Campos, ‘La coyuntura, 1940–1948: el ascenso de nuevas fuerzas sociales y los cambios en las funciones del estado’ in Viquez, Jaime Murillo (ed.), Historia de Costa Rica en el siglo XX (San José, 1989)Google Scholar. Also, see her ‘La coyuntura 1940–48, entre el testimonio y la academia: un análisis historiográfico’, unpubl. Master's Thesis, MA Programme in Central American History, University of Costa Rica, 1989.

5 The most succinct anti-Calderonista account of the 1940s is Cañas, Alberto F., Los ochos años (San José, 1982; originally published in 1955Google Scholar). Also, see Ferrer, José Figueres, Palabras Gastadas (San José, 1979; originally published in Mexico in 1942Google Scholar) and his recently published El espíritu del 48 (San José, 1987).Google Scholar

6 The ideological dominance of Figuerista images of 1948 is particularly acute among North American scholars. This is discussed in Gudmundson's, Lowell useful review essay, ‘Costa Rica and the 1948 Revolution: Rethinking the Social Democratic Paradigm’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 19, no. 1 (1984)Google Scholar. A recent attempt to interpret the events of the 1940s in this way is Booth, John A., ‘Costa Rica: The Roots of Democratic Stability’, in Diamond, Larry and Linz, Juan (eds.), Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 The most comprehensive account of the 1940s by a Calderonista is Avendaño, José Albertazzi, La tragedia de Costa Rica (México, D. F., 1951)Google Scholar. The limited diffusion of anti-Figuerista accounts is nicely illustrated by the fact that Albertazzi Avendaño's memoirs cannot be found in the holdings of the National Library, even though he served as its director during the 1930s. Other useful sources include Picado, Teodoro, El pacto de la embajada de México (Managua, 1948)Google Scholar and the writings of Valverde, Manuel Mora, many of which have been published in his Discursos, 1934–1979 (San José, 1980).Google Scholar

8 See his ‘El sistema político-electoral costarricense del período 1914–1948’, in Historia de Costa Rica en el siglo XX, p. 51Google Scholar. Also, see Vargas, Claudio A.A., , ‘La guerra civil de 1948: la sustitución del modelo liberal’, in Gómez, Carmen Lila et al. (eds.), Las instituciones Costarricenses del Siglo XX (San José, 1988)Google Scholar. I have sought to translate all passages contained in the text of this article into English from Spanish in the most literal fashion that the proper use of English permits.

9 Bulgarelli's, Aguilar book is entitled Costa Rica y sus hechos políticos de 1948: problemática de una década (San José, 1969)Google Scholar. Bell's volume is called Crisis in Costa Rica: the 1948 Revolution (Austin, 1971)Google Scholar. This book was translated and published in Costa Rica by EDUCA in 1976. All page citations refer to the English-language version of Bell's book.

10 See Acuña, Miguel, El 48 (San José, 1975)Google Scholar; Vega, Eugenio Rodríguez, De Calderón a Figueres (San José, 1981)Google Scholar; and Sikora, Jacobo Schifter, Las alianzas conflictivas: las relaciones de Estados Unidos y Costa Rica desde la segunda guerra mundial a la guerra fría (San José, 1986)Google Scholar. Schifter's book was originally presented as a doctoral dissertation in the department of history, Columbia University, in 1983 under the title of ‘The Origins of the Cold War in Central America: A Study of Diplomatic Relations Between Costa Rica and the United States (1940–48)’. A preliminary version of this book was published as Costa Rica, 1948: aná;lisis de los documentos confidenciales del departamento de estado (San José, 1982).Google Scholar

