central america., February 23, 1883

central america.

What I now say will bring me only insults, but in days of grief my words will be remembered.—X.

A great thinker says that in the last few centuries admirable progresses have been made in all matters, but that the political sciences, since Montesquieu, have taken no other steps than the terrible experiments with which the doctrines of that immortal publicist have been proved.

The author of the Cartas Persas says in Book IX, chapter 1, of the spirit of the laws, as follows:

“If a Republic is small a foreign force destroys it; if it is large some internal vice destroys it.

“Both troubles infect in the same manner the democracies as much as the aristocracies, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the thing itself, and there is no form for remedying it.

“On that account it is very probable that men would have finally been obliged to live under the government of one alone, if they had not imagined the plan of a constitution which unites the external force of the monarchical to all the internal advantages of the republican government; such is the federative Republic.

“This form of government is an agreement made by various political bodies, by which they consent to be citizens of another greater state which it is proposed to form; and thus comes into existence a society of societies which form another new one, which can become greater by uniting with new associates.

“These associations it was which caused Greece to flourish for so long a time. The Romans made use of them to attack the universe, and the universe to defend itself from the Romans; and when Rome reached the summit of her greatness, it was also the associations formed by fear on the other side of the Danube and the Rhine which gave the barbarians strength to resist.

“The associations of cities were, in former times, more necessary than at present. A city without power ran, then, a greater risk; since, by conquest, it lost not only the executive and legislative power, as happens to-day, but, also, all kind of property that there is among men.

“This species of Republic, capable of resisting external force, can be maintained in all its extension without being internally corrupted, since the form of this society avoids all inconvenience.

“He who might wish to usurp, could not be accredited in the same manner in all the confederated states.

“If in one he acquired much power, it would cause inquietude in the rest; if he should subjugate a part, that which remained free would resist him with forces independent of those he might have usurped, and could strike him down before he finished establishing himself.

“If any sedition should occur in one of the confederated members, the rest could appease it. If abuses are introduced in any part, the sound parts correct them. This state could perish on one side, without perishing on the other; the confederation can be dissolved and the confederated remain sovereign.

“Composed of small Republics, it possesses the kindness of the interior government of each one, and with respect to the without, it finds all the advantages of the grand Monarchies in the power of the association.”

All the world knows that the United States of America were nothing more than thirteen English colonies when they made themselves independent, that they then had only three millions of inhabitants, and that to-day they form a nation of more than fifty millions, whose rapid greathess, obtained in the shadow of the federative system, has no example in the world since the foundation of Rome. Central America attempted to imitate the United States, adopting the federal system, and obtained, for result, wars, disasters, and an absolute fractionization.

Many sensible and completely honest people are frightened in the presence of this gloomy historical picture, and execrate any thought leading to the unity of Central America.

It is necessary to turn the attention to those persons, and beg them to examine the affair with calmness and coolness.

In the year 1824 a constitution was emitted which it was impossible to fulfill.

The first President of Central America, Don Manuel José Arce, comprehended this; Señor Bettranena, exercising as vice-president the executive power of the nation, understood it; Don José Francisco Barrundia understood it, in those memorable days when, as the oldest senator, he was at the head of the country: and General Morazan, during those eight years of constant struggle, in which he presided over the Republic.

The constitution of 1824 did not establish a federal district like that of Columbia, in the United States of America. Our federal authorities obliged to take lodgings in one of the state capitals. There they were looked upon as guests; and the chief of the state considered them as rivals. Soon this rivalry produced a struggle between the President of the Republic and the chief of the state.

Sometimes the chief was conquered, as was Don Juan Barrundia in Guatemala, in 1826, by President Arce; at other times the President was conquered, as was Arce, in 1629, by Barrundia’s party.

The same scenes were presented in Salvador during the period of Don Joaquin San Martin, the federation being lodged in the capital of that state.

The federal system supposes equality. “It is difficult,” says the author before quoted, “for the stales to be of equal extension and power. The Republic of the Lycians was an association of twenty-three cities; the larger ones had three votes in the common council, the medium two, and the smaller one.”

Montesquieu disserts on the manner of obtaining that equality as far as possible.

Such an important question, wisely solved by the North Americans, the authors of our constitution of 1824 did not know how to solve.

