No. 44.
Mr. Baker
to Mr. Gresham.
Nicaragua, May 10, 1894. (Received May 21.)
Sir: In a protracted conversation, lasting from 2.15 to 5 o’clock, on Saturday, May 5, with Mr. José Madriz, Nicaraguan minister of foreign affairs and special commissioner to this reserve, the following historical facts were agreed upon:
Gen. Carlos A. Lacayo was commissioned by the President of Nicaragua in November, 1893, as commissioner to the Mosquito Reservation, as provided in the treaty of Managua of 1860. His instructions were to assert Nicaragua’s sovereignty over this territory, and to take such steps as would finally bring about a complete incorporation of the reserve into Nicaragua and the extension of her laws and language over it. He was instructed to bring this about, if possible, by diplomatic methods.
General Lacayo was accompanied by a military official, General Cabezas, who was designated as “inspector-general of the coast,” an office not known to the Mosquito Government nor provided for by the treaty of Managua.
On the arrival of General Lacayo at Bluefields, he recognized the Mosquito Government then existing, with its chief, its executive council of seventeen, its council of thirty-six headmen (all Indians), and all its public officials.
General Lacayo set on foot negotiations with these officials for their abdication and the turning over of the local government to him. He tendered to the chief, Robert Henry Clarence, a commission as brigadier-general in the Nicaraguan army, with a pledge that his salary sis such military officer should be the same as his present salary as chief of this nation and that it should continue for life. He offered to pension the attorney general, Mr. J. W. Cuthbert, and the vice-president, Mr. C. Patterson, besides agreeing to secure to them good titles and the unmolested possession of all the lands and property which they owned. He also opened negotiations of a similar character with individual headmen, with a view of gaining their adhesion to the cause of Nicaragua, but, Mr. Madriz acknowledged, with no success.
For a space of between two and three months, while these negotiations were going on, General Lacayo recognized the official authority of Chief Clarence, his executive council, and the officers of the Mosquito Government.
General Lacayo, having failed in his diplomatic efforts to get possession of this reserve, concluded to charge this failure up to the American business men of this territory. He charged the Americans with being inimical to the interests of Nicaragua, in that they have caused [Page 85] the Indians to withhold their consent to the extension of Nicaraguan rule over the reserve.
(I will remark, by way of parenthesis, that I have found no evidence that Americans have tampered with or attempted to influence the Indian headmen in the premises. I find the fact to be that the sentiment of the residents—Indians, Creoles, negroes, and Americans—is unauimous in opposition to the extension of Spanish rule over this territory. No headman, no executive councilman, no chief, would entertain an idea of voting to amalgamate with the Spaniards in the sense of permitting them to extend their military rule over their people.)
General Lacayo, having failed in his diplomatic efforts, communicated with the President at Managua, and recommended that troops in goodly numbers be placed at the disposal of General Cabezas and himself, on the claim that the chief and his council were disloyal to the sovereign Government of Nicaragua. The call was responded to, and troops were sent. This city (Bluefields) was occupied by an armed force; the executive council was dispersed; the public offices were occupied by armed soldiers; the archives, books, records, and papers of the Mosquito Government were taken violent possession of and removed to General Lacayo’s military headquarters, and the prison doors were thrown open, and all criminals were set at liberty. Martial law was proclaimed by General Cabezas throughout the reserve, and the territory declared to be in a state of siege. Military governors, with extraordinary powers, were placed over every town and hamlet; new taxes were imposed; new regulations of commerce and trade were established. Government was by “decree,” and not by legislative enactment. While General Lacayo was laboring under the impression that his failure to induce the members of the Mosquito Government to abdicate their official positions in favor of Nicaragua was chargeable to the negative influence of Americans, he inconsiderately, as Mr. Madriz admitted, recommended the President to withdraw Consul Braida’s exequatur.
In discussing the murder of William Wilson, an American citizeu, by Norberto Argüello, the military governor of Rama, Mr. Madriz expressed his deep regret that such an event should have happened at that particular time, especially as it gave rise to much ugly talk as to threats made by Spaniards against the lives and property of Americans. In this connection Mr. Madriz admitted that Argüello’s successor as military governor of Rain a Francisco Torres, had not obeyed his most definite instructions to keep his prisoner closely confined in prison—that Torres had permitted him to go at large, thus treating his orders with contempt. Therefore. Mr. Madriz assured me, he had suspended Torres from office, and had appointed in his stead a Br. Barberena, a young physician who was educated in Philadelphia, who had traveled some and talks English well. Torres, although appointed to govern an English-speaking town, could speak no English.
