This is just a simplified guide. The questions are not central to the discussion in this class, but rather basic starting points.
Prof. Jorge Majfud
- What were the “Banana Wars” that followed the Spanish–American War (1900–1930)?
- Name at least two U.S. protectorates or dictatorships from this period.
- Who was the most decorated U.S. general of his generation to denounce the true motivations behind many military and economic interventions?
Charlemagne Péralte
The Washington Post, 1920
Ted Roosevelt on Colombians
«To talk of Colombia as a responsible Power to be dealt with as we would deal with Holland or Belgium or Switzerland or Denmark is a mere absurdity. The analogy is with a group of Sicilian or Calabrian bandits; with Villa and Carranza at this moment. You could no more make an agreement with the Colombian rulers than you could nail currant jelly to a wall—and the failure to nail currant jelly to a wall is not due to the nail; it is due to the currant jelly. I did my best to get them to act straight. Then I determined that I would do what ought to be done without regard to them. The people of Panama were a unit in desiring the Canal and in wishing to overthrow the rule of Colombia. If they had not revolted, I should have recommended Congress to take possession of the Isthmus by force of arms; and, as you will see, I had actually written the first draft of my Message to this effect. When they revolted, I promptly used the Navy to prevent the bandits, who had tried to hold us up, from spending months of futile bloodshed in conquering or endeavoring to conquer the Isthmus, to the lasting damage of the Isthmus, of us, and of the world. I did not consult Hay, or Root, or any one else as to what I did, because a council of war does not fight; and I intended to do the job once for all.»
(To Thayer, July 2, 1915.) William R. Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay. (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1915), II, 327-328.
«In 1928, the Colombian army opened fire on hundreds of banana workers who were on strike for better conditions, killing an untold number. This article uses an image wrested from corporate archives to imagine others that we don’t get to see.»
A Photograph We Were Not Supposed to See. https://visualizingtheamericas.utm.utoronto.ca/1928-massacre-1
US Ambassador to Colombia
United Fruit Company memo dated March 8, 1928, which accompanied the photograph of the five labor leaders. Courtesy of the Visualizing the Americas Collection, University of Toronto Mississauga
«I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.»
On War, by U.S General Smedley Butler (1933)
“If you are a blond, you belong to the best people in the world, but it’s all over with you! Your forebears committed the fatal mistake of intermingling with inferior brunettes, and as a result the great qualities of the blond race, which gave the world the highest type of culture, have been sadly undermined and the predominant traits of the brunettes are asserting themselves more and more until their complete triumph is foreshadowed, especially in the United States.”
The New York Times on the newly published book The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant.
October 22, 1916
“Mr. President: …my son, Serg. John F. Hemphill, was killed in action against General Sandino’s troops. For the death of my son I hold no malice against General Sandino or any of his men, for I think, and I believe that 90 per cent of our people agree with me, that they are to-day fighting for their liberty, as our forefathers fought for our liberty in 1776, and that we, as a Nation, have no legal or moral right to be murdering those liberty-loving people in a war of aggression. What we are doing Is nothing less than murder, for the sole purpose of keeping in power a puppet President, and acting as a collector for Wall Street, which is certainly against the spirit and letter of our Constitution. My son was 29 years old, served 3 years of his third enlistment, survived honorable service through the World War against Germany, only to be officially murdered in a disgraceful war against this little nation. …If necessity arose I would be willing to sacrifice not only all four sons, but my own life as well, in a war of defense, but I am not willing to shed one drop of blood in a war of aggression such as this one is… Suppose that on bad fallen, as my son has, a victim of the greed of Wall Street, would you feel that the financial gain was worth the cost?
John S. Hemphill. Ferguson, Missouri.
Letter to the Congress. January 19, 1928.
Marines in Nicaragua
Augusto Sandino
Transcript congress 1928(2).pdf
Page 2277
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Notice: The following pages are not mandatory readings. They provide a historical background drawn from «The Wild Frontier: 200 Years of Anglo-Saxon Fanaticism in Latin America» that may be considered for this topic.
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1909. Everything will be ours because our race is superior
Washington DC, March 4, 1909—William Howard Taft becomes President of the United States and his young wife, Nellie, fulfills her childhood dream of someday becoming the First Lady.
Nellie had accompanied the big man William to take office as Governor of the Philippines eight years ago. Thousands of Filipinos massacred, often for sport, had paved the way for the Tafts’ arrival in Manila, which left Nellie disappointed by the lack of any form of popular enthusiasm. After governing the Philippines for three years, Taft had been appointed Secretary of War in 1904 and, shortly after, had appointed himself Governor of Cuba to “stabilize the island.”
Once settled in the White House, Taft, the enormous “Uncle Taft,” a wrestling champion in his youth, sends the Marines to occupy Cuba and the Dominican Republic once again, within the framework of those countries’ constitutions (written by Washington). To improve accounting math, the National City Bank of New York takes possession of the national bank of Haiti.
Taft proclaims, with the authority of experience: “The day is not far off when our flag will cover from the North Pole to the South Pole, passing through the Panama Canal. The entire hemisphere will be ours due to our racial superiority. In fact, it already is, by the strength of our morality.”
Meanwhile, new methods of torture are being discovered. A hundred years later, in 2009, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen will charge the CIA $80 million to teach them new torture techniques in Guantánamo, but for now, the experiments are more economical. Before the popular technique of waterboarding, in the Philippines they continue practicing “the water cure,” which consists of administering several liters of water to the suspect through a bamboo cane, from the mouth to the stomach. If the suspect did not confess what he was expected to confess, a Marine would jump on his stomach until the detainee’s mouth erupted in a geyser several meters high, amusing the civilized truth technicians. Lieutenant Grover Flint, a Harvard graduate, testifies before a U.S. Senate panel that these interrogation practices are not rumors but the norm among the U.S. military.
