8: "On the Margin of International Life"
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During the period from 1889 to 1907 two incidents revealed the
standing that the republics of Hispanic America had now acquired
in the world at large. In 1889 at Washington, and later in their
own capital cities, they met with the United States in council.
In 1899, and again in 1907, they joined their great northern
neighbor and the nations of Europe and Asia at The Hague for
deliberation on mutual concerns, and they were admitted to an
international fellowship and cooperation far beyond a mere
recognition of their independence and a formal interchange of
diplomats and consuls.
Since attempts of the Hispanic countries themselves to realize
the aims of Bolívar in calling the Congress at Panama had failed,
the United States now undertook to call into existence a sort of
inter-American Congress. Instead of being merely a supporter, the
great republic of the north had resolved to become the director
of the movement for greater solidarity in thought and action. By
linking up the concerns of the Hispanic nations with its own
destinies it would assert not so much its position as guardian of
the Monroe Doctrine as its headship, if not its actual dominance,
in the New World, and would so widen the bounds of its political
and commercial influence-a tendency known as "imperialism."
Such was the way, at least, in which the Hispanic republics came
to view the action of the "Colossus of the North" in inviting
them to participate in an assemblage meeting more or less
periodically and termed officially the "International Conference
of American States," and popularly the "Pan-American Conference."
Whether the mistrust the smaller countries felt at the outset was
lessened in any degree by the attendance of their delegates at
the sessions of this conference remains open to question.
Although these representatives, in common with their colleagues
from the United States, assented to a variety of conventions and
passed a much larger number of resolutions, their acquiescence
seemed due to a desire to gratify their powerful associate,
rather than to a belief in the possible utility of such measures.
The experience of the earlier gatherings had demonstrated that
political issues would have to be excluded from consideration.
Propositions, for example, such as that to extend the basic idea
of the Monroe Doctrine into a sort of self-denying ordinance,
under which all the nations of America should agree to abstain
thereafter from acquiring any part of one another's territory by
conquest, and to adopt, also, the principle of compulsory
arbitration, proved impossible of acceptance. Accordingly, from
that time onward the matters treated by the Conference dealt for
the most part with innocuous, though often praiseworthy, projects
for bringing the United States and its sister republics into
closer commercial, industrial, and intellectual relations.
The gathering itself, on the other hand, became to a large extent
a fiesta, a festive occasion for the display of social amenities.
Much as the Hispanic Americans missed their favorite topic of
politics, they found consolation in entertaining the
distinguished foreign visitors with the genial courtesy and
generous hospitality for which they are famous. As one of their
periodicals later expressed it, since a discussion of politics
was tabooed, it were better to devote the sessions of the
Conference to talking about music and lyric poetry! At all
events, as far as the outcome was concerned, their national
legislatures ratified comparatively few of the conventions.
Among the Hispanic nations of America only Mexico took part in
the First Conference at The Hague. Practically all of them were
represented at the second. The appearance of their delegates at
these august assemblages of the powers of earth was viewed for a
while with mixed feelings. The attitude of the Great Powers
towards them resembled that of parents of the old regime:
children at the international table should be "seen and not
heard." As a matter of fact, the Hispanic Americans were both
seen and heard—especially the latter! They were able to show the
Europeans that, even if they did happen to come from relatively
weak states, they possessed a skillful intelligence, a breadth of
knowledge, a capacity for expression, and a consciousness of
national character, which would not allow them simply to play
"Man Friday" to an international Crusoe. The president of the
second conference, indeed, confessed that they had been a
"revelation" to him.
Hence, as time went on, the progress and possibilities of the
republics of Hispanic America came to be appreciated more and
more by the world at large. Gradually people began to realize
that the countries south of the United States were not merely an
indistinguishable block on the map, to be referred to vaguely as
"Central and South America" or as "Latin America." The reading
public at least knew that these countries were quite different
from one another, both in achievements and in prospects.
Yet the fact remains that, despite their active part in these
American and European conferences, the Hispanic countries of the
New World did not receive the recognition which they felt was
their due. Their national associates in the European gatherings
were disinclined to admit that the possession of independence and
sovereignty entitled them to equal representation on
international council boards. To a greater or less degree,
therefore, they continued to stay in the borderland where no one
either affirmed or denied their individuality. To quote the
phrase of an Hispanic American, they stood "on the margin of
international life." How far they might pass beyond it into the
full privileges of recognition and association on equal terms,
would depend upon the readiness with which they could atone for
the errors or recover from the misfortunes of the past, and upon
their power to attain stability, prosperity, strength, and
responsibility.