11 The famed alliance between the Communist patty and Calderón Guardia's government is discussed by Contreras, Gerardo and Cerdasm, José Manuel, Los años cuarenta: historia de una política de alianzas (San José, 1988Google Scholar). For additional discussions of Sanabria's role in the promulgation of these and related reforms, see Arrieta, Santiago, El pensamiento socio-político de Monseñor Sanabria (San José, 1977)Google Scholar, Segura, Ricardo Blanco, Monseñor Sanabria (San José, 1971)Google Scholar and Valverde, Gustavo Adolfo Soto, La iglesia costarricense y la cuestión social: antecedentes, análisis y proyecciones de la reforma social Costarricense de 1940–43 (San José, 1985)Google Scholar. Soto Valverde's book is particularly useful because it challenges the received opinion that Calderón Guardia needed to befriend the communists in order to avoid being overthrown by groups of angry capitalists. See especially pp. 189–347. This issue will be discussed in the next section of this article.

12 Despite his obvious importance in Costa Rican politics, Ulate Blanco has only received the attention of one biographer. See Torres, José Luis, Otilio Ulate: su partido y sus luchas (San José, 1986)Google Scholar.

13 See Pérez, Jorge Enrique Romero, Acción Demócrata: los orígenes del Partido Liberación Nacional (de León Cortés a JoséFigueres) (San José, 1983)Google Scholar and La social democracia en Costa Rica (San José, 1982).Google Scholar

14 Biographies of José Figueres include: Ameringer, Charles D., Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José Figueres of Costa Rica (Albuquerque, 1978)Google Scholar and Esquivel, Arturo Castro, José Figueres Ferrer: el hombre y su obra (San José, 1955).Google Scholar

15 See Schifter, Las alianzas conflictivas, for the most detailed discussion available of this issue.

16 See chapter four of La fasa oculta de la guerra civil (San José, 1979)Google Scholar. For Trudeau's analysis, see his ‘Costa Rican Voting: Its Socioeconomic Correlates’, unpubl. PhD diss., Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1971. As Schifter himself points out, this data should be analysed with a great deal of care. It should not be forgotten that this analysis hinges on electoral results from the decades following the civil war to interpret class alignments during the 1940s. Furthermore, as ecological analysis does not require the use of individual-level data, the correlations produced by Trudeau only measure the nature of the relationship between the overall social characteristics of, and the aggregate number of votes received by each party in, targeted cantons. The precise nature of class alignments within each canton remains unknown.

17 Bolaños, Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948 (San José, 1979), p. 12Google Scholar. Also, see p. 45 for a slightly more extensive affirmation of the core idea of Rojas Bolaños' study.

18 The cost of living index rose from 109.13 in July 1941 to 189.29 points by December 1944 (1936 = 100). Bolaños, Rojas took his data, in Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948, p. 81Google Scholar, from Facio, Rodrigo, La moneda y la banca central en Costa Rica (México, D. F., 1947), p. 181Google Scholar. Note: the edition of Facio's book cited by Rojas Bolaños is identical, except for its pagination, to the version I subsequently footnote.

19 Rojas Bolaños, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948. The first quotation appears on the last paragraph of p. 91, the second near the bottom of p. 89.

20 See Ibid. pp. 32–3 and p. 39.

21 See his ‘Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism’, Theory and Society, vol. II, no. 4 (07 1982)Google Scholar and his Making Sense of Marx (New York and London, 1986)Google Scholar. It remains unclear whether Marxist theories can comprehend state behaviour. Theda Skocpol concludes that three important types of neo-Marxist theories of the state are fundamentally flawed because they cannot adequately comprehend the behaviour of the state in the United States during what Bolaños, Rojas would label a ‘período de crisis’. See her ‘Political Response to Capitalist Crisis: Neo-Marxist Theories of the State and the Case of the New Deal’, Politics and Society, vol. 10, no. 2 (1980)Google Scholar. Also, see Berg, Axel Van den, Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar

22 Bolaños, Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–48, p. 81.Google Scholar

23 Rojas Bolaños, Ibid. p. 81. The source of this claim is the interview, ‘Fundación del Partido Vanguardia Popular’, Entrevista no. 1 hecha por Oscar Aguilar Bulgarelli al señor Manuel Mora Valverde, in Bulgarelli, Oscar Aguilar, Costa Rica y los hechos políticos de 1948, anexo 1, pp. 489–91Google Scholar. There is a discussion of this famous incident on pp. 55–7 of Aguilar Bulgarelli's book. No one is sure exactly when this meeting took place. Bolaños, Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–48, p. 97Google Scholar, n. 1, also suggests it took place during the first part of 1942. But Valverde, Soto, La Iglesia Costarricense y la cuestión social, pp. 289–97Google Scholar, provides convincing evidence that Mora Valverde's views are factually incorrect and, by implication, that the dominant class did not unite against Calderón Guardia's government because of its alleged dislike of these social reforms. This and the next paragraph rely heavily upon Soto Valverde's arguments.

24 Bolaños, Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–48, p. 81.Google Scholar

25 Rojas Bolaños, Ibid., p. 92 refers to an article in Diario de Costa Rica (26 March 1943) that makes this information public knowledge.

26 See his ‘Don León Cortés murió lamentándose de la indiferencia de los capitalistas’, Diario de Costa Rica (San José), no. 8,325 (22 12. 1946), pp. 1, 5.Google Scholar

27 The letter mentioned in the previous sentence is dated 5 August 1943 and is printed in Valverde, Soto, La iglesia Costarricense y la cuestión social, pp. 337–8.Google Scholar

28 See Facio, Rodrigo, La moneda y la banca central en Costa Rica (San José, 1973), pp. 152–6Google Scholar for an analysis of these measures.

29 Ortega, Víctor Hugo Acuña, ‘Patrones del conflicto social en la economía cafetalera costarricense (1900–1948)’, Revista de Ciencias Sociales (San José, Costa Rica), no. 31 (03 1986).Google Scholar

30 See ‘Ley No. 36 (21 December 1940)’, Colección de leyes y decretos (San José, 1940), pp. 739–42Google Scholar. This law was subsequently reformed. See ‘Ley No. 641 (14 Aug. 1946)’, Colección de leyes y decretos (San José, 1946).Google Scholar

31 This occurred during the autumn of 1945. See Facio, , La moneda y la banca central en Costa Rica, pp. 285–95Google Scholar for a brief description of the government's abandonment of its proposed monetary laws.

32 An account of this campaign from one of its proponents can be found in Jiménez, Manuel F., Intervenciones Públicas (San José, 1951), pp. 13–43Google Scholar. The government's position on its financial policies is defended by the Minister of Finance, Lara, Alvaro Bonilla, La aplicación de las leyes de ordenamiento fiscal (San José, 1947Google Scholar) and by Picado, President in his Impuesto sobre la renta (San José, 1947)Google Scholar. These three originally published their views in the pages of Diario de Costa Rica and La tribuna during the first two months of 1947.

33 A useful overview of this problem is Facio, Rodrigo, ‘El problema de las divisas’, Obras históricas, vol. 1 (San José, 1975Google Scholar) [this study was originally published in San José in 1950].

34 Perhaps the first systematic attempt to explain the divergence between individual and common interests is Olsen, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, 1965Google Scholar). For a pathbreaking explanation of capitalist behaviour in the light of these theories, see Bowman, John R., Capitalist Collective Action: Conflict and Cooperation in the Coal Industry (New York and London, 1989Google Scholar). Also, see Offe, Claus and Wisenthal, Helmut, ‘Two Logics of Collective Action’, reprinted as chapter four in Claus Offe, Disorganised Capitalism (Cambridge, 1985Google Scholar) for a discussion of the different types of collective action problems confronting capitalists and workers.

35 Both taxes were progressive in nature. They are reprinted and discussed in ‘Dictamen de la Comisión de Hacienda del Congreso Constitutional’, La gaceta: diario oficial, no. 281 (10 12. 1946), pp. 2,209–12.Google Scholar

36 ‘Ir a la huelga de brazos caídos se propusó anoche en la reunión de profesionales’, Diario de Costa Rica, no. 8,123 (20 12. 1948), pp. 1, 8Google Scholar. The hardliners included Lic. Ramón Arroyo Blanco, Dr Luís Dobles Segreda, Dr Antonio Peña Chaverria, Dr Carlos Luís Valverde Vega and congressman Fernando Volio Sancho.

