Colossus of the North

It amuses me to hear politicians and journalists bemoaning the presumed interference of the Russian government in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in support of the candidacy of Donald Trump.

What makes their mortification so humorous is not the credibility of their claim -- or lack of credibility, depending on one's political affiliation -- but rather its hypocrisy. Either these self-styled authorities are ignorant of the United States' one-hundred-twenty-five year history of foreign intervention or they have chosen to accept this ignominious past and justify it in the name of American exceptionalism.

While the cynic might assert that one party's commission of an act with impunity for which another is roundly condemned is an exceptionalism hardly praiseworthy, the more aspirational observer, and the vast majority of his countrymen, will insist that it is America's virtue, with which among nations it is uniquely endowed, which defines its exceptionalism. And it is with the most virtuous of intentions that the United States has embarked upon these foreign adventures, that is, if the message routinely conveyed by its leaders to querulous citizens can be believed. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 315)

Americans consider themselves, in Herman Melville's words, "a peculiar, chosen people, the Israel of our times." Historian Stephen Kinzer says, "They are hardly the first people to believe themselves favored by Providence, but they are the only one in modern history who are convinced that by bringing their economic and political system to others" they are fulfilling a providential mission." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 314)

George W. Bush spoke for many when he declared that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual choice, is "right and true for every person in every society." Which implies "that Western-style of democracy is the natural state of all nations and will be be adopted by all once the artificial barriers imposed by regimes based on other principles are removed." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 315)

"Generations of Americans have embraced this idea because it reinforces their self-image as a uniquely different people who want only to share their good fortune with others." In reality, however, "when the United States acts in the world, it acts as other nations do, to defend or further its interests." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 316, 315)

But Americans do not like to think that their government has self-centered motives. In order to deflect such concerns, leaders have realized that "they can win popular support for their aggressive policies if they can present them as motivated by benevolence, self-sacrificing charity, and a noble desire to liberate the oppressed." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 315)

Should skeptics challenge the genuineness of this argument, its proponents will maintain that America is intrinsically benign, that what is good for America is good for other countries, and that, regardless of motivation, exercise of its power will ultimately make them and their people richer, freer, and happier. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 316)

Two other themes will become apparent during this review of American international activism.

The first is the decisive role that United States presidents and their designated surrogates -- Secretaries of State and Defense, National Security Advisers -- have played in shaping world events. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 107)

By the end of the nineteenth century, executive prerogative in the conduct of foreign affairs had been established as a guiding principle, with Congress relegated to a diminished role -- notwithstanding the Senate's rejection of Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations in 1920. From the administration of William McKinley through that of Richard Nixon, executive officeholders have had deep ties to powerful businesses which might be seeking valuable natural resources, a larger consumer market, or a strategic location with access to such resources or markets. When an economic interest could identify an ideological cause -- such as Christian improvement, Manifest Destiny, or anti-communism -- to camouflage its ambitions, the stage was set for a U.S. sponsored regime change.

The second theme addresses the student's responsibility to examine the aftermath of these interventions and evaluate the outcomes. Did they accomplish their objectives -- assuming such objectives were clearly articulated? What were the consequences: intended, unintended, short-term, long-term? Did the native populations benefit, or were they harmed? Did they enjoy higher standards of living and more stable, democratic governments or did they suffer from poverty and totalitarian rule?

The answers to these questions will become evident in due time.

TO SECURE THE SAFETY OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROPERTY

On January 14, 1893, Queen Liliuokalani received several dozen members of the Hawaiian Patriotic Association, and, at their behest, proclaimed a new constitution, the main provision of which restricted voting rights to the islands' indigenous population. Outnumbered by natives 40,000 to 6,000, the white elite ruling class, which included the queen's four cabinet members, was aghast and outraged at this blatant attempt to divest it of its power. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 18)

