You've done an incredible job writing up this war, and I really like how you addressed the telegraphs effect on war.
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Though I was rooting for the Zelayistas, this always seemed the more likely outcome. Hopefully the Centroamericans don't go back to their petty squabbles and figure out a way to make their union work for the long run.
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That was a great look at the war! I fear that the Zelayistas are never going to be more than a thorn in the Centroamerican side with this recent defeat.
Also, if Zavala managed to suppress the rebellion, I can see a window of opportunity for him to march on the capital and take power for himself
Also, if Zavala managed to suppress the rebellion, I can see a window of opportunity for him to march on the capital and take power for himself
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Just to say, I’ve never got around to catch up here, but I’m going to try and rectify that over the next few weeks. Looks like a fantastic piece of work, @Zeogludon! 
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Discovered this in the recent ACA's and am loving this so far! Great job!
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La Matanza, 1882 to 1885
The first stage of the Second Maya War, between 1880 and the spring of 1882, took the form of a relatively conventional armed conflict between two opposing armies in the field. The brutal reprisals carried out by Joaquín Zavala following Cruz’s unintentional destruction of Livingston in the summer of 1882 drastically changed the character of the conflict, transforming it into an unconventional guerrilla war focused on the civilian population. The shift away from the Zelayista army and towards an irregular insurgency turned civilian populations into military targets, allowing violence to escalate in both scale and the scope of those targeted. The focus on ‘enemy’ civilian populations also hardened racial tensions in Central America, reframing the struggle in the eyes of contemporaries from one between Zelayistas and Cernistas to one between indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalans.
The great tragic irony of the bloodshed that engulfed Guatemala in July 1882 was that it was based on a falsehood. Without access to the reliable and modern communication networks set up in other states, Zavala and his forces often received news secondhand. This was the case with the events in Livingston, as Zavala received reports several days after the town’s destruction that claimed, untruthfully, that the Zelayistas butchered the inhabitants of Livingston before locking the survivors in a church and setting it ablaze. Infuriated by the horrendous massacre he believed had occurred in Livingston, Zavala immediately set about organizing a reprisal to ‘avenge Livingston’ and – by his logic – dissuade the rebels from future outrages.
As demonstrated by his conduct in the Matagalpa War, Zavala was an ardent believer in collective punishment, a doctrine he believed was all the more applicable in Guatemala’s central highlands because the population had been part of Zelaya’s republic for almost a decade and was, thus, evidently complicity in Zelaya’s crimes. Most of the group of officials who could be considered fully ‘complicit’ had already fled to Zelaya’s temporary capital at Santa Cruz, so Zavala was forced to instead select another group to pay the cost for alleged Zelayista outrages. Zavala decided that the ‘ancianos’, the elders and traditional leaders of the Maya, were the group next most complicit. They had status within the community and, by failing to oppose Zelaya, bore responsibility for his actions.
Pictured: A group of Mayan alcaldes posing, c.1880. These traditional leaders often opposed Zelaya's more radical reforms or felt their power challenged by democratic elections, making them a moderate force within the Maya community
Without informing either the political leadership or Vicente Cerna of his plans, General Zavala issued an order for the “ancianos de los Indios”, to be gathered in Antigua. Some were escorted by Cernista soldiers; many, believing they were to be consulted in some fashion, travelled willing to Antigua. By 14 July 1882, Zavala considered the number of elders gathered in Antigua to be sufficient for his plan. That next morning, the Mayan elders were assembled on the Plaza Mayor and General Zavala appeared to give a speech on horseback at the front of the crowd. Zavala is reported to have berated the assembled Maya for their support of Zelaya and then rode off. Upon leaving the plaza, Zavala or one of his aides fired a pistol into the air. At this signal, Centroamerican soldiers surrounding the plaza advanced and began firing into the crowd. Surrounded by the Centroamerican Army on all sides, all three thousand of the unarmed men were massacred in an atrocity alternatively called “la matanza de los ancianos” or “la matanza de los alcaldes”.
The premeditated murder of thousands of Mayan elders blindsided the entire Centroamerican leadership, including Vicente Cerna, and changed the character of the Second Maya War. When news reached him in Ciudad Guatemala that the massacre had taken place, Cerna was livid, at the inhumanity of the act, at the mockery it made of Cernista claims that Centroamerican rule guaranteed ordered liberty, and at the fact that Zavala had usurped Cerna’s authority on Guatemalan soil. Cerna immediately took action to have the upstart Nicaraguan removed from his position of authority. Cerna sent personal ambassadors to San Salvador and made sure that news of the matanza de los ancianos was known in every republic. The news inflamed humanist public opinion and Zavala’s actions were denounced by the Catholic Church. Responding to outraged constituents, the politicians of Central America – in speeches and in newspapers – announced their intention that the first act of the Confederal Congress when it reconvened in September 1882 would be to remove Zavala. Relishing the opportunity to take down his personal rival, Cerna also convinced the Senate of Guatemala to initiate proceedings against Zavala for murder, threatening the general with jailtime should he lose command of his army.
For all the outrage that the matanza de los ancianos provoked in the eastern republics, their reaction was muted in comparison to the outpouring of grief and rage in Guatemala. When news of the massacre reached the villages of the central highlands, it was met with horror, shock, and grief. The crime committed in Antigua was all the more shocking and horrific for the widespread knowledge about Guatemalans that the ancianos were entirely innocent. Far from being pillars of Zelayista rule, the elders were generally conservative, skeptical of Zelaya’s promised changes, and often found themselves competing for authority with elected Zelayista officials. The Maya of Guatemala correctly perceived the matanza de los ancianos as an unprovoked and senseless slaughter of the innocent.
