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The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956. a Revisionist Look

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The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956. a Revisionist Look The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956 A Revisionist Look Paul Coe Clark, Jr. The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956 The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956 A Revisionist Look Paul Coe Clark, Jr. Westport, Connecticut London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Paul Coe. The United States and Somoza, 1933-1956 : a revisionist look / Paul Coe Clark, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-94334-8 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—Nicaragua. 2. Nicaragua— Foreign relations—United States. 3. Somoza, Anastasio, 1896-1956. 1. Title. E183.8.N5C54 1992 327.7307285'09'041—dc20 92-8399 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright Cc.) 1992 by Paul Coe Clark, Jr. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-8399 ISBN: 0-275-94334-8 First published in 1992 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (239.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 FOR MARY LYNN Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv 1 A U.S. Policy Dilemma: Conflict Between Non- I Intervention and Constitutional Government 2 The Struggle for Constitutionalism 17 on the Eve of the Somoza Regime 3 Somoza and Roosevelt, Part I 39 4 Somoza and Roosevelt, Part II 63 5 Somoza and Washington: The War Years 83 6 Discord in Relations 109 7 From Welles to Braden: A New Direction 127 viii Contents 8 Washington Moves Against the Regime 139 9 The Diplomatic Break: May 1947-May 1948 159 10 The Cold War Takes Over: The U.S. 179 Warms to the Regime, 1948-1956 11 The Myth of Somoza as Washington's 197 Favorite Son: A Conclusion Epilogue 203 Bibliography 209 Index 227 About the Author 241 Preface The disintegration of the brutal Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua in 1979, its replacement by the Marxist Sandinista regime, and subsequent efforts to overthrow that regime occupied U.S. government officials for over a decade. The Nicaraguan Oncenio, or eleven-year period from 1979 to 1990 that witnessed these events, including the Sandinista's electoral defeat by Violeta Chamorro in 1990, resulted also in enormous literary attention on this previously seldom discussed country and especially on past U.S. involvement in its internal politics. Few aspects of past U.S. policies toward Nicaragua emerge unblemished from this overwhelmingly critical literature. Journalists and academicians alike began to repeat old critiques. Most condemned anew the policies that originally brought U.S. Marines to Nicaragua in 1909 to protect American economic and security interests, policies they liked to argue continually supported repressive regimes that inevitably stifled chances for more just and democratic governments. The cornerstone argument of these critics holds that after 1933 the United States established and supported the regime of Anastasio Somoza Garcia as a surrogate to serve American policy ends. The popularly held notion that Washington favored the Somoza regime, and indeed engineered its emplacement and nurtured its continuance in power, came to symbolize for many the larger idea that U.S. foreign policy after World War II was predicated upon backing x Preface dictatorships worldwide as long as they supported American interests, particularly anti-communism. Condemnation of Washington's policy toward Nicaragua comes from a broad range of critics in Latin America and the United States—only a few of which will be mentioned here. Over twenty years ago one of the founders of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, Carlos Fonseca Amador, set the theme that would be followed by numerous Latin Americans when he charged that the people of Nicaragua had been suffering under the "yoke of a reactionary clique imposed by Yankee imperialism virtually since 1932." Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez echoed Fonseca, claiming that the United States was solely responsible for first creating and then sustaining the Somoza dictatorship for over forty years. In the early 1980s two Nicaraguan writers declared that the Somoza regime was "made in the U.S.A.," repeating the popular assertion that the regime drew continual support from the United States.' North American critics often made similar charges. Writer Patricia Flynn contends that despite its anti-democratic rule, the Somoza regime won "unflagging support" from Washington for maintaining stability in Nicaragua. Noted diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber believes that during the 1930s and 1940s Washington officials clearly preferred repressive dictatorship in Central America to what he labels "indigenous radicalism." LaFeber argues that modern Nicaragua was formed by American military occupation and by the "U.S. created and supported Somoza family dynasty." The dynasty's founder, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, LaFeber notes with asperity, was the United States' "most important and lasting gift to