Iván Molina has continued his exploration of Costa Rica's public education system and youth activism in his most recent monograph, which examines the early history of the nation's second public institution of higher education, the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (ITCR.)
In 1971, then-president José Figueres established the ITCR to expand higher education opportunities and, according to Molina, to foment cultural-political change. Molina suggests Figueres was deeply upset by the increasingly activist student and faculty culture taking shape at the older University of Costa Rica (UCR) and wished to support a different university culture at the ITCR. An intentionally rigid vertical power structure headed by an eight-person board of directors that limited students’ and faculty voices was established to this end. Seven board members were selected by the nation's president, one was elected by the students. Between 1980 and 1982, students organized three strikes that would force the ITCR Board to democratize the institution's governing structures. This monograph traces these successful efforts in 12 brief chapters.
Molina frames his study within a broader study of twentieth-century university activism in the Caribbean Basin region, and suggests that the ITCR democratization struggles are the most important in Costa Rica and among the most significant within the broader region due to their lengthy duration and their success in reformulating the institution. As no counter-examples outside of Costa Rica are provided it is, however, difficult to measure these claims. Yet, certainly, Molina makes good use of newspapers and Legislative Assembly records to demonstrate the steadfast resolve of ITCR students and their ability to repeatedly secure the support of politicians, parents, members of the clergy, and the broader national community.
Molina traces ITCR student activism to the decision by UCR graduates in charge of the Colegio Federado de Ingenieros y Arquitectos (CFIA, a professional society that regulates professional norms for engineers and architects in Costa Rica) to initially reject the ITCR's first graduates from entry into their ranks. In response, the ITCR board mobilized students, and they formed a student federation in 1976 to organize marches and other actions to protest the CFIA's discriminatory practices. These efforts paid off. In 1978, ITCR graduates were admitted into the CFIA.
ITCR students would take this political experience into a struggle against the board to secure better financial aid opportunities and to reshape university governance. In particular, students organized themselves to protest the fact that most need-based financial aid packages relied largely on loans rather than scholarships, as was the long-established norm at the UCR. In 1980, students led two strikes to increase scholarships. The second strike was the most dramatic: students occupied the campus and police stormed the ITCR, arresting dozens of students after attacking them with tear gas.
Molina illustrates how the ITCR board consistently sought to paint student protestors as communist misfits. Students successfully countered this narrative by limiting their calls for change to the institution. In fact, by 1982, students could count on support from both the National Assembly and the Executive Branch, which by then likely recognized that more strikes would follow if democratic channels for change were not established at the ITCR. A third strike that year placed the ITCR board under considerable political pressure and led directly to a process of internal restructuring that empowered students and faculty.
This top-down study details the actions and responses of the ITCR board, legislative assembly members, and the students over a three-year period. A timeline of events would have helped this reader. Some fine-tuning of the individual chapters’ arguments would have helped avoid sometimes becoming lost in the details. My largest disappointment, however, as a reader was that this work did not seek the voices of former students and board members who might have enriched and humanized this institutional history. Notwithstanding these critiques, this well-researched book will no doubt be of interest to scholars of Latin American student movements.
