“No Podía Permanecer Indiferente”: A Fragmented Mexican Revolutionary Family Intervenes in the Costa Rican Civil War (1948)

ABSTRACT

This article examines the interventions of different official and non-official actors of Mexican origin in the Costa Rican civil war in 1948. The article demonstrates that during the early Cold War years, Mexico’s international relations with Central America were conducted by multiple actors, part of different transnational networks, in part due to the ruptures surrounding the pacts of what was known as the Mexican revolutionary family. This article reconstructs the different historical trajectories, interests, agendas, and actions of these actors, shedding light on a topic often neglected by Mexican foreign policy historiography. Taking up recent debates over Mexico’s stance during the Latin American Cold War, this article contributes to filling the gap in the early Cold War Mexican foreign policy towards the region, stressing nuances over the existence of a non-intervention, homogeneous foreign policy that prioritized the relationship with the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• Central America
• Caribbean Legion
• Guatemala
• Costa Rican Civil War
• Mexico

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. John Bell, Crisis in Costa Rica. The 1948 Revolution (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1971); Rodolfo Cerdasm, “Costa Rica,” in Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948, ed. Leslie Bethbel y Ian Roxborough (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992); Kyle Longley, The Sparrow and the Hawk (Tuscaloosa: The Univ. of Alabama Press, 1997); Marcia Olander, “Costa Rica in 1948: Cold War or Local War?” The Americas 25, no. 4 (1996): 465–93; David Díaz, Crisis social y memorias de lucha: guerra civil en Costa Rica, 1940–1948 (San José: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 2005).

2. Piero Gleijeses, “Juan José Arévalo and the Caribbean Legion,” Journal of Latin American Studies 21, no. 1 (1989): 133–45; Charles Ameringer, The Caribbean Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946–1950 (Univ. Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1996); Rodrigo Véliz, “‘Soñadores y quijotes’: la faceta internacional del proyecto revolucionario guatemalteco (1944–1951),” Secuencia 111, no. 4 (2021): e1933.

3. Aaron Moulton, “‘We Are Meddling:’ Anti-Colonialism and the British Cold War against the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944–1954,” The International History Review 44, no. 1 (2021); Rodrigo Véliz, “‘El más importante asunto internacional:’ Belice, el Imperio británico y la política exterior guatemalteca en la posguerra (1945–1948),” Anuario de estudios centroamericanos 46 (2020): 1–38.

4. “Incidentes con diplomáticos durante la situación bélica que acaba de producirse en Costa Rica,” letter from Ambassador of Mexico to San José [Ojeda] to Foreign Minister [Torres Bodet], May 1, 1948, Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteirores [hereafter, AHSRE], Ciudad de Mexico, number 457, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1. Longley, “Peaceful Costa Rica,” 170.

5. “Adquisición de algunas armas para la defensa de esta Embajada,” letter from Ojeda to Torres, April 22, 1948. AHSRE, number 418, file 728.6-0/510.

6. Mónica Toussaint, Guadalupe Rodríguez y Mario Vázquez, Vecindad y diplomacia. Centroamérica en la política exterior mexicana, 1821–1988 (México: SRE, 2001) 152–53; Guadalupe González, “México ante América Latina. Mirando de reojo a Estados Unidos,” en En búsqueda de una nación soberana. Relaciones internacionales de Mexico, siglos XIX y XX, ed. Jorge Schiavon, Daniela Spenser y Mario Vázquez (México: CIDE y SRE, 2006), 468–69.

7. Amelia Kiddle, México’s Relations with Latin America during the Cárdenas Era (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2016); Friedrich Schuler, Mexico between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934–1940 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2000).

8. Blanca Torres, México y el mundo (México: Senado de la República, 1991); Soledad Loeza, “La fractura mexicana y el golpe de 1954 en Guatemala,” Historia Mexicana 66, no. 2 (2016): 727; Pablo Yankelevich, “América Latina en la agenda diplomática de la revolución mexicana,” in En búsqueda de una nación soberana. Relaciones internacionales de México, siglos XIX y XX, ed. Jorge Schiavon, Daniela Spenser and Mario Vázquez (México, CIDE y SRE, 2004); Jorge Schiavon, “México-Estados Unidos. Estabilidad y seguridad a cambio de autonomía,” in En búsqueda; Toussaint et. al., Vecindad y diplomacia.

