THE FIVE REPUBLICS OF
CENTRAL AMERICA
[Illustration: CENTRAL AMERICA]
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
THE FIVE REPUBLICS
OF
CENTRAL AMERICA
THEIR POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT AND THEIR RELATIONS
WITH THE UNITED STATES
BY DANA G. MUNRO
A THESIS
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.
NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ND STREET
LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY
1918
COPYRIGHT 1918
BY THE
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
By many persons in the United States, Central America is conceived of
chiefly as a land of revolutions, bankrupt governments, and absconding
presidents, and a haven for fugitives from justice from more settled
countries. The progress of the people of the Isthmus since their
declaration of independence, and the significance of this progress
in view of the difficulties with which they have had to contend, are
rarely recognized. The fact is too frequently overlooked that the
greater part of the people of the five republics, except in Costa
Rica, are descendants of the semi-civilized aboriginal tribes whom the
_Conquistadores_ enslaved in the sixteenth century, and that these
Indians still remain, for the most part, in a condition of dense
ignorance and economic dependence. Even the white upper classes were
prevented for three centuries from making any advance in civilization
by the restriction of intercourse with other countries and the
centralization of authority in the hands of foreign officials under
the Spanish colonial system; and they were unable to set up a stable
political system when they obtained their independence, because of
their lack of experience in self-government, and because of the absence
of political institutions upon which a stable system of government
could be based.
When we take these facts into consideration, and when we see the
advances which some of the Central American Republics have been able
to make despite these handicaps, we shall be less ready to conclude
that their people are inherently unfit for self-government. Our own
race is removed from the disorderly conditions which characterize the
more turbulent parts of the Isthmus only by a few hundred years, and
in the United States we are not unfamiliar today with evils similar to
some of the worst evils of Central American political life. There is no
reason to suppose that all of the five republics will not eventually
develop stable governments, as some of them have already done. Although
conditions in many parts of the Isthmus are still very bad, they are
gradually being overcome by the efforts of the better elements among
the ruling classes and by the gradual progress of the common people.
Since the Washington Conference of 1907, moreover, the preservation of
internal and international peace in the Isthmus has been powerfully
aided by the influence of the United States.
That the economic and political conditions of Central America and the
other countries of the Caribbean should be understood by the American
government and the American people is of the utmost importance. The
policy of the United States, more perhaps than any other factor either
external or internal, will determine the course of the development of
the five republics during the next few decades, and if this policy is
to be beneficial, it must be based on knowledge and must be controlled
by an intelligent public opinion. Only injustice can result from the
publication of works like many of the recent superficial descriptions
of Central America, whether they portray the five countries as foci
of continual disorder, constitutionally incapable of self-government,
and hence destined to absorption by a stronger power, or paint a
ridiculously laudatory picture, based on official reports and on the
utterances of the authorities rather than on critical observation. It
is the purpose of this study to describe conditions simply as they
appeared to the author during a sojourn of two years in the Isthmus,
with the object of setting forth what the people of Central America
have achieved since their declaration of independence and what problems
confront them in their present stage of development.
The difficulties in the way of a careful study of the history and
the economic and political conditions of the five republics are very
great, because there is so little trustworthy written material.
Historical works are especially unsatisfactory. The colonial period
is ably treated in two or three books by Central American authors,
but the development of the community since its separation from Spain,
and the far-reaching economic and political changes which have taken
place during the last century, have apparently never been studied by
anyone who was equipped by historical training and by a knowledge of
the country to interpret them. In attempting to obtain material for
sketching the historical development of the Isthmus, therefore, I have
been forced to rely on the very inadequate histories which do exist,
which are little more than lists of presidents and revolutions, and
upon a large number of political pamphlets, government documents, and
memoirs of Central American leaders and of early travelers in the
Isthmus. Much of this material is all but worthless because of the
ignorance or the ulterior motives of the writers, but there is enough
of value to reveal certain broad tendencies of economic and political
development.
It is equally difficult to secure data concerning the condition of the
country at present. Official publications can rarely be accepted as
reliable because of the carelessness with which records are kept and
statistical data are gathered by most of the departments, and because
official statements about the material progress of the country and the
activities of the authorities too often represent patriotic aspirations
rather than accomplished facts. The differences in the use of terms
and in standards of public service, moreover, are so great that it is
difficult for a foreigner to obtain an idea of the actual situation in
one of the countries merely by conversation with the authorities and
other persons in the capital. The writer found it extremely helpful
to supplement such conversations with trips to the provincial towns
and through the rural districts. An acquaintance with the life and
the character of the people outside the somewhat Europeanized cities,
and an observation of the actual working of the political machinery,
did much to make clear many things which otherwise might have been
difficult to understand.
The courtesy of the officials of the five governments, and the
hospitality extended to the traveler by all classes of the people,
make a journey through Central America an experience upon which one
can always look back with keen pleasure. It would be impossible here
to thank individually the many friends who helped to make my stay in
the Isthmus both pleasant and profitable. Nevertheless, I wish to
express especially my appreciation of the assistance which I have
received from Dr. L. S. Rowe, Mr. John M. Keith, Señor Luís Anderson,
Señor Manuel Aragón, Mr. Boaz Long, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Jones, General
Luís Mena, Mr. and Mrs. William Owen, Professor Philip M. Brown, Señor
Francisco Castro and Doña Fidelina de Castro, Dr. Escolástico Lara, Dr.
Juan B. Sacasa, Dr. Louis Schapiro, and General José María Moncada.
Without their assistance, it would have been impossible to secure the
information upon which this study is based.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE 1
II. CENTRAL AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS 24
III. GUATEMALA 50
IV. NICARAGUA 72
V. SALVADOR 99
VI. HONDURAS 119
VII. COSTA RICA 138
VIII. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CENTRAL AMERICAN FEDERATION 164
IX. THE CAUSES OF CENTRAL AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS 185
X. THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE OF 1907 204
XI. THE INTERVENTION OF THE UNITED STATES IN NICARAGUA 227
XII. COMMERCE 265
XIII. CENTRAL AMERICAN PUBLIC FINANCE 284
XIV. THE INFLUENCE OF THE UNITED STATES IN CENTRAL AMERICA 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY 321
INDEX 327
CHAPTER I
THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE
Physical Features--Character of the Population--The
Land-owning and Laboring Classes: Their Mode of Life and
Personal Characteristics--Factors Which Have Retarded Economic
Development--Agricultural Products--Foreign Immigration and
Investments.
Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica, the five
Republics of Central America, occupy a narrow strip of land between
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, extending East and South from Mexico
to the Isthmus of Panama. Although their combined area is smaller
than that of the state of California,[1] they comprise many regions
of strikingly different climatic conditions, for the mountains which
occupy the greater part of their territory cause variations in the
distribution of rainfall, and also provide plateaus and high valleys
where the tropical heat is less intense because of the altitude. Along
the shore of the Caribbean Sea there is a broad strip of country
but little above sea level. This has remained almost uninhabited
until recently because of its intense humidity and suffocating
temperature, but within the last twenty-five years it has become of
great economic importance, at least to the outside world, through its
exports of bananas. The lowlands extend inland to the Central American
_Cordillera_, a series of ranges which grow higher and higher as they
approach the Pacific Ocean, until they culminate in a great chain of
volcanic peaks which traverses the Isthmus from the Mexican boundary
to that of Panama. It is near these peaks, where the decomposed lava
from past eruptions has created a marvelously fertile soil, and where
the climate, with copious but not excessive rains during six months of
the year, is healthful and favorable to agriculture, that the great
majority of the people of Central America live. Almost all of the
more important cities and towns are situated either in the mountain
valleys, at an altitude of from two to seven thousand feet, where the
temperature rarely exceeds eighty degrees Fahrenheit, or in the hot,
but dry and therefore comparatively healthful plain between the base of
the volcanoes and the Pacific Ocean.
Populous and partially civilized Indian communities had existed in this
part of America for centuries before the Spanish conquest, and their
descendants form the bulk of the population of the five republics.
Although the original inhabitants were almost exterminated in many
districts by the oppression and mistreatment of the early colonists,
enough remained to become the predominant racial element in the
conglomerate population, Spanish in language and religion but Indian
in civilization and standards of living, which arose from the fusion
of the invaders, the aborigines, and the negroes who were brought in
as slaves or escaped to the mainland from the West Indies. This was
especially true of the three central countries of the Isthmus, and the
development of these has therefore been somewhat different from that of
Costa Rica, where the white stock predominates even among the common
people, and from that of Guatemala, where the pure-blooded Indians are
still a distinct and separate race.
Although the Central American countries are theoretically democracies,
there is in each a small, powerful upper class, consisting of
the so-called “principal families.” These are for the most part
descendants of the prominent creole[2] families of colonial days, and
are therefore in many cases of pure or almost pure Spanish descent. A
large proportion,--perhaps the majority,--however, have more or less
Indian and even negro blood in their veins. This class has been able
to maintain its dominant position in the community, partly because of
its command of the government, which it assumed when the republican
institutions which the Isthmian patriots attempted to introduce after
the declaration of independence were found to be unworkable because of
the ignorance of the mass of the people, but more especially because
of its control over agriculture. At the time of the conquest, the
land, like everything else in the invaded territory, was treated as
the property of the crown, and that in the neighborhood of the Spanish
settlements was divided among the colonists by the royal governors.
Further large allotments were made from time to time during the
colonial period. After the declaration of independence, the governments
of the several republics continued to regard as state property all
land not already specifically granted, and sold or gave away large
tracts of it to rich natives or foreigners, notwithstanding the fact
that much of the public domain was already occupied by peasants who
had always considered the patches which they cultivated as their own.
The number of large holdings has been further increased in some of the
republics by the division of the common lands formerly held by each
village among the village’s inhabitants; for the beneficiaries have
often sold their shares to their wealthier neighbors. At the present
time a comparatively small number of persons own a very large amount of
agricultural property, and employ the majority of the other inhabitants
of the Isthmus as workmen on their plantations. The economic and
political power of this class would manifestly be very great even
if it were not supported by their prestige as the descendants of the
conquering race.
Although their wealth is entirely agricultural, the “principal
families” invariably reside in the cities. They make frequent visits
to their plantations, which they intrust to the care of overseers, but
the majority of them show a marked aversion both to country life and
to rural pursuits. As a whole they are neither very enterprising nor
very energetic. Those who do not inherit a plantation which produces
an income sufficient to support them turn to one of the already
overcrowded learned professions rather than to the development of the
natural resources of their countries, in the exploitation of which
foreigners are daily making fortunes before their eyes. Nearly every
member of the upper class, moreover, is actively engaged in politics,
often to the exclusion or to the detriment of his other occupations.
The wealthier families live in one or two story houses of adobe or
concrete, which cover a surprisingly large extent of ground but
have little pretension to architectural beauty or to comfort. These
are built around two, and often three, courtyards or _patios_.
The front _patio_, upon which open the _sala_, or parlor, and the
bedrooms, generally contains an attractive garden surrounded by an
open _corredor_, which serves as living room and dining room. At the
rear are the kitchen, stable, and servants’ quarters. The standard of
living, especially in the less advanced countries, is still rather
primitive. Furniture and food are of a very simple character, and the
servants, of whom each family employs a large number, are untrained
and inefficient. The band concerts three or four times a week, the
cinematographs, and occasional cheap operettas offer almost the only
opportunity for diversion, except on the very unusual occasions
when a government subsidy makes possible a short season of opera
or drama. Social events are comparatively few. In every city there
are two or three civic _fiestas_ during the year, when the native
society abandons itself to a round of dancing, horse-racing, and other
gayeties, but at other times the capitals of the Isthmus are decidedly
dull. Life in them has, however, a peculiar charm for the foreigner,
because of the kindliness and friendliness of the people.
Since the building of the railways and the increase of commerce have
brought the Central American countries into closer touch with the
outside world, there has been a great change in customs and ways of
living in such places as Guatemala, San Salvador, and San José de
Costa Rica. The high price of coffee during the last decade of the
nineteenth century brought about an era of prosperity such as the
rather backward communities of the Isthmus had never before known.
Elaborate private residences and costly public buildings were erected
in the national capitals, and pianos, window glass, modern furniture,
and other articles which had formerly been little used, were imported
from Europe in great quantities. After the reaction which set in when
the value of coffee in the world’s markets declined, the new standard
of living remained, and even the poorer members of the upper classes
now enjoy most of the comforts and many of the luxuries of modern
civilization. The tendency to adopt European and North American customs
is greatly furthered by the young people, who in increasing numbers are
sent abroad to school and college, for they return with new tastes and
new ways of thinking even when they do not acquire a great amount of
learning.
Although the members of the upper class are for the most part
descendants of the _conquistadores_, social and political prominence
is today no longer entirely a matter of birth. The old creole families
formed a narrow and exclusive circle until the latter part of the
nineteenth century, but as a result of factional wars among themselves
and against other portions of the community, they have now become
generally impoverished and almost exterminated. A new element,
recruited from the more intelligent and ambitious members of the lower
classes, has meanwhile achieved a large amount of political power,
and has perforce been admitted to a position almost of equality with
the old aristocracy. At the present time, humble birth in itself is
no obstacle to advancement, although educational opportunities are so
limited, and the part played by family influence and favoritism is so
great, that only the most capable and energetic boys from the lower
classes can hold their own with those to whom the accident of birth has
given powerful friends and greater opportunities for study.
The half-breeds, known as _ladinos_ or _mestizos_, occupy an
intermediate position between the white aristocracy and the great mass
of the laboring population, in which the Indian blood predominates.
For the most part these are artisans, or skilled laborers, in the
towns. They are generally clever workmen, enterprising and quick to
learn, but without the capacity to work steadily and diligently for any
one object. They occupy practically all of the positions which call
for manual dexterity or special training. Many become more prominent
than the persons of pure Spanish descent in the public schools and
universities, and not a few rise to high positions in the government or
in the learned professions.
In each of the five republics there are some small farmers, who are
for the most part descendants of the early Spanish colonists. These
are the leading citizens of the smaller towns and villages. They do
not always have property of their own, but often cultivate fields
allotted to them by the municipalities of which they are citizens.
The new settlements which were founded from time to time during the
colonial period were given tracts of land, usually a league square, to
be used in common by their inhabitants, one part as pasture, another as
forest, and a third to be apportioned each year among the members of
the community. Similar grants were made to many of the Indian villages
and tribes, which in some cases received a title to much larger tracts
than their white neighbors. These common lands still exist in all of
the republics, but the number of villages which hold them has been
greatly reduced because some of the governments, as in Costa Rica and
Guatemala, have enacted laws dividing them among the inhabitants,
in the hope of stimulating private enterprise. The property thus
apportioned, as we have stated above, was frequently sold to the rich
planters, especially in the districts where the climate was suited
to the cultivation of coffee, and the former owners became part of
the class of landless laborers. Even where this has not occurred, the
smaller villages have in most places decayed because of the emigration
of their inhabitants to the cities and to the coffee-growing centers.
The small-scale agriculturist has ceased to be an economic factor of
importance, except in Costa Rica and in some parts of Salvador; and
today there are few places more lifeless and more depressing than the
once prosperous settlements in the more remote country districts.
The household servants and the common laborers, who form the poorest
classes, are descendants of the native tribes whom the _conquistadores_
overcame and enslaved early in the sixteenth century. The first
settlers everywhere forced the Indians to work for them, either
by declaring them slaves, as a punishment for rebellion, or by
establishing the _encomienda_ system, under which influential Spaniards
were intrusted with the religious instruction of the inhabitants of
certain villages, and in return for the benefits thus conferred were
allowed to demand a certain amount of labor from their spiritual
charges. These _encomiendas_, or _repartimientos_, were the principal
source of income among the early colonists. The unfortunate aborigines
were compelled to work in mines or plantations or to bring in tribute
to their masters, and they were treated with the most revolting cruelty
when they failed to do so. After the Spanish government became aware of
the grave abuses which the system involved, it ordered its suppression,
but the _encomiendas_ were finally abolished only after a long struggle
with the colonists, who were secretly aided by the royal governors in
maintaining their privileges. The Indians never entirely regained their
economic independence, for their descendants, with the exception of a
few thousands who live an isolated, half-savage life in clearings in
the forest, are to the present day dependent upon employment on the
plantations of the white families.
Whether in the cities or in the country, the laboring classes live in
one or two room huts of adobe or wood, with dirt floors and thatched
roofs. A crude table and two or three chairs, one or more beds of
rawhide or wood, and often a shrine, with a small image of the Virgin
or of some saint, comprise the entire furniture. The walls are
decorated with colored prints and advertisements, which are much prized
by those fortunate enough to secure them from some passing traveler
or from friends in the city. There is usually a loft in one end of
the hut, in which the stock of corn and beans, if there is any, and
a few of the more bulky family possessions are kept, while the small
tools and utensils and the contents of the larder are suspended from
the walls. Water, which is often brought by the women on their heads
from some little distance, is contained in large earthenware jars and
dipped out in gourds, which serve not only as cups but as washbasins.
Cooking is performed over an open fire on a brick platform, where there
is sometimes a primitive oven. The family livestock is represented by
a few pigs and chickens, which associate on friendly terms, inside and
outside of the house, with the lean dogs and naked children.
Under such conditions, the Central American laborer lives contentedly
and without worry, for he requires few clothes and but a small amount
of inexpensive food. Corn, prepared in the form of _tortillas_, beans
and rice cooked with lard, and coffee form the diet of the average
family day after day. Plantains are also eaten in great quantities in
some parts of the Isthmus, and eggs can frequently be secured. Meat
can be had only occasionally outside of the cities, and vegetables,
although easily grown, are little cultivated. The same is true of the
innumerable and delicious tropical fruits, which grow up where accident
dictates, without care or protection.
Because of the primitive living conditions, there is a considerable
amount of disease and a high death rate, especially among the children.
Malarial fever and typhoid are common, and intestinal parasites are
omnipresent. The hookworm, especially, has done incalculable harm.
The eradication of this disease has recently been undertaken by
the governments of several of the five republics, with the aid of
the International Health Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation,
which has contributed large sums of money and lent trained men for
the prosecution of the work. The prevalence of the hookworm, which
perhaps contributes as much as any other factor to the poor physical
condition of most tropical races, is indicated by the fact that of
the persons examined by the representatives of the Commission in
1915, 60.1 per cent were found to be infected in Costa Rica, 58.6 per
cent in Guatemala, and 49.4 per cent in Nicaragua.[3] Notable results
have already been obtained, not only in curing sufferers, but in
educating the people and their governments to appreciate the need for
improvements in sanitation and the need for closer attention to the
public health in general. When the principles of hygiene are better
understood in the Isthmus, and when better systems of sewers and
water supply are provided, the Central American cities should be as
healthful as any in the temperate zones, for their moderate climate and
the porousness of the volcanic soil upon which they are situated should
do much to prevent the diseases common in other parts of the tropics.
In the country villages, life is extremely uneventful and deadening.
The women spend a large amount of time in visiting one another and in
attending church services or prayer meetings. The men work, where there
is work, on week days, and get drunk on _aguardiente_, or sugar-cane
rum, on Sunday. The fiestas and fairs, which are held at least once
a year in every village, are mainly an occasion for gambling and
debauchery, so far as the common people are concerned. There are few
other recreations. The monotony of such an existence, which leads
the rural laborers to embark on any adventure offering promise of
excitement and prospects for loot, is one of the factors which makes
it easy to raise a revolutionary army in many of the Central American
States.
Except in Guatemala, where there exists a peonage system which will
be described later, the wages of the working man are not very low,
considering the fact that his services are of far less value to
the employer than would be those of one who was more energetic and
intelligent. They range in general from the equivalent of fifteen cents
United States currency a day with food and lodging to thirty, forty, or
even fifty cents a day without it, and in some places are still higher.
The workmen are neither conscientious nor physically strong, and the
amount which they accomplish in a day is small. On many plantations,
payment is made by the task, and the employees work intermittently,
frequently failing to appear for days at a time. This is in part due
to the prevalence of drunkenness and disease, and in part simply to
an indisposition to work more than is necessary to provide a bare
subsistence.
There is little pretense of equality in the treatment by the government
of the upper and lower classes. The laborers and country people
are forced to bear the entire burden of the military service which
is theoretically required of all, and to perform work on the roads
and other public undertakings from which the wealthy families are
practically exempt; and they are everywhere taxed heavily, although by
indirect means, for the benefit of the professional politicians who
occupy posts in the government. The petty local officials exercise an
almost irresponsible authority over them, and frequently use their
power for their own personal advantage or for that of their friends.
The poor man enjoys little security in his personal or property rights,
and thus has little incentive to better his position.
Education, however, has done much in the last twenty-five years to
improve the situation of the masses in the more advanced republics,
for the laboring man who learns to read and write has in his hands a
powerful weapon both for his own protection and for the advancement
of his political and economic interests. In Costa Rica, where public
schools have been established everywhere and the percentage of
illiteracy is comparatively insignificant, the peasants are assuming
a more influential place in the community. Salvador, Nicaragua, and
Honduras have been prevented by internal disorder and lack of resources
from raising their educational systems to the level of that of their
more tranquil neighbor, but their rulers have taken a very real
interest in popular instruction, and have made it possible for a very
large part of the people to acquire a knowledge of reading and writing.
In Guatemala alone the great majority of the inhabitants are at present
illiterate. This is not entirely the fault of the government, which
has instituted a large number of schools and has legislated for the
establishment of others by the owners of plantations, but is due rather
to the indifference of the Indians themselves, who as a rule do not
care even to learn to speak Spanish.
Public and private morality have been rather disastrously affected by
the social conditions arising from the conquest of a half-civilized
race by adventurers who in too many cases belonged to the lowest and
worst classes in Spain. The Indians who continued to form the bulk of
the population were deprived of their own religious and moral customs,
and were given in their place a Christianity which was imposed upon
them by force, and of which, because of the cruelty and licentiousness
of their conquerors, they saw only the worst side. The oppression and
violence which characterized the communities of the Isthmus during
their early history long prevented their social life from acquiring
stability, and made brute force, rather than conscience or public
opinion, the ruling principle in private as well as in public affairs.
Even at present, in some of the five countries, political and social
conditions tend to militate against public spirit and altruism in
public life and personal honesty in private life. Social conditions
also leave much to be desired. With the men of the upper classes, ideas
of morality are generally rather loose, and it is not unusual to see a
respected citizen bringing up a number of children by other women side
by side with those of his lawful wife. The community not only does not
censure his careless observance of the marital tie, but even receives
the illegitimate offspring on practically the same footing as the
legitimate. With the half-breed laborers, marriage is an institution
which finds little favor, not, as is sometimes said, because of the
expense which the ceremony involves, but because both the men and the
women dislike the obligations and ties which a formal union creates,
and prefer a relation which, although generally fairly permanent, can
be broken off by either party at will.
This low morality is to a very great extent due to the lack of
religious restraints. At one time, the Catholic Church, to which all
of the people nominally belong, was very powerful throughout the
Isthmus, and the clergy and the numerous monasteries exercised a strong
social and political influence. A few years after the declaration
of independence, however, the Liberal leaders, who had been opposed
by the clerical party in their struggle to regain power during the
years 1826-29, expelled the archbishop and many of the other priests,
and suppressed all of the convents. The religious orders were never
revived, except in Guatemala after the Conservative victory of 1839.
There they continued to exercise a dominant influence until the
revolution of 1871, after which the government again suppressed them
and took radical measures to destroy the influence of the secular
clergy. In the other countries, the priests continued to play a small
part in politics, usually as the allies of the Conservative party,
but at present their influence can hardly be said to be important. In
spiritual as well as in temporal affairs the Church has now almost
entirely lost its hold on the people. Many of the women are still very
devout, but the men, especially among the upper classes, are for the
most part frankly irreligious. In the country districts, few of the
churches can support a priest, and religious observances are confined
to prayer meetings, led and participated in by the women, and to the
rather licentious celebration of holy days. Among the priests, many of
whom are foreigners, there are some who lead an irreproachable life,
but many others, especially in the poorer countries, do much to harm
the Church by their scandalous conduct. There are a few missionaries
from England and the United States, but Protestantism is so utterly
unsuited to the temperament of the people that they have made few
converts.
The Central American has, nevertheless, many good qualities. He is
good-natured, affable, profoundly attached to his friends and the
members of his family, and deeply susceptible to lofty ideals and
patriotic impulses. In every city there are a number of men who are
distinguished for their personal integrity and their scrupulous
honesty, whose influence and example do much to offset the demoralizing
effects of conspicuous political corruption and commercial dishonesty.
Even among the most brutal and the most ignorant of the men who have
been in power in the various republics, there have been few who have
not done what they could, in spite of the difficulties presented by
armed opposition and administrative disorganization, to promote the
social and economic progress of their countries.
The backwardness of the five republics is in large part due to the
isolation in which they were kept by Spain during the three centuries
of their existence as colonies. Their development was restricted
until the beginning of the nineteenth century by a misguided policy
which made progress almost impossible. Agriculture and industry were
hampered by burdensome regulations and taxes which not only prevented
the cultivation of many products for which the country was admirably
suited, but also made difficult, if not impossible, the exportation of
those which could be grown. The prohibition of commercial intercourse
with foreign countries and the restriction of that with Spain, combined
with other obstacles to transportation to and from Europe, practically
shut off Central America from the rest of the world during the entire
colonial period. Even the declaration of independence in 1821 made
little immediate change in this respect, for the new republics had
still no direct means of communication with Europe and North America.
They all faced the Pacific rather than the Atlantic Ocean. Guatemala
City, San Salvador, and the other capitals were not only nearer to the
West than to the East Coast, but they were separated from the latter by
mountainous country and pestiferous jungles through which traveling
was difficult and dangerous. It was not until the construction of the
Panama and Tehuantepec Railways brought the West Coast ports within
comparatively easy reach of the centers of the world’s trade that they
could export their products profitably. More recently the construction
of railways across Guatemala and Costa Rica has given those countries
an outlet upon the Atlantic.
Even after the main obstacles to communication with the outside world
had been removed, the economic development of the five republics was
held back by internal conditions, for the political disturbances which
characterized their first half century under republican institutions,
and which are still prevalent in some of them, made large scale
agriculture difficult and unprofitable, and discouraged commerce.
The civil wars often drew the laborers away from the plantations at
the time when their services were most needed, and caused a periodic
destruction of property and a laying waste of planted fields. In
Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Salvador, where revolutions have been less
common during the last generation, the wealthier classes have become
very prosperous through the production and exportation of coffee, but
Honduras and Nicaragua, because of the almost continuous fighting
between rival factions, are today but little better off than in 1821.
All of the five Central American countries are still purely
agricultural communities. Manufacturing has never advanced beyond the
point of providing a few primitive articles for home consumption, and
the native industries have declined since the increase of commercial
relations with the outside world has made it more profitable to import
many things, such as textiles, furniture, and leather goods, than to
make them with the crude tools of the local craftsman. There are a few
small factories in each city which produce _aguardiente_, cigars and
cigarettes, cloth, candles, and other articles, but in none of them is
there employed a great amount of capital or a great number of laborers.
The most important agricultural products, from the native point of
view, are the staple food crops, among which corn, which is cultivated
by every farmer in every part of the Isthmus, holds first place. Beans,
rice, sugar cane, and plantains are also found everywhere where they
will grow. Potatoes, cacao, and countless varieties of fruits and
vegetables from the temperate zone as well as from the tropics are
raised here and there in the climates suited to them, but comparatively
little interest is shown in their cultivation, and they are
surprisingly hard to obtain except in the markets of the larger towns.
Agricultural methods have changed little since the Spanish conquest.
Except in the most thickly settled regions, the old Indian system of
planting is still employed. A patch of forest is cleared by cutting
down the larger trees and burning off the undergrowth and branches, and
the seed is sown among the charred trunks in holes made with a pointed
stick. After being used for one year, the land is planted with grass
for pasture or allowed to return to its original condition, and is not
cultivated again for from three to five seasons. In the regions where
the density of the population makes it necessary to plant the fields
year after year, a crude form of wooden plow is used, but fertilizers
and modern agricultural implements are little known. The _machete_, a
long heavy knife which each laborer carries at his belt, serves as axe,
hoe, and trowel. The soil is so rich, however, that it produces two and
in some places even three crops each season without apparently becoming
impoverished.
In Nicaragua and Honduras, and in the low country along the Pacific
Coast of the other republics, a large part of the land is devoted to
cattle _haciendas_. The stock as a rule is not of a very fine type.
Except on a few ranches no attempt has been made to improve the race
of the herds by the importation of animals from abroad, and the native
stock seems to have degenerated somewhat as the result of centuries of
life in a hot climate. The cattle receive little attention from their
owners, and in some regions die by thousands in dry years for lack of
food and water. Practically all of the meat is consumed in Central
America, for the surplus product of Honduras and Nicaragua is bought
by their more densely populated neighbors. The hides and horns are
exported to the United States and Europe, but the occasional attempts
which have been made in recent years to do the same with a few thousand
head of live cattle have not been very successful. Dairy products play
but a small part in Central American domestic economy. The native cows
produce little milk, and the cheese which is made in large quantities
is commonly of a very inferior quality.