For many Maya who had experienced and appreciate the self-rule granted under Zelaya, the murder of their communities’ most esteemed and honored members demanded immediate payment in kind. In another tragic irony, the community leaders who might have preached caution and forbearance were the elders and their murder deprived Maya communities of a moderating voice. Without the elders, the voices that advocated revenge and bloody action carried the day. As news of the massacre spread throughout the highlands in late July and August, it was followed by a wave of violence against the Cernistas and their allies, particularly the White and Ladino hacendados who had returned with Cerna’s armies. For the most part, the attacks were spontaneous and occurred within days of news of the massacre arriving. Villagers, armed with pitchforks, machetes, and clubs descended on isolated Cernista army outposts, killing those they could and subjecting the survivors to the siege. The country estates of the hacendados lacked these defenses and their inhabitants were entirely at the mercy of the wrathful mob. Within the course of only two months, Cernista rule in Guatemala – so recently reestablished – was washed away in a tide of blood.
Vicente Cerna was aware of the rapidity of his regime’s collapse and the impotence of his attempts to salvage his authority. With every day, another one of the great constellation of outposts, garrisons, and pro-Cerna estates ceased to report back and another part of Guatemala was lost to Central America. Cerna’s attempts to restore order were futile with the country set against him; large columns of Cernista calvary could set out from Antigua or Tecpán, but the villages they passed through had always been warned of their approach and were found abandoned except for the old and infirm. Unlike the Zelayistas, who organized a standing army and sought open battle, Cerna and the Central Americans were now faced with a guerrilla war against a civilian population who had no army to defeat and no strongpoints to capture. The Cernista army was utterly unprepared and unsuited for this kind of mobile irregular warfare. By the end of the summer of 1882, Cernista rule in Guatemala had been reduced to the cities, the countryside entirely lost to the unnamed and leaderless peasant guerrillas.
Pictured: the bodies of travellers and an abandoned wagon on the road between Chimaltenango and Tecpan, summer of 1882. Attacks by the guerrillas may travel without an armed convoy unsafe
The Maya Wars had always existed along multiple axes of conflict: liberal versus conservative, the settler colonial state of Guatemala versus indigenous power structures, landlords versus peasants, and Whites and Ladinos versus indigenous Guatemalans. But while its racial character had always existed – and indeed been emphasized in Centroamerican accounts of the conflicts as ‘against Indians’ – the racial conflict had not always been paramount. Most importantly, Zelaya did not the conflict in racial terms. Those Whites and Ladinos who did not flee the advance of the Zelayista armies found themselves unmolested, although many resented having to treat with indigenous Guatemalans on equal terms. The murder of hundreds of Cernista families in the reprisals following Zavala’s matanza de los ancianos brought the racial component of the conflict to the fore. The Centroamerican response, championed and directed by Joaquín Zavala, accepted and reinforced this racial character. So that, from the summer of 1882 until its bloody conclusion in 1885, the Second Maya War became primarily a conflict between Whites and Ladinos on one side and indigenous Guatemalans on the other, to the detriment of their common humanity.
The Confederal Congress that convened in San Salvador in September 1882 was faced – in addition to the ongoing and continuing economic crisis – with the newest bloodbaths in Guatemala, both Zavala’s unprompted massacre and the hundreds of dead Cernistas, many of them civilians, who were victims of the peasant mobs. Of the two sets of atrocities, the massacres of families on their haciendas and Cernista soldiers in their barracks took precedence. While Zavala’s actions were shocking, transgressive of civilian authority, and offensive to the humanitarians in the electorate, his victims had been Mayas, while the victims of the peasant reprisals had been Whites or Ladinos. For 19th Century Central America, Ladinos and Whites were recognized members of a Centroamerican social, cultural, and political community, while Amerindians were not. These attitudes were even sharper among the disproportionately White electorate. This meant that the Congress soon made disciplining Zavala a secondary concern after devising a response to the massacres of Cernistas.
The Centroamerican congressmen, however, were as totally unprepared to respond to this newest crisis as was Vicente Cerna’s government. They recommended and demanded a military response to the ‘rebels’, but were confronted by the same reality that Cerna’s army had come across: an unconventional enemy without an army in the field and defending no fixed points cannot be engaged and defeated in a conventional battle. Only one figure of military authority claimed to have a solution to the military situation in the central highlands, Joaquín Zavala. Zavala’s solution, communicated to the Congress via telegram from his headquarters in Antigua, was to recognize that a state of war existed between the government and the civilian population and destroy every settlement in Guatemala from which rebel activity had been reported.
The Congressmen were initially reticent to endorse Zavala’s population-centric strategy. Firstly, because it was drawn from the same doctrine of collective punishment that started the most wave of violence in Guatemala, and, secondly, because it was proposed by Joaquín Zavala, whom they blamed as the instigator of the crisis. His plan became more acceptable, however, as time passed. Each week in the fall of 1882 brought another traveler murdered on the Chimaltenango-Tecpán road or another survivor of a massacre at a hacienda straggling into town, with both accounts being widely circulated in newsprint. The circulation of these crimes in print placed pressure on the politicians to do something, but the only plan that had not already been tried and failed was Zavala’s. One of the Guatemalan delegates, Alejandro Manuel Sinibaldi Castro, who son-in-law was among the victims of an attack on a hacienda, was the first to recommend adopting Zavala’s plan. The other delegates remained reluctant, but were convinced by the lack of other options presented and the urging of their senates that some action must be taken to reassert control over the central highlands and to avenge the hundreds massacred during the summer.
On 25 October 1882, the Confederal Congress voted to reaffirm Zavala’s command over the Army of Central America – which had existed in limbo since July, as, although he was never removed, it was very clear that his superiors intended to remove him – and to endorse his population-centric plan for restoring control over Guatemala; the dissenting vote was by Guatemalan Victoriano Solares Pineda, a Cerna ally. Vicente Cerna was despondent at the news that his rival would again escape punishment and threatened retirement, although he recanted this after receiving an appeal from the Guatemalan Senate to remain as the republic’s president. Cerna’s occupation of the president would mean that the Army of Guatemala would remain firmly separate from the Army of Central America and would not participate in Zavala’s punitive campaigns.