37 ‘No pago de impuestos acordó la asamblea de anoche’, Diario de Costa Rica, no. 8,324 (21 12. 1946), pp. 1, 8Google Scholar; ‘En numerosa asamblea convocada por las Cámaras representivas se acordó la abstención total del pago de impuestos’, La prensa libre, no. 13,995 (21 12. 1946), pp. 1, 6Google Scholar; ‘Movimiento de resistencia para el pago de impuestos’, La tribuna, no. 7,855 (21 12. 1946), pp. 1, 3Google Scholar; ‘Solemnemente declara la Cámara de Comercio que no usará métodos ilegales o violentos contra las nuevas leyes tributarias’, La tribuna, no. 7,867 (10 01. 1947), pp. 1, 2.Google Scholar

38 ‘Resolutión No. 16 (19 Dec. 1947)’, de Hacienda y Comercio, Cartera, Colección de leyes y decretos (San José, 1947), pp. 341–2.Google Scholar

39 With the exception of the last quotation, all other citations can be found in Bolaños, Rojas, Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–48, p. 103Google Scholar. The quotation about Calderonismo as a class fraction is on p. 48.

40 Los años cuarenta, pp. 8–9, 72–82, 86, 97, 105, and 120 for numerous examples of class reductionism. It is interesting to note that Contreras and Cerdas, Ibid. pp. 8–9, once refer to the work of Mario Ramírez Boza to substantiate their conceptualisation of Costa Rican class structure. Yet neither they nor Ramírez Boza supply evidence linking classes and class fractions to political organisations. Indeed, Ramírez Boza does not seem to want to attempt to pursue this objective. That, at least, is my reading of Boza's, Ramírez ‘El desarrollo de las clases sociales y la industria en Costa Rica (1880–1930)’, unpubl. Master's Thesis, Master's Programme in Central American Sociology, University of Costa Rica, 1983.Google Scholar

41 See Mas, Jorge Rovira, Estado y político económica en Costa Rica, 1948–1970, tercera edición (San José, 1988)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 39–118 and the ‘anexo teórico’, where the class reductionism of his approach is discussed in painful detail; and Mora, Jorge Mario Salazar, Política y reforma en Costa Rica, 1914–1958 (San José, 1981)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 67–134.

42 See: ‘No nos explicamos como un grupo de jóvenes intelectuales, de la calidad de un Rodrigo Facio, quienes accedieron a unirse con un solo bloque, con el sector conservador de la política nacional, que veía en todo lo que tenía color de reforma social, un aspecto negativo para la buena marcha del país, para sus instituciones y para sus intereses particulares pues estaban convencidos de que debían seguirse pié a pié, los postulados del liberalismo económico del siglo XIX.’ See his Costa Rica y sus hechos políticos de 1948, p. 246. On pp. 297–8, Aguilar Bulgarelli explicitly refers to the frustration of the middle class. He does so by referring to the book by Bosch, Juan entitled Una interpretación de la historia costarricense (San José, 1980Google Scholar; originally published in 1963).

43 This is made very clear in chapter one of Bell's book. Indeed, the North American fascination with José Figueres stems precisely from the supposed middle-class character of Figueres' political movement. It should be remembered that when Bell travelled to Costa Rica during the late 1960s to conduct the research for his book, North American policy-makers and academics expected the Latin American middle classes to become non-communist, democratic reformers of their poverty-stricken societies. A book that nicely summarises this position is Johnson, John J., Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Palo Alto, 1958)Google Scholar. It is also never very clear to Bell why this group disliked Calderonismo, nor why Costa Rica's middle-class reformer achieved and maintained power in an undemocratic fashion.

