Mexico, the United States, and the 1926–1927 Nicaraguan Crisis Open Access

Victory over Spain in 1898 provided the United States with the opportunity to pursue the various options that imperial status now offered. Indeed, under the influence of the strategic precepts of an Alfred Thayer Mahan, the messianic expansionism of a Josiah Strong, the extended frontier concept of a Frederick Jackson Turner, and the now seemingly obtainable economic aspirations of a James G. Blaine, North Americans looked to their newly established imperial arena with anticipation and confidence. It would be the adjacent circum-Caribbean region, for the most part, where the United States government would attempt to create the appropriate climate for the attainment of its strategic, economic, and altruistic goals. Acquisition of the Canal Zone in 1903 served in particular to focus U. S. attention on the isthmus. Accordingly, whenever revolutionary violence erupted in Central America, the United States government invariably took vigorous action to ensure the survival of governments and factions which were supportive of North American interests. Such action was even more energetic and precipitous if U.S. officials perceived an external threat to their interests in the region.

In reviewing the pattern of inter-American affairs during the early twentieth century, the relationship between the United States and Nicaragua stands out as one of the most instructive examples of the sustained efforts on the part of U.S. policy makers to promote an isthmian Pax Americana. At no time was this commitment more evident than during the mid-1920s when Nicaraguan civil strife, exacerbated, in the estimation of Washington, by the intrusion of foreign material as well as ideological forces, prompted the United States government to mount a major military intervention on the isthmus.

It was in late December 1926 when the first elements of a marine expeditionary force landed on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. Initial newspaper accounts indicated that the U.S. forces were needed “to protect American and foreign lives and property” threatened as a result of the ongoing conflict between Nicaraguan Liberal and Conservative political factions.¹ As more and more marines landed, however, it became difficult for the United States government to explain its escalating intervention solely in terms of protecting lives and property. Indeed, on January 4, 1927, a White House spokesman invoked national security considerations to justify the landing of marines, indicating that such action was necessary to protect the interoeeanic canal rights that the United States received from Nicaragua in the 1916 Bryan-Chamorro Treaty. These rights included an option to build a canal through Nicaraguan territory and to establish a U.S. naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. The official then declined to elaborate any further on the matter. The New York Times, however, was not so reticent, observing in a front-page news story that the United States government believed that Mexico was attempting to take advantage of the Nicaraguan conflict “to drive a Bolshevist wedge between continental United States and the Panama Canal . . ..” The Times indicated that although the Coolidge administration had never made a formal statement to this effect, government officials apparently possessed evidence which proved Mexican complicity in a plot to bolshevize Central America.²

The combination of a steadily increasing U.S. military presence in Nicaragua and widespread public and private speculation over the rationale for such an interventionist policy served to elicit a much more comprehensive policy declaration from the government. Accordingly, within a matter of days, President Calvin Coolidge, in a message to the Congress, and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, provided the nation with their perceptions of the situation in Central America. Both Coolidge and Kellogg were unequivocal in their indictments of Mexican meddling in Nicaraguan affairs, insisting that it was Mexican military aid which sustained Juan B. Sacasa’s Liberal forces in their fight against the Conservative government of Adolfo Díaz. In the estimation of President Coolidge, Mexico, “a foreign power,” was promoting anarchy in Nicaragua, thereby endangering United States strategic and economic interests in that nation, and, by extension, throughout the entire isthmus.³ Secretary Kellogg, in his testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, reemphasized the threat to U. S. strategic and economic interests in Nicaragua, and then tarred Mexico with a bolshevist brush in an effort to provide even greater justification for the administration’s interventionist policy.⁴ Thus, the very highest foreign policy-making echelons within the United States government emphatically laid the blame for the escalating Nicaraguan crisis on a radical Mexican regime intent on extending its hegemony throughout Central America. Accordingly, this study will focus on the purported Mexican involvement in Nicaragua and the resultant confrontation between Mexico and the United States. Specific areas for consideration will include Mexico’s policy objectives in Nicaragua; Mexican efforts to implement these policies; the United States government’s response to the Mexican presence in Nicaragua; and the short- and long-term consequences of this confrontation for Mexico, the United States, and Nicaragua.

