The Early History of

Costa Rica’s Labor Movement

by
Marc Edelman*

Las luchas sociales en Costa Rica 1870-1930. Vladimir de la Cruz (San

José: Coedición Editorial Costa Rica and Editorial Universidad de
Costa Rica, 1980).
Los mártires de Chicago y el 1°de mayo de 1913. Vladimir de la Cruz
(San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1985).
In a recent symposium in the Costa Rican journal Revista de
Historia, the question was posed as to whether in that country there is &dquo;a
new historiographic generation&dquo; (Revista de Historia, 1985). Despite
some minor semantic differences, participants in the debate agree that in
Costa Rica there have been significant qualitative changes in the writing
of history during the past 15 years. From narrative institutional and
biographical accounts authored by those who were &dquo;historians by
vocation, not by training&dquo; (Melendez, 1985: 22), the discipline has
increasingly incorporated more sophisticated methodologies and a
broader set of thematic and theoretical concerns. The growing interest
in social, economic, and demographic history elsewhere in Latin
America and the presence in Costa Rica of a small but dynamic group of
foreign and foreign-trained historians have been particularly important
in this process of &dquo;generational&dquo; change (Araya, 1985).
The works reviewed here are a product of this transition, representing
an effort by a historian formed in the old mold to tackle a subject of
characteristic interest to social historians of the &dquo;new generation.&dquo;
Vladimir de la Cruz, Professor of History at the University of Costa
Rica and Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty at the National University
in Heredia, has broken new ground in these studies of the early history
of the labor movement in Costa Rica. His focus on the working classes,
present (if at all) in most previous writing largely as passive spectators to
elite maneuverings, marks a significant step forward in Costa Rica
historical investigation, and the wealth of new material he has assembled

*Marc Edelman teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 57, Vol. 15 No. 2, Spring 1988 81-87
a 1988 Latin American Perspectives

81

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will inevitably be a key point of reference for any serious future work in
this area. De la Cruz’s analysis of this material and his choice of sources,
however, are strongly influenced by traditional historiographical
approaches and, for this reason, do not always adequately address the
interesting issues he raises.
Las luchas sociales en Costa Rica, presented originally as a licencia-
tura thesis at the University of Costa Rica, received considerable
acclaim when it was first published in 1980. De la Cruz has assembled a
massive amount of information on labor, socialist, and anti-imperialist
movements in Costa Rica during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. These are subjects traditional historians had largely ignored
and that were treated only in cursory fashion by Communist party
historians, who tended to view them as relatively insignificant antece-
dents in that remote period prior to the founding of their party in 19311
(Gamboa, 1975).
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, two different and largely
unconnected types of labor activity existed in Costa Rica. Urban
artisans in the central part of the country, some under leaders influenced
by classic liberalism or Freemasonry, established mutual assistance
organizations, often with employer participation. In a few cases, as with
the bakers’ organization, these groups led successful strikes for higher
wages and better working conditions, but in general they limited
themselves to creating savings associations and undertaking cultural
activities. On the distant Atlantic coast, first Chinese and then Italian
laborers, imported to build railroads, rioted and went on strike against
inhuman working conditions. By the first years of the twentieth century,
working-class newspapers appeared and a new Liga de Obreros
(Worker’s League) was formed that transcended the occupation-,
enterprise-, and industry-based organizations that had proliferated until
then.
In 1909 a small group of intellectuals founded the Centro de Estudios
Sociales &dquo;Germinal,&dquo; which served as a forum for worker education and
organization. Influenced by Spanish anarchosyndicalism, the center’s
leaders included several individuals who were to have a major impact on
Costa Rican education and letters, notably Omar Dengo, Carmen Lyra,
and Joaquin Garcia Monge. The group was instrumental in the creation
of the Confederaci6n General de Trabajadores (General Confederation
of Workers, or CGT) that, in 1920, led a major strike that won the
eight-hour day for large numbers of urban workers.

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 83

Costa Rica appears to have been insulated from the revolutionary

upsurge in Europe to a greater degree than other Latin American
countries, which received more immigrants or that had larger urban
proletariats. Even though a Centro Socialista sympathetic to the
Russian Revolution was created in 1919 under the direction of Dr.
Aniceto Montero, the Bolsheviks had few followers in Costa Rica until
the late 1920s. De la Cruz points repeatedly, although not systematically,
to the role of immigrants in Latin America in spreading revolutionary
ideas. But their influence cannot have been very great, since the CGT
decided in 1923 to dissolve and merge into the Partido Reformista led by
the flamboyant ex-priest and general, Jorge Volio. There were, of course,
more strikes and memorial meetings to commemorate the death of