Two years earlier Liliuokalani had succeeded her brother Kalakaua to throne upon his death. She had never forgiven him for bowing to the wishes of the haole planter community (foreign-born white Hawaiians and their progeny) and signing reciprocity treaties in 1874 and 1876 which, in exchange for the exclusive right to maintain commercial ports and military bases on the islands, allowed the planters to sell their sugar in the U.S. without tariffs. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 13-14)

She despised the "bayonet constitution" which Kalakaua had acquiesced to in 1887 under threat of deposition by an armed militia. It stripped the monarchy of much of its sovereignty, vested most authority in the cabinet, and granted suffrage to Americans and Europeans including noncitizens while denying it to Asian laborers. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 15)

Among those incensed by Liliuokalani's new constitution was Lorrin Thurston, a descendant of missionaries who believed that only whites could rule the island efficiently. He organized a thirteen-member Committee of Safety, which approved without dissent his motion "that it is the sense of this meeting that the solution of the present situation is annexation by the United States." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 16, 19)

When the queen's cabinet refused to join Thurston's plot to dethrone her, he turned to John L. Stevens, the American minister to Hawaii. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 21-22)

Stevens had been appointed to his post by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, a former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate and an ardent advocate of annexation. Stevens had been assured by the local commander that two hundred marines and sailors aboard the 3000-ton naval cruiser, the Boston, anchored in the Honolulu harbor, were standing by to "cooperate and sustain him in any action he might take." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 19, 17)

At a mass meeting held on the afternoon of January 16 at the Honolulu armory, Thurston instigated the passage of a resolution authorizing the Committee of Safety to "devise such ways and means as may be necessary to secure the permanent maintenance of law and order and the protection of life, liberty, and property in Hawaii." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 23)

That afternoon Minister Stevens penned a fateful note to the Boston's captain, Gilbert Wiltse: "In view of the existing critical circumstances in Honolulu . . . I request you to land marines and sailors from the ship under your command for the protection of the United States legation and consulate and to secure the safety of American life and property." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 24)

After the contingent had marched through town and set up camp next to the Government House and near the Iolani Palace, the Committee of Safety met to establish its new government. With Thurston sick in bed, it chose as president Supreme Court Judge Sanford Dole, who would dominate Hawaiian politics for the next ten years. In 1901, his cousin James Dole would found the fruit company which later bore his name. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 26)

The next day, January 17, in a last-minute effort to salvage her kingdom, the queen sent her ministers to appeal to Stevens. He dismissed Attorney General Arthur Peterson with a warning that if the "insurgents were attacked or arrested . . . the United States troops would intervene." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 28)

Later that afternoon Stevens delivered a proclamation to Dole and his comrades at the Government House. It acknowledged that "A Provisional Government had been duly constituted in the place of the recent Government of Queen Liliuokalani," and recognized "said Provisional Government as the de facto Government of the Hawaiian Islands." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 29)

"John Stevens had been sent to Hawaii to promote annexation . . . If he overstepped his boundaries when he brought troops ashore, especially since he knew the Committee of Safety's claims of  'general alarm and terror' were a fiction, he was doing what Secretary of State Blaine [acting with the authority vested in him by his superior, President Benjamin Harrison] wanted." By deploying his power to depose the Hawaiian monarchy, "Stevens became the first American to direct the overthrow of a foreign government." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 30)

Within days Thurston and four of his cohorts showed up in Washington with a treaty in hand calling for "complete and perpetual political union between the United States of America and the Hawaiian Islands." Two events coincided, however, to derail its acceptance by the Senate. First, Queen Liliuokalani also made an appearance and delivered a letter to the new Secretary of State, John Watson Foster, asserting that the rebellion in her country "would not have lasted an hour" without the support of American troops and that the new government had "neither the moral nor the physical support of the Hawaiian people." Then, on March 4, Grover Cleveland, a Democrat and staunch anti-imperialist was sworn in as president; he promptly withdrew the treaty. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 83-84)

Annexation would be consummated with the advent of Spanish-American War in the spring of 1898 when its advocates seized upon Hawaii as the military base the U.S. would need to support its ambitions in the Far East. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 86-87)

On November 22, 1993, one hundred years after an American-backed revolution brought down Hawaii's monarchy, President Bill Clinton signed a resolution which Congress had passed apologizing "to Native Hawaiians . . . for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom" and for the subsequent "deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 88)

Apologies come easier when no long-lasting harm ensues. Perhaps that is why few would be forthcoming in the years ahead.

