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Sotanis, a former Italian artillery officer, is a nattily dressed, slender man in his early forties who apparently does nothing in San José except study his immaculate finger nails, drink Scotch-and-sodas, collect stamps and vanish every few months only to reappear again, still studying his immaculate finger nails.
It was Sotanis who arranged for Nicaragua to get the shipment of arms and munitions which I mentioned earlier. This uncommunicative Italian stamp collector paved the way for Wakabayashi to meet Raul Gurdian, the Costa Rican Minister of Finance, and Ramon Madrigal, Vice-president of the government-owned National Bank and a prominent Costa Rican merchant.
As a result, the Italian Minister to Guatemala is Ubico's adviser on almost all matters of state. Guiseppe Sotanis, a mysterious Italian officer who sits in the Gran Hotel in San José, Costa Rica, collecting stamps and studying his immaculate fingernails, arranges for shipments of Italian arms into Guatemala.
A few months ago Sotanis, the Italian minister to Guatemala, and Ubico met in Guatemala City. Shortly thereafter the Italian arms manufacturing company, Bredda, sent Ubico two hundred eighty portable machine guns, sixty anti-aircraft machine guns and seventy small caliber cannon. But President Ubico is not hopelessly addicted to one brand of fascism.
He finally got permission from Costa Rica to establish his experimental station. In obtaining that concession he was aided by Giuseppe Sotanis, an Italian gentleman wearing the fascist insignia in the lapel of his coat, whom he met at the Gran Hotel in San José.
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