Ranging at times from outright invasion to more subtle elements of political, economic, and cultural penetration, Mexican influence has long been a constant in Central American affairs. Whether represented by pre-Columbian Toltec expansionism, the irredentism of Agustín de Iturbide’s abortive empire, the hostility of Porfirio Díaz for Justo Rufino Barrios’s concept of Central American unionism, or varying degrees of Mexican involvement in twentieth-century revolutionary movements, the prospect of some form of intrusion on the part of Mexico has been a matter of realistic concern for generations of isthmian dwellers. Given the fact that Mexico had long looked on Central America as a natural sphere of influence, Mexico’s assumption of the role of regional power broker stands as a logical and consistent element in that nation’s foreign policy agenda. Therefore, Mexican support for the Liberal revolutionary forces in Nicaragua in the mid-1920s represents anything but an isolated phenomenon insofar as Mexico’s relations with the isthmian region are concerned. Indeed, Nicaraguan Liberals had often looked to Mexico for assistance in their longstanding conflict with their Conservative opponents, a relationship that Nicaraguan Conservatives sought to counter with an alliance of their own. Thus the predilections of various Nicaraguan political factions to exploit external sources of support to their own advantage, and the willingness of Mexico and the United States to use these very same factions to achieve their own policy objectives, would provide ample opportunity for the two powers to compete for influence in Nicaraguan and isthmian affairs.

One manifestation of Mexico’s affinity for the Nicaraguan Liberals involved the diplomatic support that the Mexican government provided to the Liberal President José Santos Zelaya in his 1909 conflict with revolutionary forces which operated with the open sympathy, if not the open support, of the United States. Mexican diplomacy, however, was not enough to save Zelaya. Bowing to intense pressure from the United States, the Liberal leader resigned in early December 1909, boarded a Mexican gunboat, and departed for exile, first in Mexico and then in Spain.⁵

The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 effectively removed Mexico from any further immediate involvement in Nicaraguan affairs. Accordingly, the United States government enjoyed a free hand to sustain the Conservative regime of Adolfo Díaz which emerged in May 1911 out of the Byzantine-like factionalism of Nicaraguan politics. When President Díaz, in August 1912, came under attack from dissident Conservative and Liberal forces, he promptly requested and received American support in the form of a marine expeditionary force. With the defeat of the revolutionaries, the United States withdrew the bulk of the marine force, leaving behind in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua a 100-man legation guard to provide a visible token of official U.S. support for the Díaz government and subsequent Conservative regimes.

This U.S. overt military interventism prompted the Nicaraguan Liberals to seek outside support of their own in their drive for political power. Accordingly, beginning in 1916 and continuing throughout 1917, Julián Irías, a prominent Liberal leader, sought Mexican aid for his plans to overthrow the Conservative government in Managua. The timing for such maneuvering was more than appropriate, for by early 1916 Mexico had emerged from the most destructive phase of her revolutionary experience only to find herself faced with intervention from the United States in the form of the Pershing expedition. Under the intensely nationalistic leadership of President Venustiano Carranza and allegedly aided and abetted by imperial Germany, Mexico was ready to counter, wherever it was practical, perceived threats to her national interest.⁶ Central America appeared to provide the proper blending of U. S. vulnerability on the one hand and Mexican interest on the other. Accordingly, Carranza decided to challenge his northern rival by establishing Liberal regimes throughout the isthmus that would be friendly to Mexico. Given the realities of geographical propinquity, the long-term ties of race and culture, and the recent emergence of Liberal leaders who wished to challenge the Conservative clients of the United States, Central America presented the Mexican government with an appropriate arena to promote the so-called Carranza Doctrine. The essence of this doctrine was the assertion in Mexico of revolutionary nationalism and the creation internationally of a united Latin American anti-imperialist front to counter the economic and political hegemony of the United States.⁷

The promise of participating in such a front in combination with the understandable desire to gain political power inspired Julián Irías and other Central American Liberals such as Máximo B. Rosales of Honduras and José Castillo of Guatemala to join forces with the Mexican government. Double agents, however, had thoroughly infiltrated the isthmian revolutionary forces in their various staging areas throughout the United States and Central America. Local authorities were thus able to frustrate the exile invasion plans by arresting or deporting most of the revolutionary leaders.⁸ This action ended, at least for the remainder of Carranza’s presidency, revolutionary activity involving Nicaraguan Liberals and the Mexican government. It would not be until the administration of Plutarco Elías Calles that Nicaraguan Liberals would once again be able to find a receptive audience for their revolutionary plans within Mexican governmental circles. Such an opportunity would occur in the aftermath of the 1924 Nicaraguan presidential election.

