File No. 818.00/177
Mr. R. Fernández Guardia to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: I have the honor, and at the same time regret, to inform your excellency that I have been instructed to withdraw from Washington and to express to you my Government’s profound chagrin over the failure of all its efforts to maintain the friendly relations which, down to the present, have existed between the Republic of Costa Rica and the United States of America.
Your excellency knows that Costa Rica has done all that is compatible with national dignity to preserve the friendship of the United States. No more than this can be exacted from a nation which, although small and weak, is as jealous as the greatest and strongest of its honor, independence and sovereignty, which she has known how to defend when endangered, thus proving her right to existence and liberty.
[Page 333]Imperative political circumstances with which your excellency is familiar, forced Costa Rica, by means of a bloodless coup d’état, to overthrow an intolerable Government. This act has since been approved and confirmed by the vote of an immense majority of the people cast with freedom, and the régime which arose out of that coup d’état stands today as a perfectly constitutional Government. As such it has been recognized by the four nations which, by virtue of a public treaty, are the only ones that possess the sanctioning authority in this regard.
Respecting the right possessed by a sovereign nation to take to itself such government as it pleases or as best suits its needs, there can be no possible question, for that right is of the very essence of sovereignty; it is acknowledged by every civilized nation. In the United States, Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of North American democracy writing on the 30th of December. 1792, as Secretary of State, declared:
We certainly cannot deny to other nations that principle whereon our own Government is founded, that every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases and to change these forms at its own will * * *
The great statesman, Henry Clay, said to the Congress, on the 24th of March, 1818:
Whatever form of government any society of people adopts, whomever they acknowledge as their sovereign, we consider that government, or that sovereignty as the one to be acknowledged by us.
In his address delivered to the Congress, May 15, 1856, President Franklin Pierce, stated in the following language, as clear as it is positive, the policy of the United States in the matter of recognition of foreign governments:
It is the established policy of the United States to recognize all governments without question of their source or their organization, or of the means by which the governing persons attain their power, provided there be a government de facto accepted by the people of the country, and with reserve only of the time as to the recognition of revolutionary governments arising out of the subdivision of parent States with which we are in relations of amity. We do not go behind the fact of a foreign government exercising actual power to investigate questions of legitimacy; we do not inquire into the causes which may have led to the change of government. To us it is indifferent whether a successful revolution has been aided by a foreign intervention or not; whether insurrection has overthrown existing government, and another has been established in its place according to preexisting forms or in a manner adopted for the occasion by those whom we may find in the actual possession of power. All these matters we leave to the people and the public authorities of the particular country to determine; and their determination, whether it be by positive action or by ascertained acquiescence, is to us sufficient warranty of the legitimacy of the new government.
During the sixty-seven years which have elapsed since the establishment of the existing Government of the United States, in all which time this Union has maintained undisturbed domestic tranquillity, we have had occasion to recognize governments de facto, founded either by domestic revolution or by military invasion from abroad, in many of the governments of Europe.
It is the more imperatively necessary to apply this rule to the Spanish American Republics, in consideration of the frequent, and not seldom anomalous, changes of organization or administration which they undergo and the revolutionary nature of most of these changes, of which the recent series of revolutions in the Mexican Republic is an example, where five successive revolutionary governments have made their appearance in the course of a few months and have been recognized successively, each as the political power of that country, by the United States.
The foregoing doctrine is the only one that is compatible with the right of sovereignty, as that right has been understood down to the [Page 334] present time and President Pierce, in formulating it, conformed strictly with a universal principle of international law. It is true that a few years later the United States departed somewhat from this doctrine, but then only under the compulsion of necessity created by the Civil War. At that time was born what might be called “conditional recognition” of republican governments. The new doctrine was clearly formulated by Assistant Secretary of State William Frederick Seward when, on the 7th of May, 1868, he wrote as follows:
We do not deny or question the right of any nation to change its republican constitution. We do not deny the right even to change it by force, although we think that the exercise of force can be justified in rare instances. What we do require, and all that we do require, is when a change of administration has been made, not by peaceful constitutional process, but by force, that then the new administration shall be sanctioned by the formal acquiesence and acceptance of the people.
The principle involved in the above stated doctrine has not, so far, been recognized by any nation outside the New World. This is easily explained by the fact that it is in contravention of the absolute right of sovereignty. In America itself this principle has been accepted only by the five Central American Republics (since 1907), in their mutual relations and as exclusively reciprocal in character, which fact would not warrant its application in any case, or in any manner whatever, by any nation not a party to the treaty that established it. Furthermore, in view of the special circumstances that surround the international life of the five Republics of Central America, the adoption of that principle by them, instead of derogating from their right of sovereignty, on the contrary confirms and strengthens it, since the principle evidently has for its object the mutual defense of the independence of the five States that once formed the Central American Federation.
But this principle, which, for the reasons given seems to be advantageous in the special case of the five Republics of Central America, is wholly inadmissible by international law. A sufficiently convincing reason for this lies in the insuperable difficulty, already experienced by the United States, in the similar cases of Peru and Costa Rica, of applying the principle with equality; and no one can deny that, in these conditions, as a general principle it becomes essentially arbitrary and unjust, particularly when applied by a strong to a weak nation with which no obligation to reciprocity has been contracted.
