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TA REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES 1950120217 118676 gilashuone BUISS 7930 speeches from the Communist leaders demanding that he continue in the Presidency beyond the end of his term, May, 1944. It was also reported that bombs and machine guns had recently been purchased in the United States and sent here by plane for use of the government in connection with the coup état.
However, contrary to all of these rumors, which were apparently spread by political opponents of the administration, no trouble whatever occurred during the afternoon, nor did any of the speeches have a political character, at least on the surface.
The program of speeches was a long one, a number of labor leaders from provincial cities and towns of Costa Rica being introduced and allowed to make short speeches while awaiting the arrival of the last part of the parade.
The formal program, however, included only four addresses: one by the secretary of the associated labor syndicates, Señor Rodolfo Guzman; one by an independent member of Congress, Mariano Cortes; one by the leader of the Communist Party, Congressman Manuel Mora, and concluding with a speech by President Calderón Guardia, One of the preliminary speakers, besides making the usual references to the solidarity of labor in all parts of the country and praising the social President, stated that he came from the hell of the big banana plantations. apparently referring to the properties of the United Fruit Company on the Pacific Coast.
The speech by Guzman praised the social legislation of the administration, particularly the so called parasite law (permitting squatters to remain on land which they had cultivated and giving other land to the owner. the Social Security Law, providing for old age unemployment and sickness insurance, and the proposed Labor Code, embodying probably the most extreme socialistic legislation for the protection of labor and the settlement of disputes involving labor on the statute books of any of the countries of the Western Hemisphere (see my despatch no. 1697 of April 21, 1943. Guzman concluded his speech by addressing the President directly, promising him that if he wished to continue his program of social legislation, the Costa Rican labor syndicates were solidly behind him.
Señor Mariano Cortés announced that he spoke for capitalists and property owners of liberal views. He deolared that he and many of his friends favored legislation to alleviate the miserable circumstances of the laboring man and the peon, and that if the labor unions would see that their members observed their contractual agreements, the type of capitalist for whom he spoke was in favor of the so called social guarantees.
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