... A Crazy man's war (1856) ...
by Infocostarica Staff

It's incredible to think that a crazy man can start a war. Well, it's actually not so incredible because that's how most wars start, but it's still baffling... William Walker was only five feet five inches and 120 pounds, but like other short men with superiority airs, he did a lot of damage. He was born in Nashville in 1824, and after failing as a doctor, lawyer and writer, he decided to embark to Central America on a mission- to take over these countries and to annex them as slave nations to the Southern United States.

Walker succeeded in Nicaragua in 1855, where he took over the nation, had himself elected president and established slavery. After this victorious start, he expected similar luck in Costa Rica, thus invading Guanacaste (Northern province) in 1856. Costa Rican president, Juan Rafael Mora, gathered an army of nine thousand peasants to join the forces of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in order to defeat the invaders. The makeshift Costa Rican army was armed with machetes and with very few rifles, but they still managed to expel Walker's army in what is now the Santa Rosa National Park. The filibusters retreated into Nicaraguan territory.

The Costa Rican army followed the invaders into Nicaragua and met them at the town of Rivas, where an important fort was located. A young drummer boy who was going to become Costa Rica's national hero, Juan Santamaria, torched the fort, thus forcing Walker's army to escape. The boy didn't survive this sacrificial gesture, but his memory as a hero lives on. After his escape, the Southern filibuster was rescued by the U.S. Navy and taken to his country. However, he came back to Nicaragua, where he was defeated by the armed forces but was released after three years. As if not convinced of inevitable failure, Walker insisted on taking over a government building in Honduras but was later captured and promptly shot by the Honduran army.

Out of the countries threatened by Walker, Costa Rica suffered the most. After the war, a terrible cholera epidemic hit the country, killing ten percent of its population. The demographic catastrophe caused an economic disaster and a crisis that didn't end until 1859. The coffee activity, which had provided the country with an unprecedented stability, suffered tremendously because of the lack of credit and of farm hands.

President Mora, who had instituted a fair judicial system and promoted public education and land grants for coffee farmers, was unjustly blamed for the crisis and even for the cholera epidemic! The president and his supporters were sent into exile in 1859, but a year later,they came back. Mora and his brother-in-law, General Jose Maria Canas, were captured when they tried to regain power of the government and were both shot in a park in Puntarenas (on the Pacific coast) that now bears their names.

This incident was typical in an era when coups were commonplace. Costa Rica would have to wait until Tomas Guardia's rule in the 1870's for a stage of stability where such subjective and personal decisions wouldn't be made at a presidential and governmental level.