On Heroes and Tombs | Translation

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[Daniel Alarcón]: This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón. 

Let’s start here: it is the afternoon of April 10, 1981, and we are on a street in downtown Alajuela, a city about 40 minutes by car from the capital of Costa Rica. It is a small country, and at that time, Alajuela was a mid-sized city with just over 30,000 people. A boy waits anxiously at the entrance of his house. His name is Rodolfo González, and at that moment, he was 11 years old.

[Rodolfo González]: For Alajuela, knowing that the bones of the national hero were coming was a huge excitement, right? It was like having something tangible from the national hero.

[Daniel]: The national hero Rodolfo is referring to is a 19th-century soldier. His name was Juan Santamaría, and he was also from Alajuela. Saying that Juan Santamaría is important in Costa Rica is an understatement. At one point, his existence and death were the foundational myth of Costa Rican identity.

The story goes like this: between 1856 and 1857, there was a war in Central America. Not between the countries of the region—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—which were just consolidating as independent republics, but all of them against a common enemy: the filibusters. That was the name given to a private American army, backed by the southern states of the U.S. with pro-slavery ideas, that came with the purpose of conquering the territories of the region.

In Costa Rica, this war is known as the National Campaign of 1856 and 1857.

The war had different battles, but the most important for this story—and for Costa Rica—took place in Nicaragua. It was a difficult time, and it is said that Juan Santamaría played a decisive role. In a heroic act, the soldier volunteered to set fire to a building where the filibusters were taking refuge. His goal was to force them out of their position, making them vulnerable. He succeeded, but died in the process. And according to the story, that fire was the turning point that led the Central Americans to victory in that battle. And thus, the myth of Juan Santamaría was cemented.

But let’s go back to Rodolfo and that afternoon in 1981. He wasn’t the only one excited about the arrival of the national hero’s remains. Because if Santamaría is important to ticos (Costa Ricans), he is particularly important to those from his native province.

[Rodolfo]: A lot of Alajuela’s identity revolves around Juan Santamaría.

[Daniel]: So the whole city was waiting. Not just for him, but for other soldiers who had died in that battle over a century ago, whose remains were also returning.

[Rodolfo]: And so, a lot of preparations were made. It was known that a large caravan, departing from the northern border with Nicaragua, would travel through all of Guanacaste, then arrive in Alajuela. And what excited me the most was that it was going to pass right in front of my house. At the corner of my house, about 50 meters away, there was a teacher—I remember—from school he spent four hours making a large sign with lights in the patriotic colors, blue and red, and well, the white light that had the figure of the national hero and a phrase that read Paso a los héroes del 56 (“Passage for the heroes of ’56”). I remember him with a cigar in his mouth, sweating profusely to make that sign as striking as possible, right at the corner.

[Daniel]: And around six in the evening, Rodolfo finally heard noise, commotion. Along with his family, he brought out chairs to sit on the sidewalk and watch the caravan pass by…

[Rodolfo]: Seeing the lights before seeing the parade, hearing the sirens—it obviously made my little kid heart race. I was trying to spot where the traffic was passing, wondering what it was going to be like. In my mind, as a child, I thought it would be a coffin.

[Daniel]: Seconds later, motorcycles and cars passed by, and soon after, a large truck moving slowly.

[Rodolfo]: And at the center of it, there was just a very small wooden box. And in my imagination—because I don’t know whether it was really like that—I saw some initials, J.S., and to me, that was Juan Santamaría. What struck me the most was how small the box was, that the truck passed right in front of my house, and that it was all over in about a minute. I just kept watching that truck, following it with my eyes, along with the crowd and the flags and everything.

[Daniel]: And watching it fade into the distance… That small box stopped nearby, right in the center of town. It was received at the Cathedral, where a mass was held in its honor. Then, it was taken to a nearby building—the city’s old jail, which had recently been turned into the Juan Santamaría Historical and Cultural Museum, dedicated to preserving the history of the hero and the Campaign of 1856. The box was guarded the entire time by two police officers, and it was placed beneath a commemorative bust.

[Rodolfo]: With a phrase from a former president that said, “The lineage of the people of Alajuela is the lineage of the soldier Juan.” It was very solemn, absolutely solemn. And everyone kept saying, “We can’t believe that for the first time, we have the bones of the national hero.”

