File No. 818.00/100
The President wishes to have it clearly settled that he did not come to
ask that American forces go to my country in order to overthrow the de facto Government presided over by Tinoco and
to restore him, González, to the post that lawfully belongs to him, nor
to place therein any of his personal or political friends. On this point
Mr. González maintains the same invariable attitude which he expressed
when your excellency saw fit to intimate to him the expediency of his
reoccupying his post until the end of his term.
Mr. González is not actuated in this matter by the slightest idea of
personal advantage, the only thing he desires being that Ms country may
return as soon as possible to constitutional order. For this the smooth
and unobstructed course which he approves is the same one which both
your excellency and His Excellency President Wilson stated to Mr.
González as having already been adopted by the American Government in
this affair, viz., the non-recognition of the Tinoco Government, either
now when he is acting as a dictator or later on when a farcical
election, carried out and directed under his control, invests the
traitorous Minister with the pompous and illegal title of Constitutional
President of Costa Rica.
Neither Tinoco nor any of his relatives or friends can represent the
spontaneous wish of the Costa Rican people, and the most effective and
practical way in which that people can continue to enjoy the [Page 310] peaceful and constitutional
life it has been leading for half a century consists in having the
traitor not reap the fruits of his crime, whether it be in a direct form
or in an indirect one through some of his protegés.
And in order that neither Tinoco nor any of those surrounding him may be
able to perpetuate themselves in power, nothing is needed but a negative
act by the United States Government, that is, the non-recognition of
that régime.
In view of the bad economic situation of the Costa Rican Government,
which situation President González thought he could remedy by
establishing the tax reforms undertaken by him, the life of that
Government is impossible without the cooperation of foreign capital, or,
more properly speaking, American capital, for it is well known that
Europe is not now in a position to divert a cent of its resources in
order to finance governments on this continent, and this capital could
not go to Costa Rica without a responsible Government being first
established there with which to deal.
With the resources which Tinoco and his followers could lay their hands
on in the interior of the country, the present Government could not live
over two or three months. They would then necessarily be compelled to
capitulate in favor of some third party whom both Mr. González and his
friends and partisans would be willing to support resolutely
notwithstanding such third party were our political enemy. The only
thing we ask is that it may not be Tinoco or any of his relatives, or
any of the persons intimately connected with the criminal move of
January 27 or with the pseudogovernment which was afterwards
established.
[Inclosure]
memorandum prepared by manuel castro quesada,
envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of costa rica,
for consideration by his excellency the secretary of state.
On the 27th of January last, about ten o’clock in the morning, the
Costa Rican Minister of War, Don Federico A. Tinoco, in defiance of
the authority of the Constitutional President of the Republic,
Licenciado Don Alfredo González Flores, proclaimed himself as Chief
Executive of the nation under the title of Provisional Chief.
The movement was supported by the officers in command and subordinate
officers of the barracks known as El Principal and La Artillería in
which two places are located the entire military armament and
equipment of the Republic, so that whoever secures control of those
depots, secures, ipso facto, control of the
whole country. The commanding officer of the Second Section of the
Police, together with his subordinate officers, also incorporated
themselves with the movement at its inception, and there then
remained faithful to the legitimate President only the First Section
of the Police and the Presidential Guard. President González,
therefore, could have put forth some measure of resistance; but this
he preferred to avoid, as resistance would have meant a number of
innocent victims and incalculably disastrous consequences for the
country.
Such, then, were the considerations that moved President González to
refrain from resistance by force. He at once released the troops
that were faithful to him, and took refuge in the American Legation,
whence, at the end of a week, and still under the protection of the
Stars and Stripes, he set forth to take ship at Port Limón.
The facility with which Mr. Tinoco was able to carry out his criminal
purpose may be explained by the blind confidence wherein he had been
held by the President, and by the unshakable faith that is the
natural inspiration of military loyalty and honor. Tinoco, besides
being the Minister of War, was Commander [Page 311] General of the barracks of the capital and
Director General of Police, three offices that have always
heretofore been exercised by different persons, but which the
President entrusted to Tinoco in the belief that his loyalty was a
guaranty against any possibility of disturbance of the civil
order.