Until several years after the declaration of independence practically
the only exports of Central America were the forest products of the
East Coast and small amounts of indigo, cochineal, and cacao from the
communities on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. The five republics had
very little commerce, and for this reason had little intercourse with
the outside world. This state of affairs was completely changed when
the coffee plant was introduced from the West Indies in the second
quarter of the last century. As the soil and climate on the slopes
of the volcanoes along the western coast were found to be admirably
suited to this valuable crop, and the product of Central America from
the first commanded a high price in the European markets, the number
of plantations increased rapidly, and the new industry soon became the
chief interest of the landed proprietors in Guatemala, Costa Rica,
and Salvador, and to a less extent in Nicaragua. The cultivation of
coffee was in fact carried to a point where it seriously affected the
production of the staple food crops, for land formerly planted with
corn and beans was turned into _cafetales_, and the inhabitants of the
rural districts, who formerly raised enough food to supply their own
wants and to sell a small amount in the cities, were led by the greater
earnings or were forced by official pressure to become laborers on the
coffee plantations. Food prices have consequently risen, and it has
become necessary to import flour, rice, and sometimes even beans and
corn from other countries. When land has once been planted with coffee
trees, which require from three to five years to come into bearing and
thus represent a large amount of fixed capital, it is difficult to
return it to its original uses, or to release the laborers from the
plantation to engage in other occupations, even though in eras of low
coffee prices the production of other crops might be more profitable.
Coffee is most advantageously grown on a large scale, as its
preparation for the market requires the removal of the pulp of the
berry and of the two skins of the bean itself by rather expensive
and complicated machinery. The better plantations in Central America
produce from 200,000 to 1,000,000 pounds of cleaned coffee each
year,[4] and have their own _beneficios_, or cleaning mills. The
farmers who operate on a smaller scale, or who for some reason have not
found it profitable to install a cleaning mill, send their coffee to
_beneficios_ in important shipping centers, where the work is performed
at so much per bag. Before the war the greater part of the product was
exported to Germany, England, or France, but the partial closing of the
market in Europe has caused increasing amounts to be sent to the United
States since 1914.[5]
The rapid development of the export trade and the corresponding
increase in the imports of the five republics would not have been
possible without the improvement in means of transportation which has
taken place during the last half century. There has been a remarkable
betterment, especially in the facilities for travel between Central
America and the United States. On the Atlantic side, the United
Fruit Company, and, in times of peace, the Hamburg-American line, as
well as a number of smaller companies, provide an ample freight and
passenger service between all of the important ports and New Orleans
and New York. From Puerto Barrios and Puerto Limon, the termini of
the transisthmian railroads, there are several boats each week. The
conditions on the West Coast are much less satisfactory, for the
Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which has almost a monopoly since the
German Cosmos Line was forced to withdraw by the war, provides a very
irregular and rather expensive service. Even there, however, conditions
are immeasurably better than at the time of the opening of the Panama
Railway in 1855.
Internal communications have also been improved. Fifty years ago,
there were practically no railways in the entire Isthmus, but at the
present time each of the national capitals, except Tegucigalpa, is
connected with one or more seaports by daily train service. Other
forms of transportation and travel, however, are still in a rather
primitive state. Some of the republics have spent large amounts of
money in constructing roads for bringing the products of the country to
the cities or to the railway stations, but as a rule the impecunious
governments have not been able to make much headway against the
difficulties presented by the mountainous character of the country and
the torrential rains of the wet season. There are few highways which
are suitable for any vehicle more elaborate than the slow-going oxcart,
and in many places even these have to give way to the pack mule.
One of the forces which has been most potent in bringing Central
America into closer contact with the outside world has been the
cultivation of bananas by North American enterprise along the low,
densely wooded Atlantic Coast. Until recently almost the only
inhabitants of this region were scattered, uncivilized tribes descended
from Indians and runaway West Indian negroes, who lived in an extremely
primitive way in clearings along the shore or on the banks of the
rivers. There were one or two struggling ports and a few settlements
of woodcutters who traded in mahogany, logwood, and Spanish cedar, but
these had little intercourse with the civilized communities of the
interior. Within little more than a quarter century, this unpleasant
and unhealthful but marvelously fertile region has been transformed.
Great banana farms have been created in the formerly impassable jungle,
and a net of railways has been built to carry the perishable fruit to
the ports, from which it is shipped in fast steamers to the United
States and Europe. This is the work of one American corporation, the
United Fruit Company, which controls the banana trade not only of
Central America, but of the West Indies as well. As the plantations and
the transportation lines are managed principally by North Americans and
the manual labor is performed by negroes from the British West Indies,
English is the predominant language of the new towns which have sprung
up. To the native Central American, the Coast is almost a foreign
country. The Caribbean ports of Honduras and Nicaragua are in fact
for all practical purposes farther from Tegucigalpa and Managua than
from New Orleans, and even in those countries where there are better
means of transportation from the interior to the fruit ports the banana
country has developed in its own way, influenced little, economically
or politically, by the communities of the interior. The interior towns,
however, have been profoundly affected by the changes on the East
Coast. The fruit trade is mainly responsible for the improvement of the
steamship service; and in Guatemala and Costa Rica the railways built
originally for the transportation of bananas have been extended to the
capitals of the two republics, so that the journey from Europe and
North America to those cities, and through them to other parts of the
Isthmus, has been shortened by several days.
In the interior of several of the republics, the last fifty years have
seen a considerable immigration of foreign business men and planters,
among whom Germans and North Americans have been the most numerous,
although there have also been many Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Italians.
The newcomers have obtained almost complete control over the foreign
trade of the Isthmus, and even the retail trade at the present time is
largely in the hands of Spanish, Chinese, and Armenian shopkeepers.
Mercantile pursuits were at one time one of the chief occupations
of the creole families, but most of the easy-going Central American
merchants, accustomed to the routine created by three centuries of
isolation, have been unable to hold their own under changed conditions.
The same is true, though to a less extent, in agriculture. Many of the
finest plantations were developed in the first place by foreigners,
and others are constantly passing into their hands. The majority of
those still belonging to natives are heavily mortgaged, for the Central
American planter apparently cannot resist the temptation to borrow
money, notwithstanding the high rates of interest and the ruinous
conditions on which he secures it. There are several European firms
whose business it is to make loans secured by plantations and crops.
These eventually take over the properties which fall under their
control, either reselling them or operating them on their own account.
There are also several small and not very scrupulous banks, of which
the majority have been established, in part at least, with foreign
capital. In some of the republics these have co-operated effectively
with the officials in the disorganization of the currency and of the
government finances. Large investments have been made by North American
interests in railways and mines. The total amount of foreign capital
in the country is, however, comparatively small, because internal
disorders and the slowness with which the country has been opened up
have until lately discouraged investments. There is still an immense
field for foreign enterprise in the exploitation of Central America’s
natural resources, which include not only land suitable for the
production of almost every kind of agricultural product, but also great
forests of valuable woods and as yet untouched mineral deposits.
In some respects, the relations between Central America and the outside
world have not been entirely beneficial to the communities of the
Isthmus. Many of the foreigners, especially among the Americans, have
been fugitives from justice in their own countries who have used their
talents to the disadvantage of the natives, or adventurers who have
mixed in the politics of the country for their own profit. Unscrupulous
corporations or individuals have exploited the inexperience or cupidity
of the local governments to obtain valuable concessions without
making any adequate return for the favors received, and have not even
hesitated to incite or to assist revolutions when they thought that
their interests would be furthered by doing so. Too many of the foreign
business men have done what they could to make worse the already
low standards of commercial morality and have shown themselves more
unprincipled than their native competitors. In spite of the distrust
generated by hard experiences, however, the Central Americans do not
seem to dislike the newcomers or greatly to resent their intrusion.
Many North Americans and Europeans have become respected and
influential residents of the communities in which they have settled,
and marriages between foreigners and natives of the better class, which
have been generally welcomed by the creole families, are gradually
giving rise to a half-foreign element which is becoming more and more
prominent in each of the five republics.
Closer contact with the outside world has thus brought about entirely
new conditions throughout the Isthmus. What the final result of the
present changes will be, it is difficult to say. The native families
are now more and more losing their hold on the economic life of
the country, for commerce, banking, mining, and to an increasingly
greater extent agriculture, are controlled by foreigners. They are
therefore being forced into the learned professions, which afford a
very poor livelihood for any but the most able, and into politics.
Their influence is becoming less and less, and the time seems not far
distant when the dominant place in the community will be assumed by the
foreigners and their descendants, who will probably be assimilated to
a great extent into the native population. Some of the more energetic
and intelligent native families will doubtless be able to maintain
their present wealth and influence, although they will be forced to
change their customs and habits completely, as many of them are already
doing in the more advanced countries. Whether political and social
conditions will be improved or made worse by these developments it is
still too early to say, but it is inevitable that both the character of
the governments and the conditions of the people as a whole should be
profoundly affected.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The estimated area and population of the five countries, as given
in the Statesman’s Year Book for 1916, are:
_Area._ _Population._
Guatemala 48,290 square miles. 2,003,579. (1915)
El Salvador 7,225 ” ” 1,225,835. (1914)
Nicaragua 49,200 ” ” 703,540. (1914)
Honduras 44,275 ” ” 562,000. (1914)
Costa Rica 23,000 ” ” 420,179. (1915)
------ ---------
171,990 4,915,133
[2] The word creole is used in the Spanish-American sense, to signify a
person of Spanish descent born in America.
[3] These figures are compiled from the Second Annual Report of the
International Health Commission, 1915.
[4] In Guatemala there are three or four plantations which produce much
more than this.
[5] For a more complete account of the coffee trade, see Chapter XII.
CHAPTER II
CENTRAL AMERICAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
Early Political History of the Isthmus--Difficulty of Establishing a
Stable Government--Annexation to Mexico--Establishment and Dissolution
of the Central American Federal Republic--Strife Between Liberals
and Conservatives--Description of Central American Governments at
Present--Importance of the President--Political Parties, Patronage,
and Graft--Revolutions.
On September 15, 1821, the principal civil and ecclesiastical
personages of Guatemala City, with many of the royal authorities
and the more prominent creoles, met in convention to proclaim the
independence of the five provinces of the Viceroyalty of Guatemala,
which had until that time been a dependency of the Spanish crown. The
existing administrative machinery was not for the moment abolished,
for many of the officials had approved of and had taken a prominent
part in the action of the separatist party. The Governor General,
Brigadier Gainza, continued to exercise the executive power, and the
local governors in Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica were
instructed to do the same. In the capital, a committee of influential
natives, called the _Junta Consultiva_, was appointed to assist the
former royal authorities until a new form of government should be
decided upon. There was no armed resistance to this action on the part
of the mother country, for the latter, engaged in a prolonged struggle
with her more important colonies in the South, was in no position to
send troops to subjugate the inaccessible and relatively insignificant
communities of Central America.
The prospect which confronted the provinces thus thrown upon their own
resources was far from bright. They were ill equipped for existence
as an independent nation. The creole aristocrats, who had led the
movement for separation from Spain, and who now assumed control of
the government, had had little training to fit them for the exercise
of their new responsibilities, for few had received more than the
most rudimentary education at home, and fewer still had traveled in
foreign countries. None had had any practical experience in political
affairs, for it had always been the policy of the royal authorities
to fill official positions exclusively with Peninsular Spaniards,[6]
thus excluding the natives of the colonies from all share in the
administration. There were a half-score of brilliant leaders in the
councils of the new nation, but they were notable rather for their
exalted but impractical ideals than for any grasp of the concrete
situation with which they had to deal at home. Their patriotism was of
a high order, but their statesmanship left much to be desired. Among
the common people, the great majority were ignorant and superstitious
Indians, with a small admixture of Spanish blood and a thin veneer
of Spanish civilization. They were scattered through a strip of land
eight hundred miles in length, in isolated valleys, separated from
one another by mountain ranges and pestilential jungles, where rough
mule trails afforded the only means of communication. Throughout the
greater part of the Isthmus, the people of each village, having little
commerce with their neighbors or with the outside world, depended for
subsistence almost entirely upon their own products. A few favored
sections produced indigo, cochineal, or precious metals for export, but
the expense of shipping these articles from the Pacific Coast to Spain,
the only country with which the colonists were allowed to trade, was so
great that the planters derived little profit from them. Standards of
living were therefore little higher, even in the cities, than they had
been three hundred years before.
The Central American nation was divided within itself from the very
first. In Guatemala there was a bitter jealousy, created by the special
privileges and the pretensions of the more favored classes, between
the Peninsular officials and the creole great families on the one hand
and between the latter and the merchants and professional men of less
aristocratic origin on the other; and this feeling was intensified by
radical differences of opinion about religious and economic questions.
Besides the dissensions within the group which assumed the control of
political affairs in the capital, there were factional conflicts and
local civil wars in almost every part of the Isthmus. The provinces,
which had long felt that their interests were sacrificed by the royal
authorities to those of Guatemala, showed an inclination to dispute
the authority of the new central government, and their insubordination
was encouraged by the ambitious local governors, who desired to enjoy
independent authority, and by the not inconsiderable party which still
remained loyal to Spain. San Salvador, Comayagua, Leon, and Cartago,
the seats of the provincial governments, were soon the centers of more
or less open revolts against Gainza and the _Junta Consultiva_, while
other towns, actuated on their side by jealousy of the local capitals,
allied themselves to the party in control in Guatemala. The result was
a condition of anarchy which throttled agriculture and commerce, and
almost put an end to all semblance of organized government.
The inexperience of the creole leaders, and the conflicts between
jealous social classes and rival towns, were the more disastrous
because the Central American communities possessed no political
institutions which could be used as the basis for the establishment of
an independent government. In this respect they were in a situation
very different from that of the United States in 1783, for in that
country the state and local organizations had remained almost unchanged
despite the revolution, and the creation of a new central authority
had been made comparatively easy by the inherent political capacity
derived from centuries of racial experience in self-government. In
Central America, the country had been ruled for three hundred years by
officials and laws imposed by an outside force, and when this force
was withdrawn the old order fell to pieces, leaving nothing to take
its place. The self-appointed revolutionary committees had little hold
on the loyalty of the people, and little power to make their commands
respected. The only political institution which may be said to have
survived the change was the municipality. Even in colonial times,
the wealthier creoles had been able to purchase positions in the
_ayuntamientos_, or governing boards of the cities, and had thus had
a voice in the management of certain purely local affairs. After the
declaration of independence, the _ayuntamientos_ were in many places
almost the only respected authority, and they played a large part both
in maintaining order and in organizing the _juntas_ which took charge
of provincial affairs. But they never formed a real basis for the
formation of state and national governments, because their independence
and authority, which had been small under Spanish rule, was taken
from them early in the revolutionary era by the military despots who
obtained control of affairs. Their prominence during the transitional
period after 1821 contributed little to the establishment of orderly
government, for they were the foci of the local jealousies which did
more than anything else to keep the country in a state of anarchy.
The organization of a permanent government, to take the place of
the provisional revolutionary committees, consequently presented a
difficult problem. There was from the first a strong party which
favored the establishment of a federal republic, but the majority of
the wealthy classes, who had supported the declaration of independence
only because of their jealousy of the Peninsular Spaniards who
monopolized the official positions and because they realized that the
mother country was no longer in a position to protect her colonies from
outside aggression and internal disorder, doubted the ability of the
people of the Isthmus to rule themselves under republican institutions,
and advocated the union of the five provinces with Iturbide’s Mexican
empire. This party soon grew very strong as the result of disorders
which broke out in Honduras and Nicaragua, and on January 25, 1822, the
_Junta Consultiva_ voted in favor of the annexation. General Filísola,
the representative of the Emperor, reached the capital a few months
later, and proceeded at once with an army against the people of San
Salvador, who had refused to recognize his authority. He had barely
overcome the resistance of the republicans there when news arrived that
Iturbide had fallen.
Filísola, returning to the capital, called together a congress of
representatives from each of the five provinces, to which he turned
over his power. This body, assuming the title of National Constituent
Assembly, declared the former Central American colonies a federal
republic, and appointed a provisional executive committee of three men,
who exercised a precarious authority, subject to constant interference
by the Assembly, for two years. During this time, the Assembly framed
an elaborate constitution, modeled on that of the United States,
establishing a federal government in Guatemala City, and state
governments in each of the five provinces. A president and five _Jefes
de Estado_, chosen by the people through electoral colleges, took the
place of the Captain General and the royal provincial governors, and
the law-making power was placed in the hands of a Congress of one
chamber. The system of checks and balances in the American constitution
was taken over and made more intricate by elaborate provisions for
the maintenance of the independence of the legislative, executive, and
judicial departments and for the prevention of abuses of power.
The Assembly also adopted much progressive legislation, which did away
with many of the worst features of the Spanish regime. From the first,
however, its sessions were disturbed by irreconcilable differences of
opinion between the radical members, who were in the majority, and the
clergy and many of the rich landowners and merchants, who disapproved
of the proposed reforms. As a result of this conflict, two parties
were formed, which called themselves “Liberals” and “Conservatives.”
The Liberals controlled the first constitutional congress, which met
in 1825, and elected their candidate, Manuel José Arce, President
of the Republic. The latter, however, soon quarreled with his own
party, dissolved the congress, and even overthrew and reorganized the
state government of Guatemala, with the aid of the Conservatives.
These arbitrary acts caused revolts in many parts of the Isthmus,
and especially in Salvador. The people of that state had always been
peculiarly jealous of the control of their affairs from Guatemala,
and their hostility towards the capital had been increased by the
opposition of the federal authorities to the creation of a new diocese
in their territory. Under the leadership of Father Delgado, who aspired
to the bishopric, they united with the disaffected party in Honduras
and Guatemala in a two years’ war against Arce, and finally succeeded
in overthrowing him (1829).
Francisco Morazán of Honduras, the leader of the victorious army, was
proclaimed President of the Federation in 1830. The Guatemala state
authorities who had been expelled by Arce were reinstated, and Liberal
supremacy was established by force of arms throughout the Isthmus.
There were frequent Conservative revolts, however, and even the people
of Salvador, who had played the principal part in Morazán’s triumph,
showed their former jealousy of domination from Guatemala by turning
against him. Their resistance was overcome by force in 1831, but it was
thought politic to transfer the seat of the federal government to San
Salvador. After this, Morazán’s prestige waned rapidly. His efforts
to repress disorder were unavailing, and the Conservatives gradually
regained control of many of the state governments. The last federal
congress, which adjourned in 1838, declared the states free to govern
themselves independently; and in 1839, when Morazán’s second term came
to an end, his authority was recognized nowhere outside of Salvador. He
was expelled from Central America in the following year by an army from
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
The breakdown of the federal system was inevitable. Even those
responsible for the adoption of the constitution of the United States
as a model had little idea how that constitution really worked, and
had no conception of the spirit of compromise and of mutual respect
for legal rights which alone made the existence of a government such
as they wished to establish possible. Many of the state governors
refused to obey the federal officials, and were overthrown by the
latter and replaced by adherents of the faction in power in the
capital. The Congress, attempting to tie the hands of the executive,
was reduced to impotence by the use of the army. The President himself
succumbed before the end of his term to a revolution in which all of
the disaffected elements took part. Even a better organized government
would probably have been unable long to maintain order in a country
where distances were so great, means of communication so inadequate,
and sectional jealousies so intense as in Central America.
Equally inevitable was the breakdown of the democratic institutions
which the leaders of the constituent assembly had sought to create.
The elections soon became a farce because of the ignorance and
indifference of the great mass of the people. The history of the
Central Americans had never taught them respect for the will of the
majority, and there was consequently little inclination from the first
to accept an unsatisfactory verdict at the polls in good faith. The
authorities gradually learned to bring pressure to bear upon the voters
in the interests of the party in power, and as time went on assumed
a more and more complete control of the balloting, until candidates
opposed by the government ceased to have any chance of success. At
the same time the members of the opposition party were restrained or
expelled from the country, to prevent their intriguing or revolting
against the government. Within a few years authority established
and upheld by force was the only authority which was recognized or
respected, and there was no means of changing the officials in power,
and consequently no recourse against bad government, except revolution.
Civil war had thus become an indispensable part of the political system.
For some years after 1839, there was intermittent internal and
international strife, with hardly an interval of real peace, in
nearly every state of the Isthmus. Costa Rica alone, because of her
peculiar social conditions, which will be described in a subsequent
chapter, led a comparatively tranquil existence in her isolated valley.
Elsewhere the establishment of stable governments seemed impossible.
Conflicting ambitions, mutual persecutions, and sectional jealousy,
as well as differences over religious and economic questions, divided
the political leaders of the community into vindictively hostile
factions, which had no means of settling their disputes except by an
appeal to arms. The state governments, resting upon the outcome of
revolutions, had little claim to legality or to the respect of the
community, and they were compelled to maintain their position, where
they maintained it at all, by force and by tyrannical repression of
attempts to overthrow them. Besides the opposition of disaffected
classes at home, they faced also the constant danger of intervention by
neighboring state governments which were in the hands of the opposite
party, for the solidarity created by mutual action in federal affairs
led the Conservatives and Liberals in each state to assist their former
brothers in arms in other states even after all formal political
connection had been broken. This solidarity was strengthened by the
ambition of a large section of the Liberal party to re-establish the
old federal union by force, under the leadership of the followers
of Morazán, and by the opposition to this plan on the part of the
Conservatives.
During the greater part of the period from 1839 to 1871, the
Conservatives, under the leadership of the aristocratic-clerical party
in Guatemala, were dominant throughout the Isthmus. The Liberals
secured control for short terms at different times in Salvador,
Honduras, and Nicaragua, but in almost every case they were overthrown
by the intervention of Rafael Carrera, the President of Guatemala.
These Conservative governments, although usually controlled by the
wealthiest and most respectable classes in the community, did little
to improve the desperate political and economic situation into which
the continual civil war had plunged the new republics, partly because
of frequent changes in the personnel of the governments and frequent
dissensions within the ruling class, and partly because of the inherent
weakness of administrations established and upheld by the force of a
foreign government.
In 1871-72 the Liberals returned to power as the result of a concerted
movement in Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador. This revolution effected
far more than a mere change of presidents; it marked the destruction of
the old aristocratic-clerical party as the dominant force in politics.
In Guatemala, where the Conservative leaders were exiled or imprisoned,
and both the great families and the Church were deprived of a great
part of their property and influence, the old regime has never been
restored. Its disappearance greatly weakened the position of its allies
in Honduras and Salvador. A very similar though almost bloodless
revolution occurred in Costa Rica in 1870, when General Tomás Guardia
overthrew the “principal families” which had hitherto controlled the
government. In Nicaragua, where party divisions were based rather on
local rivalries than on class distinctions, the change from the old
order to the new was neither so sudden nor so complete, and the Granada
aristocracy was able to maintain itself in power until 1893.
The Conservative party continued, indeed, to exist as a political
force, but it was no longer a social group which stood for definite
principles and points of view so much as mere organization of
professional politicians. The influence of the great families became
less and less, and the leadership in the party was assumed by military
chiefs whose objects and ambitions were little different from those
of their opponents. Since 1871, party lines have tended to disappear,
and it has made little difference in political conditions whether an
administration was controlled by one faction or the other. In Honduras
and Salvador, in fact, even the party names have almost ceased to
be used, and in Nicaragua they denote merely the adherents of rival
cities. It is difficult to say how strong the old aristocracy still is
in Guatemala because of the ruthless suppression of all manifestations
of political opinion by the government.
Since 1871, the republics of the Isthmus have been governed for the
most part by strong, absolute rulers, who have concentrated all power
in their own hands and who have on the whole been more successful in
maintaining order than the frequently changing and less centralized
administrations controlled by the Conservative oligarchy. Revolutions
and revolts still occur, but they are less often victorious than
formerly, for the relative power of the government has greatly
increased. The agricultural development of recent years has made
the wealthy classes, who have capital invested in coffee and sugar
plantations, inclined to frown on attempts to plunge the country into
civil war; and the improvement and the increased cost of artillery
and other military material have made it more difficult to equip a
revolution strong enough to overcome the regular army. Individual
presidents, supported by strong military forces, have thus been able to
hold the supreme authority for long terms of years, and to establish
highly centralized, comparatively efficient administrations, which
have done much to encourage the development of the country. Whatever
may be the disadvantages of the exercise of irresponsible power by one
man, there can be no doubt that the Central American countries have
made more progress under governments of this kind than they did under
the constantly changing administrations of their early history, which
had neither the prestige nor the military power necessary to maintain
order. Until the other departments, and especially the legislatures,
had been reduced to subjection by the executive, the action of the
latter was often almost completely paralyzed, and more than one
president was forced to resign by petty disputes arising purely from
personal jealousy. Under such conditions it was of course impossible to
pursue any definite and coherent policy.
The majority of the Central American governments at the present time
are republican only on paper, although the forms of the various
constitutions are still observed. Elections are held regularly in all
of the five republics, but they are controlled by the administration,
which almost invariably secures the triumph of the official ticket.
The extent to which this control is exercised varies with the
character and the strength of the President. In most cases, opposition
candidacies are simply not permitted, and anyone engaging in propaganda
unfavorable to the government’s party is severely dealt with. At
other times, only known adherents of the President are allowed to cast
their votes, and the ballots, if necessary, are fraudulently counted.
Even in Costa Rica, where comparative freedom prevails, the citizens
are sometimes intimidated or coerced, and the authorities are able to
bring pressure to bear in many ways, by promises of favors or by petty
persecutions. Such practices are made easier by the fact that the
voting is open and public, as the Australian ballot is unknown. One
or two real elections, in which the government has not desired or has
not dared to impose its will on the country, have been held in each of
the five republics, but they have usually not been participated in by
a large part of the people outside of the cities, and they are looked
back upon for generations as events far out of the ordinary. As a rule
changes in the presidency come about only when the chief magistrate
voluntarily relinquishes his office to a member of his own party, or
when the opposition is victorious in a civil war.
So long as he can maintain himself in office and suppress revolts
against his authority, a Central American president is an absolute
ruler, who dominates all other departments of the government. He
appoints and removes every administrative official, and through his
ministers directly supervises every branch of the public service. The
revenues are collected and expended under his orders with a more or
less perfunctory regard for the budget voted by the legislature, and
with little pretense of making an accounting for them. He not only
executes, but also makes and unmakes the laws, either through his
control of the Congress, or simply by executive decree. The army and
the police are under his absolute command. Even the courts usually
decide the more important cases which come before them in accordance
with his wishes. His power is curbed only by the fear of losing the
support of his followers or of being overthrown by a popular revolt,
and neither of these dangers is ordinarily very great so long as he
retains the loyalty of his friends by gifts of offices and money, and
prevents political agitation by an effective use of the army and police.
The national legislatures, in spite of the constitutional provisions
aiming to make them independent and co-ordinate departments of the
government, have in practice little authority of their own. Except
in Nicaragua, where the bi-cameral system now prevails, each of
the republics has a Congress of one chamber. The members of these
are theoretically elected by the people for a term of two or four
years, but they are in reality chosen by the administration like
other officials, and are therefore little more than a mouthpiece of
the president. Any attempt on the part of the Congress to oppose
the wishes of the executive, in fact, is discouraged by the use of
force or by minor persecutions, such as the withholding of salaries
or the molestation of the delegates by the police. Not infrequently
differences of opinion arise in regard to matters of little
significance, but in matters of serious importance the Congress rarely
attempts to assert its own will.
With the judicial department, the case is much the same. The Supreme
Court, elected for a fixed term either by the Congress or by the
people, usually appoints and removes all minor judges and judicial
employees. This system has worked well in Costa Rica, where the
tribunals are generally independent and honest, but in the other
republics political considerations are apt to play a large part
not only in the selection of judges but in the decision of cases.
The courts are subjected to much the same kind of pressure as the
legislature, and there are few of them which would dare to oppose
themselves to the expressed wishes of the president. They therefore do
little or nothing to protect private citizens against abuses of power
by the executive authorities or by the minor officials.
The president is assisted by ministers whom he appoints and who are
responsible to him alone. The most important portfolios are those for
War, Public Works, Finance and Public Credit, and Government. The
minor departments--Justice, Public Instruction, Charities, etc.--are
generally placed in charge of subsecretaries. The heads of the
departments are rarely more than advisors and aids to the president,
who directs their policy and passes on practically all of their acts.
They have no independent authority, and as a rule no real influence
over the conduct of affairs when the chief executive is a man of strong
character.
The local administration is under the direction of the Department
of Government, which has a representative subject to the orders
of the minister, and through him responsible to the president, in
every town and village throughout the country. Each republic is
divided into from seven to twenty-three departments, under governors
who are at the same time military commanders, “_jefes políticos y
comandantes de armas_.”[7] These officials, who are appointed by
the president, enforce the laws, collect the taxes, and control
the expenditure of government funds in their jurisdictions, and
for these purposes have under their orders practically all of the
subordinate national authorities. The departments are subdivided into
“municipalities”--districts which include a town or village with
the surrounding country--where the central authority is represented
by a minor official commonly called _comandante_,[8] who commands a
few soldiers and is intrusted with the duty of maintaining order and
enforcing the laws. These departmental and local authorities are too
frequently petty tyrants, who show little respect for the private
rights or the property of the inhabitants of the districts under their
jurisdiction. As they are subject to little real restraint in their
own sphere of action, they are able to exploit the people of the lower
classes practically as they please, and even persons of wealth and
social position are not free from their persecutions unless they can
protect themselves by the exercise of political influence. Redress
against abuses of power is difficult to secure, because the courts
usually cannot or dare not interfere, and the higher authorities, more
concerned with the loyalty than with the official virtue of their
subordinates, take little interest in protecting the rights of common
citizens.
In each municipal district, there is a local government, or
_municipalidad_, consisting of one or more _alcaldes_, or executive
officers, and a board of _regidores_, or aldermen. This body, which has
wide jurisdiction over matters of purely local interest, such as the
repairing and lighting of streets, the building of roads and bridges,
and the enforcement of sanitary regulations, is elected by popular
vote and is theoretically independent of the local representatives
of the department of government. In practice, however, the latter
dominate its actions, and prevent the _alcaldes_ from carrying
out any action of which they do not approve. The members of the
_municipalidad_ themselves, moreover, are in most places nominated by
the central government, which controls their election as it does that
of other officials. In any event they are prevented from playing a
very prominent part in the promotion of local interests by the lack
of funds. Their revenues, which are derived mainly from taxes on
business establishments and fees for water and other public services,
rarely suffice to carry out any very important improvements, and their
credit is very poor. As a result, the central government is forced to
construct and administer all of the more expensive public works, and to
exercise many of the other functions which are assigned to the local
boards by law.