[Daniel]: But that joy about Juan Santamaría and the other heroes returning home would soon turn into embarrassment… And it would escalate tensions between two countries on the brink of crisis.

After the break, we’ll tell you the rest.

We’ll be right back.

[Daniel]: We’re back. Our senior editor, Luis Fernando Vargas, tells us the story.

[Luis Fernando Vargas]: Nicaragua handed over the remains of Juan Santamaría and the other soldiers to Costa Rica in a discreet ceremony at the border between the two countries. I haven’t been able to find videos from that day, but there are newspaper reports.

In the photos, you can see the then-president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Carazo, carrying an urn alongside Daniel Ortega. You might know Daniel Ortega today for the dictatorship he leads in Nicaragua, but back then, in 1981, he was a much lower-profile figure: a commander of the Sandinista guerrilla movement. Just a few years earlier, they had overthrown a brutal dictatorship that had lasted four decades in Nicaragua. He wasn’t one of the top leaders of the guerrilla during the fight, but he had recently become the Coordinator of the Junta for the Reconstruction of Nicaragua, with the goal of leading the country toward democracy.

During the ceremony, the Costa Rican president thanked the fallen heroes for securing the country’s freedom, and promised them that they would finally rest in their homeland. And a Nicaraguan master of ceremonies referred to Juan Santamaría as an anti-imperialist hero. He was drawing a parallel: the Sandinistas and Juan Santamaría, in different moments, had both fought against U.S. dominance. The dictatorship that the Sandinistas overthrew in the revolution had been installed and, for many years, supported by the United States.

Those photos of the Costa Rican president and Ortega together were—and still are—strange. And to understand why, you have to know something about the two countries, something that Rodolfo, who is a historian, journalist, and storyteller, explained better than anyone:

[Rodolfo]: We’re like a family that has a love/hate relationship—sometimes more hate than love. Our political and even family histories are so intertwined that we live in a constant state of tension.

[Luis Fernando]: There’s a phrase often attributed to Ricardo Jiménez, who was Costa Rica’s president three times in the early 20th century:

[Rodolfo]: The seasons in Costa Rica are three: the rainy season, the dry season, and the season of conflicts with Nicaragua.

[Luis Fernando]: Especially border conflicts. They’ve fought over rivers, islands, and even an entire province. But there are other tensions, too, like the xenophobia Nicaraguans face in Costa Rica, with stigma, marginalization, and violence. The relationship has always been tumultuous, and for many years, it has been cold and tense.

And in 1981, the situation between the two countries could also be described as… complicated, to say the least. Rodolfo experienced it through the mind of a child.

[Rodolfo]: This is crazy, but as a kid, just from the news and everything going on, I was afraid of a Nicaraguan invasion. I’d be playing in the yard, hear a plane, and think, “They’re invading us.” I’m not saying every Costa Rican child felt that way, but in my house, we talked a lot about the news, and that fear was real for me.

[Luis Fernando]: And that’s because politicians, the press, and many Costa Ricans were panicked about the Sandinista guerrillas—the heirs of the Cuban Revolution and the driving force of communism in the region.

The Sandinista Revolution fueled the armed struggles gaining momentum in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The United States was nervous. And as a U.S. ally, Costa Rica was nervous too. You could say that the Cold War was fought with weapons in Central America in the 1980s.

And while Costa Rica wasn’t a battlefield like El Salvador or Honduras, it was in a delicate situation. The country was going through one of the worst economic recessions in its history. When Carazo took office in 1978, he increased the country’s debt—which was already high. Soon after, global oil prices skyrocketed, and the prices of Costa Rica’s main exports—coffee and bananas—collapsed. The currency was devalued, and food shortages worsened.

I wasn’t born yet, but my parents have told me about the long lines to buy rice or beans, the basics, subsidized by the government. Scenes that looked like they came straight out of the Soviet bloc during those years. People feared—reasonably—that the economic crisis caused by Carazo could explode into a revolution.

Additionally, a group inspired by the guerrilla movements in the region carried out attacks in the Costa Rican capital. Two bombs had been detonated just weeks before the handover of the remains of the heroes of the 1856 Campaign—one at the Honduran consulate in Costa Rica and another on a bus carrying U.S. soldiers.