Nicaragua." "As every president after Hoover knew," he writes, "the Somozas did as they were told." Another distinguished historian and Latin Americanist, Professor Charles Ameringer, refers to the "widespread belief" that the Somoza regime was created in the United States. Political scientist Martin Needler, one of the leading students of Latin American politics in the United States, supports the American surrogate thesis, applying his "indirect-rule model of imperialism" to U.S. support of Somoza rule. Another U.S. critic and adherent to the surrogate theme refers to Washington's "Somoza solution" to the problem of protecting its interests in Central America. A recent, impassionedly written study claims that Washington "unleashed Somoza" on his homeland. Many others enthusiastically support the thesis that dictators—and especially Somoza Garcia of Nicaragua—were the type of leaders that the United States preferred in Central America.' As a Latin Americanist influenced by these critics, I began research on this book expecting to largely support their school of thought. Since this book was approached from a U.S. policy perspective, research consisted primarily of an extensive examination of diplomatic records at the National Archives in Washington, although the National Archives Preface xi of Nicaragua and other sources in that country were also used. Other research included a review of letters and documents at the Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower libraries; an examination of the Arthur Bliss Lane collection at the Sterling Library at Yale; and interviews with former participants in and observers of policymaking in both the United States and Nicaragua. It included as well two years of work from an office at the Library of Congress, which allowed access to its vast resources. Exhaustive research eventually forced me to abandon earlier notions and preconceptions and to align my views with a limited number of scholars who have—in tangential assertions in studies that primarily deal with other topics—taken the first steps to question the popularly held theories that the United States placed Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power and sustained him there as Washington's man in Managua. These individuals include professors Robert Pastor and Anthony Lake, and the writer and scholar Mark Falcoff. Pastor, a political scientist with extensive experience in U.S.- Nicaraguan relations during the Carter administration, sees two overriding myths dominating perceptions of the relationship between the United States and the original Somoza. The first is that Somoza existed because of the United States; the second is that the United States preferred, in Pastor's words, "vassals and right-wing dictators." He strongly refutes these notions, claiming that Washington never wanted Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power but could do little to prevent his rise in the non-interventionist atmosphere of the 1930s.' Anthony Lake argues that while Somoza exploited his relationship with officials in Washington for his own gain, he sees their attitude toward Somoza as one of "vague contempt." Mark Falcoff writes persuasively that the United States never intended the ends to which Nicaragua arrived under the Somoza regime; he agrees that all of the Somozas cleverly used every chance to make their countrymen and the outside world believe they had the undying support of Washington. Falcoff refutes those many indictments by the casual observer of past U.S. policy toward Nicaragua, and argues that most recent critiques were made, not based on the record, but in the service of current (1980s) political agendas.` These assertions are perhaps the genesis of a new examination of the theories of those who have so readily condemned the entire history of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. It should be noted that most previous studies of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations largely concentrate on Washington's relations with the youngest of Somoza Garcia's sons, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, heir to the dynasty and the man fixed in the American mind as the Nicaraguan dictator during the regime's dramatic fall in 1979. This book, however, is the first to extensively examine the long record of U.S. relations with the first Somoza, and it draws conclusions that clearly depart from the heretofore common understanding. xii Preface Notes 1. Carlos Fonseca Amador, "Nicaragua: Zero Hour," in Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, editors, The Nicaragua Reader (New York: Grove Press, 1983), 126; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "To the People of the United States," New York Times, 17 April 1983, 15; Edmundo Jarquin C. and Pablo Emilio Barreto, "A Dictatorship Made in the U.S.A.," in Nicaragua: A People's Revolution (Washington: EPICA Task Force, 1980), 1. 2. Patricia Flynn, "Central America: The Roots of Revolt," in Roger Burbach and Patricia Flynn, editors, The Politics of Intervention: The United States in Central America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 34; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W.
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