It can be readily seen that in a political organization such as has
just been described the character of the administration will depend
almost entirely upon the capacity and disposition of the man at its
head. An able president, in a Caribbean Republic, exercises an absolute
power for which it would be difficult to find a parallel anywhere
in the civilized world.[9] He is not restrained, like the absolute
monarchs of Europe and Asia, by dynastic traditions or religious
considerations, and he has little need to consider public opinion so
long as he retains the good will of the army and of the office holders
who owe their positions to him. He can often re-elect himself for term
after term, and he is responsible to no one for the exercise of his
authority or for his management of the public revenues. The country is
so small that he can, and does, extend his control to matters of minor
and purely local importance, even interfering with his fellow-citizens’
personal affairs and family relations, without regard for the most
sacred rights of the individual. It is in his power to exile, imprison,
or put to death his enemies, and to confiscate their property, while at
the same time he can enrich and advance his friends. The ever-present
possibility of revolution, it is true, prevents too great an abuse of
power in some of the more enlightened republics, but in the others
centuries of misgovernment and of the oppression of one class by
another have done away with respect for individual rights to such
an extent that the cruelest and most arbitrary rulers are tolerated
because the people feel that they would only risk their lives and
property, without improving their condition, by revolt.
Only an exceptionally able man, however, can exercise such despotic
power for a long period. A chief executive of less force of character
will generally find it impossible to maintain his position or will
be dominated by his political associates. Often a military leader or
a powerful minister is the real ruler. It is frequently said that a
strong, autocratic government is that which is best suited to the
peculiar conditions of tropical America, because it affords the
greatest security to agriculture and commerce and the best protection
to foreign investments. Many Central American presidents, however,
inspired by patriotism and by republican ideals, have refused to
exercise dictatorial powers, allowing the other departments of the
government a measure of independence, and relinquishing their offices
to a more or less freely elected successor at the end of their legal
term. These have not always been so successful in maintaining order
and in carrying out public improvements as their less scrupulous
contemporaries, because they have been unable to act with the same
decisiveness and effectiveness which are possible where all authority
is concentrated in the hands of one man; but such administrations at
least provide an opportunity for the people to gain some experience in
self-government, and make for a more healthy national political life
than can be found where the expression of opinion in the press and even
in conversation is curbed by a military despotism. When a long-standing
and strongly established dictatorship breaks down, moreover, there is
too frequently a period of disorder which destroys all of the advances
made during years of peace. The entire organization of the government,
built around one commanding figure, goes to pieces when the leader,
either through death or incapacity, is compelled to relax his hold; and
it is very rarely that a new man is at once found who is capable of
keeping the administrative machine together. In those countries, such
as Costa Rica, where the presidency is a position of less influence
and profit, and where the custom of rotation in office prevails, it is
comparatively easy to settle the question of the succession peaceably,
in accordance with the law or by an agreement between the political
leaders; but where all parties have been subjected for years to the
autocratic rule of one man, and compelled humbly to obey his commands,
none of the factional chiefs can tolerate the thought that a personal
rival may succeed to the same position. For this reason, the fall of
a Central American dictator is generally followed by a more or less
prolonged civil war, which only ends when one group of men succeed in
imposing their will upon the others.
It would be impossible for a single individual, who can rely neither
upon the loyalty due to an hereditary sovereign nor upon the prestige
enjoyed by a chief magistrate chosen by a majority of the people, to
impose his absolute authority upon the whole nation, were it not for
the peculiar political conditions existing in Central America. In
all of the five republics, the common people show little hostility
to despotism as such and little disposition to attempt to influence
the selection or to guide the policy of their rulers. Neither the
illiterate and oppressed Indian _mozo_ of Guatemala nor the prosperous
and conservative _concho_ of Costa Rica has any real conception of
the meaning or of the possibilities of democratic institutions, and
both are willing to leave the conduct of political affairs to their
superiors. For them, the government, with the forced military service
and the compulsory labor on public works which it demands, is simply
a necessary evil, and attempts to change its personnel by civil war
arouse more dismay than enthusiasm. Few among the lower classes enter
into revolutionary uprisings voluntarily. The upper classes, on the
other hand, are interested in politics not so much for the sake of
principles or policies, as because they wish to secure a share of
the offices and spoils which provide many of them with a comfortable
living at the expense of the rest of the community. There are among
them many professional politicians and military leaders who have no
other lucrative occupation, and the number of these has been swelled
considerably in recent years by the fact that the commerce and to a
less extent the large scale agriculture of the five republics have
fallen under the control of foreigners, leaving many formerly wealthy
native families impoverished. By the use of offices and money,
therefore, the government can always secure adherents and build up a
strong following, the members of which are deeply interested in its
remaining in power because their positions depend upon it. It is upon
a political organization of this kind, and upon the army, that the
president must rely for holding in subjection his personal enemies and
the mass of the ignorant and indifferent common people.
The military force is the chief support of the government. The highest
officers in this are usually influential and trusted members of the
president’s party, for the very existence of the administration
depends upon their loyalty. The standing army itself is composed of a
few thousands of ragged, barefooted conscripts of the most ignorant
type, commanded by professional soldiers of little education or social
position, who have in many cases risen from the ranks themselves.
Theoretically every male citizen is liable to military service, but
in practice all but the poorest classes secure exemption in one way
or another. There is little fairness or system in recruiting. When
additional soldiers are needed, the required number of peasants or
laborers are simply seized, taken to the _cuartels_, and forced to
enlist for a longer or shorter period, whether they have already
performed their legal service or not. When news is received that troops
are being raised in a given vicinity, every able-bodied man goes into
hiding; and in certain capitals, one frequently sees small parties of
“volunteers,” bound with rope and under a heavy guard, being brought in
from the country to augment the garrison. Since soldiers of this type
think little for themselves, and follow blindly the commands of their
leaders, it is the latter who really control the army. In spite of
the immense power which they might exert, however, these officers are
usually merely the tools of the civilian politicians, who secure their
support by giving them money and conferring military honors upon them.
Although each republic has been governed at times during its history
by men who were professional soldiers, the number of real military
dictators has been surprisingly small.
Although the great historic political parties have disintegrated,
and in some states have disappeared altogether, there is always a
more or less open and organized opposition to the government, made up
of the rivals of the men in power and of the discontented elements
which have not received their share of the offices and spoils. These
factions, in the main, simply represent personal and local jealousies
and ambitions. Their members are held together by ties of blood and of
friendship, always potent in a Latin American country, but especially
so in these little republics, whose people have until recently had
comparatively little intercourse with the outside world and have become
closely related by continual intermarriage. Enmities between prominent
families become especially bitter in such communities, as does also
the jealousy between different towns and villages, which, though but a
few miles apart, have little commercial or social intercourse with one
another. Questions of national policy, and plans for the development
of the national resources play a small part in political contests. The
prominent leaders are not so much the representatives of theories or
tendencies as men who have won the confidence and loyalty of the people
of their towns and villages, or who are the heads of powerful family
connections, and the intrigues and the struggles for power between such
men and their followings are the principal motive of the civil wars
which are still so frequent in many of the five republics. The factions
which dispute the control of the government in the four northern
republics still call themselves Liberals and Conservatives, but there
is at the present time little difference in their policies or in the
character of their membership. They are in reality mere combinations
between the ambitious leaders of smaller groups, each of whom is
striving to advance his own fortunes and those of his friends.
The animosities created by former civil wars, however, as well as the
bitterness of the struggles for office at the present time, still
make the feeling between the different factions very intense. In some
of the republics, each group of men which has secured control of the
government has endeavored to consolidate its power, and to avenge
its members for past injuries at the hands of the party which it has
overthrown, by severe and often utterly unjustifiable treatment of
its defeated enemies. The latter are frequently reduced to a point
where they find life in their own country almost intolerable. The
more influential leaders of the opposition are exiled or imprisoned,
and sometimes deprived of their property by confiscation or forced
loans, and the rank and file of the party are subjected to all of
the persecutions which the greed or the vindictiveness of the new
authorities may suggest. Many of the measures taken are really
necessary, especially when there is danger of a counter revolution; but
they do much to keep alive a bitter personal hatred between the rival
groups of politicians. Within the last few years, the realization of
this fact has led the governments of many of the republics to adopt
a more humane and civilized policy, but the customs formed during a
century of civil war have made the execution of such a policy very
difficult.
The fact that the control of the government is seized and held by each
succeeding administration by force naturally inclines the victorious
party to treat it as the spoils of war. A sweeping change of employees,
from cabinet ministers to janitors, takes place upon the accession
of each new president, and causes a demoralization of the public
service which can easily be imagined. Not only are inexperienced and
inefficient men given official positions, but the pay roll is loaded
down with salaries to useless or purely ornamental functionaries,
appointed as a reward for political services. The schools and certain
other governmental activities, such as the telegraphs, are to a
slight extent saved from the general disorganization by the fact that
the small salaries paid and the special abilities required in them
make the positions unattractive to the sinecure-hunting professional
politicians; but even in these, the experienced and faithful employee
has no chance against the man who has powerful friends.
Favoritism in appointments is not, however, so grave an evil as the
graft which is more or less prevalent in the governments of all of the
five republics. This corruption is due partly to the tendency to regard
official positions as the fruits of a temporary victory, from which
as much profit as possible is to be secured while the domination of
the party in power lasts, and partly to the fact that it is impossible
for many of the employees to live on their ridiculously inadequate
and often irregularly paid salaries. In some of the countries, where
there have been long periods of despotic government by one man, who
has subordinated every other consideration to the maintenance of his
personal following and the consolidation of his power, conditions are
almost incredibly bad. From the postal clerk who steals illustrated
reviews out of the mail boxes, to the high official who mysteriously
becomes the owner of large amounts of property during his tenure of
office, the servants of the nation rob their fellow-citizens by an
infinite variety of methods. The President and the ministers derive
profits from the granting of concessions and contracts; the local
officials exact tribute from those who depend on them for protection;
and every other employee who has regulations to enforce or favors to
dispense endeavors to secure small sums from those who are affected by
his performance of his duties. Under these military dictatorships, the
irresponsible authority enjoyed by the officials, and their continual
abuse of their position, result eventually in a deplorable vitiation
of political ideals and official morality among the members of all
parties, for the opponents of such an administration, on coming into
power in their turn, are too often unable to resist the temptation to
follow the example of their predecessors, and to avenge and indemnify
themselves for their sufferings at the hands of their enemies.
The most harmful corruption is that which exists in the courts.
Cases are too often decided with regard only to the influence of
the persons involved or to the inducements which they hold out, and
political considerations play a very large part wherever they arise.
In some countries, in fact, the President has often intervened openly
in judicial questions, forcing the magistrates to decide them as he
desired. Where the evidence makes impossible or ridiculous the verdict
which the court would like to render, cases are very likely to be held
up indefinitely by the loss of necessary documents, or the decision is
purposely made invalid by allowing technical defects in the procedure.
A magistrate who attempts to perform his work conscientiously
frequently has his decisions reversed by the upper courts or left
unexecuted by administrative officials, and is himself not unlikely to
be deprived of his position.
Such corruption, however, has reached its extreme development only in a
few cases, where particularly unscrupulous men have obtained absolute
control of the government. In the majority of the five republics,
graft flourishes to an alarming extent, but is neither so universal
nor so disastrous to the public morals. Ideas of official virtue are
rather lax among most of the professional politicians, but there are
nevertheless comparatively few who do not show a sincere desire to
carry out the duties of their offices faithfully and efficiently, even
though profiting at the same time from their position in ways which an
Anglo-Saxon official would consider illegitimate. In Costa Rica, as
we shall see, the employees of the government receive fairly adequate
salaries, which under normal conditions are regularly paid, and, in
consequence perhaps of this fact, perform their duties as honestly
and efficiently as the officials of the average North American state.
In each of the other governments, there are officials whose integrity
is above suspicion. These, however, are the exception rather than the
rule, and graft will apparently always be one of the most salient
characteristics of Central American administration so long as the moral
standards and political conditions of the Isthmus remain what they are.
The execution of the criminal laws is usually lax and sometimes
corrupt. The members of the upper classes can generally evade
punishment, or at least escape with light penalties, even when
they have committed a serious offense, provided the offense be not
political. There is none of the five countries in which atrocious
murders have not been committed with impunity, and frauds of a
disgraceful character carried out without fear of justice, by persons
of social prominence, within very recent years. Where the lower classes
are involved, the laws are enforced rather more severely, but in an
irregular manner, and criminals frequently escape punishment through
the venality or the carelessness of the courts or of their jailers,
when there are no special circumstances to make the government anxious
to hold them. Those who are convicted and sentenced are usually
employed under a heavy guard on public works, and receive in return
for their labor a small amount of money with which they can buy food.
The death penalty is very rarely enforced for any non-political crime,
although it is said that it is the custom of the military officials in
some of the countries to shoot suspects at the time of their arrest, in
order to avoid the trouble and expense of trying them. Notwithstanding
the inactivity of the officials, however, there is not a large amount
of brigandage in Central America, and deeds of personal violence, if
we except the bloody encounters which occur every Sunday under the
influence of _aguardiente_, are comparatively few. The people seem to
be peaceable and law-abiding by nature, even in places where there is
no organized force to hold criminals in check.
The worst features of the Central American governments are due chiefly
to the fact that the officials are subject to so little control by
public opinion. Those who benefit by the acts of the administration
support it whatever its defects, while those who do not, oppose it
regardless of its merits. The sentiment of the ruling class as a
whole may influence the government in non-political matters, but in
taking measures to strengthen their own position the president and his
advisors are rarely deterred by considerations of legality, popularity,
or morality. An administration does not weaken itself so much by the
violation of rights guaranteed by the constitution as by failing to
provide offices and other rewards for its own supporters. The press, as
a means for shaping public opinion, has little political importance,
for even in those countries where it is not subject to a close
censorship, the majority of the newspapers are too partisan or too
venal to command general respect.
The only remedy against bad government is revolution. This,
unfortunately, almost invariably proves worse than the evil which it
seeks to cure. The civil wars of the last ninety-six years have wrought
incalculable harm in all of the five republics except Costa Rica, not
only by the destruction of lives and property, but by making force the
only basis of authority, and by placing men of military ability rather
than constructive statesmen in positions of power. The numerous Central
American patriots who have worked with all their will and energy for
the establishment of efficient administration and the economic progress
of their countries have found their efforts nullified by the continual
disorder which has made peaceful evolution impossible. Time after time,
by an outbreak of civil war, all classes of the population have been
forced to suspend their regular occupations, and crops, livestock, and
other property have been carried off for provisions or for loot. Under
such conditions there is little incentive for the natives to develop
their agricultural properties or for foreigners to invest money in
railways or in mines. The resources and energies of the governments,
wasted in maintaining their military supremacy over their enemies,
have not been available for the construction of the much needed roads
and railways or for the execution of the sanitary measures which are
all but indispensable in a tropical country. As the result of these
conditions some of the republics of the Isthmus have made little
progress since their declaration of independence, although those which
have enjoyed comparative peace have advanced rapidly in prosperity and
civilization. The first requisite for the improvement of the economic
and political conditions of Central America is the substitution of some
peaceful means of changing the personnel of the governments for the
costly and destructive method of revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] By Peninsular Spaniard is meant a native of European Spain.
[7] In Costa Rica, the departments are called provinces, and their
administrative heads, _gobernadores_.
[8] This is not the official designation, which differs from country
to country. In Guatemala, they are called _comisionado político y
comandante militar_, in Nicaragua, _agente de policía_, in Costa Rica,
_jefe político_, etc.
[9] It should be stated that the description of Central American
governments in this chapter does not apply in all its details to Costa
Rica. In that country, although the written constitution and the
framework of the government are the same as in the other countries,
political conditions are, in fact, very different. The President comes
into office, in most cases at least, by a free election rather than a
revolution, and exercises a far less absolute power than elsewhere on
the Isthmus. The peculiar conditions existing in Costa Rica will be
described in a subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER III
GUATEMALA
Political History--The Government--The Indian Population--The Contract
Labor System--Production of Coffee and Other Crops on the South
Coast--Means of Transportation--Outlying Sections of the Country.
Guatemala is the most important of the five Central American republics.
Her two millions of people form about forty per cent of the entire
population of the Isthmus, and her commerce is greater than that of any
of the other four countries. Although in many respects less advanced
than Costa Rica and Salvador, her wealth and her strongly organized
government, supported by a formidable army, have always enabled her
rulers to play the leading part in the international politics of the
Isthmus, and even to exert a decisive influence in the internal affairs
of her neighbors.
The people of the Republic live for the most part on the plateaus along
the Pacific Coast, not far from a chain of lofty volcanic peaks which
fringe the interior tableland on the south, and on their farther side
slope abruptly down to the low coastal plain. Of the many populous
towns in this region, by far the greater number were prosperous
and rather highly civilized communities centuries before Columbus
discovered America. They are still inhabited mainly by Indians,
although in each place there is now an upper class of white merchants,
planters, and professional men.
For several years after the declaration of independence, the history
of Guatemala, as we have seen, was closely connected with that of the
federal government. The Liberal state administration, which Morazán had
installed, maintained itself in office until 1838. It was overthrown
by a revolt among the bigoted and ignorant _ladinos_ east of the
capital, who were persuaded by the priests that an outbreak of cholera
in the preceding year was due to the poisoning of the rivers by the
authorities. The Liberals retired to the western city of Quezaltenango,
where they attempted to set up an independent state, but they were
completely defeated by the Conservative army in 1840. Rafael Carrera,
a half-breed peasant who had led the popular uprising, was for a
generation the most powerful personage of Central America. Becoming
president in 1844, he retained this office during the greater part of
the period from then until his death in 1865, although the difficulties
arising from renewed Liberal revolts caused him to resign twice for
short intervals. In 1854, he was made president for life. Carrera was
an absolute despot, fond of the trappings of supreme power, but in
political matters somewhat subject to the control of the leaders of the
Conservative party and the ecclesiastical authorities. The policy of
his government was therefore shaped by the great families and by the
Church, and the more liberal and progressive elements in the community
were not allowed to express their opinions or to take part in public
affairs.
One of the early acts of the Conservative administration was the
repudiation of the federal union. The wealthy classes of the capital
had suffered so much from the disturbances attending that ill-starred
experiment, and had been put to so much expense in organizing
expeditions to uphold the authority of the federation in the other
states and in defending the central authorities against attacks from
outside, that it is not surprising that they preferred to sever all
connection with their turbulent neighbors. During their entire tenure
of power, it was their policy to discourage the restoration of the
union, not only by refusing to accede to any proposals tending to this
end, but also by intervening by intrigue and even by force in the
internal affairs of their neighbors when the plans of the unionist
party could not be frustrated in any other way.
After the death of Carrera, and during the administration of Vicente
Cerna, his successor, the Liberals renewed their activities in
opposition to the government, and finally succeeded in 1871 in
overthrowing it by revolution. The first president under the new regime
was Miguel García Granados. He was succeeded in 1873 by the real leader
of the party, General Justo Rufino Barrios, under whose masterful
leadership the Conservatives were completely crushed. The religious
orders, which had been very powerful, were expelled from the country
and deprived of their property, and a similar fate overtook the heads
of the old aristocratic families. Liberal reforms of all kinds were
introduced in theory if not always in practice, and provision was made
for the building of railways, the encouragement of agriculture, and the
establishment of schools. Barrios’ great ambition was the restoration
of the Central American union, but his efforts to secure the
co-operation of the other governments of the Isthmus for this purpose
met with little success. It was in an attempt to accomplish this object
by force that he met his death, for he was killed in a battle against
the army of Salvador in 1885.
Manuel Lisandro Barillas, one of the _designados_, or vice-presidents,
succeeded Barrios and held office until 1892. At the expiration of
his term, not having the strength nor the desire to remain in power,
Barillas held the only comparatively free election in the history of
the Republic, and José María Reyna Barrios, a young nephew of the great
Liberal leader, became President. Although capable and energetic, this
ruler was so extravagant in his expenditure of the public revenues that
his death by assassination in 1898 left the Republic in a very serious
financial condition. This was intensified by the political difficulties
which confronted the first _designado_, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, when
the latter took control of the administration. After a few months of
tension, however, the new chief executive succeeded in establishing the
legal authority and in overcoming some of the problems confronting the
national treasury. He is still at the head of the state, after nineteen
years of service.
The dense ignorance and the oppressed condition of the masses of the
people, combined with the bitter factional strife among the upper
classes, where party hatred has probably been stronger than in any
of the other Central American countries, have caused the government
of Guatemala to became a military despotism, more absolute than
any other on the Isthmus. The administration firmly maintains its
authority by means of a large standing army and police force, and
promptly and mercilessly checks the slightest manifestation of popular
dissatisfaction. An elaborate secret service attempts, with a large
measure of success, to inform itself fully of everything which occurs
in the Republic. Supposed enemies of the party in power are closely
watched, through their neighbors, their servants, and even through
the members of their own families, and foreigners coming to the
country often find themselves shadowed until the details of their
business are discovered. It is dangerous to express an opinion on
political matters even in private conversation. Much of the mail,
and especially that coming from abroad, is opened and read in the
post office. The formation of social clubs is discouraged because of
possible political results, and it is impossible for a man prominent
in official circles to have many friends without arousing distrust.
Persons who fall under suspicion are imprisoned or restricted in their
liberty, or even mysteriously disappear. The ruthless execution of
large numbers of persons, many of whom were probably innocent, have
followed attempts to revolt or to assassinate the President. This
reign of terror is approved by many influential natives and by the
majority of the foreigners in the country on the ground that only a
very strong government can prevent revolution and maintain order; and
there is no doubt that the life and property of foreigners, at least,
has been safer in Guatemala than in some of the other Central American
countries. The omnipresent spy system, however, and the cruel treatment
meted out to those who incur the displeasure of the authorities, have
created an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and fear, especially in the
capital, which has noticeably sapped the spirit and the self-respect of
the people. Patriotism and national pride have to a great extent been
destroyed by the ban on the discussion of important national questions,
and the country has thus probably become less rather than more fit for
self-government during the last two decades.
Although the presidents, almost without exception, have shown great
force of character and marked administrative ability, the subordinate
officials are very frequently inefficient and corrupt. Official
morality seems to be growing worse rather than better, apparently
as a direct result of the depreciation of the currency, which has
not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in salaries. The
highest employees, such as the ministers and the judges of the Supreme
Court, receive the equivalent of about fifty dollars a month, and the
remuneration of minor functionaries varies from one dollar to twenty
dollars. Posts in the government, consequently, have little attraction
except for those who desire them because of the opportunities which
they afford for graft, and respectable persons, who are often appointed
to professorships in the schools or to other positions requiring
special knowledge and experience, accept only because they are
practically compelled to. The great majority of the administrative and
judicial officials are men of a rather low type, and bribery, theft,
and oppression are consequently very prevalent. The fact that the
superior authorities do not punish or discourage even the most flagrant
corruption gives rise to the suspicion that they are willing to have
their subordinates recompense themselves in this way, in order not to
be forced to pay them salaries out of the national treasury adequate
for their support.
Notwithstanding the corruption in the government and the exploitation
of the people for the benefit of the official class, there is at least
a pretense of public-spirited administration. Humanitarian laws are
put on the statute books and praised in the newspapers; the cities are
beautified by laying out parks and erecting monuments; magnificent
buildings for schools, hospitals, and other public institutions
are constructed; and the progressiveness and benevolence of the
administration are heralded by subsidized writers, not only in Central
America, but even in the United States and Europe. The motives of the
government are no doubt praiseworthy, but the actual good accomplished
has not been great. The execution of the reforms has been left to
officials who had no understanding of their spirit and who were in
many cases deterred by their own interests from carrying out their
provisions; and the schools and other public institutions have never
been properly equipped or provided with adequate teaching staffs
because of the failure to appropriate money for these purposes.
Although all power is centered in the hands of one man, the forms of
the constitution are still observed and elections are held regularly in
accordance with the law. They are, moreover, participated in, not by a
few chosen voters, as in some other Central American countries, but by
the entire body of citizens. In a presidential election, especially,
all classes of the population are rounded up by the military and taken
to the polls, where they exercise a right of suffrage restricted
only by the fact that they are not permitted to vote for any but the
official candidates. The number of votes for the re-election of the
president thus equals, when it does not exceed, the total number of
adult males in the Republic.
Since the breakdown of the Central American federation, Guatemala
has suffered from fewer successful revolutions than any other state
of the Isthmus. The Republic has been by no means free from internal
disorder, but at least it has not been subjected to the continual
demoralizing changes of regime which have occurred so frequently
in its neighbors. This comparative stability has been in part due
to the strong organization which the government inherited from its
Spanish predecessors. The Captain General and the royal _audiencia_ in
Guatemala City had naturally enjoyed more prestige and had possessed
more means of making their authority respected than had the subordinate
governors in the provinces in colonial days, and the old administrative
machinery and traditions were maintained to some extent after the
declaration of independence. Moreover, the country has had a series of
able rulers, holding office generally for life, who have crushed all
opposition with little regard for constitutional provisions or public
opinion, and who have almost always been able to defeat attempts at
revolution and to arrange for the succession of a president of their
own choosing. There are, of course, turbulent elements which make
occasional attempts to overthrow the government, but their influence
has been much less than in Honduras, Nicaragua, or Salvador because of
Guatemala’s racial and economic conditions.
Among the upper classes, although they are divided among themselves by
bitter political feuds, and although there are many powerful families
which have suffered indescribable outrages at the hands of governments
of opposite political faith, the revolutionary spirit seems at present
to be conspicuously absent. The majority of the white families who own
plantations upon which they employ Indian labor are more interested
in the maintenance of peace than in obtaining offices for themselves
by a revolt which would cause their workmen to be recruited into the
army and would perhaps lead to the destruction of their properties.
The difficulty of overthrowing the government, with its large standing
army and its superior military equipment, and the terrible consequences
which follow an unsuccessful attempt to do so, deter those who have
anything to lose from engaging in political agitation.
The half-breed middle class, which is usually a cause of disturbance
in the neighboring republics, plays but a small part in politics.
The _ladinos_, as they are called, occupy an economic and social
position between that of the Indian laboring population and the landed
proprietors, being employed as artisans, small tradesmen, and minor
public officials in the towns, and as carpenters, mule drivers, and
skilled laborers in the country. In the districts east of the capital,
where there are few full-blooded Indians, the _ladinos_ work on the
plantations or on their own small patches of ground. Many of the
more intelligent rise from humble origins to high positions, but the
majority are ignorant, dishonest, and vicious, and form one of the
least desirable elements in the community. Their importance, however,
is small, as compared with that of the other classes.
The great majority of the inhabitants of the Republic are docile and
ignorant pure-blooded Indians. These have never shown any liking or
capacity for war since the first small force of Spanish invaders
conquered their populous kingdoms at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Political agitators have rarely been able to incite them to
resistance to the authorities, for whom they have a deep-rooted respect
and fear; and for this reason the organization of a revolutionary army
among them is more difficult than among the turbulent half-breeds of
the other Central American countries. For the government, on the
other hand, they make patient and obedient, if not very intelligent,
soldiers. Many of them are raised to high military offices, for their
lack of interest in political affairs makes them more dependable than
the white or _ladino_ officials. They are on the whole, therefore, an
influence on the side of peace.
Guatemala is the only one of the Central American countries where
the aboriginal population still maintains its identity as a distinct
race. In other parts of the Isthmus the Indians were exterminated by
thousands during the first century of Spanish rule, and those who
survived were assimilated into the European communities to such an
extent that they adopted the language and customs of their conquerors
everywhere except in a few outlying districts. In Guatemala this did
not take place, partly because the population was more compact and more
civilized at the time of the conquest, and partly because the natives
received more protection in their rights from the Spanish authorities
in the capital than in the provinces. The Indians were of course
subjected to the _encomienda_ system just as were those of Honduras and
Nicaragua, but the _repartimientos_ worked less harm among them than
in those countries because their great number made the exploitation of
the whole population by the small groups of Spaniards impossible. The
Indians are still sharply set apart as a class from the half-breed and
white population. In many places they are almost entirely unacquainted
with Spanish, although their native languages, of which it is said
that there are nineteen spoken in the Republic, are becoming more and
more contaminated by Castilian words and phrases. The inhabitants
of each village still maintain the distinctive costumes and in some
places retain traces of the religious observances of pre-Spanish days;
and wherever they have been left to themselves they still carry on
agriculture and their primitive household industries in much the same
way as before the conquest.
The failure of the Indians to assimilate with the white population
caused them to remain in the position of a subject race. Even after the
abolition of the _encomiendas_ they were still compelled to labor for
little or no remuneration on the plantations of the white landowners,
for it became the practice for the authorities to recruit a number
of them by force and to send them anywhere where their services were
needed, either as a special favor to the beneficiary or for a money
consideration paid into the treasury. These _mandamientos_, as they
were called, were the chief means by which agricultural laborers were
secured until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. After the
establishment of the large coffee plantations, however, they were found
to be entirely inadequate for providing the large and regular supply of
labor which was necessary for the new industry, and the system has been
to a great extent superseded, although not entirely done away with by
the present _Ley de Trabajadores_, enacted in 1894.
