Honduras declares war on Germany

On 19 July 1918 in Tegucigalpa the President of Honduras, Francisco Bertrand, signed decree number 58 at a meeting of the council of ministers. Its first article stated: “It is declared that a state of war exists between the Republic of Honduras and the government of the German Empire.” The second announced that the government would report on it to the National Congress at its next session. Beside the president’s signature, the decree bore the signatures of all the ministers. At ten o’clock that evening the American chargé d’affaires, Curtis, sent the full text to Washington, and the foreign minister asked him to convey to the United States government the “lively feelings of cordiality” of Honduras and its wishes for the success of the cause the Americans were defending “in the name of the freedom of nations”. Fourteen months after breaking off relations with Berlin, Honduras became a belligerent.

Continental solidarity

The preamble to the decree took up two sentences. The first stated that the reasons for which Honduras had broken off diplomatic relations with the German Empire “had become more acute” and were becoming graver every day for the international life of all nations. The second declared that “continental solidarity” placed on the states of America the duty of contributing, as far as they were able, to the triumph of the cause of civilisation and right that the United States was defending together with the Allied nations, and that this required taking a firm stand in the present world conflict.

Like Haiti, which had declared war on Germany a week earlier, Honduras made no mention of Austria-Hungary. In this it differed from Nicaragua, which in May had declared a state of war with both empires. Of the five Central American republics that had once formed a common federation, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica had already declared war on Germany. Only El Salvador remained neutral, though friendly to the Americans. According to a 1919 survey by the Pan American Union, eight of the twenty Latin American states declared war on Germany, and Honduras was the last to do so.

A republic of banana companies

Honduras was then a poor country of just over half a million inhabitants in which, as the American historian Percy Alvin Martin wrote, public affairs were run by a small class, and the decisive voice belonged to the president-dictator. On the Caribbean coast, around ports such as La Ceiba (PL) and Tela, American banana companies operated. The United Fruit Company built railways and plantations there through its subsidiaries, and its rival was Samuel Zemurray’s Cuyamel Fruit Company. The companies received enormous land concessions from the government in return for building railway lines and had influence on national politics. In 1910–1911 Zemurray financed the uprising of General Manuel Bonilla, which ended in a truce negotiated by the Americans.

Bertrand owed his career to precisely this arrangement. Under the settlement he was provisional president in 1911–1912, and when Bonilla won the election he became his vice-president. After Bonilla’s death in March 1913 he took over power and held it throughout the war. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, his government kept well away from it. American diplomats reported that German influence in the country was strong. The large German trading houses almost all had their headquarters in the Pacific port of Amapala, on an island in the Gulf of Fonseca, and played a large part in the trade carried on through that port.

The Las Trojas dispute

In July 1918 Tegucigalpa was particularly anxious for Washington’s goodwill. On 2 July the foreign minister showed Curtis a telegram according to which the Nicaraguan political chief of the department of Nueva Segovia had declared the village of Las Trojas to be Nicaraguan territory. According to the Hondurans, a hundred infantrymen and forty horsemen had invaded Honduran territory as far as Las Trojas and Potrerillos, destroying crops and carrying men and women off to Nicaragua. The President of Nicaragua, Emiliano Chamorro Vargas, maintained that he had sent only a revenue guard of 25 to 40 men, which was pursuing tobacco smugglers on territory that had long been Nicaraguan. Managua did not recognise the arbitral award by which in 1906 King Alfonso XIII of Spain had drawn the border between the two states.

The Honduran minister in Washington protested at the State Department that 140 Nicaraguan soldiers had occupied Las Trojas, raised their flag there and were burning houses. He warned that if they were not withdrawn, Honduras would have to send troops in defence of its rights and its honour. On the morning of 16 July Bertrand told Curtis that he earnestly desired American mediation and an arbitration that would settle the dispute once and for all. He wanted the arbitrator to be President Woodrow Wilson himself, because his ruling would carry more weight than an award by the Chief Justice of the United States, whom Chamorro proposed as arbitrator. Three days later he signed the war decree. The sources do not link the two matters directly, but at a time when Honduras was counting on a settlement in Washington, a show of loyalty to the United States could do it no harm.

Congratulations from the State Department

The news reached Washington on the evening of 20 July. Former President Policarpo Bonilla, who was in the United States on a special mission, also gave official notice of it. On 23 July the acting Secretary of State, Frank Polk, instructed Curtis to hand the Honduran government a note in which the United States received the news “with profound satisfaction”. “This action of Honduras against the common enemy of civilisation, human rights and liberty is further proof that she stands firmly for the cause of democracy,” Polk wrote. He congratulated the “sister republic” on the noble stand it had taken alongside the other free nations fighting for the rights of humanity.

The dispute with Nicaragua died down for the time being. On 22 July Chamorro assured the American minister in Managua that he had withdrawn the revenue guard from Las Trojas and that the border was quiet. In August, however, the tension returned: Honduras accepted the Spanish king’s award as the only basis for talks, and the Nicaraguans reported that Tegucigalpa was moving five hundred soldiers with machine guns and cannon to Danlí (PL) near the border. The border dispute dragged on for decades. It was settled only in 1960 by the International Court of Justice, which upheld the validity of the 1906 award.

A war without soldiers

Honduras sent neither soldiers nor ships to Europe. According to Martin, the official aim was to bring the country’s foreign policy into even closer line with that of the United States, but in the light of later events it may be supposed that the government also wanted a free hand over German property. The constitution did not allow the confiscation of foreigners’ property, but the authorities found another way. On the pretext that the motor launches belonging to German firms in Amapala were being used to disturb public order, they requisitioned all of them, which completely paralysed the trade of these houses, and the firms themselves were placed under the supervision of officials. On 7 August, at Washington’s request, Bertrand allowed the duty-free export of corozo palm nuts, which American chemical industry needed for gas warfare.

Belligerent status gave Honduras a seat at the Paris Peace Conference. Its delegation was led by Policarpo Bonilla, who tried unsuccessfully to have the Covenant of the League of Nations include a definition of the Monroe Doctrine guaranteeing the Latin American republics their independence and territorial integrity. In June 1919 he signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Honduras, and in November 1920 the country became a member of the League of Nations, from which it withdrew in 1936. Bertrand did not see out his term in office. When in 1919 he tried to secure the presidency for his own candidate, a Liberal uprising broke out, and in September, according to some sources under American pressure, he had to step down. In 1920 the leader of the uprising, General Rafael López Gutiérrez, became president.