Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1878
No. 63.
Mr. Williamson to Mr. Evarts.
Guatemala, January 18, 1878. (Received February 16.)
Sir: Referring to my No. 747, I have, now the honor to hand you a copy and translation of the decree of the Government of Costa Rica breaking off relations with that of Guatemala; a copy and translation of the letter of the minister of foreign affairs of Costa Rica in reply to that of the minister of foreign affairs of Guatemala, sent to you with my No. 734, and a copy and translation of a printed circular sent to this and other legations here by the minister of foreign affairs of Costa Rica, all relating to the rupture of relations between Costa Rica and Guatemala.
The decree announces the closing of relations of every kind between Guatemala and Costa Rica.
The answer of the minister of foreign affairs of Costa Rica is a defense of President Guardia against the charges made against him by the minister of Guatemala, and seems to be intended to show that those charges, if true, do not justify the government of Guatemala in the course it has adopted.
The printed circular is mainly a repetition in a different form of the reply to Dr. Montufar. The government of Guatemala appears to anticipate war. The army is being recruited. A person has been sent to San Francisco recently to buy a steamship to be equipped as a man-of-war.
I have, &c.,
Thomas Guardia, general-in-chief of the army and Provisional President of the Republic of Costa Rica:
Considering that the Government of Guatemala has refused to recognize the Government of Costa Rica, and that an act so grave and offensive against this republic demands the adoption of a measure for the preservation of the national dignity and honor, decrees:
The Government of Costa Rica, not recognized by the Government of Guatemala, closes all official relations with that republic while it is governed by General Refino Barrios.
- T. GUARDIA.
- José Ma. Castro,
Secretary of State, &c. - Rafael Machado,
Secretary of War, &c. - Salvador Sara,
Secretary of Finance, &c. - M. J. Zammorro,
Secretary of Public Improvements, &c.
Mr. Castro to Mr. Montufar.
Sir: I have received the note dated the 30th of November last, in which, in the name of, and according to instructions of, the Señor President of Guatemala, your excellency answers the one my predecessor had the honor to direct to you under date of September 30 of the present year.
The latter informed the supreme Government of Guatemala, in the manner required by the subject, that the municipalities and notable citizens of the Republic of Costa Rica had named as Provisional President the general-in-chief of the army, Señor Don Tomas Guardia, that in the mean time, a political code being established, the election of a Constitutional President could be proceeded with.
The note answering this was not sent to the minister of foreign relations, but to Dr. Don José Ma. Castro, who in effect was actually filling that elevated charge. I consider as an involuntary error the suppression of the practices which are rigorous in communications of this character, and I eagerly desire to consider it so, because it is impossible that it can be hidden from the indisputable skill of your excellency that, not directing it to the minister, but to the private person, your note would fail to reach any signification. In the view, then, and with the understanding that the note which your excellency has thought well to address me is a diplomatic one, I proceed to answer it in the name and by the instructions of the General President of Costa Rica.
It commences by not entering upon qualifying terms in respect to the illegality or legality of the extraordinary changes in this republic, and I cannot but felicitate your excellency for having laid aside so extemporaneous a qualification.
Costa Rica does not fear without doubt a comparative study in regard to this particular, but the customs of all cultivated people and the teachings of the most eminent publicists agree in reputing as an indiscreet disturbance of public peace and of the respect due from one state to another the slightest attempt to discuss the fundamental institutions to which either of them may voluntarily submit.
It continues: That, remembering the relations that existed between your government and the Señor General Guardia, the President of Guatemala, has seen with sorrow that they are neither pleasant nor satisfactory, nor do they argue happy results; and after explaining minutely two distinct charges against the person now at the head of the government of this republic, your excellency concludes by declaring that while that person remains in charge of the high trust confided to him by his fellow-citizens, the Government of Guatemala will not recognize the Government of Costal Rica.