In October 1924, a coalition ticket headed by the Conservative Carlos Solórzano and the Liberal Juan B. Sacasa defeated the Conservative faction led by Emiliano Chamorro. Mexican diplomats in Nicaragua were impressed by what they considered to be the enlightened policies of the coalition government. Indeed, on the eve of the 1924 election, the Mexican chargé d’affaires in Managua commented on how the “perfectly organized” Nicaraguan Confederation of Labor had given its support to the Solórzano-Sacasa ticket. The envoy pointed out that the representatives of the Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos (CROM) had been instrumental in organizing the Nicaraguan labor movement. The chargé noted in particular the vital liaison role that the Nicaraguan labor leader Salomón de la Selva played between the incipient Nicaraguan Confederation of Labor and CROM.⁹ The fact that de la Selva enjoyed a close working relationship with CROM’s leader Luis Morones served to cement this relationship even further.¹⁰ During the 1925 May Day celebration, Nicaraguan organized labor filled the streets of Managua with thousands of supporters, and visiting CROM officials gave a series of lectures in the Nicaraguan capital and the port city of Corinto. Although the Mexican diplomatic representative felt that the Nicaraguan proletariat was still a bit unsophisticated, he was, nonetheless, impressed by the fact that the Nicaraguan government and even the local police were extremely supportive of the workers and their organizations.¹¹ Thus at the very outset of the Solórzano-Sacasa administration, it appeared as if the institution of organized labor provided an important area of common interest linking Mexico and Nicaragua.

These ties between Mexican and Nicaraguan labor are significant, for President Calles had come into power in 1924 with strong support from the agrarian and labor sectors of the Mexican revolutionary coalition. These sectors accepted as a given the implementation of revolutionary change in Mexico and the concomitant development of an aggressive, and essentially anti-U. S. foreign policy which would endeavor to share the benefits of Mexico’s revolutionary experience with other governments in the hemisphere.¹² Accordingly, any specific linkages between the Mexican revolutionary leadership on the one hand and the seemingly progressive coalition government in Nicaragua on the other would present Calles with an excellent opportunity to extend the Carranza Doctrine to Central America.

From Nicaragua, the newly appointed Mexican minister, Antonio Médiz Bolio, affirmed that the government of Carlos Solórzano and Juan B. Sacasa advocated, like Mexico, a vigorous defense of national sovereignty and appeared to have a real interest in promoting the welfare of all sectors of Nicaraguan society. The Mexican envoy reported that the political opposition in Nicaragua, headed by the Conservative leader Emiliano Chamorro, represented a prointerventionist, proforeign tendency and a personalistic style of government dominated by traditional, clerical, and capitalistic values. It would be to Mexico’s advantage, according to Minister Médiz, to support the progressive policies of the Solórzano-Sacasa government and, above all, to serve in Nicaragua as a countervailing force to the influence of the United States. The Mexican diplomat felt certain that the Nicaraguan people were eager to follow Mexico’s example, and he suggested that the Mexican government should lose little time in showing Nicaragua “the path that we know through our own long and difficult experience.”¹³ Indeed, for Mexico, Nicaragua, under the coalition government, seemed to represent a logical point of departure for a Mexican isthmian policy based solidly on Carranza’s principles. The Mexican government acted to reinforce such a commitment when, on September 30, 1925, President Calles ordered Minister Médiz to transfer the seat of the joint Mexican Legation from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. Given the fact that Nicaragua appeared to be the country where Mexico could exert the most positive influence, it seemed logical, in the estimation of the Mexican authorities, to have their diplomatic representative stationed in Managua on a permanent basis.¹⁴

Within a month’s time, however, the Nicaraguan political scene underwent some significant changes. On October 25, 1925, Emiliano Chamorro and his supporters launched a coup d’etat. The Conservative leader quickly consolidated all effective military and political power in his own hands; reduced President Solórzano to mere figurehead status; and forced Vice-President Sacasa to flee the country. Using Sacasa’s enforced absence as a pretext, Chamorro’s subservient congress, purged after the coup of any Liberal taint, stripped Sacasa of his position and formally banished him from the country. With the traditional wing of the Conservative party now in the ascendancy, the Mexican Legation in Managua suggested to the Mexican Foreign Ministry some possible policy options which would allow Mexico to maintain a degree of influence in Nicaragua and at the same time reduce the dependence of the Conservative authorities on the United States. Mexico’s tendering of good offices to help resolve the boundary dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras and a concerted effort to negotiate trade agreements between Mexico and Nicaragua would be, in the estimation of the Mexican Legation, excellent vehicles to accomplish such a policy.¹⁵

Time, however, was not on Mexico’s side. Emiliano Chamorro soon pressured President Solórzano to resign, and the de facto ruler of Nicaragua formally assumed power on January 16, 1926. In an effort to consolidate his position on the international level, President Chamorro immediately sought diplomatic recognition from, among others, Mexico, the United States, and the other Central American nations. The Mexican government responded to Chamorro’s request by ordering the closure of the Mexican Legation in Managua.¹⁶ Minister Médiz then left Nicaragua and established his diplomatic residence on a permanent basis in San José, Costa Rica.¹⁷ When the United States and the other isthmian nations also refused to recognize Chamorro, the Nicaraguan strongman found himself in diplomatic limbo.¹⁸