THE LANDS OF OUR AMERICA

On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, killing more than 250 American sailors. Three weeks earlier President William McKinley had dispatched the battleship ostensibly on a "friendly visit," but many observers speculated that his real intentions were to protect American business interests on the island, which exceeded $50 million, and to demonstrate his determination to control a volatile situation. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 36)

In 1895 Cuban patriots had rebelled for the third time in twenty-five years, seeking to shed the shackles of an imperialist Spain and thereby accelerate its inevitable collapse. Their guiding spirit was the celebrated lawyer, poet, and essayist, Jose Marti, who from his New York exile managed to unite a host of factions and persuade two veteran commanders, Maximo Gomez and Antonio Maceo, to come out of retirement to lead their army. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 35)

Tragically, Marti, having returned to his homeland, was killed in one of the war's first skirmishes. The day before his death he penned an unfinished letter in which he urged his comrades not only to free their country from Spain but also "to prevent by the independence of Cuba the United States from extending its hold . . . and falling with all the greater force on the lands of our America." (Ferrer, p. 151)

His fears were well-founded. "Since the days of Thomas Jefferson in the 1790's . . . almost every presidential administration in Washington had imagined Cuba as eventual U.S. territory. Unable to accomplish that outright, they had settled for it belonging to a weak Spain." (Ferrer, p. 151)    

President McKinley, like his predecessors, and any Americans who thought about the matter considered Spanish rule to be a blight on Cuba. But the prospect of an independent Cuba, which might be too assertive and unwilling to submit to U.S. policy, was just as alarming -- and in January 1898, General Gomez was predicting a Cuban victory by year end. "After three years of continual fighting, Cuban rebels had won control of most of the island, had forced the hungry and disease-plagued Spanish army into guarded enclaves, and were preparing to attack Santiago and other cities." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 35,40)

In a confidential memorandum, the U.S. assistant secretary of reported that "Spain's struggle in Cuba has become absolutely hopeless . . . Spain is exhausted financially and physically, while the Cubans are stronger." (Ferrer, p. 151)

After protracted negotiations dating back two years, American diplomats finally pressured Spain into agreeing to a cease-fire. But the Cubans refused to lay down their arms, informing McKinley that "if an armistice is carried out in good faith, it means the dissolution and disintegration of the Cuban army." And "why would the army dissolve itself without having achieved independence?" (Ferrer, p. 152) 

Whether Spain was responsible for the sinking of the Maine or, as many Spaniards contend to this day, the United States itself planted the explosives, the American public was outraged. Incited by inflammatory reports from William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and other sensationalist newspapers of foreign treachery and Cuban civilians starving in concentration camps, it clamored for intervention. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 36; Ferrer, p. 152)  

On April 25, Congress assented to McKinley's request and declared war on Spain but only after appending an extraordinary article to the resolution. Known as the Teller Amendment, it disavowed any "intent to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island [Cuba] except for pacification thereof," after the accomplishment of which the United States would "leave the government and the control of the island to its people." (Ferrer, pp. 152-153)

"It was a war entered without misgivings and in the noblest frame of mind," wrote military historian Walter Millis thirty years later. "Seldom can history have recorded a plainer case of military aggression." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 39)

On June 22, American soldiers landed on Cuba's southeastern coast. "They fought three one-day battles, the most famous being the one in which Theodore Roosevelt, dressed in a uniform he had ordered from Brooks Brothers, led a charge up . . . San Juan Hill. On July 3, American cruisers destroyed the few decrepit Spanish vessels anchored in Santiago." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 39)