1909. Eliminate That Independent Capitalist
Managua, Nicaragua. December 17, 1909—U.S. Marines have landed on the Caribbean coast. President José Santos Zelaya, the architect of a prosperous and modern Nicaragua, must resign at Washington’s suggestion and goes into exile in Mexico, as Jacobo Árbenz would later do in Guatemala nearly half a century later. The reasons are the same, but in 1909 the fear of communism is not yet a big business. It does not exist.
José Santos Zelaya, known for his capitalist ideas and progressive policies, for his radical reforms in favor of the democratization of his country, for new individual rights, and for wresting the Caribbean coast from the British Empire, had begun negotiations with France and Japan for the construction of an interoceanic canal. The proposed canal threatened to compete with the one in Panama, leading Woodrow Wilson to block the loan requested from France, arguing that the money would be used to purchase arms, which, without a doubt, “would jeopardize the peace and progress of the region.” In 1907, Zelaya had repelled an attempted invasion by Honduran President Manuel Bonilla, with the help of banana magnate Samuel Zemurray and mercenary Lee Christmas.
In 1903, Washington had decided that Panama was a better option to connect New York with California and Nicaragua had determined that it was free and could negotiate with Europe as well. The biblical zeal of Washington could not tolerate this, and as in the devastating bombing of San Juan del Norte in 1854, it sent persuasive ships. As the manual indicates, following the credit blockade, Washington proceeded to finance the opponents of the rebellious president, whose independent influence threatened to spread to Honduras. The spontaneous rebellion against the corrupt dictator had been initiated by General Juan Estrada and supported by the conservative leader Emiliano Chamorro. Two Americans, mining supervisor Leonard Groce and rubber tapper Lee Roy Cannon, had been hired by Washington to support General Juan Estrada, who had committed to accepting Washington’s financial loans.[1] But the two mercenaries were discovered on the San Juan River and admitted that they were going to bomb the ship carrying Nicaraguan troops. Two days later, they were executed in El Castillo, resulting in the expected justification for invading the country once again.
On December 1st, Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox sent a missive to the chargé d’affaires of Zelaya’s government in Washington denouncing the offenses committed by his government: “Since the Washington Conventions of 1907, it is notorious that President Zelaya has kept Central America in constant tension and agitation, that he has repeatedly and inadmissibly violated the provisions of the convention, attempting to discredit those sacred international obligations… It is equally well known that under the regime of President Zelaya, republican institutions have disappeared in Nicaragua, that public opinion and the press have been strangled, and imprisonment has been the reward for any tendency toward true patriotism… Two Americans, whom your government accuses of being officers related to the revolutionary forces and who, therefore, should have been treated according to the enlightened practice of civilized nations, have been assassinated by direct order of President Zelaya. It is said that their execution was preceded by barbaric cruelties… From every point of view, it has become difficult for the United States to delay any longer a more active response to the calls made to fulfill their responsibilities to protect their citizens, their dignity, to protect Central America and civilization… Consequently, it will be evident to you that your role as chargé d’affaires has come to an end. I have the honor of attaching your passport in case you wish to leave the country”.
On December 17, Zelaya goes into exile in Mexico. A few months later, the U.S. Marines restore democracy, freedom, and order in that country and force its new leaders to write a new constitution. Five years later, when General Chamorro becomes president. Then, Woodrow Wilson will sign a treaty with Nicaragua for the construction of an interoceanic canal, to ensure the security of the region. The canal will never be built, and the United States will occupy Nicaragua from 1909 until 1933 when it finally hands over the country to its creole marine, the dictator Anastasio Somoza. Somoza and his sons will rule Nicaragua with the support of Washington until just days before the Sandinista Revolution of 1979.
In just over a decade, José Santos Zelaya had turned Nicaragua into the most prosperous country in Central America. His independentism had managed to yield economic and social fruits but, once again, such audacity alarmed Washington and the powerful transnational corporations. Zelaya’s capitalism was as dangerous as the socialism of the Sandinista Revolution of 1979 will be. Seventy years of U.S. interventionism reduced the most prosperous country in the region to a banana republic, ravaged by dictatorships, poverty, violence, militarism, and endemic corruption.
Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox has an idea: if we teach Latin American countries how to behave and how to organize their own governments, the Monroe Doctrine will no longer need the United States to be enforced. In 1911, Knox writes to President William Taft that extending oversight over Latin America is nothing but “a benevolent measure.” On January 10, 1916, at a public event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he adds: “The goal of the march of Western Civilization will not be fully achieved until this process, which has taken two hundred years, unites the Anglo-Saxon race into a homogeneous people and extends the hegemony of our race and Anglo-Saxon civilization.”
In 1912, the Secretary of State (the “Sleepy Phil” as his colleagues called him for falling asleep at board meetings) will embark on a tour of the Caribbean aboard the US Navy warship. Knox, a representative of the race that prefers discipline and work over parties, ensures that nothing essential is missing on his work journey across the southern seas and orders the boarding of 864 bottles of fine wine, mostly Champagne, 1,500 cigars, and six pounds of caviar.
(…)
1911. The Sam Banana Revolution
Roatán Island, Honduras. 1911—Samuel Zemurray manages to have General Manuel Bonilla enter Honduras clandestinely. To lead the rebellion against President Miguel Dávila, he hires two mercenaries, Guy “Machine Gun” Molony, a notorious Louisiana mobster, and Lee Winfield Christmas, an unemployed engineer from New Orleans who had already been appointed General by Bonilla himself during his previous government. Zemurray provides his mercenaries with the most modern weapons of the time and uses his own yacht, stranded at the port of Bayou San Juan on the Mississippi River.