In the United States there are two legislative chambers. One of them is composed of deputies elected according to the number of inhabitants of each State. In that chamber the largest states have the greatest representation. In another chamber, called the Senate, all the states are equally represented. The Senate of the United States is a great power, which is presided over by the Vice-President of the American Union. The Senate ratifies international treaties, approves or disapproves nominations made by the President, gives or denies its sanction to the laws passsed by the House of Representatives, and has many other important attributes.

The Central American Senate was a body of no force and could not give equality to the states.

Suffice it to say, that if the Senate denied its sanction to a decree of the Chamber of Deputies, that chamber ratified its decree and the President of the Republic was obliged to give it effect.

The Supreme Court of the United States is not only a judicial but a political power. It matters nothing that the House of Representatives pass a law contrary to the American Constitution, nor that the Senate sanction it, and that it be ordered fulfilled by the President, because the Supreme Court, the case being brought before it, will not give force to the law.

The supreme court of central America lacked lacked power. Here, unconstitutional laws were passed by the federal Congress, and only armed resistance of the states could be opposed to them.

Neither were the attributes of many authorities well defined, nor were the powers which, should settle their controversies well marked. Under that régimen all ought to be, and all was, confusion and chaos, until the catastrophe of separation in 1839. Then arose five futile nationalities, without prestige, without power.

Why have not these nationalities, like the valley of Andorra, been destroyed by an external force, as Montesquieu says that if the Republic is smaller a foreign force destroys it?

Colombia has taken from Costa Rica part of her territory.

The limits of Costa Rica before reason, before justice, before the public conscience, are the point of Burica and the shield (escudo) of Veraguas.

The limits of Costa Rica, according to her debility and the abuse of a foreign power, are others very different.

The limits of Guatemala include Belize, which has been usurped from her and which the debility of her Government ceded to Great Britain. The limits of Guatemala, according to her constitution of 1825, include Soconusco.

The limits of Honduras and Nicaragua embrace the extent of territory called the Mosquito Coast, on which we have the leaden hand of a foreign power.

And why bias the catastrophe not been absolute? Why have these five futile nationalities not been totally destoyed? They have not been because two great powers, England and the United States, without our knowing it, and without our having any intervention in the affair, celebrated a treaty to keep us independent. This is called the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Among its stipulations we find the following

“That at no time will they occupy nor fortify, nor colonize, nor arrogate, nor exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America; that neither will they make use of any protection that any one of them lends or may give, or of any alliance that either one has or may have with any state or nation with the object of maintaining or erecting fortifications, or of occupying or fortifying or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part whatever of Central America, or of arrogating or exercising over said points any dominion whatever.”

This was stipulated without taking any account of us, and without our intervention being necessary for anything. Such is what we are worth, and the consideration they have for us abroad.

That treaty keeps us independent. It is well to ask if it will be internal. Clearly not.

Mr. Blaine, Secretary of State of the United States in the time of Garfield, asked England that the Clayton-Bulwer treaty be declared insubsistent. Mr. Frelinghuysen, the present Secretary of State, asks the same. What will become of Central America when the treaty, by virtue of which neither England nor the United States can, dispose of the Central American territory, disappears?

Neither Mr. Blaine nor Mr. Frelinghuysen has taken the futile nationalities of Central America into account on asking for the abolition of the treaty, as neither Mr. Clayton nor Mr. Bulwer took these little Republics into account on signing it.

Central American unity is indispensable, and those who oppose it will be responsible before future generations for our future misfortunes, identical with those which to-day afflict Poland.

Our discredit abroad is immense. This cannot be comprehended in the interior of Costa Rica. It is necessary to understand it to be in other countries and even to penetrate into elevated circles, whose doors only open before determined political positions. Costa Rica has been so discredited abroad that a cabinet has not been wanting which pretended not to know her, and to continue treating the country like a barbarous nation.

