Bertilio Quiros, 72, died at a farm in San Isidro de El General in the southern part of the country, trampled under the hooves of his own oxen in an accident unique even in the days when oxen were common farm animals here.

Quiros used the team every working day to gather up and haul sugar cane. Apparently, he slipped and fell Tuesday, the slow moving and docile, but weighty beasts continuing to plow forward over his prone body.

Witnesses said Quiros was walking over the remains of the sugar cane left from harvest when he fell at his work at Quebrada Farm near San Isidro in the far southern edge of Costa Rica.

A niece, Marlene Quiros, told the national newspaper La Nacion that her brother saw the whole tragedy. “He (her brother) called out for the oxen to stop but instead he startled them and they killed him (her uncle) almost immediately. We tried to revive him but it was too late.”

Because of the difficult access to the farm, Red Cross rescuers had to cover the last 200 meters on foot. “But when we arrived, the man had died,” paramedic Alexander Sandi said regretfully.

Tractors, trucks and pickups have replaced the oxcart and their normally gentle, slow moving propulsion, but in some rare places the animals are still used, although often are kept more for nostalgia than for usefulness or necessity.

But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coffee went to market in the carts that hauled the beans to the port of Puntarenas. The loose beans were covered by a cloth to protect them from the elements and often the oxen driver placed his children in the cart.

The country still holds an oxcart parade in the town of Escazu and in Atenas there is a monument to oxen drivers. By the mid-20th century, the plain, unpainted cart was replaced by brightly decorated ones and the oxcart began to pass into status of a curio.

In the era when Costa Rica boasted its own national airline, LACSA, the painted wheel, by that time almost standardized by the artisans at the rural town of Sarchi, decorated the tails of its aircraft.

Today, Sarchi is still one of the tourist must-see destinations and, probably, one could buy a full sized oxcart there — but the most common item is a liquor cart or coffee table formed like a miniature oxcart.