In conceptualization, the plan Zavala proposed for Guatemala was similar to that which he had employed against the Matagalpa in Nicaragua. In other cases, it was known that civilians were supplying rebels in a particular area, so the solution was to remove the civilians from that area. The difference was in the scope and the methods employed. Whereas in Nicaragua, the cleared areas were bands around railroads, the area to be cleaned in Guatemala included the entirety of the heavily-populated central highlands. Zavala also ran his campaign on the assumption that anyone encountered by his soldiers was hostile and to be treated as an enemy combatant. In practice, this meant that any able-bodied male civilians were to be shot on sight.
Pictured: Soldiers of the Army of Central America stand and watch a Mayan village burn in the central highlands, January 1883.
The Army of Central America began its war on the Guatemalan population in November 1882, starting with the destruction of every village along the road between Antigua and Chimaltenango. As they had when the Cernistas had attempted to carry out their own punitive expeditions, the local population abandoned their towns ahead of the army’s advance. Entering the abandoned villages, the Centroamerican army stole whatever valuables or livestock were left behind and set fire to the settlement. If any able-bodied residents remained and attempted to stop the army from burning their homes, they were shot and their bodies thrown into burning buildings. Zavala waged this campaign of destruction with methodical efficiency, always keeping his army in large detachments to stave off ambush and holding men in reserve should the arsonists be attacked. Over the course of months, the Centroamerican army moved southward, burning away any trace of human habitation from large areas of the central highlands, leaving them depopulated and rendering tens of thousands of mainly-indigenous Guatemalans homeless.
For all the odiousness of his methods, Zavala’s strategy for pacifying the central highlands worked. Brigandage on roadways stopped once the villages that had sheltered and fed the bandits were destroyed, making it again possible to safely travel between Sololá and Jutiapa again without an armed escort. For the political leadership back east, it meant that, after suffering under months of critical newspaper coverage of atrocities committed against Cernistas on the highlands and harangued by their constituents, they could again point to tangible successes. With the exception of Vicente Cerna and his faction, who retained his personal rivalry with the Nicaraguan general, Zavala’s success led him to be embraced by the Centroamerican leadership as a national military hero and the country’s best hope of surviving the revolution threatened by the Juan Antonio Zelaya.
Success in the central highlands meant that military planning could now shift north to the upper reaches of the Rio Motagua and the Verapaz highlands, which remained under Zelayista control. The campaign for the Verapaz was to be conducted by two columns, one moving up the Rio Motagua until they reached the mountain passes north to San Jerónimo and Salamá, and one landing at the former site of Livingston and progressing along the Rio Polochic and its tributaries to reach Cobán. Concerned that a divided force would be insufficient to face the Zelayistas in a potential battle, General Zavala requested to the Confederal Congress for additional soldiers for this campaign but was denied on grounds that the economy remained in a deep recession. Zavala, however, continued to insist upon additional soldiers, eventually prompted President Montes of Honduras to agree in March 1883 to attach a battalion of the Honduran army to the expedition, provided that the Honduran commander, Longino Sanchez, be given control over one of the two columns. Zavala grudgingly agreed to this compromise and gave General Sanchez the less desirable task of marching along the marshy and crocodile-invested Rio Polochic.
Pictured: General Longino Sanchez, likely taken in the early 1880s. A rising star in the Honduran military and with close political connections, Longino Sanchez sought out the military commission with Zevala to bolster his future political career
Unsurprisingly given these conditions, Joaquín Zavala’s column was the first to reach San Jerónimo in early July 1883. He recorded that both San Jerónimo and nearby Salamá were largely abandoned and that he faced far fewer forces defending the towns than he encountered in the rear attempting to attack supply trains. Although he was well situated to assault Cobán, Zavala refused to move on the town or to provide aid to the beleaguered Honduran column, instead waiting several months – quartered in a comfortable vineyard in San Jerónimo – for Longino Sanchez’s force to finally reach the mostly-abandoned city in November 1883.
The fact that General Zavala had provided no assistance to the northern column did not go unnoticed by Longino Sanchez, who wrote to President Montes, complaining bitterly of how Zavala had treated the Honduran force. These complaints were communicated to Zavala by the Honduran government and – in what may have been an honest attempt at redress but may also have been another deliberate slight to a rival commander – Zavala assigned the Hondurans the job of garrisoning the Verapaz while the Army of Central America assembled for the drive toward Santa Cruz del Quiché. Regardless of Zavala’s intentions in assigning this role, it was not well received by Longino Sanchez. Sanchez saw the garrison duty as another attempt – together with his assignment to take Cobán – to deprive him of his fair share of military glory. This feeling was echoed in the Honduran press, which was broadly sympathetic to Sanchez and critical of how Honduran soldiers had been used in the campaign. In a face-to-face meeting in San Jerónimo in December 1883, General Sanchez told as much to General Zavala, demanding that he be included in the campaign toward Santa Cruz. Joaquín Zavala responded angrily to the younger commander, refusing to rescind the order and causing the meeting to break up without a resolution.
Zavala, apparently feeling he had prevailed over Sanchez, began to withdrawal the Army of Central America from Salamá and San Jerónimo in the second week of December 1883 and retreated to Zacapa to begin penning a series of letters denouncing Sanchez to Fernando Guzmán and his other political allies. The Honduran soldiers under Sanchez relieved the Army of Central America in what appeared to be an ordered transition. This state of affairs, however, was only temporary, as his diaries from the time reveal that Longino Sanchez spent this month and the next planning and preparing for his own independent assault on Santa Cruz.