Shortly before, the legendary founder of Cuyamel Fruit Company had returned to New Orleans to convince the former president of Honduras, General Manuel Bonilla Chirinos, a friend of the banana companies, to revolt against his country’s government, as he had done in 1908 without much success. Known as Sam Banana, the Russian immigrant had amassed a fortune in Alabama and the port of New Orleans, thanks to his brilliant idea of selling discarded bananas from ships. He doesn’t know what failure is. He knows that to overthrow José Zelaya in Nicaragua, two years earlier, it took the intervention of the marines. Better than anyone, he remembers that in 1903 Washington invaded Honduras to return Bonilla Chirinos to the presidency and prevent General Terencio Sierra from “perpetuating himself in power” after four long years.[2] But he knows Honduras very well, and as a successful businessman, he has faith in his ability to organize a revolution in a foreign country without government assistance, because he also knows that if something goes wrong, the marines of his country will return to Honduras, as they will do six more times in his lifetime. When he becomes the manager of his greatest rival, the United Fruit Company, he will also contribute to the destruction of democracy in Guatemala in 1954, this time with the help of Washington’s new intelligence office, the CIA.
Sam Banana was never happy with President Miguel Dávila, who, moreover, had been an ally of José Santos Zelaya, the most successful president of Nicaragua, deposed by Washington two years earlier, in 1909, for being independent. He had plenty of reasons. If in English social tributes are called taxes, in Spanish they are impastos and signify an imposition by the State, and if there’s one thing a representative of Anglo-Saxon liberty detests, even if he’s Russian, it’s taxes and a State that doesn’t dedicate itself exclusively to the police and the military. Sam Banana disagreed with imposing taxes, laws limiting land ownership for foreigners, and the government’s lack of preferential treatment. In a country contested by a handful of large private companies dedicated to monoculture, the president had the audacity to grant some concessions to rival companies.
Now, after surviving the attempted coup of 1908, financed by Sam Banana’s Cuyamel Fruit Company, President Dávila faces a new rebellion, apparently led by Sam’s friend, former President Manuel Bonilla, and will have to resign.[3]
The supposed rebels from New Orleans arrive on the island of Roatán and, shortly after, take Puerto Trujillo. Although the marines of the USS Marietta (who were maintaining order on the coast of La Ceiba) pretend to control the situation, they are informed of the rebels’ plans and let them proceed. When President Dávila is informed of the capture of La Ceiba, to avoid another bloodbath, he calls Washington’s representative in Tegucigalpa and announces that he will leave the presidency in the hands of whoever the United States designates as his successor. Four hundred kilometers from the capital, aboard the USS Marietta, Washington’s representative, Thomas Dawson, and Zemurray’s rebels decide who will be the next president of Honduras. The rebellion is sold as a “fight against foreign interference,” and the Dávila government is accused of being traitorous.
To bring peace to another republic that doesn’t know how to govern itself, Washington chooses Francisco Bertrand as the new president. Only by chance will Manuel Bonilla win the 1912 elections and be sworn in as president in a national ceremony guarded by dozens of U.S. marines to prevent any protests. After the proper and orderly inaugural celebration, President Bonilla will grant Sam Banana ten thousand hectares, in addition to exempting the Cuyamel Fruit Company from import taxes, and will continue this practice of patriotic compensation for the liberating company of his friend Sam. Bonilla will die in office and be succeeded by Francisco Bertrand, who becomes president for a second time.
Reports, newspapers, and modern encyclopedias will speak of “a period of stability.” During this stability, the banana companies, in healthy competition among themselves for control of the small country of big business, will support different political groups, some in the government and others in the opposition, until newspapers, politicians, and encyclopedias begin to speak of a new period of rebellions, armed uprisings, and instability. Especially when the United Fruit Company sets foot in Honduras to compete with Zemurray.
In the years to come, to resolve this natural contradiction of success, progress, and freedom, Washington will send its warships to the coasts of Honduras, as a way to ensure order and stability. The rest will be up to the national army, such as the repression of the Cuyamel Fruit Company workers’ strike in 1917, or the strike at the Standard Fruit Company in 1918, or the general strike of 1920.
Honduras was the first banana republic capitalism” emerge in American universities, they will quickly be discredited as exaggerated, communist things, or foreign infiltration.
The official status of a Banana Republic, under various variations, will continue into the 21st century. Washington will invest astronomical sums in the Honduran army until it becomes the largest and most prestigious institution in the country and the country itself becomes one of its military bases. As a natural consequence, society and national culture will become militarized with speeches and symbolism appropriate to the role they play. Few will escape this fate revealed in Washington, but they will be demonized, as is fitting.
In 1954, Sam Bananas, then former director of the United Fruit Company, will repeat his feat of overthrowing a president. This time the target will be the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz, and everything will be done in a more technical and scientific manner with the help of the CIA, the White House, Edward Bernays, his fake news, and the invaluable collaboration of the Latin American Moctezuma complex. Guatemala will plunge into a bloody civil war administered by Washington-friendly dictatorships, which will leave at least 200,000 dead. Sam Banana will die on December 2, 1961. In his lengthy obituary, the New York Times will mention his philanthropic work, “his eye for great opportunities,” the value of his fortune, and the feats of his business ventures in Honduras. Nothing about his political involvement in the violation of other countries’ laws and nothing about his business radicalism, because that makes no sense to Anglo-Saxon fanaticism.
In Honduras, as in many other countries occupied or intervened by Washington, not even liberal capitalism will thrive. The large transnational corporations will make it impossible, preferring a semi-feudal system, which is far more profitable for their interests. Satellite governments will absorb almost all national resources to control cheap labor (those blacks, those drunk Indians, those “lazy people who live off the State”) will have to be demonized to justify their exploitation. Henceforth, half of their budgets will be dedicated to financing the national army. By the mid-1960s, Costa Rica will have achieved stability by eliminating its army, while in Honduras, Washington will have turned that institution into the largest and most important in the country. With the government practically absent in its other social obligations, Honduras will become a military base for the United States, from which it will intervene in other countries in the region. It will also become the capital of crime and emigration—in addition to guaranteeing new coups d’état, such as the one in 2009.