Encouraged by Chamorro’s inability to gain diplomatic recognition, Juan B. Sacasa, the banished Liberal vice-president and now leader of the Nicaraguan Constitutionalist forces, traveled to Washington in an effort to gain support for an anti-Chamorro revolutionary movement. In March 1926, Sacasa had a series of interviews in the Department of State with Stokeley Morgan, the assistant chief of the Latin American Division. Morgan informed the Liberal leader that the United States government disapproved of any military activities aimed at the overthrow of the de facto regime in Nicaragua. The departmental official insisted, much to Sacasa’s exasperation, that the only policy the United States would approve would be the long-term “exercise of moral pressure” to restore legitimate rule to Nicaragua. Sacasa pointed out, however, that such a policy favored Chamorro, given the fact that he held power by force while his Constitutionalist opponents, on the other hand, were in effect being denied recourse to the only real means of restoring themselves to power. Morgan’s only response to Sacasa’s argument was a reiteration of the United States government’s “moral suasion” position; accordingly, Sacasa left the Department of State empty handed.¹⁹

In early May 1926, Liberal revolutionaries landed on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. Anticipating that their action would inspire anti-Chamorro uprisings throughout the entire country, the Liberals had planned to set up a rival government on the Atlantic side of the country and then link up with their militant sympathizers on the Pacific coast. Juan Sacasa explained the Liberal strategy in a letter to the Costa Rican foreign minister. Lamenting the failure of a policy of moral suasion, Sacasa insisted that the only alternative available to the Constitutionalist forces was open revolution. The Liberal leader indicated that the revolutionaries planned to proclaim him the constitutional president of Nicaragua, a position that he intended to accept. Once he organized his government on Nicaraguan soil, Sacasa hoped that Costa Rica would recognize this administration as the legitimate authority in Nicaragua.²⁰ Such was not to be, however, for Chamorro’s forces were able to defeat the revolutionaries on the Atlantic coast and then suppressed the Constitutionalist uprisings in the western portion of the country. Given his easy victory over the revolutionary forces, Emiliano Chamorro appeared to be in a very secure position. Juan Sacasa, however, was not ready to admit defeat. Indeed, the Liberal leader still had one major card remaining in his hand, and he now went to Mexico City to play it.

Once in residence in Mexico City, Sacasa moved rapidly to secure Mexican support for the Liberal cause. In a letter to President Calles, Sacasa indicated that he had exhausted all diplomatic options involving the United States and the Central American nations for achieving a peaceful resolution of the Nicaraguan crisis. The Liberal leader then regretfully stated that armed struggle appeared to be the only way to reestablish the rule of law in Nicaragua. Given the fact that the Liberal forces had failed in their previous military venture, Sacasa requested the “indispensable help” of Mexico to return constitutional authority to Nicaragua.²¹ Several days later he wrote the following to the Mexican executive: “Conforming with your suggestion I have elaborated a military and political plan of action to submit to the proper judgment of your Excellency.” After a meeting in which Calles and Sacasa discussed the military and political program that Sacasa and his fellow Liberals had drawn up, the Liberal leadership submitted for the Mexican president’s “revision and approval” the program which Sacasa indicated the Liberals, “with the direct and active support of your honorable government,” would “follow and uphold in the revolutionary movement to reestablish the Constitutional order of Nicaragua and in the campaign for the unification and independence of Central America. ”²²

Sacasa’s proposed agreement called for Mexican military support for the Liberals, efforts on Mexico’s part to gain recognition for Sacasa from the other Central American governments, and the tendering of Mexican diplomatic recognition as soon as Sacasa established himself on Nicaraguan territory. Once Nicaragua was under the control of the Liberals, Sacasa’s government was to begin revision of any treaties between Nicaragua and the United States that infringed on Nicaragua’s sovereignty. Sacasa also pledged that his government would work for a Central American union which, once established, would conclude a treaty of alliance with Mexico and would “adopt in its constitution the principles of international defense and nationalization of the sister Mexican Republic, following as a social and political program that developed by Mexico.”²³

Using the Sacasa draft treaty as a point of departure the Mexican government, over the course of the next several weeks, developed a formal treaty instrument which, although differing in certain respects from the Sacasa draft, emphatically committed Mexican moral and material support to the Liberal revolutionary cause.²⁴ The mutual commitments in the Calles-Sacasa Pact can be divided into those linking Mexico and the Liberal movement during and after the struggle for power. Since Sacasa failed to overthrow his Conservative adversaries, it is not possible to determine to what extent a Nicaraguan Liberal government would have fulfilled the provisions of the pact which dealt with Mexican-Nicaraguan relations in the postrevolutionary era. It is possible to discern, however, given the available evidence, the definite involvement of the Mexican government in Sacasa’s revolutionary movement.

