The Hispanic Nations of the New World [55]
express regret for the ill feeling between the two countries which had arisen out of the Panama incident, provided that such expression were made mutual; and, as a species of indemnity, it agreed to pay for canal rights to be acquired in Colombian territory and for the lease of certain islands as naval stations. But neither the terms nor the amount of the compensation proved acceptable. Instead, Colombia urged that the whole matter be referred to the judgment of the tribunal at The Hague.
Alluding to the use made of the liberties won in the struggle for emancipation from Spain by the native land of Miranda, Bolivar, and Sucre, on the part of the country which had been in the vanguard of the fight for freedom from a foreign yoke, a writer of Venezuela once declared that it had not elected legally a single President; had not put democratic ideas or institutions into practice; had lived wholly under dictatorships; had neglected public instruction; and had set up a large number of oppressive commercial monopolies, including the navigation of rivers, the coastwise trade, the pearl fisheries, and the sale of tobacco, salt, sugar, liquor, matches, explosives, butter, grease, cement, shoes, meat, and flour. Exaggerated as the indictment is and applicable also, though in less degree, to some of the other backward countries of Hispanic America, it contains unfortunately a large measure of truth. Indeed, so far as Venezuela itself is concerned, this critic might have added that every time a "restorer," "regenerator," or "liberator" succumbed there, the old craze for federalism again broke out and menaced the nation with piecemeal destruction. Obedient, furthermore, to the whims of a presidential despot, Venezuela perpetrated more outrages on foreigners and created more international friction after 1899 than any other land in Spanish America had ever done.
While the formidable Guzman Blanco was still alive, the various Presidents acted cautiously. No sooner had he passed away than disorder broke out afresh. Since a new dictator thought he needed a longer term of office and divers other administrative advantages, a constitution incorporating them was framed and published in the due and customary manner. This had hardly gone into operation when, in 1895, a contest arose with Great Britain about the boundaries between Venezuela and British Guiana. Under pressure from the United States, however, the matter was referred to arbitration, and Venezuela came out substantially the loser.
In 1899 there appeared on the scene a personage compared with whom Zelaya was the merest novice in the art of making trouble. This was Cipriano Castro, the greatest international nuisance of the early twentieth century. A rude, arrogant, fearless, energetic, capricious mountaineer and cattleman, he regarded foreigners no less than his own countryfolk, it would seem, as objects for his particular scorn, displeasure, exploitation, or amusement, as the case might be. He was greatly angered by the way in which foreigners in dispute with local officials avoided a resort to Venezuelan courts and--still worse--rejected their decisions and appealed instead to their diplomatic representatives for protection. He declared such a procedure to be an affront to the national dignity. Yet foreigners were usually correct in arming that judges appointed by an arbitrary President were little more than figureheads, incapable of dispensing justice, even were they so inclined.
Jealous not only of his personal prestige but of what he imagined, or pretended to imagine, were the rights of a small nation, Castro tried throughout to portray the situation in such a light as to induce the other Hispanic republics also to view foreign interference as a dire peril to their own independence and sovereignty; and he further endeavored to involve the United States in a struggle with European powers as a means possibly of testing the efficacy of the Monroe Doctrine or of laying bare before the world the evil nature of American imperialistic designs.
By the year 1901, in which Venezuela
Alluding to the use made of the liberties won in the struggle for emancipation from Spain by the native land of Miranda, Bolivar, and Sucre, on the part of the country which had been in the vanguard of the fight for freedom from a foreign yoke, a writer of Venezuela once declared that it had not elected legally a single President; had not put democratic ideas or institutions into practice; had lived wholly under dictatorships; had neglected public instruction; and had set up a large number of oppressive commercial monopolies, including the navigation of rivers, the coastwise trade, the pearl fisheries, and the sale of tobacco, salt, sugar, liquor, matches, explosives, butter, grease, cement, shoes, meat, and flour. Exaggerated as the indictment is and applicable also, though in less degree, to some of the other backward countries of Hispanic America, it contains unfortunately a large measure of truth. Indeed, so far as Venezuela itself is concerned, this critic might have added that every time a "restorer," "regenerator," or "liberator" succumbed there, the old craze for federalism again broke out and menaced the nation with piecemeal destruction. Obedient, furthermore, to the whims of a presidential despot, Venezuela perpetrated more outrages on foreigners and created more international friction after 1899 than any other land in Spanish America had ever done.
While the formidable Guzman Blanco was still alive, the various Presidents acted cautiously. No sooner had he passed away than disorder broke out afresh. Since a new dictator thought he needed a longer term of office and divers other administrative advantages, a constitution incorporating them was framed and published in the due and customary manner. This had hardly gone into operation when, in 1895, a contest arose with Great Britain about the boundaries between Venezuela and British Guiana. Under pressure from the United States, however, the matter was referred to arbitration, and Venezuela came out substantially the loser.
In 1899 there appeared on the scene a personage compared with whom Zelaya was the merest novice in the art of making trouble. This was Cipriano Castro, the greatest international nuisance of the early twentieth century. A rude, arrogant, fearless, energetic, capricious mountaineer and cattleman, he regarded foreigners no less than his own countryfolk, it would seem, as objects for his particular scorn, displeasure, exploitation, or amusement, as the case might be. He was greatly angered by the way in which foreigners in dispute with local officials avoided a resort to Venezuelan courts and--still worse--rejected their decisions and appealed instead to their diplomatic representatives for protection. He declared such a procedure to be an affront to the national dignity. Yet foreigners were usually correct in arming that judges appointed by an arbitrary President were little more than figureheads, incapable of dispensing justice, even were they so inclined.
Jealous not only of his personal prestige but of what he imagined, or pretended to imagine, were the rights of a small nation, Castro tried throughout to portray the situation in such a light as to induce the other Hispanic republics also to view foreign interference as a dire peril to their own independence and sovereignty; and he further endeavored to involve the United States in a struggle with European powers as a means possibly of testing the efficacy of the Monroe Doctrine or of laying bare before the world the evil nature of American imperialistic designs.
By the year 1901, in which Venezuela