Context, scope, and relationship to the trilogy
The Jerez–Molina Treaty, signed in 1896 between Costa Rica and Nicaragua by chancellors José Gregorio Jerez (Nicaragua) and Ascensión Esquivel Molina (Costa Rica), is one of the fundamental diplomatic documents for the practical definition of the land border in the northern zone, clarifying aspects that the Cañas–Jerez Treaty (1858) and the Arbitral Award of President Grover Cleveland (1888) had left open or insufficiently specified.
Its importance lies in the fact that it develops, organizes, and delimits on the ground several of the provisions of the Cleveland Award, in particular those referring to:
- the demarcation of border landmarks,
- the operational interpretation of the course of the San Juan River,
- the practical use of its waters,
- the articulation of Costa Rican navigation,
- and the relationship between Nicaraguan sovereignty over the river and the derived rights for Costa Rica.
Unlike the Cañas–Jerez Treaty—foundational but often ambiguous—and the Cleveland Award—clarifying but distant—, the Jerez–Molina Treaty grounds the obligations on an administrative, geographic, and technical level, becoming an indispensable document for understanding the modern border.
Its relevance within the trilogy
In the narrative–historical project of Las Aguas del Olvido, the Jerez–Molina Treaty functions as an intermediate link in a long chain of diplomatic decisions in which the absence—or voluntary omission—of the Transit Campaign (1856–1857) becomes evident again.
Although almost forty years had passed by 1896 since the Costa Rican column of Máximo Blanco had captured the filibuster steamers, blocked the interoceanic route, and de facto secured Costa Rican sovereignty in the San Juan, the truth is that:
- the treaty does not incorporate the most decisive military antecedent in the region;
- nor does it recognize the Costa Rican strategic control over the southern bank during the war;
- nor does it use the Blanco campaign as a historical argument in the territorial negotiation.
This exclusion – which is not accidental but part of a diplomatic pattern – is part of what the trilogy calls “the dead space of memory”: a historical vacuum carried over from the 19th century and later reinforced by the Second Republic, which weakened the Costa Rican position in its subsequent disputes.
Thus, the Jerez–Molina Treaty is key not only for what it says, but for what it does not say: it constitutes another evidence of how the military history of the San Juan was progressively separated from the diplomatic history, creating a gap that still conditions the present.
To consult the complete document
👉 Download PDF of the Jerez–Molina Treaty (1896)
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