JORGE VOLIO JIMENEZ

Background

Jorge Volio Jiménez was born on 26 August 1882 in Cartago.

Education

He studied at the University of Louvain in Belgium, where progressive Cardinal Mercier strongly influenced him.

Career

After Tinoco resigned, Volio returned from exile in Nicaragua and founded the Reformist Party in 1923.

In 1924 he ran for president in a threeway contest, in which no candidate received a majority. Volio, despite insistence that there could be no compromise with the status quo, gave his support to Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno and accepted the post of vice president.

In 1926, Volio tried to overthrow Jiménez, who sent him abroad to seek psychiatric care. After this episode, Volio never recovered his influence, although he was actually a deputy in the national congress at the time of his death.

Politics

The Reformist Party was the first true political party in Costa Rica, organized around a body of ideas, not a personality. It challenged the benign rule of the liberal patriarchs and the economic domination of the coffee barons. Volio addressed the problems of low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate housing, and unemployment, and demanded that the government act to narrow the gap between the poor and the rich.

Views

A Catholic priest, he gave up his calling in 1915, but he took seriously the social Christian philosophy and was deeply moved by the poverty and social injustice he perceived around him. As a political activist, he fought the tyranny of Federico Tinoco Granados.

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