American troops occupied the city on July 1, but forbade Cuban forces from entering, nor was their commander, General Calixto Garcia allowed to participate in the surrender ceremony two weeks later. (Ferrer, p. 164)

In December 1898, when representatives from Spain and the United States met in Paris to sign the treaty that codified the end of Spanish dominion over Cuba, there were no Cubans present. A month later, as the Spanish flag was lowered, a new one rose atop the Morro lighthouse which guarded the entrance to the Havana harbor; it was red, white, and blue, with five stripes and forty-five stars. "That flag will never come down in this island," proclaimed an American senator at the ceremony. Thus was the thirty-year Cuban War of Independence erased from the annals of history and replaced by the Spanish-American War. (Ferrer, pp. 165-166)

Portrayed by the press as "an ignorant rabble composed largely of blacks barely removed from savagery" and scorned by one American general as "no more fit for self-government that gunpowder is for hell," the Cubans soon saw their hopes for independence crushed under the boot of a new subjugator. President McKinley declared that the United States would rule Cuba according to the "law of belligerent right over conquered territory." He appointed Rough Rider Leonard Wood military governor, and empowered him to regulate the island's politics, economy, and educational system. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 41-42)

Wood oversaw the organization of a constitutional constitution which produced the framework for a republican form of government similar to that of the United States. Some members of Congress, however, were not willing to accept an independent Cuba "to which," in Wood's words, "the United States may properly transfer the obligations for the protection of life and property." (Ferrer, pp. 176-177)

On February 25, 1901, Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut appended a resolution to an army appropriations bill that would set the course for Cuba's future. Known as the Platt Amendment, it established "an American prerogative to exercise indirect rule in Cuba" under a submissive local regime. It "limited the Cuban government's ability to sign treaties with third nations or to incur debts on its own. It set aside Cuban territory for use as naval bases and coaling stations." The most despised article "gave the United States the right to intervene militarily in Cuba, uninvited." (Ferrer, pp. 178-179; Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 42) 

Faced with the continuation of the U.S. occupation, Cuban delegates to their convention accepted the amendment and incorporated it into their constitution. But ultimate sovereignty would rest with the United States, as even General Wood admitted when he wrote to Theodore Roosevelt: "There is, of course, little or no real independence left to Cuba under the Platt Amendment." (Ferrer, p. 180)

American troops left Cuba permanently in 1909. Whether the nineteenth century rallying cry of Cuba Libre could have been fully realized in a long-lasting democratic government without U.S. interference is unknown. During most of the twentieth century authoritarianism, corruption, crony capitalism, and suppression of human rights informed a series of dictatorships culminating in the twenty-five-year reign of Fulgencio Batista. Batista became an American ally of sorts, inviting military advisers to train his army and encouraging the development of a gangster economy built on prostitution and gambling. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 89)

Batista's cancellation of congressional elections in 1952 fanned the flames of widespread discontent, which exploded into revolution seven years later. In his first public appearance as its presumptive leader, speaking from Santiago's central plaza, Fidel Castro forecast an outcome different from 1898, "when the Americans came and made themselves masters of the country." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 90)

Anti-Communist hysteria precluded any U.S. rapprochement with Castro. His government confiscated foreign corporations, banned capitalist enterprise, and welcomed overtures from the Soviet Union. His legacy was a career of undermining American interests from Nicaragua to Angola, a crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, mass emigration that amounted to almost thirty percent of his country's population, and repressive policies that left the remainder impoverished, destitute, deprived of civil liberties, and suffering from acute shortages of basic necessities like food and medicine. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 90-91)

THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES

While the Cubans, having fought for years for their independence and with victory in sight, rejected Spain's offer of colonial autonomy, the inhabitants of Puerto Rico instantly accepted it. On March 27, 1898, they went to the polls and elected a House of Representatives. Three months later, on July 17, the House convened and named a governing cabinet led by newspaper editor Luis Munoz Rivera. It would hold power for eight days. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 44-45)

