-Monday, December 2, 2019-
The country celebrates 71 years
of Army abolition
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Sunday the government celebrated the 71st anniversary of the abolition of the Army at the National Museum in San José.
Official acts were attended by government officials and veterans of the Civil War of 1948.
At the beginning of the activity, President Carlos Alvarado announced through a video previously recorded the award of Merit in Peace and Democracy to coach Dixiana Mena-Torres, mother of athletes Andrea and Noelia Vargas.
The award for merit was created in 2010 as a recognition that the government gives to those who, by their actions, are an example of commitment to the values and principles of peace and democracy.
“An exemplary mother and woman. A Costa Rican who teaches us that discipline allows us reaching gold, as she did with her daughter Andrea Vargas, in the Pan American Games in Lima in Peru, " said Alvarado. "As well as shaping the promising career of her other daughter, Noelia Vargas."
President Alvarado did not attend the celebration because he is in Spain, to be part of the Madrid COP25 Climate Summit.
Dec 1 each year, Costa Rica celebrates one of the most significant events in the country's history, the abolition of the army.
According to the Ministry of Education, the army until 1948 was an institution with legal bases and economic resources, which was supported by the national budget.
On Dec. 1, 1948, Gen. Jose Figueres Ferrer, who along with his small troops won the civil war that year, decided to dissolve the army in Costa Rica.
After winning and become the president of the governing board, Figueres, in a symbolic ceremony, beat down stones from a tower of the Bellavista barracks.
Bellavista was the headquarters of the army before the 1948 revolution. Today is part of the National Museum.
"On Dec. 1, 1948, I gave some blows on a wall of the Bellavista Barracks to symbolize the elimination of the remains of the military spirit of Costa Rica at another time," said Figueres in one of the symbolic act of celebrating the abolition of the army.
In 1949, the elimination of the army was incorporated into the political constitution. "This allowed us to use the budgets previously assigned to the army in the development of the public education system," said the ministry in its statement.
In Act No. 178, of Oct. 31, 1949, appears the approval of the constitutional article that eliminates the army as a permanent institution and creates the civil police, for the protection of public order.
That year by Decree No. 249, the Founding Board of the Second Republic, transferred the Bellavista barracks to the University of Costa Rica so that the National Museum could be installed there.
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