1912. The Los Angeles Mining Company
Niquinohomo, Nicaragua. October 4, 1912—The resistance leader, Benjamín Zeledón Rodríguez, dies in combat against the joint forces of the United States Marines and the Nicaraguan army loyal to President Adolfo Díaz Recinos. The soldiers place his body on a cart pulled by two oxen, and as they enter the town, the Marines drag it through the streets. A young peasant watches the scene and does nothing. His name is Augusto César Sandino.
Benjamín Zeledón Rodríguez had been a magistrate on the Central American Court of Justice representing Nicaragua during the government of the anti-interventionist President José Santos Zelaya, who had resigned three years earlier under pressure from Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox. The current president, Adolfo Díaz Recinos, had been the secretary of The Los Angeles Mining Company, an American company that owned the most profitable gold mines in Nicaragua. The national army was led by the conservative General Emiliano Chamorro. Chamorro had actively participated in the overthrow of President José Santos Zelaya in 1909 and would succeed Díaz Recinos as president in 1917.
Twenty years later, the long resistance of Augusto César Sandino and his peasant guerrillas would defeat the invading army. What the guns of the world’s most modern army couldn’t do, the words of a traitor would. Anastasio Somoza García, the new director of the National Guard appointed by the US ambassador, Matthew Hanna, would convince Sandino to attend a meeting with the new president Juan Bautista Sacasa. Upon leaving, Sandino, his father, and his brother would be kidnapped and executed. With the dictatorship of Somoza, Sandinism would also be killed but would be reborn forty years later and overthrow his son, again through the resistance of rebel arms.
[1] By then, the State Department had secured an agreement whereby Nicaragua would accept $2.24 million from Brown Brothers and J & W Seligman in exchange for 51 percent control of the country’s railroads and docks. From then on, Washington will no longer need to manage these businesses, transferred directly into the hands of Wall Street.
[2] Terencio Sierra had been elected in 1899 and had rejected the 1902 elections, which is why his government will be remembered in the official history of his country as “The Usurper Government.” Then they ran out of titles for the countless foreign usurpations that would continue for generations.
[3] Shortly before, President Dávila had negotiated a loan from Pierpont Morgan (J. P. Morgan) for ten million dollars (250 million at 2020 value) to pay his European creditors, but the Congress of Honduras had rejected it due to the stipulated conditions, which guaranteed that, in case of default, Honduras would have to cede control of its finances to Washington, effectively becoming a new protectorate. This rejection and blatant show of independence was the last straw.
1914. I’m going to teach them to choose decent governments
Managua, Nicaragua. August 5, 1914—Following the rule, the anti-imperialist Woodrow Wilson must attend to poorer and smaller countries. Just as President William McKinley admitted that he couldn’t locate occupied Philippines on the map, Wilson fails at geography. After intervening in the Caribbean and Central America in 1914, he declares: “I’m going to teach the South Americans to choose decent governments.” That same year he invades the Dominican Republic and Haiti to suggest military governments that, although foreign, are more obedient and patriotic than the poor without uniforms. A year later, he intervenes in Nicaragua, Cuba, Panama, and Honduras to “defend U.S. interests.”
Although the government of the independentist José Santos Zelaya was blocked, destabilized, and forced to resign in 1909 for attempting to secure loans in Europe for the construction of an interoceanic canal because, according to President Woodrow Wilson, “it would risk the peace and progress of the region,” now, on August 5, Nicaragua signs the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, through which the Wilson administration introduces an amendment similar to the Platt Amendment, approved for the Cuban constitution a decade earlier. Nicaragua becomes a U.S. protectorate for generations to come.
Through this treaty, Nicaragua leases two islands for ninety-nine years and, for the same period, recognizes the right of the United States to establish military bases on its territory. Additionally, “it grants in perpetuity to the Government of the United States, free at all times from any tax or other public charge, the exclusive and proprietary rights, necessary and convenient for the construction, operation, and maintenance of an interoceanic canal through the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua or by any route over the territory of Nicaragua.”
The lease will cost the United States three million Nicaraguan pesos, which will be deducted from the debt maintained by the Central American country with banks of the civilized world.
In 1916, the Central American Court of Justice rules against this agreement, considering it contrary to previous treaties. The Court of Justice is dissolved.
President Wilson keeps his word of honor and does not take a single additional foot of foreign territory.
1915. Crucified Rebels, Decorated Heroes
Hinche, Haiti. July 28, 1915—The Marines return to Haiti to restore order. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan supports the invasion and asks where the country is located. When one of the American executives of the Banque Nationale d’Haiti assists him with encyclopedic information, Bryan exclaims: My God, “Negroes who can speak French!”. American journalist Herbert Seligmann denounces the use of machine guns to kill unarmed Haitians and accuses the Marines of practicing, as in the Philippines, the sport-killing of blacks (gooks) and of reinstating slavery in fact, forcing the population into forced labor. On August 15, President Woodrow Wilson writes to his future wife, Edith Bolling Galt, that he had approved the new invasion, considering that “our intervention in Haiti will not have much effect on Latin America, since, being a country of Negroes, they are not considered part of the brotherhood.”
Charlemagne Péralte, a Haitian of Dominican origin, one of the few patriotic military leaders that Latin America produced, resigns from his post. Two years later, he takes up arms against the American occupation, and fifteen thousand Haitians join his guerrilla movement. They call themselves Cacos, like the trogon, the bird that inhabits the skies of the island and hides in the mountains, like the rebels who expelled the French a hundred years ago, like all the rebels of the hemisphere who, for centuries, in the hills began the resistance against the ports.
