His stumbling block was Benjamin F. Chase, American Consul in San José. In the absence of a Minister, Mr. Chase was reporting to Washington the current political history of Costa Rica. Being a stubborn sort of Yankee, he was reporting the truth, even though the Tinocos tried to make a pet of him. Having failed to bribe the Consul, according to rumors afloat at the time, the Dictator is said to have hired another gringo to shoot him. Several of the more loyal Americans formed themselves into a guard at the Consulate, and the Consul continued to send home unfavorable reports on the Tinoco régime.
All Costa Rica murmured its discontent at the increasing taxation. Revolutions commenced to brew. In the suppression of the uprisings, Joaquín introduced a reign of terror. His spies were everywhere. Political opponents were thrown into old-fashioned wooden stocks and exhibited in public. The prisons were filled. According to reports, prisoners were frequently beaten with iron rods, and sometimes hung up by the thumbs. Many of the stories have the exaggerated ring of the yarns told about Cabrera in Guatemala. They include those of a man burned in oil, of gold teeth being extracted and resold to dentists, and of a private swimming pool where Joaquín, after depriving his prisoners of water for forty-eight hours, would march them out to see him diving and swimming in gallons of it.
The leading revolutionist, Don Julio Acosta, had a force of two hundred men on the Nicaraguan border, but Joaquín’s army numbered about ten thousand. The revolutionists had neither arms nor ammunition. Washington, following its traditional policy of selling weapons only to constitutionally elected presidents, whether they were crooks or not, refused to sell to Don Julio, insisting that he work out his own salvation.
Indirectly, it was Tinoco’s large army that caused his own destruction. Knowing that all Costa Rica hated him, he had strengthened it with soldiers of fortune from Nicaragua and Honduras, of the type who gravitate wherever there is trouble. They must be paid. All other government employees could wait. The school teachers, in protest, left their schools, and marched through the streets with their pupils. Emboldened by their example, the letter carriers and the street cleaners followed. When the police sought to disperse them, the women cried:
“We are your friends! We are protesting against the cutting of your salaries to pay foreign soldiers!”
And the police stood back, while all San José surged through the streets, shouting, “Down with the Tinocos!” Joaquín at the time was absent from the city. Hearing of the disturbance, he hastened back, and led his troops in person, riding fearlessly into the mob. Some of the women and children were forced into the American Consulate, and surged upstairs to the balcony. A young boy attempted a speech. Tinoco soldiers drew their rifles and fired. The crowd fled back inside the building, leaving Consul Chase alone on the balcony. Eleven bullet holes dented the stucco behind him, but he was not harmed.
This was the beginning of the end. Joaquín quickly pacified the city, for no one dared to face him. But—the Old-Timers suspect—a little note came down from Washington. Federico, the nominal Dictator, made plans for an exit. He handed his resignation to the Vice-President, who appointed him “Ambassador-at-Large” to Europe, with a salary of $100,000 a year, payable in advance. All of his cohorts received similar appointments—by a procedure which, if unethical, was quite proper according to international law—until their salaries exhausted what little cash remained in the country.
Joaquín, the real Dictator, had no intention of fleeing with them. Whatever might be said of him, he was no coward. He meant to fight to the end. But the end came unexpectedly. He was strolling nonchalantly down the street one evening when a man saluted him. Always military, Joaquín snapped his own hand to his hat-brim. He did not observe that the other man had saluted with the left hand, or that the right concealed a revolver. As Joaquín’s fingers touched the hat-brim, the man shot him. Then he turned and ran up the street, blazing into the air, and shouting:
“Joaquín is dead! Costa Rica lives!”
The elder Tinoco was at home in the castle when the news reached him. Seizing the telephone, he called up the prison.