Having been mistreated and badly used by Zavala and unlikely to be included in any future campaigns, Sanchez decided that he would secure glory for himself and his republic by leading the Honduran contingent to seize Santa Cruz by itself. Abandoning their hard-won positions in the Verapaz, Sanchez’s Hondurans marched back down to the Rio Motagua in February 1884 and then turned west to follow the river upstream to Santa Cruz. In doing so, Sanchez led around 1,500 soldiers into a trap that Zelayista General Serapio Cruz had been preparing for the Army of Central America. Taking advantage of the dense vegetation and small number of settlements on this portion of the river, Cruz had hidden a few hundred of his soldiers along the river bank downriver of the main army in the region. On 14 February 1884, Longino Sanchez’s force engaged a Zelayista army half their size on an open bank of the Rio Motagua; hearing gunfire, Cruz’s hidden soldiers marched quickly upriver from their positions and attacked the rear of the Honduran army. While another general might have been able to restore order, Sanchez was taken completely off guard and allowed his army to fall apart. Taking fire from two directions, the Honduran soldiers fled into the woods or tried to swim across the river. Over 1,000 Honduran soldiers were killed in the battle, during its aftermath, or drowned while trying to swim across the Motagua; Longino Sanchez was among those few who swam to safety.
Astoundingly, Sanchez’s ill-advised solo attack on the Zelayistas did not bring an immediate end to his military career. Nor did the fact that his assault including abandoning the Verapaz, whose key junctures were quickly retaken by local Zelayistas. In part, this was due to his personal conduct during the battle, as several survivors reported to newspapers that he had placed his own life in danger assisting wounded men in their attempts to flee. On top of the personal heroism Sanchez showed, the Honduran government was also unwilling to been seen as giving in to Joaquín Zavala’s very public demand that Sanchez be removed. The faction in the Honduran Congress that supported Longino Sanchez’s replacement was weakened by Zavala’s strident condemnations of the general, which turned the issue into one of Honduran national pride and of standing up for civilian rule. Neither President Montes nor the Senate appreciated taking commands from a Nicaraguan general subordinate to civilian authority. A big motivation for keeping Longino Sanchez as commander was to demonstrate that the Honduran government was not in the thrall of the Army of Central America.
The resistance to Zavala’s will lasted only so long, however. Zavala remained one of only two living generals with any major history of success against Zelaya, the other being Vicente Cerna, who if anything had made himself even less popular among the other Centroamerican governments than had Zavala. It was the consensus that, if Central America was to win its war against Juan Antonio Zelaya, its armies needed to be led by Joaquín Zavala Solís. And, since Zavala refused to march unless Longino Sanchez was removed from command, eventually Zavala got his way. Under pressure from the Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan governments for holding up the campaign, President Montes relented in April 1884 and dismissed Longino Sanchez as commander, replacing him with the dependable Luis Bográn Barahona, who relinquished his position in the Senate to assume command.
Pictured: Luis Bogran Barahona, member of the Honduran Senate and scion of one of Honduras's wealthiest families, the owners of the Bogran calico mills in Omoa. The connections granted by societal position allowed him to become a senator prior to the age of thirty, a remarkable achievement then and now
Being dismissed did nothing to silence Longino Sanchez, who transformed himself in a diehard opponent of Joaquín Zavala and, as an aspect of this, one of the most vocal opponents of the ethnic cleansings Zavala had conducted in Guatemala. Playing up stories of his personal heroism during his disastrous battle for a sensationist Honduran press, Sanchez managed to secure election to Honduran Congress in the fall of 1884, placing himself at the center of a coalition of the Catholic party and the anti-integrationist clique around former president José María Medina Castejón. This new faction challenged the incumbent José Francisco Montes in that year’s president elections. Their candidate, Senator Ezequiel Marín, lost by only a handful of electoral votes in an upset that would have ground to a halt Confederal cooperation on the war in Guatemala. The anti-Zavala faction did not let this electoral defeat stop them and made common cause with Cerna loyalists in Guatemala, opponents of Guzmán in Nicaragua, and any other Centroamerican groups who shared their opposition to Joaquín Zavala and his murderous conduct in the war.
The emergence of a humanitarian lobby explicitly opposed to Joaquín Zavala and his conduct in the Second Maya War prompted his supporters to become more vocal in their support of the general and his actions, even founding a short-lived newspaper, El Caballero Templaro, composed entirely of military reports and – occasionally fabricated – retellings of Maya atrocities. This faction in support of Zavala, usually referred to as the exterminationists, built on the developing Centroamerican identity of a Hispanic, White supremacist, and Christian civilization to portray the conflict with the Maya a clash between two alien civilizations, a clash that was both inevitable and necessary. This group, ignoring the centuries of cultural exchange between indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalans, recast the history of Central America as a continuous conflict between two separate races – Christian Europeans and Pagan Indians – in which the Europeans and those Indians who embraced Christianity and Hispanic civilization had built the great Centroamerican civilization and pushed the Pagan Indians to its periphery. Drawing on contemporary examples from across the Americas in the 1880s, including US victories against the Sioux and Comanche, and Chilean and Argentine victories against the Mapuche, the exterminationists argued that it was natural for the superior European civilization to expand and to crush the inferior Indian one.
Pictured: an artist's depiction of Sioux leader Thasunke Witko surrendering to US forces in 1888. Central Americans who saw themselves in a parallel struggle with the Maya paid close attention to news of military victories from Patagonia and the US Great Plains
Racist attitudes towards indigenous people were commonplace in Central America and had been for centuries. The jump made by the exterminationists was in their characterization of Amerindians as totally excluded from Centroamerican civilization. Dating back to the Spanish colonial policy of encomienda, the racism of Central America had had a paternalist quality, where it was the job of those on the top of society to Christianize and ‘improve’ the Amerindians by forcibly including them in a society dominated by the colonists. The exterminationists rejected the core conceit of earlier racists that Amerindians could be included in Centroamerican society at any level. The exterminationists claimed that the Amerindians were essentially foreign to the culture and civilization of Central America, that coexistence between the two races was impossible, and that the only solution was the expulsion of all ‘Pagan Indians’ from Central America.
