Domingo B. Castillo, Venezuela Would March to the Pyre, 1905

A prolific writer, Domingo B. Castillo was active in Venezuelan politics in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth. This selection comes from a short pamphlet he titled, Venezuela y el Monroismo. In the text he writes about Cipriano Castro, who was the Venezuelan President from 1899 to 1908. He also mentions the New York & Bermudez Company, which was at odds with Cipriano Castro’s government throughout his tenure.

I.

The language of hatred has always been insult, and it has always reared its arrogant and merciless head to butt it against those who stray outside the common ground.

In times of great change, when all things become unsettled at once, the vested interests struggling for survival thrash about in the upheaval of new ideas dawning. In such circumstances the pain of powerlessness is not sounded by battle cries but by more pathetic notes.

In this particular moment of history justice perishes and rancorous passion reigns. Then the life of our public servants turns livid with hatred and loses every virtue worthy of respect. And so its history will never be certain, except when the spirit of the times has ceased ruffling history’s pages, when it has untangled the considered truth from the error and brutality of conflict.

The judgments passed down by emotion and self-interest amid the acrimony of combat are never magnanimous or accurate. There is always in them the triviality and malice of struggle. Later, when the vertigo of battle has passed, when moods have calmed and thoughts emerge clear and vigorous, comes the refuge of reason’s judicious study.

Into the deep furrow cut open by a soldier with his sword, or a visionary thinker with his pen, the seeds of hatred soon fall and put forth weeds and shoots, the fruit of good and evil both. In this soil choked with thistles a harvester who seeks grain will only bruise his hands and torment his soul.

Nations are great human seedbeds where the wisdom of a philosopher waters the seed of his ideas, hoping they will bloom in the conscience of generations to come.

The work of restoration is always arduous. People cherish the past and refuse to change their ways. To rise from history’s rut they require the thrust of a mighty hand; a greater force must stir them and drive them down the course of progress.

Such stirrings tear into the fabric of nations and awaken deep tremors and grave crises. The pain is immediate, intense, stabbing. Yet afterward comes healthful thought, and then the effort is redeemed.

It is in just such an age of great peril that the one man’s commanding character triumphs over the hurdles of combat, an age of trial in which the weak are imperiled and the great innovative spirits arise, spirits worthy to be studied by later generations.

II.

The work of General Cipriano Castro is a soldier’s work. He ascended to the presidency of this republic from the heart of a Revolution, when conditions around the country were altogether extraordinary.

The breath of civil war had kindled strong emotion and bled the nation dry; political factions tossed as if shaken by hurricane winds. Ambitions surged like towering waves on a choppy sea, and normality in the life of the nation seemed unachievable.

The economic problem was a true enigma in the midst of the chaos left behind by errors in the past.

The miasma of factional conflict had not yet been dispelled, and suspicion dominated the public’s attention. The roots of many new revolutions grew unchecked throughout the soil of the republic and disturbed even the most tranquil of spirits.

To bring order to such confusion, and to conquer the animosity and danger of that crucial moment, the authority of one superior man had to prevail.

General Cipriano Castro, under the enlightened influence of profound patriotic ideals, set himself to the mission of restoring the nation, of demolishing ancient customs, and it is only natural that in doing this he was bound to draw blood from political interests that were thought inviolable and factional dogmas that the public had heretofore regarded as sacred.

His first step on the road of reform was an endorsement of the educated and astute youth, whom he placed in high public office.

Working amid the hazards of war, which did not once allow him a day of rest, he has put the public house in order, observed the obligations of internal and external public debt, and given constant proof of the sincere precept that he reveres, of governing with honor and gravity.

He has laid down crucial decrees in every branch of administration, and has executed countless works of assistance in these states in the most equitable fashion. He has reestablished order and tranquility, and has furnished the trust that the interests of our country require in order to prosper.

In the face of such evident facts passion must hold its tongue. The antipathy of General Castro’s opponents will never be able to blot out the great figure of his character, nor strip away a single glorious laurel thrown by those won over to his cause.

In recent memory no president in all of Latin America has been more noteworthy, or more embattled.

The series of prolonged revolutions that he has put down in Venezuela have made him necessary to its government and indispensable if peace in the Republic is to be maintained.

Currently his most fervent intention is that of paying to the last cent the debts that Venezuela has contracted.

In the eyes of our president the law of this nation does not admit of any doubts in the matter of national sovereignty. His greatest wish is to give strength to the principle, unequivocal in all ages, that is recognized with regard to foreigners in Venezuela: their right to live in this country provided they submit to its laws.

In this regard General Castro’s opinion is adamant. His policy is one of respect for foreign interests, but against this policy must be weighed equally the rights and prerogatives of the republic.

With this issue of national decorum resolved, an issue of profound and momentous importance for Venezuela’s future, the nation will face no obstacle capable of checking the design of the man who will foster this nation’s destiny.