Mr. Tinoco, from the moment of the inauguration of the Government he
betrayed, had had in view the coup he finally
achieved, and had from the beginning devoted himself to the
development of his plans. To that end, and counting always on the
absolute liberty of action allowed him by the President in his
branch of the Government, he gradually introduced into the barracks
elements that he knew would support him in the treason he was
preparing for; by gifts and favors he attracted to his side the
military personnel of the government, dismissing or assigning to
posts in which they could not interfere with his designs all
officers who, he feared, would not adhere to his plans; and so, when
the moment arrived, Mr. Tinoco was able, without resistance on the
part of the barracks—indeed, with their active help—to become master
of the situation and to impose his will on the Republic.
On that instant was inaugurated in Costa Rica a régime absolutely
opposed to existing law, and presided over by the person least
qualified to direct the destinies of a nation. Unscrupulous and
wholly without enlightenment, Mr. Tinoco has never participated in
public affairs, and his history for the past forty years is confined
to the fact that he is the son of a distinguished family which sent
him to be educated abroad. His acquirements resulting from that
education were limited to a certain skill in dress and deportment
such as characterizes a man of fashion. With no other endowment than
such personal graces, he returned to his country where he soon
became known for his amorous adventures, an inordinate addiction to
gambling, and duelling. He is a very pleasant fellow, and when a
disease completely obliterated his scalp, eye-brows, eye-lashes,
beard and mustache, and his physical condition became such as to
interfere with his social triumphs, he dedicated himself to
politics, and by means of his consummate skill in ingratiation,
obtained, through a leader of one of the political parties in Costa
Rica, a seat in Congress as a deputy. He there demonstrated his
absolute ignorance concerning all public questions, but as he was
known to be impetuous and very ready to resent by force any offense
or insult, he was favored by his party and served it in politics as
a sort of bravo of the Middle Ages.
The political evolution of 1914 placed the Presidency of the Republic
in the hands of Don Alfedo González, and that gentleman, having
entertained a true affection for Tinoco, and having believed him to
be a loyal adherent, decided to entrust to him the Ministry of War,
in the conviction that he could rely on his strong arm with entire
security and so dedicate himself without anxiety to the great work
to which all his energies were to be devoted, e. g., the
reconstruction on a scientific and rational basis of the nation’s
finances which had theretofore been administered on foundations
empirical and absurd.
From the very moment when Tinoco was raised to the office of
Minister, the entire country predicted the very thing that happened.
Indeed, on a certain occasion his excellency the President of
Nicaragua, Don Adolfo Díaz, through the medium of the Costa Rican
Minister at Managua, warned President González that Tinoco would
betray him. But President González was deaf to all such warnings,
both from within as well as from without the country, and instead of
removing Tinoco from office continued day by day to repose in him
more and more of his confidence and conferred upon him an increasing
measure of public duties, until, as above stated, on the day when
Tinoco perpetrated his great crime, that false friend occupied the
offices of Minister of War, Commander General of the Barracks of the
Capital and Director General of Police.
The time fixed by the Constitution for holding the presidential
elections approached, and the writer, believing that the best
interest of the country called for the continuation in power of
President González, for an additional term, conferred with Minister
Tinoco and proposed the idea. Tinoco manifested entire concurrence
therewith, availed himself of the opportunity to reaffirm his
loyalty and adherence to the President, and in company with Don Juan
Rafael Arias, Minister of the Interior, and the undersigned, called
upon the President and begged him to accept the candidacy for a
second term.
The President, in positive and unequivocal terms, made it clear to us
that he would not accept reelection, and, to avoid misunderstanding
on this point, and to make his intentions perfectly understood by
all, immediately summoned the other members of the Cabinet, Messrs.