It is important to note that Joaquín Zavala never avowed support for exterminationist positions, always justifying his violence against Amerindians as military necessity. This being said, his conduct during the Second Maya War and resultant effect on Amerindian populations across Guatemala leave no doubt as to why he was revered by the exterminationists.
The second Verapaz campaign was shorter and simpler than the first, as Zavala – correctly – assumed that resistance would be comparable to the previous year and thus there was no need for two parallel columns. Instead, the Hondurans provided a vanguard as the combined army fought to retake the road between San Jerónimo and the Rio Motagua. The Centroamerican Army was able to outgun and overpower the scattered and decentralized resistance in the Verapaz, allowing Zavala to retake Salamá by late July 1884. At this point, progress slowed, not because resistance intensified – it remained paltry – but because Zavala decided to that the population of the Verapaz was untrustworthy and needed to be removed for the region to be secured for Guatemala. Accordingly, he ordered the Army of Central America to repeat in the Verapaz the same population-centric tactics used in the Matagalpa War and in the Guatemalan central highlands: villages were to be burned, livestock stolen, and any Amerindians treated as enemy combatants and shot on sight. The shock and fear these attacks created among the local population caused most of the population loss, as thousands of refugees fled north of Cobán, west to Mexico, or east to British Belize. Even more than elsewhere, the destruction in the Verapaz was cruel and resulted in a vast area largely denuded of human settlement. For his part, Luis Bográn was repulsed by the atrocities and resigned his command, returning to the Honduran Senate as a new addition to Longino Sanchez’s humanitarian faction.
Juan Antonio Zelaya, from his headquarters at Santa Cruz, understood that, while still improved compared to the beginning of his rebellion, his military situation was not good. The Centroamerican Army was larger than his own remaining forces, which had abandoned all their artillery during the retreat from the Valle de Guatemala. Moreover, the sandy banks of the Rio Motagua were difficult to fortify to the degree that he had the approaches to Chimaltenango. While Zelaya did consider himself the superior tactician, two surprise defeats had lessened his ego and made him wary of seeking an open battle with the Central Americans. For this reason, he decided against pursuing another engagement on the Rio Motagua and instead strengthening his strategic position by fully seizing Los Altos from Mexico.
On its face, this plan sounds like insanity – doing something again and expecting a different result – but Zelaya’s experience briefly occupying Quetzaltenango in 1878 had led him to believe that conditions were ripe for the region to be torn away from Mexico. For starters, Mexico’s response to the Zelayistas had been underwhelming for years; not only did Mexico seem unable to limit Zelaya’s influence within its territory, its sluggish and corrupt administration also seemed largely uninterested and unwilling to try. Moreover, the Mexican state had not become stronger or more capable in the years since 1878, but had instead crumbled a little more each year under the weight of near constant revolts against Porfirio Diaz’s tyranny. The Mexican army was stretched everywhere at once and Zelaya made a guess that, should he make a serious attempt to seize Los Altos and deny it to Mexico’s armies, that President Diaz would be willing to write off the loss of the backward and remote province. Such a success would give Zelaya more room to maneuver away from Santa Cruz and a stockpile of Mexican weapons, including much heavier artillery than anything Central America could muster.
Withdrawing all but a few hundred of his men from the approach to Santa Cruz, Juan Antonio Zelaya marched with his reconstituted force of around 3,000 men through friendly villages to Quetzaltenango. Making little attempt to hide their intentions, the Zelayistas began a daylight assault on the city’s garrison post on 17 July 1884, which surrendered after only a number of hours. In front of a large crowd of townsfolk and excited villagers, Zelaya declared his intention to stay reclaim the town for Guatemala.
Pictured: Juan Antonio Zelaya, c. 1883. This is the last known photo taken of Zelaya, showing a much older man in military uniform
Unfortunately for Zelaya, his assumptions about the Mexican government’s reaction proved incorrect. Mexico was, in the 1880s, a tottering state whose unpopular leader struggled to retain control of his nation, but it was also a tottering state whose unpopular leader had faced over a decade of continuous unrest yet still remained in power. President Diaz was not inclined to accept Zelaya’s capture of Quetzaltenango as a fait accompli and ordered an army of several thousand under the command of Tiburcio Fernández Ruiz to crush Zelaya and remove his army from Los Altos. Unlike in 1878, this time Zelaya prepared to defend Los Altos, still hoping that a show of resistance would cause the Mexicans to back down. This was not the cause. Encountering resistance from dug-in Zelayistas along the Mazatenango-Quetzaltenango road, Tiburcio Fernández took advantage of his much larger force to assault valleys to the west of the main road. Assuming that a show of resistance would be sufficient, Zelaya had concentrated his forces along the main approach and only lightly garrisoned the smaller and more distant roads leading to the highlands. While Zelaya managed to avert disaster by peeling away some soldiers to cover the smaller roads, he seems to have recognized that the Zelayistas could not maintain a defense of all of the approaches to Los Altos against determined Mexican attack because he pulled back his forces in late August 1884 and retreated to Sololá, again abandoning Quetzaltenango. Having held the town for a little over one month, he was again forced to abandon it. The exercise had not been a total loss, however, as that brief occupation had allowed for the looting of the Quetzaltenango armory and the acquisition of new French-made artillery pieces which could be used to threaten a reinvasion of the central highlands.
Joaquín Zevala and his army were informed of Zelaya’s capture of Quetzaltenango and his subsequent defeat at the hands of the Mexicans, but misread the meaning of these events. Rather than seeing Zelaya’s defeat as an opportunity, General Zavala assumed that Zelaya had attacked the Mexicans because he was stronger than had been previously assumed. This recalculation led Zavala to halt his campaign of destruction in the Verapaz at the end of September 1884 and shift towards a defensive posture. Previously, Zevala had planned on concluding the ‘pacification’ of the Verapaz – the metric for when this was reached was left unclear – and then moving up the Rio Motagua to attack Santa Cruz. However, if the Zelayistas had enough manpower and fire to attack Mexico, Zevala reasoned that they would be able to challenge and defeat his force as it marched up the Rio Motagua, even absent an ambush. With an offensive campaign risky, Zevala switched to defense, leaving behind a detachment to guard the road to San Jerónimo and taking the majority of his force back to the central highlands to block Zevala should he try to invade from Sololá.
