José Santos Zelaya
Encyclopedia
José Santos Zelaya López (1 November 1853 Managua
- 17 May 1919 New York City
) was the President
of Nicaragua
from 25 July 1893 to 21 December 1909.
, and mistress Juana López Ramírez. His father José María was married to Rosario Fernández.
party and enacted a number of progressive
programs, including improving public education
, building railroads, and establishing steam ship lines and enacting constitutional rights that provided for equal rights, property guarantees, habeas corpus, compulsory vote, compulsory education, the protection of arts and industry, minority representation, and the separation of state powers. However, his wish for national sovereignty often led him to policies contrary to colonialist
interests.
In 1894, he took control of the Mosquito Coast
by military force; it had long been the subject of dispute, home to a native kingdom claimed as a protectorate
by the British Empire
. Zelaya's fortitude paid off, and the United Kingdom, not wishing to go to war for this distant land of little value to the Empire, recognized Nicaraguan sovereignty over the area.
The possibility of building a canal
across the isthmus of Central America
had been the topic of serious discussion since the 1820s, and Nicaragua
was long a favored location. When the United States
shifted its interests to Panama
, Zelaya negotiated with Germany
(who happened to be in the middle of a cold war with the U.S over Caribbean ports) and Japan
in an unsuccessful effort to have a canal constructed in his state. Fearful that president Zelaya might generate an alternative foreign alignment in the region, the U.S. labeled him a tyrant in opposition to U.S. planned hegemony.
José Zelaya had ambitions of reuniting the United States of Central America, with, he hoped, himself as national president. With this aim in mind, he gave aid to liberal federalist factions in other Central American nations. This threatened to create a full scale Central American war which would endanger the United States Panamanian canal and give European nations, such as Germany, an excuse to intervene to protect the collection of their bank's payments in the region or if failing that then demand a land concession.
The Zelaya administration had growing friction with the United States government, for example while the French government had inquired to the U.S. whether a loan to Nicaragua would be deemed unfriendly, the U.S. secretary of state required the loan to be conditional on U.S. relations. After the loan was pending on the Paris stock exchange, the U.S. further isolated Nicaragua by claiming any money Zelaya would receive "would be without doubt spent to purchase munitions to oppress his neighbors" and in "hostility to peace and progress in Central America." The US State Department also demanded that all investments in Central America would also need be approved by the U.S. as a means to protect U.S. interests and to overthrow president Zelaya according to a French minister.
The U.S. started giving aid to his Conservative and Liberal opponents in Nicaragua who broke out in open rebellion in October 1909, led by Liberal General Juan J. Estrada. Nicaragua sent its forces into Costa Rica
to suppress Estrada's pro U.S. destabilizing forces, but U.S. officials deemed the incursion as an affront to Estrada's aims and attempted to coerce Costa Rica into acting first against Nicaragua, but Foreign Minister Ricardo Fernández Guardia assured Calvo that Costa Rica was determined "not to enter such dangerous actions as those proposed by Washington." It "considered the joint action proposed contrary to the Washington treaty and desired to maintain a neutral attitude." Costa Rican officials considered the United States a more serious threat to Central American peace and harmony than Zelaya's Nicaragua. Costa Rica Foreign Minister Fernández Guardia insisted, "We do not understand here what interests can the Washington government have that Costa Rica assumes a resolutely aggressive position against Nicaragua, with the danger of compromising the observation of the...conventions of December 20, 1907.... It is in Central America's interest that U.S. action with respect to Nicaragua should assume the character of an international conflict and in no sense the character of an intervention tolerated and even less solicited or supported by the other signatory republics of the Washington Treaty.
In historian Juan Jose Arevalo book titled The Shark and the Sardines, Juan noted:
landed in Nicaragua's Bluefields
port , supposedly to create a neutral zone to protect foreign lives and property but which also acted as a base of operations for the anti-Zelayan rebels. On 17 December 1909, Zelaya turned over power to José Madriz
and fled to Spain. Madriz called for continued struggle against the mercenaries, but in August 1910 diplomat Thomas Dawson obtained the withdrawal of Madriz. Thereafter the U.S. called for a constituent assembly to write a constitution for Nicaragua and the vacant presidency was filled by a series of Conservative politicians including Adolfo Diaz
. The U.S. Marines remained stationed in Nicaragua until 1932, with one brief withdrawal in 1925. They also supervised several Nicaraguan elections during, this time, though through free trade
and loans, the U.S. exercised strong control over the country.
of the Royal Order of Our Lady of the Concepcion of Vila Viçosa of Portugal
.
Managua
Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua as well as the department and municipality by the same name. It is the largest city in Nicaragua in terms of population and geographic size. Located on the southwestern shore of Lake Xolotlán or Lake Managua, the city was declared the national capital in...
- 17 May 1919 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) was the President
President of Nicaragua
The position of President of Nicaragua was created in the Constitution of 1854. From 1825 until the Constitution of 1838 the title of the position was known as Head of State and from 1838 to 1854 as Supreme Director .-Heads of State of Nicaragua within the Federal Republic of Central America...
of Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
from 25 July 1893 to 21 December 1909.
