Knox's war on Zelaya
1910 Marines land in Bluefields and Corinto.
Some Context…
From 1890 to 1899 US forces invaded Nicaragua three more times. In
1896 marines attacked Corimo to 'protect American interests during
political unrest'; in 1898 US troops landed at San Juan del Sur; in 1899
they were in action in Bluefields and San Juan del Norte, all under the
rubric of 'protecting American lives and bridges'. Nicaraguans should
have understood by this time that people in Washington, not Managua,
would control their destiny.
Nevertheless, some Nicaraguans took sovereignty seriously. In the
early 1900s Nicaraguan President Jose Samos Zelaya (who assumed
dictatorial powers) committed a bold and, as it turned out, rather
imprudent act. This crusty authoritarian nationalist refused to cede to
the United States exclusive rights to build a canal, which would have
included US control of a strip of Nicaraguan territory. Instead, he invited
European and Japanese concerns to aid in building an interoceanic link
to connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He also asked the Bank of
England - not a New York bank - for a loan.
US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox took umbrage. Highly
conscious of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corrolary to
that document, which asserted US 'international police power' in the
hemisphere, Knox branded Zelaya's moves as opening the door to
'European infiltration'. He angrily denounced the Nicaraguan president
for even daring to think about entering into financial transactions With
any but US banks. Knox's subsequent demands on the Nicaraguan
government belied even the thinnest respect for its sovereignty: a ninety-nine
year lease for a naval base on the Gulf of Fonseca and permanent
access rights for a canal through Nicaragua. In words that presaged
Reagan administration rhetoric some seventy years later, Philander Knox,
in 1909, accused Zelaya of 'keeping Central America in tension and
turmoil'.
The stubborn Zelaya, taking seriously the fiction of Nicaraguan
independence, refused to accede to Knox's commands. The US government retaliated by destabilizing his regime. During the course of
subverting Zelaya's government, two US secret agents were caught in
flagrante delicto trying to dynamite Nicaraguan bridges. Zelaya ordered
them to be tried. Despite US protestations, they were convicted and
shot. Knox used the incident to sever diplomatic relations and send
marines to Bluefields.
Knox's plan worked. As was the case in subsequent episodes of
destablization, the government and the private sector cooperated. United
Fruit Company donated $1 million toward the overthrow of the Zelaya
government. Zelaya was forced into exile and replaced by Adolfo Diaz
who, obedient to Washington's commands, canceled concessions to
non-US firms and opened the door to the exaggerated claims of US
banks, which then transferred to their own coffers more than half of
Nicaragua's national bank assets. In 1914, as the Panama Canal opened
to ships crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific, President Diaz made
an offer to the United States: S3 million in exchange for 'rights in
perpetuity' to any land needed to build a canal through the San Juan
route in southern Nicaragua. The $3 million was handled by US-appointed
commissioners to repay foreign loans, mostly to US banks,
so that a mere pittance actually found its way into the Nicaraguan
Treasury. The canal was never built, but the United States acquired a
renewable lease for a naval base on the Corn Islands and on the Gulf
of Fonseca.
THE GUERRILLA WARS OF CENTRAL AMERICA, Saul Landau