Word: pepe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Costa Rica's admirable if not entirely unblemished history of democratic government, no figure stands taller than diminutive (5 ft. 3 in.), scrappy José Figueres Ferrer, 64. At the head of a ragtag band of rebels in 1948, "Don Pepe" routed a Communist military coalition that had tried to seize power illegally. He banned the Communist party, abolished the army (Costa Rica has not had one since), instituted many social reforms and, after 18 months, restored power to the elected President. Figueres was elected to the presidency in his own right in 1953 and again last year. Educated...
...Pepe" Figueres-sometimes called El Enano (the dwarf) because he stands only 5 ft. 3 in.-is the grand old man of Latin America's democratic left. In the small band of democratic reformers (including Venezuela's Romulo Betancourt. the Dominican Republic's Juan Bosch, Peru's Raul Haya de la Torre) who only recently seemed to be Latin America's best hope for nonviolent change, he remains one of the few effective survivors...
Divided Road. A onetime M.I.T. student whose heroes range from Bolivar and Lincoln to Don Quixote, Don Pepe has led his country twice before. In 1948, when the Costa Rican army and Communist-led commandos sought to prevent a newly elected government from assuming power, Don Pepe routed them with a ragtag 700-man army. He took control at the head of a junta, and in the next 18 months he dissolved the army, expanded social-welfare programs, gave women the vote and nationalized the banks. Then, by prior agreement, he stepped aside in favor of the man whose election...
...comeback attempt, Don Pepe delivered 805 speeches in eleven months and visited every town in the country. That performance was a wholly convincing reply to the young critics who questioned his vigor. Of his four opponents, his chief adversary was Mario Echandi Jimenez, another ex-President (1958-62), who accused Don Pepe and his National Liberation Party of Communist leanings. "I am not going to take anything from anybody who has struggled up the economic ladder," said the conservative Echandi. By contrast, Don Pepe directed his campaign to the problems of "the submerged third"-the urban unemployed and rural poor...