central american nationality. (No. 1.), December 30, 1882

central american nationality. (No. 1.)

I.

In number 295 of the Diario Oficial of the 29th of the present month we have seen, with a certain degree of satisfaction, an editorial in which are made some comments upon the most important affair which has in the last few days occupied almost exclusively the public attention. And we say, “with a certain degree of satisfaction” because, not having the honor to entirely agree with the editors of the Diario Oficial, it has still pleased us to see the absurd rumors which have circulated contradicted; rumors which we have also contradicted with energy, founded on the little experience we have had, and on some knowledge that we have concerning the men and affairs of our country. It has pleased us to see satisfied a public necessity, which we all, absolutely all, have experienced, which was that of an authoritative voice which should come to bring light into the chaos of so much conjecture; finally, it has pleased us to see that to the press, that is to say, to public opinion, will be commended the decision adopted in an affair of so much transcendency.

II.

But, as we have before said, we have not the honor to agree with the opinions expressed in that article; and although separated from public life and all connected with it; although our name, which has never been distinguished, may be almost unknown, we believe it our imperative duty to raise our voice addressing men of intelligence and experience; those who are at the head of our destinies; those who, very soon, will occupy the seats of the Congress, all of our compatriots, without distinction of ranks or parties, calling their attention to the most important question being agitated; and we do so inspired by the manifestations of opinion which never, even in the days of our public life, has been hidden from us; inspired by our patriotic sentiments, the conveniences or inconveniences, the advantages or disadvantages, the possibility or impossibility of that question, without there being on our part any paltry sentiment, any bastard passion, to come and confuse us in our task.

III.

Again comes upon the carpet of Central American diplomacy the great question of nationality. Again it comes to be agitated, at a moment when no one expected it, and to absorb the attention of all. Will it be for good? Will it be for ill? This is what it is impossible to predict.

IV.

The history of this question is a history of tears and blood. That word has not been pronounced a single time by the Governments of Central America without being followed by one of those insensate struggles in which no one knows the object of the dispute, in which all lose: struggles in which we have exhausted our strength; we have destroyed our prosperity; we have closed the fountains of our progress; we have blotted our name from the great book in which the world records the names of enlightened nations; we have killed our credit; we have covered ourselves with opprobrium and shame; we have demoralized our country; and, finally, we have put off the day of its reconstruction.

The name of “Central American Union” has been the constant declaration of our wars; the incendiary proclamation which has preceded those vast conflagrations where we have lost all; the kiss of Judas under which we have disguised our hatreds; the hypocritical word with we have hidden our miserable ambitions.

Oh, do not charge us with exaggerations; look over the brief history of our country, and it will be found that that name, which we ought not to pronounce without respectfully uncovering our heads, has been the dismal prologue of all our puerile rivalries.

V.

It is not, then, without dread that we always hear that question initiated; but, being once opened, it is necessary to examine it; we shall endeavor to do so without fear or malice. We believe, above all, that the step which is to be attempted is premature; let us examine all the Central American Isthmus and we do not find in it the elements that are essential, indispensable for the unification of its peoples. Still more, we find many, very many, opposing elements. What means shall we make use of? We can only choose two—diplomacy and the sword.

VI.

We believe and have hope in the efficacy of the former, when the question is of conciliating the interests of two nations fighting among themselves, to give a rational solution to that difficulty; we believe in it when the strong imposes upon the weak; the supreme reason of force; when it is endeavored to harmonize by its means reciprocal interests, so that they may develop, each in its sphere, without interfering in their respective movements; we believe in it when the relations between two countries being broken both parties are trying to renew them; but we do not believe in diplomacy when it wishes to constitute itself a power, substituting its voice for the voice of the nation; when it pretends to conclude conventions which opinion, necessity, and convenience reject; when it pretends to harmonize interests which interfere among themselves by their very nature, and, in fine, when it is desired that the decisions of plenipotentiaries or of a congress of them shall be the decisions of the peoples they represent.

VII.

No diplomatic combination gave unity to Italy in spite of the numerous endeavors to this effect, nor has any nation united its parts by similar means, except when this has been a general necessity, when it has been in the conscience of it all and of each one, when it has come to be one of those national inspirations which, j have had the universal opinion for organ and for arm—that of the entire nation.

VIII.

