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Getting to Know the Unknown Soldier: Official Nationalism in Liberal Costa Rica, 1880–1900*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Steven Palmer
Steven Palmer
Affiliation:
sessional lecturer in History at theMemorial University of Newfoundland.
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Extract

On 28 February 1885 Guatemala's Liberal dictator, Justo Rufino Barrios, declared the Union of Central America, and made it plain that this would be achieved through force of arms if the four other Central American Republics did not consent to his decree. On 5 and 6 March, as Costa Rica's Liberal state began to plan a popular mobilisation against the Guatemalan threat, an article appeared in the pages of El Diario de Costa Rica, written by a resident Honduran man of letters, Alvaro Contreras. It was called ‘Un héroe annómino’. Curiously, though, this hero is not anonymous at all. The article soon reveals that his name is Juan Santamaría, a humble footsoldier who, during the Battle of Rivas in 1856, had volunteered to burn down the Mesón de Guerra from where William Walker's filibusters were decimating Costa Rican troops with rifle fire. The attempt was successful, but Santamaría sacrificed his life in the process. The invention of Costa Rica's ‘almost unknown soldier’ had begun.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 45 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Contreras, Alvaro, ‘Un héroe anónimo’, Diario de Costa Rica, 5 03 1885, pp. 1–2Google Scholar; 6 March 1885, pp. 1–2.

2 ‘Un héroe anónimo’, La Gaceta, 6 March 1885, p. 218.

3 Diario de Costa Rica, 22 March 1885, p. 1.

4 ‘Acuerdo No. XLVI’, Colectión de leyesy dispositions administrativas emitidas en el āno 1885 (San José, 1886), p. 122.

5 Diario de Costa Rica, 11 April 1885, pp. 1–2;Pacheco, Jesús Marcelino, ‘11 de abril de 1857’, Boletín Oficial, 11 04 1885, p. 3Google Scholar.

6 The contradiction of using as a symbol a war conceived as one of Central American union in order to mobilize the people against a war to create a Central American nation was negotiable due to the fact that Costa Rican armies were being raised to fight against Barrios alongside those of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

7 By 1888, for example, the official editorial commemorating the war claimed that Walker was defeated ‘by our arms, supported by the efforts of the other Republics’. La Gaceta, 1 May 1888, p. 512.

8 In the Monumento National the pre-eminent role of Costa Rica in defeating Walker was cemented in the Romantic allegory of the figures; for an analysis of the statue, see Pujol, Annie Lemistre, Dos bronces conmemorativos y una gesta heroica, la estatua de Juan Santamaría y el Monumento National (Alajuela, Costa Rica, 1988), pp. 59–64Google Scholar.

9 The clearest formulation of this argument can be found in Carballo, José Luis Vega, Orden y progreso, la formation del Estado National en Costa Rica (San José, 1981)Google Scholar. Vega Carballo asserts that nationalism existed ‘since the colonial period’ and was therefore previous to and ‘a necessary infrastructure’ of the later erection of the state; pp. 44 and 186.

10 The focus on these characteristics as somehow defining the axis of Costa Rican historical development begins with the Liberal historiography mentioned below, and receives its classic reformulation in the work of Brenes, Rodrigo Facio, Estudio sobre economia costarricense (San José, 1942)Google Scholar, and Alfaro, Carlos Monge, Historia de Costa Rica (San Josė, 1939)Google Scholar.

11 Gudmundson, Lowell has pioneered attempts to reveal the political, class and racial hierarchies that existed in Costa Rica prior to the rise of the coffee economy; see, in particular, Costa Rica Before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the Export Boom (Baton Rouge and London, 1986)Google Scholar, and Estratificación socio-racialy economica de Costa Rica (San José, 1978).

12 Jiménez, Iván Molina, Costa Rica (1800–1850), el legado colonialy la génesis del capitalismo (San Josė, 1991), p. 163, and pp. 162–75Google Scholar.

13 It is worth noting, in particular, that most discussions of nationalism in Costa Rican historiography take a Romantic view in assuming that the nation precedes and informs nationalism, the latter being an expression of a cultural, social or economic reality. The advances made in the study of nations and nationalism over the past fifteen years appear to make clear the fact that, as Hobsbawm puts it, ‘Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.’ Hobsbawm, E. J., Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990), p. 10Google Scholar.

14 ‘Proclama anunciando a los costarricenses el peligro del filibusterismo’, Revista ANDE, año X, nos. 26–9, p. 117.

15 ‘Edicto del primer Obispo de Costa Rica Monseñor Anselmo Llorente y Lafuente’, Ibid., pp. 116–17.

16 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), pp. 30–1Google Scholar.