Article I of the Additional Treaty to the Treaty of Peace and Amity, concluded at Washington, on the 20th of December, 1907, by the five Republics of Central America, stipulates that:
The Governments of the High Contracting Parties shall not recognize any other Government which may come into power in any of the five Republics as a consequence of a coup d’état, or of a revolution against the recognized Government, so long as the fully elected representatives of the people thereof have not constitutionally reorganized the country.
From the text above quoted it will be clearly seen that the principle adopted has no further reach than to prevent recognition of governments that emanate from force so long as they have not been confirmed by the popular will freely expressed; certainly it was never intended to take away the sacred right of rebellion, for that would be [Page 335] equivalent to condemning the peoples to be the victims of tyranny; and such will surely be the fate of the Central American peoples if the United States persists in its purpose to apply the new principle without the limitation stipulated in the Additional Treaty above cited, for the right of rebellion is the only true guaranty possessed by the peoples against bad governors and that guaranty cannot be renounced without losing at the same time the right to liberty. The right of rebellion, moreover, is altogether healthful. This was the thought of so eminent a statesman as Thomas Jefferson, judging from what he wrote, in 1787, to James Madison:
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
But for nothing clearer and more conclusive can be cited in this regard than what was said by President Wilson in his address to Congress of December 7, 1915:
Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing. Every American who has drunk in the fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe without reservation to the high doctrine of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which in the great days in which our Government was set up was everywhere amongst us accepted as the creed of free men. That doctrine is, that government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people, nation or community; that of all the various modes and forms of government, that is the best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
In the same address the President had already said, referring to Mexico:
Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at last proved that we will not take advantage of her in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing.
These words show that President Wilson also admits the principle that a strong country may not, because of the weakness of another, impose upon the latter a government of its own choosing. On this point I am constrained to remind your excellency, in the case of Costa Rica, that in view of the preponderating position occupied by the United States in America, and of the influence it exercises—particularly in the Republics of Central America—the fact that the Washington Government refuses to recognize the legally constituted Government of Costa Rica, and seeks to justify its refusal by invoking a principle that is no part of international law, will probably be interpreted as unjustified intervention, and it is to be feared that this procedure on the part of the United States will not tend to strengthen the confidence reposed in that great country by the Republics of Latin America; because the Governments of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, having recognized the legitimacy of the Costa Rican Government, the fact that your excellency’s Government persists in its refusal of recognition, despite the doctrine it has itself maintained, lends itself to the supposition that what [Page 336] really hangs in doubt before the United States is the independence and sovereignty of the Costa Rican Republic as well as of Central America and also of all the Latin American Republics.
If this be the case, the policy now pursued by the United States towards Costa Rica would be in open contradiction to the following language of President Wilson in his address before the Congress on the 22d of January of the present year:
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
In these words, persuasive in their eloquence, is to be found an admirable résumé of the doctrine of nonintervention, and Costa Rica turns to them for support in her demand that, in the name of the right of small nations to exist, she be permitted to live her own life conformably with the freely expressed will of the majority of her people. Because intervention is not exclusively an act committed through armed force. When adopted towards a small and weak nation, the mere unfriendly attitude of a great and powerful government suffices to produce the effects of intervention to a greater or less degree. So true is this that your excellency cannot but be aware that in consequence of the attitude assumed by the Washington Government respecting Costa Rica, the country is living in a continuous state of concern which, doubtless in abuse of the name of the United States, is being kept alive by persons who are propagating the idea that the Government of this country is supporting, or at least looks with approval upon, their efforts to disturb the public order. The Government of Costa Rica has given no credit to that absurd propaganda; but it has been unable to find an explanation for the conduct of the United States towards a country which has given it repeated proofs of friendship, and which was perhaps the first among the American Republics to declare spontaneously its solidarity with that great nation when it entered upon its war with Germany.
In recalling the declaration which, in the name of my Government, I had the honor to make to your excellency on the 9th of last April, I am glad to be able to inform you that, in spite of the sore straits in which it finds itself, the Government of Costa Rica adheres to its attitude of solidarity with the people of the United States, for it feels that nothing should be allowed to prevail against the noble cause that is being defended by that people and by the other champions of liberty, democracy and the right of small nations to exist. That very cause is the one which, with respect to Costa Rica, I have so far, vainly sought to defend before the Government of the United States; and it is in truth most disheartening to realize that at the very moment in which the Republic founded by George Washington is hastening to sacrifice the lives of thousands of its citizens to maintain the right of certain small nations of Europe to control their own fate, that same right is denied to one of the American Republics which has abundantly proven that it also merits the privilege of enjoying it.
In conclusion permit me to express to your excellency, on this glorious day that marks one of the greatest steps in the progress of world liberty, my genuine regret over the fact that I have not been [Page 337] accorded the opportunity to present to you my respects and to defend the cause of my Government, which has been condemned without hearing by the Government of your excellency.
I take pleasure [etc.]