Costa Rica abolishes its army
1948 · Event
Victorious junta leader José Figueres symbolically sledgehammers the walls of the Bella Vista barracks and abolishes the Costa Rican army, diverting military spending to education and health — a demilitarisation that still stands.
On these timelines: Latin America, Master
More from Latin America
- Spanish Conquest of the Americas (1519)
- Bolivar's liberation of South America (1819)
- Fall of Tenochtitlan (1521)
- Columbian Exchange (1492)
- Haitian Revolution begins (1791)
- Toussaint Louverture issues Haitian constitution (1801)
- Pizarro executes Atahualpa (1533)
- Falklands War (1982)
Around 1948
- Berlin Airlift (1948)
- US Civil Rights Movement (1954)
- Indian independence and Partition (1947)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Cuban Revolutionary War (1953)
- Decolonisation of Africa (1952)
- The Holocaust (1941)
- Battle of Stalingrad (1942)
- Battle of Britain (1940)
- Chinese Civil War (resumed) (1945)