The rebels manage to prove that the invader is not invincible, and in the battle of Fort Dipitie, they defeat the forces commanded by the famous Marine general, Smedley Butler, commander in the bombing and capture of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914, twenty years before he became a critic of his country’s military abuses, of the imperialism of American corporations, and consequently, of ceasing to be the most venerated national hero by the press.[1]
After two days of combat, the rebels lose 75 men and the Marines only one, but the Marines must abandon the fort and flee to the mountains. During the escape, Marine Daniel Daly kills three rebels with a knife and recovers a machine gun, for which the United States government will award him the Medal of Honor. Lieutenant Edward Albert Ostermann also receives one for his heroism in leading the escape that will be called the Recovery of Fort Dipitie. The patriots who fought almost naked, the hysterical black men, have no time or medals or books to remember them.
Like almost all previous resistances, this one too will end up crushed by the disproportionate force of the invader. A month later, the rebels who occupied Fort Rivière almost without weapons are dislodged. 70 rebels die, and one Marine is injured by a stone that breaks two of his teeth. A Navy report informs that, in the twenty months the rebellion lasted, more than three thousand Haitians have lost their lives under various circumstances, all violently. Misguided historians will speak of more than ten thousand victims.
As so many times in ten thousand years of history, a Judas betrays the rebel leader. In this case, one of Charlemagne Péralte’s commanders, Jean-Baptiste Conzé, is tasked with leading the Marines to the rebel leader who, on October 31, 1919, without any possibility of defense, is executed with a shot to the heart by Marine Sergeant Herman Hanneken.
Hanneken is immediately promoted to second lieutenant for his valiant action. His assistant, Corporal William Button, will also receive the coveted Medal of Honor, the highest possible recognition from the U.S. government and society for a soldier’s service to the nation, in this case “for eliminating Haiti’s greatest bandit“. Hanneken will also receive the Navy Cross for executing Péralte’s successor, Osiris Joseph, a few months later.
Péralte’s body is displayed in a position reminiscent of depictions of a crucified Jesus. The photograph, taken by the Marines and distributed throughout the country to demoralize the rebels (like that of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, executed in 1967 under similar circumstances) will become an icon of resistance and dignity.
The progressive Republican senator William Borah protests the brutality of the reports reaching Washington: “we must leave Haiti and all the other countries where we have no right to occupy; it may be true that their people are incapable of governing themselves as we understand a government should be, but whatever it is will be their government”. A few months later, in 1916, General George Barnett will write to Colonel John Russell in Port-au-Prince ordering him to “stop the indiscriminate killing of Haitians”. In defense of his troops, Colonel Russell will respond that “the Haitians are a hysterical people”. The testimonies collected from the Marines and U.S. officers insist on the savage nature of Black people, even when they are educated in Europe. The highly decorated Colonel Littleton Waller asserts that no one “can ever trust a Black man with a revolver; they are Black, no matter how educated they are”. In Saint Marc, the Marines are accused of whipping an elderly woman and hanging a fifteen-year-old boy accused of a minor theft. Young women have stopped bathing in rivers for fear of being raped by white men.
John Russell Jr. and Littleton Waller will receive all possible promotions and be awarded the Haitian Campaign Medal, among many other decorations that won’t fit on their uniforms, which they will wear upon their return to civilization at high society parties.[2] Herman Hanneken will be honored with two more Navy Crosses for his valiant actions in Nicaragua. On February 3, 1929, he will execute the prisoner Manuel María Girón Ruano, a 61-year-old Sandinista general. Later, he will enjoy a peaceful retirement in Virginia, surrounded by his heroic memories that he will embellish for his proud grandchildren, and he will die in La Jolla, California, on August 23, 1986. He will never respond to journalists eager for thrilling details about the Marines’ valiant actions in the land of Black people.
One year after Mexico’s revolutionary constitution, which prohibits foreigners from owning national subsoil resources, Haiti, under occupation, will pass its new constitution ensuring this sacred right for foreign companies.
In 1929, the Haitians will demand the withdrawal of the Marines from their country, but Washington will decide that, after a century and a half of struggle, Black people are not ready to be free. The highly decorated General John Russell, then high commissioner and acting ambassador in Haiti, will explain it bluntly: “the Haitian mentality only recognizes force; any hope of logical and rational thinking is impossible for these people”. When the “Good Neighbor Policy” strategy gains momentum and some politicians begin to propose a withdrawal of military forces from the island, the vice consul in Cap-Haïtien, Corey F. Wood, will lament that in Washington they don’t understand because they are too far from the real reality: “They believe the Haitian people have matured and that it is they who are speaking when in fact they are nothing more than children acting under Bolshevik influence”. On April 22, 1931, Secretary of State Henry Stimson will take the middle road: “We are trying to gradually leave the path clear for the Haitians; of course, this is not the way to deal with Black people, which is why I fear we’ll get into more trouble this way.”[3]
The Marines will not leave Haiti or other countries in the region until 1934 when, desperate due to the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins to cut military spending and announces his new “Good Neighbor Policy” toward Latin America.[4]
1916. We were supposedly fighting for democracy
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. May 4, 1916—Once again, without warning, 750 Marines occupy the other side of the island. The previous landing had occurred in 1905 to control the Caribbean nation’s external debt, but now President Woodrow Wilson fears the arrival of the Germans in the region and is concerned about the safety of U.S. citizens, who could become victims of the erratic policies of the Dominican government and the potential rise to power of General Desiderio Arias.