Allow me to call your Excellence’s attention to the novelty such conduct may imply in diplomatic practice and principles. The antecedents of a Governor and the proceedings of a government can, without doubt, occasion the rupture of the good understanding reigning between two states in which it is seen that degrees may exist, and it may be conceived that they may reach occasions and may reach with frequency the terrible results of an armed struggle; but the recognition of a de-facto government is an entirely different thing, and it has not been the practice, until now, recognized or followed in any example worthy of mention, that there should be inspired sentiments of sympathy or antipathy, in order to recognize the self-evident fact that a certain government directs the destinies of a country.
I repeat, that the acknowledgment of a government does not depend nor can it depend on the sympathies that it inspires, but on the vitality with which it exists, and I will permit myself to interpret the note of your Excellency, deducing from its terms that the Supreme Government of Guatemala does not refuse to recognize the government presided over by Señor General Guardia, but that it breaks off with respect to him diplomatic relations heretofore existing.
This remains admitted, but no and never the unauthorized charges with which pretensions are made to justify a measure of so lamentable a character.
It is certain that the Señor General Don Tom as Guardia had the honor to represent Costa Rica as Diplomatic Envoy near the Government of Guatemala, and of concluding with that government a treaty of friendship and alliance that, on account of reasons that it is not now necessary to examine, was never exchanged, and therefore never complied with.
If the Señor General Guardia, in the discharge of his mission, had incurred the displeasure of your excellency’s government, I could understand that his conduct would be remembered as an obstacle to the maintenance of the good relations between our governments; but your Excellency acknowledges in your note that the diplomatic functions of the Señor General Guardia were discharged in a satisfactory manner.
It will be immediately seen that he is blamed for actions that do not belong to him; and, in truth, it is incomprehensible that he who was not at the time governor of Costa Rica [Page 78] should be now made responsible for the fault of the non-exchange and ratification of the treaty. These acts were outside and above the pleasure of the Minister, who received his instructions to celebrate it from his Government.
As regards the Señor General President of Costa Rica having ever pretended to promote internal discord in Guatemala, decorum will allow me to say nothing more than that your Excellency’s Government is badly informed, and that the Government of Costa Rica was surprised, and with justice, that there had been consigned to so important a document as your Excellency’s note an assertion of so grave a character, when the government in whose name it was made could not, if obliged to do so, uphold it with a single proof. Contradicted thus in accordance with historic truth the foundations of the order of affairs which the General President of Guatemala has esteemed convenient to establish with Costa Rica, this Government finds itself called upon by self-respect to accept the painful necessity.
Consequently, there will be published a decree closing official relations between the two republics; this note being the commentary of the inevitable determination and the only reply that corresponds to the manifestations which I answer.
Nothing, however, has been said that opposes, in any way, my concluding the present communication by subscribing myself with the most distinguished consideration.
Your Excellency’s obedient servant,
To his Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Guatemala, Doctor Don Lorenzo Montufar.
Mr. Castro to Mr. Williamson.
National Palace, San José, December 25, 1877.
Sir: With the aversion of all republican hearts to a dictatorial régime and with the eagerness inspired by civilization and fraternity, the worthy general Don Tom as Guardia was no sooner seated the present time, in the Presidential chair of this Republic than he hastened to take—retrenching greatly his own power—measures providing for the welfare, interior and exterior, of the nation.
With regard to the first, he called to his side known apostles of public liberties, unshackled the press, decreed amnesty, called together a constituent assembly, raised in the meantime a grand national council, to whom he abdicated the faculty of emitting general laws, and initiated, among others, the guarantee, in which is displayed the glory of the country, religious liberty, and in which appears, crowning the grand principles of democracy, the most philanthropic and splendid, the absolute inviolability of human life.
With regard to the second, he ordered communicated by circular to all the cabinets with whom that of Costa Rica was in relations, the cause of his recent exaltation to power, and directed to all the rulers of friendly nations in due form the customary autograph letter.