What has been the fortune of Guatemala during the fractionization of the country? It has been the perpetration of crimes without number. I made a slight review on the 25th of February, 1870, concerning the decapitation of General Cruz, and of the derision publicly made of the mutilated head of the victim. Here is the review:

“That people saw Don Gregorio Salazar assassinated, firing upon him over his children, who surrounded him to save him. That people saw deputies arise from their seats to take their lives. That people saw an unhappy marimbero assassinated in a public street because he did not permit his daughter to be the concuhine of General Carrera. That people saw the corpse of that same marimbero, in the principal plaza of Guatemala, cut into pieces and the pieces fastened in different public places. That people saw a general of the Republic (Guzman) defeated in an action, and afterwards despoiled of his uniform, clothed in rags, his beard and hair pulled out, tied on a mule and made to enter the city of Guatemala amid the jeers of his enemies. That people saw Señor Corzo, commandante of the Altos, decapitated and his cadaver derided. That people saw the city of Quezaltenango given up to pillage, and all the individuals who composed the municipality shot, without excepting the secretary. That people saw many citizens shot without form of law, after having delivered to their executioners the price of their ransom, which their wretched families had been able, with a thousand pangs, to collect together. That people saw more than forty persons shot without other trial than the supreme will of an autocrat, while one of the executioners played a guitar and made certain persons dance in the midst of the public agony. That people saw the malefactors who had committed so many crimes received in Guatemala with flowers and triumphal arches. That people saw the colleges of Totonicapan and Quezaltenango destroyed that the people might not be educated, and functionaries placed at the head of those departments so incapable and cruel that, to the reproach of their country, they re-established the infamous penalties and the gibbet. That people saw for several days fusilades and butcheries executed on a multitude of Salvadorean prisoners, who, on the morning of the 19th of March, 1840, broke the line which surrounded them. In the midst of the bloody tumult many soldiers and even wounded sought an asylum in a certain house which was in the service of the retrogrades, and they were delivered to their executioners.

“That people saw a certain Figueroa commandante of Jutiapa, commit, among other horrible excesses, that of making prominent persons bring him young daughters of the family to dishonor them, at times compelling to this sacrifice, by imprisonment and other violences, the very brothers and parents of the victims. That people saw its Government feign rebellions to dissolve an Assembly and spill the blood of innocent supposed rebels to obtain a political end. That people saw the prisoners of a jail shot without sentence of the tribunals, and without other motive than that the places of imprisonment would not hold them. That people saw the judges pass sentences of death dated back to cover the responsibility of the assassins. That people saw, one and many times, shut up in certain damp and mortiferons dungeons, that they call Castle, fathers of family, who have died there, expiating the crime of not being of the opinion of their executioners. That people saw a certain Lucio Lopez decapitated, his mutilated head jeered at, and exhibited as a trophy. That people saw a man enticed out by deceit at midnight from a house where he was sleeping tranquilly, to be shot at the doors of Luna’s printing office. That people saw the assassin rewarded with the commandancy of the Castle of Matamoros. That people saw the hero of the conservatives of Guatemala feign, in Atescatempa, that a party of Salvadoreans were attempting to carry off a young woman, the object of his desires. The hero came out to fight the supposed enemies, who were his own troops, chosen by himself, to rescue the young woman, and to triumph over her in reward for his exertions. In the midst of the simulated skirmish the aggressor received a genuine wound. He confessed and communed, but did not forget the object o£ his strategy, and conducted the young woman by force to his barracks at Jutiapa. That people saw one of the sons of the same people torn from his family, and conducted on foot to the Castle of San José, where they shot him in punishment for having said he was a Liberal. That people saw the hero of the retrogrades take for himself the prest which came from the treasury for the troops, and himself advise the soldiers to revolt, as they did, falling upon the properties, and leaving many persons in poverty. That people saw, immediately after, the same hero repress the disorder that he had advised, and shoot a multitude without the precedence of any kind of trial whatever. Among the one shot was a certain Catsum, who loudly cried that he was innocent; that in the revolt he had done no more than fulfill the orders of General Carrera, and he asked to be permitted to speak to him. Death closed his lips.

“That people saw securities and guarantees of all kinds given to disaffected citizens, to the conservatives, and also saw immediately thereafter, those same, who incautiously confided in the securities, persecuted, shot, nine of them in Sacatepeque, and others in Ostuncalco, among whom were the patriots Tomas Marin and Rafael Martinez. The latter threw his own blood on the assassin, and said to him, ‘That stain no one shall be able to remove from you!’ The same people saw in Salama a prominent resident of that town forced to dig his own grave, to be covered with earth up to the throat, and in that most wretched situation a thousand dollars demanded of him to ransom his life; it saw the relatives of the victim get together that money with much anguish and agony; saw the executioners take the money, and saw immediately thereafter the command given to beat the head which appeared at the level of the ground until the consummation of the sacrifice. Can there be in the most bloody history of the most execrable of monsters a deed which reveals so much barbarism?

