Héroes olvidados

History has a peculiar way of remembering the victors, but it is often unforgiving toward those whose deeds are relegated to the shadows. Forgotten Heroes is born from that absence, from the silence that official memory has left on those who fought without expecting recognition.

Don Pepe Figueres, the architect of modern Costa Rica, not only led a revolution, but also laid the foundations for a country without an army. However, his story is not told only in his speeches, his political decisions, or the books he left behind. His legacy was built on the shoulders of many whom time, unjustly, left behind. This book rescues those voices, interweaves them with the memory of Don Pepe in his final days, and offers us a story that transcends simple testimony to become an exploration of identity and sacrifice.

But Forgotten Heroes is also a meditation on the fragility of the body, on the slow but inevitable defeat that life imposes on all its protagonists. Don Pepe, the undisputed leader, the brilliant strategist, the man who led armies and challenged governments, finds himself in his final battle: that of memory against oblivion, that of the body against disease. In the final days of his life, his mind wanders between the echoes of war and the symptoms of his deterioration. His wife, his close circle, his interviewers—all, consciously or not, become witnesses and guardians of a man who is slowly fading away.

In every terminal illness, there is a turning point: a moment when the eyes of those around the sick person begin to reflect another truth, one that can no longer be ignored. That moment when the struggle for life transforms into an accompaniment to death. Doña Karen, his wife, understands this better than anyone. With the silent love of those who care for those who pass away, she watches over Don Pepe in his decline, knowing his fate, but respecting his wish to tell his story until the end. Because if death is inevitable, at least it can come with the certainty that memory will outlive its passing.

This novel speaks not only of war and its forgotten heroes, but also of the final days of a man who, like so many others, reaches the end of his life clinging to his memories, aware that, in the act of recounting them, he grants them a final breath of immortality.