Throughout the war, the weakness of the Mexican government had given the Zelayistas a degree of strategic depth, allowing them to retreat into and attack from lands that the internationally-recognized Central American governments dared not cross. Juan Antonio Zelaya had clearly come to rely on this state of affairs because his reaction to the buildup of Zevala’s army in Tecpán was tranquil; he was in Mexican land where Centroamerican soldiers would not come after him. In fact, as the Army of Central America gathered and build defenses on the other side of the border throughout the fall of 1884, Zelaya had a number of cannons from the Mexican armory taken back to Santa Cruz to be used by the forces there. This assumption that the Mexican borderline, which meant nothing to Zelaya, would mean something to his foes would prove false at Sololá and would cost Juan Antonio Zelaya his life.
Upon his return to the central highlands, Zevala continued his preparations for the defensive bulwark against potential Zelayista attack. However, personal inspections of the frontline near Tecpán allowed him to sight the Zelayista army and was shocked to count under 2,000 men. Initially assuming that other soldiers were craftily hidden or in reserve close by, Zevala ordered continued reconnaissance on the Zelayista camp. However, by December 1884 it became clear that Zelaya’s army was considerably smaller than Zevala had believed and, unlike his own, had prepared virtually no static defenses. The issue remained that the Zelayistas were in Mexico, but Zevala was unwilling to give up this opportunity to fight and win a conventional battle. On 4 January 1885, Zevala ordered his soldiers to advance on the Zelayista camp north of Sololá, well inside Mexican territory.
Zelaya and his forces were caught totally off guard by the Centroamerican attack. The first Centroamerican columns reached Sololá in the early morning and when runners alerted the Zelayista camp, most soldiers were still enjoying their breakfasts. Without pre-constructed defensive works and caught unprepared, the Zelayista army was decisively defeated, with most soldiers breaking ranks and fleeing, leaving behind their newly captured materiel. Zelaya himself was not fortunate enough to escape – he and his staff were assailed by Centroamerican cavalry and he was killed as the two groups of horsemen exchanged fire. Recognizing the fallen leader, the Centroamerican cavalrymen cut off his head and placed it on the point of a lance to be presented as a grisly trophy.
With the death of Juan Antonio Zelaya, the eponymous movement fell apart. While the democratic constitution that Zelaya had created was deliberately intended to outlive him, it was based on the assumption of that there was a territory to govern and people to vote in elections. In 1885, the Zelayistas had neither. No similarly charismatic and talented leader emerged to replace Zelaya, leaving the formerly-dynamic movement rudderless and adrift. Most of the liberals attached to the Zelayista leadership seem to have accepted this, retreating into exile in Mexico. The common soldiers must have shared this sense of despair as almost none stayed at Santa Cruz, which was retaken by Zevala’s forces two weeks after the Battle of Sololá. Fearing reprisals by the Centroamericans, the Zelayistas and their families also slipped across the Mexican border to join the large population of Amerindian refugees in Chiapas. Although resistance to Guatemalan rule would continue up to the present day, the death of Zelaya effectively ended the Second Maya War.
Unexpectedly attacking Sololá may have given Joaquín Zevala the crucial element of surprise and allowed him to end the war, but it also threw Central America into a new crisis with Mexico. Zevala passing through Mexican territory did not go unnoticed by Chiapas Governor José María Ramírez. While parts of the Mexican government may have been relieved to have Zelaya dead at Centroamerican hands, none were tolerant of Centroamerican soldiers in disputed territory and Zevala was very firmly told to leave Mexico. Although he did not outright refuse, Joaquín Zevala also showed no sign of plans to vacate Sololá, which he had turned into military headquarters for his campaign against Santa Cruz. The issue dragged on into February 1885 when, despite concluding his campaign the previous month, Zevala still refused to vacate Sololá. Eventually this became intolerable and the Mexican Ambassador resident in Tegucigalpa was dispatched to the Confederal Congress in Managua to make a formal complaint of Zevala’s presence. The Mexican Ambassador’s statement was taken gravely by the Congress – even by the Guatemalans, who may have claimed the territory but did not want to risk war with Mexico – which issued orders demanded that Zevala withdraw back across the border. Zevala was given scant time to obey or ignore these orders because Mexico deployed another tactic at the same time, sending General Tiburcio Fernández to the highlands overlooking Sololá on 26 February 1885 and demanding that the Centroamericans remove themselves. Within 24 hours of Mexican guns being positioned over Sololá, Zevala’s camp had begun packing up and soon returned to Guatemala, tailed by Mexican cavalry. This entirely unnecessary crisis with Mexico would shape the course of post-war Centroamerican politics and become the centerpiece of Joaquín Zevala’s new political career.
Pictured: Joaquin Zevala Solis, the first head of the Army of Central America and a figure constantly at the center of political contraversy during his own time. The figurehead of an exterminationist movement he never endorsed, he shifted to become the leading advocate of armed confrontation with Mexico
The lasting impact of the Second Maya War was the destruction of any relationship with Amerindian communities in Guatemala and the massive displacement experienced by Amerindians – primarily Maya – living in the central highlands and the Verapaz. At the beginning of the First Maya War, the Amerindian population of Guatemala was estimated at around 230,000. At the end of the Second Maya War, fewer than 22,000 Amerindians were thought to have remained in Guatemala. The change is even more drastic looking at population distributions: nearly the entire Amerindian population of the central highlands was either killed or displaced, as were more than 50% of Amerindians living in the Verapaz. Those Amerindians who remained were now concentrated in the jungle lowlands north of the Verapaz or lived in the cities. The rural heartland of Mayan culture and life in the central highlands was devastated. With many of its White or Ladino inhabitants slaughtered in the summer of 1882 and the Amerindian population driven off, large parts of Guatemala’s central highlands became a fertile desert devoid of human presence. It is unclear how many of the displaced Amerindians died in the conflict. Based on records kept in British Honduras and by charitable societies in Mexico, the large majority of Amerindians must have survived to escape as refugees, but that still leaves a death toll ranging from the thousands to the tens of thousands. To this figure must be added not less than 10,000 Amerindians who starved to death during the conflict when the crops and livestock of entire regions were pillaged and burned.
