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

Abstract

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.

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