So, amid that widespread tension, Alajuela experienced the joy of welcoming the remains of its heroes, especially those of Juan Santamaría.

[Luis Abel Gutiérrez]: Inside that coffin… if you opened it, there were three small boxes. Everything was made of bitter cedar; you could smell it. Very well finished, sanded down and all.

[Luis Fernando]: That’s Luis Abel Gutiérrez, an architect and then-vice-president of the Juan Santamaría Museum, where the remains were deposited. He was there when they opened the coffin that Rodolfo had seen pass in front of his house. Inside the box, there were three smaller boxes.

[Luis Abel]: And in each small box, there were… let’s call them lumps. Little packages wrapped in aluminum foil, of different sizes—some 15 centimeters, 10 centimeters, 8 centimeters in diameter. Small roundish balls, three or four per box.

That, according to the Nicaraguan government, was where the remains of the heroes were.

[Luis Abel]: The remains of Juan Santamaría were supposedly in a separate brick and concrete niche, which was said to have been extracted from 50 centimeters beneath the church of San Francisco in Rivas.

[Luis Fernando]: That’s a church in Rivas, the Nicaraguan city where the battle was fought, where Juan Santamaría set fire to the enemy stronghold. There has always been a legend in Nicaragua that his bones were buried there, but there was no scientific or historical evidence.

The handover of the bones was an initiative of the Costa Rican government. But the original plan was very different. It was supposed to be symbolic. Costa Rica did not expect such ancient human remains to be found, so the repatriation was going to be of the soil from the battlefield—a symbolic gesture.

But just days before April 11, 1981—the anniversary of the battle where the Costa Rican soldiers died—the Nicaraguan government announced that an excavation had revealed not only the bones of soldiers but also, based on the evidence in one coffin, the legendary remains of Juan Santamaría. From that moment on, what was supposed to be a small event started making newspaper headlines. It was no longer a symbolic act: the real heroes were coming home. It was historic. The press and the public had high expectations.

However, throughout the process, the Juan Santamaría Museum had little say or influence. They had agreed to receive the remains on one condition: that a forensic analysis be conducted.

[Luis Abel]: Because, you know, nowadays you can determine DNA and age… I mean, we are serious people here.

[Luis Fernando]: After all, this was a national treasure. And they weren’t the only ones demanding it. The Costa Rican Writers’ Association was also suspicious of the remains. One of its members, who had ties to the Sandinistas and declined to speak with me, said he had heard rumors that the whole thing was fake.

So, after the parade and the mass, once the remains were at the museum, the commission team decided to open the boxes with a notary present. And they began to examine them.

[Luis Abel]: Okay. We open the first package from box number one. What do we find? Dirt and something that looks like a chicken leg. Package number two. There’s a scapula, but it’s not human—it’s too small, probably from a dog or a rabbit or who knows what. And as we kept opening them, we found a series of bones that had nothing to do with human remains. You’d expect femurs, ribs, skulls… something.

[Luis Fernando]: It seemed like a joke. No rational person would believe those were human remains. It was an insult to one of Costa Rica’s most important symbols.

[Luis Abel]: So now what? You receive this, and you think, “Well, what do we do now?” Right? You have to act with historical responsibility. I mean, in the end, what do we tell our future generations—our grandkids and great-grandkids? That we received a pile of junk and buried it?

[Daniel]: After the break: What exactly arrived in Costa Rica? We’ll be right back.

[Daniel]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. Luis Fernando Vargas continues the story.

[Luis Fernando]: Even though everyone at the commission and the museum were certain that what was in those boxes were not human remains, there were divided opinions on what to do next.

[Luis Abel]: I once heard a member of the Administrative Board say, “Let’s not make such a fuss about it.” He was against any investigation or scientific study.

[Luis Fernando]: There was a reason behind that. The Costa Rican president at the time had been a huge supporter of the museum, helping it get established.

The remains—whatever they were—represented, for the public and the president, a priceless national treasure. The government had already accepted them without demanding scientific rigor or certainty. And worse: they had announced it with pomp and fanfare, as a major diplomatic achievement. The president would look terrible if it turned out that the remains were not those of the national hero. It was a delicate, even embarrassing situation. Making a scandal out of it was, for some at the museum, a direct attack on the president—the same man who had helped them so much.