Articles I, II, and III of the Calles-Sacasa Pact called on Mexico to provide financial backing as well as military advisors, arms, and munitions for the Liberal expeditionary forces. The Mexican government also agreed to transport the revolutionaries from Mexico to Nicaraguan territory.²⁵ Accordingly, beginning in mid-August and continuing through December 1926, a number of vessels cleared ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Mexico bearing arms and men for the Liberal revolutionary movement. Included among these ships were the Foam, Carmelita, Superior, Jalisco, and perhaps the most notorious gunrunner of them all, the Tropical.²⁶ The operations of this particular vessel provide an excellent means of assessing the Mexican government’s involvement in the Liberal revolutionary movement.

In mid-August 1926, the Mexican steamship Tropical left the port of Manzanillo and set a course for Salina Cruz, a port further down the Pacifìc coast of Mexico. On board were a group of Nicaraguan Liberals, including, among others, Julián Irías, who had reportedly purchased the ship from the Mexican government. Sailing with the Liberals were 50 Mexican civilians, most of whom were former military personnel, and 4 Mexican army machine gunners. The Mexican contingent was to serve as a military escort for the shipment of arms that the Tropical was carrying, a shipment which reportedly included 1,200,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rifles, and four machine guns.²⁷ Upon arrival at Salina Cruz, a portion of the military supplies was unloaded and then transported by train across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Puerto México where another Mexican vessel waited to carry the guns and ammunition to the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua.²⁸ After remaining in harbor for several days at Salina Cruz, the Tropical, under Mexican registry and flying the Mexican flag, sailed down the West coast of Mexico and Central America and eventually made contact with Liberal revolutionaries on Nicaragua’s Cosigüina Peninsula. After the men had landed, however, a detachment of Chamorro’s troops arrived on the scene either killing, taking prisoner, or putting to flight the members of the expeditionary force and capturing whatever equipment the Liberals had brought ashore.²⁹ The Tropical, meanwhile, had put to sea, but the vessel, running low on fuel, was forced to put in at the Salvadoran port of La Unión for gasoline.³⁰ It was at this point that the Tropical became an international cause célèbre.

The Tropical still had on board a considerable amount of arms; accordingly, the Nicaraguan revolutionaries in charge of the vessel wished to put to sea and return to Nicaragua as soon as the resupply operations were completed. The Salvadoran authorities, however, seeking to prevent the continuation of the filibustering expedition against Nicaragua from their own national territory, ordered the internment of the vessel.³¹ It took several weeks of delicate negotiations before Julio Madero, the Mexican minister to El Salvador, was able to reach an agreement with the Salvadoran government which allowed the Tropical to leave her enforced anchorage at La Unión on the condition that the vessel proceed directly to a Mexican port.³² Accordingly, the Tropical left La Unión on October 3, 1926 and arrived two days later at the Mexican port of Salina Cruz.³³

The only allusion to the Tropical incident in the available Mexican Foreign Ministry documentation lies buried deep within Minister Madero’s summary report regarding his diplomatic service in El Salvador, a report which the envoy sent on to the Mexican Foreign Ministry in December 1927. Madero took pride in the fact that he had been able to project a good social and professional image for Mexico during his two and one-half year tenure in El Salvador. “I have had,” Madero indicated,

At the time of the Tropical episode both Juan Sacasa and high ranking Mexican officials vigorously denied that Mexico was intervening in any way in Nicaraguan internal affairs.³⁵ In an interview years after the events described above, however, Emilio Portes Gil, a prominent figure in the Calles administration and subsequently president of Mexico, specifically acknowledged that Calles had indeed sent arms and munitions by sea to the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua.³⁶ Thus while the initial mission of the Tropical was abortive, this same vessel and others sailing from Mexican ports made subsequent voyages down the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the isthmus bringing military supplies to the Nicaraguan Liberals.³⁷