This law defines two classes of laborers or _mozos_: _colonos_, who
reside permanently on the plantation, and _jornaleros_, who sell
their services for a longer or shorter period by contract. The former
usually work for the employer only a part of each month in return for
the land which he allows them to cultivate. This system is most common
in the Alta Verapaz, where the plantations have great amounts of land
unsuitable for coffee cultivation, and where the Indians, who until
a short time ago had lived a life of complete freedom in the forest,
are less amenable to control than on the South Coast. The laborers
there are for the most part natives who lived upon the land before it
was purchased by the present owner, and who had no recourse, after
the establishment of the plantation, but to accept their new status
or to leave their homes. They are on the whole better off than the
_jornaleros_ because they enjoy more independence and are able to work
part of the time for themselves.
The _jornaleros_, or day laborers, are held on the plantations under a
peonage system. Theoretically the Indian is perfectly free to contract
himself or not as he pleases, but when he has once done so, he may
not leave his employer’s service until he has completed the time for
which he agreed to work and has repaid any money which the _patron_
may have lent him. If he attempts to escape, he is hunted down by the
authorities and returned to the plantation; and the entire expense of
capturing him and bringing him back is debited in his account. If, on
the other hand, he refuses to work, he may be imprisoned until he is
in a more reasonable frame of mind. Those who still prove obstinate,
after fifteen days in jail, may be sent at the request of the employer
to the convict labor squads, where fifty per cent of the returns of
their labor are set aside for the benefit of their creditors. The whole
system depends upon keeping the _mozo_ in debt. For this purpose, he
is allowed a limited amount of credit at the plantation store and is
even loaned small sums of money from time to time if necessary. Few are
sufficiently energetic or ambitious to make a serious effort to free
themselves from these obligations. They have in fact little incentive
to do so, for those who leave the plantation can only look forward to
similar employment elsewhere, or what is much worse, to impressment
into the army, from which _mozos_ working on large coffee, sugar-cane,
banana, or cacao plantations are legally exempt.
The law imposes on the employers certain obligations which are more or
less faithfully observed. In most cases, huts are provided for _mozos_
of both classes, and food is dealt out to them when the supplies of
food which they themselves raise are exhausted. The _jornaleros_, in
fact, are fed almost entirely by their employers, although they are
frequently given small patches of ground for gardens and are allowed
three or four weeks during the year in which to cultivate them. The
planter distributes medicines and even furnishes amateur medical advice
when it is needed. Free schools, required on all by law, are maintained
on some plantations, although as a rule they are attended only by
the children of the _ladino_ employees, for the Indians do not care
about educating their children and are generally not compelled to do
so. The owner of the plantation is responsible for the maintenance of
order, and is empowered to imprison criminals and fugitives from labor
until the local authorities can take charge of them. In these duties
he is assisted on the larger plantations by an _alcalde auxiliar_, an
official appointed by the municipal _alcalde_ from a list of names
submitted by the owner. This functionary, who nominally represents
the authority of the government, but is in reality an employee of the
planter, is an invaluable aid to the latter in maintaining his control
over the laborers.
The wages paid to laborers are at the present time extremely low,
for they have risen little in spite of the rapid depreciation of
the national currency. The _jornalero_ or _colono_ on the average
plantation, in addition to a limited amount of very simple food,
receives from two to three _pesos_ (from five to eight cents in United
States currency) a day, whereas voluntary laborers, upon whom the
planter has no hold, receive from five to seven _pesos_ for precisely
the same work. It is customary in most places to pay by the task, so
that those who are most efficient may earn slightly more than this sum,
while those who are weak or incapable will receive less. Considering
that the Indian enters the service of the planter owing the fifty or
one hundred _pesos_ which it is customary to advance to him when he is
contracted, it is not surprising that he is unable to free himself
from debt, especially as the few articles which he must buy--clothes,
tools, and candles for the church or chapel--are relatively very
expensive. The combined earnings of the whole family, for the women and
children are usually given tasks as well as the men, are in fact hardly
sufficient to supply the necessities of life without an occasional
extra loan from the employer.
This peonage system, in itself pernicious, is subject to the gravest
abuses. The short-sighted and improvident Indians are easily persuaded
to accept advances of money when they have some immediate occasion,
such as a baptism or a funeral, for spending it, without realizing
apparently the onerous conditions under which they must make repayment.
The professional _habilitadores_, or contractors of labor, and the
agents whom many of the planters maintain in the native villages, take
advantage of this fact and of the other weaknesses of the Indians’
character to obtain a hold upon them. This is made much easier by the
aborigines’ fondness for liquor and by their helplessness when drunk.
The Indians are often induced to sign contracts by misrepresentations
or even actual violence, for the corrupt and unscrupulous local
authorities not infrequently bring pressure to bear upon them by
threats of arbitrary imprisonment or of impressment into the army. Many
of the representatives of the government derive a large income from
considerations paid them for service of this kind and from tributes
which they exact every month or every year from the planters in their
districts as the price of official support in disputes with their
laborers. That the contracts are rarely entered into voluntarily and
with a full appreciation of their terms is evident from the great
difference in the wages received by those who work under them and the
wages earned by the so-called voluntary laborers. The government has
made half-hearted attempts to check the worst features of the system,
but its decrees enjoining strict respect for personal liberty and
stipulating minimum wages for contracts made in the future have for the
most part been left unexecuted by the local officials.
The contract labor system is defended in Guatemala on the ground
that the cultivation of coffee, upon which the prosperity and the
commerce of the country depend, could not be carried on without it.
The Indian, it is said, would never work for more than a few days in
the year unless he were compelled to, as he is perfectly contented
with a few possessions which he can obtain for himself by cultivating
a small patch of ground in the woods. The planters complain of a
scarcity of labor even at the present time, and often find it difficult
to cultivate their properties and harvest the crops. This argument
explains, but hardly justifies, the system. An institution which
subjects the masses of the people to a degrading bondage, and which
prevents these masses from progressing or becoming more fit for the
self-government which they are nominally supposed to exercise, must
in the long run be extremely harmful to the country as a whole. The
development of agriculture and commerce, which has been beneficial
chiefly to foreign investors, can hardly be said to be desirable
if it has made social and political conditions within the country
worse. While the Indians are practically serfs, living under the most
primitive conditions and deprived of any opportunity to better their
position, it will be impossible to educate them or to raise their
standard of living.
There is, moreover, no conclusive proof that the Indians would refuse
to work if they were not forced to by the labor laws and the tyranny
of the officials. They naturally do everything they can to escape
employment under the present conditions, where they receive in return
for their labor nothing but the bare necessities of life. These they
could obtain for themselves, almost without working, if they were
left in their original condition in the forest. There is no reason to
suppose, however, that they would refuse employment at wages which
were really worth their while. They are certainly not a more lazy race
than their half-breed neighbors, and they would doubtless improve
their standards of living, which are today no lower than those of the
_ladinos_ in the more backward parts of Honduras and Nicaragua, if
they were given an opportunity to do so. Nor would the cost of coffee
growing be so increased as to make it prohibitive. In Costa Rica and
Salvador, where the wages are from four to eight hundred per cent
higher than in Guatemala, the planters are prosperous and make large
profits. Under the present system, the underfed and ill-treated Indians
are unwilling and inefficient workers, and their services involve a
great extra expense to the employer in the form of sums to be paid to
_habilitadores_ and local officials in return for aid in contracting
them. This money would be saved, and the value of the Indians as
laborers would certainly be greatly increased, if the peonage system
were done away with and the workers were freely employed at fair wages.
There are some thousands of Indians, especially in the less developed
parts of the Republic, who still cultivate their own properties or a
share in the common lands of their villages, raising not only the corn
and beans with which they feed their families, but also a small surplus
which they carry long distances to sell in the markets in the towns.
They seem to delight in the free life of the mountain trails, where the
traveler continually passes long lines of them, in their picturesque
local costumes, carrying vegetables, home-made cloth, baskets, and
grass mats--the men with heavy burdens in the peculiar square frames
on their backs, and the women with baskets or bundles poised on their
heads. Many of them come to the capital from places several days’
journey distant, camping by the side of the road at night, and reach
their destination nearly as quickly as more aristocratic travelers do
on mule back. Besides those who market their own products in this way,
there are large numbers of professional _cargadores_, who spend their
lives on the roads, taking goods from one place to another for hire or
as a commercial speculation. They are said to cover as much as thirty
miles a day with a load of one hundred pounds, and they form one of the
most important factors in the internal transportation of the country.
These free Indians work only part of the time or not at all on the
plantations. When they do work, it is usually as “volunteers” at the
time of the harvest. Their number, however, is constantly diminishing.
As the extension of the coffee plantations has made the demand for
laborers more and more insistent, it has become increasingly difficult
for the Indians to escape from the snares of the _habilitadores_ and
the pressure exerted by the local officials, so that those in the
more developed agricultural districts have with few exceptions been
persuaded or forced into service on the plantations. Many of the
Indians who lived on the public domain have been forced to work for the
foreigners who purchased from the government the land which they had
formerly cultivated, for it has been the regular practice in some parts
of the country to secure new _mozos_ in this way. Even those who once
owned land of their own have often sold it to their wealthier neighbors.
At the present time the situation of the Indians is probably worse than
it was fifty years ago, and it is certainly worse than that of the
lowest classes in the other republics. The development of the peonage
system has deprived them of even the small measure of economic and
political liberty which they once enjoyed, and by taking them away from
their homes has almost entirely destroyed their old community life.
The native municipalities, which exist side by side with the _ladino_
municipal boards in many of the towns, and which formerly managed
the internal affairs of the native community, have been powerless
to protect the members of the latter from the operations of the
_habilitadores_ and the tyranny of the representatives of the central
government. Many of the Indian villages which once enjoyed a sort of
independence of their white neighbors are now completely at the mercy
of brutal local officials, who are not content to exact money from the
people under them by every conceivable pretext, but even make a regular
practice of virtually selling into slavery those who are intrusted to
their government.
Their own vices, meanwhile, have reduced the native race to a pitiable
condition in those districts where they have longest been in contact
with civilization. The cheap and poisonous _aguardiente_, the sale of
which is encouraged by the government because of the revenue which it
produces, is consumed in great quantities by the laboring classes,
and there are drinking places everywhere, not only in the towns and
villages, but even along the country roads. The liquor is much inferior
to that produced in the other Central American countries, and is sold
at a price equivalent to less than ten cents a quart. Its effects are
appalling. To it are due the greater part of the crimes committed
in the country, for drunkenness makes the usually peaceable Indians
quarrelsome and unruly, and causes Sundays and holidays to be marked
everywhere by a great number of murders and robberies. There is a very
evident degeneration, due to this one vice, among the Indians in the
southern part of the country.
The coffee plantations, which have within fifty years become the most
important enterprises in the country, are for the most part situated on
the southern slopes of the volcanoes along the Pacific Coast, not far
from the populous towns and villages of the interior plateau. They are
on the average larger than in the other countries of the Isthmus, and
as a rule have their own cleaning mills. The coffee of Guatemala is the
best in Central America, with the possible exception of that of Costa
Rica, and is hardly excelled in any part of the world. The largest
and best plantations are owned and managed by Germans, who either set
them out in the first place or acquired them from their former native
owners; and many of those which still belong to citizens of Guatemala
are for all practical purposes under the control of foreign concerns
which hold mortgages on them. Not only production, but also marketing,
which is mainly in the hands of German export firms, have been highly
systematized.
The production of coffee overshadows all other agricultural enterprises
on the South Coast, but there are nevertheless many other crops which
deserve to be mentioned because of their local importance. In the
plateau above the coffee plantations, not only the typical Central
American foods, like corn and beans, but also many temperate zone
fruits and vegetables, and even wheat, are cultivated successfully.
On the coastal plain to the South, there are large cattle ranches and
cane plantations, which, in part at least, supply the home demand for
meat, sugar, and _aguardiente_. Sheep in the highlands, and cotton in
the lowlands, supply the raw material for the clothes still woven by
the Indians on hand looms in their huts. There is a regular exchange
of foodstuffs, carried for the most part on the backs of men, between
the settlements in the plateau and the more tropical districts of
the coast plain. The traveler cannot fail to be impressed with the
great variety of products which differences in the altitude and in
the distribution of rainfall make possible, for in the markets of the
capital one can see almost every kind of temperate and tropical zone
fruits and vegetables, brought from one point or another of the steep
slope between the plateau and the coast. Little attempt has been made,
however, to cultivate for export any of the valuable native plants,
with the exception of coffee, or even, in the case of some of them,
to raise enough to supply the local demand. Flour, for instance, is
brought from the United States in large amounts, although there is no
apparent reason why a quantity of wheat sufficient to supply the whole
country should not be harvested on the plateaus west of the capital.
Cotton also flourishes, but most of the cloth used is imported or
is manufactured in the country from imported yarn. As in the other
countries of the Isthmus, the production of the one great export has
consumed the capital and energies of the inhabitants of the Republic
to such an extent that other forms of agriculture have been seriously
neglected.
The economic development of the southern part of the country has
been greatly accelerated in recent years by the improvement in means
of transportation. The Northern Railway, which connects the capital
and the South Coast with Puerto Barrios on the Caribbean Sea, was
completed in 1908 after great expense and many difficulties. Another
road runs from Guatemala City to the Pacific ports of San José,
Champerico, and Ocós, crossing the southern part of the country to the
Mexican frontier, where it is separated by only a few hundred yards
from the Pan American Railway of that Republic. With the exception
of the capital, however, most of the important towns still depend
upon more primitive forms of transportation, as they are situated in
the high plateaus, several miles above the railway line which runs
along the South Coast. The same is true of the majority of the coffee
plantations. The highways which connect the towns and _fincas_ with the
stations and with each other are chiefly mule paths, although there
are cart roads, and even in some cases carriage and automobile roads,
between the largest cities.
The railway system is under the control of an American-owned
corporation which is closely allied to the United Fruit Company.
The freight rates are high and very inequitable, as they have been
arranged with a view to giving Puerto Barrios, which is served by the
Fruit Company steamers, every possible advantage over the Pacific
Coast ports, through which a large part of the foreign commerce of the
country is still carried on. According to the schedule in force in the
fall of 1915, for example, the company charged $0.70 gold[10] to haul
a bag of coffee from the station of Candelaria to Barrios, a distance
of 331 miles; $1.48 from Guatemala City to Barrios, or 196 miles; and
$0.64 from Los Amates to Barrios, which is sixty miles. To the Pacific
ports, on the other hand, the rates were proportionately much higher,
for that from Candelaria to Champerico, twenty-two miles away, was
$0.22, and that for the seventy-five mile haul from Guatemala to San
José was $1.00.
The policy of the railway company has to a great extent counteracted
the benefits which the Republic might have received from the opening of
the Panama Canal, because it has discouraged the shipping of imports
and exports by way of the Pacific Coast. The western departments
have profited somewhat by receiving lower rates to Barrios, but it
still costs them more to send their coffee by that route than if
they had a fair rate to the southern ports. In other parts of the
country, the railroad is forced to charge higher rates than would
otherwise be necessary, in order to maintain its total revenues. The
loss to the country as a whole from having its commerce deflected
to a more expensive route than that which it would otherwise have
taken is considerable. Although the Pacific Coast ports are mere open
roadsteads, where the irregular steamship service cannot be compared
with that provided by the Fruit Company at the safe harbor of Puerto
Barrios, they are nevertheless the logical outlet for the commerce of
the more populous part of Guatemala, because they are so much nearer
to the coffee plantations. The difference in the ocean freights from
Barrios to New York and from the Pacific ports via Tehuantepec or
Panama to New York--between forty and fifty cents on each one-hundred
pound bag of coffee--is not in reality enough to offset the actual cost
of the long railroad haul across the mountains.
Although it is on the South Coast that the great majority of the people
of Guatemala live, there are several other districts of economic
importance. The exploitation of the natural resources of these has been
left almost entirely to foreigners. Beyond the arid and unproductive
interior districts immediately north of the volcanic region, there is
another coffee belt in the Department of Alta Verapaz, the product of
which, known to the trade by the name of the departmental capital,
“Coban,” is of an unusually fine quality. The owners of the plantations
are for the most part Germans. The coffee, which amounts to about ten
per cent of the total exported from the Republic, is shipped from the
port of Livingston, with which the plantations are connected by a short
railway and a regular line of launches on Lake Izabal and the Rio
Dulce. East of the Alta Verapaz, along the lower part of the railway
line from the capital to Puerto Barrios, the United Fruit Company has
established a number of banana plantations. These are not so extensive
as those of Costa Rica or Honduras, but they furnish a continually
increasing export, which is now second in value only to that of coffee.
The low, unhealthful plain of Peten in the North, which comprises
almost a third of the area of the Republic, is rich in mahogany,
Spanish cedar, and other valuable trees, but the lack of means of
transportation and the deadly climate have so far prevented the
increase of the population there and have discouraged the development
of the natural resources.
Guatemala has been gifted by nature with a delightful and healthful
climate and a marvelously fertile soil which ought to make her one of
the richest countries in tropical America. She can never attain real
prosperity, however, until her rulers make a determined effort to
improve the situation of the masses of the people by doing away with
the worst features of her social organization. Among the lower classes,
the contract labor system and the unrestricted sale of _aguardiente_
are today causing a steady degeneration, which eventually, if not
checked, will cause the community as a whole to sink farther and
farther into a condition of semi-barbarism. These evils will be very
difficult to remedy. Legislative action to secure the independence of
the Indians will be obstructed by the interest which the ruling classes
have in the _status quo_, and the education of the laborers to a point
where they will be able to protect their own interests will be a matter
of generations and perhaps of centuries. Upon a gradual raising of the
social and economic status of the aborigines, however, rather than upon
the development of agriculture and the exploitation of the natural
resources of the country, the future of Guatemala depends.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] When the expression “gold” is used in regard to sums of money,
United States currency is meant.
CHAPTER IV
NICARAGUA
Points of Resemblance Between Nicaragua, Salvador, and
Honduras--Peculiar Geographical Situation of Nicaragua--Factors
Which Have Caused Disorder There--Rivalry Between Leon and
Granada--History of the Republic--Economic Conditions--Means of
Transportation--Relations with the United States.
Nicaragua, Salvador, and Honduras strongly resemble one another in many
of their characteristics. They differ from the two other republics of
the Isthmus in that there has been more mixture of races among their
people than in those countries. The Indians did not remain a distinct
ethnic entity, as in Guatemala, and were not exterminated, as in Costa
Rica, but fused with the invaders into a fairly homogeneous half-breed
population which adopted the language and religion of the Spaniards
but in most places retained the Indian ways of living and cultivating
the soil. The upper classes, especially in Nicaragua and Salvador, are
for the most part of European ancestry, and the laboring population,
although there is but a small part of it which does not also show
an admixture of Spanish blood, is distinctly Indian in features and
customs; but only in a few places is there a sharp line between either
of these classes and the half-breed, or _mestizo_, element, which is
perhaps the most numerous of the three. Social distinctions seem to
some extent to coincide with, but they can hardly be said to depend
upon, racial lines.
There is thus more homogeneity in the population and less inequality
between the classes than there is in Guatemala. Although the greater
part of the people are laborers on the plantations of the aristocracy
which owns all of the best agricultural properties, they are free
laborers, who receive fair wages and are not compelled to work unless
they wish to. There is, furthermore, a somewhat wider distribution of
land than in the northern Republic, and the rights of the small farmer
are better protected than are those of the Guatemalan Indian.
The government, although in no sense democratic, is nevertheless
dependent to some extent upon public opinion, for the lower classes
are all too prone to revolt and overthrow a president with whom they
are discontented. The political parties are led and directed by a
wealthy and educated minority, but their sanguinary contests with one
another are usually decided by the support of the common people, and
especially of the people of the cities. Several causes lead artisans
and laborers who otherwise have no interest in politics to take part
in these civil wars. One of the most important is the rivalry between
different towns and villages, the spirit of _localismo_, and another,
which, however, is rapidly becoming less prominent, is the traditional
division, based on no real opposition in principles or policy, into
“Conservatives” and “Liberals.” Still a third is the disposition to
be “against the government,” whatever its merits--a disposition which
is by no means peculiar to the Hispano-Indian race. It is upon these
factors that the political parties are built up. Each chief endeavors
to secure a following among the artisans and laborers of his district
by cultivating friendly personal relations with them and by playing on
their prejudices, and to carry his followers with him in whatever line
of action best suits his personal interests. The groups thus formed
consequently represent petty prejudices and loyalty to individuals
rather than political principles.
The presidents of these countries are therefore less absolute rulers
than the chief executive of Guatemala usually is. Instead of an easily
controlled army of ignorant Indians, who have little disposition to
do anything but obey the commands of their officers, the government
must depend on soldiers who, to some extent at any rate, think for
themselves and take an interest in political affairs. It must not
only retain the good will of its followers, but it must refrain from
arousing hostility in the community at large, where the opposition is
usually too numerous and too well-organized to be rendered harmless by
killing or exiling its leaders and repressing its agitation. There is
no public opinion sufficiently strong to prevent the party in power
from dealing severely with its most conspicuous enemies, or from
misusing its control of the machinery of the administration for the
benefit of the officials and their friends, but there is at least an
ever-present danger of revolution to make it cautious about alienating
the sympathies of too large a proportion of the people at large.
Republican institutions cannot be said to flourish in any of the
central republics, but there is a far more hopeful prospect of their
eventually becoming a reality there than in Guatemala. It would be
impossible, among the factious half-breeds of the Nicaraguan towns,
to round up all classes of the population by military action and
lead them to the polls to vote for the president, as was done when
President Estrada Cabrera was unanimously re-elected in 1916, but it
is not very difficult to control the election by other means. Under
ordinary circumstances, there is no chance for any but the official
ticket. The opponents of the government, and even those who are
suspected of being lukewarm in their support of it, are excluded from
the official lists of voters, with or without a perfunctory excuse,
and opposition candidacies are discouraged by the imprisonment or
the expulsion from the country of the rival leaders and of their
chief supporters. Fraud and intimidation are generously employed to
increase the government’s majority. The measures taken are usually
sufficient to secure a result satisfactory to the faction in power,
but occasionally they are unavailing because the opposition is strong
enough to wring a compromise from the administration or to overthrow it
by revolution. Elections, therefore, are often accompanied by more or
less disorder and uncertainty, and a too violent attempt to impose an
unpopular candidate on the people has not infrequently been followed
by civil war. With the spread of popular education at the present
time, there are grounds for hoping that elections will in the not very
distant future become more nearly a real expression of the will of the
people--a character which they have already assumed in Costa Rica.
The political and economic development of Nicaragua has been determined
by forces similar to, but more marked than, those which have affected
Salvador and Honduras, and a study of her history and institutions will
therefore make it easier to understand the situation of the other two
republics.
Nicaragua has always been an object of interest to the outside world
because of her geographical situation. In her territory, the Central
American _Cordillera_ is broken by a depression which extends across
the Isthmus, forming the basin of the two great lakes and of the San
Juan River, their outlet to the Atlantic. Lake Nicaragua, which is
only 110 feet higher than the ocean, is separated from the Pacific
by a range of small hills, the lowest passes of which are said to be
but twenty-five or twenty-six feet above its surface and thus only
135 above that of the sea.[11] At the narrowest place this strip of
land is less than thirteen miles wide. North of Lake Nicaragua, and
connected with it by a small river, is Lake Managua, between which
and the Pacific there is a distance of about thirty miles across the
low plain of Leon. In colonial times, the route across the Isthmus
through Leon to Granada on Lake Nicaragua, and from thence by water,
was commonly used for the transportation of products from all parts
of Central America to Spain; and much more recently it was one of the
most popular ways of reaching California from the East Coast of the
United States. It early attracted the attention of those who were
interested in transisthmian canal projects, and came to be considered
by many as the most practicable route for an interoceanic waterway.
Diplomatic controversies for the control of the proposed canal, and the
machinations of corporations desiring to secure concessions for its
construction, which it would be impossible even to sketch here, have
played a large part in the international relations of the Republic,
and at times have not been without effect on her internal political
conditions.
The people of Nicaragua, more than those of any of the other countries
of the Isthmus, are dwellers in cities. About a fourth of all her
inhabitants live in six important towns in the lake plains.[12] The
Spaniards established their principal settlements in this region at
the time of the conquest, in spite of the hot climate, in order the
more easily to hold in subjection and to utilize the labor of the
large Indian communities which had long since grown up there because
of the fertility of the soil and the plentiful water supply. The
concentration of the population in a few centers has intensified all
of the conditions which have worked against peace in Central America,
and has made Nicaragua the most turbulent of the five republics. The
inhabitants of cities, since the beginning of history, have been
more inclined to disorder and revolt than their brothers in the
country, and this is especially true in Central America, because both
_personalismo_ and _localismo_, with all their attendant evils, reach
their most complete development in large communities, where the contact
between individuals is closer and the number of persons interested in
politics is greater than in rural districts. The _mestizo_ artisans,
who are relatively more numerous and more influential in Nicaragua than
anywhere else in the Isthmus, are always ready to drop their work and
take up arms in the interests of their faction or of their _patron_,
and even the ordinary laborers, in the towns at least, are Liberals or
Conservatives, and followers of this or that chief. The common people
are but little interested in the principles involved in the contests
between the two great traditional political parties, but they follow
their leaders partly from personal devotion and partly because they are
united to them by the old local hatreds which have kept these parties
alive in Nicaragua after they have become little more than names in
other parts of the Isthmus. This rivalry between different towns
has caused bloodshed at one time or another in each of the Central
American republics, but in all except Nicaragua it has to a great
extent died out at the present time, because the capitals have become
more important than any of their rivals, and have drawn to themselves
many of the wealthier and more influential provincial families. In
Nicaragua, neither of the two cities established by the Spaniards at
the beginning of the sixteenth century has been able to establish its
supremacy, and the history of the country from the very beginning has
been one long struggle, made more bitter by radical differences in the
ideals and interests of their people, for the control of the government
and the direction of the affairs of the nation.
Granada, at the western end of the Great Lake, has always been
primarily a commercial center, since the days when it was the chief
port for the trade between Central America and Spain by way of the San
Juan River. Her leading citizens are not only landed proprietors, but
merchants, who sell goods in person over the counters of their stores.
Her great families form a coherent and powerful group, which has
always been able, because of its wealth and social prestige, to exert
an influence far out of proportion to its numbers, not only in its
own city but in the country at large. The greater part of the fifteen
or twenty thousand other inhabitants depend upon them as servants or
employees, for the artisan class is small and relatively unimportant.
There are few professional men of social prominence and few small
landholders, for the rural districts roundabout are mostly given over
to large, carelessly managed cattle ranches. The Chamorros, Lacayos,
and Cuadras, with their relatives, have always considered themselves
a sort of creole aristocracy, and even in colonial times they were
restive under the control of the Spanish authorities at Leon. After the
declaration of independence, they naturally joined the great families
of Guatemala in the Conservative party, and they have since retained
the name, if not the principles, of that organization.
The Liberal party, on the other hand, has its center in Leon, the
capital of the province in colonial times, and today, with sixty or
seventy thousand inhabitants, the largest city of the Republic. There,
the domination of political and social affairs until 1821 by officials
sent over from Spain prevented the rise of a strong creole aristocracy,
and the constant infusion of Spanish blood during colonial times,
as well as the presence of many Peninsular Spaniards even after the
declaration of independence, somewhat retarded the changes wrought in
the white stock in other places by nearly four centuries of life in the
torrid climate of the lake plains. The people of Leon have always shown
an inclination towards intellectual and professional pursuits which is
noticeably absent in Granada, and take great pride in their schools
and their university. The most prominent lawyers and physicians of the
Republic, even in Managua and the other cities, are for the most part
_Leoneses_, just as the majority of the leading native merchants are
related to the Granada families. Leon has a large and aggressive body
of artisans and many small landholders, for the wide plain around the
city is divided into a large number of little properties, worked either
by the owner in person or under his immediate supervision. There are
few families of great wealth. It was inevitable that such a community
should take the side of the Liberals in the struggles which marked
the early years of the Central American federation, for the character
of its population made it radical just as the position of the great
families of Granada made them conservative.
The other towns of the Republic, none of which until within recent
years could compare in wealth or population with either of the two
chief cities, are divided between these in their sympathies. Those
which are dependent geographically upon one of the rivals have
naturally followed it in politics. Others are split within themselves
by feuds between their leading citizens and between different elements
in their population. Since the development of the coffee industry has
caused a great increase in the importance of Managua, Matagalpa, and
some of the other towns, these places have of course acquired much
political influence, but the various groups among their people have
rather allied themselves to the already existing factions than formed
new ones of their own. The Conservative and Liberal leaders in Granada
and Leon still dominate the party councils, although their authority is
sometimes questioned by their allies in the newer centers.
The jealousy between Granada and Leon found expression in armed
conflict as soon as the authority of the mother country was removed.
After the declaration of independence, the Spanish governor in
Leon, like the authorities in many of the other provinces, refused
to recognize the authority of Gainza, while the Granadinos joyfully
accepted the new central government in Guatemala in preference to that
of the mother country. As the result of this situation, an intermittent
war began which lasted until General Morazán, on becoming president
of the Federation, sent Dionisio de Herrera, as _jefe de estado_, to
restore order. Under him the Liberal party was firmly intrenched in
power. He was succeeded by a series of _jefes_ of the same faction,
most of them under the control of a military leader named Casto
Fonseca, who was _comandante de armas_. The destruction of the Liberal
governments in the other republics, however, made the position of the
authorities in Nicaragua precarious; and in 1845 their administration
was overthrown by a Conservative uprising aided by armies from Honduras
and Salvador, which wished to punish Leon for the asylum afforded there
to the defeated followers of Morazán. After sacking the capital and
slaughtering a large part of its inhabitants, the invaders moved the
capital to Masaya and later to Managua, both small towns near Granada.
