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 Bolivar 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 and 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 Gomez,
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. *
* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The
Chronicles of America").
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. *
* See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The
Chronicles of America").