For more than a century and a half, Costa Rica has narrated its national history with a surprising void in the very heart of its eastern border. While the collective memory repeated the exploits of Santa Rosa and the Second Battle of Rivas, the country left another decisive episode in the shadows: the Transit Campaign (1856–1857), the only fluvial campaign organized and victorious in the history of Central America, led by Major Máximo Blanco Rodríguez and the Vanguard Column, whose men sailed up the San Juan in extreme conditions, captured nine filibuster steamboats, and suffocated William Walker’s interoceanic route.
That operation—due to its logistical precision, territorial control, and control of the continent’s strategic artery—altered the course of the war in Nicaragua and blocked the expansion of slavery into Central America and Mexico.

However, that extraordinary triumph was not converted into a national symbol.
It was silenced, cut short, displaced to the margins of official history.
And not out of neglect.

The trilogy The Waters of Oblivion arises from this mystery and explains it step by step.

I. The origin: a deleted victory

In The Bitter Waters of the San Juan, the first book, I reconstruct the campaign from the mud, fever, and combat: from the desperate construction of rafts and improvised parapets, through the successive capture of the steamboats, to the total isolation of the filibusters on the Transit Route.
This volume recovers, with documentary rigor and historical narrative, the moment in which Blanco and his men achieved something inconceivable: controlling an interoceanic corridor with blood and mud with just two hundred sick and hungry soldiers without logistical support.

But the victory had an unexpected political price.
The military and symbolic rise of Blanco bothered factions within the Mora government and power sectors associated with transit commercial interests. The river campaign was first minimized, then omitted, and finally absorbed by a national narrative that, since the late nineteenth century, favored other symbols and other protagonists.

That first silence—born of internal political conflict—would be only the beginning.

II. The mechanism of oblivion: a State decision

The second book, Silenced Waters, shows that this omission was neither accidental nor temporary.
During the following decades, as Costa Rica negotiated, defended, and reinterpreted its border rights over the San Juan, the memory of the river campaign became an uncomfortable political burden.

Between 1858 and 1916, in the various legal episodes of the Cañas–Jerez Treaty, the Cleveland Award, the disputes over navigation, sovereignty, and use of the river, and the dispute over the banks, the existence of a victorious military campaign in Nicaraguan territory—and particularly its strategic success over the interoceanic route—was not used, mentioned, or vindicated.
It became a dead space within the country’s historical record.

The arrival of the Second Republic did not break this void; it consolidated it.
The new “civic and peaceful” identity of the Costa Rican State preferred a history without military culture, without victorious campaigns, without uncomfortable commanders.
The result was a structural disconnection between the real history of the San Juan and Costa Rican diplomacy for more than a century.

III. The water border: disputes and lost opportunities

In The Water Border, the third volume, I analyze the accumulated consequence of this oblivion.

The Isla Calero disputes, the controversy over navigation, the historical claims reinterpreted from Nicaragua, and the arguments presented before The Hague in the 21st century show that Costa Rica has defended its sovereignty with partial resources, without integrating the totality of its territorial and military memory, and without using one of the most powerful elements of its historical position:
the effective control of the San Juan in 1856–1857.

By omitting this decisive campaign in the construction of its legal position, Costa Rica has left on the table a set of historical arguments that, used correctly, could have reinforced its sovereign narrative during the arbitrations of the 19th century, the disputes of the 20th century, and the international defense of the 21st century.

For 150 years, the country has defended the river without telling its true history.

IV. The recovery: memory, geopolitics, and future

The complete trilogy proposes a broader horizon:
rescuing history not only to correct the past but to guide the future.

The world today is in an accelerated process of reconfiguration of maritime routes, regional alliances, and interoceanic projects driven by new hegemonies.
In that context, the Caribbean, Central America, and the San Juan are once again strategic pieces.

For Costa Rica, updating its memory of the river campaign, understanding the geopolitical significance of the San Juan, and recognizing the figure of Máximo Blanco is not an act of nostalgia:
it is a tool to participate—with its own voice and historical foundations—in the debates on infrastructure, connectivity, and corridors of the 21st century.

Conclusion

The Waters of Oblivion is more than a literary trilogy.
It is a historical reconstruction project, a public memory tool, and an attempt to return to Costa Rica an essential chapter of its territorial identity.

From the silent epic of the Vanguard Column to the contemporary disputes of The Hague, passing through the treaties, diplomacy, and the narrative void built for more than a century, this trilogy reveals a clear guiding thread:

When a country renounces its memory, it renounces part of its sovereignty.
When it recovers it, it has a future again.