A Conservative government, made up of the great families of the latter
city, endeavored to establish order and repair the damage wrought by
the civil wars which had continued almost without interruption ever
since the federal government had grown too weak to maintain peace, but
their efforts were of little avail. The new _comandante de armas_,
Trinidad Muñoz, kept the country in a state of continual disturbance,
by intrigue and conspiracy, in order to increase his own influence,
and finally betrayed the party which had placed him in office and used
the force intrusted to him to bring about the re-establishment of the
capital at Leon. A new Conservative uprising aided by Honduras and
Costa Rica overthrew him in 1851, and the seat of the government was
again transferred to Managua. The Conservatives made a sincere effort
to establish harmony between the two parties, but after their attempts
to conciliate their opponents by giving them a place in the cabinet had
proved a failure, they endeavored equally unsuccessfully to maintain
order by severe measures which only made the Liberals the more bitter.
In 1854, the people of Leon, under the lead of Máximo Jeréz and
Francisco Castellón, drove the forces of the government out of their
city and attacked Granada. The Conservatives, who received timely aid
from Guatemala, resisted determinedly. By the end of the year they were
apparently gaining the upper hand, when the Liberals, in their attempts
to turn the tide, called in the support of a band of North American
filibusters. This was the origin of the “National War,” one of the most
remarkable and most romantic events in the history of the Isthmus.
On June 16, 1855, William Walker landed at the port of Realejo, with
fifty-seven other adventurers, ostensibly for the purpose of aiding the
Liberal government at Leon, which had invited him to come to Nicaragua,
but in reality with the intention of obtaining control of the entire
country for himself. This he succeeded within a few months in doing.
Carrying his force to San Juan del Sur by sea, he evaded a Conservative
army sent to attack him there, sailed up the lake to Granada, and on
October 13 occupied that city with little resistance. The force of the
Conservative leaders was unimpaired, but they feared to attack the
foreigners, who held their families as hostages. Corral, the head of
the government forces, agreed therefore to a treaty of peace, signed on
October 23, by which Patricio Rivas, a moderate Conservative, became
president, Corral himself secretary of war, and Walker commander of
the army. The native troops were for the most part disbanded, and the
filibusters, or the “American Phalanx,” as they called themselves, were
practically the only military force in the Republic.
Walker desired to establish a coalition government, under his own
control, in which the leaders of both great parties should be
represented. This proved impossible, because the native chiefs from the
first showed signs of disaffection. Corral was discovered to be holding
treasonable correspondence with the presidents of the other Central
American republics, and was shot only a short time after the signature
of the treaty of peace. Rivas, the new president, and Jeréz, the leader
of the Liberals, deserted Walker in the following June, and began a
revolution against him in Leon and the western departments. Walker
thereupon had himself elected President of the Republic (June 29, 1856).
The adventure of the filibusters had meanwhile attracted much interest
and sympathy in the United States, where the control of Nicaragua by
an American was regarded as an offset to the encroachments of Great
Britain on the eastern end of the proposed route of the interoceanic
canal. The control exercised by that power over Greytown, at the
mouth of the San Juan River, had not yet been given up, in spite of
the provisions of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The people of the South,
moreover, who favored expansion in tropical countries in order to
maintain the relative influence of the slave states in the Union,
believed that they saw in the measures which Walker adopted early in
his administration to aid Americans in acquiring land in Nicaragua,
and to open the way for the introduction there of negro slavery,
indications that his ultimate object was the annexation of the country
to the United States as a new slave-holding commonwealth. This belief
appears to have been erroneous, for Walker himself more than once
expressed the intention of creating an independent nation, with
himself at its head as military dictator;[13] but it at least gained
for the adventurer a large amount of assistance.
It was therefore easy for Walker’s friends to secure large amounts of
supplies and many recruits for his cause in the United States. The
original force of fifty-eight was soon increased to several hundred,
and the immense losses caused by disease and by fighting were made
up with little difficulty. It is said that 2,500 men in all joined
the “phalanx,” of whom more than one thousand died of wounds or of
disease.[14] The government of the United States attempted to stop
the recruiting of men and the fitting out of expeditions within its
jurisdiction, but it was able to accomplish very little because of the
deficiencies of its neutrality laws and the strong popular feeling in
favor of the filibusters, which often prevented the federal officials
from carrying out the orders of their superiors. The President and the
Department of State themselves were by no means unfriendly to Walker’s
enterprise while it still offered a prospect of success. The American
minister in Nicaragua had throughout exerted his influence in favor of
Walker, although in so doing he had greatly exceeded his instructions,
and the Rivas government had been officially recognized by President
Pierce on May 14, 1856. This recognition was not, however, extended to
Walker after the latter had become president.
The most useful friends and the most dangerous enemies of Walker’s
regime were the American financiers interested in the Accessory
Transit Company, a concern which was at that time transporting many
thousands of Americans each month from New York to San Francisco
by way of the San Juan River, crossing from the Great Lake to the
Pacific by a macadamized road from La Virgen to San Juan del Sur.
When the filibusters arrived in Nicaragua, a contest was in progress
in this company in which Morgan and Garrison, the agents at New York
and San Francisco respectively, were striving to wrest the control
from Cornelius Vanderbilt. Failing to achieve their purpose, Morgan
and Garrison determined to make use of Walker to turn the tables upon
their successful rival. They did much to aid him in securing control
of the Nicaraguan government by supplying him with money and arms and
by bringing him large numbers of recruits in their steamers from New
York and San Francisco; and in return for these favors they prevailed
upon him to revoke the concession of the old company and to grant a
new concession to them. This action brought Walker into a conflict
with Vanderbilt, who from that time on used every means to compass the
filibuster’s destruction.
In July, 1856, Walker was practically supreme in southwestern
Nicaragua, and had complete control of the Transit route. An army
sent against him by Costa Rica a few months before had won two or
three battles, but had soon been forced to withdraw by an epidemic of
cholera. The hostile elements in Nicaragua itself, and the armies of
Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras, were however gathering at Leon, for
all Central America had risen in arms against the foreign invader. In
September the allies advanced on Masaya, where they inflicted a heavy
defeat on a small force of Americans. In November they took Granada,
the seat of Walker’s government, which the filibusters evacuated and
destroyed on their approach. Walker then moved his army by water to the
Transit road, which was the chief avenue by which he received supplies
and recruits from the outside world.
The allies had thus far been unable to inflict a decisive defeat on
the American leader. Although they had faced him for five months
with forces which must have outnumbered his little command at least
three to one, the quarrels between their leaders had made effective
action impossible, and the diseases which had decimated both camps had
disheartened them far more than they had the intrepid “phalanx.” It
is probable that they would soon have abandoned the campaign had not
Costa Rica, instigated by Vanderbilt and encouraged by the government
of Great Britain, again taken the field and struck Walker a decisive
blow at his weakest point. In December a force from that country,
directed by one of Vanderbilt’s agents, had descended the San Carlos
River and seized the steamers on the San Juan and the Great Lake,
thus cutting off Walker’s communications with New York, whence he had
received the greatest part of his reinforcements. They then joined the
allies who were confronting the filibuster force at Rivas. Walker was
now no longer able to replenish his supplies or to fill the gaps in his
ranks with new recruits. Although in desperate straits, he held out for
several months, beating off the attacks of the Central American troops
with great loss. The melting away of his small force through disease
and desertion, however, finally made his position untenable. On May 1,
1857, he surrendered to Commander Davis of the U. S. S. St. Mary’s, who
had interposed his mediation to put an end to the hostilities.
At the conclusion of the war there were six armies in Nicaragua,
representing the four other Central American republics and the two
factions in the country itself. Most of the foreign contingents
were withdrawn by their respective governments, after some slight
difficulties, but neither the Conservatives under General Tomás
Martínez nor the Liberals under Jeréz were willing to allow the other
party to take possession of the government. Another civil war would
probably have been the result, had not the Republic suddenly been
menaced by a new danger from without. Costa Rica, attempting to take
advantage of the exhaustion of her neighbor, declined to evacuate the
territory which she had occupied on the south bank of the San Juan
River, and demanded the surrender of certain military posts there which
would give her control of the greater part of the route of the proposed
canal. As soon as the intentions of President Mora became evident,
Jeréz and Martínez assumed a joint dictatorship and prepared for war.
Hostilities were only averted by the sudden return of Walker, which
forced the two countries to settle their differences and to prepare to
resist a new invasion. Costa Rica had already withdrawn her claims when
news arrived that the filibuster had been taken prisoner by the captain
of an American warship on the East Coast before he had had time to
reach the interior.[15]
Meanwhile the capital had been definitely and permanently established
at Managua, and Tomás Martínez had taken charge of the presidency
as the result of an election. With his accession began the first,
and up to the present time the only, era of relatively stable and
comparatively efficient government in the history of the Republic.
Martínez held office until 1867, suppressing a Liberal revolt led by
Jeréz in 1863, and was succeeded by a series of capable and honorable
presidents belonging to the Conservative party.[16] These men were
the leaders of a strongly organized and homogeneous group, which was
able to maintain itself in office until 1893 because of its unity and
its moderate and sagacious policy. Although thoroughly conservative
in ideas as well as in name, striving to maintain the existing social
order and the influence of the Church, the administrations of the
“thirty years” nevertheless did much to promote the economic and
social progress of the country. A railway was built from the Pacific
port of Corinto to Leon and Lake Managua, and another from the city
of Managua to Granada; agriculture was encouraged in many ways; and
even the school system was enlarged and improved. Their most important
achievement was the maintenance of peace during so long a period. There
were few revolts of importance, and not one successful revolution
between 1863 and 1893, notwithstanding the fact that the prolonged
tenure of power by one political group, which allowed no real freedom
of elections, was naturally distasteful to the opposition.
The methods by which the Conservatives were able to sustain their
authority for so long should afford a valuable lesson for their
successors. In the first place, the government was that of a group
of men, rather than that of one absolute ruler. As each president
at the end of his term turned over his office to one of his
associates, instead of bringing about his own re-election, there
was little jealousy between the leaders, and each in turn had the
support of a united party. So long as there was no treachery within
the administration itself, and so long as friendly relations were
cultivated with the neighboring states, the government, with its
control of the army and the forts, had little to fear from its enemies.
The Liberals, on their side, showed little inclination to recommence
the civil wars which had devastated the country from 1821 to 1863,
for they profited by the maintenance of order, and were treated with
far more fairness and generosity than usually falls to the lot of the
opposition party in Central America. At the present time, after a
quarter century of renewed party strife and mutual persecution, many
members of both parties look back on the “thirty years” as the happiest
period of the Republic’s history.
There were, however, dissatisfied elements which only awaited an
opportunity to overthrow the Conservative regime. The Leon leaders were
far from accepting the rule of their traditional rivals complacently,
and they could rely upon the support of increasingly numerous groups
of young men of the middle and lower classes in other parts of the
country, who were beginning to take a prominent part in political
agitation. The “Principal Families” were losing their prestige as they
had already lost it in Guatemala and Costa Rica, and their political
power was destroyed when the first serious dissension appeared in their
ranks. In 1889 President Carazo died in the middle of his term, and was
succeeded by Roberto Sacasa, one of the few Conservatives from Leon.
When the new president attempted to give the people of his own city
some of the more important public offices, the extreme partisans of
Granada overthrew him in 1893. This act, which broke the unity of the
Conservative party and thus weakened the government, was followed by a
successful Liberal uprising in Leon some months later.
As the result of this revolution, the presidency was given to a young
man from Managua, who was prominent among the younger generation of
Liberals. José Santos Zelaya was the absolute ruler of Nicaragua for
sixteen years. He was supported at first by the leaders at Leon,
but in 1896, when it became evident that he intended to force his
re-election for a second term, the western city rose against him.
The administration was saved only by the intervention of the allied
government of Honduras and by the aid of the Conservatives of Granada,
who were willing to support even a Liberal president against their
traditional enemies. This episode illustrates one of the chief sources
of Zelaya’s power--his skill in playing off the members of the
different factions against one another. When it became evident that
it was impossible to overthrow him, the Leon chiefs again associated
themselves with him, and even some of the wealthy _Granadinos_ accepted
positions and favors from him.
During the Liberal administration, the railway system and the steamer
service on the lakes were extended and improved, the development of the
coffee districts was stimulated by generous subsidies, and the capital,
Zelaya’s birthplace, was transformed from a rather primitive small town
to the most progressive city of the Republic, which at the present
time is ahead of Granada, and but little behind Leon, in population.
Marked progress was made in the matter of public instruction, for
schools were opened in all parts of the country, and many young men of
special ability were sent abroad to study. It is to be regretted that
the Conservative administrations which succeeded Zelaya have fallen far
behind the Liberal dictator in this respect, and have abandoned many of
the educational institutions which he opened.
Despite his progressive policy, however, Zelaya was a brutal and
unscrupulous tyrant, who exploited the country for his own personal
profit on a scale unprecedented in the history of the Isthmus. He and
his ministers established monopolies of all sorts, and sold valuable
concessions to foreigners or acquired them themselves, until there
were few forms of agriculture or industry which did not pay a heavy
tribute to some favored person. The silver currency disappeared before
large issues of irredeemable paper money, and the requisitions of the
government were paid for, not with cash, but with receipts which could
be negotiated only at a loss and through the aid of persons having
influence with the treasury department. Private persons enjoyed little
protection in their property and personal liberty against abuses of
power by the local and military officials, and the enemies of the
government suffered not only exile and the confiscation of their
property, but even torture and sometimes death in the prisons. The
rich families of Granada, who were with some reason held responsible
for the revolts which occurred almost every year, were treated with
great brutality. The avarice and cruelty of the men in power, however,
were felt most severely only by their irreconcilable enemies. The
friends of the government prospered, and the people as a whole suffered
comparatively little. In the country at large, in fact, the inflow of
money resulting from the reckless sale of concessions created a sort of
prosperity, for which the country has had to pay since Zelaya’s fall.
Zelaya raised Nicaragua to a position of influence in Central America
which she had never before enjoyed. He fomented revolutions in all
of the other four republics, and even in countries so far distant as
Colombia and Ecuador, until by 1909 the only one of his neighbors
who did not hate and fear him was the president of Honduras, whom he
himself had placed in office by his invasion of that state in 1907.
During the last three years of his administration, his attempts to
re-establish the old federal union, with himself at its head, plunged
all Central America into turmoil. His warlike activities and his
systematic opposition to American influence in the Isthmus finally
brought about an open rupture with the government of the United States,
and did much to cause his downfall. The history of the revolution of
1909, and the history of the Republic since that date will be treated
in Chapter XI.
Ninety-five years of rarely interrupted civil strife have left
Nicaragua in a condition which offers little hope for the early
re-establishment of peace and good government. The advances made along
these lines between 1863 and 1893 were to a great extent nullified
during the Liberal regime, when the continual attempts at revolution,
followed usually by barbarous treatment of the people of Granada and
other Conservative centers, not only revived and intensified the old
localistic spirit, but aroused a turbulent spirit and a strong taste
for factional strife among the people of all classes. Within a few
years after 1893, it would have been impossible for either party to
acquiesce in the rule of the other as the Liberals had acquiesced in
the Conservative regime of the “thirty years,” for the subordination
of any sense of justice to political considerations in the conduct of
the government and in the courts made the opponents of the party in
power so insecure in their property and in their personal liberty that
they were ready to support almost any revolutionary movement which
promised an alleviation of their condition. The only creed of public
officials and professional politicians seemed to be the promotion of
the interests of their faction and the abuse and subjugation of their
political enemies. These conditions were little changed by the advent
of the Conservatives to power in 1910, because the new authorities, who
had grown up under the oppression of Zelaya, with the worst features of
his administration constantly before their eyes, apparently could not
resist the temptation to avenge themselves upon their former rulers on
the one hand and to attempt to recoup their losses at the expense of
the nation on the other. The political morality of all parties had been
so debased that a restoration of the clean and moderate regime of the
“thirty years,” of which many of the older generation in Granada had
dreamed, was no longer possible.
The fertile lake plains, laid waste time after time by revolutionary
armies, are no longer the “Mahomet’s Paradise” which travelers had
described in glowing terms in colonial times. After the declaration of
independence, the energies of the ruling class in each section of the
country were entirely occupied in endeavors to maintain themselves in
power or to overthrow administrations controlled by their enemies. The
harassed landholders continued to cultivate their plantations as well
as they could in the intervals between civil wars, but the political
situation of the country soon became so hopeless that there was little
incentive for them to attempt to repair the damage wrought by each
successive outbreak or to engage in new agricultural enterprises. The
indigo plantations which had made the people of the province wealthy
under the rule of Spain were abandoned some time before the invention
of aniline dyes made them unprofitable in the other states, and the
famous cacao of Nicaragua, which was formerly an important export,
is now grown in quantities little more than sufficient to supply the
local demand. The only important products of the lake basin today are
plantains, corn, beans, sugar, and cacao, which are planted for local
consumption, and cattle, which are still raised in large numbers,
notwithstanding the losses inflicted on ranch owners by foraging
parties and bandits.
Outside of the hot plains of the interior, there have until recently
been few settlements of importance. The climate of the mountains to
the northwest and southeast of the lakes is much more suitable to
European colonization than that of Granada and Leon, but the latter
cities, situated as they are on what was formerly the transisthmian
commercial route, have always been preferred as a place of residence by
the creole families. The majority of the towns which were established
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the regions of Matagalpa,
Jinotega, and Segovia were soon destroyed by the fierce mountain
Indians or by pirates who came up the rivers from their bases of
operations on the East Coast; and those which survived, with few
exceptions, are today but little more than straggling villages. In
the _sierras_ between the lakes and the Pacific, there were at the
time of the conquest a number of Indian villages, but their growth
was discouraged by the fact that the lack of rivers and springs made
it difficult to secure even drinking water in the dry season. Neither
district received much attention from the government until the latter
part of the nineteenth century.
During the last twenty-five years, however, a number of coffee
plantations have been established both in the departments of Matagalpa
and Jinotega, and in the mountains near Managua and Granada. These
are not so large nor so well equipped as those in other countries of
the Isthmus, and their product is much less than that of Guatemala or
Salvador, but their development has nevertheless greatly increased the
commerce of the country. It has not, however, affected general economic
and political conditions so much as it would have if the majority of
the plantations were not owned and managed by foreigners. Nicaraguan
citizens hold only a part of the properties in the southwestern
_sierras_, and those in the North are almost entirely in the hands of
Germans, Englishmen, and Americans. The natives have participated less
in the prosperity due to the new conditions than in any of the other
countries where coffee has become the principal national product.
The Matagalpa and Jinotega districts have a large Indian population,
living in little settlements scattered through the mountains. These
tribes were not subjugated by the colonial authorities until nearly two
centuries after the establishment of Leon and Granada, and even at the
present time, when most of them have adopted the Spanish language and
religion, they show little admixture of white blood. At the time of
their pacification they received large tracts of land from the crown,
which they still hold in common and apportion at regular intervals
among their members. As the extent and the exact boundaries of these
grants have never been definitely settled, they have been a cause
of constant friction between the native communities and the white
planters. The officials of the central government have often carelessly
sold land belonging to the Indians to the coffee growers as a part of
the public domain, and the planters themselves have in some instances
taken possession of the property of the aboriginal communities without
any right to do so. Projects for the surveying of the Indian lands and
for the sale of those which their owners do not need to the coffee
planters have for some time occupied the attention of the authorities
at Managua.
The labor situation in the northern coffee belt presents considerable
difficulties. The Indians, who see little advantage in exchanging their
free life in their own villages for one of toil on the plantations,
do not furnish the regular and dependable supply of workmen which are
indispensable for the proper cultivation of the plantations, although
they do not refuse to work for a few days when they have need for a
small sum of ready money. Under Zelaya, an attempt was made to solve
the problem by the passage of a peonage law similar to the _Ley de
Trabajadores_ in Guatemala. This system seems never to have borne so
heavily upon the Indians as in the latter republic, but it at least
gave the planters a means for securing a regular force with which to
work their properties. Further aid was furnished by the recruiting
of laborers by force during the harvest time, when many Indians from
Matagalpa were even forced to travel for many days on foot across the
hot plains of the interior to work for friends of the administration
in the _sierras_ south of the lakes. The labor laws were abolished by
the Conservative administration, however, and since 1910 the planters,
unable to enforce contracts which they make with the Indians, have
often had difficulties in harvesting their crops. Their position has
been alleviated somewhat by the fact that the local authorities have
in many cases illegally enforced the old law; but the uncertainty of
the labor situation has greatly discouraged the extension of the
plantations and the introduction of new capital.[17]
The East Coast, which is for all practical purposes farther from the
cities of the interior than it is from New Orleans, has only within
the last quarter century become an integral part of Nicaragua, for
until 1894 it enjoyed a sort of independent existence under British
protection as the “Mosquito Kingdom.” This was a fictitious state of
half-breed Indians and negroes, who had from early times maintained
commercial and to some extent political relations with the nearby
settlements of English pirates and woodcutters, and through them with
the governor of Jamaica. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when
the attention of the world was first called to the possibility of
constructing an interoceanic canal by way of the San Juan River, these
relations were made the pretext for the establishment of a protectorate
over the entire eastern portion of Nicaragua and for the seizure of
Greytown, at the mouth of the San Juan, which had never even been in
the domain claimed by the Indians. The territory which was thus brought
under British control was in reality governed, not by the savage and
degenerate native chiefs, but by the British and other foreigners who
had settled along the Coast. The United States from the first refused
to recognize the protectorate, and protested vigorously and in the
end successfully against the violation of Nicaragua’s sovereignty.
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed in 1850, bound both powers not to
colonize, occupy, or exercise dominion over any part of Nicaragua or
Central America, but the British government refused to admit that
this obliged it to withdraw its protection from the Mosquitos, and
the continued occupation of Greytown, as we have seen, was one of
the causes which led the people of the United States to support the
filibustering expeditions of Walker. In 1860, Great Britain agreed to
abandon the protectorate on condition that Greytown should be made a
free port, and that the Indians should be given a reservation in which
they were to be free to govern themselves in accordance with their own
usages. This meant that the foreigners on the Coast were practically to
be at liberty to manage their own affairs without interference by the
native authorities. The arrangement was unsatisfactory from the first,
for the residents of Greytown and Bluefields objected to every exercise
of Nicaraguan sovereignty, and Great Britain upheld them in their
attitude, and thus in fact continued to exercise a protectorate over
them.
Matters came to a crisis in 1893, when Zelaya made a war with Honduras
the pretext for sending an army into the reservation and seizing the
control of the government. The Indians and the foreigners on the Coast
protested strongly against this action, but Great Britain, wearied of
the difficult and equivocal position in which her relations with the
Mosquitos had placed her, refused to uphold them. They had, therefore,
no choice but to submit. In 1894 a convention called by the Nicaraguan
commander and dominated by him voted for the complete incorporation of
the reservation into the Republic as the Department of “Zelaya,” and
the Republic has ever since exercised complete jurisdiction over the
former “sambo” kingdom.
Like other sections of the Caribbean litoral, the East Coast of
Nicaragua is inhabited chiefly by Americans and English-speaking
negroes. Its principal product is the banana. Bluefields, which is the
administrative center and the seaport, is connected with New Orleans
by a regular line of small steamers, and has far more commercial and
financial relations with the United States than with the interior.
During the Liberal regime, many important concessions were granted for
enterprises in the newly incorporated territory, which later became
a source of no little embarrassment to the government. In some cases
the higher officials made grants which were actually harmful to the
community as a whole, for their own personal profit, while in others
large tracts of land were ceded or special privileges were granted to
unscrupulous promoters who had little intention of carrying out in
good faith the obligations which they assumed, but who appealed to
their own governments for aid whenever they became involved in disputes
with the native authorities. Some of the monopolies established, and
particularly the exclusive right which one company received to operate
steamers on the Bluefields River, caused great discontent on the Coast
itself, and led the foreign colony there to take a prominent part in
organizing and supporting the revolution of 1909, by which Zelaya was
overthrown.
The means of transportation between the various sections of Nicaragua
are as yet very primitive. In the interior, they are by no means bad,
for it was comparatively easy to build a railroad from Corinto, the
chief port on the Pacific, to all of the important cities of the lake
region and to the coffee district west of it; and the lakes themselves
afford a cheap means of transportation to the regions around their
shores. Matagalpa and the northern departments, however, depend upon
the rudest kind of cart roads, and are almost inaccessible in the rainy
season. Communication with the Atlantic Coast is still more difficult,
especially at present, for the steamer service which formerly existed
on the San Juan River has been allowed to deteriorate, and the overland
route to Bluefields involves several days of traveling through a
sparsely settled tropical forest on mule back. Preparations are now
well advanced for the construction by American capital of a railway
from Bluefields to Lake Nicaragua, which would make travel from the
East to the West Coast comparatively easy. Another road is planned
from the main line of the Pacific Railway to Matagalpa, and it seems
not improbable that this and the Bluefields line may eventually be
connected, so that it will be possible to cross the Republic from one
ocean to the other.
The execution of these projects, and in fact Nicaragua’s whole prospect
for the immediate future, depend upon her relations with the United
States. Since 1911, both the political affairs and the economic
development of the country have not been entirely in the hands of her
own citizens, for the government at Washington, in its efforts to
promote peace in Nicaragua and in Central America, has entered upon a
course which has forced it on several occasions to intervene decisively
in the internal politics of the country, and two firms of American
bankers, as a result of their financial assistance to the government,
have gradually assumed control of the customs houses, of the railways,
of the currency system, and even of the internal revenues of the
Republic. The course of events which has brought this to pass will be
described in Chapter XI.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Elisée Reclus, _North America_, Vol. II, pp. 274, 279.
[12] There are no very reliable figures for the population of the
cities or for the total population of the Republic, but the best
estimates agree that the Republic has about 600,000 inhabitants, while
the population of the cities mentioned may be stated approximately as
follows: Leon, 62,000; Managua, 35,000; Granada, 17,000; Chinandega,
10,000; Masaya, 13,000; Rivas, 8,000.
[13] See William O. Scroggs, _Filibusters and Financiers_, which
gives a very complete account of Walker’s career, and upon-which the
foregoing sketch is to a great extent based. Walker himself wrote a
book about his campaigns, entitled _The War in Nicaragua_, and many of
his followers also left accounts of their adventures.
[14] Scroggs, op. cit. p. 305.
[15] Walker was eventually captured and shot while attempting a third
invasion of Central America on the North Coast of Honduras in 1860.
[16] These were: Fernando Guzmán, 1867-71; Vicente Cuadra, 1871-75;
Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, 1875-79; Joaquín Zavala, 1879-83; Adán
Cárdenas, 1883-87; Evaristo Carazo, 1887-89; David Osorno, 1889; and
Roberto Sacasa, 1889-93.
[17] In a previous chapter, the author has stated it to be his opinion
that the plantations of Guatemala could be operated successfully
without a peonage system. The effect of the repeal of the labor laws in
Nicaragua would seem to prove the contrary, were it not for the great
difference between the Indians of the two countries. In Guatemala, the
Indians depend upon the planters for a living, as they have little land
of their own. They were, moreover, almost wholly an agricultural people
before the Spanish conquest, whereas the Indians of Matagalpa have
always secured at least a portion of their food by hunting, and have
never been accustomed to any but spasmodic and irregular agricultural
labor. They have also great tracts of land of their own, of which,
unlike the tribes in Guatemala, they have never been dispossessed.
CHAPTER V
SALVADOR
Geographical Description--History--Improvement of Political Conditions
in Recent Years--Activities of the Government--Agricultural
Products--Social Conditions--Means of Transportation--Relations with
the United States--Prospect for the Future.
Salvador is the most important of the Central American republics,
after Guatemala, although she has a far smaller territory than any of
her neighbors. Almost all of her total area of 7,225 square miles is
suitable for cultivation, and there are few parts of it which are not
inhabited by a dense population. Notwithstanding the fact that she has
no coast line on the Atlantic and has thus been deprived of direct
communication with Europe and the Eastern United States, her foreign
trade is far greater than that of Honduras and Nicaragua, and but
little behind that of Guatemala and Costa Rica, while her upper classes
are more closely in touch with the outside world, and have shown a
greater tendency to adopt foreign customs and practices than those of
the majority of the other countries. Her capital, San Salvador, is a
busy, up-to-date commercial center, which impresses the traveler as one
of the most progressive cities of the Isthmus.
Extending from Guatemala on the west to the Gulf of Fonseca on the
east,[18] the Republic occupies a section of the broad plain along the
Pacific Coast of the Isthmus, and like the similarly situated section
of Guatemala, is traversed by a chain of volcanic peaks, many of which
are still active or have been active within very recent times. The
soil, consisting mainly of decomposed lava, is extremely fertile. The
slopes of the mountains are excellently adapted for the cultivation
of coffee, and in the lower altitudes, although much of the country
is rough and broken, nearly all of the other characteristic Central
American products can be grown. There is a plentiful rainfall from
May to October, and an abundant water supply for the dense population
is provided by several lakes and by a number of streams which do
not dry up during the rainless season. The Lempa, which divides the
eastern from the western half of the country, after flowing through
the northern departments from its source near the Guatemalan frontier,
is by far the largest river on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. As
the more important cities are situated in the valleys at the foot of
the volcanoes, or in the low plains along the coast and on the banks
of the Lempa, few of them are more than two thousand feet above sea
level, and their climate is consequently less agreeable than that of
the most densely populated parts of Guatemala and Costa Rica. Except
in the lower Lempa Valley, however, the people are fairly healthy,
probably because the porousness of the soil discourages the breeding of
mosquitoes and thus holds in check some of the diseases most prevalent
in other parts of the tropics.