17 ‘Mensaje del Presidente Mora al Congreso’, Revista ANDE, p. 133.

18 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, pp. 30, 34, and pp. 30–9 passim.

19 Nor did many of his predecessors, and this perspective at least partly explains the hesitancy of Costa Rica's dominant groups in embracing the Republican nation-state form: the brief flirtation with the Mexican Empire (1822–3), the patient participation in the extremely inept Central American Federation (1823–38), the ten-year wait following the collapse of the Federation prior to declaring a Republic, and the entering into negotiations with the British, only months after the Republic was finally declared, to establish Costa Rica as a protectorate.

20 Jiménez, Iván Molina, ‘Aviso sobre los “avisos”. Los anuncios periodísticos como fuente histórica (1857–1861)’, Bibliografíasy documentatión (Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Costa Rica), no. 13, 1992, p. 21Google Scholar. For a reprint of the Clarin patriótico, see Revista ANDE, pp. 306–26.

21 For a discussion of the overthrow of Mora and an overview of this very neglected period in Costa Rican history, see Meléndez Ch., Carlos, Dr. José Ma. Montealegre (San José, 1968), pp. 37–69Google Scholar.

22 For a marvellously eccentric traditional view of the period, seeVega, Eugenio Rodriguez, ‘Don Tomás Guardia y el Estado Liberal’, Siete ensayos políticos, fuentes de la democracia social en Costa Rica (San José, 1982)Google Scholar. On the decade of Liberal reforms in the 1880s, see the detailed narrative account of Hernández, Edward Denis, ‘Modernization and Dependency in Costa Rica During the 1880's’, unpubl. PhD diss., UCLA, 1975Google Scholar. A recent attempt at a synthesis from the perspective of political history is Mora, Orlando Salazar, El apogeo de la República Liberal (1870–1914) (San José, 1990)Google Scholar. Other studies which refer to specific aspects of the reform will be referred to below.

23 Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. Nowell (eds. and trans.) (New York, 1971), pp. 247, 258 and 262Google Scholar.

24 Molina Jiménez, Costa Rica (1800–1850), pp. 327–33; on the change in the temporal quality of life, see Molina Jiménez, ‘De lo devoto al profano. El comercio y la producción de libros en el Valle Central de Costa Rica (1750–1860)’, Avances de Investigación (Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad de Costa Rica), forthcoming.

25 At the level of analysis of the state, though not of the nation, this is also Vega Carballo's perspective which he calls a change from the patrimonial oligarchic state to the Liberal oligarchic state; see Orden y progreso, pp. 231–79.

26 Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 15 and 40.

27 Seton-Watson, Hugh, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, Co, 1977), p. 148Google Scholar; cited in Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 82. For an extensive discussion of this official nationalism, see Anderson, pp. 80–103.

28 Unfortunately there is no good intellectual history of the Liberal era in Costa Rica that might detail the dynamic between the state, the more conservative economic organisations of the oligarchy, its own organic intellectuals, and the more progressive middle-class intellectuals, whether nationals or foreigners.

29 Hobsbawm, E. J., 'Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914, in Hobsbawm, and Ranger, Terence (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), p. 271Google Scholar.

30 The examples are too numerous to mention, but a thorough recent study of Santamaría and the ‘scholarly’ works that have been written about him, although compiled very much within the confines of historia patria, is Meléndez Ch., Carlos, Juan Santamaría: una aproximacidn críticay documental (Alajuela, 1982)Google Scholar. The most ambitious attempt (at least in titular terms) to discover the ‘real life’ of our hero is Salazar, Demetrio Gallegos, Vida privaday hecho heróico de Juan Santamaría (San José, 1966)Google Scholar; for reasons that will become clear below, the book cannot but fail in fulfilling its intriguing promise of intimate details.

31 Vega Carballo, Ordeny progreso, p. 198.

32 ‘Pensión de tres pesos para la madre de Santamaría’, Revista ANDE, pp. 87–8.

33 Reprinted as Discurso pronunciado por el Sr. don José de Obaldía, en el salón del Palacio de Gobierno, el día 1; de setiembre de 1864 (Alajuela, 1989).

34 ‘Se pide aumento de la pensión,’ Revista ANDE, pp. 89–90. It is worth pointing out that this could well have been as much a product of the scrivener's more ‘nationally attuned’ consciousness than of Carvajal's.

35 Although Santamaría's mother had specifically indicated in her petition that her son was ‘known vulgarly as “Herizo”’, Meléndez maintains that these petitions were forgotten until their rediscovery in 1900; see Meléndez Ch., Carlos, ‘Presentación’, 1857 Solicitud de pensión de la madre de Juan Santamaría presentada ante el P residente Juan R. Mora (Alajuela, 1977)Google Scholar, n.p.

