Castellón to Señor Gallegos, April 26, 1885

Señor Castellon to Señor Gallegos.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Salvador:

Having informed the President of the Republic of your excellency’s telegram of the 23d instant, relative to the meeting of a Central American congress in Santa Tecla for the purpose of treating for the national reorganization, I have received instructions to answer your excellency in the following terms: The actual circumstances, under which Central America has just suffered great disturbance and serious evils with the pretext of realizing the union of the states are not in any way favorable to place on the “tapis” a question which has in all times been precursory, to internal revolutions and of wars between states. Public opinion has declared against this initiative at a moment when the people have not even recovered from the immense sacrifices which the proclamation of that scheme cost them, and when the armies of Nicaragua and Costa Rica have not returned to their homes. Nicaragua, therefore, is not inclined to take part in those discussions by sending to Santa Tecla her plenipotentiaries, believing, on the other hand, it to be incompatible with her dignity to treat with a Government such as that of Guatemala, whose existence is ignored, and from whom in has not received one word of friendship or of reconcilation. My Government regrets that the initiative of union should start from the friendly Government of Salvador, whose desire it would have much honored in seconding were it not for the weighty reasons which oppose it, and which I trust it will know how to justly appreciate.

I subscribe myself, &c.,