Nicaragua: The German Century

Founding members of the Deutsche Club in Nicaragua  1901

When one thinks about foreign powers that have changed the course of Latin American history, the two countries that immediately come to mind are Spain and the United States.  Others that make the list might be Great Britain with its influence in the Caribbean and along much of the region's Atlantic coast during the 19th and 20th century, or France with it's former Caribbean colonies and that one quixotic adventure into Mexico.  A country that doesn't come up very often is Germany; but the German footprint--the result of a wave of immigration in the 19th century--can be seen from the Oktoberfest celebrations in Nuevo Hamburgo, Mexico to the German museums in Valdivia, Chile.  Germany's impact in Nicaragua has been particularly consequential.

Nicaraguan history has been marked by three great power shifts.  The first was independence, which was thrust upon Nicaragua in 1821--no battles were fought, no dilemmas faced.  A few flags and people were swapped.  The power vacuum left behind by the Spanish, however, unleashed a feud between the country's two major cities--Granada and Leon--for control of the newborn state.  The dispute culminated in a civil war, where the Leon faction (the liberals) requested the help of a group of American mercenaries, led by the southerner William Walker.  Walker, after helping to beat the Granada faction (the conservatives), turned his guns on his allies the liberals, and proclaimed himself president.  So, it wasn't until the 1850s that Nicaragua actually had to fight and die for its independence; and it was not against the Spanish, but against a group of slave-state proponents from the United States.*

The second major power shift was the rise of Jose Santos Zelaya, the dictator responsible for the actual establishment of a Nicaraguan political state.  Gaining power through a coup in 1893, Zelaya began building railroads, establishing steam lines, and strengthening public education.  He enacted a number of seminal constitutional rights, introducing habeas corpus, compulsory education, the separation of powers, and property guarantees.  He also took control of the entirety of the Nicaraguan territory by expulsing the British from the Atlantic side of the country, and creating a new department, named (naturally) Zelaya.

The final shift was Anastasio Somoza, who transformed the country into his personal estate.  He is the founder of a very particular political culture: the modern clientalist corrupt authoritarian dictatorship.  A political culture that sees politics as a winner-take-all game, and the presidency as the pinnacle of power, fame, and wealth.  A political culture which became so entrenched that even a popular revolution could not shake it.

Germans, I'll argue, played a critical role in both the appearance of Zelaya onto the national political scene and in cementing Somoza's legacy. All in all, a small group of German immigrants were responsible for much of what happened politically in Nicaragua in the twentieth century.

Following the defeat of William Walker's forces, the liberal party spent the next thirty years living down the fact that they had been the ones that invited the American to Nicaragua.  Meanwhile, the conservative elite ran the government like an hacienda, with a small clan of granadinos rotating in positions of power.  It was during this time that a group of German immigrants were given plots of land for cultivation in the north of the country.  They began producing coffee.  Little did the Germans know that their coffee plantations would shift the balance of power in favor of the liberals, make Zelaya president, and completely transform the Nicaraguan state.

The coffee plantations were fantastically successful, not just for the German immigrants but for the country as a whole.  Coffee became--and remains--Nicaragua's cash crop.  This new wealth translated into political power, and it mostly benefited the liberals.  Because, at the heart of the Leon/Granada feud is the way people in each city make a living.  Leon's sphere of influence was up north, where the vast open land and cooler climate is well suited for raising cattle and farming.  Granada, on the other hand, was a port city that specialized in trade and commerce.  It was a story of the cowboy against the city slicker.  The Germans by introducing coffee into equation, strongly tipped the scales towards the farmers in Leon.  Leon's strength became evident with Zelaya's take over, and his 16 years in power.**

Zelaya's reign might have lasted longer had he not made the mistake of pissing off the United States.  As it became clear that the US would choose Panama over Nicaragua to build a canal, Zelaya began looking for other countries that might be interested in investing in an inter-oceanic route through Nicaragua.  Who did he turn to?  That's right, Germany.  Once the US caught wind of Zelaya's flirtations with Germany--which was at the time competing for influence in the region with the US--it decided it had had enough.  Zelaya was given an ultimatum, Godfather-style, in the form of a now infamous message from the US Secretary of State Philander Knox, known as the "Knox note": resign or face the consequences.  Two weeks later he resigned.***

After Zelaya's fall, the country was mired in two decades of political instability; presidents didn't finish their terms, civil wars broke out, and the United States spent a good portion of that period militarily occupying the country.  In 1932, after spending four grueling and unsuccessful years fighting a guerrilla war against a group led by the pesky Augusto C. Sandino, the US decided to pack up their things and go back home.  The US Army had been training a newly created National Guard, which was intended to be an independent standing army, outside the control of any politician or party and in charge of defending the constitution.  It was a typically American foreign policy, toeing the line between naively well-intentioned and cynically Machiavellian (you are never quite sure if they are inept boneheads or mad geniuses).  Anyways, before leaving, the US handed the keys to this well-trained, well-armed military group to a friend of the Ambassador's, a Nicaraguan who had studied in the US, spoke good English, and was also the political cousin of the Nicaraguan President: Anastasio Somoza.

Shockingly (!!), Somoza used the National Guard as his personal army and took over the country.  But, curiously, it would be the outbreak of the Second World War that would transform Somoza from your average dictator, into a king worthy of his own dynasty.  In 1941, Somoza, as the great opportunist that he was, declared war on Germany shortly before the United States did the same.  The act not only made him look good with the US, it also gave him an excuse to persecute German Nicaraguans and (more importantly) expropriate all their coffee plantations.  And just like that, Somoza became owner of some of the most productive land in the region, and one of the richest men in the country.  It would be a dramatic first step in the dictator's long process of accumulating national wealth.  People say that at the height of their power, the Somozas owned more than sixty percent of Nicaraguan corporations.

All because of the coffee plantations: they transformed the Nicaraguan economy, brought Zelaya to power, and made the Somozas into a dynasty.  And it all started with a couple German immigrants and a few acres of land.



Footnotes:
*: There are two Independence Days that are celebrated every year in Nicaragua, and which, coincidentally, fall one day apart: September 14 and 15th.  One is for the official signing of independence from Spain and the other commemorates a pivotal battle against Walker's army.

**: The fact that Leon is considered "liberal" and Granada "conservative" is misleading.  If anything, landowners, like those in Leon, have profound connections to ancestry and traditions through their land, which traditionally make them conservative.  Commercial centers and port cities, like Granada, tend to be more cosmopolitan, and the coming and going of people means there are few established traditions leading to a more progressive and liberal ideology.  So, you could say that it should be the other way around.  Leon is conservative and Granada liberal.  But even that is a misrepresentation.  Jose Santos Zelaya, the Abraham Lincoln of the Nicaraguan liberal party, is famous for his progressive reign; and Granada, while a port city, is a traditional and devoutly religious city.

***: You can find the "Knox note" here.