Public Service

In 1988, José María was asked by Nobel Peace Laureate President Oscar Arias to serve in his government, as President of the National Railway System. In this capacity he put in place a plan to overhaul the ailing the Railway System, and shortly afterwards was appointed Minister of Foreign Trade (1988) and later Minister of Agriculture (1988-1990).

José María quickly established himself on the national political scenario, by personally facing down a ruinous national strike at Costa Rica’s main port of Limon and helping coax the country’s agricultural sector from traditional staple crops to technically more complex export agriculture, with greater value added.

When his party Liberación Nacional lost the 1990 elections, José María traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he earned a Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
While concentrating on his academic work, José María was greatly influenced by the important global events taking place. The Soviet Union was disintegrating, the Iron Wall in Europe was coming down, and technology allowed citizens all over the world to witness first hand the daily developments in the first Gulf War.

As José María describes it, “the old world of the cold war was giving way to the new world of globalization and the future would not be a simple continuation of the past”. Impressed by these paradigm changes, José María decide to run for the Presidency, with the objective of leading his country into the new world.