36 ‘Un héroe anónimo,’ El Tambor, 9 Sept. 1883.1 owe this information to the wonderful staff of the Museo Cultural Histórico Juan Santamaría.

37 Zuñiga, José Gil, ‘Un mito de la sociedad costarticense: el culto a la Virgen de Los Angeles (1824–1935)’, Kevista de Historia (UNA, Costa Rica), vol. VI, no. 11, enero-junio, 1985, p. 69Google Scholar.

38 La Gaceta, 8 March 1885.

39 In fact the Executive was introducing into Congress its Fundamental Law of Public Education at precisely this moment; La Gaceta, 3 March 1885, pp. 203–4. This particular plan died soon after along with President Fernández, though it directly anticipated the educational reform that was finally undertaken by the successor regime of Bernardo Sóto. On the educational reform, see Fischel, Astrid, Consensoy represión; una interpretación socio-politka de la educatión costarricense (San José, 1987)Google Scholar.

40 Ciro, , Cardoso, F. S., ‘The Formation of the Coffee Estate in Nineteenth-Century Costa Rica’, in Duncan, K. and Rutledge, I. (eds.), Land and Labor in Latin America (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 190–1Google Scholar.

41 For a more detailed analysis of Guardia's nationalist discourse, see Palmer, Steven, ‘A Liberal Discipline: Inventing the Nation in Guatemala and Costa Rica, 1870–1900’, unpubl. PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1990, pp. 118–35Google Scholar.

42 Guardia, Tomás, ‘Mensaje del Ptesidente de la República de Costa Rica, al Congreso Nacional, 1 de mayo de 1872’, in Meléndez Ch., Carlos (comp.), Mensajes Presidenciales, 1859–1885 (San José, 1981), p. 76Google Scholar.

43 La Gaceta, 11 July 1884, p. 635; Arias, Claudio Antonio Vargas, El liberalism!), la Iglesia y el Estado en Costa Rica (San José, 1992), p. 153Google Scholar.

44 On the political role of the Church, see Vargas Arias, El liberalismo, la Iglesiay el Estao, pp. 187–226 passim. On the Church-led boycott of public education, rather hastily dismissed as a product of ‘indifference, conservative fanaticism and ignorance’, see Fischel, Consensoy represion, p. 192.

45 A truly Costa Rican literary tradition did not take shape until the first generation of costumbristas began publishing their works in newspapers from 1890 onwards, and the first Costa Rican novel did not appear until 1900; see Margarita Rojas et al., La casa paterna; escrituray nation en Costa Rica (San José), forthcoming; and Sóto, Alvaro Quesada, La formation de la narrativa national costarrkense (1890–1910) (San José, 1986)Google Scholar.

46 Obregon, Clotilde María, Costa Rica; relationes exteriores de una República en formación, 1847–1849 (San José, 1984), p. 23Google Scholar.

47 Molina, Felipe, Bosquejo de la República de Costa Rica sequido de apuntamientospara su historia (New York, 1851), p. 17Google Scholar.

48 El Ferrocarril, 21 Sept. 1872, p. 1.

49 La Gaceta, 16 Sept. 1881, pp. 2–3.

50 La Gaceta, 15 Sept. 1882, p. 4.

51 ‘Editorial’, Gaceta Oficial, 15 Sept. 1878, p. 1; ‘Discurso de Juan Venero’, La Gaceta, 16 Sept. 1881, p. 3.

52 La Gaceta, 15 Sept. 1883, p. 897.

53 These selections came from the manuscript of Fernandez's ten-volume collection, the first three volumes of which were published in 1881: Colección de documentos para la historia de Costa Rica, 10 vols., vols. I–III (San José, 1881); vols. IV-V (Paris, 1886); vols. VI-X (Barcelona, 1907).

54 La Gaceta, 6 Aug. 1881, p. 2; publication of the instalments ceased upon Guardia's death in August 1882.

55 La Gaceta, 11 Jan. 1887, p. 27.

56 Molina, Bosquejo de la República de Costa Rica, p. 10; emphasi s mine.

57 With time, this nationalist certainty becomes more and more entrenched: in 1988, when some ancient footprints were discovered in the north of the country, Costa Rica's main newspaper would announce, only half in jest, ‘Ticos de hace más de 50 mil años’; La Nación, 10 Feb. 1988, p. 1.

58 Fernández, ‘Prólogo’, Colección de documentos, iv: v–vii.

59 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 26.