Bolstered by fresh infusions of arms and ammunition from Mexico, the Liberal forces began to exert significant military pressure on the Chamorro government. As the fighting intensified, however, both sides began to consider the possibility of a negotiated settlement. The United States government, eager to see peace restored to the Nicaraguan scene, encouraged the Liberals and Conservatives to settle their differences at the conference table.³⁸ Accordingly, a truce was declared and representatives of the warring factions met at the Pacific coast port of Corinto on the U.S.S. Denver. The attitude of the Mexican government apparently had a decided impact on the Liberal negotiating position, for during the morning conference session of October 19, 1926, the Liberal delegation publicly declared that their forces had received aid from Mexico and if they could not gain the acceptance of Sacasa at the conference they were prepared to carry on the revolution with continued Mexican support. To adhere to any other position at the conference would be, in the estimation of the Liberal delegation, a breach of faith with their Mexican allies.³⁹ The Conservatives, for their part, were unwilling to make any concessions to their opponents and the conference entered into a deadlock.⁴⁰ The Liberals thereupon withdrew from the Corinto Conference and proceeded with their earlier plans to establish a rival government at Puerto Cabezas on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. The Liberals assumed that Mexico, in compliance with Article VI of the Calles-Sacasa Pact, would tender the new administration immediate diplomatic recognition, a move that the authors of the agreement hoped the other Central American governments would soon follow.⁴¹ Armed with the moral force of diplomatic recognition on the one hand and Mexican guns on the other, the Sacasa government would then move to extend its authority throughout the entire country.

Once Sacasa was in power, the Calles government, through the implementation of its pact with the Liberals, would be able to extend the principles of the Carranza Doctrine to Nicaragua. Article V of the Calles-Sacasa Pact, for example, prescribed Nicaraguan abrogation of agreements which, like the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, constituted “a menace to the sovereignty and national integrity of Nicaragua,” and were thus “harmful to Latin American hegemony.” Article IV provided for Mexican colonization around the terminal points of the prospective Nicaraguan canal as well as in the region adjacent to the Gulf of Fonseca. If carried out, such a colonization program would preempt U.S. control of these vital areas. Article VII of the pact called for the Mexican government to make a loan of 10,000,000 gold pesos to the Sacasa regime once it had established itself in Managua. The loan was to be redeemed through a bond issue placed upon the Nicaraguan railroad system.⁴² In short, these articles promised to create a new strategic, political, and economic order in Nicaragua, an order under the aegis of Mexico and not the United States. Carranza himself would have been hard pressed to improve on this scenario.

Although certain, at this particular time, that an agreement linking Calles and Sacasa did indeed exist, officials of the United States government were not aware of its specific terms. Within a matter of days after the breakup of the Corinto Conference, however, these officials received an intimation of just what might occur in the wake of a Liberal victory in Nicaragua. On the evening of October 27, 1926, Isidro Fabela, a distinguished jurist, publicist, and former Mexican diplomat, addressed the Ibero-American Society in Mexico City. In attendance at the lecture were representatives of the local Liberal revolutionary junta and, in the words of the United States chargé, a number of “other Central American radicals.” The lecture was a bitter indictment of U.S. policy in Nicaragua in which Fabela predicted that following the imminent Liberal triumph, the new government would immediately denounce the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty and nullify all concessions and agreements with private American interests which infringed on Nicaraguan rights.⁴³

The seemingly increasing Mexican threat in combination with the uncertain Nicaraguan political situation following the failed Corinto peace talks helped to generate a significant amount of political maneuvering within Conservative government ranks. On October 31, 1926, Emiliano Chamorro resigned his position as president. After considerable behind- the-scenes activity on the part of Lawrence Dennis, the U.S. chargé d’affaires, the Nicaraguan Congress, on November 11, 1926, elected Adolfo Díaz, a Conservative party leader and long-time friend of U.S. interests, to serve as president for the remainder of Carlos Solórzano’s unexpired term. Now that Adolfo Díaz represented the best hope of the United States for the establishment of Nicaraguan peace and stability, the Department of State moved quickly to obtain the normalization of Nicaragua’s relations with the other isthmian nations. Accordingly, its Central American ministers received instructions to press the isthmian governments to join with the United States in recognizing the new Nicaraguan regime.⁴⁴ Washington’s acceptance of Díaz, however, did not necessarily guarantee the new regime’s acceptance elsewhere, for while El Salvador and Honduras soon followed the lead of the United States, Costa Rica and Guatemala did not. Indeed, despite the elaborate legal trappings which attended the transfer of presidential power in Nicaragua, considerable doubt persisted regarding the legitimacy of the Díaz government. Many observers, for example, believed that Díaz had played a significant, albeit covert, role in the original Chamorro coup d’etat. Since that time, Díaz had unquestionably served as a major force in the Chamorro regime, and now that he held power in his own name there were those, including in particular the Liberals and their Mexican allies, who felt that no substantive changes whatsoever had occurred on the Nicaraguan political scene.⁴⁵