9. Lorenzo Meyer, “Relaciones México-Estados Unidos. Arquitectura y montaje de las pautas de la Guerra Fría, 1945–1964,” Foro internacional 50, no. 2 (2010): 204; Juan Mendoza, Cien años de política exterior mexicana. De Francisco I. Madero a Enrique Peña Nieto (México: Cenzontle, 2014), 131; Yankelevich, “América Latina,” 277–79; Schiavon, “México-Estados Unidos,” 423.

10. Jürgen Buchenau. In the Shadow of the Giant. The Making of Mexico’s Central American Policy, 1876–1930 (Tuscaloosa and London: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1996); Kiddle, Mexico’s Relations; Schuler, Mexico between Hitler; Jürgen Buchenau, Plutaro Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution (Maryland and Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Jürgen Buchenau, The Last Caudillo: Alvaro Obregón and the Mexican Revolution (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

11. Soledad Loeza, “La reforma política de Manuel Ávila Camacho,” Historia mexicana 63 (2013): 251–358; Soledad Loeza, “La política intervencionista de Manuel Ávila Camacho: el caso de Argentina en 1945,” Foro internacional 56, no. 2 (2016): 851–902; Soledad Loeza, “The Mexican Political Fracture and the 1954 Coup in Guatemala,” Culture & History 4, no. 1 (2015): e006.

12. Daniela Spenser, En combate: La vida de Lombardo Toledano (México: Combate, 2018); Kiddle, México’s Relations; Schuler, Mexico between Hitler; Humberto Garza, “Desequilibrios y contradicciones en la política exterior de México,” Foro Internacional 24, no. 4 (1984): 443.

13. Renata Keller, “A Foreign Policy for Domestic Consumption: Mexico’s Lukewarm Defense of Castro, 1959–1969,” Latin American Research Review 47, no. 2 (2012): 100–19; Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015).

14. Aaron Moulton, “Building their Own Cold War in their Own Backyard: The Transnational, International Conflicts in the Greater Caribbean Basin, 1944–1954,” Cold War History 15, no. 2 (2015): 135–54 and Nicolás Prados, Cuba in the Caribbean Cold War (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

15. Soledad Loeza, “La política intervencionista de Manuel Ávila Camacho: el caso de Argentina en 1945,” Foro internacional 56, no. 2 (2016): 853.

16. Vanni Pettinà, “Adapting to the New World: Mexico’s International Strategy of Economic Development at the Outset of the Cold War, 1946–1952,” Culture & History, 4, no. 1 (2015): e003.

17. Ryan Alexander, Sons of the Mexican Revolution: Miguel Alemán and His Generation (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico, 2016).

18. Laura Moreno, “Repensando la Guerra Fría: México y Estados Unidos ante el conflicto en Costa Rica de 1948,” Revista estudios, 38, no. 2 (2019): 1–26.

19. Greg Grandin y Gilbert Joseph, A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin America’s Long Cold War (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2010), 18–21; William Booth, “Rethinking Latin America’s Cold War,” The Historical Journal (2020): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X20000412.

20. Thomas Benjamin, La Revolución: Mexico’s Great Revolution as Memory, Myth, and History (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2000).

21. Aaron Moulton, “Militant Roots: The Anti-Fascist Left in the Caribbean Basin, 1945–1954,” E.I.A.L. 28, no. 2 (2017): 14–29; and Moulton, “Building,” 135–54.

22. Telegram from José Figueres to Juan José Arevalo, April 13, 1948, Cartago, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica [hereafter CIRMA], Antigua Guatemala, Fondo Juan José Arévalo, Subfondo Relaciones externas.

