Juan Santamaria Museum: Worth a Look
by Rod Hughes
Among the many places worth a visit here is the Juan Santamaria Historical Museum, named in honor of the country’s only war hero. (As this is written, the museum is closed for expansion and will not open until May. Ironically it was closed April 11, the holiday honoring the hero.)
Recently, The Tico Times star columnist, Mitzi Stark, did a profile on Santamaria, for whom the capital’s airport is named. The hero gave his life in 1856 to blunt the invasion of Costa Rica by U.S. soldier of fortune, William Walkers, in one of the few military battles fought by this country.
The political background to Walker’s ultimately ill-fated quest to create a slavery-oriented United States of Central America involves several of the great names of Wall Street. A southerner during the tumultuous days when slavery was a burning issue in the U.S., Walker and a small band of followers called “filibusterers” managed to take over large sections of the region but when he threatened Costa Rica, it was the beginning of the end for him.
On paper, Costa Rica appeared an easy conquest, even then with no army worth mentioning. But the country’s President Mora mobilized a ragtag army of sorts, without uniforms but with castoff muskets and even a cannon or two. Walker’s force had landed in Nicaragua and was met in northwestern Costa Rica and pushed back into Nicaragua.
Walker made his stand at Rivas in that country’s southern region. His headquarters was an adobe building with thick walls but with a vulnerable thatch roof. The Costa Rican commander gave the order to torch the roof but at least two of his soldiers lost their lives to sharpshooters attempting it. Juan Santamaria volunteered and managed the task, losing his life as he did it. The resulting fire drove Walker out and, encouraged by Costa Rica’s victory, Central Americans began to resist. Walker died in front of a firing squad in Hondruas.
Photography was in its infancy and no images were made of the humble hero, the French invention, the daguerrotype, not having made its way to this country. In fact, it would be another 50 years before studio photography made its way here, producing walls full of ancestors, usually in oval frames, of couples, she sitting in ruffled dress, he in stiff collar, both looking severely constipated.
So, it is understandable that famous French sculptor Aristide Croizy’s bronze statue of the hero in Alajuela has him in a uniform when he actually wore rough peon garb. The statue at the international airports is more accurate. But the authenicity of the hero’s body produced an international incident more than 100 years later.
In a gesture of friendship from the newly installed Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the early 1980s, what Ticos assumed were the remains of the hero were exhumed in Rivas and transported back to his native land with great ceremony. For the Nicaraguans it was symbolic but curious historians here opened the coffin to find what may have been assorted human bones but some that were definately bovine. An irreverent caption writer for The Tico Times termed the hero’s final resting place, the “tomb of the unknown cow,” but the Costa Rican government was not amused…
Another spot of historical interest from the same war is La Casona, a large hacienda mansion at Santa Rosa National Park near Liberia in Guanacaste Province. It was there that the Costa Rican army mustered to march north in 1856. The building itself is a replica, having been burned by vandals in late years of the 20th century. Two hunters, disgruntled at having been chased out of the park, torched the national relic in revenge. Thousands of school children contributed lunch money to rebuild it.