On May 12, seven American warships occupied the San Juan harbor and fired 1,362 shells into the city, killing about a dozen people. On the morning of July 25, a detachment of marines and sailors waded ashore near Guanica on Puerto Rico's southwestern coast, secured the town, and raised the American flag over the customs house. With that act the United States effectively took control of the island. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 45)

At the Paris Peace in December 1898, when the terms of the surrender were fixed, Spain tried to retain Puerto Rico, even offering territory elsewhere in its place. President McKinley rejected these offers, informing his negotiators that he had decided that Puerto Rico was "to become the territory of the United States." The Spanish, defeated and weak -- and the Puerto Ricans, who had no say in the matter -- had no choice but to accept. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 46)

During the early years of the twentieth century, after most of Puerto Rico's best land was swept up by four American corporations and converted to sugar cultivation, the population became steadily poorer. Unemployment rose to thirty percent, disease and malnutrition ran rampant, life expectancy fell to forty-six years, and few had access to electricity and modern plumbing. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 92)

Conditions did not improve until the United States gradually handed over to the Puerto Ricans administration of their own affairs. It 1948 it allowed them to elect their own governor; four years later it conferred on their homeland the unique status of "free associated state." Over time the island flourished, economically and intellectually. It became a center of democratic thought and action and its people the proud champions of their native food, music, and traditions. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 92-93)

TO EDUCATE THE FILIPINOS, UPLIFT THEM, AND CHRISTIANIZE THEM

William McKinley was not satisfied with his conquests in Cuba and Puerto Rico. On May 1, 1898, a week after the declaration of war on Spain, Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in the Philippines, leaving this vast archipelago, unknown to most Americans, ripe for plucking. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 46-47)

Wrestling with the Philippines question, McKinley admitted to falling on his knees and praying for light and guidance. "One night late it came to me," he said. "There was nothing left for us to but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and uplift them and Christianize them" -- although most were already practicing Catholics. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 47)

At the same time, as he acknowledged to his Paris negotiating delegation, he was not unaware of the Islands' military and commercial opportunities: their strategic location and their accessibility to burgeoning trade markets in the Far East. For $20 million they became the property of the United States, along with their population of seven million. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 47-48)

The latter, of course, had not been party to the treaty. A group of insurgents, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, elected a constituent assembly, promulgated a constitution, and on January 23, 1899, proclaimed the Republic of the Philippines. Twelve days later the new nation declared war on the U.S. forces which had invaded the Islands. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 48)

Relegated to a footnote in American history, nonetheless it was bitterly and savagely fought. Handicapped by a lack of weaponry and strangled by an effective naval blockade, the Filipino guerillas adopted tactics their enemy had never seen before. "They laid snares and booby traps, slit throats, set fires, injected poisons, and mutilated prisoners." American soldiers were no less brutal, forcing captives to swallow salted or dirty water to extract the truth from them and summarily executing others without any evidence that they were combatants. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 50)

Even after Aguinaldo was captured, issued a statement accepting U.S. sovereignty, and urged his comrades to lay down their arms, many continued to fight. On September 28, 1901, scores of rebels erupted from hiding places in the village of Balangiga on the island of Samar and fiercely attacked their American occupiers, stabbing and hacking them to death, supposedly in retribution for their having tortured, raped, and arrested the town's residents. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 52)

American commanders ordered a swift and ruthless retaliation. Their soldiers razed Balangiga, and then rampaged through the countryside. "Fueled by a passion to avenge their slain countrymen, they killed hundreds of people, burned crops, slaughtered cattle, and destroyed dozens of settlements." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 53)

U.S. newspapers like the Indianapolis News and the New York Post condemned the troops for adopting "methods of barbarism" and "pursuing a policy of wholesale and deliberate murder." Defenders claimed that they had reacted understandably to Filipino "cruelty, treachery, and murder" and that any atrocities had been "aberrations" of which only "a few soldiers were guilty." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 54)

On July 4, 1902, McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt, declared the Philippines pacified. "The important guerilla leaders had been killed or captured, and resistance had all but ceased." But the cost had been beyond all expectations: 4,374 Americans killed and 36,000 Filipinos, including 20,000 civilians. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 55)