“That people saw erected a triumvirate of anthropophagi: Rafael Carrera Zotero, his. I brother, and Geronime Pais; it has seen the triumvirate sustained on charnel-houses, and the triumvirates which were lacking substituted, by force of blood, by new anthropophagi. That people have seen how many crimes of perverted humanity barbarism can commit, and frequently hears in the cathedral of God the apotheosis of the execrable monsters who perpetrate so many crimes.”

This review circulated in Guatemala under the régime of President Cerna, and there was not a single voice raised saying that it contains the least falsehood. Afterwards it was reprinted and added to in Guatemala.

In the additions it is said that the author does not mention some deeds worthy of being placed in the first rank, as the death of Don Manuel Yrungaray, of Oyrasum and of Luna.

Here are the results of thirty years of fractionization. Were so many excesses, so many crimes committed under the régime of the very defective federal constitution of 1824? Under that impracticable charter, which would have disorganized Switzerland and the United States of America, we lived better than under the system of 1839.

Do we want yet another thirty years of crimes and horrors?

We will be told that the picture presented by the country since the 30th of June, 1871, is not more flattering. It is not so; but he who should imagine such an assertion would only defend the doctrine which we sustain, which reduces itself to demonstrating the disadvantages of the fractionization of the country.

On the 30th of June a party succumbed, but the fractionization did not disappear. It remained on foot.

In a country where the public is exceedingly limited, where from its smallness that country inspires neither respect nor fear, the governor, with a word, with a sign, with a cry, can do what he pleases.

Those permanent commissions which we see in Costa Rica, those legislative authorities which impose taxes, which augment the existing ones, without considering public opinions, that decree unconstitutional laws, did not operate thus under the federal régime; because they feared the opinion of Central America; because the federal Congress would not admit unconstitutional decrees, much less retroactive; because the federal court would not apply them, although they might be sanctioned by the Congress.

Before the fractionization a genuine merit was necessary to rise to power. For the same reason the abuses of the governors were not to be feared.

Arce ascended to the first executive chair by his incessant labors previous to the year 1821, in favor of independence, by his persecutions and martyrdoms of that time, and also because he was considered as one of the heroes of the bloody struggle with the Mexican Empire.

Morazan rose to power by his glories in Trinidad, in Gualcho, in San Antonio, in San Miguelito, in the Charcas, in Guatemala.

Valle was elected President of Central America because he was a sage.

It is not to be expected that he who ascends with those titles will, in power, be a Carrera or a Guardiola.

The ideas of the fractionization are by a fatal hallucination rooted in Costa Rica.

Don Juan Rafael Mora, fallen and defeated, went to the United States. In Washington he was offered resources to place himself at the head of the Central American reorganization, and did not accept them. Mora believed that the unity of the country is an evil.

Did Don Juan Rafael Mora, at the moment he was about to be shot in Puntarenas, remember the offers he refused in Washington?

Dr. John José Maria Castro segregated Costa Rica from the Central American family. The doctor was then innocent, for the misfortunes produced by the defective constitution of 1824 had just occurred; and because the very elevated love of Castro for the place of his birth, made him believe that Costa Rica alone and isolated could become great; but he would not be innocent now that a prolonged and painful experience of which he himself has been a victim has presented to him the frightful reality.

The servile party of Guatemala, not only divided Central America, but it proposed to itself that in all the states disunion should be sustained by means of decrees, like that of Carrera and that of Castro. That disunion was sustained by foreign agents, at whose head was Mr. Frederick Chatfield.

Chatfield was demanding from Nicaragua and Honduras a part of their territory, and the fractionization of Central America suited him. He also had intentions on Costa Rica, but those intentions were not understood here.

In the year 1847 Chatfield said to the Government of Nicaragua as follows:

British Consulate-General, Guatemala, September 10, 1847.

