File No. 701.1811/48
The Costa Rican Minister ( Quesada) to the Secretary of State
Excellency: Señor Don Rafael Oreamuno, Secretary of the Legation, being now out of the country, and I having also to make a trip, I beg your excellency to deign to consider as being in charge of the Legation Señor Don Francisco M. Montero, the Vice Consul of the Consulate General of Costa Rica in New York, whose office is at 2 Rector Street in this city, until Señor Don Juan Rafael Oreamuno returns; and immediately upon his return, I beg your excellency to be pleased to consider him as Chargé d’Affaires.
Before leaving, I wish to picture to your excellency the very sad condition in which my country finds itself under the shameful rule of the usurper, Tinoco, as this would be the best defense of the efforts put forth both by President Gonzalez and. myself to prevent a recognition of that intolerable tyranny by this cultured and powerful Government.
A little more than a year has passed since the rule born of the treachery of the former Minister of War, aided and abetted by American capital, forced that rule upon Costa Rica, and that short space of time has sufficed to turn one of the most prosperous and better-governed countries of the continent into an unfortunate tribe subject to the unrestrained and conscienceless will of that despot, and deprived us of nearly every advantage offered by civilization.
For instance: In the matter of public charities, my country proudly stood comparatively at the head of the other Latin American Republics. We had an insane asylum which could still be compared with the best in this country, various hospitals which had little to envy from the most perfect institutions of that kind in any part of the world, homes for orphans, lying-in hospitals, etc. All these, on a small scale, have been well equipped and highly efficient.
Now, the greater part of those institutions have been closed and those which remain have been brought down to the lowest level. A [Page 250] great many lunatics have been thrown out on the street with all the attendant danger and inconvenience to the community, and of the 600 beds that were at the hospital of San Juan de Dios, the best in the Republic, there are but 140 left, and those will be very soon removed.
An annex to that hospital for the care of tuberculosis has been closed and the local papers speak of the death of many of those patients on the public highway.
With public instruction the situation is no less deplorable. Of the 16 schools that were in the capital, 11 have been closed and 4,000 children in San José alone have been deprived of the benefits of teaching, and the same proportion prevails in the rest of the country.
All the other public services have had more or less the same fate. In the last 9 months the Government has not paid one cent of the interest on its internal debt nor for the rents of houses nor for the merchandise it buys in the interior. The revenue on spirits, which ranks second in the country, has been reduced to practically nothing, so as to enable his henchmen publicly to dispense illicitly distilled spirits.
The International Bank, a state bank founded by President Gonzalez on the basis of public credit, and which under his intelligent administration had hoarded in its vaults the sum of 800,000 colones in gold for the redemption of its notes, has been destroyed by Tinoco, who brought its metallic reserve to the trivial sum of 70,000 colones, as a result of the sacking, as it was called by the manager of the branch of the Royal Bank of Canada at San José, of that institution by the traitor.
The colon, our monetary unit, which was worth 40 cents in American gold when Tinoco broke into power, has fallen during his administration as low as 17 cents in spite of the fact that the increase of exports of the country amounted to a million, while the imports were half a million less during the first 10 months of the past year as compared with the same months of 1916.
In his eagerness to procure funds he has overburdened every industry with excessive taxes, which must necessarily destroy them as it has already destroyed many, and the funds so procured have not been used for the public good, but to raise troops, ten and twenty times larger than those which at other times were employed by the several governments for the maintenance of order. At the gambling tables where Tinoco spends his nights, on the keeping of a harem by his brother Joaquin, Minister of War, and in supporting in this country a few adulators who sing the praise of their masters, goes the weakened marrow of the nation, and yet there are American concerns which would defend this ignoble rule in the Department of State and at the same time endeavor to mislead public opinion through the press, a part of which is practically controlled for that purpose. In this field we are powerless, defenseless. In some newspaper or other there are seen, daily, items disparaging us, the enemies of Tinoco, calling us pro-Germans, anti-Americans, and whenever we try to protest against such odious slander, we find the doors of the editors closed. Many a time have we given to the newspapers articles and declarations demonstrating the iniquity of the charges made against us, but never have we succeeded in having them published. American [Page 251] companies owning interests in Costa Rica blocked our way and we had no recourse against it.
So intolerable has the situation in Costa Rica grown that about a month ago groups of citizens took up arms against the hateful rule. Desperation, which is always a poor adviser, drove them to suicide, for it amounts to nothing else to meet with a few shotguns and revolvers an enemy armed with modern rifles, machine guns, and ordnance. It was an easy task for Tinoco under those circumstances to suppress the movement and fill the jails with six or seven hundred political prisoners, among whom were three of the ministers of the Gonzalez administration and all of his brothers. Another of those ministers, Señor Acosta, whom I had the honor to present to your excellency in December, 1915, is a fugitive from the country, as is Señor Oreamuno, the magistrate representing Costa Rica in the Central American Court of Justice, and also many other persons of note. I must not forget that among the fugitives are two of the deputies of the making of Tinoco in the bogus elections he ordered after seizing the power, Messrs. Rogelio Fernandez Guell and Rafael Rodriguez, willing servants of the tyrant at the beginning but who soon came to turn against him as have all those who applauded the setting up of the hateful situation which is now debasing and denigrating Costa Rica.