23. “Complemento de informaciones rendidas por la vía cableográfica,” letter from Ojeda to Torres, April 24, 1948, AHSRE, number 422, file 728.6-0/510. See the agreement in “Convenio celebrado entre el excelentísimo señor, don Teodoro Picado, presidente de la República de Costa Rica, y el Presidente don Benjamín Nuñes, representante del Ejército de Liberación Nacional,” April 19, 1948, AHSRE, file 728.6-0/4050S. The subject is discussed in Bell, Crisis in Costa Rica; Fabrice Lehoucq, “Class Conflict, Political Crisis and the Breakdown of Democratic Practices in Costa Rica: Reassessing the Origins of the 1948 Civil War,” Journal of Latin American Studies 23, no. 1 (1991): 38–9; Cerdas, “Costa Rica,” 293–97; Longley, Sparrow.

24. Telegram from Torres to Ojeda in San Jose, April 29, 1948, AHSRE, number 51166, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1; telegram from Ojeda to Torres, April 26, San José, AHSRE, número 353, expediente (83-0)/510 “48.”

25. Telegram from Ojeda to Torres in Bogotá, April 19, 1948, AHSRE, expediente 728.6-0/405S.

26. Telegram from Torres to Mexican delegation in Bogotá, April 21, 1948, AHSRE, expediente 728.6-0/405S.

27. On Mexico’s performance in Bogotá, see: Blanca Torres, México y el mundo (México: Colmex, 2010), 82–5; Ignacio Sosa Álvarez, “México y su defensa de la paz, la seguridad y el desarrollo durante la guerra fría: José Gorostiza y las tesis sobre política regional entre Chapultepec y Bogotá,” in Artífices y operadores de la diplomacia mexicana. Siglos XIX y XX, coord. Agustín Sánchez et al., 348–65 (México: Porrúa, UMSNH, CSL, CcyDEL y UNAM, 2004).

28. Toussaint et al, Vecindad, 168.

29. Kiddle, Mexico’s Relations, 31; Schuler, Mexico between Hitler, 11.

30. Telegram from Legación de Guatemala in San José to Arévalo, March 30, 1948, Cartago, CIRMA.

31. Letter from Adolfo Monsanto to Arévalo, April 3, 1948, Mexico, CIRMA; Olander, “Costa Rica in 1948,” 481–82; Schwartzberg, Democracy and U.S. Policy, 183–85.

32. “Llegaron más armas de origen mexicano a Costa Rica,” April 8, 1948, La Prensa Libre [Costa Rica].

33. Longley, “Peaceful Costa Rica,” 154.

34. “Los comunistas mexicanos también envían armas a los de Costa Rica,” April 21, 1948, Panamá América [Panama City]; “Visita del embajador de México,” April 22, 1948, La Tribuna [Panama City]; “El Encargado de Negocios de Mexico rectifica una noticia cablegráfica,” April 28, 1948, La Prensa [Lima]. See “Desmintiendo noticia barco transportaba pertrechos de guerra a Costa Rica,” letter from ambassador to Panama to Torres, April 27, 1948, AHSRE, number 338, file 83.13/510 “48.”1.

35. “Para la reconquista de Belice,” February 20, 1948, El Universal Gráfico [México]; “¿Ocupación de Belice?” February 21, 1948, El Imparcial [Guatemala]; “¡A Belice! ¡A Belice!” February 23, 1948, Excelsior [México].

36. See letter from Northern Caribbean Area Commander to War Office, 25 April 1945, National Archives, Foreign Office 371, AS 2320.

37. Letter from Ambassador to Tegucigalpa to Foreign Office, February 27, 1948, NA, Foreign Office 371, AN 0981.

38. Telegram from Ambassador to Mexico for Foreign Office, March 3, 1948, 4.10pm, NA, Foreign Office 371, AN 0875; letter from Monsanto to Arévalo, March 3, 1948, Mexico, CIRMA.

39. Longley, Sparrow, 80; David Díaz, “La temprana Guerra Fría en Centroamérica: Nathaniel P. Davis, los Estados Unidos y la Guerra Civil de 1948 en Costa Rica,” Revista PSIS (2014): 29; Alexia Ugalde, “‘Caínes despiadados, caínes invasores.’ La invasión del 10 de diciembre de 1948 a Costa Rica en perspectiva nacional y transnacional,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 46 (2020): 18.

40. Telegram from Ojeda to Torres, August 13, 1948, AHSRE, number 1478, file 728.6-0/510 ”48. ”1; Márquez, Jorge, “La política exterior del cardenismo,” en El cardenismo, 1932–1940, coord. Samuel León (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010), 371–435.