The revolutionary movement thus continued, and early in December 1926 the Liberals established a rival government at Puerto Cabezas with Juan Sacasa as president. Mexico tendered immediate diplomatic recognition to Sacasa, and it appeared as if the Liberals had irrevocably committed themselves to a military resolution of Nicaragua’s longstanding political crisis. Adolfo Díaz, however, moved rapidly to counter this threat to his power. In a move reminiscent of his policy in 1912, Díaz requested American support to shore up the shaky foundations of his Conservative government. Coming as it did in the face of a direct military challenge from the Mexican-backed Liberals, the Díaz request for help probably came as no real surprise to the United States government. The Nicaraguan president, moreover, was not the only isthmian leader who viewed the Mexican-Liberal alliance with alarm. The governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras, pondering the negative implications of a Mexican colossus extending radicalism throughout the isthmus, had also expressed their concern to officials of the United States.⁴⁶

Responding at least in part to the persistent pleas of Díaz and other conservative Central American leaders for aid against the Liberals and their “bolshevik” allies, the United States, as we have already seen, made the decision to commit military forces in order to maintain its hegemony in the isthmian area. Accordingly, U.S. Marines once again landed on Nicaraguan soil.⁴⁷ With the establishment of garrisons and neutral zones throughout the country and the stationing of U.S. naval squadrons off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Nicaragua, the balance of power shifted solidly in favor of Adolfo Díaz and the Conservatives. Faced with a severe financial crisis at home and possessing, at best, only limited military resources, the Mexican government, having obviously underestimated President Coolidge’s propensity to intervene militarily, had no real option other than to disengage from its Nicaraguan adventure.⁴⁸

Against a backdrop of an ever increasing United States military presence in Nicaragua, President Calles, in early January 1927, discussed the isthmian crisis with a group of visiting American students. The Mexican executive, in reviewing the situation, lamented in particular the fact that the original victims of Emiliano Chamorro’s coup, President Solórzano and Vice-President Sacasa, had made considerable efforts to improve the lot of the Nicaraguan people. The current Nicaraguan situation, in the estimation of Calles, was really quite simple. There were two Nicaraguan governments: one founded on violence and one founded on legality. The Mexican view was that Juan Sacasa represented the legally constituted authority in Nicaragua. Calles then shifted his focus and informed his audience that “the real difficulty is oil.” The presidents implication was, of course, that the U. S. intervention in Nicaragua was simply another means by which Washington hoped to pressure Mexico into adopting a national petroleum policy that would be more favorable to U.S. oil interests.⁴⁹

In making such an assertion, however, President Calles left himself open to charges of hyperbole. While it might be possible to use the petroleum issue to explain, at least in part, U.S. policy in Nicaragua, there is little doubt that the Coolidge administration was very seriously concerned about the expanding Mexican presence in Central America. By the same token, while the Mexican government might have felt that an aggressive Central American policy could bolster its bargaining position with the United States vis-à-vis the petroleum question, one cannot ignore the fact of Mexico’s long-term association with the isthmus in general and Nicaraguan Liberals in particular. Accordingly, when President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg went public with their charges of Mexican bolshevism and isthmian intervention, the Mexican authorities lost little time in launching a rhetorical offensive of their own.

On January 12, 1927, the day after the Coolidge message to the United States Congress had appeared in the Mexico City press, Foreign Minister Aarón Sáenz, in a front-page newspaper story, categorically stated that Mexico had no political, territorial, or commercial interests whatsoever in Nicaragua.⁵⁰ In a subsequent declaration, Sáenz called Secretary of State Kellogg’s charges of Mexican intervention in Central America “unjust,” and firmly rejected the North American official’s intimation that Mexico was a nation under “bolshevist” influence.⁵¹ On January 20, 1927, Juan Saeasa, in a newspaper interview, stated emphatically that there never had been a pact binding Mexico and the Nicaraguan Liberals. Saeasa went on to say that the only aid Mexico had given his forces involved the shipment of arms and munitions.⁵²

These statements include elements of both truth and dissembling. Mexico, for example, did have specific interests in Nicaragua and, as we have seen, there most certainly was an agreement that linked the Calles government and the Nicaraguan Liberals under Saeasa. The Kellogg charges of Mexican bolshevism, however, had no real foundation in fact, a judgment shared by many contemporary observers and later scholars as well.⁵³ Saeasa, on the other hand, by openly admitting the fact of Mexican material support, not only contradicted his own earlier statements but also undercut official declarations on the part of the Mexican government.

