In 1891, soon after the fall of President José Manuel Balmaceda, a group of U.S. sailors serving on the Baltimore went ashore for liberty in Valparaíso. Doubtless the bluejackets hoped to enjoy the seamy pleasures of the port’s famous bars and brothels. While some sailors may have achieved this purpose, others encountered a more hostile reaction. A fight, which erupted between U.S. service personnel and the habitués of the True Blue Saloon, mushroomed into a riot that left two North Americans dead and more than a dozen wounded.
A U.S. investigation team, claiming that the local police had turned a blind eye to the fighting, held the Chilean government responsible for the injuries sustained. Predictably, Valparaíso’s officials denied any responsibility, dismissing the incident as a criminal matter. The situation might not have worsened if Chilean Minister of Foreign Relations Manuel A. Matta had not deliberately published a statement which ridiculed the U.S. report. The normally torpid President Benjamin Harrison unexpectedly acted, demanding compensation as well as an apology for the deaths and the injuries sustained. For a time it seemed that war might erupt between the two nations. The Moneda, however, eventually capitulated to the White House’s demands. Still, the Baltimore incident was not without anxiety: some North Americans even feared that the vastly superior Chilean fleet would attack San Francisco. The United States did not strike a good bargain: in return for Santiago’s apology and reparations, Washington also earned the enmity of generations of Chileans.
While Joyce Goldberg has done a good job relating the story of the Baltimore, the book has some problems. The author has not placed the incident within the broader context of Chilean-U. S. relations. In part this problem arises because Goldberg does not use many Chilean sources. For example, she makes little reference to the Chilean popular press. Moreover, she tends to indulge in certain speculations which are often not only without foundation but extremely controversial. For example, she states that Republican congressmen may have regarded the Chilean Congressionalists as Confederates (p. 38); and that the Baltimore incident probably caused Chile to boycott the Columbian Exposition and side with Spain in 1898 (p. 142).
This work does not seem to have a clear thesis. Indeed, there is a one-dimensional quality to the study, which seems more a narrative than an analysis. Goldberg seems to expect the reader to accept her ideas without offering evidence. She alleges, for example, that the Baltimore incident reveals “that, however vaguely, the U.S. populace was beginning to feel a growing moralistic world responsibility” (p. 142), but offers no proof of what the popular feeling really was.
In a sense, “Fighting Bob Evans’’ was right: sailors, even drunken ones, are entitled to the protection of the law. Nations have a right to expect that their citizens will be treated civilly. Clearly, the Moneda felt the same way: in the 1870s, for example, it became furious when Bolivian officials mistreated Chileans working in the Caracoles region. It became equally irate when Chileans emigrated to work on the Panama Canal. If Washington can be distressed over the taking of hostages in present-day Lebanon, then attacks on uniformed members of the U.S. government would also produce anger in 1891.
Since this book does not materially expand our understanding of the Chilean side of the issue, U.S. specialists might find it more useful than would Latin Americanists.
