File No. 817.00/1765.
The American Chargé d’Affaires to the Secretary of State .
Managua , January 8, 1912 .
Sir: I have the honor to call the Department’s attention to the attitude observed by the signers of the so-called Dawson Conventions, with regard to the pledges contained therein.
The first, to break the agreements was General Juan J. Estrada. Agreement No. 4, which affects Nicaraguan politics though not international relations, contains the clause:
Also it is agreed that the Government to be established in Nicaragua must not permit, under any pretext, the Zelayista element in its administration.
This clause was inserted in the original draft of the agreement by General Estrada himself, in his own handwriting. Nevertheless, as the Department has already been informed,1 on the night of the 8th and morning of the 9th of May last, General Estrada, as President of the Republic, attempted a coup d’état, with a view to turning the Government over to the Liberal party teeming with the Zelayista element. Through his brother, General Aurelio Estrada, and other prominent Liberal and Zelayista leaders, he had called the Liberals of Managua and adjacent parts to the Campo de Marte, and there ordered the chiefs of the garrison to supply them with arms. Those chiefs of garrison, being Conservatives and furthermore loyal to the Minister of War, General Mena, who was then in prison under orders of Estrada, refused to obey the command of the President, and, instead, turned the guns of the garrison upon the residence of the Campo de Marte, where General Estrada was living, demanding that he resign and deposit the power in the Conservative Vice-President Adolfo Díaz, who was there at the time. General Estrada having no other recourse complied then and there at 2:00 a.m., on the 9th of May [1911].
The next to openly violate the agreements was General Mena. Agreement No. 1, clause 3, provides that the Constituent [Constitutional] Assembly will convoke the people for the election of a constitutional president corresponding to the period following the present one. As the Department is already aware the members of the National Constituent Assembly stampeded that body on October 7th and carried the election of General Mena.2 General Mena violated the agreements by not immediately declining to accept, as he had promised me he would do were they to elect him. Furthermore, it [Page 1015] might be supposed that he could perhaps have prevented that election, notwithstanding the promise that the deputies held out for his election as the sine qua non for the approval of the loan contracts. He was warned by the Legation of the inadvisability of the step, and also forewarned of the possible consequences.
President Díaz might also be considered as having violated the agreements as he neither opposed the election of General Mena—on the contrary he favored it1—nor has he taken the attitude, at any time, that the National Constituent Assembly should convoke the people for a popular election. It must be said, however, that President Díaz was hardly in a position to do so. As a matter of policy, all things being considered with a view to the success of the American program, he was practically under the necessity of accepting the course pursued.
Fernando Solórzano, not being a signer of the first three agreements, and supposedly ignorant of their existence, acted in apparent good faith in accepting his election as Vice President, According to the terms of Agreement No. 4 the signers should designate at their opportunity and by a majority a candidate for Constitutional President of the Republic and another for Vice President, corresponding to the period following the presidency pro tempore of General Estrada, obliging themselves to take into consideration that the one chosen must represent the revolution and the Conservative party. The majority was composed of Luis Mena, Adolfo Díaz, and Fernando Sólorzano, and the candidates designated were Mena and Solórzano.
There remains only to be considered the attitude of General Emiliano Chamorro. He alone of the signers of the first three agreements has not actually violated to some extent their specific pledges. He did, however, depart from the spirit of the Agreement [No. 1] in not supporting General Estrada during his term as President. The Department wall remember that the first National Constituent Assembly, which was under Chamorro’s complete control, drew up a Constitution which should have effectively emasculated the Executive power and would have created an oligarchy with the Chamorro family and followers as the predominant element. This Assembly was dissolved on April 5th2 and the Constitution adopted by it rendered null and void. General Chamorro, however, alone of the signers of the first three agreements can be said to have rigorously observed the specific pledges therein contained. The Constitution drawn up by the first Assembly tended to the abolition of monopolies, guaranteed the legitimate rights of foreigners, provided for the Mixed Claims Commission, the loan, and would have convoked the people for the election of a Constitutional President for the term beginning January 1, 1913.
I have [etc.]