Despite repeated demands by the Filipino Nationalist Party for "complete, absolute, and immediate independence," the United States would not relinquish its hold on the Islands until 1946. Even then it retained possession of the Subic Bay Naval Station and the Clark Air Base, signing ninety-nine-year leases on both; over time they grew into "cities unto themselves," housing thousands of soldiers and employing 10,000 Filipinos. Despite generating $200 million for the country's economy, they remained vivid symbols of American power and lightning rods for nationalist resentment. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 94-95)

Self-government for the Philippines was no panacea. From 1971 to 1986 its people suffered under the iron hand of Ferdinand Marcos; one of the most oppressive and corrupt heads of state of his time, he used imprisonment and murder to suppress all opposition and siphoned billions of dollars into his own pockets through a maze of cartels and monopolies. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 96)

Because of his anti-Communist espousals, a series of U.S. presidents overlooked Marcos's crimes and sent him billions of dollars in military aid. When he was finally driven from office by a non-violent uprising led by Corazon Aquino, the widow of a slain patriot, it was an American helicopter that airlifted him to safety and an American state, Hawaii, that gave him asylum during the last year of his life. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 96-97)

While there is no guarantee that the Philippines would have realized political stability and economic vitality had its 1899 Republic not been so precipitately terminated, at least those responsible would have been spared the blame so many Filipinos assign them for the century of turmoil that ensued. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 98)

THE MENACE OF CENTRAL AMERICA 

In 1893, thirty-nine-year-old Jose Santos Zelaya was sworn in as president of Nicaragua, and immediately embarked upon a revolutionary program based on the principles of his Liberal Party. "He built roads, ports, railways, government buildings, and more than 140 schools. He paved the streets of Managua and lined them with lamps. He legalized civil marriage and divorce . . . He encouraged businesses to expand, especially the nascent coffee industry. In foreign affairs, he promoted a union of the five small Central American countries and fervently embraced the grand project that would thrust Nicaragua onto the world stage: the interoceanic canal." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 57)

The latter would fail to come to fruition due to intense lobbying by the French syndicate which preferred the Panama route. Among its strategies were to publicize the threat posed by Nicaragua's majestic Momotombo volcano even though it was practically dormant and lay one hundred miles from the proposed canal and to depict Zelaya as a rogue intent on interfering with American business interests. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 58-60)

These measures were enough to convert President Roosevelt, who adopted the new site with unabashed enthusiasm. As Panama was a province of Colombia and Columbian leaders were reluctant to surrender sovereignty over the canal zone, Roosevelt resolved "to secure the Panama route without further dealing with the foolish and homicidal corruptionists in Bogata." He sent ten warships to the port of Colon and put 400 marines ashore to prevent any Columbian vessels or armed forces from reaching Panama City. There, on November 6, 1893, a group of revolutionaries was formerly recognized by the United States as the legitimate government of the new Republic of Panama (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 60-61)

Once ground was broken on the Canal in 1904, Roosevelt appended his own Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It asserted the right of the United States to intervene in any country in the Western Hemisphere to remedy "chronic wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 64)

This language would be used to justify President Zelaya's U.S.-sponsored overthrow during the administration of Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft. Zelaya angered Taft's Secretary of State, Philander Knox, when he threatened to cancel the gold mining concessions of a company with close ties to Knox and when he spurned American bankers in favor of their British and American counterparts to obtain railroad financing. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 64-65)

Knox despised Zelaya's passionate nationalism and grandiose ambitions. In the summer of 1909, he launched a public relations campaign designed to paint Zelaya's regime as brutal and oppressive. Soon American newspapers were luridly reporting that Zelaya had imposed a "reign of terror on Nicaragua" and had become "the menace of Central America." President Taft announced that the United States would no longer "tolerate and deal with such a medieval despot." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 65-66)