Early life
He was a son of José María Zelaya Irigoyen, born in NicaraguaNicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, and mistress Juana López Ramírez. His father José María was married to Rosario Fernández.
Politics
Zelaya was of Nicaragua's liberalLiberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
party and enacted a number of progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
programs, including improving public education
Public education
State schools, also known in the United States and Canada as public schools,In much of the Commonwealth, including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the terms 'public education', 'public school' and 'independent school' are used for private schools, that is, schools...
, building railroads, and establishing steam ship lines and enacting constitutional rights that provided for equal rights, property guarantees, habeas corpus, compulsory vote, compulsory education, the protection of arts and industry, minority representation, and the separation of state powers. However, his wish for national sovereignty often led him to policies contrary to colonialist
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
interests.
In 1894, he took control of the Mosquito Coast
Mosquito Coast
The Caribbean Mosquito Coast historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras, and part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests...
by military force; it had long been the subject of dispute, home to a native kingdom claimed as a protectorate
Protectorate
In history, the term protectorate has two different meanings. In its earliest inception, which has been adopted by modern international law, it is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity...
by the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
. Zelaya's fortitude paid off, and the United Kingdom, not wishing to go to war for this distant land of little value to the Empire, recognized Nicaraguan sovereignty over the area.
Reelection, possibility of a canal, and response from the US
José Santos Zelaya was reelected president in 1902 and again in 1906. Both under questionable circumstances for his original rise to the presidency was by a military coup.The possibility of building a canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...
across the isthmus of Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
had been the topic of serious discussion since the 1820s, and Nicaragua
Nicaragua Canal
The Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal was a proposed waterway through Nicaragua to connect the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean...
was long a favored location. When the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
shifted its interests to Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, Zelaya negotiated with Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(who happened to be in the middle of a cold war with the U.S over Caribbean ports) and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in an unsuccessful effort to have a canal constructed in his state. Fearful that president Zelaya might generate an alternative foreign alignment in the region, the U.S. labeled him a tyrant in opposition to U.S. planned hegemony.
José Zelaya had ambitions of reuniting the United States of Central America, with, he hoped, himself as national president. With this aim in mind, he gave aid to liberal federalist factions in other Central American nations. This threatened to create a full scale Central American war which would endanger the United States Panamanian canal and give European nations, such as Germany, an excuse to intervene to protect the collection of their bank's payments in the region or if failing that then demand a land concession.
The Zelaya administration had growing friction with the United States government, for example while the French government had inquired to the U.S. whether a loan to Nicaragua would be deemed unfriendly, the U.S. secretary of state required the loan to be conditional on U.S. relations. After the loan was pending on the Paris stock exchange, the U.S. further isolated Nicaragua by claiming any money Zelaya would receive "would be without doubt spent to purchase munitions to oppress his neighbors" and in "hostility to peace and progress in Central America." The US State Department also demanded that all investments in Central America would also need be approved by the U.S. as a means to protect U.S. interests and to overthrow president Zelaya according to a French minister.
The U.S. started giving aid to his Conservative and Liberal opponents in Nicaragua who broke out in open rebellion in October 1909, led by Liberal General Juan J. Estrada. Nicaragua sent its forces into Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
to suppress Estrada's pro U.S. destabilizing forces, but U.S. officials deemed the incursion as an affront to Estrada's aims and attempted to coerce Costa Rica into acting first against Nicaragua, but Foreign Minister Ricardo Fernández Guardia assured Calvo that Costa Rica was determined "not to enter such dangerous actions as those proposed by Washington." It "considered the joint action proposed contrary to the Washington treaty and desired to maintain a neutral attitude." Costa Rican officials considered the United States a more serious threat to Central American peace and harmony than Zelaya's Nicaragua. Costa Rica Foreign Minister Fernández Guardia insisted, "We do not understand here what interests can the Washington government have that Costa Rica assumes a resolutely aggressive position against Nicaragua, with the danger of compromising the observation of the...conventions of December 20, 1907.... It is in Central America's interest that U.S. action with respect to Nicaragua should assume the character of an international conflict and in no sense the character of an intervention tolerated and even less solicited or supported by the other signatory republics of the Washington Treaty.
In historian Juan Jose Arevalo book titled The Shark and the Sardines, Juan noted:
From April 1908 the United States kept, off the coasts of Nicaragua on the Atlantic, a squadron made up of the cruisers Washington, Colorado, South Dakota, and Albany, and other smaller units, with a total contingent of four thousand men. These men--better said, their officers--had instructions to take advantage of the first opportunity to intimidate the arrogant and uncooperative president. In the city of Bluefields, overlooking the squadron, there was a State Department representative with precise orders about the situation: Consul Thomas Moffat.