60 On the close connection between the state's legal dispute and the beginnings of Costa Rican historiography, see the thorough study of Quesada, Juan Rafael, ‘El nacimiento de la historiografía en Costa Rica’, Revista de Historia (Universidad de Costa Rica/Universidad Nacional), Número Especial, 1988, p. 63Google Scholar, and passim.

61 ‘La Campaña Nacional Centroamericana’, El Diario de Costa Rica, 11 04 1885, p. 1Google Scholar. His Apuntamientos geográficos, estadísticos e históricos, containing a large section on the 1856 war, was published in March 1887, received a favourable review in the official paper, and was immediately designated as the school text to replace Molina's history; see La Gaceta, 24 March 1887, p. 302.

62 Barrantes, Francisco Montero, Elementos de historia de Costa Rica, 2 vols. (San José, 1892)Google Scholar; and Compendia de la historia de Costa Rica [1894], 2nd edn (San José, 1896).

63 Venero, Juan, ‘Bosquejo histórico’, La Gaceta, 2 05 1880, p. 3; the series was published daily between 1 May and 27 May 1880Google Scholar.

64 Pacheco, Jesús Marcelino, ‘11 de abril de 1857’, Boktín Oficial, 11 04 1885, p. 3Google Scholar; the error is not due to a misprint, since the erroneous date is repeated in the text.

65 León Fernández wrote that his youthful attempts in the 1850s to locate documents or records on Costa Rica history were consistently met by the response that they did not exist. ‘In the belief that periodical and other official or personal publications could provide me some light on the country's more notable historical events, I dedicated myself earnestly to the formation of collections published after 1830 [when the first printing press arrived in Costa Rica] … I became convinced upon reading them that none contained any information of any interest concerning the years prior to 1824 …’ Colección de documentos para la historia de Costa Rica, cited in Abelardo Bonilla Baldares, Historia de la literatura costarricense, 3rd edn. (San José, 1982), p. 88.

66 The Gaceta Oficial had become a daily publication on 23 Feb. 1878, but its function as disseminator of official laws, decrees, congressional business and government contracts and appointments precluded its becoming a newspaper proper. Furthermore, it was too closely associated with state policy to maintain any critical stance that would increase its semblance of ideological ‘neutrality’. Upon the appearance of non-official dailies, the Gaceta confined itself to affairs of state, except in moments of crisis or celebration.

67 This consisted of conceding to the Diario de Costa Rica and the Otro Diario free use of the telegraph; see ‘Acuerdo No. IV’, Colleccidn de las disposicioms legislativas y administrates emitidos en el año 1886 (San José, 1887), p. 25.

68 The paper comprised four pages, including opinion and commentary, news of the nation's capital, the provinces, mail, boat and train fares and schedules, international news, advertisements, and a little section called ‘Efemerides’ reproducing tidbits from Costa Rican history. Its editor was sometime government functionary and historian, Joaquín Bernardo Calvo, and its writers the Liberal educator, Juan Fernández Ferraz and Rafael Montúfar, the son of the notable Central American liberal, Lorenzo Montúfar.

69 Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 30 and 39.

70 Diario de Costa Rica, I Jan. 1885, p. 1.

71 Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 17.

72 Contreras, Alvaro, ‘Un héroe anónimo’, Diario de Costa Rica, 6 03 1885, p. 1Google Scholar; emphasis mine.

73 Meléndez, Santamaría, pp. 33–4.

74 Unfortunately, I have been unable to discover any study of the rise of the ‘Unknown Soldier’; however, a figure who seems to stand, like Santamaría, between identity and anonymity, is ‘the simple soldier known as the drummer of Arcola’ who fought under Napoleon and a statue of whom was erected in France during the early 1890s to show troops that their sacrifices would not go unnoticed. See Cohen, William, ‘Symbols of Power: Statues in Nineteenth-Century Provincial France’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 31, no. 3 (07, 1989), p. 505CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is interesting to note that Santamaría was also alleged to have been a drummer, and was represented as such – the role of the drummer being, perhaps, one that connotes both pacific self-sacrifice and leadership.

75 See ‘Pensiones y Premios’ [Articles 722–739], Código Militar de la República de Costa Rica, 1884, Guerra y Marina 8305, Archivo Nacional de Costa Rica (hereafter ANCR).

76 Diario de Costa Rica, 30 May 1886, p. 2.

77 For the augmenting of Joaquín Durán's pension, Congreso 9305, 28 Dec. 1886, ANCR; for the concession of a pension to Francisco Barquero Segura, Congreso 9382, 8 Aug. 1887, ANCR; for Francisca Carrasco, ‘Decreto No. XVIII’, Colección de las disposiciones legislativas … 1886, p. 514.