The people are of much the same racial character as those of Nicaragua
and Honduras, although there seems to be rather more Spanish blood in
their veins, and less admixture of negro, than in those countries.
The majority are in part at least of Indian ancestry, but all speak
Spanish, and there are only a few communities where the aborigines have
maintained their individuality and their primitive customs. Among the
upper classes, the greater number are of pure or nearly pure European
descent, but Indian blood is no bar to social or political prominence.
The people as a whole are fairly industrious, considering the climate
and the prevalence of hookworm and other intestinal parasites, and the
standard of living among the laboring classes is considerably higher
than in Guatemala or Nicaragua. The landowning class is perhaps the
wealthiest and the most enterprising in the Isthmus.
The early history of Salvador was as turbulent as that of her
neighbors. For many years after the declaration of independence she
was almost continuously in a state of civil war, partly because of the
rivalry between the political leaders and the jealousy between the
cities within the state itself, and partly because of the incessant
quarrels between the state authorities and those of Guatemala. As
we have seen, her people played a prominent part in the struggles
which accompanied the first attempt to establish a Central American
federation. The prolonged war in which the citizens of Salvador and
of one section of Honduras overthrew the Conservative government in
Guatemala in 1829 was followed within three years by new difficulties
which led President Morazán in his turn to remove the state authorities
in San Salvador and to transfer to that city the seat of the federal
administration. From then until the final fall of the great unionist
leader, Salvador was frequently involved with one or another and at
times with all of her neighbors, because of the opposition of the
latter to the federal authorities. She was the last of the five states
to admit the dissolution of the union, and at the present time she is
the chief center of the party which favors its restoration.
The Liberal party, which had supported Morazán, was driven from power
by the intervention of President Carrera of Guatemala in 1840, and for
five years the government was under the control of Francisco Malespín,
one of Carrera’s friends, who used his position as _comandante de
armas_ to make and unmake presidents and to dominate the policy of the
civil authorities. The Liberals were able to return to power in 1845,
after a bloody struggle in which Malespín, although now estranged from
Carrera, was assisted by the government of Honduras. They were again
driven out in 1852 by Carrera, and four Conservative leaders occupied
the presidency for short terms. The Liberals, under the leadership of
Gerardo Barrios, regained power in 1860, but were forced to relinquish
it two years later as the result of another war with Carrera. In 1863,
the Conservative leader, Francisco Dueñas, became president, and
conducted the government efficiently and successfully until 1871, when
the Liberal party, which was at the same time carrying on successful
revolutions in Guatemala and Honduras, defeated him and placed at the
head of the state Santiago González, who remained in office until
1876. His successor, Andrés Valle, became involved in another war with
Guatemala, arising from an intervention by both states in the internal
affairs of Honduras, and was replaced by Rafael Zaldívar, one of the
leading followers of the former president Dueñas. This able ruler
remained in office until 1885, maintaining the friendliest relations
with President Barrios of Guatemala, despite the fact that one belonged
to the Conservative and the other to the Liberal party. When Barrios
attempted to renew the Central American Union by force, and entered
upon the campaign which ended so disastrously for him at Chalchuapa,
however, Zaldívar took the field against him. A short time after this
war, Zaldívar was forced to resign by a revolution headed by Francisco
Menéndez, and the latter was president until his death in 1890. After
him, the Republic was ruled by the Ezeta brothers, two military
leaders who seized the presidency by a _coup d’état_ and maintained
themselves in office by despotic and rather barbarous methods until
they were overthrown by an uprising in the city of Santa Ana in 1894.
Rafael Gutiérrez, who became president in that year, was an able and
patriotic executive, but some features of his administration caused
considerable discontent, and his participation in the Treaty of
Amapala, by which Salvador entered into a loose union with Honduras and
Nicaragua, caused his fall in 1898.
The new president, General Tomás Regalado, served his full term and
passed on the chief magistracy in an orderly manner to Pedro José
Escalón in 1903. From that time there has not been a successful
revolution in Salvador, although discontented political leaders have
occasionally made ineffectual attempts to overthrow the government. In
1906, General Regalado, who was very influential in the administration
of President Escalón, brought about a short and purposeless war with
Guatemala, which ended with the death of its author on the battlefield.
In 1907 there was another war, between Salvador and Nicaragua,
about the presidency of Honduras, and in that and the following
year President Zelaya of Nicaragua attempted several times, without
success, to promote revolutions against the governments of Escalón
and of Fernando Figueroa, who succeeded him. The Government of the
United States exerted its good offices to put an end to the hostilities
between the two countries, and finally threatened to use force if
necessary to put an end to Zelaya’s attacks on his neighbor, but peace
was not entirely re-established until the Nicaraguan president was
overthrown in 1909. Figueroa was succeeded by Manuel Enrique Araujo in
1911. This president was assassinated in 1913, and the vice-president,
Don Carlos Meléndez, completed the unexpired term and was re-elected to
the chief magistracy in 1915.
In the confused political history of Salvador, two important facts
stand out: first, that the revolutions which occurred so frequently
during the seventy-five years following the declaration of independence
were due more to the interference of the other countries, and
especially of Guatemala, than to the strife of factions at home;
and second, that in recent times, when this kind of interference is
no longer so frequent, there has been a remarkably rapid progress
towards the establishment of a more stable form of government. For
three-quarters of a century after 1821, the internal tranquillity of
the country may be said to have been almost entirely dependent upon its
relations with its neighbors. The parties which were formed during the
turbulent years of the Central American Union continued to act together
long after the states which made up the Union had become independent
nations, and Conservative governments in Guatemala continued to regard
themselves as the natural enemies of Liberal administrations in
Nicaragua and Salvador, largely because of the bitter animosity between
the leaders, which had been engendered by the events of the years
1821-40. Discontented factions in Salvador never hesitated to call in
assistance from other countries to overthrow a hostile government at
home, and the presidents of the other countries on their side were
always ready to intervene to secure the establishment of a friendly
administration in Salvador, in order to increase their own influence
and to make more secure their own position. As the leaders who had
participated in the wars under the Federation died, however, and the
parties lost their fundamental economic and social characteristics, so
that there was little real difference in principles or point of view
between the Liberals of one country and the Conservatives of another,
factional politics ceased to a great extent to be international.
Intervention to overthrow a government of opposite political complexion
was then no longer so necessary as a measure of self-preservation, as
it had been when every Liberal or Conservative who came into power
in one of the states felt it his duty to use all of the resources at
his command to secure the domination of his own party in the others.
Guatemala has not played a decisive part in overthrowing a president
of Salvador since the battle of Chalchuapa in 1885, and Honduras and
Nicaragua have now fallen so far behind their neighbor in population
and resources that their intervention is no longer seriously to
be feared. The attempts of the president of the latter country to
encourage revolutions in Salvador in 1907 and 1908 were failures,
although they caused the government considerable uneasiness and expense.
Since 1908, moreover, international wars between the Central American
states have been made practically impossible by the fact that the
United States has employed diplomatic pressure and sometimes actual
force to secure the observance of the Washington Conventions of
1907, by which the five countries pledged themselves to abstain from
interfering in each other’s internal affairs. At the present time
it is not probable that an army from one state would be allowed to
invade one of the others for the purpose of bringing about a change
of government. The prevention of this kind of aggression, of which
there were instances almost every year before 1907, has done much to
discourage revolutions in Central America, because there is little
chance, except in cases where there is a very general and very violent
popular discontent with the government in power, for a revolt to
succeed without active assistance from outside.
Since the character of her international relations has changed so
that external influences no longer make the establishment of internal
peace impossible, Salvador has become one of the most orderly and best
governed of the Central American republics. Her political affairs are
almost entirely in the hands of a small educated class, among whom
landed proprietors are more powerful and professional politicians and
revolutionists on the whole less numerous and less influential than
elsewhere in the Isthmus. This class was for many years divided within
itself into hostile factions, which were kept alive, long after the
disappearance of their original sources of difference, by the intrigues
and interventions of the neighboring governments. After the violent
animosities created by the wars during the first Central American
Union died out, however, and after the cultivation of coffee and the
development of commerce had opened up greater opportunities for the
acquisition of wealth and power than were offered by the contest for
public offices, the ruling class as a whole turned its attention from
politics to agriculture. The damage inflicted by the frequent civil
wars was severely felt by the proprietors of the plantations, who were
realizing for the first time the possibilities of the new life which
the importation of foreign luxuries and the ability to travel abroad
placed before them, and they consequently became almost a unit in
their desire for peace and a stable government. An attempt to start an
old-fashioned revolution at the present time, unless there were some
strong reason for desiring to overthrow the government, would probably
meet with determined hostility among the greater part of the wealthier
and more intelligent classes.
It cannot be said, however, that Salvador is inherently a peaceful
country in the same sense in which this is true of Costa Rica. The
lower classes have no more inborn respect for authority and love of
peace than have those of Nicaragua and Honduras, whom they strongly
resemble in their racial characteristics and customs, and a large
element among them have always taken part in wars and revolutions with
the same gusto that is shown by the _mestizos_ of the more turbulent
countries. If they are on the whole less prone to revolt, this is due
to the fact that they are fairly contented under present conditions,
and that they are held under control by a much stronger and better
organized military power than in those countries. The government is
maintained in office, not by popular respect for authority or by the
will of the people, but by force, for there are always elements, even
among the upper classes, which are awaiting an opportunity to overthrow
it.
There is at present, however, no organized opposition, as the old
historical parties have nearly died out and the formation of new ones
has been discouraged by the policy of the government, which generally
either wins over discontented political leaders by the gift of offices
or money, or forcibly prevents them from carrying on propaganda hostile
to it. In former times, opponents of the group in power were exiled
or even murdered, but recent administrations have attempted rather to
conciliate their opponents and to maintain the good will of the common
people, and there has been little of the severity towards defeated
rivals which has helped to keep alive factional hatred in Guatemala
and Nicaragua. Nevertheless, opposition to the government is still
suppressed with a firm hand, and murders for political purposes are by
no means unknown.
The political institutions are no more democratic than those of the
neighboring countries. Except where a successful revolution intervenes,
the presidency is passed on by each incumbent to a successor of his own
choosing, and all of the other nominally elective offices are filled in
accordance with the wishes of the administration, since the authorities
control the elections by preventing the nomination of opposition
candidates and by exerting pressure on the voters. Every department
is under the absolute personal control of the president, so far as he
wishes to exercise his authority, and the responsibility for everything
which occurs during the administration rests upon his shoulders. The
Congress has at the present time some degree of independence, and the
judiciary is not subjected to the same dictation by the executive
as in some of the other countries, but neither is in any real sense
co-ordinate with the latter, nor would be able to resist it if a
serious difference of opinion arose.
Of late years, however, the presidents of Salvador have made little
attempt to exercise the absolute and arbitrary authority which some
of the recent rulers of Guatemala and Nicaragua have enjoyed, for
they have generally been content to abide so far as possible by the
provisions of the constitution and to relinquish their office to one
of their supporters at the end of their legal term. Since 1898, with a
single exception, changes of administration have taken place without
the intervention of force, and the one president who was assassinated
was followed by the constitutionally elected vice-president, without
disorder or further bloodshed.
The chief support of the government is the army, which is better
trained and better equipped than that of any other Central American
country. A large proportion of the soldiers, apparently, serve
voluntarily. Moreover, many remain with the colors for long periods,
and learn to take a certain amount of pride in their calling. The
officers are of an unusually high type, because the comparatively good
salaries and the education offered by the Polytechnic School have
induced many young men of the better classes to adopt the military
profession as a career. Both officers and men seem on the whole to
be loyal to the government and show little tendency to political
intrigue,--a statement which cannot be made with regard to the forces
of some of the other republics. The army is far larger than the wealth
or the actual necessities of the country would seem to justify, and
heavy expenditures upon it have been a source of some discontent; but
the existence of a well-organized and well-trained body of troops has
undoubtedly been a strong factor in favor of stable government and a
valuable protection against attack from without.
The civil police is also efficient and well equipped compared with
that of the neighboring countries. Besides the usual city forces, there
is an organization called the _Guardia Civil_ in the rural districts
near the capital which patrols the roads and does much to protect life
and property. Crimes of violence, however, are by no means uncommon,
and are very frequently allowed to go unpunished, for the activity of
the army and the police, as in the other Central American countries,
is directed more towards the maintenance of the authority of the
government than towards the prevention of wrongdoing. The suppression
of revolts and the control of all parts of the Republic by military
force is easier than in any of the neighboring countries, because of
the small area to be policed and the denseness and compactness of the
population.
The chief functions performed by the government are the preservation
of order, the management of the customs houses and the other sources
of income, and the operation of such fundamentally necessary public
services as the postal and telegraph systems. A comparatively small
amount of money, considering the wealth of the country, is available
for other purposes, because of the heavy cost of the military
establishment and the losses due to inefficiency and peculation in
the collection and expenditure of the revenues. Sanitary measures and
public instruction have not received the attention which might be
expected among so progressive a people and little has been done, except
by private initiative, to develop the resources of the country or to
stimulate foreign commerce. Although abortive attempts have been made
from time to time to establish agricultural and industrial schools,
the government has little interest in such institutions, and has never
given them sufficient funds to accomplish anything of great value. The
system of highways, which is of especial importance because of the
lively internal commerce, leaves much to be desired, but its defects
are due more to almost insurmountable difficulties arising from heavy
rainfall and from the physical formation of the country than to lack of
interest. There are, however, cart roads, which are fairly good in the
dry season, in all parts of the Republic, and near the capital there
are several roads suitable for automobiles, which are owned by many of
the wealthy people of the city.
The public schools have received less attention than in some of the
other countries. The Department of Public Instruction, which possesses
many well-informed and able officials, has done what it could with the
scanty resources at its command, but the government has not supported
it with adequate appropriations, and has not always shown care or
impartiality in the appointment of teachers. Only about one-fourth
of the children between six and fourteen years of age are receiving
instruction.[19] The schools in the capital and in the larger cities,
although badly equipped and very badly housed, do excellent work, and
the visitor cannot fail to be impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the
children and by the teachers. The latter are generally inadequately
trained, but they appear to have a natural gift for arousing the
interest and holding the attention of their pupils. In the country,
educational opportunities are much more limited, for the rural schools
have but three regular grades, with a complementary year in which
instruction in some trade is given, and there is little opportunity
for the children to receive a secondary education unless they can
afford to spend five years completing their primary course in one of
the cities. The education of the lower classes has been purposely
restricted to a few fundamentals, because the authorities have desired
to discourage the tendency, so harmful in all parts of Central America,
towards the adoption of the learned professions at the expense of
agricultural pursuits. No government aid is now granted to poor
children for advanced study either at home or in foreign countries, and
every effort is made rather to encourage those who have completed their
primary course to fit themselves for the cultivation of the soil or for
some trade. In the capital, schools have just been inaugurated where
practical instruction for this purpose is given. There are a number of
secondary institutions in the larger cities which compare favorably
with those in other parts of Central America, although they also suffer
from lack of funds and from the absence of well-trained teachers. The
same is true of the University, where law, engineering, pharmacy, and
other professions are taught. The wealthier families educate their
children in private institutions rather than in the public schools,
and more and more young people at the present time are being sent to
complete their studies in foreign countries, and especially in the
United States.
The administration of public affairs is considerably less corrupt and
somewhat more efficient than in Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Honduras.
The integrity of many of the higher officials is above suspicion, and
theft is apparently not practiced on a large scale in any department
of the government. The judiciary is neither so hopelessly venal nor
so inefficient as in some of the other countries, and the Supreme
Court is a body which commands general respect. The administration of
the postal and telegraph systems is fairly reliable, although it is
typically Central American in its methods and in its spirit. Conditions
are nevertheless very far from what they should be. Even at the present
time, under a president whose honesty and whose progressive ideals are
doubted by no one, public officials are too often appointed for purely
personal reasons rather than with any regard to their fitness, and
graft is practiced more or less openly in all of the departments, with
the knowledge, if not with the consent, of the higher authorities.
Large amounts of money are paid from the public treasury on different
pretexts to political leaders whom the administration desires to
conciliate, and men of little ability or patriotism are given positions
of responsibility and authority for which they are not at all fitted,
and in which their conduct is not infrequently scandalous. These
conditions are to a great extent beyond the control of the government,
for an administration which failed to consolidate its power by such
methods probably could not maintain itself very long in office. The
old-style professional revolutionists, many of whom have a considerable
following among the lower and middle classes, are still too powerful to
be disregarded, and the idea that offices and graft are the legitimate
rewards of political activity is no less paramount than formerly. There
is every prospect, however, that political conditions will improve as
the government becomes more stable, and as public opinion, already a
powerful influence for good, becomes more enlightened and exerts more
control over the factional leaders.
Economically, Salvador is one of the most prosperous countries of the
Isthmus. Her principal product is coffee, grown on the slopes of all
the higher volcanoes and hills, which is exported to the amount of
from sixty to seventy million pounds annually to France, the United
States, and other countries. In the lower parts of the country, there
are many large cattle ranches and cane plantations, which produce meat
and sugar for local consumption. Corn is raised everywhere, even more
than in other parts of Central America, because of the denseness of
the population and because of the large _per capita_ consumption. One
small section of the Pacific Coast, called _La Costa del Bálsamo_, is
notable for its exports of balsam of Peru, a forest product which is
found in its wild state only in this one spot.[20] The trees from
which this medicinal gum is extracted have within recent years been
brought under systematic care in large plantations, and have proved a
source of considerable wealth to the native capitalists, as well as to
the Indians who collect the balsam in the forest by primitive methods.
The upper classes are as enterprising and progressive as any social
group in Central America. A large proportion of them have traveled
abroad and have adopted foreign ways of living at home, and as a
whole they have shown a responsiveness to new ideas and an energy and
patriotism which promises much for the future of their country. The
owners of the large plantations live in the cities, but they take a
deep interest in the management and development of their properties,
and usually spend a portion of the year upon them. Few are free from
the Central American tendency to extravagance and improvidence, but
they have nevertheless been sufficiently enterprising and progressive
to maintain their dominant position in the economic life of the country
while the resources of the other republics have been falling more and
more into the hands of Europeans and North Americans. There are some
rich agriculturalists who are foreigners, but they are relatively few
as compared with those in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The great majority
of the more valuable plantations still belong to citizens of Salvador,
and much of the stock in the banks and in the more important industrial
enterprises is controlled by native capital. This fact is of great
significance, because it indicates that the people of the Republic have
adapted themselves to modern conditions more readily than have their
neighbors. The preservation of the class which furnishes the natural
leaders and rulers of the community cannot but have a beneficial social
and political effect.
The lower classes, housed in dirt-floored thatched huts, and subsisting
on a diet in which the corn _tortilla_ is the chief feature, offer
a striking contrast to their wealthy and Europeanized superiors,
but they are nevertheless somewhat better off than in any of the
neighboring republics except Costa Rica. The majority of them have
regular work on the plantations, where they are supplied with homes
and food and receive wages which compare favorably with those paid in
Honduras and Nicaragua. Their standard of living is somewhat higher
than in those countries, and they are in general better treated both
by their employers and by the authorities. A large proportion of
the laborers on the bigger plantations are given patches of land to
cultivate for themselves. In the central part of the country there are
many small landholders, who find a ready market for their products in
the cities, and are enabled by the possession of a regular money income
to enjoy many little luxuries which are unknown in the more backward
parts of the Isthmus.
In the cities, and especially in the capital, small-scale commerce
and manufacturing are very active. Great quantities of vegetables,
milk, firewood, and other country products are daily brought into town
in ox-carts by the peasants, who exchange them for the manufactured
articles which they need, and the market and the countless small stores
in the vicinity are always a scene of great animation. There are a
number of little manufacturing establishments, where candles, shoes,
soap, and cigarettes are made, chiefly by hand labor, and the products
of these are bought by the lower classes in surprisingly large amounts.
Only a few of the smaller commercial establishments, however, belong to
natives of the country, for the greater part of the retail trade is in
the hands of foreigners.
External commerce has attained large proportions, despite the fact that
the Republic has no access to the Atlantic. As in the other countries
of the Isthmus, there are few North American merchants; and English,
German, and Dutch houses control the import and wholesale trade.
Until the outbreak of the European war, Salvador purchased a smaller
proportion of her imports from the United States than did any of the
other republics of the Isthmus, but this condition has necessarily
changed within the last two years. Of the exports, the coffee, which
is the only item of first importance, is shipped to some extent to San
Francisco, but more to France and Germany.
Both external and internal commerce have been greatly aided by the fact
that the territory of the Republic is so small, and that all parts of
it are so close to the Pacific Coast. The problem of transportation has
not been nearly so difficult as in some of the other countries. There
are now few important towns which have no railway connection. The most
important line is that of the Salvador Railway Company, an English
corporation which provides a cheap, rapid, and in every way excellent
service from the capital and Santa Ana to Sonsonate and Acajutla. Over
this passes the greater part of the freight and passenger traffic,
for Acajutla, although merely an open roadstead, where loading and
unloading is difficult and expensive, is the principal port of the
Republic. Another line is being built by the International Railways
of Central America, the American concern which operates the Guatemala
system, from La Union on the Gulf of Fonseca to San Salvador. This
passes through many important cities in the eastern departments, and
has now reached San Vicente, about forty miles from the capital.
The service is not so good, and the rates are higher than on the
Salvador Railway Company’s line, and the usefulness of the road is
greatly diminished by the fact that its builders have as yet failed
to construct a permanent bridge over the Lempa River, to cross which
freight and passengers must submit to a disagreeable and hazardous
transfer in scows during the rainy season. It is, however, of immense
importance to the rich sections through which it passes, and when it
is completed, connecting the capital with the land-locked harbor of
La Union, it will not only provide a new outlet for the commerce of
Salvador, but will also open a much more rapid and convenient route
to Honduras and Nicaragua, which are reached in a few hours by water
from La Union. The same company plans to build a line from Santa Ana
to Zacapa, on the Guatemala Railway, which will make both San Salvador
and La Union accessible directly by railway from Puerto Barrios on the
Atlantic. When this is done, the journey from the United States to each
of the three central republics of the Isthmus will be shortened by
several days.
Besides the ports mentioned, Salvador possesses two others. La
Libertad, immediately south of the capital but separated from it by a
steep range of hills, is an open roadstead from which a large amount of
coffee produced in the neighborhood is shipped. El Triunfo, on a rather
shallow bay east of the Lempa River, is close to another coffee-growing
district, but it will have to be greatly improved before it can be made
a regular port of call for large steamers. Both of these are connected
with their tributary country by cart roads, which are good in the dry
season, but become very bad when it rains.
As elsewhere on the Pacific Coast of Central America, there has been
hardly any steamship service at these ports since the beginning of the
European war except that of the Pacific Mail, whose ships touch there
at irregular intervals and afford expensive and rather unsatisfactory
accommodations for freight and passengers. The Pacific Steam Navigation
Company also operates one small steamer, formerly the property of the
Salvador Railway Company, between Panama and Salina Cruz, stopping at
most of the ports on the way, and the government of Salvador owns a
still smaller vessel which plies between the ports of the Republic and
San José, Guatemala. Salvador suffers far more from the inadequacy of
the West Coast steamship service than do any of the other countries,
for Guatemala and Costa Rica have excellent connections with the United
States and Europe by way of their Atlantic ports, and Nicaragua and
Honduras have comparatively a small amount of foreign commerce. The
Republic will not be able to develop as it should until its connections
with the outside world are greatly improved.
The relations between Salvador and the United States have never been
so close as in the case of those republics where more American capital
has been invested and where regular and direct steamer communications
have encouraged commerce and travel; and in recent years the friendship
between the two countries has been endangered, although it has by no
means been destroyed, by political questions. The influence exerted
by the United States in the internal politics of some of the nearby
countries, especially in the case of Nicaragua, and the proposal
to establish an American naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca, close
to the port of La Union, have greatly alarmed public sentiment in
Salvador, and have called forth strong but ineffectual protests from
her government. This fear of what the people of the Republic regard
as American tendencies towards expansion has caused a rather marked
distrust and dislike of the United States among certain classes,--a
feeling which can be dispelled only by the most careful regard for
Central American rights and susceptibilities in the future. With
frankness and fair treatment on both sides, however, the relations
between the two republics are bound to grow more friendly as they grow
closer; for the influence of the increasingly large number of natives
of Salvador who travel and study in North America, and of the Americans
who are now in Salvador, should do much to bring about a better
understanding.
The prospect for the future of Salvador seems very bright. Political
and social conditions are improving steadily, and the prosperity of
the Republic, with its fertile soil and industrious population,
seems secure. The progressive spirit of the ruling classes and their
rapid absorption of foreign ideas afford reason to believe that the
control of the economic life of the country by foreign interests,
which is becoming more and more marked elsewhere in the Isthmus, may
here be avoided. The introduction of foreign capital is of course very
necessary for the development of the country, as is the immigration of
foreigners of the better class, but it is to be hoped that this may
take place without resulting in the impoverishment and the decay of
the leading native families. If the best people of the Republic can
continue in the future to play the part which they play at present in
politics and agriculture, the little country promises to remain one of
the most prosperous and most civilized states in tropical America.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] It should be noted that the Isthmus is bounded by the Atlantic
on the north and the Pacific on the south in Guatemala, Salvador, and
Honduras, whereas the former ocean lies east and the latter west of
Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
[19] According to figures furnished to me by Sr. Juan Lainez, Director
of Primary Instruction, there are 245,251 children between the ages of
six and fourteen in Salvador, of whom 60,860 are enrolled in public and
private schools. The average attendance is considerably less than the
number enrolled. The budget for Public Instruction for the year 1916
was $1,205,074.44, or approximately $408,000 in U. S. currency.
[20] It has been introduced into Ceylon. _Encyclopædia Brittanica_,
article on “Balsam.”
CHAPTER VI
HONDURAS
General Description--History--Effects of Continual Civil War--Lack of
Means of Communication--Backwardness of the People--The North Coast.
The territory of Honduras may be roughly described as a triangle, the
base of which is formed by the shore of the Caribbean Sea, and the
other sides by the Guatemala-Salvador boundary on the southwest and
by that of Nicaragua on the southeast. At the apex, on the south,
there are a few miles of coast on the Gulf of Fonseca which give
the Republic its only outlet on the Pacific. The country is very
mountainous, but, unlike its neighbors, is in no part of volcanic
origin, for the chain of craters which elsewhere traverses the Isthmus
several miles inland from the coast passes by Honduras through the
conical islands of the Gulf of Fonseca, leaving the mainland entirely
outside of the belt of decomposed tufas which forms the most fertile
agricultural districts of other parts of Central America. There are
thus none of the rich eruptive plains and gently sloping mountainsides
which have encouraged the establishment of the great coffee and sugar
plantations of Guatemala and Salvador and have made it possible for
the regions near the Pacific Coast in all of the other countries to
support dense populations. The southern portion of Honduras is occupied
by a series of rugged mountain chains, where only small amounts of
land in the valleys are suitable for cultivation and the rainfall is
scanty and irregular. The first Spanish settlements were established
in this district, notwithstanding the difficulties of raising food
and transporting supplies from the outside world, because of the
gold and silver mines, which in colonial times made Honduras one of
the most important provinces of the Isthmus; and when the mines were
abandoned, during the years of anarchy which followed the declaration
of independence, the inhabitants still clung to their decayed villages
and supported themselves as well as they could by agriculture. North of
the continental divide, the mountains are lower and less precipitous,
and there are great stretches of open savannahs and pine-covered
hills, where the rainfall is plentiful and the grass is green at all
seasons of the year. The soil is not very fertile, except in the river
bottoms, but the region is admirably adapted for the raising of cattle.
The cities of the south and of the interior are still the center of
the political life of the country, but since the development of the
banana trade they have been rapidly outstripped in economic importance
by the newer towns created by foreign enterprise on the North Coast.
The region near the Caribbean Sea is a low plain, extending for many
miles into the interior, traversed by scattered mountain ranges and by
several large, slow-flowing rivers. Here there are many settlements of
North Americans, West Indian negroes, and natives, who are occupied
chiefly with the cultivation of bananas.
The people are a mixed race. Spanish is the only language, and
Catholicism the only religion, but even in the cities there are few
persons who are entirely white, and in the country districts, although
there are almost no pure-blooded Indians except on the uncivilized
Mosquito Coast, the majority of the inhabitants have far more American
and African than European blood. The aborigines of Honduras were never
so numerous or so civilized as those of Guatemala, Salvador, and
Nicaragua, and they were exterminated after the conquest to a somewhat
greater extent than in those countries because of the hard labor in the
mines; but their characteristics are nevertheless those which are most
marked in the half-breed population of today. Negro blood also is very
evident in the people in the regions north of the continental divide,
and in many places, especially near the coast, seems to predominate
over the other racial constituents. It was far easier for runaway West
Indian slaves and other immigrants of the same color to reach the
interior from the Caribbean Coast of Honduras than elsewhere in the
Isthmus, because the country back of the coast line was more open and
more attractive, to them, on account of its warm climate. What effect
this element has had on the development of the Republic it is difficult
to say, but it is possible that it may account in some measure for the
backwardness of most of the regions in which it is found.
The central position of Honduras has forced her, whether she wished to
or not, to take part in nearly every international conflict which has
occurred in the Isthmus; and the continual intervention of her stronger
neighbors in her internal affairs, combined with factional hatred and
greed for the spoils of office on the part of her own citizens, have
kept the Republic in a state of chronic disorder down to the present
time. Because of the economic backwardness and the isolation of her
people, she has been affected comparatively little by the factors
which have in recent years tended to discourage internal disorder and
civil strife in Salvador. Her government has never become so strong
that it was able to repel aggression from without or to hold in check
its enemies at home, and no part of her territory, with the possible
exception of the North Coast, has reached a stage of agricultural or
industrial development sufficiently high to give rise to a class of
plantation owners or capitalists more interested in the maintenance
of peace than in the dominance of one or the other political faction.