A U.S. Navy officer places a list of demands on the presidential office desk. One of them stipulates that a U.S. citizen handle the Treasury and the country’s budget while the Dominican army is replaced by a National Guard under the command of a U.S. officer. The elected president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Isidro Jimenes, disagrees. He refuses to sign a new treaty and decides to resist the invasion, which he finds humiliating. Shortly after, 1,700 more Marines land. Three days later, the constitutional president resigns. In his farewell speech, he boldly declares, “I have not hesitated for a moment with the whole country on my side, except for that treacherous portion of the army that now occupies the public squares of our nation.” Poets are always dangerous, and Fabio Fiallo, uncle of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, is sentenced to five years of hard labor for criticizing the occupation.
On November 29, the Marines take control of the country almost secretly and without informing Congress, which constitutes a new illegal action according to the laws of the land of laws, and declares the Dominican Republic a “State under military occupation” due to the “innate incapacity of its people to govern themselves.” Admiral Harry Shepard Knapp replaces the provisional president, Francisco Henríquez, and becomes the new dictator whom official U.S. history will never, ever call a dictator. The occupation, repression, and state terrorism will be referred to as “restoration of order.”
One of the first measures implemented by the new U.S. dictatorship is to disarm the Dominican population, a tactic that will be repeated throughout the history of Latin America while in the United States the right to bear arms (as long as one is not Black) is elevated to the status of religion. Alongside repression and impunity for murder, the economy grows in the shadow of the prosperous northern superpower. Purely by chance, the dictatorship repeals Article V of the 1804 constitution, which denied foreign ownership of land, and imposes an agricultural economy under the guardianship of the First National City Bank. All production and trade will be tied to Wall Street. The flourishing Dominican shoe industry will vanish in favor of imports of better products from the United States.
Four years later, on October 6, 1920, The Washington Post will report that during this period on the island, 12 U.S. officers and 108 Marines died in combat, in addition to “several thousand natives.” The Post will also question the logic of the occupation with the excuse of collecting a debt: “Does it make any sense to kill thousands fighting for their freedom on their own land, against a military regime that hasn’t even received the approval of our Congress, all carried out in the name of the people of the United States?”
La Martina also acknowledges the lack of elegance of the occupation and the dictatorship, considering that a convincing enemy to protect the southern republics had not yet appeared. Anti-American sentiment reaches uncontrollable levels due to the Dollar Diplomacy and the propaganda distributed by the Creole elites of the region.[5] As a solution, the de facto U.S. government creates a new national guard, this time the Dominican National Guard, which in 1921 will be renamed the Dominican National Police. The new repressive body lacks prestige among the people, and only the poorest and most desperate enlist. The American journalist, travel writer, and occasional police officer in Panama, Harry Frank, writes that, according to the inhabitants of the Dominican Republic, the worst criminals of the country have joined the Guard and, protected by their uniforms, have dedicated themselves to harassing the rest of the population. Spanish-speaking marines explain the acronym P.N.D. as “Poor Barefoot Negroes.”
The marines will not withdraw from the island until 1924, when they find a responsible general (later Generalissimo) named Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, and leave him in charge of that country full of mulattos and mosquitoes. Like Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo will remain as director of the National Guard for some time, until he decides to officially elect himself as dictator in 1930. One of his many achievements will include the massacre of at least 14,000 Haitians in El Perejil on October 8, 1937. All carried out, as expected, with the patriotic mulatto army and the approval of the few whites, or whitened, of the ruling and business class. Mulattos who hated blacks, renegaded blacks, and poorer than the mulattos.
On July 17, 1920, The Nation will denounce that in the past four years the Dominican Republic has been governed by a dictatorship directly administered by the U.S. Navy, censoring everything that could reference freedom, to the extent that its officers ordered the removal of the word Liberty from the name of the Liberty Theater, “all in our name, when we were supposed to be fighting for democracy.” On its front page on October 6, The Washington Post will acknowledge, under the title “The Tranquility in Haiti and Santo Domingo Does Not Address the Accusations,” that “it is true that strict censorship is exercised by the U.S. Navy over the Dominican Republic, making it impossible to know what is happening there, aside from the fact that it is our officers who write the laws in that country, subjecting any citizen who does not obey them to a court martial… How is all this reconciled with Article 1 of the treaty of the Second Hague Convention, of which the United States is a signatory?”
Testimonies describe instant executions for reasons of offenses to the honor of the invaders. In 1921, a commission of the U.S. Senate will study several cases of abuses in this Caribbean republic. In one of them, on December 14, Dr. Alejandro Coradin will describe how an 80-year-old man, José María Rincón, was taken from a pharmacy and then tortured and dragged through the streets of Hato Mayor tied to the tail of a horse because he carried a medical prescription mentioning sulfur and pork fat. The prescription was for a skin treatment, the doctor firmly and without bowing states in Washington, but the U.S. Navy doctors determined it was for curing the wounds of the rebels. After torturing him, they shot him and finally hanged him from a tree.[6] “Can you describe the man,” a senator asks, “was he a strong man?” “As strong as an 80-year-old man can be,” Dr. Coradin responds. Another senator insists, asking about the main person responsible for the crime. What was his name? What did he look like? How was he dressed? Dr. Coradin repeats his statements from the day before and identifies him as Colonel Peralez, a Dominican under the orders of the occupying forces, from the area, white, tall, disguised as a marine, and protected by other U.S. marines.
Since the creation of the Hispanic republics at the beginning of the 19th century, the democratic system of the United States had been the idealized model for their politicians and intellectuals. The greatest obstacle to making it a reality has always been the United States. The revered economic system imposed by force only benefited and will continue to benefit, for a long time, one of the parties. One doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out which one.
