Getting to Know the Unknown Soldier: Official Nationalism in Liberal Costa Rica, 1880–1900
On 28 February I885 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 heroe an6mino'. Curiously, though, this hero is not anonymous at all. The article soon reveals that his name is Juan Santamaria, a humble footsoldier who, during the Battle of Rivas in 1856, had volunteered to burn down the Mesdn de Guerra from where William Walker's filibusters