Lenin, contacts with workers’ organizations in El Salvador, the creation

of a Popular University under Garcia Monge’s direction, and move-
ments against the presence of foreign monopolies and the U.S.occupa-
tion of Nicaragua, as well as a number of other manifestations of
growing ferment. De la Cruz discusses all of these in considerable detail
although in a somewhat rambling style. But throughout the 1920s
efforts to found lasting working-class political organizations foundered.
It is difficult to separate the episodic quality of De la Cruz’s account
from a larger problem of periodization that pervades his work. &dquo;The
idea (was),&dquo; he writes in the introduction (1980: 15), &dquo;to formulate the
work in one direction: the workers’ movement in the 1870-1930 period,
in order to justify from there the birth of the (Communist) Party.&dquo;
This peculiar partisan teleology exacerbates the fragmentary quality
of the analysis in Las luchas sociales..., since the participants in the
various movements and organizations, both failed and successful, are
not always measured in terms of their own historical context, but in
relation to distant processes or future events. The approach also begs
some interesting questions. It is clear, for example, from De la Cruz’s
work that there were at least sporadic Comintern activities in Costa Rica
prior to the founding of the Communist Party in 1931, but it is not
possible to tell how these contributed to that event. Similarly, little
attention is given to how the ideologically and organizationally
heterogeneous workers’ organizations or the anarchosyndicalist intel-
lectuals of the Germinal Center were won over to the Communist Party
position, as many-although by no means all-eventually were. De la
Cruz does not consider the inconvenient fact that even as late as 1929 the
Germinal Center sent delegates to Buenos Aires to attend the founding

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84

conference of the anarchosyndicalist Asociaci6n Continental Ameri-

cana Trabaj adores (Continental American Association of Workers)
de
(Godio, 1983: 162-163).
An additional difficulty with De la Cruz’s work that again contributes
to its somewhat wooden, discursive quality is its virtually exclusive
reliance on Costa Rican newspaper sources. The manifestations of
social struggle that appear in print, even in workers’ publications, are
inevitably limited to certain kinds of events covered in accordance with
existing journalistic standards. Agrarian struggles, in particular, re-
ceived little coverage in the national press and are covered only in a
cursory fashion by De la Cruz (1980: 71-75). Peasant resistance to
landlord encroachments was particularly significant during the 1900-
1930 period and was covered in considerable detail in provincial
newspapers that De la Cruz apparently did not examine. The 19111
Abangares miners’ strike (Garcia, 1984), in which some 14 West Indian
foremen were killed by Hispanic laborers, is not discussed by De la
Cruz, who is usually unconcerned with and insensitive to the important
issue of racism and ethnic divisions within the working class. (At
another point, in discussing a riot by Chinese workers, he refers to the
death of one worker of &dquo;coolie nationality&dquo; [1985: 55].)
There is also abundant documentation on both rural and urban
struggles in Costa Rica’s National Archives, where there is a well-
organized collection of ministry reports, judicial proceedings, petitions,
and other documents that could have greatly enriched De la Cruz’s
work. He seems not to have considered consulting it, however. Foreign
primary and secondary sources that might have had bearing on the
Costa Rican situation or provided comparative perspectives are almost
entirely absent from his bibliography. De la Cruz’s comment (1985: 19)
that he did not speak with surviving pre-1930 labor leaders because,
among other reasons, their addresses were unknown, is not convincing,
especially since it concerns a society in which even today virtually
anyone of even minimal importance or fame can be located and
interviewed with little effort.
In spite of these caveats, Las luchas sociales is an important book.
...

De la Cruz has assembled a truly massive amount of information on a

subject that has rarely been studied in any depth before. His attention to
repressive measures taken by the state, such as the provisions banning
communist literature and establishing internal exile in the early 1930s,
fills a significant gap in the accounts of historians who emphasize Costa
Rica’s liberal democratic heritage. De la Cruz’s book will be the

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 85

necessary point of departure for any member of the &dquo;new generation&dquo; of

Costa Rican social historians who wishes to pursue related topics.
Los mdrtires de Chicago y el I’de mayo de 1913 is, as even its title
suggests, a less coherent work than Las luchas sociales.... It consists of
two essays by de la Cruz on Chicago’s Haymarket martyrs and on the
first celebration of May Day in Costa Rica in 1913. Added as appendices
are the texts of 1913 May Day speeches by several of Costa Rica’s early

leading socialists, two articles on the trial of the Haymarket activists

that Josd Marti contributed to the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion
in 1886 and 1888, and the courtroom statements of the Haymarket
defendants themselves.
De la Cruz’s essay on the Haymarket martyrs, based entirely on a
small number of secondary sources, is not intended to be an original
contribution and is therefore not likely to be of interest to serious
students of labor history. Lengthy passages from the study on Costa
Rica’s first May Day celebration appeared earlier in various chapters of
Las luchas sociales..., although it also contains interesting additional
material culled from the nation’s press. In brief, de la Cruz describes
how the workers’ mutual aid societies that originally included employers
gradually gave way first to mutual aid societies and clubs that excluded
employers and then to more combative gremios (guilds) and unions. The
main political parties founded workers’ clubs in an effort to contain and
channel the growing effervescence. The labor press expanded and
foreign publications by Kropotkin and others began to circulate with
increasing frequency.
However, de la Cruz’s constant alternation between strictly chrono-
logical listings of events and sketchy analytical passages that leave many
questions unanswered is hardly satisfying. Thus, for example, in a
section that outlines coverage in the Costa Rican press of events leading
up to the 1886 international movement for an eight-hour day, we read
seven pages of paragraphs such as the following:

26 de marzo:
marzo. In/~ the
~Ac United ~a~, the
C//!!~ States, ~4pac/!c Indian
~c Apache T~~an Jer6nimo
ycromwo
surrenders unconditionally in Arizona. In London, a large demonstration
of unemployed is expected in front of the Royal Exchange. In Brussels, it
is reported that there was a socialist uprising in Liège (1985: 38).

The sections on the Costa Rican situation in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries and on capital accumulation (1985: 43-47) are

similarly sketchy, although de la Cruz’s brief description of how imports

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86

of English manufactures undermined domestic artisanry is important

for understanding the rise of the labor movement. The strength of the
essay is in its concise analysis of the changing character of workers’
struggles and the transition from mutual aid to classist organizations in
the decades leading up to the celebration of Costa Rica’s first May Day.
Plans for May Day 1913, as described by de la Cruz (1985: 80), seem
in retrospect a bit quixotic. The celebration was to begin at 8:00 a.m.
with a soccer match between the &dquo;Libertad&dquo; and &dquo;Oriente&dquo; sports clubs.
This was to be followed at 9:30 by a distribution of free candy for poor
children. At 10:00 the &dquo;Aeronaut&dquo; Masterson was supposed to take his
&dquo;new balloon&dquo; aloft and provide a &dquo;sensational descent and new
surprises for the public.&dquo; Only at noon would the speeches begin, to be
followed by a parade to the graves of four workers killed the year before
in an industrial accident.
Everything seems to have gone as planned, except that the Aeronaut
Masterson was not able to make his ascent due to the high winds. As to
what happened to the labor movement in the weeks and years after the
country’s first May Day, we know very little from de la Cruz’s essay.
While one can suppose that the event was inspirational and that there
were May Day celebrations in 1914 and 1915 and thereafter, the author

simply leaves off his narrative after summarizing the press reports on the
rally.
The most interesting section of Los mdrtires de Chicago... is likely to
be the appendices. The May Day address by Joaquin Garcia Monge is
especially forceful and prescient as regards the danger of intervention in
Central America by

~yorc~M ca~/c q/prpy w/!o, ~Ac ~o~ M<?~ arrtvc ~o ~c .yoMM~q/’~T~M

the foreign eagle of preywho,if he does not arrive to thesound of drums
and trumpets, glitters with gold coins and slowly becomes the master of the
consciences of corrupt politicians, and, legally, of our territory (1985: 97).

Garcia Monge’s speech, as well as his other writings, mark him as an

outstanding and eloquent figure in the history of Latin American
socialism, unjustly ignored outside his native country.
Jose Marti’s articles on the trial of the Haymarket activists are an odd
yet nonetheless fascinating addition to Los martires de Chicago....
Curiously, Marti’s articles do not support the case that de la Cruz, like
most labor historians sympathetic to the U.S. eight-hour-day movement,
is eager to make, namely, that August Spies, Albert Parsons, and the
other &dquo;martyrs &dquo;were victims of a frame-up. Marti, who observed part of

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 87

the trial of the Chicago activists, is convinced that they did indeed throw
the bomb that killed the police and he rails against the &dquo;barbarous works
of these blind avengers... this brood of assassins&dquo; (de la Cruz,1985: 128,
131). These articles will undoubtedly be of interest to those seeking to
understand the contradictions in Marti’s thought, although their
rhetorical quality makes them of doubtful value to students of the
Haymarket affair.

REFERENCES

Araya Pochet, Carlos

1985 "Surgimiento de la nueva generaci&oacute;n." Revista de Historia 6 (January-July):
15-18.
Gamboa, Francisco
1975 Costa Rica (4th ed.). San Jos&eacute;: Edici&oacute;n Popular-Libreria Internacional.
Garcia Murillo, Guillermo
1984 Las minas de Abangares: Historia de una doble explotaci&oacute;n . San Jos&eacute;:
Editorial Costa Rica.
Godio, Julio
1983 Historia del movimiento obrero latinoamericano/2. Nacionalismo y
Comunismo, 1918-1930. Mexico City: Nueva Sociedad-Editorial Nueva Imagen.
Mel&eacute;ndez Chaverri, Carlos
1985 6 "&iquest;Una
Revista (January-July):
nueva generaci&oacute;n
de Historia de historiadores?"
19-25.
Revista de Historia
1985 "&iquest;Existe una nueva generaci&oacute;n historiogr&aacute;fica en Costa Rica?" Revista de
Historia 6 (January-July): 11-13.

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