Perhaps the most effective defense of Mexico’s Nicaraguan policy appeared in a January 12, 1927 editorial in Excélsior, the newspaper that many sources considered to be the semiofficial voice of the Mexican government.⁵⁴ The editorial took the position that Juan Sacasa was the legal president of Nicaragua while the United States, on the other hand, was backing up with armed force the illegitimate regime of Adolfo Díaz. After repeating the Coolidge charges regarding Mexican aid to Sacasa, the editors posed the following questions:

The editors went on to point out that regardless of any other motives that the Mexican government might have for its involvement in Nicaragua, the moral objective of aiding a fellow Latin American nation in establishing a constitutional and representative government was unassailable. The Coolidge policy, on the other hand, was to support an illegitimate government imposed on the Nicaraguan people through violence. Thus on the moral plane alone, Mexico had pursued, in the estimation of the editors, a positive and progressive policy, while President Coolidge’s morality condoned an armed intervention in Nicaragua and attempted to disguise this intervention with the hypocritical mask of puritan righteousness.⁵⁵ In this way, through a program of legitimate aid to a recognized government, the Mexican authorities justified their Nicaraguan policy and implicitly asserted their continued adherence to the anti-imperialist and noninterventionist principles of the Carranza Doctrine.

In reviewing the 1926-27 Nicaraguan crisis it is apparent that both the United States and Mexico had hegemonic pretensions in Central America. Mexico, in the aftermath of her violent revolutionary experience, was attempting to establish the political, economic, and cultural linkages that territorial propinquity and historical association seemed to justify. The reformist, renovating spirit that permeated Mexican society during this period seemed to have found a kindred, albeit incipient, movement in the Solórzano-Sacasa administration in Nicaragua. Accordingly, Mexico remained loyal to this regime in the wake of the Chamorro coup d’etat. The resultant Calles-Sacasa Pact reflected not only this loyalty but also the Mexican government’s blueprint for establishing a Mexican presence in Central America. Such a policy, of course, abutted directly against the United States government’s perception of viable isthmian geopolitical reality. North American policy called for, at least from the perspective of a Calvin Coolidge and a Frank B. Kellogg, a Central America in which conservative governments subservient to United States strategic and economic interests maintained themselves in power. When a seemingly radical Mexican government appeared to threaten this client-state relationship in Nicaragua, the Coolidge administration sent in the marines.

The United States government’s response to the 1926–1927 Nicaraguan crisis brings to mind the classic admonition of Harold and Margaret Sprout. “ . . . [W]hat matters in making policies . . . is how the policymaker imagines his environment to be, not how it actually is. Conversely outcomes, accomplishments, the operational results of policy decisions, depend on conditions as they actually are, not as someone imagines them to be.”⁵⁶ As we have already seen, the Coolidge administration’s perception of a Mexican “bolshevik” menace was more chimerical than real. As the Sprouts indicate, however, policymakers act on how they imagine the environment to be, not necessarily on “how it actually is.” Accordingly, President Coolidge acted on his perception of a “foreign” or Mexican “bolshevik” threat to North American interests on the isthmus. While the president might have erred regarding Mexico’s “bolshevist” connection, he most certainly was correct in his recognition of a Mexican power play in Central America. The renewal of U. S. military intervention in Nicaragua was sufficient to stay Mexico’s hand and, to a certain extent, probably induced the Calles government to adopt a more conciliatory posture in its future relations with the United States.⁵⁷ What followed for the United States and Nicaragua also tended to bear out the final part of the Sprout paradigm, for it would be actual conditions on the isthmus which would, in turn, determine the results or outcomes of U. S. policy.

Once the marines had landed, the most significant reality that U. S. policy makers had to contend with was the force of Nicaraguan nationalism which erupted in July 1927 in the form of the Sandino insurgency. The “outcomes” of Washington’s decision to intervene included an extremely long (1926-33) period of military occupation, the creation of a purportedly apolitical Nicaraguan constabulary, and, after the ultimate withdrawal of the marines early in 1933, Sandino’s voluntary demobilization. Sandino’s death at the hands of the Nicaraguan National Guard came within a year’s time, thus setting the stage for the long-term (1936-79) dictatorship of the Somozas. The reality of Nicaraguan nationalism that men like Sacasa and then Sandino represented would remain subliminal until the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, when a new generation of Nicaraguan nationalists, putatively linked with another “outside” force, would once again challenge United States hegemony on the isthmus. Ironically, the “ins” of the 1920s have become the “outs” of the 1980s. Indeed, as present day Nicaraguan factions, much like their early twentieth-century predecessors, seek to exploit outside forces to their own advantage, one is hard pressed to discern just who is (or was) manipulating whom.