Well, then, what would a diplomatic congress in Central America signify? It would signify the will or the promise of the Various Governments to be present; it would signify the meeting of the representatives of those various Government, but never public opinion genuinely represented; there would be an official representation, but not a national one, in the legitimate sense of the word; its decisions would bind those Governments, but would not bind the sentiments of the peoples, because these are far above conventions; because there are interests created during half a century of separation which cannot be easily harmonized; because there is now a certain spirit of local nationality, allow us the word, which has been exacerbated by our constant discords; because there are petty rivalries, formed in fratricidal struggles, which are easily irritated; because there is among our people a very narrow criterion to judge of these questions, born of our own dissensions; because we would have to rectify our present frontiers that there might be a stable equilibrium, a rectification impossible, because it would wound the general sentiment of those who would consider themselves defrauded, and it would be necessary to have recourse to force; because, whatever may be said, our people are yet incapable of governing themselves, and the will alone of the chief of a state would suffice to break the fragile web so laboriously woven; because our people commence to-day their political education, and look with absolute indifference on all belonging to the interior régimen; because we are divided into diverse castes, not legal out actual, not of supremacy but of blood; castes which have different decrees of civilization.

IX.

The indigenous element, preponderating in Guatemala by its number, which constitutes the great majority of that Republic, which in Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras forms a great mass separated in all parts from rest the citizens by its ignorance, is a passive lends itself to everything except to putting in practice ideas which it does not comprehend, does not know. Can our nationality, then, be reconstructed without it? We believe not.

X.

We see no necessity of refuting the second means—war. Let us look over the whole history of humanity, and we shall find Empires composed of innumerable servants; we shall find Monarchies composed of slaves instead of subjects united by the sword; never a national body constituted by it.

XI.

Common sense suffices; it is plainly to be seen that the sword neither is, nor ever has been, a band of union, but an instrument of destruction; we have to accept it as one of those social infirmities, a lamentable legacy of barbarism, and only to repulse the assaults of the latter is it legitimate to employ it. It is the genuine expression of force, never of right; and when it is not drawn against crime, it is a crime to draw it.

XII.

We are not among those who deny the advantages that the realization of the grand thought of reconstructing our country would bring us, but the obstacles to its being carried to a practical conclusion are not hidden from us. Let us suppose that without apparent opposition that end be reached, how long would it last; what result would it produce? We feel genuine affliction on consideration of this phase of the problem.

XIII.

Our social condition, it is painful to say, is much below the level of our institutions; expressing in our fundamental codes all the grand principles contained in them has served for nothing; they have remained sterile by our abandonment. In presence of the absolute forgetfulness of the people, the complete indifference with which they look upon the most sacred rights, the most sacred obligations, the governors have had to substitute fact for right; from this proceeding tyrannies like those which have afflicted Guatemala in the time of Carrera; Salvador, under a military administration, adopted by her; Costa Rica, under the government of Guardia circumstances have not changed; they remain the same, and we ought not to hope that they will change from the simple fact of our uniting ourselves into a single nation.

Consequently, from the moment in which an ambitious governor arises in whichever of the sections, whether denying due obedience to the general power, or striving to reach the latter, we will have the national unity forcibly broken, or, erect and arrogant, the thousand heads of anarchy. And we may not be called pessimists for making this augury—speaking of peoples where ambition is ceaselessly agitated; where all believe themselves excused from exercising the sacred rights of citizenship; where all tolerate the abuses of power without protesting, but where every one thinks he has the right to ensanguine the soil of the country in the name of those rights which he has not wished to exercise; to violently pull down a power .before whose abuses he has been dumb, without blushing for vile interests or childish fears.

XIV.

The unity would be therefore a weak spider web, broken before being concluded, whose meshes would be untied before the will of an intriguer, or broken at the stroke of the first saber raised against them.

XV.

Let us examine the circumstances of our various states, and see if they are such as permit us to think even of that so much desired unity. It is a law, not only political and social but also economical, that all association has the object of producing advantages to the associates. We have seen that, in the first two senses, we would obtain none; let us see to-day, and this with especial relation to Salvador and Nicaragua, what advantages we would obtain in the economic sense. First, if union were possible we are not ignorant that—our elements being united—we could undertake enterprises impossible in our present isolation; but let us see if that union is possible; let us examine if our circumstances permit us to establish such a system, if they are the same in the diverse fractions, if their economic situation is identical.

XVI.

Guatemala has an interior debt of $5,000,000, Salvador and Nicaragua of $1,500,000, approximately, each one; and Costa-Rica and Honduras, although but little is known of their internal condition, should have a debt proportionally much greater considering the financial confusion of the first under the government of Guardia, and the exhaustion of the second when its present governor came into power. The appropriations of both have not been collected during some time, and we have now left the time very far behind in which such a situation was arranged by a simple decree in which a Government itself declared itself a blameless insolvent, cancelling its liabilities by a simple stroke of authority.

XVII.

Well, then: Can the first and the last two, with their already deficient revenues, the augmented expenditures which the new system would render indispensable, and on the diminution of the revenues they now have—as would of necessity succeed in inverse ratio to the quota of each in the general expenses—could they collect even the interest of their increased debts? We firmly believe not. It is doubtful if even Salvador and Nicaragua, whose situation is easy, could succeed in collecting their respective appropriations and the part corresponding to them in the general expense without producing a confusion, more or less complete, in their treasury. Every one knows that it would be necessary to augment the taxes, and that at a moment when the country trembles before the crisis through which it is passing, and when the people find already very heavy the weight of the present taxes.