41. Telegram from Ojeda to Torres, August 13, 1948, AHSRE, número 1478, expediente 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

42. Letter from Dirección General del Servicio Diplomático to Ojeda, September 27, 1948, AHSRE, número 624,335, expediente IV/533.1(728.6-1)/106592.

43. Telegram from Ojeda to Torres, July 31, 1948, AHSRE, number 51971, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

44. Telegram from Torres to Ojeda, August 2, 1948, AHSRE, number 804, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

45. Telegram from Ambassador to Washington to Torres, August 7, 1948, AHSRE, number 1418, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

46. Telegram from Torres for Ambassador to Washington, August 9, 1948, AHSRE, number 52060, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

47. Letter from Torres to Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (Limón), August 9, 1948, number 511,023, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

48. Letter from Secretaría de la Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas to Torres, August 19, 1948, AHSRE, number 7068, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

49. Letter from Limón to Torres, August 18, 1948; AHSRE, number 22249, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

50. “Ni la Junta de Gobierno ni yo hemos pensado en que México haya vendido aviones para la contrarrevolución en Costa Rica,” August 6, 1948, Diario de Centroamérica [Guatemala].

51. Tanalís Padilla and Louise Walker, “In the Archives: History and Politics,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 1 (2013): 1–10; Patrick Iber, “Managing Mexico’s Cold War: Vicente Lombardo Toledano and the Uses of Political Intelligence,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 1 (2013): 11–19.

52. Jorge Gil, Samuel Schmidt y Jorge Castro, “La red de poder mexicana: el caso de Miguel Alemán,” Revista mexicana de sociología 55, no. 3 (1993): 103–17; Rogelio Hernández, Presidencialismo y hombres fuertes en México. La sucesión presidencial de 1958 (México: Colegio de México, 2015); Alexander, Sons of the Mexican.

53. Stephen Niblo, México in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (Delaware: Scholarly Resources Books, 1999), 162; Enrique Krauze, Mexico: Biography of Power (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1998), 538; Barry Carr, La izquierda mexicana a través del siglo XX (México: Ediciones ERA, 1996), 151–60.

54. Monica Rankin, ¡Mexico, la patria! Propaganda and Production during World War (London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2009); Hernández, Presidencialismo; Meyer, “Relaciones Mexico-Estados Unidos,” 211–13; Loeza, “La reforma política,” 251–358; Torres, México y el mundo; Luis Aboites, “La construcción del centro político en México. Un acercamiento a partir de la extinción de la Contribución Federal 1948),” Historia mexicana 67, no. 4 (2018).

55. Pettinà, “Adapting”; Schiavon, “México-Estados Unidos.”

56. Buchenau, In the Shadow.

57. Telegram from Jorge García-Granados to Arévalo, July 19, 1945, Mexico, D.F. CIRMA.

58. Letter from Gustavo Santiso Gálvez to Arévalo, March 16, 1947, Guatemala, CIRMA. See also Anonymous letter to Arévalo, January 26, 1947, Guatemala, CIRMA and Krauze, Mexico, 595–966.

59. Memo from Valdés Calderón to Arévalo, December 13, 1947, Mexico, CIRMA.

60. Ibid.

61. Buchenau, In the Shadow, 166.

62. Memo from Valdés Calderón to Arévalo, December 13, 1947, Mexico, CIRMA.

63. Synthesis of interview with President Alemán, July 13, 1948, Mexico, D.F., CIRMA.

64. “Publicación de la revista Time referente a una alianza militar entre la República Dominicana, Nicaragua y Honduras,” letter from ambassador in Ciudad Trujillo to Torres, October 14, 1948, AHSRE, número 633, expediente 729.3–0/510.

65. “Documentación a los costarricenses Manuel Mora Valverde, Isabel Car y Judith Ferreto, asilados políticos en la Embajada de México en Costa Rica,” letter from Dirección General del Servicio Diplomático to Subsecretario de Gobernación, May 4, 1948, AHSRE, number 463, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

66. Spenser, En combate; Laura Moreno y José Mejía, “Desde la embajada de Mexico en Costa Rica: exilio de comunistas, calderonistas y legionarios,” Dimensión Antropológica 25, no. 74 (2018): 150–73.

