Volio Jiménez, Jorge (1882–1955)

Jorge Volio Jiménez (b. 26 August 1882; d. 20 October 1955), Costa Rican politician. Volio Jiménez was born in Cartago, Costa Rica, to a bourgeois family. From a young age, he held Christian and reformist ideas, in pursuit of which he formed study groups and in 1902 created the daily La Justicia Social. In 1903 he went to the University of Louvain in Belgium to study for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1909, at which time he also received a master's degree in philosophy. He then took his Christian-socialist ideas back to his country and worked as priest and professor. In 1911, his fighting spirit took him to Nicaragua, where he participated in the resistance against the U.S. intervention. In 1915, he left the priesthood in order to work as a journalist and professor. Between 1917 and 1919 he fought against the dictatorship of General Federico Tinoco in Costa Rica, whose defeat in the battle of El Jobo led to the reestablishment of a liberal democracy. In 1920 Volio Jiménez received the rank of major general. In 1922 he was elected to Congress and in 1923 he formed the Reformist Party, of which he was a candidate for president.

During the 1920s, Volio Jiménez outlined a reformist ideology that questioned the liberal system and the dominant oligarchy and advocated reforms favoring the working class. His program called for state intervention to obtain agrarian reform, civil rights, tax reform, political democracy, a public university, and protection of the nation's resources. He played an important role in awakening the workers, peasants, and middle class to political participation, and several of his ideas were later put into practice, especially during the 1940s. Owing to his alliance with the liberals, he served as vice president of the republic from 1924 to 1926. In 1932 he participated in a failed coup d'état and later retired from politics. Between 1940 and 1948, he was dean of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Costa Rica. From 1954 until his death in San José, Costa Rica, he served in Congress.

See alsoTinoco Granados, Federico; Volio Jiménez, Jorge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Araya Pochet, Historia de los partidos politicos: Liberacíon nacional (1968).

Additional Bibliography

Chávez Méndez, Rodolfo, and Arnoldo Mora. Un acercamiento al pensamiento teológico de Jorge Volio. San José, Costa Rica: Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes, Editorial de la Dirección de Publicaciones, 1998.

Ramírez A., Victoria. Jorge Volio y la revolución viviente. San Pedro de Montes de Oca, Costa Rica: Ediciones Guayacán, 1989.

Solís, Javier. El benemeritazgo del general Volio. San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1990.

                                    Jorge Mario Salazar