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It's morbid, but with the highlands now being deserted, Guatemala and perhaps Central America as a whole may become a rather attractive destination for, I'd imagine, mainly Romance (Portuguese, Spanish and Italian) migrants from Europe
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I imagine Zavala's reputation and victory against Zelayista have given him considerable influence in Centro-American politics.
Perhaps he'll even run for office. Although maybe it's better to keep control of the army and be the power behind the throne?
Perhaps he'll even run for office. Although maybe it's better to keep control of the army and be the power behind the throne?
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Very attractive I'd say. Only downside is having to live under an extremely conservative and repressive regime. Then again, these people are coming from Spain, Portugal, and Italy, so I'd say they're pretty used to that.
Insightful! The next few years following the war are going to focus a lot on Zevala and what path he is going to choose.
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Phew. Grim series of events. It'll be intersting to see how the conflict with Mexico plays out, its much bigger, but also hasn't had the benifit of the economic boom and at least vageuly compotent government that Central America has had.
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Well, that was quite a dark chapter in Centroamerican history. It's sad to see Zelaya go but his chances had always been slim.
As for Zavala, he looks like a nasty piece of work with a perfect position to dominate the politics of the next years
As for Zavala, he looks like a nasty piece of work with a perfect position to dominate the politics of the next years
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A Victorious Nation, 1885-1890
A Victorious Nation, 1885 to 1890
The conclusion of the decades-long crisis of the Maya War coincided with two new crises: one in internal politics and one in foreign relations, both occasioned by Joaquín Zevala Solís. Domestically, the turmoil was caused by Zevala’s return from the battlefield at the head of a conquering army and widespread apprehension over what the famously independent-minded general might do. Internationally, Zevala’s occupation of Sololá in the final act of the Second Maya War had created a diplomatic crisis with Mexico that Zevala and his supporters were eager to keep alive and smoldering.
The most immediate fear that accompanied the end of the Second Maya War was that of a coup. Borrowing the metaphor most commonly used by the Classically-educated citizens of the period, there was a great fear of Zevala returning, “as Caesar victorious from Gaul”. This fear did not come to pass – chiefly because there is no indication that Zevala ever aspired to become a military autocrat – but the threat of coup and military dictatorship hung over Central America up until the time when Zevala finally did relinquish his command and return to Managua. When, contrary to the fears of many politicians, Zevala and his army retired to their barracks outside of San Salvador, the Confederal Congress in Managua was faced with the thorny issue of what exactly should be done with the non-rebellious army and its leader. The Congress was divided not only in its approach to the Centroamerican Army, but also in its attitude towards its victorious general. Among the politicians, some were enthusiastic fans of General Zevala; some were diehard opponents of Zevala, for personal or humanitarian reasons; and the largest number were jealous and venal men who feared losing their own position and power in some shakeup of the existing order. What these groups shared was an inability to agree on what should happen to Joaquín Zevala – whether framed as what positions were most befitting of his contributions or where he could do the least harm.
By the beginning of April 1885, a common position had emerged between the anti-Zevala faction and the conservatives that Zevala should not be allowed to retain control of the Army of Central America in its present form; such an influential man controlling the most formidable force in the Confederation would always pose a threat to democracy and to the power of lesser men. However, the simplest solution of removing Zevala was stymied by the thorny question of who would replace Zevala as commander. Fortunately, multiple interests converged on the solution of reducing the size of the Army of Central America. This idea was popular because it effectively eliminated the army as a potential site to challenge the existing civilian governments, appealed to traditional Enlightenment concerns about the dangers of a large peacetime army, and, crucially, met with Joaquín Zevala’s approval – General Zevala was relieved that his successor could not now become a powerful rival.
The technical aspects of the plan to reduce the size of the army were almost as controversial as the arrangements made in creating the Centroamerican Army and, as a result, took until the end of May and the last day before the recess of the Confederal Congress to be finalized. What made the planning process difficult was that nearly every officer in the Centroamerican Army had political connections; had, in fact, obtained his commission through said connections; and now used those same connections to retain his command during the downsizing. As a result of this pushback, the new trimmed-down version of the Army of Central America to be re-formed in the summer and fall of 1885 had a great many fewer enlisted men, but roughly the same number of officers, most of them now leading severely understrength units. The new commander was Fernando Figueroa, a reliable veteran soldier then serving as Minister of War for El Salvador. With these arrangements settled, Joaquín Zevala transferred command of the Army of Central America to Figueroa in June 1885 and returned to Managua to launch his civilian political career, removing the shadow of coup that for months rested over Central America.
Guatemala faced its own crisis in miniature that same year, as President Vicente Cerna y Cerna died of stomach cancer in June 1885 at the age of 70. Having served as Guatemala’s president for over a decade and its commander-in-chief throughout the conflict with Zelaya, Cerna’s passing left a yawning political chasm in Guatemala. The succession was exacerbated by Cerna’s attempts during his life to keep the political stage clear of any potential rivals. Being unable to agree on a provisional president, the Senate took over executive functions until indirect elections could be held, leaving Guatemala without effective leadership in the immediate aftermath of a devastating and costly war.
