From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (64 page)

The administration also sent troops to neighboring Haiti. Partly by its own choice, the United States traditionally had little influence in Haiti, although it had coveted the Môle St. Nicolas, one of the Caribbean's finest ports. Historically, the black republic had been most influenced by France; after the turn of the century, German merchants and bankers secured growing power over its economy. Wilson viewed rising European influence as "sinister." United States officials ascribed more credence than warranted to rumors of German establishment of a coaling station at the mole and to the even more bizarre report—
after
the outbreak of World War I—of a joint French-German customs receivership. Bryan set aside his anti-imperialist views long enough to try to take the mole "out of the market" with a preemptive purchase. He subsequently attempted to head off any European initiative by imposing on Haiti a Dominican-type customs arrangement. Haiti defiantly resisted U.S. overtures, but an especially brutal revolution in which the government massacred some 167 citizens and the president was killed and his dismembered body dragged through the streets provided ample reason for U.S. intervention. In July 1915, allegedly as a strategic measure and to restore order, the United States placed Haiti under military occupation. Wilson admitted that U.S. actions in that "dusky little republic" were "highhanded," but he insisted that in the "unprecedented" circumstances the "necessity for exercising control there is immediate, urgent, imperative." The better elements of
the country would understand, he hoped, that the United States was there to help, not subordinate, the people.
³¹

Whatever Wilson's intentions, the military occupations on Hispaniola represent major blots on the U.S. record. The United States imposed at the point of a gun the stability it so desperately sought, but at great cost to the local peoples and to its own ideals. In the Dominican Republic, the U.S. Marines fought a nasty five-year war against stubborn guerrillas in the eastern part of the country, often applying brutal methods against those they contemptuously labeled "spigs." Using models developed in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, U.S. proconsuls implemented technocratic progressive reforms, building roads and developing public health and sanitation programs. The reforms benefited mainly elites and foreigners. Little changed as a result, and when the marines withdrew in 1924, life quickly reverted to normal. The Americans bequeathed to Dominicans a keen interest in baseball. The domineering presence of outsiders certain of their superiority also created a nascent sense of Dominican nationalism. Perhaps the main result of the occupation, an unintended consequence, was that the Guardia Nacional established to assist in upholding order would become the means by which Rafael Trujillo maintained a brutal dictatorship for thirty-one years.
³²

In Haiti, the marines also encountered stubborn resistance, making it impossible for Wilson to remove them when he was so inclined in 1919. The United States systematically eliminated German economic interests and gained even tighter control over Haiti's finances and customs than it had of the Dominican Republic's. But it could not attract much investment capital, and the country remained impoverished. There was no pretense of democracy: Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was jokingly called "Josephus the First—King of Haiti." The U.S. financial adviser employed the threat of not paying the salaries of Haitian officials to gain veto power over legislation. The racism of occupying forces was even more acute where the people were stereotyped like African Americans—"the same happy, idle, irresponsible people we know," as a marine colonel put it. United States officials imposed the Jim Crow style of segregation already in place in the American South. They promoted a Tuskegee-type educational system emphasizing technical education and manual labor. Once the marines left, as in the Dominican Republic, the roads (built with forced labor) fell into disrepair and public health programs languished. The blatant
racism of the occupation forces pushed a local elite in search of its identity to look back to its African roots.
³³

Wilson's problems in Central America paled compared to the challenges posed by Mexico. The most profound social movement in Latin American history, the Mexican Revolution was extremely complex, a rebellion of middle and lower classes against a deeply entrenched old order and the foreigners who dominated the nation's economy followed by an extended civil war. It would be six years before the situation stabilized. The ongoing struggle created major difficulties for Wilson. His well-intentioned if misguided meddling produced two military interventions in three years and nearly caused an unnecessary and possibly disastrous war. The best that can be said is that he kept the interventions under tight control and learned from his Mexican misadventures something of the limits of America's appeal to other nations and its power to effect change there.