Such is the disparagement into which the Tinoco Government has fallen that outside of his nearest relatives, it may be said that he has only foreigners in command of the troops. His military adviser, who holds his full confidence, is Dr. Julian Irias, extremely well known in Nicaraguan politics, who has brought to him a legion of adventurers of all nationalities. The Minister of Hacienda, Licentiate Manuel Francisco Jiménez, who has certainly been the person who turned the situation to his own advantage with an effrontery that can only be compared with his unscrupulousness, has just withdrawn from the government on anything but friendly terms. Tired of being used as a tool to torture the citizens, Colonel Pinaud, one of the military chiefs who lent most effective aid to Tinoco in his treachery, tendered his resignation which was accepted, but he was immediately thrown into jail. Opinion has become so estranged from that misrule that I have reliable information to the effect that Señor Fernandez Guardia himself, who represented Tinoco’s interests in Washington, is now as deeply displeased as anyone with the situation which he defended here.
Dr. Don José Maria Soto, for many years household physician of Tinoco and former president of the “27 of January” Club, an institution created by the usurper to arrange the details of his laughable election, is now at the Altamont Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland. I wish that the Secretary could have from Señor Soto’s own lips a description of the situation that now prevails in Costa Rica.
The former presidents of the Republic who did so much to strengthen the traitor’s power, would gladly now wash their huge mistakes in their own blood.
Finally, Mr. Secretary, the predictions which I ventured to make in the beginning to your excellency as to the condition in which Tinoco would put the country are literally coming true. Misery and [Page 252] ruin could not be worse and the dissatisfaction and discord of all the social classes are growing daily greater.
Tinoco recently ordered the confiscation of all the property of 40 citizens, which will make even deeper the abysm of disrepute into which he has fallen. And so protests against such frightful tyranny do not come now only from us, the friends of the former order of things; the country is unanimously with us, and so we now find in jail by the side of the brothers of President Gonzalez a multitude of men who stood with the traitor in his criminal attempt.
Therefore, there can be no tranquillity in Costa Rica as long as Tinoco is not overthrown; revolution must break out again at any moment and with the scarcity of means at the disposal of the people there is ample reason to fear that the next movement will prove as fruitless as that which has just failed and only serve to lead the country into worse anarchy. What Costa Rica needs to defend her life and her rights is arms, and your excellency well knows that it is impossible for the manufacturers of this country to furnish them at this time.
As with respect to the press, here again Tinoco has equally the advantage of us: to him the Governments which recognize him, such as that of Guatemala, have not hesitated to furnish the war implements he has asked, and in these very United States one Francis J. A. Darr, of the firm of Savage, has given him formal promise to fill a large order for machine guns, which Tinoco personally gave him in January at San José. In the last fiasco the Government’s soldiers murdered with impunity British subjects and seriously wounded an American citizen. These acts of vandalism which could not even be thought of in Costa Rica, the Athens of America, as the Honorable John Bassett Moore, calls it in his book, Principles of American Diplomacy, will surely be represented by the adventurers who stand with Tinoco as innocent if not commendable acts. These same men possibly would say that those Englishmen and that American were dangerous German agents to keep up the slander started by those miscreants in their endeavor to injure us, the enemies of Tinoco.
And now that I have touched upon this point, I must say to your excellency that in my country, as in all Latin American Republics, the great majority is intensely pro-Ally, and now in the presence of the noble attitude taken by President Wilson not to recognize the hateful Government presided over by Tinoco, it may be said that all of my fellow citizens are intensely pro-American. The Kaiser, who recognized Tinoco, has proved that he was in Costa Rica the same enemy of democracy and a partisan of tyranny as he is everywhere; and on the contrary, President Wilson in repudiating that hateful rule has given further conclusive proof of the sincerity of his devotion to the principles of justice and fraternity, whether Belgium, Serbia, or Costa Rica be concerned. And it being so, can it be conceived that we, the enemies of Tinoco, could sympathize with a tyrant who recognizes him and approves his acts and opposes the noble Chief Magistrate who has denied him his friendship? The charge is so ridiculous that it must truly provoke hilarity rather than indignation.
Before concluding, Mr. Secretary, I deem it proper to say to your excellency that President Gonzalez will stay a few months more in [Page 253] this country, and that if by any chance your excellency should require any information from him, he may be called at No. 80 Front Street, in this city.
Begging your excellency to deign to forgive my taking up so much of your time with this long statement, I take pleasure [etc.].