History
The Spanish invaders founded the city of "Our Lady of Las Dopicos" in 1539, which was actually near Tenuzco, the capital of the Pazteca empire. In the series, the capital had two spelling variations: Los Dopicos and Las Dopicos.
San Theodoros apparently became independent around the early 1830s as a result of the unstated actions of General José Olivaro, possibly similar to those of Simón Bolívar or José de San Martín. Endless rebellions after Olivaro in the 1840s until 1930s made San Theodoros have the most number of presidents in history.
During the The Broken Ear, San Theodoros and its hostile neighbor Nuevo Rico go to war over the area of Gran Chapo (grand chapeau, "Big Hat") in 1937 – an allusion to the Chaco War fought by Bolivia and Paraguay over Gran Chaco from 1932–1935. It was thought that the area was custodian of large oil reserves, so a war sparked in the area. The Chapo War, accidentally started by Colonel Tintin, was short, lasting only a few weeks at most, resulting in a stalemate. It is eventually revealed that the notion of the presence of oil in the area was incorrect.
Military coups and counter-coups of Generals Tapioca and Alcazar have followed each other with regularity – and soldiers switch sides every time. In fact, revolution seems like a tradition in San Theodoros, as evidenced in Tintin and the Picaros, where it is said that mass executions after a revolution by firing squads is a tradition. A San Theodoran firing squad consists of six soldiers.
In The Red Sea Sharks, General Alcazar is seen in exile, having been deposed again by his rival in 1958. Alcazar is now negotiating for arms sales by this time.
The latest information about the country is from 1976 when General Alcazar, now supported by the International Banana Company, for the last time ousted General Tapioca during a carnival in an unusually bloodless coup. His guerrillas, collectively known as Los Picaros, wore carnival outfits during the operation. Tintin and his associates had their minor part in the proceedings, although Tintin concocted the plan, and insisted that there be no bloodshed. After the coup General Alcazar renamed the capital from Tapiocapolis to Alcazaropolis after himself.
Read more about this topic: San Theodoros
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)