The San Juan River and the problem of historical memory in international litigation.
Introduction
In international law, history is not a mere narrative background: it is a strategic input. Treaties, arbitral awards and international judgments are interpreted-explicitly or implicitly-in the light of historical contexts that give meaning to concepts such as sovereignty, use, effective control and legitimacy.
The case of the San Juan River between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is a unique example of how the deliberate omission of a key historical episode -the Transit Campaign of 1856-1857- has generated a narrative vacuum that has conditioned, for more than a century, the Costa Rican legal and political position.
This article proposes a simple but uncomfortable thesis: when a State renounces to fully integrate its history into its legal argumentation, its sovereign defense is structurally weakened.
The Transit Campaign: a historical fact with legal value
Between December 1856 and March 1857, Costa Rica executed a river military operation of great strategic complexity on the San Juan River. Under the command of Major Máximo Blanco Rodríguez, Costa Rican forces captured steamships, blocked the Transit Route -the main inter-oceanic corridor prior to the Panama Canal- and disarticulated William Walker’s filibuster logistics.
From a contemporary perspective, this campaign brings together elements that today would be considered relevant in terms of international law:
- effective exercise of control over a strategic road
- organized and sustained military use
- management of captured resources
- defense of territorial integrity in the face of a transnational threat
However, this episode was not systematically integrated into the official Costa Rican narrative or its subsequent diplomatic projection.
From the 19th to the 20th century: the construction of silence
The silencing of the Transit Campaign was not accidental.
In the 19th century, post-war internal political conflict, factional tensions and the tragic fate of President Juan Rafael Mora generated a selective narrative of the past. Some figures were exalted; others, such as Máximo Blanco, were relegated to the margins.
In the 20th century, particularly after the creation of the Second Republic, this silence was inherited and normalized. The new national identity, centered on demilitarization and pacifism, tended to minimize complex military episodes that did not fit the founding narrative.
The result was an incomplete historiography that, without explicitly intending to do so, left out a precedent with potential legal and geopolitical impact.
Treaties, awards and litigation without a complete history
From the Cañas-Jerez Treaty (1858) to the Cleveland and Alexander arbitration awards, and more recently the judgments of the International Court of Justice in The Hague (2009, 2015), Costa Rica has partially successfully defended its navigational rights and certain legal principles.
However, these defenses have been built without explicitly incorporating the Transit Campaign as a historical-operational antecedent.
This has generated a paradox:
Costa Rica has defended the law, but has renounced to defend the history that gave density to the law.
In practical terms, this has allowed the regional and global narrative to perceive the conflict as a purely legal dispute, detached from a past in which Costa Rica exercised effective control over the river corridor.
Memory, sovereignty and interoceanic future
Today, when the world is once again looking to Central America as a strategic space for inter-oceanic routes, logistical infrastructure and geopolitical alliances, the case of the San Juan River takes on a new dimension.
Historical memory ceases to be an academic matter and becomes a strategic asset.
Reintegrating the Transit Campaign into the contemporary understanding of the conflict does not imply reopening disputes or questioning judicial rulings. It implies something more profound: restoring the historical continuity necessary for a country to negotiate from a position of greater clarity, legitimacy and long-term vision.
Conclusion
The San Juan River is not just a geographical boundary or a legal object. It is a space where history, law and geopolitics converge.
When a nation accepts a fragmented memory, it also accepts a fragmented sovereignty.
The critical recovery of episodes such as the Transit Campaign does not seek to glorify the past, but to complete it. And only a complete history makes it possible to build legal and political strategies that meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Editorial note
This article is part of the intellectual project that accompanies the trilogy Las Aguas Amargas del San Juan – Aguas Silenciadas – La Frontera del Agua, dedicated to analyzing the relationship between historical memory, sovereignty and geopolitics in Central America.