But for many, the forensic study absolutely needed to be done….

[Luis Fernando]: Meanwhile, there was a promise that the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture would travel to Costa Rica to explain the details of the excavation and what had been found. He would also bring the investigation documents. But there was no set date.

However, some in Costa Rica decided not to wait.

[Zulay Tellini Duarte]: My name is Zulay Tellini Duarte, and I worked with the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sports at that time.

[Luis Fernando]: Zulay worked in the museum division, and as part of her job, she had to travel to Guanacaste, a province near Nicaragua. And it was precisely while she was there that she received an order from the minister.

[Zulay]: She asked us for a favor—she wanted us to go to Rivas because she wanted us to see the alley where they found Juan Santamaría’s remains. We were thrilled to go, of course.

[Luis Fernando]: Without announcing anything, they arrived in Rivas, Nicaragua, posing as tourists. It was an unofficial visit. According to the press, the archaeologists hired by the Sandinista regime had carried out a 90-meter-long, 2-meter-wide, and 2-meter-deep excavation beside the church, in an area used as a garage. They claimed to have found a box with the initials “J.S.” there. But when Zulay and her colleagues arrived, they found something smaller—much, much smaller.

[Zulay]: They lifted two paving stones. Just two paving stones. Imagine that—two paving stones. And that’s where they said Juan Santamaría’s bones were found.

[Luis Fernando]: The alleged bones. There was no excavation anywhere near the 90 meters they had announced. Nothing. Just a couple of tiles, which they took lots of pictures of.

[Zulay]: I’m not an archaeologist, but who knows how they got those bones out—because, no way, it didn’t match up with an actual dig site. We started talking to the locals around the park, and they told us, “Yes, the Russians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans all showed up, had a big gathering, and took out some little bones.” Not a lot—just a few tiny ones.

[Luis Fernando]: They spent the night in Rivas, and the next day, they returned to Costa Rica. But apparently, word had spread that someone had been investigating.

[Zulay]: They gave us a hard time at the border—as if they had already found out that we had been taking pictures. They started questioning us: “Are you on an official mission? What are you doing?” We just kept saying, “No, no, we’re tourists. We’re just tourists.”

[Luis Fernando]: In the end, after some intimidation, they were allowed to cross. They got the sense that the Nicaraguan government knew exactly what they had done, but chose not to confront them. Zulay and her colleagues handed the information over to the minister.

While the minister reviewed the photos and the report, the forensic study had already begun. It took four months. In all that time, the Nicaraguan Minister of Culture never showed up to explain the findings, nor was the promised report ever delivered. And when the results were finally ready, the conclusion was undeniable.

[Luis Abel]: The scientists came back and said, “Look, this is just dirt. The remains are not human. There’s nothing more to see here. We do not believe these are the remains of the heroes of 1856—not at all.”

[Luis Fernando]: The report confirmed that there were bones, yes, but they belonged to non-human mammals. From two or three different species—likely domesticated animals: cows, dogs, cats, chickens.

The commission decided to make the results public. The media picked up the story, and the people were outraged.

A member of parliament declared:

[Archive soundbite]

[Congresswoman]: “They didn’t just deceive the Costa Rican authorities, but—far worse—they deceived the Costa Rican people, for whom Juan Santamaría’s heroic deeds and legacy are sacred.”

[Luis Fernando]: And in a satirical newspaper supplement, a mock telegram conversation was published:

[Archive soundbite]

[Voice 1]: “Please locate Santamaría’s bones. Urgent mission. Check the pasture behind the slaughterhouse. Fatherland or death. We shall seize victory.”

[Voice 2]: Package of bones ready. They came out a bit mixed, but they’ll do—no one will notice the difference. Death to the counterrevolutionaries.

[Luis Fernando]: A cryptic and somewhat poetic newspaper column also wrote:

[Archive soundbite]

[Voice 3]: Let’s not talk about bones, please. Lately, we hate bones and bone collectors. Our bones ache with rage every time we see bones. A bone feels like an insult.