44 Bodenheimer, Susanne Jonas, La ideología social demócrata en Costa Rica (San José, 1984)Google Scholar; Claudia Quirós, V., Los tribunales de probidad y de sanciones inmediatas (San José, 1989), pp. 23–34Google Scholar [these tribunales were hastily arranged courts that tried members of Calderón Guardia and Picado's governments during Figueres' rule]; Jorge Rovira Mas, Estado y política económica en Costa Rica, 1948–1970.

45 Even a casual examination of newspapers during this period reveals the centrality of electoral issues in Costa Rican politics. A Calderonista view of the electoral fraud purportedly exercised against the government can be found in Avendaño, José Albertazzi, La Tragedia de Costa Rica, pp. 59–73Google Scholar. An evaluation of this claim, along with the opposition's allegation of fraud, is contained in my ‘The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective’, PhD diss., Department of Political Science, Duke University, forthcoming.Google Scholar

46 For analyses of this period, see Viquez, Cleto González, El sufragio en Costa Rica ante la historia y la legislación (San José, 1975)Google Scholar; Loría, Rafael Obregón, Conflictos militares y politicos en Costa Rica (San José, 1951), pp. 1–79Google Scholar; and Carbonell, Jorge Saenz, El despertar constitucional en Costa Rica (San José, 1985).Google Scholar

47 Obregón Loría, Ibid., pp. 80–116. For more general treatments of this period, see Mora, Jorge Mario Salazar, ‘El sistema político-electoral Costarricense del período 1914–1948’; Mora, Orlando Salazar, Costa Rica: el apogeo de la república liberal, 1870–1914 (San José, 1990Google Scholar) and Samper, Mario, ‘Fuerzas sociopolíticas y procesos electorales en Costa Rica, 1921–1938’, Revista de Historia (Heredia/San José, Costa Rica) (número especial, 1988).Google Scholar

48 See, for example, ‘Fracasó un plan militar para asesinar al Secretario de Seguridad Pública’, Diario de Costa Rica, no. 8, 518 (26 08. 1947)Google Scholar; ‘Cambiará de un momento a otro la situación militar en el cuartel Bella Vista’, Diario de Costa Rica, no. 8, 517 (27 08. 1947).Google Scholar

49 This was a charge frequently repeated in the pages of the pro-government newspaper, La Tribuna, especially during 1947 and the first months of 1948. Even a summary reading of the PSD's paper, Acción Demócrata, between 1944 and 1947 reveals the adamant unwillingess of Figueres and others in the PSD to consider even compromising with the government. Figueres' own hardline position is revealed in his ‘Discurso pronunciado por Don José Figueres (desde Radio Monumental y Titania en la noche del 22 de Agosto de 1946)’, La prensa libre, no. 13, 892 (24 08. 1946), p. 4.Google Scholar

50 In the last interview Cortés granted to a journalist before his unexpected death on 3 March he asked ‘¿Está el país en disposición de ir a la resistencia armada? Yo no podría lanzar a los partidarios que con tanta abnegación me han seguido, a una asonada que sería una carnicería, porque no considero que esté el pueblo armado en forma que su rebeldía tuviera vislumbres de buen éxito…Por eso he puesto oídos sordos a las insinuaciones de violencia, que sólo podrían merecer el apoyo de los Costarricenses sensatos, cuando Ilevarán aparejada la preparación adecuada, para que la protesta armada tuviera alguna probabilidad de buen éxito y no significará simplemente un derramamiento infructuoso de sangre Costarricense.’ Cortés Castro then suggested that a compromise presidential candidate be found for the 1948 elections. ‘El último reportaje político de don León Cortés’ [entrevista hecha por Sergio Carballo R.], La prensa libre, no. 13,752 (6 03 1946), pp. 1, 3.Google Scholar

