CECLASSTED Authority Stateletter Fuhr 18;me Cate 2418 AIR MAIL. v physician, it apparently became the strongest faction in the province.
According to its supporters, however, the Confraternidad candidates for Congress were so outrageously defrauded of victory by the Governments of both León Cortés and Calderón Guardia that the movement disintegrated. Dr. Vargas is at present in the United States, having refused to support either Teodoro Picado or León Cortés in the past presidential elections, and our recent trip disclosed no enthusiasm for, or activity by, the Confraternidad.
An impressive number of people interviewed was distinctly hostile to the Calderón Guardia brothers and their recent administration. Added to their customary disappointment over their inability to obtain any assistance from the Government was widespread indignation at both election frauds and what they consider as graft on an epic scale. Everywhere we had cited to us the case of the expertsthe Calderón regime sent to Guanacaste to help fight the plague of locusts which for the past few years has been attacking the farms, and everywhere the opinion was that of the two evils the locusts themselves were the less predatory. While the Guanacastecans have become used to local political machines dominated from San José, they appear to feel that the Calderons were too brazen in their actions. As to President Picado, a somewhat more tolerant attitude was noticeable, despite the fact that the way the past presidential elections were manipulated is still distinctly resented. There was little spontaneous comment heard concerning the President, but the general attitude seems to be that of willingness to give the Administration a chance to see what it can accomplish. The President has evidently gone slowly in appointing office holders, with the result that there have been but few cases of former officials who are aggrieved at having been turned out of office, portion of this tolerance may perhaps be traced to the fact that the President wife is a native of Guanacaste, but it is also true that the President is well remembered for his term as Minister of Education, when he made an effort to visit all parts of the country. And, it might be added parenthetically, that this observer was more impressed by the school system of Guanacaste than by any other Governmental activity. separate report on the schools will be submitted by Eugene Desvernine, Acting Cultural Attaché of the Embassy. There exists some apprehension as to what part Manuel Mora and the Vanguardia Popular will play in the coming four years, and in general Guanacaste appears to be skeptical, if not hostile, to the program for which that group stands. As might be expected, the strongest opposition to the Communist peril was encountered among the big ranch owners who dominate the economy of the province, but among the rank and file of the people there seems to exist little enthusiasm for the Vanguardia movement.
This might be expected in such a predominantly agricultural community, at for the fact that the farmers live in the most abject poverty and in some sections own no land of their own. It was rumored that the Vanguardia dominated Confederación de Trabajadores de Costa Rica was attempting to establish a union of cart drivers in Santa Cruz, but inquiry in that city failed to reveal such an organization.
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