The course of events in certain of the republics in and around the Caribbean Sea warned the Hispanic nations that independence was a relative condition and that it might vary in direct ratio with nearness to the United States. After 1906 this powerful northern neighbor showed an unmistakable tendency to extend its influence in various ways. Here fiscal and police control was established; there official recognition was withheld from a President who had secured office by unconstitutional methods.
Nonrecognition promised to be an effective way of maintaining a regime of law and order, as the United States understood those terms. Assurances from the United States of the full political equality of all republics, big or little, in the western hemisphere did not always carry conviction to Spanish American ears. The smaller countries in and around the Caribbean Sea, at least, seemed likely to become virtually American protectorates.
Like their Hispanic neighbor on the north, the little republics of Central America were also scenes of political disturbance.
None of them except Panama escaped revolutionary uprisings, though the loss of life and property was insignificant. On the other hand, in these early years of the century the five countries north of Panama made substantial progress toward federation. As a South American writer has expressed it, their previous efforts in that direction "amid sumptuous festivals, banquets and other solemn public acts" at which they "intoned in lyric accents daily hymns for the imperishable reunion of the isthmian republics," had been as illusory as they were frequent.
Despite the mediation of the United States and Mexico in 1906, while the latter was still ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between the first two belligerents. Since diplomatic interposition no longer availed, American marines were landed in Nicaragua, and the bumptious Zelaya was induced to have his country meet its neighbors in a conference at Washington. Under the auspices of the United States and Mexico, in December, 1907, representatives of the five republics signed a series of conventions providing for peace and cooperation. An arbitral court of justice, to be erected in Costa Rica and composed of one judge from each nation, was to decide all matters of dispute which could not be adjusted through ordinary diplomatic means.
Here, also, an institute for the training of Central American teachers was to be established. Annual conferences were to discuss, and an office in Guatemala was to record, measures designed to secure uniformity in financial, commercial, industrial, sanitary, and educational regulations. Honduras, the storm center of weakness, was to be neutralized. None of the States was thereafter to recognize in any of them a government which had been set up in an illegal fashion. A "Constitutional Act of Central American Fraternity," moreover, was adopted on behalf of peace, harmony, and progress. Toward a realization of the several objects of the conference, the Presidents of the five republics were to invite their colleagues of the United States and Mexico, whenever needful, to appoint representatives, to "lend their good offices in a purely friendly way."Though most of these agencies were promptly put into operation, the results were not altogether satisfactory. Some discords, to be sure, were removed by treaties settling boundary questions and providing for reciprocal trade advantages; but it is doubtful whether the arrangements devised at Washington would have worked at all if the United States had not kept the little countries under a certain amount of observation. What the Central Americans apparently preferred was to be left alone, some of them to mind their own business, others to mind their neighbor's affairs.
Of all the Central American countries Honduras was, perhaps, the one most afflicted with pecuniary misfortunes. In 1909 its foreign debt, along with arrears of interest unpaid for thirty-seven years, was estimated at upwards of $110,000,000. Of this amount a large part consisted of loans obtained from foreign capitalists, at more or less extortionate rates, for the construction of a short railway, of which less than half had been built. That revolutions should be rather chronic in a land where so much money could be squandered and where the temperaments of Presidents and ex-Presidents were so bellicose, was natural enough. When the United States could not induce the warring rivals to abide by fair elections, it sent a force of marines to overawe them and gave warning that further disturbances would not be allowed.
