Tinoco Granados, Federico (1870–1931)

Federico Tinoco Granados (b. 1870; d. 1931), the extraconstitutional president of Costa Rica (1917–1919) following the overthrow of President Alfredo González Flores (1914–1917). As the last military figure to seize power in modern Costa Rica, Tinoco is still a controversial figure. He was minister of war and the navy, commandant of San José, and head of the police at the time of the coup against González. Faced with crushing economic difficulties as a consequence of World War I, González had attempted a series of progressive tax measures in the face of inflationary pressures. Both wealthy and popular interests welcomed his overthrow, but the popularity of the Tinoco regime, led by Federico and his brother José Joaquín, faded quickly. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson chose to make an example of Tinoco and refused to recognize his regime, both on principle and out of a partisan Democratic suspicion that Republican investors such as Minor Keith (United Fruit) and Luis Valentine (Rosario Mining of Honduras) were in league with Tinoco, expecting to conduct oil exploration and to receive investment incentives. Once Costa Rica was isolated internationally, popular living standards suffered even more under Tinoco, and his occasionally bloody repression of would-be rebellions and exile invasions caused his regime's early popularity to evaporate. Just as he was turning power over to his successor, Vice President Juan Bautista Quirós Segura, on 10 August 1919, his brother Joaquín, the war minister, was assassinated in San José. Tinoco left power two days later. Elections were held later that year, and Julio Acosta Garcia was elected president. Tinoco died in Paris.

See alsoAcosta García, Julio; Costa Rica; González Flores, Alfredo; Wilson, Woodrow.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Federico Tinoco Granados, Páginas de ayer (1928).

Carlos Luis Fallas Monge, Alfredo González Flores (1976).

Hugo Murillo Jiménez, Tinoco y los Estados Unidos: Génesis y caída de un régimen (1981).

Mercedes Muñoz Guillén, El estado y la abolición del ejercito, 1914–1949 (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Palmer, Steven. From Popular Medicine to Medical Populism: Doctors, Healers, and Public Power in Costa Rica, 1800–1940. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

                                  Lowell Gudmundson