With tacit approval from U.S. consul, William Moffett, a group of American companies operating in and around Bluefields on the Caribbean coast threw their political and financial support behind provincial governor General Juan Jose Estrada, who was eager to supplant Zelaya. On October 10, 1909, Estrada declared himself president of Nicaragua and appealed to the United States for diplomatic recognition. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 66)

Zelaya was on the verge of crushing the uprising when he made a fatal mistake. His forces captured and executed two American mercenaries who had confessed to attempting to blow up a government ship carrying five hundred soldiers. Knox drafted a letter to the Nicaraguan minister in Washington stating that "the United States is convinced that the revolution represents the will of the majority of the Nicaraguan people . . . that under President Zelaya, republican institutions have ceased to exist except in name, that public opinion and the press have been throttled, and that prison has been the reward of any tendency to real patriotism." (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 66-68)

After President Taft ordered warships to both Nicaraguan coasts and a company of marines to Panama, Zelaya recognized the hopelessness of his condition; on December 16, he submitted his resignation to the National Assembly. His successor, Liberal jurist Jose Madriz, was determined to carry on the fight. But when he dispatched a military ship, the Venus, and government troops to Bluefields, both were forbidden to attack the rebels, the former by consul Moffett, the latter by the commander of more marines who had landed there, both claiming that once the shooting started American lives would be endangered. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 68-69)

Madriz tried to negotiate with the United States, but his compromises were rejected on the grounds that Nicaragua must be free of "Zelayist influence." Disgusted, he vacated his office and followed his colleague into exile, opening the way for General Estrada to march to Managua and assume the presidency on August 21, 1910. Thus was carried out the first explicit ousting of a foreign leader by the U.S. government. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 70)

Zelaya was the greatest statesman Nicaragua ever produced. He is remembered "as a visionary who dared to imagine his small, isolated country could achieve greatness." The figureheads who followed him presided over a protectorate whose customs agency, national bank, steamship line, and railway were administered by the United States. Defending these interests were thousands of marines who fought holding actions against two rebellions until President Hoover, weary of the bloodshed, brought them home in 1933. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 98-99)

For the next sixty years two factions -- the Sandinistas, adherents of Augusto Cesar Sandino, and the Somozan dynasty, descendants of Anastasio Somoza Garcia -- vied for supremacy. Their ongoing conflict, exacerbated by further U.S. interventions, took a heavy toll in blood and treasure and condemned generations of Nicaraguans to high rates of poverty, unemployment, infant mortality, and preventable deaths. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 99-100)

TRIUMPH OF THE BANANA MAN 

On December 23, 1910, twenty men boarded a navy surplus ship, the Hornet, and set sail from New Orleans, their cargo hold bulging with rifles, ammunition, and a Hotchkiss machine gun. Their destination was Honduras; their mission was to overthrow the liberal government of President Miguel Davila. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 72-73)

The squadron was led by four shady characters: Lee Christmas, "a Dumas hero in real life," who had fought in almost every Central American war and revolution the past quarter century; George "Machine Gun" Mahoney, a notorious gangster who could be depended on to shoot his way out of any situation he encountered; Manuel Bonilla, a former Honduran general primed to seize the presidency; and Bonilla's chief aide, Florian Davadi. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 71)

The organizer of the plot was Sam Zemurray, whose meteoric rise in the industry had earned him the title "Banana Man." Landing in Mobile, Alabama in 1892 as a penniless Jewish immigrant from Moldavia, he amassed $100,000 in six years by salvaging and selling overripe bananas he saw being dumped into the sea. He borrowed half a million dollars, bought fifteen thousand acres of in Honduras, and quickly became a major player in the banana trade. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 72)

"Like other American businessmen in Central America, Zemurray considered his land a private fiefdom. He resented having to pay taxes and abide by Honduran laws and regulations. That put him in conflict with President Davila, who was not only intent on enforcing taxation but was also campaigning to limit the amount of land foreigners could own in Honduras." (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 73)

Deposing Zelaya had required the combined efforts of the U.S. State Department, the navy, the marines, and President Taft. Recruiting his own mini-army, Zemurray set out on his own to execute a similar coup in Honduras.