[Luis Fernando]: It was a national embarrassment. Not only had someone mocked Costa Rica, but worse, the mockery came from the Sandinistas, whom many considered the greatest threat to the country.

But some people wanted to stay calm. An archaeologist suggested that there was no bad faith involved. A historian from the commission said it was undoubtedly a mistake and that Costa Rica itself had provided false information for the search. A former president, considered a founder of modern Costa Rica, advised that it was best not to talk about the issue.

At the same time, a small report from Nicaragua about the excavation was published in a government-paid ad in the newspapers. It was just two pages long and said very little. Meanwhile, the Costa Rican government insisted the situation had to be handled carefully.

The commission planned to formally return the remains to Nicaragua a few days later. They felt it was necessary—out of respect for the Costa Rican people’s history—to return those false remains, despite the tense political situation.

During those same days, Costa Rica was celebrating the birth anniversary of Juan Santamaría. So, on the night of August 27, 1981, a conference was held at the museum about the life of the national hero, led by one of Costa Rica’s most prominent historians. That’s why Luis Abel was there, along with journalists and academics. During the event, someone approached Luis Abel with a message.

[Luis Abel]: They’re saying the minister is outside with the police and some other men.

[Luis Fernando]: It was José Rafael Cordero, the Minister of the Presidency at the time. To explain the significance of this: in Costa Rica, the Minister of the Presidency is the President’s right-hand man, coordinating between government institutions. Cordero was also an honorary member of the Commission for the 150th Anniversary of Juan Santamaría. He was aware of the investigations but opposed returning the remains to Nicaragua, fearing it would escalate into a diplomatic conflict.

And, of course, you can imagine the whole situation was humiliating—it made the president and his administration look bad, including Cordero himself. Unfortunately, José Rafael Cordero passed away in 2014, so I couldn’t speak with him. But Luis Abel remembers that moment:

[Luis Abel]: Then Don José Rafael walked in and said, “I’m here for the remains.”

[Luis Fernando]: “I’m here for the remains.” He was accompanied by the Nicaraguan Ambassador to Costa Rica and many police officers. The official records don’t specify the exact number, but they describe it as, and I quote, “unusually large and strange.”

[Luis Abel]: We told him, “No, look, everything that was studied is documented in a notarized report when the box was opened, in order to issue a serious document. How can you just take them like this? That’s not how it works.”

[Luis Fernando]: The commission had planned to return the boxes a few days later, along with a notarized report confirming that what was being returned was exactly what had been received months earlier. But the minister wanted them immediately.

The museum staff asked him to be patient—at least until the conference was over. But the minister was tense, almost furious. The boxes were in storage, and he demanded the keys immediately.

[Luis Abel]: I remember the museum’s secretary said, “I’m not handing them over. No, no, no, they’re not here. They’re not here.” And then the minister told the police, “Proceed.” Which meant he wanted them to break the door down and take the boxes.

[Luis Fernando]: He was going to take them by force. What followed was what in Costa Rica would be called a “zafarrancho”—a chaotic uproar. Shouting, pushing—museum staff blocking the door, while the minister ordered the police to break it down.

After several minutes of a shouting match, the minister finally came to his senses and calmed down a bit. Luis Abel told him they would hand them over that night, but they had to draft a legal document on the spot with a lawyer present, to confirm that nothing had been altered.

An emergency lawyer arrived, and they drafted a notarial act in the museum. By then, it was late. The police presence outside had drawn the attention of people from downtown, and now all eyes were on the museum. Luis Abel helped carry the box out, pushing through a sea of locals who were watching the dispute from the entrance. He remembers it well.

[Luis Abel]: The truth is, in the middle of all that commotion, they started leaving, and by then, the streets of Alajuela were packed. And as they walked out, the crowd started shouting, “Woof, woof, moo,” and who knows what else, right?

[Luis Fernando]: All the animal sounds people associated with those infamous bones. And that’s how the brief return of the heroes of the 1856 Campaign ended—amid police, fights, and mockery. Nothing was solemn anymore; it was an embarrassment. Now, Costa Rica had to return a bunch of animal bones to Nicaragua.

[Daniel]: We’ll be right back.

[Luis Fernando]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. I’m Luis Fernando Vargas.

