American Legation, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Despatch No. 381 Dated: June 16, 1927.
TRANSLATION FROM EL CRONISTA APRIL 23, 1927.
OF THE CARIBBEAN POLICY IV ARCHIVES We will enumerate the methods followed by the United States, to put their Caribbean policy into practice, and to study within the limits of daily journalism, the efficacy of its results.
These methods may be reduced to three: persuasion, inspection and violence.
The first consists in the non recognition of governments called illegitimate as a means to oblige them to retire from office; and the despatch of special envoys of the Department of State to smooth out our differences.
The second is the method of supervising the elections in our countries, as has occurred in Panama and Nicaragua.
The third manifests itself by sending war ships and landing marines to make the situation their own.
These methods are all overed by a generic phrase moral with assistance which with inimitable prudence the United States has qualified them.
Moral assistance supervises elections, grants or denies recognition to Governments, sends special agents, despatches warships and lands marines.
And what results have been produced by this system of moral assistance to the Caribbean peoples? Does it represent a contribution to the progress of our countries? Has it bettered their civilization? Has it given the death blow to our endemic turbulence? Is it a factor for peace, or is it a factor for war?
Ås to the first aspect of moral assistance, recognition, this might render magnificent results, if it were impertially applied to illegitimate governments, not simply by way of official