He was happy to fulfill this duty in the extent in which it was possible for him with the Presidents of the sister republics here, and particularly with the President of Guatemala, with whom, as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Costa Rica, he had adjusted during the year anterior a treaty of peace, friendship, and alliance, the exchange of which he promised to effect. Yet that President did not think well to respond to such courteous and friendly advances. What broke more than two months of surprising silence was a dispatch from the honorable Señor Secretary of Foreign Relations, Dr. Don Lorenzo Montufar, in which, to the irregularity of addressing the undersigned not in his official character but in his private condition, was added, in compliance with instructions of the Señor General President of Guatemala, that of affirming that his Government could not recognize the Government of Costa Rica while at its head was found General Don Tomas Guardia.
A measure so much in discord with Diplomatic practices was based on the supposed charge that, having stipulated in article sixth of the treaty which General Guardia, as Minister Plenipotentiary, signed in Guatemala, of not permitting in the territories of the contracting parties the entrance of new members of the Company of Jesus, and that the Government of Costa Rica would embrace every opportunity to expel the four Jesuits existing within limits of its country, the same General Guardia, far from complying with this clause, was in particular correspondence with the Jesuits; he called and introduced them into the country, and had placed under the obscuring power of the said company the youth of Costa Rica. He based it also on the idea that these acts induced him to believe that there would be repeated the equally imaginary ones, that General Guardia during his former administration, plotted the downfall of [Page 79] the Government of Guatemala, supported its enemies, and made considerable payments to obtain its downfall.
The first foundation disappears by only noting that the treaty, the lack of execution of which is charged, had not even been exchanged, and consequently not become a law, of the contracting Republics; as would have been necessary for it to become obligatory. These faults of exchange and execution can be imputed to the respective Governments, but never to the Diplomatic Minister, whose mission had terminated without reaching such acts. Notwithstanding this, General Guardia always worked, using his influence and personal relations—the only action he had—in regard to the article VI of the treaty so much in sympathy with his own opinions; and there are many documents to demonstrate this, while the accusations to the contrary are not strengthened by the aid of a single proof.
The truth requires that the proper thing may be said in regard to the inferential acts on which the erroneous belief was founded, that the actual President of Costa Rica could have plotted the fall of the Government of Guatemala. The acts alluded to, without any proof that makes them in the smallest degree admissible, cannot be raised to a subject of discussion, nor reach among qualifying epithets one more gentle than that of being unfounded.
I leave them in this place not without the surprise that, even upon the hypothesis that a better place would have suited them, they could be used by the government of Guatemala as a pretext to refuse recognition to the government of General Guardia, when they were not taken into account at his acceptance as minister to treat with, and even remain near the government to which he was accredited, satisfying it by his personal and diplomatic deportment.
The skill of the distinguished Dr. Montufar, from whom it could not be concealed that a dispatch directed, not to the Secretary of Foreign Relations, but to Dr. Don José Ma. Castro, can have no effect nor signification, induced me to think that his omission of the rules, which in such cases are rigorous, was owing to an involuntary error, and I decided to answer the aforesaid dispatch. The general President of Costa Rica also had motives of the same nature for believing that the unusual non-acknowledgment of his government on the part of that of Guatemala was nothing but a pretext for the termination of official relations. The dignity and decorum of his high Magistracy prescribed the acceptance of that measure, and in effect he put it in execution by a decree of the 19th of the present month, thus leaving closed from that date the (supra dichas) official relations between this republic and that of Guatemala.
Such is now the state of affairs between both countries, established by the President of the latter, without sufficient cause, without looking to the bonds of fraternity that bind the two countries, without considering how greatly will be darkened the good name of Central America by the discord of its integral parts.
With the regret that such sudden changes wrest from the lovers of the Central American Union, and in compliance with instructions that I have received from his Excellency the President of this republic, I direct you this communication.
On complying with the indicated duty I am happy to subscribe myself
Your obedient servant,
To his Excellency Señor Don George
Williamson,
Minister Resident of the
United States in Central America.