From then on, the Costa Rican government handled the return of the remains to Nicaragua discreetly. There’s little information about it. Perhaps it was shame for having so naively believed the bones were real. Or maybe it was fear that angering the Sandinistas could trigger the long-dreaded invasion. Perhaps it was both.

The remains were simply sent by plane, and representatives of Nicaragua’s National Reconstruction Junta received them. In statements to the media, the Sandinistas still insisted that those were the bones of the heroes of the 1856 Campaign and of Juan Santamaría. They claimed that the enemies of the revolution—presumably the Sandinista revolution—wanted to sow discord between the two governments. They promised to bury the bones in the city of Rivas. After that, their whereabouts became unknown in the Costa Rican press.

But at that moment, it didn’t matter. It felt like the best thing to do was bury the whole issue quickly.

[Luis Abel]: You know, a layer of dirt hides everything. Personally, I felt that maybe that’s what happened. Just bury it, let it go—it’s over. Little by little, it faded away.

[Luis Fernando]: It’s understandable that, with internal conflicts and economic crises across Central America, the fate of a few century-old bones would be forgotten. A crisis that now seems silly, but at the time, in a region on fire, it had every potential to escalate. It didn’t. But from that moment on, any lingering sympathy for the Sandinistas and their project for Nicaragua was gone.

Still, I was left with questions: Why did this happen? Why animal bones? Why did Costa Rica believe it so easily?

In downtown Alajuela, not far from the Juan Santamaría Museum, there’s a park named after the national hero. Next to it is one of those trendy food markets, called Mercadito Santamaría. The Juan Santamaría International Airport, which welcomes millions of tourists every year, is about three kilometers away.

But let’s focus on the park. It’s simple, with few structures, mostly covered in concrete pavers, and lacking trees. At its center—no surprise—stands a statue of Juan Santamaría. It’s an important piece in the history of Costa Rican public art. It was the first large bronze structure displayed in the streets of Costa Rica.

The statue depicts a young man, holding a torch in one hand and a rifle in the other, wearing sandals and a soldier’s uniform. Since childhood, I’ve imagined Juan Santamaría looking like that—with those features, holding that torch. But during a museum tour, I learned that that statue was actually ordered from a catalog by a French sculptor, using as a model the face and clothing of a French colonial soldier.

I mention this because, in reality, as a society, we know almost nothing about our national symbol. We know he had a mother, and that he loved her. We know he was a drummer in the army. But beyond that? Nothing. We don’t know what he thought, what he liked, anything.

In fact, when I was in school, studying the history of that war, I often heard the theory that Juan Santamaría never existed, that he was a fictional character.

At some point, someone told me about this theory, and I finished primary school feeling like everything I had been taught was made up. It gave me vertigo. I was 12 years old, and my older brother—who was quite a bit older—used to talk about how God wasn’t real, that it was all a lie to make people behave. In my childish mind, I connected the two ideas: God and Juan Santamaría, or rather, their lies. And I felt that deep discomfort—why do they tell me something is true when it isn’t?

And, in my war-video-game-fueled mind, with limited knowledge, Costa Rica without Juan Santamaría doing something heroic in that battle lost so much. I knew about a battle on national soil that lasted less than 20 minutes, and even back then, it sounded ridiculous. How could that be taken seriously?

Beyond that, there was nothing. There was no war for independence—the news just arrived months later.

Costa Rica, without Juan Santamaría, was a thousand times more boring for a kid. It was a feeling that, years later, when I read a Costa Rican writer, I finally found the words to describe: “Nothing has happened in Costa Rica since the Big Bang.”

Historians agree that there was indeed someone named Juan Santamaría who fought in the war—despite what many Costa Ricans might tell you. But the perfect story of the hero burning the building and dying in battle remains in doubt. In Nicaragua, they say it wasn’t him who set the fire, but a Nicaraguan. There’s also uncertainty about whether Juan Santamaría died in battle in Nicaragua. Different sources suggest that he may have died near the border, either from his injuries or from the cholera epidemic that devastated the Costa Rican army.

This ambiguous and unclear story makes Juan Santamaría a rather unusual national hero. Because he has a name, but in reality, he is anonymous.

[Rodolfo]: Juan Santamaría is a soldier who represents the common people.