78 Congreso 9590, 28 June 1888, ANCR; did she also demonstrate an incipient feminism by stating that ‘although it's true that I have some daughters, it's also true that they can barely support themselves, let alone me, due to the meagre earnings which women receive for their work’?

79 La Gaceta, 15 June 1887, p. 635.

80 On statues during the Republic, see Cohen, ‘Symbols of Power’, pp. 497–513; on the commissioning of the sculptors, Aristide Croisy and Louis Carrier Beleuse, see Lemistre, Dos bronces, pp. 59–64.

81 For a narrative account of the events of 1889, see Rodríguez Vega, ‘La afirmación del Estado Liberal’, Siete ensayos politicos, pp. 72–9; on the general amnesty, see Piedra, Raúl Aguilar, ‘La Responsabilidad del Estado costarricense en la defensa del patriotismo: el Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría’, unpubl. Licenciatura thesis, Univ. of Costa Rica, 1984, p. 144Google Scholar.

82 For a debate on the significance of 1889 see the edition of the Revista de Historia (UNA/UCR), no. 20, julio-dic. 1989.

83 Medina, Mario Oliva, Artesanos y obreros costarricenses, 1880–1914 (San Jose, 1985), pp. 81–3Google Scholar.

84 It appeared on 15 Sept. 1891 in pamphlet form, a reprint of which exists as Información Ad Perpetuum, Heroismo de Juan Santamaria, Battala de Rivas del 11 de abril de I856 (Alajuela, 1977).

85 Prensa Libre, 15 Sept. 1891, p. 1.

86 Sálazar, Carlos Franco, ‘Discurso leído en Cartago, 20 set., en el baile conmemorativo al héroe de Rivas’, Prensa Libre, 26 09 1891, pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

87 La Gaceta, 18 Sept. 1891, p. 1,052.

88 On the education of women in Costa Rica during the reform era, see Margarita, Silva H., ‘La educatión de la mujer en Costa Rica durante el siglo XIX’ Revista de Historia (UNA/UCR), no. 20, julio-dic. 1989, pp. 74–7Google Scholar. See also the excellent discussion of these issues as they related to the Mexican liberal discourse on women in Franco, Jean, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (New York, 1990), pp. 79–101Google Scholar.

89 Darío, Rubén, ‘Fiesta de la Patria’, Prensa Libre, 25 09 1891, p. 2Google Scholar.

90 La Gaceta, 18 Sept. 1891, p. 1053.

91 Bustamante, Carlos María de, Cuadro histórico de la revolutión mejícana (México, 1854), p. 31Google Scholar; Mora, José María Luís, México y sus revoluciones, 3 vols. (México, 1950)Google Scholar, vol. 3, p. 33.

92 Villoro, Luís, ‘La revolutión de independencia’, Historia general de México, 4 vols. (Mexico 1976)Google Scholar, vol. 2, p. 340.

93 For an in-depth study of the Mexican state's use of local Liberal organisations to establish popular allegiance, see Thomson, Guy P.C., ‘Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism: the National Guard, Philharmonic Corps, and Patriotic Juntas in Mexico, 1847–88’, journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 22 (part 1) (02 1990), esp. pp. 46–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. That Mexican liberals had to create and tolerate such ‘jacobin’ and thus potentially volatile popular organisations no doubt corresponds to their facing a much stronger Catholic and Conservative foe than existed in Costa Rica.

94 Gudmundson estimates the Afroamericans in the Central Valley formed between 10 and 20% of the total populace in the first half of the nineteenth century; ‘De “Negro” a “Blanco” en la Hispanoamérica del Siglo XIX: la Asimilación Afroamericana en Argentina y Costa Rica’, Mesoamérica, no. 12 (Dec. 1986), p. 312.

95 La Gaceta, 15 June 1887, p. 635.

96 Margarita Rojas, ‘Cronología de la literatura y cultura costarricense, 1824–1930’, San José, n.d. (mimeo), p. 6. This impressive canvas is on view in the Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría in Alajuela.

97 La Gaceta, 10 March 1885, p. 231.

98 Lemistre, Dos Bronces, p. 59.

99 La Gaceta, 18 Sept. 1895, p. 920.

100 ‘Día de Independencia’, Revista de Costa Rica en el Siglo XIX (San José, 1902), p. 179.

101 I have been inspired here by Anderson's discussion of the significance of the act of singing the anthem; Imagined Communities, pp. 132–3.

102 For a brief history of the 1902 contest for a new lyric, and a semiotic analysis of the winning entry, see Amoretti, María, Debajo del canto (San José, 1987)Google Scholar.

103 Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions’, pp. 263–4.