(…)
1927. The First Aerial Bombing in Military History
Ocotal, Nicaragua. July 16, 1927—In the morning, two planes fly over the city and begin to drop bombs. One of the pilots, Lieutenant Boyden, nicknamed Crazy Boy, cannot land because the Sandinistas have destroyed the highway. The second plane, piloted by Sergeant Wodarczyk, nicknamed Polish Horse, discovers from the air that the marine headquarters has been surrounded. Informed in Managua of the unacceptable humiliation, a few hours later, five American planes arrive in the city with a military innovation that Washington had long been eager to test. The planes arrive loaded with bombs and with history, unloading them in precise and coordinated dive movements, avoiding any ground defense. This day will be known in military history as the first aerial bombing in a war.[1]
The retaliation, apart from being a tactical and technological experiment, must also serve as an example. The attack is a response to a treaty that the rebels did not accept. On May 4, in Tipitapa, the government, the Nicaraguan generals, and the American General Gilbert Hatfield had signed the Pact of the Black Thorn to end internal disputes. According to this treaty, the various national factions had committed to handing over their weapons to the marines and accepting their presence in the country to guarantee order and respect for previously signed treaties, all under occupation. But Augusto Sandino had not agreed. The rebel peasant who believed himself capable of confronting the occupation of his country, who began the resistance struggle with twenty-nine men and forty rifles, is determined not only to face the powerful U.S. Army but also the liberal and conservative elites who opened their doors to the invaders and made deals with them. Beyond whether the president of Nicaragua is liberal or conservative, he says, it must be a Nicaraguan freely chosen by Nicaraguans. On June 10, 1928, in a letter to the Honduran intellectual Froylán Turcios, Sandino will write and describe American imperialism. “Speaking of the Monroe Doctrine, they say: America for the Americans.” Then, the half-Indian corrects the use of language: what they mean is “America for the Yankees. Now: so that the blonde beasts are not deceived any longer, I reaffirm the phrase in the following terms: the United States of America for the Yankees. Latin America for the Indo-Latinos.”
At that time, the consul of the other empire, Great Britain, reports that the American marines “use unnecessary violence against the Indians and blacks in the region.” An American doctor from Bluefields denounces “the practice of all kinds of tortures by our marines,” such as blows to the face and head or the application of the “water cure” (the submarine) on hundreds of Nicaraguans. In other cases, the doctor details that victims are tied by the testicles to increase the pain. These practices are directed by Colonel Carroll and overseen by Captain Donald Kendall.
Although Sandino promotes solidarity and a strict ethical code against alcohol abuse and sets exemplary punishments for the abuse of women, neither he nor his followers will respond to the marines’ tortures with flowers. One of them, Pedrón Altamirano, will stand out for hunting marines and punishing them with similar torments.
Last year, when Washington forced the Nicaraguan congress to accept Adolfo Díaz as the new president, one of the most renowned American journalists and critics of his country’s imperialism in Latin America, Will Rogers, distilled sarcasm very close to Mark Twain’s: “We announced to the world that Díaz is the legitimately elected president of Nicaragua, but Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Uruguay and Paraguay say otherwise. It is quite interesting to discover that only we are the ones who do the right thing.”
Although the president appointed by Washington, Adolfo Díaz, is not recognized by either the majority of Latin American countries or the majority of Nicaraguans, on May 11, General Gilbert Hatfield sends Sandino a letter warning of an armed reprisal if the terms of peace are not accepted. Sandino responds: “I received your message yesterday and I understand it. I will not surrender, and I await you here. I want a free homeland or death. I am not afraid of you.” Gradually, his followers have grown to include peasants and starving workers, unpaid miners, and indigenous people fighting for their communal lands. None of them have any military training. On Friday the 15th, after destroying the runway, they entered Ocotal with such force and determination that they ended up forcing General Hatfield, his powerful marines, and the Nicaraguan National Guard to take refuge in the central barracks. The marines had responded with automatic machine guns, but despite killing several rebels, they failed to break the siege. Hours later, the planes arrived and now bomb the city, leaving an unrecorded number of dead and forcing the rebels to retreat. Fifty bombs and thousands of rounds fired from the nose and tail of each plane kill civilians and demoralize those who remain. Sandino withdraws with his men to the mountains.
In the United States, newspapers celebrate a new feat of military technology. Only one marine has died in this novel battle. High-ranking officials receive distinctions. General Hatfield receives the Navy Cross from President Calvin Coolidge. In the famous aerial bombing, dozens of civilians and dead rebels force Sandino and his men to retreat. But Sandino and his men learn from the defeat. A traditional war is impossible against an enemy that rains fire from the sky. Thus begins a guerrilla war that grows until 1933, when it will end with the withdrawal of the five thousand marines from the country. One of them writes from Choluteca, Honduras: “every house has a picture of Sandino.” From the anti-imperialist committees in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, Sandino’s forces receive financial aid and basic medicines.
But the Washington establishment will also learn from this defeat. As will be the case with other banana republics, before withdrawing from Nicaragua in 1933, it will leave in power a local dictator who knows his people better than foreign invaders. The puppet, Anastasio Somoza, will betray and assassinate Sandino. Nicaragua, the country that before the arrival of the marines had been the most prosperous in the region, the one that had defeated Great Britain and seized the Caribbean coast, like the rest of neighboring countries under Washington’s protection, will sink into poverty, premature death, old fanaticism, deliberate ignorance, and strategic oblivion for more than half a century.
In Washington, some senators are troubled by conscience. “Our government has used the full power of arms to destroy human lives, to burn villages, to bomb women and children from the air,” protests progressive Republican Senator George Norris. Senator William King joins the criticism: “Poor Nicaragua; we send our army and our planes to burn their villages and kill their defenseless people.” President Calvin Coolidge insists with an excuse that will become a classic in political literature throughout the century: Washington’s altruistic goal is to achieve “fair elections” in Nicaragua. But Senator Norris, with the sarcasm of the defeated, responds: “If our president truly wants to use the army, the navy, and his marines to purify elections in Nicaragua, why doesn’t he send them to Philadelphia?”… What Nicaraguans want is the same as what we want; they love their children just as we love ours, and even though you call their homes shacks, they cherish them just as much as we cherish ours. But we went and burned their homes, we have murdered their children and wives when they were unarmed and hadn’t even lifted a finger against us.”