She does not enjoy the favorable climate and the fertile soil which
have encouraged the development of the great agricultural enterprises
of the neighboring states, and she has been prevented from using the
very valuable natural resources which she does possess by constant
disturbances promoted both by external and by domestic enemies.
Dissensions within the country broke out soon after the authority
of Spain was thrown off in 1821. The Spanish governor at Comayagua,
who had already repudiated the authority of the Captain General in
Guatemala, was opposed by the people of Tegucigalpa and several
other towns, and his attempts to establish his supremacy were the
beginning of a desultory conflict which lasted with few intermissions
for a number of years. After the establishment of the Federal Union,
Comayagua sided with the Conservatives and Tegucigalpa with the
Liberals, and an army from the latter city, led by Morazán, played
a large part in defending Salvador and in overthrowing the federal
authorities in 1829. The triumph of the revolution in Guatemala led
to the establishment of a Liberal state government in Honduras, but
this fell after the disruption of the Union, when President Carrera
of Guatemala aided the Conservatives to return to power (1840). From
that time until 1911, the Republic was kept in a state of turmoil
by a series of revolutions and civil wars, instigated and often
actively participated in by Guatemala, Salvador, or Nicaragua, and
sometimes by all three. Francisco Ferrer, supported by Carrera, held
the supreme power from 1840 to 1852, first as president and then as
commander-in-chief of the army. His successor was Trinidad Cabañas, a
Liberal, who had been in office only three years when Carrera sent an
army into the country to supplant him by Santos Guardiola. This ruler
was assassinated in 1862. His successor, allying himself to Salvador,
became involved in a war against Guatemala and Nicaragua, and the
victory of the two latter states resulted in the “election” of José
María Medina as president of Honduras. He was overthrown in 1872 by
the intervention of the Liberals who had just returned to power in
Guatemala and Salvador. Ponciano Leíva assumed the chief magistracy
in the following year, but was forced to relinquish it in 1876 by the
intrigues of President Barrios of Guatemala. Marco Aurelio Soto, a
man of ability and great influence, succeeded him, but he was also
forced to resign in 1883 because of the hostile attitude of Barrios,
and was succeeded by Luís Bográn, who held office until 1891. Ponciano
Leíva, who followed Bográn, was again forced to resign in 1893 by a
threatened revolution. His successor, Domingo Vásquez, was overthrown
a year later as the result of a disastrous war with Nicaragua, and
Policarpo Bonilla, an ally of President Zelaya and an ardent Liberal,
became president. After one constitutional term, he turned over his
office to General Terencio Sierra. Sierra was overthrown in 1903 by
Manuel Bonilla, who had started a revolution when the president made an
attempt to impose on the country a successor of his own choosing.
In 1907, as the result of a quarrel between Bonilla and President
Zelaya of Nicaragua, the latter sent an army into Honduras to aid a
revolutionary movement headed by Miguel Dávila. Salvador, fearing the
increase of Zelaya’s influence, came to the aid of Bonilla, but was
unable to prevent the complete victory of the revolution. Zelaya now
threatened to attack Salvador, and the president of that country,
in league with Guatemala, prepared to support a counter revolution
in Honduras. A general Central American war would undoubtedly have
followed, had not the United States and Mexico jointly interposed their
mediation and suggested that all of the republics of the Isthmus send
representatives to Washington to discuss the questions at issue between
them. This was the origin of the celebrated Washington Conference. One
of the most important conventions adopted by the delegates of the five
countries provided for the complete neutralization of Honduras and the
abstention of her government from all participation in the conflicts
between the other governments of the Isthmus.[21]
This treaty had little effect for the time being on the situation of
Honduras, for nearby countries encouraged and materially assisted
a number of uprisings against the government of Dávila during the
four years following 1907. Zelaya helped his ally to suppress these,
but when the Nicaraguan dictator himself fell the fate of the
administration which he had protected in Honduras was sealed. Manuel
Bonilla invaded the Republic from the North Coast in the latter part
of 1910, and decisively defeated Dávila’s troops after a few weeks of
fighting. When it was evident that the revolutionists were gaining
the upper hand, a peace conference was arranged through the mediation
of the United States, and both factions agreed to place the control
of affairs provisionally in the hands of Dr. Francisco Bertrand. In
the election which followed, Bonilla was made president by an almost
unanimous vote. He held office until his death in 1913, when Dr.
Bertrand, the vice-president, succeeded him. The latter is still at the
head of affairs, having been reëlected in 1915.
Today, more than ever before, there seems to be good reason to hope
that Honduras may enjoy a long period of peace. A large part of the
people are wearied of the continual disturbance in which they have
lived, and are beginning to distrust the factional leaders who have
hitherto been able to incite them to revolt at every unpopular or
aggressive action of the authorities. The government of Dr. Bertrand
has pursued a conciliatory policy towards all political elements, and
by treating its enemies with far less severity than has been customary
in the past has given them little excuse for rebellion. The so-called
parties of today have become little more than groups of professional
office-seekers, without programs or permanent organizations. While
many of the causes of discord at home have thus been removed, the
external influences which have hitherto made stable government
impossible have lost much of their importance in the last four years.
The other governments have been prevented from encouraging or allowing
the preparation in their territory of revolutionary expeditions against
Honduras, or from intervening themselves in the internal affairs of
their neighbor, by the attitude of the United States. The decisive
intervention of that Republic in the last revolution in Nicaragua
and the intimation, by a timely show of force, when outbreaks were
threatened elsewhere, that similar action might be taken if it proved
necessary, have had a salutary effect on potential revolutionists in
all of the states of the Isthmus, for there are few Central American
political leaders who desire to see the events of 1912 repeated in
their own countries.
The government of Honduras has always been and is today a military
despotism where all branches of the administration are under the
absolute control of the president. Graft and favoritism are as much
in evidence as in the neighboring countries, and the public offices,
occupied exclusively by the friends of those in power, are swept clean
and refilled after each successful revolution. Nevertheless, the
country has had a series of able and patriotic presidents, who have
done what they could, with the scanty resources at their command and
in the face of very great difficulties, to encourage agriculture and
commerce. Very real progress has been made in the field of education,
and recently in the building of roads, and that more has not been
accomplished has been due to the poverty of the national treasury, the
waste of revenues by civil wars, and the deep-ingrained practice of
graft in the public offices, rather than to any lack of progressive
spirit. The idea of enriching themselves at the expense of the public
is so much a part of the creed of the professional politicians who
form the bulk of each party and the backbone of the revolutions
to which each successive government owes its existence that it is
impossible even for a president of the highest civic ideals to devote
the entire resources of the government to internal improvements.
The effects of the disorder and misrule from which the Republic has
suffered for nearly a century are most clearly evident in the southern
departments and the interior, which are the home of the majority
of the people. The mines, in which many of the inhabitants of the
province had been employed in colonial times, were abandoned soon
after the declaration of independence, and those who were dependent
upon them were left to make a living as best they could. A large
number joined the factional armies, which were hardly disbanded during
the lifetime of the Central American Federation. Others turned their
attention to agriculture or cattle raising, but did little more than
secure a bare subsistence, working under a great disadvantage because
of the impossibility of transporting their products to a market,
and constantly facing ruin from the visits of revolutionary armies.
Those who tilled the soil confined themselves to producing small
amounts of corn, beans, and sugar from year to year for their own
consumption. Conditions were more unfavorable for the establishment of
large plantations than they had been in the other countries, because
revolutions were more continuous and more destructive, and because
there was in Honduras comparatively little land suitable for the
cultivation of coffee, indigo, or sugar for export. The raising of
cattle, which might otherwise have been carried on under very favorable
conditions, especially in the open, grassy valleys of the Olancho, was
made all but impossible by the civil wars, for no one suffers more from
the passing of a Central American army than the herdsman. There are
indeed many ranches in the interior and on the South Coast at present,
but they are run carelessly and with primitive methods. The owners,
who have lost a large part of their stock time after time by military
requisitions or by confiscation, make no effort to introduce animals of
a better breed from abroad or to give their cattle more than the most
elementary care, leaving the herds to wander in an almost wild state
over great stretches of land, and only interesting themselves in them
when they have occasion to drive a few hundred head to market. A slight
change in this respect is even now noticeable, however, for some of
the landowners are beginning to pay more attention to the welfare of
their stock and to fence in and otherwise improve their properties. If
the Republic enjoys a few more years of peace, and if a better market
can be provided abroad for live animals or beef, Honduras might easily
become the most important cattle-raising country of the Isthmus.
Many of the mines were reopened by promoters from the United States
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but the majority were
abandoned a few years later because of the decline of the price of
silver, which was the chief product. At the present time there are a
number of companies and individuals extracting the precious metals on
a small scale, but the only plant of real importance is that of the
New York and Honduras Rosario Mining Company at San Juancito, near
Tegucigalpa. The silver shipped by this one firm comprises almost
the only important export of the southern departments, and nearly
twenty-five per cent of the total exports of the Republic. There are
very great undeveloped mineral resources, and many new mines would
doubtless be opened if the difficulty of transporting machinery into
the interior could be overcome, and if the political conditions of the
Republic should be made sufficiently stable to encourage the investment
of foreign capital.
One of the factors which has done most to retard the economic
development of the country is the lack of means of communication.
Tegucigalpa is now the only Central American capital which is not
connected with at least one seaport by railway. Even ox-carts
can be used only in a very few places in the interior, for the
construction of roads between the principal centers of population
has been more difficult than elsewhere in the Isthmus because of
the greater distances to be traversed and the broken character of
the country. The chief towns of the Republic are scattered from the
Guatemalan to the Nicaraguan frontier and from the North Coast to
the South, and the mountain ranges between them, although not so
high as in the neighboring countries, are often so sharp and rugged
that they are difficult to cross even on mule back. As has already
been said, moreover, the expenditure of the energies of the people
and the financial resources of the government on civil war has made
it impossible to devote much attention to internal improvements.
Transportation between the different sections, therefore, is
principally by rough mule trails, but there is nevertheless one
splendid highway, from Tegucigalpa to San Lorenzo on the Gulf of
Fonseca, which has no equal in Central America. The regular services of
motor cars and trucks on this route have greatly reduced the difficulty
of transporting freight and passengers between the capital and its port
of entry at Amapala, although the rates charged are exceedingly high,
even as compared with those charged on Central American railways.[22]
Similar roads are now being constructed, very slowly, from Tegucigalpa
to Comayagua and to the Olancho, but they are so expensive to build and
to maintain that it seems likely to be many years before those sections
of the country will enjoy communication by automobile with the capital.
Tegucigalpa, with the nearby municipality of Comayagüela, is a
prosperous little town, with a thriving commerce and many families
of wealth and culture, but outside of the capital, if we except half
a dozen foreign settlements on the North Coast, there are few places
which show any signs of contact with modern civilization. The majority
of the people reside in the provincial cities, which are decayed
villages of from three to five thousand inhabitants, or in still more
desolate smaller settlements. There are also thousands of families
scattered through the mountains, living in thatched _ranchos_, and
subsisting almost entirely on the produce from their cornfields and
plantain patches. Even the more important towns are almost entirely
isolated economically and socially. A small amount of internal commerce
is carried on by means of mule trains, and the mails are carried to
almost all of the towns and villages with tolerable frequency and
regularity, but the great mass of the people have little interest
in anything outside of the community in which they live, and little
conception of a world beyond the boundaries of their own country.
It is not surprising that people living under such conditions should
have advanced little in civilization beyond their savage ancestors.
Even those who might have risen above their environment, had they had
the opportunity, have been kept down by almost insuperable obstacles.
There is no incentive to improve agricultural properties, or to lay up
a store of products for possible future needs, when all that a man has
is likely to be taken from him at any time, and there is no object in
raising more produce than is required for the support of the farmer’s
family when there is no market in which it can be sold or exchanged
for other goods. It is dangerous and expensive to transport products
from one part of the country to another where they may be needed, and
there are few articles which the peasant can purchase when he does
secure ready money. Little is manufactured in the country, and imports
from abroad, by the time they have borne the heavy freights from North
America and Europe via Panama to Amapala, the exorbitant charges of
boatmen, brokers, and customs officials at that port, and the expense
of transporting them into the interior, are beyond the reach of any but
the rich. In the interior, one may ride in some places for days without
passing a place where articles manufactured abroad can be bought, and
those commercial establishments which do exist, outside of Tegucigalpa,
carry only the most inferior textiles, machetes, and other necessities,
together with a few very cheap articles of personal adornment, at
prices from three to five times those which would be demanded for the
same things in the United States.
Such conditions have inevitably condemned the people to a hand-to-mouth
existence, which has eradicated all tendency to thrift. Improvidence,
which seems to be an inborn characteristic of the Spanish-Negro-Indian
population, has been encouraged by the ease with which the corn and
beans necessary to support even a large family can be produced, for
there is an abundance of unoccupied land in most parts of the country
which can be cultivated with little labor by the primitive methods in
vogue, and which will usually produce at least two crops each year.
It would seem, therefore, that the people should lead an easy, if not
an interesting existence, but the very conditions which have made
it possible for them to secure a living with little difficulty have
contributed to make them in some ways the poorest and most miserable of
the _ladino_ populations of the Isthmus. Unaccustomed to hard work or
to taking thought for the future, they rarely plant more corn during
the rainy season than is barely necessary to last them through the
dry months, so that a drought or other mishap to their crops causes
widespread want and suffering, aggravated by the difficulty of bringing
food from other parts of the country where it may be abundant. There is
no other inhabited part of Central America where the traveler finds it
so hard to secure provender for himself and his mule as he does in most
parts of Honduras during April and May.
As might be supposed, the people are densely ignorant and
unprogressive. Schools have been established in many of the towns
and villages, but the percentage of illiteracy in the community as
a whole seems to be very high. Religion is at a low ebb, although
one section of the Republic, around Comayagua, seems to be the most
fanatically Catholic portion of Central America. Outside of the
larger towns, there are almost no priests, and the people, although
superstitious, pay little attention to the precepts of the Church. It
must not be supposed, however, that the Honduraneans are necessarily
inferior, intellectually or physically, to the inhabitants of the other
republics. They are naturally quick and intelligent, and they are said
to be as efficient laborers as any of the other Central Americans.
Foreign mining corporations in all parts of the Isthmus prefer them
to the inhabitants of any of the other countries as workmen, not only
because of their greater skill, but because of their comparative
trustworthiness. There is every prospect that they will advance rapidly
in civilization when their country is brought into closer contact with
the outside world.
The economic backwardness of the country, which is in itself an effect
of the civil wars, is at the same time one of their causes. The great
majority of the people have little to lose by internal disorders, for
there are few who own more than a cheaply constructed adobe house and
a small corn patch. They welcome a revolution, with its opportunity
for plunder and for living at someone else’s expense, as an agreeable
change from the monotony of their lives and an opportunity temporarily
to improve their condition. Among the upper classes in the cities,
many of whom devote themselves to politics rather than to more useful
occupations because neither large scale agricultural or commercial
enterprises nor the learned professions afford a secure income, there
is always a large number of discontented office-seekers, ready to
engage in any kind of intrigue which offers an opportunity to make a
living at the public’s expense. The organization of a revolutionary
conspiracy is thus an easy matter, and the raising of an army among
the common people is hardly more difficult. Money and arms are secured
from foreign corporations which desire special favors, and material
and moral support can almost always be obtained from one of the other
Central American governments. With so many circumstances in their
favor, it is not remarkable that the party leaders have been able
time after time to plunge the country into civil war, sacrificing its
welfare to their own ambitions and rivalries, and frustrating the
efforts made by their more patriotic and far-sighted fellow-citizens to
improve their country’s economic and social conditions.
Although at least eighty per cent of her people live in the central
and southern departments, the most important portion of Honduras, from
the point of view of the outside world, is the long coast line on the
Caribbean Sea. This region is not only more productive than other parts
of the Republic, because of its fertile soil and heavy rainfall, but
it also has the immense advantage of being close to the Gulf ports of
the United States, with which it is in regular communication by means
of several lines of fast steamers. In recent years, its agricultural
possibilities have been developed on a large scale by immigrants and
capital from that country. Its ports, where English is the language
most generally used and American influence is predominant, have become
prosperous commercial towns, and one of them, La Ceiba, is the most
important city in the Republic, after Tegucigalpa, and has more foreign
commerce than all of the interior districts together.
The native element on the Coast is somewhat larger than in the similar
sections of Guatemala and Costa Rica, because the government has
opposed certain legal obstacles to the free immigration of West Indian
negroes. This policy has enabled other sections to profit to some
degree from the prosperity of the banana farms, because many laborers
from the interior spend longer or shorter periods working there,
earning wages far greater than they could secure at home. There is
little commercial intercourse between the two sections of the country,
however, as the roads which unite them are not suitable to any traffic
other than pack and saddle mules. Travelers frequently make the
journey from the United States to Tegucigalpa by the overland route,
and the mails are brought over regularly from the weekly steamers
which touch at Puerto Cortez, but almost none of the exportations or
importations of the interior are shipped through the Caribbean ports.
The North Coast had until lately little political connection with the
other departments of the Republic, but within the last few years the
government has established civilian officials and military forces
there, and has endeavored to strengthen the feeling of allegiance among
its inhabitants. The people of the banana district, and especially the
foreign residents, have played an important part in recent revolutions,
most of which have had one of the Caribbean ports as a base.
The bananas which are the principal product of the coast are raised
and exported by numerous small growers and by a few great fruit
companies, each of which possesses its own line of steamers and
controls the agriculture and commerce of the district in which it
operates. These concerns, nominally independent and competing, are
generally supposed to be closely connected with, if not under the
control of, the United Fruit Company, which itself has plantations
and buys fruit at one or two places. The “United” has for some years
been on unfriendly terms with the Honduranean government, and it is
said that it prefers for this reason to operate through supposedly
unrelated subsidiaries, which are in a better position than it could
be to obtain concessions and privileges at Tegucigalpa. Most of these
fruit companies have obtained concessions from the government under
the terms of which they agree to build a railroad from the North
Coast to some point in the interior, and receive in return the right
to appropriate for their own use amounts of land varying from 250 to
500 hectares (that is, from 617.5 to 1,235 acres) for every kilometer
constructed along the main line and its branches. They are allowed to
improve the ports to which their steamers sail and to build wharves
for the use of which they charge a fee to other exporters. The object
of the government in making these contracts has been to provide means
of communication between the Atlantic ports and the interior towns,
with the idea of extending the railroads eventually to the capital,
but the fruit companies, interested merely in securing land suitable
for the planting of bananas, have usually built only those sections
of their lines which are in low, flat country, and when this has
been accomplished have turned their attention to the construction of
branches through districts of the same kind. Most of them are under
obligations to extend the railways to the interior towns within a
certain term of years, but the government seems so far to have been
unable to find means to give effect to this part of the contracts.
The desire to secure railway communication between the capital and
the North Coast has been so strong that valuable and far-reaching
privileges have often been granted, with little consideration and
with no effective safeguards, to companies which have promised more
than they had any intention of carrying out; and other concessions,
often actually prejudicial to the interests of the Republic, have
been secured occasionally by foreigners who have aided revolutionary
leaders in securing control of the government. Because of the lessons
learned through many hard experiences with unscrupulous promoters,
however, the native authorities are much more cautious of late about
investigating the character and financial standing of persons applying
to them for favors, and the majority of the contracts recently entered
into have been more equitable in their terms and more explicit in their
provisions than those of former years.
The North Coast not only exports bananas, but also small quantities
of lumber, cattle, rubber, and other products. Special concessions
have been granted from time to time for cutting mahogany and cedar,
providing usually that the government shall receive five dollars,
United States currency, for every tree; and contracts have been made
occasionally with foreigners for the development of other natural
resources. Since the beginning of the European war many of the
planters, who have been unable to export their bananas because of the
withdrawal of the steamers which had hitherto carried them to the
United States, have turned their attention to the breeding of cattle
and hogs, which thrive on the otherwise useless fruit, and which are
readily sold either in Honduras itself or in the neighboring countries.
This new industry has saved many of the foreigners along the Coast from
the ruin which in 1914 seemed inevitable, and there is every reason to
suppose that it will become more and more important in the future.
The commercial relations of Honduras with the outside world are small
as compared with some of the neighboring countries. The chief exports,
and almost the only ones which reach large amounts, are the bananas
from the foreign-owned plantations on the North Coast and the silver
from the one large mine already mentioned. The coffee crop, cultivated
by primitive methods on small patches of ground, little more than
suffices to supply the local demand. Other products,--hides, lumber,
cocoanuts, etc.,--are shipped abroad in comparatively small amounts.
The imports differ little in character from those of the other Central
American countries. Their amount is small because the people have no
crop which provides them with money for the purchase of foreign goods.
The imports somewhat exceed the exports at the present time because of
the railway material and mining machinery which is being brought in by
foreign investors, and because a certain amount of goods is undoubtedly
being paid for every year under present conditions by the shipment
abroad of silver coin. By far the largest part of the Republic’s trade
is with the United States, and more than half of it is carried on
through the North Coast ports, which have regular steamer connection
with New Orleans and Mobile. The interior and the South Coast, which
have no outlet at the present time except through Amapala, have few
exports, and can buy little from foreign countries because of their
poverty and because the expense of transporting goods from Amapala to
the capital and from there to the interior towns is so great that most
imported articles are far beyond the reach of the mass of the people.
In spite of the poverty which characterizes Honduras today, her future
is not necessarily less promising than that of other parts of Central
America. Her people are not backward because they are degenerate,
but because they have been prevented from developing the natural
resources of their country by the lack of means of transportation
and by continual civil war. As has already been stated, they are by
no means lacking in intelligence or ability. The country itself,
perhaps, does not enjoy the natural advantages which have brought
about the prosperity of some of its coffee-growing neighbors, but it
nevertheless possesses great fertile tracts which are as yet hardly
explored, and great undeveloped mineral resources, which will be opened
to the world by the building of railways and the investment of foreign
capital, if the present era of peace continues. There is no section
of the Isthmus more favorably situated for banana growing, for cattle
raising, or for mining than are the northern departments of Honduras.
The Caribbean Coast, and the great plains and open valleys tributary
to its ports, which are already more important commercially than the
older settlements of the interior and the southern departments, seem
likely in the near future to become the home of the larger portion of
the Republic’s inhabitants. If this occurs, and if the railways already
under construction are extended through this region into the interior,
there will be no other country of Central America so easily accessible
from the United States and Europe, and none which should enjoy closer
commercial and cultural relations with the outside world.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] For a more complete discussion of the Washington Conference, see
Chapter X.
[22] The rates charged are equivalent to $10 in gold for each
passenger, and $1.20 to $1.60 per hundred pounds for freight. The
distance is eighty-one miles.
CHAPTER VII
COSTA RICA
Concentration of the Population in One Small District--Predominance
of Spanish Blood--Social Conditions Resulting from Absence of Indian
Laborers--Political Tranquillity--History--Character of the Government
Today--Foreign Commerce and Means of Transportation.
Although the territory of Costa Rica is approximately 23,000 square
miles in area, nearly all of her four hundred thousand inhabitants,
with the exception of some small groups of Indians and negroes who
take no part in the political life of the country, live on one small
plateau, from three to four thousand feet above sea level, surrounded
by the volcanoes and ranges of the Central American _cordillera_. The
population is so dense in this _meseta central_, as it is called, that
it is seldom possible to walk more than a few minutes without passing
a house. San José, Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela, the four principal
cities, are connected with one another by a single cart road less than
thirty miles in length, and few of the smaller towns and villages are
more than a day’s walk from the capital. Almost every acre, in the
valley and on the sides of the mountains, is used for agricultural
purposes. The people have never shown any inclination to expand into
the mountainous country to the southward, where communication with
the towns would be rather difficult, or into the hot and insalubrious
regions on the coasts. The Atlantic seaboard, as in the other Central
American countries, is given over to banana plantations, owned and
worked by foreigners; and the provinces bordering on the Pacific are
sparsely inhabited by an unprogressive race who are largely of Indian
descent. Both of these districts, because of their products, are of
importance economically, but the social and political life of the
country has its center in the cool and fertile _meseta central_.
Here there has grown up a nation which is entirely different from any
of the other Central American republics. The Spanish pioneers who
founded the city of Cartago in the latter part of the sixteenth century
were unable from the outset to establish a colony similar to those in
other parts of the Isthmus, because there was no dense agricultural
population to be divided up as laborers among the settlers. Elsewhere
the Indians, already living in large towns and devoting themselves
to agriculture, had been forced with surprisingly little difficulty
to work for their new masters; but in Costa Rica there were only a
few scattered tribes, in a low stage of civilization, who cultivated
the soil in a rude way simply to supplement their natural food supply
obtained by hunting. Unaccustomed to steady labor, they were not
promising material for a serf class like that existing at the time
in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The settlers nevertheless introduced the
_repartimiento_ system immediately after their arrival in their new
home, notwithstanding the royal order forbidding further enslavement
of the Indians, and they are said to have treated those natives who
were within reach with even greater cruelty than had been practiced
in the other colonies.[23] In consequence of this oppression, the
numbers of the aborigines decreased very rapidly, and the settlers
found themselves forced more and more to do their own work, in spite of
their efforts to replenish the supply of slaves with war captives from
Talamanca and other unsubjugated districts. Indian labor seems never to
have been a considerable factor in the economic life of the country.
At the present time there are few remnants of the aboriginal tribes
in the interior, although Indian blood is still very evident in the
people of Guanacaste and other outlying districts. The inhabitants of
the central plateau are distinctly Spanish in race and civilization.
The white families, moreover, do not seem to be of the same type as
those of Guatemala and the other countries. The majority of the people
of Costa Rica, it is commonly said, are descended from _Gallegos_, one
of the most law-abiding and hard-working of the numerous races that
occupy the Iberian Peninsula, while those of the other countries are
predominantly Andalusian. However this may be, the traveler cannot
avoid noticing a certain dissimilarity in appearance and in customs and
personal traits, between the prominent families of San José and those
of other Central American capitals.
The absence of a large Indian population had an economic and social
effect which can hardly be exaggerated. The unfortunate settlers of
Costa Rica, throughout the colonial period, were in a condition which
caused them to be pitied by all of their neighbors. Instead of living
in large towns, supported by tributes brought in by the Indians of
their _encomiendas_, the majority of the creoles found themselves
forced to settle in the country, where each family raised by its own
labor everything that it consumed. The harvests, as Governor Diego de
la Haya reported in 1719, were gathered “with the personal labor of
the poor Spanish settlers, because of there being very few slaves in
all the province.”[24] The colony was so poor that the name Costa Rica
became a standing joke. Although there was plenty of food, clothes and
other articles of European manufacture could be secured only with the
greatest difficulty, because there were no exports with which they
could be purchased. The people were almost completely shut off from the
outside world. As those who could do so left the country, and there was
no immigration, the population grew very slowly. The little community
was, however, spared the problems arising from the presence of a large
class of laborers of another race, and the Spaniards, although they
sank into a state of dense ignorance and were forced to adopt most
primitive ways of living, acquired industrious habits which still
distinguish them from their neighbors. Each settler cultivated a small
amount of land, sufficient for the support of himself and his family,
and was prevented from extending his holdings by his inability to
employ laborers and by the fact that he had no market for his products.
With the growth of the population, the entire _meseta central_
eventually became occupied by little farms. There were a few wealthy
and influential families, who had been given special privileges by the
Spanish government, but they never occupied the dominant position which
the aristocracy of Guatemala and Nicaragua had been able to assume, and
the land which they held never amounted to more than a small portion of
the cultivated area of the colony.
In colonial times, a large part of the land belonged to municipalities
rather than to individuals. As the population expanded, it became
customary to give to the founders of each new village a tract of land
to be held for the common use, part of it to be divided among the
inhabitants from time to time according to their ability to cultivate
it, and part to be held as pasture or forest. In 1841 President Braulio
Carillo ordered that a large portion of these _tierras ejidales_ should
become the property of those who were at the time cultivating them.
This decree was later annulled, but a similar law was passed in 1848,
permitting the cultivators to buy for a small price such parts of the
common lands as they had fenced in and were using.[25] These measures
resulted in a great increase in the number of small holdings.
The large uncultivated tracts owned by the central government have been
sold at low prices to anyone who wished to buy them, or have been given
away as premiums to encourage the planting of coffee or cacao. Many
persons acquired large estates in this manner, especially during the
last years of the nineteenth century, and a class of large landholders
has thus gradually grown up. These have in most cases converted their
properties into coffee plantations or cattle ranches, but many large
tracts have never been brought under cultivation, because their owners
have lacked the enterprise and the capital to do so. When the quantity
of public lands in the more accessible parts of the country began to
grow small, attempts were made to check the reckless sale of them to
persons who did not intend to turn them to account agriculturally, and
to encourage their division into small holdings. The amount sold to
any one purchaser was gradually reduced, and in 1909 a law was passed
giving each head of a family the right to claim fifty hectares of
government land, free of cost, provided that he actually settle upon
it and cultivate it. The greater part of the more favorably situated
districts, however, have now passed into private hands, and the people
show little desire to undertake the conquest of the inaccessible
country outside of the _meseta central_. The establishment of new
plantations and the opening of means of communication require more
money and a larger labor supply than the natives of the country can
provide. For these reasons, the legislation intended to increase the
amount of the Republic’s territory used for agricultural purposes has
not been very successful.