For thirty-one years, Porfirio Díaz had maintained an open door for foreign investors. Under his welcoming policies, outsiders came to own three-fourths of all corporations and vast tracts of land—newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst alone held some seven million hectares in northern Mexico. United States bankers held Mexican bonds. British and U.S. corporations controlled 90 percent of Mexico's mineral wealth and all its railroads and dominated its oil industry. Díaz hoped to promote modernization and economic development, but the progress came at enormous cost. Centralization of political control at the expense of local autonomy caused widespread unrest, especially in the northern provinces, provoking growing anger toward the regime and its foreign backers. Foreigners used Mexican lands to produce cash crops for export, disrupting the traditional economy and village culture and leaving many peasants landless. Mexican critics warned of a "peaceful invasion." Díaz's policies, they charged, made their nation a "mother to foreigners and a stepmother to her own children."
³⁴
Mexico's economy was at the mercy of external forces, and a major recession in the United States helped trigger revolution. In 1910, middle and
lower classes under the leadership of Francisco Madero rose up against the regime. In May 1911, they overthrew Díaz.

Counterrevolutions quickly followed. Madero instituted a parliamentary democracy but maintained the status quo economically, disappointing many of his backers. Díaz's supporters plotted to regain power. In his last years in office, Díaz had balanced rising U.S. power in Mexico by encouraging European and especially British economic and political influence. When Madero sustained this policy, U.S. businessmen who at first welcomed the revolution turned against him. They gained active support from Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, a conservative career diplomat friendly to U.S. business interests and skeptical of the revolution. A heavy drinker, something of a loose cannon, and meddlesome in the worst tradition of Joel Poinsett and Anthony Butler, Wilson sought to undermine official support for Madero and sympathized with plots to get rid of him.General Victoriana Huerta overthrew the government in February 1913 and brutally murdered Madero and his vice president. Out of negligence and indifference, Ambassador Wilson bore some responsibility for this gruesome outcome. Madero's corpse was scarcely in the grave when his supporters launched a civil war against Huerta.
³⁵

In one of his first ventures in diplomacy, President Wilson set a new subjective standard for recognizing revolutionary governments. Responding to the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson had established the precedent of recognizing any government formed by the will of the nation. The United States traditionally had recognized governments based simply on whether they held power and fulfilled their international obligations. With Mexico, Wilson introduced a moral and political test. Huerta was indeed a despicable character, crude, corrupt, cruel, "an ape-like man" who "may be said almost to subsist on alcohol," a presidential confidant reported.
³⁶
Wilson was appalled by the murder of Madero and indignantly vowed that he would not "recognize a government of butchers." He also suspected Huerta's ties to U.S. and especially foreign businessmen. In view of the importance of the Panama Canal, he told the British ambassador, it was vital for Central American nations to have "fairly decent rulers." He "wanted to teach those countries a lesson by insisting on the removal of Huerta."
³⁷
He hoped, in his own pretentious and oftquoted words, to teach U.S. neighbors to "elect good men." Aware that
recognition might cripple the opposition, he withheld it in hopes of bringing to power a more respectable government. In so doing, he created yet another instrument to influence the internal politics of Latin American nations.
³⁸

Wilson also dispatched two trusted personal emissaries to Mexico to push for a change of government. Neither was up to the task. William Bayard Hale was a journalist and close friend; John Lind, a Minnesota politician. Neither spoke Spanish or knew anything about Mexico; Lind indeed considered Mexicans "more like children than men" and claimed they had "no standards politically."
³⁹
Their mission—to counsel Mexico "for her own good," in Wilson's patronizing words—was a fool's errand. They were to persuade Huerta to hold elections in which he would not run and all parties would abide by the result. The president authorized Lind to threaten the stick of military intervention and dangle the carrot of loans before those Mexican leaders who went along.

Predictably, the ploy failed. The crafty Huerta dodged, feinted, and parried. At first flatly rejecting proposals he deemed "hardly admissible even in a treaty of peace after a victory," he then appeared to acquiesce, promising to give up the presidency and hold elections in late October.
⁴⁰
After a series of military defeats, however, he arrested most of the congress and in what amounted to a coup d'état established a dictatorship. Huerta's opposition responded no more positively to U.S. interference. Constitutionalist "First Chief" Venustiano Carranza expressed resentment at Wilson's intrusion and angrily insisted that he would not participate in a U.S.-sponsored election.

