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

ossenbaCh — Orchids and orchidology in Central America
The second half of The xx cenTury 40
He may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son
of a bitch!
Franklin D. Roosevelt, about Anastasio
Somoza, President of Nicaragua
The years following World War II show a convulse
Central America, struggling with political and social
unrests. In Guatemala, the progressive governments
of Arévalo and Arbenz (1944-1954) were followed
by more than three decades of military rulers and
guerilla movements fighting for a fairer social order.
All attempts to establish democratic governments in
Honduras were aborted by successive military coups.
Anastasio Somoza, in Nicaragua, was the only one of
the dictators of the 1930s that survived the post-war
era, until his regime was overthrown by the sandinista
movement in 1979. El Salvador lived through a
political evolution very similar to that of Guatemala,
with military governments focusing on agricultural
diversification and the creation of new industries,
politics that were of little benefit to the poorer classes
(Pérez Brignoli, 2000: 153-160). Mexico, where
since 1940 the social objectives of the revolution
had been sacrificed to the acceleration of economic
growth, entered finally in a post-revolutionary phase
under the presidency of Miguel Alemán (1946-1952)
and began an era of ambiguous social and economic
politics (Halperin Donghui, 2002: 500-506). In 1968,
the country was shaken by strong social protests that
ended in the infamous killings in Tlatelolco Square, on
October 2 of that same year, one of the most tragic
events of modern Mexican history. In Panama, the
movement that demanded sovereignty over the canal
gained more and more strength and ended with the
Torrijos-Carter treaties, signed on September 7, 1977,
establishing the transfer of the canal to Panama on
December 31, 1999. Only Costa Rica, under the shelter
of the social reforms of the early 1940s and the political
constitution proclaimed in 1949 which -among other
important changes- had abolished the army, seemed
to be able to escape the social and political chaos
in which the rest of the region was submerged. This
allows us to understand why, in the world of orchid
research, Costa Rica was the only country in which,
201
slowly, an institutional impulse developed, starting
with the legacy of Charles H. Lankester and continuing
in the Lankester Botanical Garden of the University
of Costa Rica, founded in 1973. In the other countries
of the region we find important advances which
depended always, however, on individual vocations
and on the high human and professional level of
their protagonists. Panama represents a special case,
where the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
has made an outstanding contribution to the botanical
exploration of the isthmus, together with Mexico, with
the outstanding results of the research and studies by
the collaborators of the AMO Herbarium.
The Mexican Renaissance (II). The work started by
Thomas MacDougall in Oaxaca was continued by a
small group of amateurs who gave an enormous impulse
to Mexican orchidology. “It was the Christmas season
many years ago in Oaxaca, and the tall ‘gringa’ who
had recently come to live in the city stood in the flower
market admiring the colorful plants that the Indians of
the Sierra had brought in to sell as holiday decorations.
She was particularly entranced by the delicate small
blossoms on some of the plants, and on noting her
interest, a gentleman standing nearby said, ‘that is a
plant of Odontoglossum cervantesii - an orchid.’ Then
and there was born in the mind of Ruth Oberg ( - 1970)
the desire to learn more about these fascinating plants,
and the man speaking to her was none other than Don
Tomás MacDougall. What a fortunate meeting!, and
the beginning of a friendship that lasted to the end of
Ruth’s life” (Pollard, 1974: 173). “The enthusiasm and
dedication of Ruth to the study of orchids made her
an important figure in the renaissance of orchidology”
(Soto Arenas, 1992:196). Ruth Oberg became known
as the ‘Orchid Lady of Oaxaca’ and visitors from many
areas, among them Glenn Pollard, George Kennedy,
Eric Hágsater, Carl Withner, Alphonse Heller, Paul
Allen and Edward Greenwood, called to consult her
and admire the contributions that she was making
toward orchid research. She was especially close to
Pollard. Together with Robert Dressler, she joined a
group from Harvard University for a collecting trip
to a remote part of the State of Chiapas - The Laguna
Ocotal Grande, where she collected a new species of
40 The author’s decision to exclude from this history all persons living at the time this work was written has the inevitable result that
this chapter shows large and unavoidable gaps.
LANKESTERIANA 9(1—2), August 2009. © Universidad de Costa Rica, 2009.