In the fall of 1928, at least a hundred protesters will march in front of the White House and the War and Navy Department. Their signs will demand, “Out with marines from Nicaragua“, “Freedom for John Porter”, “Porter, jailed for refusing to be a tool of militarist capitalism“, “Stop the new imperialist war”. The picketers’ march will be labeled in the newspapers as the “March of the Reds,” and Porter will be described as an army deserter, vice president of the textile union in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and five-time prisoner for being a striker. Dozens will be arrested for demonstrating without a permit. Among the arrested will be several members of the Anti-Imperialist League of the United States, the Union of Black Workers, the Labor Defense League, and members of the Communist Party of the United States.
Francis White, head of the Division for Latin America and later (during the economic catastrophe) a proponent of withdrawing marines from the region, will declare that the criticism against U.S. occupations in Central America and the Caribbean is motivated and organized by “professional propagandists.” Democratic Senator William Cabell Bruce of Maryland, speaking on behalf of the “silent majority” and against critics and protesters, will firmly state, “The only elements of society that disapprove of our government’s actions regarding Nicaragua are extreme pacifists and radicals.”
Among the members of the silent majority is John S. Hemphill, son of a fallen Civil War soldier and father of a marine who died in Managua, John F. Hemphill, who sends a letter to the Senate in Washington from Missouri: “My son was killed in action against the rebels of General Sandino. I cannot hate Sandino or his guerrillas. I speak on behalf of ninety percent of the people I know… We have neither the legal nor the moral right to murder those people who are fighting for their own freedom… What we are doing there is killing people to install a puppet in their government and continue acting as collectors for Wall Street… Now, gentlemen, imagine for a moment that you lose a son to the greed of Wall Street and tell me if you think the profits are worth it.”
Mr. Hemphill’s letter will be read by Senator Clarence Dill during the Congressional session on January 19, 1928. Soon after, it will be forgotten.
1928. Another Patriotic Army and Company
Cienaga, Colombia. November 28, 1928—More than twenty thousand workers refuse to continue cutting bananas for the United Fruit Company, protesting working conditions, demanding the construction of clinics, and medical coverage for work-related accidents. The sanitary conditions of the Company’s workers are among the worst in the country. All kinds of diseases are rampant, and workers rarely reach old age.
The Company does not accept the demands and refuses to pay the benefits established by Colombian law of 1915 because the workers who work for it are not its employees. They are hired by Colombians.
The United Fruit Company has its contacts in Washington, so President Calvin Coolidge informs his Colombian counterpart that, if the workers’ strike in Colombia is not lifted, he would immediately send a fleet of marines to resolve the problem.
On December 4, President Miguel Abadía Méndez decides to end the strike by workers of the United Fruit Company and, thus, put an end to the workers’ threat to national security. He sends the army to the conflict zone.
On December 5, the U.S. Secretary of State, Frank Kellogg, receives a cable from his ambassador in Bogotá: “The Colombian Minister of Foreign Relations informed me on Saturday that his government would send more military personnel to end the workers’ strike, proceeding to arrest the union leaders, who would be transferred to Cartagena. They also assured me that they would do everything possible to protect the involved U.S. interests.”
A new cable arrives a few hours later, this time from the consulate in Santa Marta: “some soldiers share the same sentiment as the workers against the Colombian government. We suggest sending a warship, as the strike has taken on a somewhat subversive nature.”
That same night, General Cortés Vargas and three hundred of his soldiers encounter thousands of workers flooding the streets of Ciénaga and describes them as a Soviet plot. The general waits, and at eleven p.m., he is informed that the Colombian government has appointed him civil chief of the province of Santa Marta, now under a state of siege.
A couple of hours later, the general sends his troops against thousands of workers sleeping in the streets and has them read a decree that prohibited any gathering of more than three people. The workers are too poor to have any kind of weapons and too naive to suspect the soldiers of their own people. A cable from the U.S. embassy reports that the national government has issued the order to “not spare bullets.”
A few minutes later, the soldiers begin firing into the crowd, which panics in the darkness. Hundreds are massacred and loaded onto trains with unknown destinations that same night. When the sun rises, nine unrecovered corpses remain, and it is reported that they are the dead from the early morning hours.
The workers who manage to escape turn to theft and vandalism of everything they find. But the government manages to pacify the area in less than a week, and the few remaining workers return to their jobs on the plantations of the United Fruit Company. The Octopus, as the company is known in other countries, soon finds new workers to replace those who vanished.
On December 9, the U.S. consulate in Santa Marta reports that “no Americans have been injured; some incidents still continue, but the soldiers are taking care of cleansing the area of communists.”
On January 16, 1929, the U.S. ambassador in Bogotá reports to Washington: “I have the honor to inform you that the representative of the United Fruit Company has informed me that the total number of dead strikers exceeds one thousand, with the loss of only one Colombian soldier.”
On July 11, 1926, the journalist and war correspondent of the New York Times, Edwin Leland James, had written in The Times Magazine: “there is probably no country in the world less loved than the United States.” At the beginning of 2002, President George W. Bush will repeat an idea deeply rooted in society: “they hate us because we are free.” Gradually, the rhetoric will shift from the discourse of superior culture to that of a superior race. On September 22, 2016, following the murder of a protester against fascism, Congressman Robert Pittenger will explain to the BBC the reason for the protests in Charlotte, North Carolina: those protesting against racism “hate whites because whites are successful.”
One year before the unpunished massacre by the UFCO and its promotion of new magical realism in Latin America, just a few kilometers from Ciénaga, Gabriel García Márquez was born.
[1] On the first of June 1921, private planes dropped incendiary bombs on the Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The racial factor is common to both incidents, but in this case, it did not refer to an international conflict.
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