Certain of the Hispanic republics, however, were not allowed to
remain alone on their side of "the margin of international life."
Though nothing so extreme as the earlier French intervention took
place, foreign nations were not at all averse to crossing over
the marginal line and teaching them what a failure to comply with
international obligations meant. The period from 1889 to 1907,
therefore, is characterized also by interference on the part of
European powers, and by interposition on the part of the United
States, in the affairs of countries in and around the Caribbean
Sea. Because of the action taken by the United States two more
republics—Cuba and Panama—came into being, thus increasing the
number of political offshoots from Spain in America to eighteen.
Another result of this interposition was the creation of what
were substantially American protectorates. Here the United States
did not deprive the countries concerned of their independence an
d sovereignty, but subjected them to a kind of guardianship or
tutelage, so far as it thought needful to insure stability,
solvency, health, and welfare in general. Foremost in the
northern group of Hispanic nations, Mexico, under the guidance of
Diaz, marched steadily onward. Peace, order, and law; an
increasing population; internal wealth and well-being; a
flourishing industry and commerce; suitable care for things
mental as well as material; the respect and confidence of
foreigners—these were blessings which the country had hitherto
never beheld. The Mexicans, once in anarchy and enmity created by
militarists and clericals, came to know one another in
friendship, and arrived at something like a national
consciousness.
In 1889 there was held the first conference on educational
problems which the republic had ever had. Three years later a
mining code was drawn up which made ownership inviolable on
payment of lawful dues, removed uncertainties of operation, and
stimulated the industry in a remarkable fashion. Far less
beneficial in the long run was a law enacted in 1894. Instead of
granting a legal title to lands held by prescriptive rights
through an occupation of many years, it made such property part
of the public domain, which might be acquired, like a mining
claim, by any one who could secure a grant of it from the
Government. Though hailed at the time as a piece of constructive
legislation, its unfortunate effect was to enable large
landowners who wished to increase their possessions to oust poor
cultivators of the soil from their humble holdings. On the other
hand, under the statesmanlike management of Jose Yves Limantour,
the Minister of Finance, the monetary situation at home and
abroad was strengthened beyond measure, and banking interests
were promoted accordingly. Further, an act abolishing the
alcabala, a vexatious internal revenue tax, gave a great stimulus
to freedom of commerce throughout the country. In order to insure
a continuance of the new regime, the constitution was altered in
three important respects. The amendment of 1890 restored the
original clause of 1857, which permitted indefinite reelection to
the presidency; that of 1896 established a presidential
succession in case of a vacancy, beginning with the Minister of
Foreign Affairs; and that of 1904 lengthened the term of the
chief magistrate from four years to six and created the office of
Vice President.
In Central America two republics, Guatemala and Costa Rica, set
an excellent example both because they were free from internal
commotions and because they refrained from interference in the
affairs of their neighbors. The contrast between these two quiet
little nations, under their lawyer Presidents, and the bellicose
but equally small Nicaragua, Honduras, and Salvador, under their
chieftains, military and juristic, was quite remarkable.
Nevertheless another attempt at confederation was made. In 1895
the ruler of Honduras, declaring that reunion was a "primordial
necessity," invited his fellow potentates of Nicaragua and
Salvador to unite in creating the "Greater Republic of Central
America" and asked Guatemala and Costa Rica to join. Delegates
actually appeared from all five republics, attended fiestas, gave
expression to pious wishes, and went home! Later still, in 1902,
the respective Presidents signed a "convention of peace and
obligatory arbitration" as a means of adjusting perpetual
disagreements about politics and boundaries; but nothing was done
to carry these ideas into effect.
The personage mainly responsible for these failures was Jose
Santos Zelaya, one of the most arrant military lordlets and
meddlers that Central America had produced in a long time. Since
1893 he had been dictator of Nicaragua, a country not only
entangled in continuous wrangles among its towns and factions,
but bowed under an enormous burden of debt created by excessive
emissions of paper money and by the contraction of more or less
scandalous foreign loans. Quite undisturbed by the financial
situation, Zelaya promptly silenced local bickerings and devoted
his energies to altering the constitution for his presidential
benefit and to making trouble for his neighbors. Nor did he
refrain from displays of arbitrary conduct that were sure to
provoke foreign intervention. Great Britain, for example, on two
occasions exacted reparation at the cannon's mouth for ill
treatment of its citizens.
