By Wendy Anders

Luis Alberto Monge Alvarez was a Costa Rican farmer and politician who served as President of Costa Rica from 1982 to 1986. He came from a humble farming family in Palmares and was involved from a young age in social and union movements, said Wikipedia.

He passed away yesterday due to cardiac arrest at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in downtown San José, reported local media.

Monge participated in the revolutionary party that overthrew the Calderon-Communist coalition government during the Costa Rican civil war of 1948. At 23, he was the youngest member of the National Constituent Assembly which drafted the 1949 Constitution which is still in effect today.

He was also a deputy in the Legislative Assembly on two occasions during the periods 1958-1962 and 1970-1974, during which he was also president of the Congress, said Wikipedia.

During his presidency, Monge allied with Ronald Reagan in the United States to aid the “global struggle against communism” by allowing the Washington-funded Contras to operate in northern Costa Rica in a struggle against Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

Although in foreign policy his government was conservative and anticommunist, in domestic politics he had a more ambivalent perspective, said Wikipedia.

On the one hand, he proclaimed himself to be a defender of democratic socialist principles historically advocated by the National Liberation Party to which he belonged since its 1951 founding. On the other hand, his government implemented the first International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Plan which limited government spending and programs in exchange for international financing to contain the country’s growing foreign debt.

Monge eliminated taxes on agriculture to boost the sector, reinforced traditional agricultural production of coffee, bananas and sugar cane, and diversified the sector by promoting the cultivation and export of non-traditional products, said Wikipedia. After his presidential term he served for a period as director of the Agricultural School for the Humid Tropical Region (EARTH)

He also promoted the development of tourism in the country, and aided the expansion of universal primary health care through the creation of Basic Integrated Health Care Teams (EBAIS).

Many years later, Monge advocated against the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Central America and Dominican Republic, and called for a “no” vote in the national referendum on the proposal.