Making landfall on New Year's Eve, by January 17 the rebels had captured the islands of Roatan and Utila and the port city of Trujillo. As they came ashore near the main coastal town of La Ceiba, they discovered that Captain George Cooper, commander of the American warship Marietta, which was also in port, had informed the town's defender, General Francisco Guerrero, that La Ceiba was a "neutral zone" and "off limits" to any fighting. Christmas himself had previously met with Cooper and explained that the "State Department was well aware of all the plans of the revolutionists . . . and that they were practically encouraged." Requesting confirmation and receiving no reply to the contrary, Cooper issued his order. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 75)

On January 25, 1911, Guerrero boldly decided to attack outside the town. The ensuing battle was one of the fiercest of the era. The general was shot off his horse and killed while urging his men to the front. Aided by George Mahoney's machine gun, the insurgents drove their enemy from the field, a disaster for Davila. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 76)

Officials in Washington had turned against him. They distrusted him because of his liberal sympathies, his preference for seeking loans from European banks, and his streak of independence which they feared might spread to other Central American countries. They imposed a cease-fire, leaving Davila no recourse other than to resign. Under a plan conceived by Christmas and Thomas Dawson, an American diplomat, after the one-year term of a provisional president, Bonilla assumed the office in February 1917. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 76)

Bonilla granted his patron, Sam Zemurray, 50,000 acres of banana land, a permit allowing his businesses to import their supplies and equipment duty-free, and a $500,000 loan to reimburse him for the expenses he had incurred in orchestrating a revolution. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 77)

Zemurray later merged his enterprises with the United Fruit Company. The conglomerate became an integral component of Central American life. According to one study, it "throttled competition, manipulated governments . . . tyrannized workers, fought organized labor, and exploited consumers." It eventually owned almost all the fertile land in Honduras, as well as its ports, electric power plants, sugar mills, and largest bank. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 77, 100)

Strikes, political protests, uprisings, and attempted takeovers racked Honduras for decades. Except for a brief period from 1958 to 1963, when the Liberal Party held power -- but failed to pass a land reform bill -- military officers, either as surrogates or holders of the presidency themselves, ruled the country. In the 1980's their staunch anti-Communism and their willingness to harbor Nicaraguan rebels earned them the patronage of the United States government and as much as $77 million annually in military aid. Submerged in poverty and terrorized by torture, kidnappings, and random killings, thousands of Hondurans fled the country. Many young emigrants settled in Los Angeles, immersed themselves in a dangerous gang culture, and transported it back to their homeland when they were deported. (Kinzer, Overthrow, pp. 102-103)

Having been a dominant presence in Honduran life for more than a century, the United States cannot escape bearing part of the blame for its endemic poverty, violence, and instability. (Kinzer, Overthrow, P. 103)

A  FAILED POLICY

American presidents justified their turn-of-the-century regime changes by insisting that they wanted only to liberate oppressed peoples, but in fact the operations were carried out mainly for economic reasons. Hawaii and the Philippines were ideal stepping stones to East Asia markets. Puerto Rico protected trade routes and would become a naval base. The presidents of Nicaragua and Honduras refused to allow American companies to conduct business within their borders without restraints. (Kinzer, Overthrow, p. 107)

"The heavy-handed interventions under the Roosevelt Corollary and Taft's dollar diplomacy changed forever the way the United States was viewed in its own hemisphere . . . The attempt to impose American ideas, institutions, and values upon different cultures was arrogant and offensive -- and did not work." Rampant economic intervention fostered instability rather than civil order. Reflexive military intervention further damaged U.S. long-term interests, left an enduring legacy of suspicion among Latin Americans, and prompted them to label their aggressive neighbor the "Colossus of the North." (Herring, p. 377)

REFERENCES

Ferrer, Ada. Cuba: An American History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Herring, George C. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change. New York: Times Books, 2006.