File No. 817.812/210
The Minister of Costa Rica to the Secretary of State
Washington, May 23, 1916.
Excellency: I had the honor in due course to receive your excellency’s important communication dated the 1st of March of this year, in which you are pleased to tell me your sentiment of the allegation I permitted myself to bring before your excellency in my notes of February 2 and 21 last, respectively, in the matter of the conclusion of the Bryan-Chamorro Canal Treaty which was referred in that month to the Senate of the United States for its high approval.
Having left for my country on the very day of which your excellency’s note bears date and not having returned to this city until a few days ago, I have not until now been afforded the honor to refer to it and I look forward to your excellency’s kindness in deigning to accept my apologies for the delay.
Deep and most pleasant, Mr. Secretary is the satisfaction I have felt at the lofty sentiments of fraternity and sympathy as well as of perfect respect for the legitimate rights of Costa Rica which mark your excellency’s above-mentioned note. On such a foundation it may be said that the difference lies merely in the estimation of details and that there should therefore be no great difficulty in reaching a perfect accord.
Your excellency takes the ground that in as much as the American Government had no intention in concluding the disputed Canal Convention, to invade any rights or interest of Costa Rica as set forth in the extensive note of August 1, 1914,8 from the Department of State to my predecessor Senor Don Joaquin Bernardo Calvo, there is no cause or foundation whatever for my Government’s protest, and that in further corroboration of this proposition and therefore in fuller refutation of Costa Rica’s complaints the Senate of the United States passed the Resolution which requires the instrument of ratification to declare that nothing in the said convention is intended to affect any existing right of any of the aforesaid nations (Costa Rica, Salvador, and Honduras).
With all the respect. I have for your excellency’s very high and unquestionable authority I will venture the remark that while the absence of intention removes all that is subjectively offensive in an act it does not in the least alter the physical consequences attending that act.
In the present case for instance if the Bryan-Chamorro Convention actually violates rights of Costa Rica, as my Government maintains, the violation is not wiped out though it were not intended by [Page 839] the signatory parties, just as the declaration suggested by the Senate cannot alter the convention in its nature or consequences.
But as I had the honor already to say to your excellency, the question really reduces itself to a mere difference of opinion, to wit: Does the Bryan-Chamorro treaty invade rights and interests of Costa Rica? My Government maintains that it does, your excellency’s and the Nicaraguan Governments that it does not.
Which is right? Which is in the right?
The Government of Costa Rica, failing to reach a direct agreement on this point with either of the two signatories of the disputed convention, has been constrained to apply to the August tribunal instituted to solve differences of whatever nature that may arise between the several Central American Republics by filing a petition against the Government of Nicaragua to have it conclusively declared that the said Government lies under a total inhibition to grant any canal concession without the previous advice or consent, according to the occasion, of Costa Rica.
If, as I believe it will, the most excellent Central American Court of Justice should decide the case in accordance with Costa Rica’s claim and thereby strip of any value or effect the engagements subscribed by Nicaragua in the premises thus wholly nullifying the Bryan-Chamorro Convention, I hasten here to repeat to your excellency what I had the honor to state in my note of the 2d of February of this year, viz., that Costa Rica’s action is not in any way prompted by any desire to hamper the United States endeavor to build and control the Nicaragua Canal; that, far from it, my Government is quite willing to reach an agreement with that of your excellency for the cession of the rights it may enjoy in the undertaking with the one proviso that such an arrangement be perfected in strict accordance with the stipulations prescribed in previous treaties.
I have the honor to forward herewith to your excellency a printed copy of the English translation of the complaint, of the documents addressed in its support and of the legal steps thus far taken in the proceedings,15 and so great is my confidence in the justice of the proposition upheld by my Government that I am sure your excellency will so recognize if, overcoming the practical impossibility of doing so, you should succeed in sacrificing the time required for a perusal and study of the pamphlet.
I have expressed my firm conviction which is also that of my Government, that the decision of the High Central American Court will solemnly confirm the justice and right on which Costa Rica’s complaint rests. But should the Honorable Court’s award be different, it would be needless for me to assure your excellency that my Government will do honor to its tradition of perfect observance of the engagements subscribed by the Republic by respectfully obeying in its every part the decision of the tribunal. The national tradition of the sister Republic of Nicaragua in that sense is equally honorable and unsullied, and on it my Government bases its confidence that the sentence, whatever it may be, of the Central American Court of Justice will be honored and respected—which confidence grows [Page 840] stronger and more certain when it is remembered that the said supreme Court, which is the pride of Central America, lives because it was given generous support by a powerful friendly nation when it was born and because, when instituted it found the moral and eminently significant authority that the Government of the United States had in its creation to be a factor in reinforcing its existence.
I may not conclude without first putting on record a respectful remark about your excellency’s reference to the protocol which was signed separately in this city on the 1st of December 1900 by the Plenipotentiaries of Costa Rica and Nicaragua with the Secretary of State of the United States carrying a promise to grant in due course to the last named country the ownership and control of an inter-oceanic canal running from San Juan del Norte to the Pacific Ocean. The said protocol’s value to Costa Rica is purely historical, as it was not only unknown to the Constitutional Congress, but not even clothed with the approval of the President of the Republic. It is not therefore a precedent by which my Government can be in any way bound.
I beg [etc.]
- For. Rel. 1914, p. 964.↩
- Not printed. See inclosure to dispatch No. 102, from the American Minister at San José, dated October 16, 1916, printed post p. 862.↩