[Luis Fernando]: This is Rodolfo González, with whom we started this story. As a historian, as a journalist, and as a man from Alajuela, he has a deep interest in the figure of Juan Santamaría. And the lack of clarity about who he really was turned out to be a tool that, since the late 19th century, Costa Rica’s leaders used to unite the republic and forge a shared national identity: every Costa Rican could be Juan Santamaría and save their homeland.

And that ambiguity has also been a weapon for many groups with different—even opposing—interests.

[Rodolfo]: It’s fascinating how the War of 1856 has always been used as a banner by different ideological groups, as if it legitimized them.

[Luis Fernando]: In the 1970s and 80s, it was common to see cartoons in the newspapers featuring Juan Santamaría and the president who sent him into battle. They would be commenting on current events. Juan Santamaría and the other heroes of the war against the filibusters became figures of authority on what the country should be. And this has been exploited countless times.

Even now, a group of supporters of the current president, Rodrigo Chaves, see themselves as the heirs of those heroes who, in 1856, defeated the American mercenaries. In their view, however, they—and President Chaves—are fighting against the corrupt political elite.

All of this brings me back to my questions: Why did something so ridiculous happen? Why did Costa Rica accept the bones without verifying them? Why did Nicaragua end up handing over anonymous animal bones when Costa Rica had only asked for something symbolic?

Zulay, the woman who traveled to Nicaragua in 1981 to investigate the excavation, told me what people were saying at the time:

[Zulay]: Back then, there was a lot of talk that the Sandinistas did it to curry favor—not with Costa Rica, but personally with President Carazo.

[Luis Fernando]: While Costa Rica was terrified of the Sandinistas at that moment, things had been different just a few years earlier.

Carazo had helped the Sandinistas by allowing weapons from Cuba to pass through Costa Rica and providing safe haven for guerrillas—including Daniel Ortega, who traveled from Costa Rica to Nicaragua to seize power.

And with his popularity at rock bottom, Carazo accepted the remains, hoping to gain some goodwill, at least for a few minutes. But it backfired. And the whole country felt embarrassed.

[Rodolfo]: So the arrival of those bones was seen as a great mockery by the Sandinista government toward Costa Rica. That’s how it felt. They laughed at us. Why? What happened? My father came home and said to me, “See? The so-called bones of our national hero weren’t his at all—they were dog and cat bones. They made fun of us.”

[Luis Fernando]: Unfortunately, most of the key figures behind the repatriation of the remains—on both the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan sides—are no longer alive. And of those who are, one is Ortega. And he’s not exactly accessible for an interview to ask, “Why did you do it?”

But I can’t ignore the Sandinista statements from the 1981 handover ceremony.

At the time, the United States was imposing an economic blockade on Nicaragua, worried about losing influence in Central America due to the impetus of the Sandinista revolution. And Ortega denounced the situation during the ceremony—despite it being mostly unrelated to the event.

Except at a symbolic level:

After all, Juan Santamaría was someone who fought against the United States. Just like the Sandinistas.

So maybe the animal bones weren’t entirely a joke. And if they were, they carried a powerful political message at a critical moment for the region—a moment when the goal was, among other things, to eliminate U.S. interference in Central American politics.

As we’ve said before:

Juan Santamaría can be anyone.

Maybe the Sandinistas saw in that hero what Costa Ricans always have.

And what’s more impressive than a national hero?

An international one.

[Daniel]: Luis Fernando Vargas is a senior editor at Radio Ambulante and lives in San José, Costa Rica.  

Special thanks to Adrián Chaves from the Juan Santamaría Historical and Cultural Museum, as well as the museum staff for their help. We also thank Dhamuza Coudin.  

We also thank Oscar Medina, José Moreira, Gabriela Rivas, and Gastón Saenz for lending their voices to this episode.

This story was edited by Camila Segura and me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design was by Andrés Azpiri and Ana Tuirán, with music by Ana.  

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes: Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa, and Desireé Yépez.  

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.  

Radio Ambulante is a podcast from Radio Ambulante Studios. It is produced and mixed using Hindenburg PRO.  

If you enjoyed this episode and want to support independent journalism about Latin America, consider joining Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us continue telling the region’s stories.  

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America.  

I’m Daniel Alarcón.  

Thank you for listening.