The first three states, we do not hesitate to affirm, would be condemned to an eternal and shameful bankruptcy, to live a life without vigor, sterilizing the thousand fountains of their prosperity and well-being; or to burden the general estimate to the detriment of the last two, making the grand principle to which we aspire unproductive.

XVIII.

And if we pass from the interior to the exterior situation, the difficulties augment in an inconceivable proportion.

Numbers, in these matters, are more eloquent than words, and their rude logic leaves no place for illusions; let us make, then, a few calculations.

In approximate numbers Honduras has an exterior debt of $33.000.000, Costa Rica of $17,000,000, and Guatemala of $5,000,000, while Salvador and Nicaragua do not owe a single cent. The Central American nation, therefore, would come to the world with $55,000,000 of exterior debt, which would draw $3,300,000 interest annually. We take the liberty to ask: Could the national treasury collect this enormous sum Every one knows it would be impossible, and the unhappy Central American people would have to leave so ponderous a legacy to their children; they would see themselves compelled to labor without truce nor rest to pay that which a few agitators have absorbed, without being able to even see in the distance the day when they would be free from this onerous tribute. One year after another would continue adding to the enormous sum above mentioned new sums, which would deepen more and more the abyss in which would be consumed the fruit of our labor, of our economy, and activity.

XIX.

It will be pretended, perhaps, that each state shall continue being exclusively responsible for its debt, and that the rest shall have no responsibility; but to that we respond that such a pretension is impossible. From the moment when the autonomy of the divers present factions disappears, to be confounded in a single autonomic entity, the condition of those credits would improve in the European markets, and the pretensions of the holders would be always more exacting, always more imperious; these claims would not wait very long, and the general Government would be besieged by agents, who would demand with arrogance the payment of what is due them. Let us recall the history of European claims in Spanish America, and we shall have the model of what would await the Central American Republic. The particular questions of each state would be converted into national questions, and perhaps we would present the melancholy spectacle that Egypt presents to-day, with its European interventions disposing, at the pleasure of the cabinets of London and Paris, of the v property and fortune of a whole people.

In a circumstance like that the states which yet retain something would of necessity have to contribute to the payment of the debts of the others, replacing the European creditors in their rights; but what would it signify to Salvador and Nicaragua to be creditors of the other states? What value would the paper of Guatemala, of Honduras, and Costa Rica have for them? None, absolutely none.

The new creditors would be ruined, without saving the debtors; there would be a sacrifice so much the more painful as it would be sterile; and for tangible result we would have only ruin in the interior, derision and discredit abroad; we would be exhibited before the world in a shameful spectacle, and would prove once more our inability and our incapacity. We are frightened at the abyss to which the exaggeration of a principle desires to conduct our country.

XX.

The Central American union is the fact of the future, but only the dream of the present. It is not given to us for the present more than to develop the elements that, further on, should produce it; elements which are known to all, but which it is not unprofitable to express here.

First of all, let us educate our people, that there may be citizens in fact and not in name; let us hasten to create public opinion, without which truly republican government is impossible; let us cause our frontiers to disappear, connecting the material and moral interests of the various peoples by means of commercial relations; let us cease intervening, by force in the affairs of our brothers, because pressure engenders hatred, and each armed intervention postpones, half a century, the fusion to which we aspire; let us unify our systems of custom-houses, of moneys, of weights and measures; let us harmonize our legislations, as far as may be possible, making them rest on the same principles; let us have a common representation abroad; let us cease ventilating ridiculous and petty questions with arms in our hands, carrying, not incidentally but systematically, our pleas to an arbitral tribunal, which could be composed of the Central American Governments that might remain neutral; let us obey its decisions as a law; let us have, finally, good faith in our relations; let us cease to hate each other as we have done up to the present, and let us wait.

XXI.

No, we repeat it, the Central American union is impossible for the present. Costa Rica, by its topographical situation and by its sentiments is separated from us; it would hot suit Salvador and Nicaragua, in the present circumstances, to enter into such a combination. We love Central America much, but more we love this piece of soil where we were born, where the light for the first time illuminated our eyes, where our intelligence has developed, where our young heart has palpitated with the impulse of the most beautiful sentiments, where the ashes of our fathers repose, where is inclosed all, all that binds us to life, than to sacrifice it on the altars of an illusion; to exchange it for an optical phenomenon, which enchants, as does the rainbow in the skies, but which like the rainbow vanishes when we approach it, when we extend our hand to touch it.

We are Central Americans, yes; but first we are Salvadoreños. Therefore, we protest against the most beautiful, but impossible idea of reconstructing Central America.