Military Abolition Day
Marking December 1st as a Day of Peace
by David Swanson
I’ve been fond of December 1st ever since I was born on it. I later found out that it had been on a December 1st that Rosa Parks had sat down and refused to stand up or move to the back of that racist bus in Montgomery. Later still I found out about a December 1st that had happened still earlier.
It was on December 1, 1948, that President José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica abolished the military of Costa Rica. He didn’t “cut” its projected dream budget by a teeny fraction that sounded bigger if multiplied by 10 and announced as a reduction “over 10 years.” He didn’t cut it in the ordinary sense of actually cutting it. He abolished it. Costa Rica put its military in a museum and a museum in its military headquarters. It turned its military bases into schools. It turned its military budget into a fund for useful projects. In 1986, President Oscar Arias Sánchez declared December 1st the DÃa de la Abolición del Ejército (Military Abolition Day). (more…)