818.00/689
The Costa Rican Agent (Lara) to the Acting Secretary of State
Excellency: In compliance with my Government’s instructions I have the honor to bring the following facts to Your Excellency’s knowledge:
The invasion of Costa Rican territory which recently took place and which, as I deemed it my duty to inform Your Excellency two months before it was carried into effect, was being preferred [prepared] in the neighboring Republic of Nicaragua, has been repulsed by the Costa Rican troops. The fifteen hundred mercenary adventurers who made up the invading force and were nearly all Nicaraguan citizens, have been defeated and thrown out of our territory. They have again taken refuge in Nicaragua in places adjoining the Costa Rican boundary line together with a few Costa Rican[s] and the Mexican soldier who was in command.
The circumstance that those adventurers invaded Costa Rica from Nicaragua where, as I informed Your Excellency, they so openly prepared for the invasion that even the Nicaraguan press gave daily accounts of the said preparations, sharply criticizing the Nicaraguan Government’s improper attitude, compelled my Government to mobilize troops in sufficient numbers to enable it to inflict a quick and telling defeat upon an enemy who received from the country from which he came assistance that could not be easily or exactly calculated.
That mobilization entails upon the Government of Costa Rica a heavy sacrifice in money and serious injury to industry and agriculture, while general disarmament cannot be ordered as long as the enemy—although now in smaller numbers—remains near the frontier of Costa Rica and could easily reorganize if those who supplied the means for the first invasion are disposed to relapse into an act which I unhesitatingly brand as criminal as I unhesitatingly declare that the people of Costa Rica peaceful and industrious by nature, as all the world knows, bring all their resources into play when threatened by a foreign enemy and with even an abridgment of their autonomy and do not spare their blood in the defence of what is dear to them.
If the Government of Nicaragua will concentrate in the interior of the country those unscrupulous adventurers unmindful of the consequences of their acts and guarantees that there shall be no further invasion, it will mean ipso facto the withdrawal of the Costa Rican troops now stationed at a reasonable distance from the frontier of the neighboring country. The Government of Costa Rica strictly standing on the defensive harbors no purpose of invading Nicaraguan [Page 830] territory, intervening in that country’s politics or resorting to reprisals that might be legitimate, cherishes the hope that the Government of the United States may bring its powerful influence to bear on Nicaragua and lead it to the path marked out by its international duties.
The conventions concluded in Washington under the favorable auspices of the Government of the United States in 1907 by the Central American countries, that have been of so great advantage to those Republics, have provisions that read as follows:
“Article XVI. Desiring to prevent one of the most frequent causes of disturbances in the Republics the contracting Governments shall not permit the leaders or principal chiefs of political refugees or their agents to reside in the departments bordering on the countries whose peace they might disturb.
“Those who may have established their permanent residence in a frontier department may remain in the place of their residence under the immediate surveillance of the Government affording them an asylum but from the moment when they become a menace to public order they shall be included in the rule of the preceding paragraph.
“Article XVII. Every person, no matter what his nationality, who, within the Territory of one of the contracting parties, shall initiate or foster revolutionary movements against any of the others, shall be immediately brought to the capital of the Republic where he shall be submitted to trial according to law.”
In conclusion I beg Your Excellency’s leave to say that the invaders having failed to carry out their original plan are now trying to work out another which cannot be any worse and of which the Government of Costa Rica is fully informed.
The enemy’s intention is to avail himself of the presence at a place called Sapoa on the Nicaraguan side, of a few adventurers, enemies of Costa Rica, led by the American mercenary Jeffers [Jeffries?], and to hurl them, shouting the false cry, “Long live President Tinoco” at the Nicaraguan forces on guard there, and at the American troops so as to give the attack the appearance of coming from the Government of Costa Rica.
I have deemed it proper to warn Your Excellency’s Government of this new purpose of our enemy.
With sentiments [etc.]