Although there are now many large plantations scattered here and there
through the country, the greater part of the _meseta central_ is still
divided into small farms. In the year 1906, there had been inscribed
in the public land register 110,201 different properties, of which the
average value was less than five hundred dollars American gold.[26]
Even when allowance is made for the fact that there are many foreigners
and rich natives, each of whom possesses a large number of separate
properties, it is evident that an overwhelming proportion of Costa
Rican families own their own homes. There is in fact practically no
landless class, with the exception of a few thousands of laborers in
the cities.
The political development of this compact community of white peasants
has necessarily been very different from that of the neighboring
countries, where a small upper class of Spanish descent had ruled and
exploited many times its number of ignorant Indians and half-breeds.
In Costa Rica the fact that nearly all of the inhabitants were of the
same stock and had inherited the same civilization has always made the
country more democratic, and has forced the class which controlled the
government to consider to some extent the wishes and interests of the
masses. The development of the Republic, unlike that of its neighbors,
has for this reason been toward rather than away from the realization
of the republican ideals held by the framers of the first Central
American constitutions. The small landholders have always exerted a
strong influence on the side of peace and stable government, for they
have rarely joined in attempted revolutions, and have shown themselves
inclined rather to take the part of the constituted authorities when
disaffected politicians endeavored to plunge the country into civil
war. Costa Rica has seen none of the protracted and bloody struggles
which have darkened the history of the other republics, for the violent
changes of government which have occurred from time to time have
been effected rather by military conspiracies in the capital than by
campaigns in the field.
The geographical situation of the Republic, moreover, has enabled it
to escape from the outside influences which until very recent years
made the establishment of stable government almost impossible in other
parts of Central America. At the southern extremity of the Isthmus,
separated from its nearest neighbors by several days’ travel through
practically uninhabited territory, it has been able to hold aloof from
the quarrels between the other republics, and has never been forced
to submit to their intervention in its internal affairs. Costa Rica
separated herself at an early date from the Central American Union,
and has taken little part in the attempts for its restoration, for her
statesmen have been unwilling to yoke their destinies with those of the
turbulent communities north of them.
During the first years of Central American independence, the war
between the imperialist and republican parties in other parts of
the Isthmus had its counterpart in Costa Rica in a short struggle
between Cartago and Heredia, which favored annexation to the Mexican
Empire, and San José and Alajuela, which opposed it. The victory of
the republicans led to the removal of the capital from Cartago to
San José, where it has since remained. For nearly half a century the
government was controlled by a few powerful families, among whom the
most prominent were the Montealegres and the Moras, and the number
of persons who participated in public affairs was very limited. The
first president, Juan Mora, was successful in organizing a fairly
efficient administration and in promoting the almost non-existent
commerce of the country, and Braulio Carillo, who took charge of the
government in 1835, after two years of agitation and disorder, carried
on the policy of his predecessor and laid the basis for the present
prosperity of the country by encouraging the production and exportation
of coffee, which rapidly became the Republic’s chief crop. He also
definitely established the capital at San José, although to do so it
was necessary to put down an armed uprising by the other towns, which
desired that the seat of the government should move from one place to
another. Carillo was defeated for re-election in 1837, but he regained
his position by a _coup d’état_ in 1838 and for four years exercised
dictatorial powers. During this period, the administration was reformed
and made more centralized, the courts were reorganized and a penal
code was drawn up, and Costa Rica’s share of the debt incurred by
the federal government was paid in full. Carillo was overthrown by a
bloodless revolution in 1842, when Francisco Morazán, landing on the
Pacific Coast, won over the chiefs of the army which the president sent
against him, and occupied the capital. The victor had hardly reached
San José when he began to raise troops and money for an attempt to
re-establish the federal union, from the presidency of which he had
recently been ejected by his enemies. Angered by this attempt to force
them into a war of aggression on their neighbors, the people deposed
Morazán and put him to death.
During the seven years which followed this revolution, continual
quarrels between political factions and constant interference by the
military leaders made it impossible for any administration long to
maintain itself in office. In 1849, however, with the election of
Juan Rafael Mora, another era of stable government commenced. The
army was reduced to obedience, and order was restored throughout the
Republic. During this administration, Costa Rica took the leading part
in the war against Walker in Nicaragua. Mora was overthrown in 1859
by a conspiracy in San José, and two military chiefs named Blanco and
Salazar, who were allied to the Montealegre and Tinoco families, came
into power. Through their influence, José María Montealegre was made
president. Mora, who had attempted an unsuccessful counter revolution,
was put to death, and the members of his family were exiled. The
severity of the government’s action aroused much bitter feeling, but
civil war was avoided by a compromise, as the result of which Jesús
Jiménez was elected president in 1863 and José María Castro in 1866.
The latter was deposed by a pronunciamento of Blanco and Salazar in
1868, and Jiménez, as first designate, or vice-president, again took
charge of the government. The new president made a determined effort
to destroy the control which the army had been exercising over the
administration, by removing Blanco and Salazar from their commands and
forcing the other officers to obey the civil authorities. In doing
this, however, he deprived the small group which had controlled the
government for so many years of its chief support.
Jiménez was deposed in 1870. A handful of men boldly entered the
artillery barracks, concealed in an ox-cart under a load of fodder,
and seized them, and with them the control of the city, almost
without bloodshed. The leader of the revolution was Tomás Guardia, an
army officer, who, unlike Blanco and Salazar, had little political
connection with the great families. This man was the real ruler of
Costa Rica from 1870 until his death in 1882, although he did not at
once assume the presidency. His government was a repressive military
dictatorship, in which his own personal followers held all of the
principal offices. The great families, whose leaders were exiled and
deprived of their property, were reduced almost to insignificance as
a political factor, and have never entirely regained their former
influence. Guardia was succeeded after his death by his close
associate, Próspero Fernández, who was at the time in command of the
army. When the latter died in 1885, his son-in-law, Bernardo Soto, took
charge of the administration as first designate, and caused himself to
be elected president for the term beginning in 1886. These two rulers
did much to improve the administration and the government finances,
both of which Guardia had left badly disorganized. The administration
of Soto was especially notable because of the work of Mauro Fernández,
his Minister of Public Instruction, who for the first time established
free and compulsory education throughout the Republic. The small group
which had been in power, however, had made many enemies, among whom
the most powerful were the clergy. The opposition grew so strong, as
the election of 1889 approached, that Soto found himself unable to
impose his own candidate on the nation without incurring serious danger
of revolution. He consequently allowed the first comparatively free
and popular election which the Republic had ever known, in which José
Joaquín Rodríguez, the candidate of the clerical party, was victorious.
Many of the partisans of the government desired to retain control of
the administration by the use of force, but they were prevented from
doing so by the firmness of the president and by the attitude of the
country people, who rose in arms and prepared to march on the capital
to enforce the verdict which they had given at the polls.
Rodríguez severely repressed all opposition, and governed during the
greater part of his term without the aid of Congress. In 1894 he forced
the legislature to elect his friend Rafael Yglesias to succeed him.
During the latter’s administration, the currency was reformed and
placed on a gold basis, and the commercial and agricultural development
of the country was promoted in many other ways. Yglesias was re-elected
in 1898, but in 1902 he turned over the chief magistracy to Ascensión
Esquivel, who had been selected by a compromise between the government
and its opponents.
With the election of Esquivel began an era of republican and
constitutional government which was unprecedented in the history of
Central America. Since 1902, the Republic has enjoyed an almost
complete freedom from internal disorder, with perfect liberty of the
press, and genuine, if somewhat corrupt, elections. Cleto González
Víquez, who followed Esquivel in 1906, and Ricardo Jiménez, president
from 1910 to 1914, were chosen by a majority of the voters in contests
in which practically all of the adult male population of the Republic
took part. Alfredo González, Jiménez’s successor, was placed in office
by Congress in 1914, after no candidate had received a majority of the
popular vote. The legality of his election was considered doubtful,
but he remained at the head of the government until January, 1917. His
advocacy of radical financial reforms, including a direct property tax
and a heavy progressive income tax, aroused much hostility among the
wealthy classes and alienated several of the more influential political
leaders, with the result that he was overthrown by an almost bloodless
_golpe de cuartel_ engineered by Federico Tinoco, the Minister of War.
The latter was formally elected president of the Republic on April
1, 1917. Each of the recent rulers of Costa Rica has devoted himself
with enlightened patriotism to promoting the welfare of the country,
and great advances have been made in reorganizing the finances, in
safeguarding the public health, and in providing for the education of
the masses of the people.
The inhabitants of Costa Rica now enjoy more stable and more nearly
democratic political institutions than any of their Central American
neighbors. Constitutional government works in practice, and the letter
of the law is generally respected, even though its spirit is often
ingeniously circumvented. The president walks through the streets much
like a private citizen, without fear of assassination or of being
captured by his enemies, and the leaders of the opposition carry on
their propaganda in San José without hindrance or persecution, and at
times are even called in to consult with the president on matters of
great importance. The press criticises the administration fearlessly
and at times scurrilously, and animated political discussions may
be heard every day on the principal corner of the main street of
the capital. The elections are participated in by about as large a
proportion of the entire population as in the United States.[27] If one
candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, he becomes president,
and if no absolute choice is made by the people, the question goes
to the Congress, where it is decided by intrigues and deals between
the political leaders. The administration is able to exert a decided
influence in the selection of its successor through its control of the
patronage and the army; but the final decision rests with the people
or the popularly elected deputies, and it is not probable that any
president would resort now to the forceful methods by which official
candidates were placed in office a few decades ago. The only break
in the peaceful development of constitutional government since 1902
was the _coup d’état_ of 1917. That the dissatisfied party should
have chosen violent means for obtaining control of the government,
instead of waiting for the election which would have been held within
a year, must be regretted by every friend of Costa Rica, but this very
event nevertheless gave the people of the Republic an opportunity
to show their capacity for self-government. Nothing could be more
characteristic of Costa Rica than the whole-hearted co-operation of
all political elements in the organization of the new administration,
without either bloodshed or persecution.
Government by the people, however, has not really advanced so far as
the number of votes cast at the elections would seem to indicate, for
the great majority of the Republic’s inhabitants still take little
interest in political affairs. So long as order is maintained and
their property rights are secure, they do not care particularly which
group of politicians is in control and they are guided in voting more
by the inducements held out by the rival candidates than by their
judgments. Personalities rather than questions of national policy are
the issue, for it is rarely that any candidate makes his campaign upon
a definite political or economic platform. Between the elections,
public opinion, although far more influential than in any of the other
Central American countries, exercises little real control over the
policy of the government. The newspapers are very widely read, and the
people as a whole are remarkably well informed about current events,
but the press nevertheless has comparatively little power, because no
one believes in its impartiality or its incorruptibility.
The choice of candidates for public office and the conduct of the
government are left almost entirely to a small number of landed
proprietors, lawyers, physicians, and professional politicians residing
in San José. These owe their influence partly to social position and
wealth, but more especially to education; for although the members
of the old principal families are still prominent, there are also
many influential leaders who have risen from the lower classes by
availing themselves of the educational advantages which the Republic
offers to all its citizens. The ruling class is divided into a number
of small political cliques, each of which professes allegiance to a
party chief. As might be expected in an aristocracy composed chiefly
of the leading people of a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, ties
of blood and personal feeling play a very large part in the formation
of these groups, especially as the prominent families are very large,
and each is closely related with the others by intermarriage. A leader
is often able to derive the major portion of his strength from his
relatives alone, for the aid of ten or fifteen active and popular
sons or sons-in-law, together with that of several score of brothers
and cousins and nephews, is not to be despised in a country where
there are at most only a few hundred active politicians. Besides his
relatives and his intimate friends, however, each party chief has also
a number of followers who are attached to him by the hope of obtaining
employment in one of the government offices, for a very large number
of persons among the upper class have little occupation aside from
politics, and little income beyond that derived from official positions
when their friends are in power.
The various leaders may have different political ideals and economic
theories, which to some extent influence their relations to one
another, but it can hardly be said that any of the present parties have
definite principles or programs. Each desires primarily to win the
elections in order to put its followers in office; and the platforms
and the utterances of the leaders are shaped with this end in view,
with the result that they receive little attention and less credence.
When it is necessary in order to obtain control of the government,
leaders of widely different points of view will join forces without any
suspicion of inconsistency, and it is no very uncommon occurrence for a
prominent member of one party to join another and very different group,
because of a quarrel with his former associates or simply because the
change improves his chances of advancement. Sectional jealousy is no
longer a force in politics, since the capital has so far outstripped
the other towns in population and wealth, and religious questions are
rarely injected into the campaign. Attempts have been made to organize
a popular party among the laborers and peasants, and this party has
achieved some notable successes at the polls, but its policy when
in power is very similar to that of the other factions. There is in
reality little ground for political rivalry between the different
classes of the population.
The so-called parties have so little permanent organization that
they can hardly be said to be in existence during the greater part
of the presidential term. About a year before an election, the heads
of the stronger groups, who are often perennial candidates, begin to
organize their own followers, and to bargain for the support of the
less powerful leaders, with a view to inaugurating their campaigns.
Committees and clubs are organized in each town and village, and
desperate efforts are made to secure the support of influential
citizens who are not permanently affiliated with any party, and to
arouse the interest of the voters in general. Processions and serenades
are organized to show the popularity of each candidate, and orators
are sent to every town and village on Sunday afternoons to entertain
the voters with abuse and denunciation of the rival aspirants. Party
newspapers are established, but they confine themselves to printing
long lists of local committees and adherents and to describing meetings
and ovations. One may search their columns in vain for serious
discussion of the issues of the campaign. Several of the regular
newspapers take sides more or less openly, while others maintain an
ostensible neutrality, but the press as a whole seems to have little
influence over the voters. As the contest progresses, feeling runs
higher and higher among the politicians, and the voters become first
interested and then excited. The meetings and ovations, the continual
political arguments on the streets, resulting in an occasional riot,
and the wholesale treating by the party workers in the drink-shops,
distract the attention of the people from their ordinary occupations,
and temporarily disorganize the entire community. Elections are
therefore looked forward to with a certain amount of dread by the more
respectable classes.
Since the adoption of the law of 1913, the President, the members of
Congress, and the municipal _regidores_ have been chosen by direct
popular vote instead of by electoral colleges. The balloting takes
place on the same day in all parts of the country. Each citizen must
inscribe his choice in a book where all may read it, and every party
has representatives at the polls to secure fair play. This system
prevents fraudulent counting, but it also encourages corruption and
the exercise of improper influence on the individual elector. Bribery
is practiced openly and on a large scale by all parties, and the voter
is often prevented from exercising his own discretion in casting his
ballot by the fear of offending the local authorities or other powerful
personages in his village. The amount of intimidation and coercion,
however, is insignificant as compared with that in the other republics,
and attempts to influence voters by such means are generally condemned
by public opinion. The president is prevented by the constitution from
seeking his own re-election, but one of his associates is usually
frankly supported by the administration as the official candidate,
and thus has an immense advantage over his opponents, even though
recent presidents have refrained from using the army and the police to
interfere with their enemies’ campaigns or to keep the adherents of the
opposition party away from the polls on election day.
The large supplies of money which are perhaps the most important factor
in the campaign are obtained by contributions from members of the
party, who hope to obtain offices for themselves or their friends in
the event of a victory, and from native and foreign business men who
desire special concessions. The banks of San José usually assist one
candidate actively though secretly, and considerable amounts are also
obtained from certain rich speculators, in return for favors contingent
on the election of the candidate whom they support. Consequently a
new administration comes into office bound by numerous more or less
improper pledges, and burdened by a considerable party debt. After
the election of 1913-14, the victorious group liquidated a portion of
its financial obligations by a levy on all office-holders, who were
presumably the chief beneficiaries of the party triumph.
The choice of the voters does not always inspire the respect which
it would in a democracy more conscious of its power and more jealous
of its rights. The people of Costa Rica have more than once shown
that they were ready to compel respect for their will when their
interests were at stake, but as a rule they are disposed to recognize
any administration which controls the capital, regarding civil war,
with its attendant destruction of crops and livestock, as a greater
evil than submission to an illegal government. It is not strange,
therefore, that a defeated faction should occasionally attempt to
seize the barracks in San José by force or by strategy, or that the
president should exact conditions from an opponent victorious in
an election before turning over to him the command of the military
forces. No candidate opposed by the government has ever obtained the
presidency without either making a compromise with his predecessor or
else overcoming the latter’s resistance by force, for even the freely
elected presidents of the last decade have in every case had the
approval, if not the active support, of the previous administration.
The strength of the government, however, in reality rests far less upon
the army than upon the disapproval of the people as a whole of any
attempt to displace the constituted authorities in a disorderly manner,
for the army itself is almost insignificant as a military force. There
are a few troops in the barracks of the capital, but elsewhere order
is maintained entirely by the civil police. It is a proud boast of the
Costa Ricans that their government employs more school teachers than
soldiers.
The President of the Republic has an almost absolute control over the
machinery of the government. He not only appoints all administrative
officers, but also in practice exercises a dominant influence over
the deliberations of the Congress, where his ministers initiate the
most important legislation. Even when his personal followers do not
have a majority in the Chamber, he can usually command one by the
use of patronage or of money from the treasury, which is often paid
to the Deputies in the form of fees for professional services to the
government. As party lines break down soon after an election, the
minor political leaders who make up the legislative body are apt to be
influenced less by hostility to the administration than by a desire
to maintain their following in their own districts by securing public
works for their towns and employment for their constituents. In times
of emergency, moreover, the Congress itself frequently vests the
President with practically absolute power, as it did when the country
was passing through the economic crisis which followed the outbreak of
the European war.
The Judicial Department, however, is far more nearly independent of
the Executive. The Supreme Court, which is elected by the Congress
every four years during the political slack season in the middle
of the presidential term, appoints and removes all subordinate
magistrates throughout the Republic. Politics enters very little into
the composition of this body, partly because of the strong sentiment
in favor of a non-partisan judiciary, and partly because party lines
are almost non-existent at the time when the judges are chosen. The
subordinate positions are also saved from the spoils system which rules
in other departments of the government, although it is inevitable that
purely personal considerations should enter to some extent into the
appointments. The administration of justice is on the whole prompt
and efficient, although the magistrates are not always distinguished
for erudition or ability and those on the supreme bench sometimes
show a human desire to make sure of their re-election as the time for
this draws near, by keeping on good terms with the President and with
the members of Congress. They are generally honest and impartial in
their decisions, however, and their incorruptibility, with hardly any
exceptions, is undoubted. That not only the people themselves but also
the foreigners in the country have confidence in the courts is shown by
the fact that there has been a conspicuous lack of the complaints of
denial of justice which have complicated the relations of some other
Latin American republics.
The local administration is highly centralized, but the people of
each district enjoy a certain amount of local self-government through
their municipalities. The representatives of the central government
are the executive officers of these bodies,[28] and the Department of
_Gobernación_ has a final veto over all their acts, but the _regidores_
are freely elected by the people of each town and village, and have
very wide powers in matters of purely local interest. The lack of
funds, however, arising from the fact that the municipalities have
no source of revenue except certain license fees and fees for public
services, forces them to leave to the central government many of
the functions which are assigned to them by the constitution, and
especially the support and direction of almost all the more costly
public works, and at the same time makes them politically subservient
to the President and the Congress, which can provide or withhold
appropriations for local purposes. President Alfredo González attempted
to make the local units truly autonomous, by authorizing them, in the
fiscal legislation passed just before his fall, to levy direct taxes
upon their inhabitants by adding a percentage to the national direct
taxes.
The central government itself, thanks to a long period of internal
peace and to the patriotism and ability of the men who have been at
its head, has reached a high degree of efficiency and of usefulness to
the community. Private rights are generally well protected, and the
oppression of private citizens by the officials, while not unknown,
is unusual. The security of persons and property is guaranteed by a
well-organized police force, a fairly efficient judiciary, and an
excellent land registry system. In spite of the difficulties presented
by the mountainous character of the country and by six months of heavy
rains every year, the Republic possesses a fair system of highways,
although in this matter there is still room for improvement. The
government-owned and operated railway from San José to the Pacific
Coast compares favorably, at least in the service rendered, with those
controlled by foreign corporations in other parts of Central America.
There are sewers in the larger towns, and aqueducts supply healthful
drinking water even in the small villages. The public health is also
protected by a rigid quarantine service, by a veterinary service which
inspects live cattle and meat, and by the regulation of contagious
diseases and prostitution; and the government employs forty physicians
in various parts of the country who treat the poor in their districts
free of charge. Many of the public services, because of the lack of
experience and training on the part of the officials, and because of
the poverty of the government, are still in an unsatisfactory state,
but they at least show an earnest desire on the part of the authorities
to promote the welfare of the country.
During the last three years, remarkable progress has been made in
improving sanitary conditions. The campaign against the hookworm,
inaugurated in 1914 with the aid of the International Health Commission
of the Rockefeller Foundation, already promises to effect an
incalculable change in the condition of the country people, an immense
number of whom suffer from this disease. The representative of the
International Health Commission has been made the head of an official
department under the Ministry of Police, and all local health officers
and police officials have been placed under his orders to assist him
in the examination and treatment of patients and the execution of
sanitary measures designed to check further spread of the disease. At
the same time, he has been made Director of the School Medical Corps,
in which capacity he has done much to secure proper care for the health
of the children and to improve hygienic conditions in the schools.
With the earnest co-operation of the government, notable results have
been obtained even in the short time which has elapsed since the work
was begun. It is impossible to estimate what the final effect of work
such as this will be, for the extinction of the hookworm alone, to
say nothing of the other results of the campaign of medical education
and sanitary improvement which has been undertaken, cannot but have a
lasting effect on the happiness of the people and on their capacity for
labor.
The field of activity in which the rulers of Costa Rica have perhaps
shown the most interest has been that of education. Its school system
gives the Republic one of its strongest claims to be ranked among the
progressive communities of the world. The nation which a century ago
was so illiterate that it was difficult to find enough men who could
read and write to fill the public offices, now provides free and
obligatory instruction for all of its citizens, with a primary school
in every settlement where there are thirty children to attend it. In
1915, there were 1,108 teachers and 34,703 children in the public
schools.[29] New buildings and equipment are being secured as fast
as possible, and new courses of technical and agricultural training
are being introduced everywhere. There are five institutions for the
secondary education of both sexes, two in San José, and one each in
Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela, offering instruction similar to that
given in American schools. These have somewhat over eight hundred
students in all. The latter are chiefly from the middle classes in
the towns, but the brighter children from the country schools are
also encouraged and financially aided in continuing their education
after they complete the primary course. A national normal school has
recently been established in Heredia to provide teachers for the entire
system. Besides the government institutions, there are schools of
law, pharmacy, music, fine arts, textiles, agriculture, and domestic
science, most of them in San José, which receive some aid from the
treasury. How high the percentage of literacy is, is attested by the
large circulation of newspapers in the country districts.
An examination of the work of the government shows that the men who
control the destinies of the Republic, however regrettable their
political methods sometimes are, do not seek power solely for their own
profit. If there is a large amount of favoritism and graft in official
circles, there is also much progressive spirit and true patriotism.
Most of the government employees are appointed for political reasons,
but they ordinarily perform their duties with as much energy and zeal
as can be expected in tropical America. Public money is often misused,
and improper considerations sometimes govern the letting of contracts,
but public works are nevertheless well executed. Wholesale theft from
the treasury, which is too often regarded with cynical indifference in
other parts of the Isthmus, would not be tolerated by public opinion in
Costa Rica.
Costa Rica’s freedom from internal disorder has enabled her to
attain a prosperity which has entirely transformed the backward and
poverty-stricken community of colonial days. In 1821, her people had
almost no means of communication with the outside world. They produced
nothing which they could export, and they were separated from either
coast by several days of difficult and dangerous traveling. Commerce
with the outside world, however, began soon after the declaration of
independence with the development of the growing of coffee, which was
exported for the first time in 1835.[30] The importance of this crop
increased rapidly, especially after the construction of a cart road,
which was completed in 1846, to the Pacific port of Puntarenas. The
Costa Rica berry soon acquired and still holds a high reputation in the
European markets.
The exporters at first encountered great difficulty and expense in
shipping their product, which they had to send around Cape Horn, or
later by the expensive route of the Panama Railway. The government,
therefore, early endeavored to provide more adequate means of
transportation. In 1871, work on a line from Puerto Limón on the
Caribbean Sea to the capital was begun by Mr. Minor C. Keith. After
difficulties which seemed almost insuperable had been overcome and
thousands of lives had been sacrificed in the deadly lowlands of the
East Coast, through train service to San José was finally opened in
1890, and the Republic found itself for the first time in direct
communication with the United States and Europe. The railway, which
still carries the greater part of the imports and exports, was leased
in 1905 for a period of ninety-five years to the Northern Railway of
Costa Rica, a concern owned by the United Fruit Company.
It was while building this road that Mr. Keith began to plant the
banana farms which later developed into the enormous Caribbean
properties of the United Fruit Company. Costa Rica still leads the
Central American republics in the production of this fruit. Almost
the entire East Coast has now been brought under cultivation, and
English-speaking communities of Americans and Jamaica negroes have
grown up everywhere along the railroad and its numerous branches.
In spite of the ravages of the disease which has attacked the older
plantations, more than eleven million bunches of bananas were exported
from Limón and its tributary ports in 1913,[31]--a quantity the
immensity of which can only be grasped when we realize that it would
provide approximately a dozen bananas for every man, woman, and child
in the United States. The Fruit Company is of course very powerful in
this region, where even the police duties of the central government are
to a great extent exercised through its agents. In the interior, the
“United” has less influence. It has many friends as well as enemies
among the party leaders, and it has not encountered so intense a spirit
of jealousy and hostility towards foreign enterprises as is found in
certain of the other republics; but whatever efforts it has made to
influence the outcome of presidential and congressional elections, in
order to be in a more advantageous position to ask concessions from the
government, have usually been conspicuously unsuccessful.
In addition to the Northern Railway, the Republic has another line,
owned and operated by the government, from San José to Puntarenas on
the Pacific Coast. This also was commenced during the administration
of General Guardia, but it was not completed until 1910. Being shorter
and on the whole less expensive to operate than the Atlantic road, it
should eventually become a formidable competitor of the latter when
adequate transportation is provided by way of the Panama Canal.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, when the price of
coffee in the world’s markets was high, the Republic enjoyed an era
of great prosperity. The wealthier families were able to travel and
to study abroad as they had never done before, and both society and
the government entered on a period of extravagance, of which the
magnificent national theater in San José is an enduring memorial.
When the coffee prices fell, there was a reaction which checked
the development of the country’s natural resources. The area under
cultivation in the interior has now remained practically the same for
many years, and the exports of coffee, which have declined in value,
have increased little or not at all in quantity.[32] During this time,
many of the more prominent native families have become impoverished,
and the upper classes as a whole have hardly shown either the energy
or the adaptability necessary to maintain their political and economic
leadership under modern conditions. They devote themselves to politics
and to the learned professions, but there are now comparatively few
of the wealthy landholders who form the most influential class in the
other Central American republics.
Banking, commerce, and mining are almost entirely in the hands of
foreigners, although the majority of the coffee plantations are still
owned by citizens of the country. These immigrants have identified
themselves more completely with the community than in any of the other
republics, often intermarrying with the natives and taking a prominent
part in local affairs. San José, although not so large or so wealthy as
Guatemala or San Salvador, is more like a European city than any other
capital in the Isthmus.
The industrious, sturdily independent peasant class in the country
districts has been little affected by the changes which have taken
place in the cities. Throughout the _meseta central_ there are
countless small farms, which not only supply their owners with corn,
beans, and sugar cane for food, but at the same time frequently produce
a small amount of coffee, which is sold to the proprietors of the
large cleaning mills to be prepared for export. The farmers not only
cultivate their own properties, but also work for several days in each
week on the larger plantations. As wages are fairly high, they thus
have a money income which enables them to live far better than their
brothers in the neighboring countries. Most of them can read and write,
and they are able to give their children educational advantages little
inferior to those enjoyed by country people in any other part of the
world. During the last few years, as we have seen, they have even
acquired a not inconsiderable political power, which will become more
important as they become more experienced in its use. It is these small
landholders who have made Costa Rica what she is today, and who offer
the strongest guarantee for her future.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] See L. Fernández, _Historia de Costa Rica durante la Dominación
Española_.
[24] Quoted by Fernández, _op. cit._ p. 316.
[25] Costa Rica, _Colección de Leyes_, VI, 133; IX, 453.
[26] For these figures, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Manuel
Aragón, formerly director of the Costa Rican statistical office.
[27] In the election of 1913, 64,056 votes were cast. The total
population in that year was estimated at 410,981.
[28] In this Costa Rica differs from the other republics, where the
_alcalde_ and the local representative of the central government are
two distinct persons, theoretically independent of one another.
[29] Costa Rica, _Anuario Estadístico_, 1915.
[30] Bancroft, _History of Central America_, Vol. III, p. 653.
[31] Costa Rica, _Anuario Estadístico_, 1913, p. xxxvii.
[32] The annual exports of coffee averaged 13,478,941 kilos, valued at
8,835,726 colones for the ten years 1891-1900; and 14,478,605 kilos,
valued at 6,709,767 colones for the ten years 1901-1910. (Costa Rica,
_Resúmenes Estadísticos_, 1883-1910.)
The exportations in the years 1912-1915, according to the _Anuario
Estadístico_ for 1913 and for 1915, were as follows:
Value in
Year. Kilos. colones.
1912 12,237,875 7,623,561
1913 13,019,059 7,752,750
1914 17,717,068 10,028,731
1915 12,206,357 8,022,166
It should be noted that the value of the colon in 1915, and during a
part of 1914, was approximately 20 per cent less than under normal
conditions.