51 This open letter is dated 10 Feb. 1948. It is signed by Luís Davila, José Joaquín Jiménez Núñez, Luís Felipe González Flores, Dr Antonio A. Facio, José Joaquín Alfaro Iglesias, Jorge Guardia, Edmundo Montealgre and J. A. Gutiérrez. See ‘El poder ha de ser traspasado al ciudadano que haya obtenido la legítima mayoría electoral del domingo pasado’, La prensa libre, no. 14, 334 (11 02. 1948), p. 2.Google Scholar

52 The only existing account to mention these negotiations is Vega, Eugenio Rodríguez, De Calderón a Figueres, pp. 179–87.Google Scholar

53 Bell, , Crisis in Costa Rica, pp. 128–9.Google Scholar

54 See Ibid., p. 135, n. 10. Bell's minuscule effort to understand the role played by Monseñor Sanabria and the Association of Bankers is to be found on pp. 128–30.

55 See his Lucha social y guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948, pp. 131–55.

56 See his Costa Rica y los hechos políticos de 1948, pp. 146–294. The page reference made in the sentence following this footnote is p. 294.

57 Zeledón, Marco Tulio, Lecciones de ciencia constitucional y la constitución política de la república de Costa Rica (San José, 1945), p. 120Google Scholar, article 91. The version of the Costa Rican 1871 constitution published in Zeledón's book is updated to include all reforms in effect for the elections of 1948. Aguilar Bulgarelli discusses Calderón Guardia's petition in Costa Rica y sus hechos políticos de 1948, pp. 267–92. It is worth noting that Aguilar Bulgarelli (Ibid., pp. 277–8, n. 23) also errs when he states that the documentary appendices of Calderón Guardia's petition cannot be found, thus preventing analysis of the former president's charges of fraud. While it may be true that the originals are not in the archives either of the Legislative Assembly or of the Supreme Tribunal of Elections, they are available in published form. See La gaceta: diario oficial, no. 50 (29 02. 1948), pp. 366–8Google Scholar; no. 56 (7 March 1948), pp. 409–20. An analysis of these and many other documents will be included in my ‘The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective’, forthcoming.

58 Víctor Hugo Acuña warned me of the dangers of counterfactual reasoning. I hope that this paragraph explains that I am not advocating, on this occasion, the development of a ‘new political history’ like the ‘new economic history’ (though I might in the future). On the uses of counterfactual reasoning in the social sciences see Elster, Jon, Logic and Society: Contradictions and Possible Worlds (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Climo, T. A and Howells, P. G. A., ‘Possible Worlds in Historical Explanation’, History and Theory, 1976Google Scholar; and McClelland, Peter D., Causal Explanation and Model-building in History, Economics and the New Economic History (Ithaca, 1975Google Scholar). Though he uses very different language to make the argument I defend in this paragraph, Miguel Acuña also concurs in the use of counterfactuals to understand the 1948 civil war. See his Calderonista-inspired El 48, pp. 15–18, 44–5, 265, 269, 375–9. The book as a whole can be considered as an exploration of a large number of counterfactual propositions about the 1948 civil war.

59 See, for example, Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred (eds.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, four volumes (Baltimore, 1978Google Scholar). A particularly good study of a democratic breakdown that also finds inevitabilist theories distasteful is Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos, ‘The Calculus of Conflict: Impasse in Brazilian Politics and the Crisis of 1964’, unpubl. PhD diss., Stanford University, 1979Google Scholar. Also see O'Donnell, Guillermo A., Schmitter, Philippe and Whitehead, Laurence (eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, four volumes (Baltimore, 1986)Google Scholar.

60 The standard secondary sources on the overthrow of this president are: Monge, Carlos Luís Fallas, Alfredo González Flores (San José, 1976)Google Scholar; García, Eduardo Oconitrillo, Alfredo González Flores: estadista incomprendido (San José, 1980)Google Scholar; Rodríguez, Armando, Administración González Flores (San José, 1978Google Scholar); and Vega, Bernardo Villalobos, Alfredo González Flores: políticas de seguros y de banco, 1910–1917 (San José, 1981Google Scholar).