This analysis would not be complete – nor would it be intellectually honest – without recognizing the lens from which it is written. The gaze is that of a Costa Rican aware of the shared history, complex and at times confrontational, with Nicaragua. A history that can no longer be approached solely as a legal or diplomatic problem, but as a strategic knot of memory, sovereignty and future projection.
The work developed over the years, culminating in the trilogy Las Aguas Amargas del San Juan and the digital project aguasamargas.com, is not only a literary exploration of the past. It is, above all, a case study on how historical narratives -or their absence- condition the capacity for action of states, especially small nations, in contexts of geopolitical transformation.
The San Juan River is not simply a river border. It is a living symbol: of contested sovereignty, of selective memory, and of a collaborative potential that, for more than a century, has been systematically neglected.
From bilateral dispute to geopolitical pressure point
In the context of the new hemispheric order that is beginning to take shape – marked by growing tensions between blocs, the reconfiguration of U.S. power and increasingly coordinated responses from the so-called Global South – the relationship between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is no longer a peripheral bilateral issue.
The Caribbean-Central America axis is once again acquiring strategic relevance. In this scenario, the San Juan emerges as a pressure point, not for its immediate military value, but for its symbolic, legal and logistical value.
An obvious risk arises here: the external instrumentalization of an unresolved historical conflict.
The danger of instrumentalization
In scenarios of regional tension, unresolved historical disputes become useful tools for external actors. For a revisionist power, exacerbating the San Juan dispute could function as a mechanism of distraction or indirect destabilization. For a hegemonic power in relative retreat, presenting itself as the exclusive guarantor of Costa Rican security -a country without an army- could justify new forms of political interference or strategic presence in the region.
In both cases, local agency is diluted. The story ceases to be its own tool and becomes someone else’s argument.
The imperative need for its own historical agency
Therefore, this analysis argues that this is a critical moment -perhaps unrepeatable- for Costa Rica and Nicaragua to reorder their relationship based on sovereignty and mutual interest, not on forced alignments with external blocs.
A genuine agreement on the San Juan River, based on the recognition of shared rights – navigation, environmental protection, sustainable development, binational management – would be much more than a diplomatic achievement. It would represent an act of strategic soft power, a demonstration of historical maturity and an affirmation that small nations can also exercise leadership when they act with intelligence and memory.
An avoidable catastrophe
It would be a tragic irony – and a historic defeat for all of Central America – if, after centuries of coexistence and shared conflict, the fate of the relationship between Costa Rica and Nicaragua were to end up being dictated by the logic of a new Cold War.
To allow the San Juan dispute to become a proxy for conflicts between great powers would be to give up the fundamental right to write our own future.
The true necessary sunset
This geopolitical analysis is marked by a personal conviction, forged in the study of archives, newspapers and in the patient observation of the river itself: the true necessary decline is not that of one country or another, but that of the inherited paradigms of external domination and automatic confrontation.
The possible future of Central America depends on recovering historical agency: the capacity of nations -large and small- to resolve their complexities with their own vision, before the whirlwind of global interests decides for them.
This is the ultimate motivation of my writing, both in historical fiction and strategic analysis: to contribute to a future where the history of Central America is once again written, thought and decided by Central Americans.
