Cleto González Víquez

Cleto González Víquez was born in Barva de Heredia on October 13, 1858. After graduating in law from the Universidad de Santo Tomás, he achieved distinction as a meticulous archival historian, penning seminal studies on the colonial municipal regimes and territorial geography of Central America.

As President from 1906 to 1910, he finalized the Pacific Railroad connecting San José to Puntarenas and modernized municipal sanitation. Re-elected during the Great Depression (1928–1932), he created the Ministry of Labor and the National Treasury while rigorously preserving constitutional civil rights. He was declared Benemérito de la Patria in 1944.