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THE HEMISPHERE: Everybody’s War

3 minute read
TIME

When gunfire began crackling in Costa Rica’s southern mountains two weeks ago, Latin Americans labeled the uprising another small-scale civil war. Last week they knew better. What had started as a purely local conflict between rival political factions threatened to involve all Central America.

To support Costa Rica’s leftist government, which was beaten in last month’s presidential elections, Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza sent fighter planes and transports and 400 well-drilled National Guardsmen to San Jose. At La Sabana airport, the Nicaraguans boarded

Red Cross trucks and headed off to the front.

The Neighbors. Meanwhile, Neighbor Guatemala took its stand behind the partisans of right-wing Editor Otilio Ulate, whose election had been annulled by Costa Rica’s Congress. The rebels’ commandeered TACA DC-35 made 19 trips to Guatemala for guns and ammunition. Led by a M.I.T.-trained planter [named] Jose Figueres, the Ulatistas fought so well that the government had to ask for more help.

Dictator Tiburcio Carias of Honduras and the Dominican Republic’s Dictator Trujillo obliged. They sent pilots and mechanics to Costa Rica to keep government planes flying. To Nicaragua’s Somoza, helping Costa Rica’s leftwing, Communist-backed government was partly a matter of business. If Ulate won the war, Somoza stood to lose the fat profits of a business he had been running with the family of Costa Rica’s ex-President Calderon Guardia. The business: selling Nicaraguan cattle in Costa Rica, contrary to the laws of both countries. On the other hand, Guatemala’s mildly leftist President Juan Jose Arevalo was quite willing to help Costa Rica’s rightists if that would hurt old enemy “Tacho” Somoza.

The Commissar. There were many other pieces in the political crazy quilt. In Costa Rica, bumbling President Teodoro Picado had been shoved aside, and Communist Chieftain Manuel Mora was openly bossing the government show from Bella Vista fortress. Shrewd Manuel Mora gave his Communists guns, then held them ready in the capital. Campesinos and other “volunteers” were shipped off to fight the Ulatistas.

Ulatistas had plenty of fight. “Nada nos atajard!” (Nothing will stop us!) screamed their mountain radio. Their leader, Planter Figueres, predicted the opening of new guerrilla fronts. Left to themselves, the rebels might win. But with Nicaragua behind the faltering government forces, and the Guatemalans doing their bit for the opposition, it looked as though Costa Rica, which Peru’s Haya de la Torre had called “the Czechoslovakia of the Western Hemisphere,” might instead become an international battleground on the pattern of civil-war Spain.

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