Uruguay and the United States, 1903-1929
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Uruguay and the United States, 1903-1929

Diplomacy in the Progressive Era

James C. Knarr

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Uruguay and the United States, 1903-1929

Diplomacy in the Progressive Era

James C. Knarr

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About This Book

A comprehensive history of the relationship between the United States and reformist Uruguay

Despite its fascinating history, the attention paid by North American historians to Uruguay, a nation nestled in the corner of South America between Argentina and Brazil, is scant when compared to that shown to its neighbors. A major portion of the Uruguayan story revolves around the figure of two-time president José Batlle y Ordóñez, who was the nation's dominant political figure between 1903 and 1929. Historians have credited Batlle with creating the hemisphere's first welfare state. Under his guidance, Uruguay passed laws in the area of workers' rights, unemployment compensation, public education, public works, and voting expansion. Ever ambitious, Batlle sought to make Uruguay the world's "model country."

Uruguay and the United States, 1903–1929 is the first study to look at the political, social, and commercial relationship between Batlle's Uruguay and the Progressive Era United States. Using government records from Montevideo and Washington, as well as newspapers, the personal papers of many of the key actors, and a variety of other sources, author James Knarr examines how this ideological and harmonious relationship developed between Batllistas in Uruguay and Progressives in the United States.

Through his analysis of diplomatic, commercial, and cultural bonds, Knarr comprehensively explores how Batlle's liberal ideas, partially built on U.S. concepts, resulted in a relationship that brought rewards for both the United States and Uruguay. This work is a must read for historians of U.S. foreign relations and Latin America.

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Year
2011
ISBN
9781612776484

1

U.S.-Uruguayan Relations before Elihu Root (1828–1906)

In December 1905, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor published a report from the North American consul in Montevideo, John O’Hara, regarding the negligible trade between the United States and Uruguay. O’Hara wrote that North American firms could explain such deficient commerce “in a very brief sentence—failure to study market conditions and [the] absence of permanent representatives.” While the consul focused on mercantile matters, his principal function in Uruguay, one can extrapolate a similar conclusion to explain the limited level of U.S.-Uruguayan diplomatic and cultural relations in the years before the 1906 visit of Elihu Root, the secretary of state, to Montevideo.1
The minimalism that Consul O’Hara discerned had its foundations in the idiosyncratic historical growth of both Uruguay and the United States in the 1800s. In very general terms, both states’ lack of military and economic power, the distance between the two countries, and the technological limitations of the nineteenth century inhibited an intimate relationship between North Americans and Uruguayans before 1906. Before focusing on the limited U.S.-Uruguayan relationship in the 1800s and how certain events led to a closer relationship between Washington and Montevideo between 1899 and 1906, therefore, a brief summary of the historical development of both Uruguay and the United States, with special reference to external relations, would be useful.
Uruguay began life as the foster child of three parents. Oddly enough, it obtained its sovereignty from neither Spain nor Portugal—both of whom settled lands in the land now forming Uruguay—but from an agreement between Argentina and Brazil negotiated by the British. By the mid-1820s, the British foreign minister, George Canning, became troubled over how persistent bickering between Brazilian policy makers and Argentine officials over the RĂ­o de la Plata basin, specifically the eastern shore of the Uruguay River, hindered British trade in the region. Thus, Canning brokered a deal between Brazil and Argentina in 1827 to create a neutral buffer state to calm tensions. By 1828, the two states had ratified the accord, and the modern RepĂșblica Oriental del Uruguay was born.2
Between 1828 and the early twentieth century, Uruguay’s foreign policv sought to balance relations with these three larger powers—Brazil and, more importantly, Britain and Argentina. Politically, Uruguay found itself beholden to the two South American states that persistently interfered with its domestic politics. For example, two political parties—the Blancos and the Colorados—gradually emerged because of the Guerra Grande that Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas instigated in the 1830s. Likewise, Brazilian policy makers in Rio de Janiero coerced Uruguay (by the 1860s under the political control of the nominally liberal Colorados) to decimate Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–70).
Economically, Uruguay remained a neocolonial enterprise of the British through most of the nineteenth century. Historian Peter Winn astutely demonstrates the almost omnipotent commercial control of British merchants, engineers, and diplomats in the Oriental Republic between independence and the Batlle period (1903–1929), arguing that “by 1900 Uruguay was England’s.” According to Winn, the British invested in Uruguay for their own sake, improving infrastructure, controlling the railroads, and founding banks not for Uruguayan development per se but to advance British commercial interests, especially John Bull’s meat industry. British banks willingly loaned funds, for example, to subsidize railroads that connected English estancias to the coast but did not offer monies for irrigation projects that would have benefited Uruguayans generally. Nevertheless, Winn notes, an Anglophile elite emerged in the 1870s and 1880s that embraced British “progress” in Uruguay. By the 1890s, some members of this elite, including newspaperman JosĂ© Batlle y Ordoñez, began to question the informal empire the British had built in Uruguay. Even so, Uruguay’s trade and diplomacy, like that of all Southern Cone states, generally oriented itself toward Europe rather than North America throughout the nineteenth century.3
While the British established a foothold in the Southern Cone, Washington policy makers focused North American foreign policy on an east-west axis, rather than a north-south axis, largely surrendering Uruguay and the remainder of the River Plate region to London. Throughout North American history, most of the key diplomatic incidents involved Europe and Asia. The United States’ Latin American policy, while relevant and, at times, arguably paramount, rarely extended south of the Caribbean before World War I.
One can point to three reasons for such a narrow geographic view on the part of Washington policy makers in the nineteenth century. First, the United States was an emerging nation. Lacking industrial might or an expansive economy, Washington policy makers, tourists, missionaries, and merchants focused on a limited area of the world—Europe, the Caribbean (including Mexico), and Asia. Put simply, political elites in Washington, recognizing the relative weakness of the preindustrial United States, ensured that its economic and political needs rarely extended beyond these regions. Second, in the age of sail, natural forces favored ships arriving at the Río de la Plata region from Europe. The currents and winds pushed ships originating from the United States inward to the Caribbean and not directly south. Meanwhile, other Atlantic trade winds and currents steered ships from Europe to the southwest, toward the Southern Cone of South America. Even with the advent of the steam age, which began in earnest in the 1870s, coal remained too costly for Yankee merchants in the wool and cattle trade, especially since such goods were available in some quantity in the United States. Third, the British had already established such an economic and political foothold in Uruguay that a weaker United States offered little or no competition.
This state of affairs does not mean that relations between the United States and Uruguay did not exist before 1906. Some Yankee commerce flowed to the River Plate and the two states exchanged diplomats. In addition, Uruguayan liberals labored to understand and to embrace North American material progress to counter British dominance. Although both sides made sporadic efforts to improve commercial and diplomatic relations, neither North Americans nor Uruguayans could overcome the limitations imposed by nineteenth-century technology, geographic distance, and British economic control in Uruguay until early in the twentieth century. Even so, their interactions informed and buttressed an important relationship later, especially for Uruguayan liberals of the Colorado Party, after Root’s 1906 visit.

