orchids and orchidology in central america. 500 ... - lankesteriana.org

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distance the United States from earlier interventionist
policies, such as the Roosevelt Corollary and military
interventions in the region during the 1910s and 1920s.
The Great Depression in the United States was a hard
blow to the Central American economies. “The Central
American countries, small producers in the concert of
nations, were extremely vulnerable to the fluctuations
of the external situation. Their economies were not
diversified and the main export products -coffee and
bananas- where nothing but ‘dessert’ on the tables of
the European or American consumers” (Pérez Brignoli,
2000: 127-128). Their societies were marked by deep
social inequalities that soon led to the formation of
the first labor unions and the first communist parties
in the region. Central America led a political life
of exclusions. “In practice, the life of the liberal
institutions and laws was above all this: an immense
monologue of the ruling classes with themselves”
(Pérez Brognoli, 2000: 129). Coups d’etat, controlled
elections and candidates imposed by the government
were the rule in political life.
The concentration of power in a few hands and the
preeminence of the military produced such typical
dictators as Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1857-1948), in
Guatemala, the ‘Señor Presidente’ in Miguel Ángel
Asturias’ magnificent novel. After Cabrera, Guatemala
was ruled from 1931 to 1948 by General Jorge Ubico
(1878-1946), “Educator and Protector of the Youth”.
It was General Jorge Ubico who signed the presidential
decree declaring Lycaste skinneri var. alba as the
National Flower of Guatemala, on February 11, 1934.
He followed the recommendation of Mrs. Leticia M.
de Southerland, president of the International Flower
Exhibition held in Miami in 1933.
General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (1882-
1966) served as president of El Salvador from 1931
to 1944. His regime was a strict dictatorship that
suppressed a Communist-led uprising during its
initial days in office, with an estimated number of
fatalities of between 10,000 and 30,000. Nicaragua and
Honduras followed similar paths. While Nicaragua in
1934 came under the rule of the Somoza dynasty, that
would control the country until 1979, Tiburcio Carías
Andino (1876-1969), “Doctor and General”, ruled in
Honduras from 1933 to 1948 with a very strong hand
for the Hondurans and a white glove for the United
Fruit Company.
LANKESTERIANA
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.
To the South, Costa Rica and Panama became
the exceptions. In Costa Rica, although the country
suffered as much as its neighbors from the results of
the economic world crisis, regular elections were held
during this period. Political life in the country was only
disrupted by the great strike in the banana plantations of
the Atlantic region (1934) and by the short civil war of
1948. Panama battled hard to maintain its democratic
regime, with the omnipotent United States often being
the judge over bitterly fought political campaigns.
To the North, Lázaro Cárdenas (1891-1970) was
elected president of Mexico in 1934 and founded the
National Revolutionary Party, predecessor of the present
Institutional Revolutionary Party. Under the slogan
of “Mexico for the Mexicans”, Cárdenas confronted
the United States after expropriating the foreign oil
companies. His six-year term marked a turning point
after the turbulent post-revolutionary years and was a
period of political stability, characterized by important
advances in education and public works. In Belize,
still a British colony, Antonio Soberanis Gómez (1897-
1975) became in 1934 a strong union leader and a
precursor of the independence movement.
Orchidology in Central America, 1930-1950
“When we solve the riddles of the forests, we
will know the history of tropical life”.
Rehn (1927: 26)
After the deaths of Rolfe (1921), Schlechter (1925)
and Kraenzlin (1934), European Botany lost its ground
in Central America, and orchidology became an
American monopoly that would last until the present
days. At Harvard, Ames and Schweinfurth continued
working on the Orchidaceae of Central America in an
enormous personal effort that lasted until the end of
their lives. But the botanical exploration of the region
came more and more under the influence of two great
institutions: the Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago and the Missouri Botanical Garden at Saint
Louis.
When Paul C. Standley joined the staff in 1927,
the interests of the Field Museum centered mainly on
Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. During the XX century,
the Museum sponsored or co-sponsored more than sixty
botanical expeditions to the American tropics.
The Missouri Botanical Garden became the leading