Under the initiative of General Castro, a leader already renowned in world politics for his rigorous will, unquestionable valor and his superlative endowments as a soldier and statesman, Venezuela is coming to a radical transformation of the timid politics of other times.

III.

The Monroe Doctrine having been violated by the acquisition of the Philippines, all the Great Powers of Europe have resolved to introduce a new principle in the Law of Nations, that they may thereby justify the conquests they intend to make in Latin America.

The occasion that European diplomacy considered propitious to violate the Monroe Doctrine is known to all, and no observer can be ignorant of Venezuela’s role, owing to the state of civil war existing in it, as a pretext for the Allied Powers to take their first step in pursuit of their ideal.

In this age diplomacy always wears a disguise. Against the expansionist policy of Europe, the Monroe Doctrine resolves the problem arising from this policy in a way that accommodates the ambitions of North America.

According to the latest interpretation of the ever-elastic Monroe Doctrine, the New World is the property of the United States.

In respect of this, the United States has determined that it must anticipate the aims of the Old World; to this end it must discover the most convenient method of accomplishing this usurpation without inciting a global war.

The reasons put forward to support the intervention of the United States in national politics throughout the Western Hemisphere are hollow, yet somehow they have sufficed to misrepresent the true intentions of modern North American statesmen.

The new interpreters of Monroe, in their dealings with South America, cling to a grand evolutionary scheme, one distant in attainment and uncertain in its results, yet they cherish it. And they go on toward the ideal of their policy with their native tenacity, never troubling themselves about the rights of foreigners or the violence which they inescapably must resort to in scaling the summit of their own colossal ambition.

In light of the aforementioned facts, it is left to the governments and statesmen of South America to consider the magnitude of the danger that threatens us. There is yet time to preserve the common destiny of this Latin continent.

IV.

The conflict instigated by Germany in Venezuela during 1902 was an act of aggression directed against the supporters of the Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela at that time defended her independent and sovereign power against the lawless ambitions of the German Empire.

Germany desired that debt and damage claims made by its citizens in Venezuela should be paid without first making an inquiry and without the involvement of the national legislature, to the detriment of that nation’s sovereignty. The government of Venezuela was inflexibly against any such imposition, insisting on the rights of the nation, on its decorum and on the honor of its people.

Venezuela was forced, despite its repeated protests, to sign the Washington Protocols in February of 1903, and the United States looked upon this insult unmoved, without coming to understand that the assault on Venezuela went hand-in-hand with an armed protest against U.S. intrusion into the province, and the politics, of the Old World.

Europe’s protest is a valid one. To seize their opportunity they require only an incident, any incident, that would give the Great Powers a pretext to break with the Colossus of the North, a measure that they deem necessary.

The United States thinks fundamentally of its own national aggrandizement and believes that it can advance its plans unopposed under cover of the Platt Law, which Cuba suffers under by right of conquest.

This law is the method chosen to aid the United States’ colonial policy. Santo Domingo has just been subjected to it, and by a most strange circumstance, the government of Dominica remains under the authority of a foreign power. Santo Domingo is once more a colony…

Such a bizarre occurrence gives the American press license to speak insolently of the possibility that the United States will annex and govern the nations of Central and South America.

To the extent that such ambitions might include Venezuela, it is pertinent to clarify matters of international politics that this republic has expounded, invigorated by the law and the justice that favors its claims.

Venezuela is paying its external and internal debt obligations punctually, and if unexpected circumstances require it to suspend such payment the Washington Protocols indicate legal measures that should be taken to repay the balances of the blockading powers.

Consequently the United States cannot interfere in this matter without violating the treaties of 1903 signed in Washington itself.

And regarding the case of the New York & Bermudez Company, which has had so much to say to the American press, one must caution that in these proceedings Venezuela will defend its rights, without restraining the legal response of the defendant.

The behavior of the government of Venezuela in this lawsuit is supported by the unassailable right possessed by the nation to proceed against the New York & Bermudez Company. And for the defendant to prevail over Venezuela in this case would require the autonomy of its civil jurisdiction to be denied, and its national sovereignty disregarded.

If matters could be pushed to such an extreme, with no better justification than force and no better excuse than the necessity of increasing Yankee dominance, Venezuela would march to the pyre like the Boers; it would fall wrapped in the glorious flag of the 5th of July, but it would not kneel as Santo Domingo has before the bureaucratic despotism of the Great Czar of the New World.

The Venezuelan people love the freedom and independence of their land, and under no circumstances would they condescend to bear the yoke of colonial life.

If the cohesion of the South American continent depends on the idea which gives Venezuela its sovereignty, the nations of Latin America may be sure that for the government that directs the fortunes of that republic today there can be no humiliating double-dealing or shameful abdication of duty.

Domingo B. Castillo, “Venezuela and the Monroe Doctrine,” (1905). Translation by William Scott White.