Admitting to a "sneaking admiration" for Huerta's "indomitable, dogged determination," Wilson stepped up the pressure.
⁴¹
He blamed the British for Huerta's intransigence and combined stern public warnings with soothing private explanations of U.S. policy. He seriously considered a blockade and declaration of war, again claiming it to be his "duty to force Huerta's retirement, peaceably if possible but forcibly if necessary."
⁴²
Ultimately, he contented himself with measures short of war, warning the Europeans to stay out, sending a squadron of warships to Mexico's east coast, and lifting an arms embargo to help Carranza militarily.

If Wilson was looking for a pretext for military intervention, he got it at Tampico in April 1914 when local officials mistakenly arrested and briefly detained a contingent of U.S. sailors who had gone ashore for provisions. The officials quickly released the captives and expressed regret, but the imperious U.S. admiral on the scene demanded a formal apology and a twenty-one-gun salute. A Gilbert and Sullivan incident escalated into full-scale crisis. Undoubtedly seeking to gain diplomatic leverage, Wilson fully backed his admiral. Huerta at first rejected U.S. demands. Sensing an opportunity for gainful mischief, he then cleverly proposed a simultaneous salute and next a reciprocal one. Wilson rejected both; Huerta rebuffed America's "unconditional demands."
⁴³

Seizing what he called a "psychological moment," Wilson ordered a military intervention at Veracruz to promote his broader goal of getting rid of Huerta.
⁴⁴
He pitched his actions on grounds of defending national honor. He easily secured congressional authorization to use military forces, although some hotheads, including his future archenemy, Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, preferred all-out war, military occupation of Mexico, and even a protectorate. To demonstrate his good intentions, the president recruited veterans from Philippine nation-building to show the Mexicans and others through the U.S. occupation the values of progressive government. "If Mexico understood that our motives were unselfish," Colonel House affirmed, "she should not object to our helping adjust her unruly household."
⁴⁵

It was a very big "if," of course. For the short term, at least, the intervention failed on all counts. Instead of welcoming the North Americans as liberators, Mexicans of varied political persuasions rallied to the banner of nationalism. In Veracruz, civilians, prisoners quickly released from jails, and soldiers acting on their own fiercely resisted the invasion. It took two days to subdue the city. More than two hundred Mexicans were killed, nineteen Americans. Across Mexico, newspapers cried out for "Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!" against the "pigs of Yanquilandia." In several cities, angry mobs attacked U.S. consulates. Even Carranza demanded U.S. withdrawal.
⁴⁶

United States forces took control of the city in early May, remained there for seven months, and performed numerous good works—with
ephemeral results. The military government implemented progressive reforms to show Mexicans by "daily example" that the United States had come "not to conquer them, but to help restore peace and order." Occupation troops built roads and drainage ditches; provided electric lighting for streets and public buildings; reopened schools; cracked down on youth crime, gambling, and prostitution; made tax and customs collection more equitable, efficient, and lucrative for the government; and developed sanitation and public health programs to transform a beautiful but filthy city into "the cleanest town in the Republic of Mexico." As in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, within weeks after the marines left it was hard to tell that Americans had been in Veracruz.
⁴⁷

The intervention contributed only indirectly to the removal of Huerta. At first, the dictator used the U.S. presence to rally nationalist support. Shaken by Mexican resistance, saddened by the loss of life, and increasingly fearful of a Mexican quagmire, Wilson as a face-saving gesture accepted in July a proposal from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to mediate. While Wilson and Huerta's representatives quickly deadlocked in the surreal and inconclusive talks at Niagara Falls, New York, the civil war intensified. Now able to secure arms, Carranza's forces steadily gained ground and in mid-1914 forced Huerta to capitulate. Chastened by the experience, Wilson confided to his secretary of war that there were "no conceivable circumstances which would make it right for us to direct by force or by threat of force the internal processes of a revolution as profound as that which occurred in France."
⁴⁸
In November 1914, with Carranza firmly in power, the president removed the occupation forces.