Diplomatic Origins (1828–99)

The United States slowly established formal diplomatic relations with Uruguay through the nineteenth century. While a North American consul resided in Montevideo (then a part of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata) as early as 1821, full diplomatic relations with Uruguay were not formalized in Montevideo until 1867. That October, President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) accredited his minister resident to Argentina, the Civil War general Alexander Asboth, to serve in the same capacity in Uruguay. Still, Asboth and his successors remained resident in Buenos Aires for the next three years, demonstrating the minor importance accorded Uruguay by Washington. Relations had improved by 1870, when Washington removed oversight for Uruguay from its Buenos Aires legation and opened a separate legation in Montevideo. Nonetheless, Washington accredited the minister in Montevideo to Paraguay as well and left his status at the lowest diplomatic level—minister resident. That same year, Washington first placed a consul in Colonia, a former smuggling port across the Uruguay River from Argentina. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison upgraded the title of the U.S. diplomatic representative from minister resident to envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, but until 1914 the holder of that post was still expected to serve North American interests in both Uruguay and Paraguay.4
The Oriental Republic’s policy makers likewise only slowly built up diplomatic relations with the United States in the nineteenth century. In 1834, Uruguay’s president, Fructuoso Rivera, established a Consulate General in New York City, initially naming North American John Lewis Darby to the post. The consul general served as Uruguay’s principal diplomatic representative until the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry raised the consulate to a legation in 1883, but Montevideo failed to name a minister to the legation in its first years, instead appointing a chargĂ© d’affaires to oversee the legation, the first being Enrique EstrĂĄzulas. Maximo Tajes finally named the first minister resident in 1889 but the legation oddly remained in New York City until 1900. Thus, one can conclude that throughout the nineteenth century policy makers in Montevideo focused on commercial relations, leaving their legation in the United States’ commercial capital, New York, rather than its diplomatic seat, Washington, D.C.5
Despite this limited diplomatic interaction in the late nineteenth century, an industrializing United States did attempt to strengthen relations with Uruguay at least once. In 1884, Congress authorized the secretary of state to send a commercial fact-finding mission to some nations in Central and South America. According to Walter LaFeber’s seminal study of the period, such missions occurred with increasing frequency throughout the late 1800s, as North American factories sought new markets in which to sell their goods. In this instance, three commissioners left the United States during late 1884, visiting Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Chile by mid-1885. Finishing their duties on the west coast of South America early, they arrived in the River Plate in early June 1885. Although initially they had intended to leave Uruguay and Argentina off the itinerary, they missed the steamer for New York, an event that allowed them two weeks to visit with political and commercial leaders in both countries to avoid “offending the sensitivities of these Republics,” according to their report.6
The commissioners’ conclusions about North American trade with Uruguay offered a depressing assessment of extant commerce but foresaw a brighter future. Their report noted that business with all three River Plate countries—Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay—remained “lamentably insignificant, and less than it was a half a century ago” owing to “no regular steam connection whatever” with the United States. While forty to sixty steamers monthly traveled between the River Plate region and Europe, the commissioners noted, none went to the United States, except for an occasional vessel that offloaded its cargo in New York before bringing Yankee products to Europe. Likewise, North American goods arrived in the River Plate only rarely and then on European ships. Thus, the commissioners asserted, the citizens of the River Plate countries see the Stars and Stripes only on men-of-war or the occasional specially chartered vessel.7
Nevertheless, the commissioners’ meeting with Uruguay’s Anglophile president, Maximino Santos, on 2 June 1885 offered hope for the future of U.S.-Uruguayan relations. The commissioners noted enthusiastically that many Uruguayans referred to the United States as the “grand republic” and that the Oriental leader acceded to Washington’s requests on almost every discussion point. Such requests included closer relations, a treaty of amity and commerce, a common Pan-American silver coin for easier commercial transactions, and Uruguay’s attendance at a Pan-American Conference to “resist European interference in American affairs.” However, Santos did refuse to discuss a reciprocal commercial treaty until the U.S. Congress lowered the wool tariff. Likewise, while Santos welcomed the creation of a steamship line to the United States, explaining that he had already contracted with a French company to improve Montevideo’s harbor, he said that his government could not afford to subsidize such a line. Thus, despite these assertions of amity and hopes for greater trade, and even though Uruguayan representatives did attend the planned 1889–90 Pan-American Conference in Washington, Britain’s mercantile hold on the Oriental Republic remained intact through the 1880s.8