To the principal Secretary of the Supreme Government of the State of Nicaragua:

Sir: Questions having arisen in various epochs with the states of Honduras and Nicaragua, concerning the extension of the maritime frontier of the Mosquito Kingdom, the Government of Her Britannic Majesty, after carefully examining the various documents and historical registers which exist relative to the affair, is of the opinion that the territorial rights of the King of the Mosquitoes should be maintained as extending from the Cape of Honduras to the mouth of the river San Juan; and therefore I am instructed to advise the supreme Governments of the states of Honduras and Nicaragua, as I now have the honor to do, that to this extent of coast the Government of Her Britannic Majesty considers that the King of the Mosquitoes has a right, without prejudice to the right which the said King may have to any territory farther south than the San Juan River; and that the Government of Her Britannic Majesty cannot look with indifference upon any attempt to usurp the rights to the territory of the Mosquito King, who is under the protection of the British Crown.

I have the honor to be, sir, your humble and obedient servant,

FREDERICK CHATFIELD.

By this note Costa Rica was threatened, for to the south of the San Juan is the Costa Rican territory. Now, I ask the separatists of both extremes of Central America why were not the intentions of Chatfield consummated? They were not consummated because the Claytou-Bulwer treaty was signed in the year 1850.

With Chatfield was united an intelligent Frenchman named Adolf Marie, who came an emigrant from Ecuador with General Juan J. Flores. Marie managed in a masterly manner the satirical burlesque style, and he put himself to combat the exertions made by the states of Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua to unite and resist the foreigner. The articles of Mr. Marie against what he called the “Trina Republic,” the “Republic of Chimandega,” were as much applauded in Costa Rica by the separatists as by a multitude of persons who, not knowing the venom contained in those articles, only discovered the facetiousness and wit in them. It caused amazement to see determined agents who hated Nicaragua sowing discord in the Nicaraguan territory, that that state might not join her sisters of Salvador and Honduras. Well and good that men who believe that they themselves form a nation do not join with other peoples; but let them not through egotism oppose the association of other peoples. They allege as a difficulty in the way of the union one of the most precious legacies of the fractionization, the debt of Honduras and Costa Rica. That argument is not new nor surprising.

A distinguished publicist, Mr. Blaine, says that that debt is more nominal than positive. Discussing the affair in the Department of State of the United States, Blaine said: “Central America should return what she received, and not what remained in Europe.”

A multitude of combinations, which are not the subject of this pamphlet, have been made in order that the unity of the country may dominate that debt, which, as it appears to-day, is superior to the value of the states on which it rests. It is said that the personal characters of some men of state who are at the front of the situation is an obstacle to the union. This personal argument, proceeding from personalism, is weakened by the manifestations which are made clearly and definitely. It is said that the chiefs who are at the front of the regenerative movement will retire from the command as soon as they have a country. Why shall we refuse to give them credit?

History is full of similar deeds. Sylla abdicated, Charlemagne abdicated, Charles V abdicated, Philip V abdicated, Charles IV abdicated, Fernando VII abdicated; and, without speaking of abdications like that of Napoleon in Fontainebleau, I will conclude by saying that Washington abdicated, and Bolivar abdicated.

If the fractionization leaves to Guatemala what we have seen, what does it leave to Honduras? It leaves her an enormous money debt; it leaves her the horrors of which she was the theater during the periods of Ferrera, Coronado, Chavez, Guardiola, Medina,. &c. Those deeds form a catalogue greater than that of Guatemala during the servile administration; it leaves her the prostration in which she is at present, and from which she cannot escape in spite of the exertions made to raise her.

To Salvador the fractionization leaves, among an infinite series of other evils, the victims of 1840; the invasions of Carrero, the excommunications and contra-excommunications of Bishop Viteri—the blood which that prelate spilled in the country—and the gibbet of General Gerardo Barrios.

To Costa Rica it leaves a chain of misfortunes, among which are the external and internal debt, and a discredit so great that a power of the first order was about to refuse to recognize this Republic.

To Nicaragua, the fractionization leaves a series of wars, among which is prominent that very celebrated one which commenced by questions between Castellon and Chamorro, which brought Walker, and which produced all those misfortunes we know of, among which is the desolating cholera, born from the putrefaction of the unburied bodies.

Nicaragua is the state of Central America where the constitutional system has to-day the most roots, and, nevertheless, she is in a lamentable situation.

There heterogeneous elements appear. There peoples under a régime good holy, if you wish, but only accepted by force.

There exists the evil of him who to impose himself to exist [sic?] and of him who for long years suffers the imposition. That great evil can only be remedied under the august shadow of the capitol of Central America.