Thinking about the Costa Rican Way, a few days ago I wrote a message to my great friend, Armando Vargas Araya, journalist, historian, politician and wonderful human being. In a few words, these were my two lines:
Who’s idea was it, and is it known who was the trigger?
My dear Jorge:
Juan Rafael Mora inaugurated in 1851 the Mora Theater, which served until the 1980s under the name of Municipal Theater, after the coup d’état against him in 1859.
The Josefina press (³La República², ³El Anunciador Costarricense²) campaigned in 1889 and 1890 to start the yearning for a National Theater.
In 1889, the Italians Francisco Durini Vasalli and Enrique Invernizio presented to the Government the plans for a National Theater, with a budget of $700,000, to be financed by the lottery plus private contributions. The article that appeared in OLa República¹, would be the trigger that would bring to the public arena the need to materialize the idea of building a great National Theater², says Astrid Fischel in her book ³El Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica. Its history² (1992).
In this favorable climate created by the press, Don Cleto González Víquez gathered in his office, on March 1, 1890, a group of coffee growers and merchants who proposed a specific tax of $0.05 per liter of exported coffee. In the three years that the tax was in force, it produced a total of $132,873.39.
The cost of the construction of the National Theater was over $3,000,000. Where did the remaining $2,867,127 come from? From an indirect tax on the general import of general merchandise (muellaje) of one cent for each kilogram, whose decree of creation to finance the works of the National Theater annulled the tax on export coffee.
Whose idea was the generator of the National Theater? First, Don Manuel Argüello Mora, Don Juanito’s nephew, in 1878. Second, by the Italian engineers Durini and Invernizio.
Who paid for the works of the National Theater? The coffee growers?
No. It was the Costa Rican people in general. Historian Fischel says: ³The glory of the construction of the National Theater should no longer be based only on the petition made in 1890 by a group of businessmen, but with reason and justice, on the systematic payment of the wharfage tax that fell on thousands of Costa Ricans over several years².
Cordial greetings,
Armando Vargas Araya
