First civil war decided by turncoat mule

By Hubert Solano

There are a lot of famous asses in Costa Rica’s past. Hidden among the more embarrassing episodes in the country’s history there is even the story of how San José came to be the capital of Costa Rica because of a mule.

In April 1823, just two years after gaining its independence from Spain, Costa Rica endured its first civil war when the people of San José and Alajuela joined forces to fight against those of Cartago and Heredia.

The people of San José and Alajuela wanted to join Mexican ruler Agustín Iturbide, while those of Cartago and Heredia declared Costa Rica part of the Federal Republic of Colombia, under the leadership of General Simón Bolívar.

Neither Bolívar nor Iturbide knew of the war, much less of its winner being decided by a mule, all of which is an event which even today, 172 years later, has yet to receive wide attention. For both the winners and losers in the war were very careful to keep the story quiet. Nobody wanted to make such a military farce public knowledge.

In those days, Cartago was the capital of Costa Rica, a title it had been proud to hold since the beginning of Spanish colonization. San José, along with Alajuela, Heredia, Escazú, Ujarras, Boruca and Bagaces, were the main towns. Costa Rica’s population was about 57,000.

On April 3, 1823, the Constitutional Congress met in Cartago and declared that Costa Rica “is now absolutely free and independent of any power”.

However, four days later the same Congress decreed that Costa Rica be ruled by Colombia.

This infuriated the people of Cartago and Heredia, who were in favor of a monarchy and had at that very time been thinking of aligning themselves with Iturbide’s empire, so that they would continue to receive privileges, jobs and exercise political power just as they had during the years of Spanish rule.

For their part, the residents of San José and Alajuela were in favor of the republican system, in the style of Bolívar.

In a effort to put a stop to Bolívar’s plan to amalgate Costa Rica with Columbia, the people of Cartago launched a coup d’etat on March 29 to bring down the legitimately formed government. From that moment the imperial flag again flew in Cartago.

The reaction of the people of San José and Alajuela was immediate. War was declared; an army was formed and marched to the front under the leadership of General Gregorio José Ramírez.

The first thing that Ramírez did was to install a gallows in San José to mete out justice to anyone found guilty of treason or cowardice.

Ramírez commanded a force of 3,000 men, mostly from San José, Alajuelita, Murciélago (Tibás), Zapote and Mata Redonda. They only had two trained companies. Their forces comprised artillery, lancers, horsemen and fusiliers.

In Cartago meanwhile, the troops were in the hands of one Joaquín de Oreamuno, old and sick, who, on the morning of battle, could not be persuaded to leave the comfort of his bed, because of the cold.

The Cartagans turned the sacristy of the parish church into a cartridge factory while civil and military orders and proclamations were issued from the house of Fr. José Joaquín de Alvarado. The Church of the Virgen de los Angeles de Cartago was a propaganda vehicle in the war.

The Cartago monarchists had decided that April 6 would be the day they swore fidelity to the empire of Iturbide I.

But General Gregorio José Ramírez swore that this event should never take place. On April 4, he sent his forces out from San José, heading east for Ochomogo in Cartago, where they arrived one day later.

At the same time, the troops from Cartago also left for Ochomogo. This was where the mother of all battles in Costa Rica was to take place.

Neither army would ever speak about the mule’s disgraceful deed

Ochomogo, Marte’s camp, was at a height of 1,500 meters in a valley formed by the spurs of Irazú volcano and La Carpintera hills.

The Cartagans won the first skirmishes, when a company advancing from San José was captured without a single shot being fired. A second advance had the same luck.

Then it was the massacre. The troops of San José launched an attack on the Cartagans and blood began to flow. After three hours of combat, the Cartago troops began to lose ground. And it was at this point that Cartago lost its right to be the Capital of Costa Rica to San José.

In this war only the Cartagans, by virtue of being from the colonial capital, had a cannon. It had been transported by mule to Ochomogo.

While the Cartagan forces held the upper hand, it had not been used. But when the situation began to change, they decided it was time to use the big gun. They did not bother to take it down from the mule but decided to fire it from the beast’s back. This was their downfall. Just as the cannon was about to go off, the mule did an abrupt U-turn and the gun fired into the Cartago soldiers instead.

When they saw the cannonball coming for them, the Cartagans took off running, never to return to the Marte battlefield.
Neither of the two camps ever spoke of the mule’s disgraceful deed. During the whole of the last century and half of this one, the story was kept a secret.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that a Cartago man, Fernando Runebaum Leiva, a learned lawyer, teacher and lover of civic education, began to speak of the curious incident. And in this way one of the most unusual episodes in Costa Rican history came to light.

So says the current president of the Colegio de Periodistas de Costa Rica, José Rafael Cordero Croceri, in many of his publications and in his last book, La Leyenda Negra de Morazán (the Black Legend of Morazán). As for the imperialist forces of Heredia, they beat the Alajuela republicans, who retreated when they saw the Heredia troops armed with cannons, but which were in reality made of wood.
When the Heredia troops came face to face with the soldiers of San José at the Virilla River, they realized that the San José forces had triumphed at Ochomogo and promptly surrendered.

The sad epilogue to this war goes as follows:

• The letter sent to Bolívar, announcing that Costa Rica wanted to be ruled by Columbia, never arrived.
• In Ochomogo, the San José forces suffered 17 deaths and 32 injuries and the Cartagans had four killed and injured nine.
• The truth was that several days before the decisive battle, the Iturbide regime had fallen in Mexico. The news reached here several weeks later.
• And never did anyone acknowledge the role of the mule in the decision to make San José the capital.