Signs of Change: The 1890s and the Juan Linfoldo Cuestas Years (1899–1903)

The period between about 1890 and 1903 represented transitional years in the worldviews of both the United States and Uruguay. Put simply, the United States expanded politically, geographically, and commercially, and in no global region were the effects of this growth more evident than in Latin America. Beginning with the 1889–90 First International American Conference, Washington policy makers embarked on a series of efforts to expand their country’s prestige and power throughout the Americas. Most notable amongst these attempts were the 1895 settlement of the Venezuela–British Guiana border, the 1898 war with Spain (through which the United States became an imperial power), the 1902–3 settlement of the Venezuela debt crisis, and the machinations that led to Panama’s independence in 1903 and the building of a Yankee-owned transoceanic canal there. To be sure, Uruguay did not figure prominently in Washington’s plans during this period, but the 1890s expansion of the United States’ Latin American policy laid the groundwork for greater cooperation in the first decade of the 1900s.
During this same period, political elites in Uruguay began to review critically the British political, economic, and diplomatic hegemony in their country. Starting in the 1890s, a distinct subset of export-oriented Colorado liberals based in Montevideo began questioning the progress of Uruguay under British neocolonial tutelage. Led by newspaper editor and politician JosĂ© Batlle y Ordoñez, these liberals saw in the British commercial dominance the seeds of Uruguayan disorder and destitution. They criticized British land consolidation in the countryside (which had victimized even Batlle’s father personally) and an economic infrastructure that supported British economic imperialism without providing for Uruguayan social and commercial development. Many of these liberals, latter termed Batllistas after their leader, therefore began looking to modernize Uruguay without John Bull and turned an admiring gaze toward the social progress that the United States at least outwardly enjoyed.9
In response to this liberal discontent, the presidency of Juan Lindolfo Cuestas (1899–1903) slightly increased U.S.-Uruguayan relations from the minimal level that had characterized them in the nineteenth century. Cuestas, though certainly not a Batllista, likewise sought to use the United States to counterbalance British diplomatic and military might in Uruguay, as well as to assure Uruguayan neutrality during any inter–Latin American dispute, especially one between the region’s titans, Argentina and Brazil. Cuestas, in short, served as a transitional figure; although he came from the old pro-British elite, he recognized the harm British commercial interests had caused Uruguay. He was, as historian Peter Winn terms him, a “putative Anglophile.”10
Despite his Anglophilia, Cuestas moved formal diplomatic relations closer to the United States. For example, he appointed his son of the same name to the post of minister resident in January 1901. In October of that year, he confirmed Uruguayan participation in the 1901 Pan-American Conference. In so doing, he raised status of Uruguay’s diplomatic representative from that of minister resident to minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary, according him the same diplomatic status enjoyed by his Yankee counterpart in Montevideo. A year later, Minister Cuestas moved the legation to Washington, D.C., establishing the first Uruguayan diplomatic post in the U.S. capital. While President Cuestas rationalized this rapid upgrade in the diplomatic service as necessary to enable his son to serve at the Pan-American Conference, the United States’ minister in Montevideo, William Finch, praised Cuestas for the move and offered another rationale. H...

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