Acosta, Foreign Minister; Guardia, Minister of the Treasury, and
Pinto, Minister of Public Works, and in their presence reiterated
his unshakable determination not to accept reelection. One of Mr.
González’s [Page 312] principal
reasons for not accepting that proposition, and which he expressed
to his hearers, was that, engaged as he was in agrarian, taxation
and banking reforms, reforms that had for their object the
introduction of a more just distribution of public burdens and
national production to prevent the holding of immense extensions of
uncultivated land by a single person, and the devising of means
whereby all Costa Ricans might develop the great possibilities of
labor offered by their country, his work must of necessity interfere
with the interests of the wealthy classes to the benefit of the
poorer classes; and that, therefore, the great power represented by
capital, which up to that time had weighed heavily upon the poorer
classes, who had borne the largest part of the burden of national
support under the system of indirect taxation that alone, thus far,
had existed in the country, would bitterly oppose his reelection and
interpose every obstacle thereto within their reach.
The President said to us, “I understand that my reforms will
seriously affect my popularity. If I wish to continue in power, I
must not provoke the hostility of the wealthy class; but as I seek
only the welfare of Costa Rica, I cheerfully sacrifice any personal
ambition I may have and shall continue to carry forward my projects
of reform. I, therefore, cannot launch my candidacy for a second
term, but instead will have the satisfaction of knowing that I have
endowed the country with equitable and just laws that will place
upon all the inhabitants of the country the obligation to contribute
to the public expenses thereof according to their economic capacity,
a contribution that will increase progressively for the more
powerful classes.”
The writer quotes the above declaration of President González because
the fundamental reason put forth by Tinoco in his proclamations and
documents in justification of his act is that he brought about the
coup d’état solely for the purposé of
preventing the President’s reelection. And yet, as has been stated,
Tinoco himself heard the President’s answer that he would not accept
the candidacy for a second term!
The fact that after the treason was consummated Tinoco surrounded
himself with numerous adherents relatively important, finds
explanation in reason of different nature. In the first place the
fear inspired by the Tinoco brothers—men without scruples, possessed
of a history showing a homicide and a series of acts of violence of
abominable character,—moved most people to prefer to affect a
measure of acquiescence rather than bring down upon their heads the
wrath and vengeance of men known to the country as wholly
implacable. Another cause lies in the satisfaction resulting to the
reactionaries and great owners of uncultivated lands from the
knowledge that with the González Government disappears the land
tax.
In this connection the writer is constrained to remark upon the
notable assistance given to Tinoco by the American concern known as
the United Fruit Company. Assistance was given by that company to
such an extent that the American Minister at San José found it
necessary to send one of the clerks of his Legation to Port Limon in
order to transmit to the Department of State a report of what was
going on. The company positively refused to allow the use of its
wireless stations or telephone lines, and even the special train
asked by the Minister to send the clerk to Port Limón was not
granted until after five hours of constantly repeated requests. This
interest of the United Fruit Company is explained, in the first
place, by its disinclination to accept the new system of taxation,
and, in the second place, by the personal friendship which for many
years has united Mr. Minor C. Keith (one of the principal directors
of the company) with the Tinoco family. Mr. Keith, who is before all
a business man in the broadest sense of the term, well knows what a
good business can be done with the aid of a government that is
somewhat unscrupulous, and knows also that no one in Costa Rica is
better qualified to collaborate with him than Tinoco.
It is a matter of common knowledge that Mr. Keith is now seeking to
advance a project that will give him control over all the water
power of the country, a project which about six months ago was
submitted to the consideration of President González, but which the
latter indignantly rejected, acting in that matter as he has acted
in all matters throughout his entire life, as a patriot and as a man
of spotless honor.
Without the possibility of a doubt we can assert, however, that,
under Tinoco, the project will prosper, and under conditions more
burdensome to the country but advantageously to the concessionary
and those who will assist him in carrying through the
concession.
Such, then, in general lines, are the events that have just taken
place in Costa Rica, and such is the moral aspect of their
protagonist.