This professor of psychology, in that chapter of psychology that could be called the "Sewers of Psychology" or the "Psychology of the Sewers" found some Nicaraguans who were making talk about country and freedom--men who were enemies of Zelaya and admirers of Wall Street. Consul Moffat, professor of mathematics in the chapter of mathematics applying to gastronomy--that is, the chapter limited to giving the ciphers for eating today, for eating tomorrow and for eating day after tomorrow--made the first dollars drop into the limp pocketbooks of the men opposed to Zelaya and was thus able to prove that psychology and mathematics have a common root. In the same way, he was able to prove that in the consciences of certain men, the sentiment of patriotism vibrates at the same wave length as a one-hundred dollar bill and that the two are woven into the same emotions regarding the future., progress and freedom.
Such Nicaraguan "patriots" were willing to do anything, just in order to be able to govern Nicaragua and administer the affairs of Nicaragua, i.e., to be the ones to carry out the buying and selling transactions. The most important one on the team was Adolfo Diaz, empty-headed as a drum, who was employed at a salary of eighty dollars a month, as bookkeeper in the La Luz and Los Angeles Mining Company. Another of the leaders was Emiliano Chamorro, surly, disagreeable member of the Conservative Party, an opponent of no civic feeling and no moral standards other than his ambition.
These two negotiated the complicity and treason of Nicaragua's military governor on the Atlantic Coast--General Juan José Estrada, to whom the Presidency or administration of the country was offered as reward. With these three "patriots" at the head of Zelaya's enemies, the Yankee squadron believed they could spare themselves the physical unpleasantness of a landing operation. The Nicaraguans would "settle the problem for themselves." Of course, those Nicaraguans were authorized to use--and did use--the Stars and Stripes.
When the rebel action began on October 10, 1909, Adolfo Diaz contributed six hundred thousand dollars. . . . On September 9, 1912, Estrada confessed to THE NEW YORK TIMES the origin of this money: he had been given a million dollars by the Yankee companies located in Nicaragua; two hundred thousand dollars from the firm of Joseph Beers and one hundred fifty thousand dollars from Samuel Weil.
Ships of the United Fruit Company carried men and ammunition for the "liberators." Between the big oceangoing cruisers and the shore, two little warships moved about, lending service as "intelligence"--the Dubuque and the Paducah.
Two Yankee citizens were taken prisoner for exploding a dynamite bomb just as the Nicaraguan military transport was coming down the San Juan River. After they confessed, these two foreign delinquents were shot by a firing squad. Their execution provided a glorious new pretext for the men who were acting in the State Department's farce. They expelled Zelaya's diplomatic representative from Washington, and they declared diplomatic relations severed with the legitimate government of Nicaragua. Mister Knox, Secretary of State and legal adviser to the Fletcher family, who, by pure coincidence, were owners of mineral exploitations in Nicaragua (among them La Luz and Los Angeles Mining Company) said in the expulsion note:
The government of the United States is convinced that the ideals and the will of the majority of the Nicaraguans are represented by the present revolution more faithfully than by the government of President Zelaya.
US sets up base of operations in Nicaragua
Officers of Zelaya's government executed some captured rebels; two United States mercenaries were among them, and the U.S. government declared their execution grounds for a diplomatic break between the countries which later lead to formal intervention. At the start of December, United States MarinesUnited States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
landed in Nicaragua's Bluefields
Bluefields
Bluefields is the capital of the municipality of the same name, and of Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur in Nicaragua. It was also capital of the former Zelaya Department, which was divided into North and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions...
port , supposedly to create a neutral zone to protect foreign lives and property but which also acted as a base of operations for the anti-Zelayan rebels. On 17 December 1909, Zelaya turned over power to José Madriz
José Madriz
José Madriz Rodriguez was the President of Nicaragua from 21 December 1909 to 20 August 1910.Madriz was born on 21 July 1867, in León, Nicaragua. After President José Santos Zelaya resigned on December 21, 1909 in the face of an armed revolt and United States opposition, Madriz assumed the...
and fled to Spain. Madriz called for continued struggle against the mercenaries, but in August 1910 diplomat Thomas Dawson obtained the withdrawal of Madriz. Thereafter the U.S. called for a constituent assembly to write a constitution for Nicaragua and the vacant presidency was filled by a series of Conservative politicians including Adolfo Diaz
Adolfo Díaz
Adolfo Díaz Recinos was the President of Nicaragua between 9 May 1911 and 1 January 1917 and between 14 November 1926 and 1 January 1929...
. The U.S. Marines remained stationed in Nicaragua until 1932, with one brief withdrawal in 1925. They also supervised several Nicaraguan elections during, this time, though through free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
and loans, the U.S. exercised strong control over the country.
Other notes
He was the 884th Grand CrossGrand Cross
The phrase Grand Cross is used to denote the highest grade in many orders of knighthood. Sometimes the holders of the highest grade are referred to "knights grand cross" or just "grand crosses"; in other cases the actual insignia itself is called "the grand cross".Alternatively, in some other...
of the Royal Order of Our Lady of the Concepcion of Vila Viçosa of Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
.