MUSIC-COSTA RICA: Remembering the Invaders in Song

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Maricel Sequeira

SAN JOSE, May 19 1998 (IPS) - To the rhythm of mazurca, vals and tambito, Costa Ricans have learned through song littlke-known details of the battle of 1856 when a peasant army turned back a band of armed U.S. privateeers.

The man behind the music is Dionisio Cabal, founder of Cantares, a group that has long sought to stimulate a revival of interest in this country’s history, rhythms and songs of the past.

In 1980, Cabal was involved in research in libraries, intrigued by the large gaps he found in the history books dealing with the events in 1856. He presented this episode in the “Song of 1856,” using a mix of narration and music to tell of the glories of the Costa Ricans against the pirates led by William Walker.

The Song begins with a description of Costa Rica in that period, in which San Jose was comprised of just “five fields” and the port of Puntarenas, in the Pacific Ocean, where coffee exports left the country, was the main source of Costa Rica’s development.

It then describes the political environment of the time, when the country was governed by coffee grower Juan Rafael Mora, who was very popular among the peasants. It ties in references to British and North American interest in the Central American isthmus at the time because of plans to build an inter-ocean canal through Nicaragua.

Mora learned of the danger and warned his countrymen. Walker took power in Nicaragua and the invasion of Costa Rica, as Mora had anticipated, followed. Mora raised an improvised “National Army of Costa Rica” and headed north. This peasant army forced the invaders out of Costa Rican territory into Nicaragua.

The actors involved in the war, most of whom are unknown, are present in Cabal’s Song. The song includes references to the discourse of Mora, though it is a version not taught in Costa Rica’s schools. It suggests that Walker was not an adventurer, but a man financed by the traditional political parties of the United States.

The war ended in 1857 with the victory of the Costa Ricans, who received the support of other Central American countries toward the end of the conflict.

Mora became President but, in 1959 lost the support of the coffee growers when he sought to create a national bank that granted credit to the peasants with favorable conditions, and was forced to flee to El Salvador. In 1860, Mora returned to Costa Rica with the intention of returning to power, but he was arrested and executed.

In historical references in which the principal events of the war of 1856 are commemorated – March 20 and April 11 – the figure of Mora is not remembered.

“This omission of the figure of Mora became official policy after 1864,” Cabal told IPS. Until then, the people celebrated April 11 shouting praise to Mora, which was intolerable for the oligarchical government.

This is the reason that Juan Santamaria, one of the soldiers who, on April 11, burned down one of the houses were the pirates were hiding, “was produced from the rabbit’s hat,” he said.

His heroic deed did not make or break the war, but he was adopted as a national hero because he was not associated with any ideological position, Cabal declared.

Public reaction to Cabal’s song has been one of surprise. “They ask why they were unaware of this history”, said the author, who added that “the answer to this question is in the story itself.”

The song, which has been a work in progress for many years, actujally still is unfinished, because each year new stories are being added, said Cabal.

Cantares has been performing its music along the route that the Costa Rican pesant army transited during the war. This year, it is also planning on performing in several Central American countries.