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José María Montealegre Fernández was President of Costa Rica from 1859 to 1863.
Born into a wealthy family of coffee plantation owners, he was sent to study medicine in London, where he graduated as a surgeon.
He came to power through a coup d'état against Juan Rafael Mora Porras. In the first months of his presidency he convened a constitutional conventional, which produced the Constitution of 1859.
Under the new constitution he was popularly elected to a three-year presidential term in 1860, after which he handed on the presidency, peacefully and democratically, to Jesús Jiménez Zamora.
After earning the animosity of President Tomás Guardia, Montealegre was forced to flee Costa Rica. He died in exile in the United States, where his mortal remains lay until they were repatriated in 1978.