In many conversations with Mr. Madriz I have represented to him the condition of unrest and nervousness created and continued by the almost constant parading on the streets of armed soldiers, and the sound at many hours during the day and night of the bugle and the drum. I earnestly protested against the necessity of armed soldiers in Bluefields.
I stated to him the devotion of the people of the United States to the principles of civil rule, the superiority of the civil authorities over the military; and I stated to him the repugnance our people felt toward being governed by the bayonet, by military satraps, by “decrees” of [Page 86] petty and usually ignorant” governors” who were imported from another section of country, wereof another race, and spoke to them in a strange language. Mr. Madriz acknowledged the force of my remarks, and on the occasion of this last conversation promised to remove, on the following Monday, May 7, all of the soldiers from Bluefields, sending about 250 of them up the river and to the interior, and the remaining 50 to the “bluff,” which commands the approach to the town. This has been done. Our military governor, a “general” in the Nicaraguan army, is still with us. Personally, this governor is a clever man, a Hollander, and speaks English; but “governors’-of towns are changed with much frequency.
On Monday, May 7, I went to Pearl Lagoon, to which place Chief Clarence and his two most intimate advisers, Messrs. Cuthbert and Patterson, retired after the assault on Bluefields on the night of February 11. I spent several hours in conversation with the three men named; I related to them the historical facts agreed upon by Mr. Madriz in his conversation with-me on the 5th instant, and these men corroborated the same facts, adding many others which will be made the subject of another communication.
All three of these men were alarmed for the personal safety of Chief Clarence, and each gave some evidence to justify his fears. On report of this portion of our interview to Capt. A. C. Clarke, commander of H. B. M. S. Magicienne, now lying off” Bluefields, he came to see me yesterday.
The result of the conference was his conclusion to go to Pearl Lagoon, invite the chief to come down with him to Blueflelds, where he would place the former under the protection of General Lacayo and would hold the latter responsible for his safety. In pursuance of this conclusion, Captain Clarke has gone with his ship to Pearl Lagoon for the purpose of bringing the chief down. It will be borne in mind that the father of the present chief, while serving in the same capacity, was poisoned, and that a Nicaraguan Spaniard was convicted and executed for the commission of the crime. That event occurred at the time of a somewhat similar effort of Nicaragua to capture and appropriate this reserve.
Referring again to my conversation with Minister Madriz, he stated to me in the most unequivocal and positive terms that Norberto Argüello, the murderer of Wilson, would be kept in close confinement in this town until the time arrived for his trial. Then he would be given a fair trial, and if found guilty of the crime charged would certainly be punished according to law.
On Saturday, the 5th instant, at the very hour Mr. Madriz and I were in conference, General Lacayo was at the prison engaged in taking what he was pleased to term Argüllo’s “ante-mortem statement.” In this “statement” Argüello claimed that in the murder of Wilson lie acted in self defense;
Mr. Madriz left Bluefields on the evening of the 7th instant for Managua, and on the afternoon of the 9th the doors of the prison were left open and Argüello deliberately walked out in the full sunlight. The woman with whom he had been cohabiting before and since the murder, had been with him at the prison the most of the day, and he was apparently in her charge. At the time he left the prison she was not with him, having gone before to arrange for his safety should an effort be made by Americans to recapture him. While the American citizens were highly and justly indignant, I believe no effort, either by the authorities or by volunteers, was made to bring him back. Americans [Page 87] naturally argued that any imprisonment or trial by the Nicaraguan authorities would be a farce, judging by the whole conduct of the officials since the night of the murder.
My conclusions, drawn from an industrious and patient investigation occupying more than two weeks, of the facts connected with the overthrow of the Mosquito Government and of the sentiments of the people of this reserve, are:
- (1)
- The present provisional Government imposed upon this people by the Nicaraguan authorities, in copartnership with Her Britannic Majesty’s consul, H. F. Bingham, is a bold usurpation, and does not rest upon the consent of 1 per cent of the people governed by it.
- (2)
- The old Mosquito Government, which existed long before Nicaragua had an existence as an independent State, and which continued to exist up to the night of the 11th of February last, was overthrown by armed violence.
- (3)
- That fully 90 per cent (and probably this figure should be made 95) of all the wealth, the enterprise, and the commerce of this reserve is American. The trade is wholly with the United States, almost all the commerce is carried by American ships, and the business is transacted by Americans. Neither the English nor the citizens of any other nation have any important business interests within the reserve.
- (4)
- The extension of the Spanish revolutionary rule over this reserve will inevitably crush out and drive from these lands the whole of this present business prosperity, and this contented and industrious population will go with it.
I am, etc.,