Zelaya waxed wroth at the spectacle of Guatemala, once so active
in revolutionary arts but now quietly minding its own business.
In 1906, therefore, along with parties of Hondurans,
Salvadoreans, and disaffected Guatemalans, he began an invasion
of that country and continued operations with decreasing success
until, the United States and Mexico offering their mediation,
peace was signed aboard an American cruiser. Then, when Costa
Rica invited the other republics to discuss confederation within
its calm frontiers, Zelaya preferred his own particular
occupation to any such procedure. Accordingly, displeased with a
recent boundary decision, he started along with Salvador to fight
Honduras. Once more the United States and Mexico tendered their
good offices, and again a Central American conflict was closed
aboard an American warship. About the only real achievement of
Zelaya was the signing of a treaty by which Great Britain
recognized the complete sovereignty of Nicaragua over the
Mosquito Indians, whose buzzing for a larger amount of freedom
and more tribute had been disturbing unduly the "repose" of that
small nation!
To the eastward the new republic of Cuba was about to be born.
Here a promise of adequate representation in the Spanish Cortes
and of a local legislature had failed to satisfy the aspirations
of many of its inhabitants. The discontent was aggravated by lax
and corrupt methods of administration as well as by financial
difficulties. Swarms of Spanish officials enjoyed large salaries
without performing duties of equivalent value. Not a few of them
had come over to enrich themselves at public expense and under
conditions altogether scandalous. On Cuba, furthermore, was
saddled the debt incurred by the Ten Years' War, while the island
continued to be a lucrative market for Spanish goods without
obtaining from Spain a corresponding advantage for its own
products.
As the insistence upon a removal of these abuses and upon a grant
of genuine self-government became steadily more clamorous, three
political groups appeared. The Constitutional Unionists, or
"Austrianizers," as they were dubbed because of their avowed
loyalty to the royal house of Bourbon-Hapsburg, were made up of
the Spanish and conservative elements and represented the large
economic interests and the Church. The Liberals, or
"Autonomists," desired such reforms in the administration as
would assure the exercise of self-government and yet preserve the
bond with the mother country. On the other hand, the Radicals, or
"Nationalists"—the party of "Cuba Free"—would be satisfied with
nothing short of absolute independence. All these differences of
opinion were sharpened by the activities of a sensational press.
From about 1890 onward the movement toward independence gathered
tremendous strength, especially when the Cubans found popular
sentiment in the United States so favorable to it. Excitement
rose still higher when the Spanish Government proposed to bestow
a larger measure of autonomy. When, however, the Cortes decided
upon less liberal arrangements, the Autonomists declared that
they had been deceived, and the Nationalists denounced the utter
unreliability of Spanish promises. Even if the concessions had
been generous, the result probably would have been the same, for
by this time the plot to set Cuba free had become so widespread,
both in the island itself and among the refugees in the United
States, that the inevitable struggle could not have been
deferred.
In 1895 the revolution broke out. The whites, headed by Maximo
Gómez, and the negroes and mulattoes by their chieftain, Antonio
Maceo, both of whom had done valiant service in the earlier war,
started upon a campaign of deliberate terrorism. This time they
were resolved to win at any cost. Spurning every offer of
conciliation, they burned, ravaged, and laid waste, spread
desolation along their pathway, and reduced thousands to abject
poverty and want.
Then the Spanish Government came to the conclusion that nothing
but the most rigorous sort of reprisals would check the excesses
of the rebels. In 1896 it commissioned Valeriano Weyler, an
officer who personified ferocity, to put down the rebellion. If
the insurgents had fancied that the conciliatory spirit hitherto
displayed by the Spaniards was due to irresolution or weakness,
they found that these were not the qualities of their new
opponent. Weyler, instead of trying to suppress the rebellion by
hurrying detachments of troops first to one spot and then to
another in pursuit of enemies accustomed to guerrilla tactics,
determined to stamp it out province by province. To this end he
planted his army firmly in one particular area, prohibited the
planting or harvesting of crops there, and ordered the
inhabitants to assemble in camps which they were not permitted to
leave on any pretext whatever. This was his policy of
"reconcentration." Deficient food supply, lack of sanitary
precautions, and absence of moral safeguards made conditions of
life in these camps appalling. Death was a welcome relief.