67. Telegram from Ojeda to Torres, July 31, 1948, number 1387, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

68. Jeffrey Gould, “Nicaragua”; Leslie Bethbel e Ian Roxborough, eds., Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948 (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 247.

69. Moreno and Mejía, “Desde la embajada de México,” 155–56.

70. Horacio Crespo, “El comunismo mexicano y la lucha por la paz en los inicios de la Guerra Fría,” Historia Mexicana 66, no. 2 (2016): 659; Gerardo Peláez, “Guerra Fría, comunismo y sindicatos en Mexico (1946–1950),” La Haine, www.lahaine.org. Consulted May 11, 2021; Keller, Mexico’s Cold War, 35–36; Alexander, Sons of the Mexican Revolution, 12.

71. Spencer, En combate, 348.

72. Telegram from Ambassador at Washington to Foreign Office, April 14, 1948, NA, Foreign Office 371, AN 1600; letter from Juan Bosch to Figueres, February 3, 949, La Habana, CIRMA; Meyer, “Relaciones Mexico-Estados Unidos,” 219; Aaron Moulton, “Counterrevolutionary Friends: Caribbean Basin Dictators and Guatemalan Exiles against the Guatemalan Revolution,” The Americas 76, no. 1 (2019): 226.

73. Kiddle, Mexico’s Relations, 199.

74. Personal note, September 10, 1947 Diario personal de Lázaro Cárdenas, México, Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia (BNAH, desde ahora), Ciudad de México, Archivo General Lázaro Cárdenas del Ríos, 1946, E1-D294-304-FF1-119.

75. Elisa Servín, “El movimiento henriquista y la reivindicación de la revolución mexicana,” Desacatos 1 (1999): 1–13; Elisa Servín, “Algunas ramas de un árbol frondoso: el cardenismo a mediados del siglo XX,” Historias 69, no. 1 (2008): 81–96.

76. Letter from Ambassador in Tegucigalpa to Foreign Office, February 27, 1948, NA, FO 371, AN 0981.

77. ^“Sobre adquisición de aviones por el señor Julio López Macegosa,” telegram from Dirección General del Servicio Diplomático to Secretario de Hacienda y Crédito Público, August 13, 1948, number 5,111,281, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

78. See also letter from Limón to Torres, August 18, 1948, number 7958, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1; letter from Secretaría de la Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas to Torres, August 19, 1948, AHSRE, number 7068, file 728.6-0/510 “48.”1.

79. Aaron Moulton, “Becoming the Dictator’s Agents: Dominican Counterintelligence in Mexico City and the Spanish Exiles’ Sabotage of the 1949 Luperón Expedition,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 26, no. 2 (2020): 212–14.

80. Letter from Ambassador in Mexico to Foreign Office, August 11, 1948, FO 371, AN 3028.

81. Personal note, October 27, 1948, Villa Obregón, Diario personal de Lázaro Cardenas, BNAH, 1948–1949, E1-D322-32-FF1-333

82. Personal note, October 27, 1948, Villa Obregón, Diario personal de Lázaro Cárdenas, BNAH, 1948–1949, E1-D322-32-FF1-333; also Aaron Moulton, “The Dominican Dictator’s Funds and Guns in Costa Rica’s Wars of 1948,” Journal of Military History 85, no. 3 (2021): 713–33.

83. Personal note, December 13, 1948, Villa Obregón, Diario personal de Lázaro Cardenas, BNAH, Memorias del general Lázaro Cárdenas: 1948–1949, E1-D322-332-FF1-333.

84. Letter from Valdés to Arévalo, December 16, 1948, CIRMA.

85. Letter from Arévalo to Cárdenas, December 20, 1948, ciudad de Guatemala, BNAH, Memorias del general Lázaro Cárdenas: 1948–1949, E1-D322-332-FF1-333. Moulton, “Building their own Cold War.”

86. Letter from Cárdenas to Arévalo, April 6, 1949, Morelia, BNAH, Memorias del general Lázaro Cárdenas: 1948–1949, E1-D322-332-FF1-333.

87. Soledad Loeza, “The Mexican Political Fracture,” e006.