Reconcentration, combined with executions and deportations, could
have but one result—the "pacification" of Cuba by converting it
into a desert.
Not in the United States alone but in Spain itself the story of
these drastic measures kindled popular indignation to such an
extent that, in 1897, the Government was forced to recall the
ferocious Weyler and to send over a new Governor and Captain
General, with instructions to abandon the worst features of his
predecessor's policy and to establish a complete system of
autonomy in both Cuba and Porto Rico. Feeling assured, however,
that an ally was at hand who would soon make their independence
certain, the Cuban patriots flatly rejected these overtures. In
their expectations they were not mistaken. By its armed
intervention, in the following year the United States acquired
Porto Rico for itself and compelled Spain to withdraw from Cuba.(1)
The island then became a republic, subject only to such
limitations on its freedom of action as its big guardian might
see fit to impose. Not only was Cuba placed under American rule
from 1899 to 1902, but it had to insert in the Constitution of
1901 certain clauses that could not fail to be galling to Cuban
pride. Among them two were of special significance. One imposed
limitations on the financial powers of the Government of the new
nation, and the other authorized the United States, at its
discretion, to intervene in Cuban affairs for the purpose of
maintaining public order. The Cubans, it would seem, had
exchanged a dependence on Spain for a restricted independence
measured by the will of a country infinitely stronger.
Cuba began its life as a republic in 1902, under a government for
which a form both unitary and federal had been provided. Tomas
Estrada Palma, the first President and long the head of the Cuban
junta in the United States, showed himself disposed from the
outset to continue the beneficial reforms in administration which
had been introduced under American rule. Prudent and conciliatory
in temperament, he tried to dispel as best he could the bitter
recollections of the war and to repair its ravages. In this
policy he was upheld by the conservative class, or Moderates.
Their opponents, the Liberals, dominated by men of radical
tendencies, were eager to assert the right, to which they thought
Cuba entitled as an independent sovereign nation, to make
possible mistakes and correct them without having the United
States forever holding the ferule of the schoolmaster over it.
They were well aware, however, that they were not at liberty to
have their country pass through the tempestuous experience which
had been the lot of so many Hispanic republics. They could vent a
natural anger and disappointment, nevertheless, on the President
and his supporters. Rather than continue to be governed by Cubans
not to their liking, they were willing to bring about a renewal
of American rule. In this respect the wishes of the Radicals were
soon gratified. Hardly had Estrada Palma, in 1906, assumed office
for a second time, when parties of malcontents, declaring that he
had secured his reelection by fraudulent means, rose up in arms
and demanded that he annul the vote and hold a fair election. The
President accepted the challenge and waged a futile conflict, and
again the United States intervened. Upon the resignation of
Estrada Palma, an American Governor was again installed, and Cuba
was told in unmistakable fashion that the next intervention might
be permanent.
Less drastic but quite as effectual a method of assuring order
and regularity in administration was the action taken by the
United States in another Caribbean island. A little country like
the Dominican Republic, in which few Presidents managed to retain
their offices for terms fixed by changeable constitutions, could
not resist the temptation to rid itself of a ruler who had held
power for nearly a quarter of a century. After he had been
disposed of by assassination in 1899, the government of his
successor undertook to repudiate a depreciated paper currency by
ordering the customs duties to be paid in specie; and it also
tried to prevent the consul of an aggrieved foreign nation from
attaching certain revenues as security for the payment of the
arrears of an indemnity. Thereupon, in 1905, the President of the
United States entered into an arrangement with the Dominican
Government whereby, in return for a pledge from the former
country to guarantee the territorial integrity of the republic
and an agreement to adjust all of its external obligations of a
pecuniary sort, American officials were to take charge of the
custom house send apportion the receipts from that source in such
a manner as to satisfy domestic needs and pay foreign creditors.(2)
________
(1) See The Path of Empire, by Carl Russell Fish (in The Chronicles of America).
(2) See The Path of Empire, by Carl Russell Fish (in The Chronicles of America).
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