The elections held within Guatemalan Congress in September 1885 dovetailed with two other consequential elections: the annual election of national delegates to Confederal Congress and Nicaragua’s presidential elections. All three elections can be described as a contest between ‘pro-Zevala’ and ‘anti-Zevala’ factions, but this focuses too much attention on the person of Joaquín Zevala. Although 19th Century Centroamerican politics were deeply personalized, the main political blocs of the 1880s and 1890s were not organized around Zevala himself, but around the hardline nationalism he espoused. ‘Pro-Zevala’ politicians supported closer cooperation within the Confederation, preached a common Centroamerican identity that excluded Amerindians, and demanded confrontation with Mexico and Britain over territorial claims. The ’Anti-Zevala’ faction opposed at least some of these positions. On topics such as civil liberties, suffrage, labor relations, and the role of the Church, both factions were in a conservative lockstep.
In Guatemala, the pro-Zevala faction was represented by Arturo Ubico Urruela, an esteemed and liberal-minded legislator who distained Amerindians and pressed for an aggressive stance towards Mexico; and the anti-Zevala faction by Manuel Francisco González, Cerna’s handpicked Speaker of Congress, a vocal opponent of Zevala’s reprisals against civilians, and advocate of a conciliatory stance towards Mexico. In Nicaragua, the presidential contest was between Joaquín Zevala himself and his former patron, the incumbent Fernando Guzmán. Up until this point, Fernando Guzmán and Joaquín Zevala had a successful political partnership, each supporting the other’s interests – this partnership evidently did not extend to an agreement about succession to the Nicaraguan presidency. Policy-wise, the main difference between the Nicaraguans was that Guzmán did not consider Los Altos to be an issue of concern to Nicaragua and opposed conflict with Mexico.
Pictured: Arturo Ubico Urruela, President of Guatemala from 1885 to 1890. As a first Guatemalan leader since the Maya War, Ubico had a powerful impact on Guatemalan politics, making the political culture more democratic and based on the rule of law, while also working to ensure the permanent exclusion of Amerindians from Guatemalan political and economic life.
The results of the elections were mixed, with Zevala and Ubico becoming the presidents of Nicaragua and Guatemala, respectively, but losing out to the anti-Zevala faction in the Confederal Congress. In those elections, the Nicaraguan Senate had sent two anti-Zevala deputies – to keep a check on the new president’s influence – as had Honduras. Moreover, one of the Honduran delegates, Senator Luis Bográn Barahona, was then elected President of the Congress.
The Confederal Congress was historically, and intentionally, a weak institution. Its powers were limited by the consensus of the Confederacy’s states and its president had no true executive function, instead serving as the body’s speaker. However, while the Confederal presidency could not be used to push through legislation, it could be used to obstruct it. And the election of Bográn as president guaranteed that Zevala’s aggressive and provocative foreign policy was not supported at the Confederal level. This lack of Confederal support for hardline nationalism was important to calming tensions with Mexico in the aftermath of the occupation of Sololá, as Luis Bográn made clear to President Diaz’s representatives that Central America was committed to a peaceful resolution of its territorial disputes with Mexico.
Despite Bográn’s assurances to the Mexican ambassador, commitment to peace and diplomacy was far from a consensus position in the late 1880s. The victory over Zelaya had created an intoxicating sense of invincibility among the Central American population, particularly its literate upper class. The threat of social revolution that had dominated the public conscious for years and which had consumed so many other American republics, had been averted in Central America and done so without outside assistance. After seeing country after country succumb to revolution and disorder, Central Americans loudly proclaimed in the press that their country had survived its great crisis. The fact that this victory was a collective victory won by a Centroamerican Army of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Nicaraguans fighting alongside each other did much to foment a sense of nationhood, as discussed earlier. Another effect of victory in the Maya Wars was an inflated sense of national strength and resilience. The core conceit was that if Central America could defeat the Zelayistas, they could defeat anyone. The mirror of this heighted sense of Centroamerican power was a distain for the strength and resilience of other American states, particularly Mexico. Together, these lines of thought were behind the boasts to retake Los Altos by force of arms or to expel the British from Belize or Greytown.
Although Bográn’s tenure as Confederal President – lasting an unprecedented two terms – made sure that the Confederation remained neutral, Zevala and President Arturo Ubico of Guatemala used their offices to escalate tensions with Britain and Mexico, respectively.
For Guatemala, this manifested in Ubico’s government acting as though its claims over Los Altos were de facto as opposed to simply de jure. Guatemala issued licenses for mining and forestry within Los Altos and, on at least two occasions, sent surveying teams into Mexican territory without permission. These moves were not totally symbolic either. Mexican control of Chiapas being so weak and its administration so threadbare and corrupt, many Altenses chose to treat with the Guatemalan government as if it controlled the region. This shows up in a series of court records in the 1880s and 1890s showing that Mexican citizens of Los Altos frequently brought their cases forward in Guatemalan courts, particularly for property disputes. Moreover, Guatemalan-issued deeds and licenses were frequently regarded as legitimate by both sides in court, despite Guatemala having no presence in the region for decades. This subversion of state authority was extremely embarrassing for Mexico, but could not be resolved through diplomatic channels. A communique to the Mexican ambassador from El Salvador phrases the issue well: “While our nation understands your concern, it is and always has been the position of all the republics of Central America that Los Altos is and remains the sovereign territory of Guatemala. Thereby, it is Guatemala’s own right to conduct law and administration in its own territory in a peaceable manner.”
President Joaquín Zevala was just as adamant about territorial claims as his Guatemalan counterpart and immediately began plans to initiate a provocation in the Mosquito Coast. Seven months into his presidency, Zevala made a pronouncement that Nicaragua considered the imposition of taxes and dues by the Moskitu on ships entering the Rio San Juan to be illegal and that Nicaragua would use its navy – a collection of armed river barges – to enforce its sovereignty over the river. Knowing that this pronouncement had the potential to bring Nicaragua into conflict with Britain, President Zevala had spent months before expanding the river boats and outfitting them with artillery loaned from the army. Suitable equipped, the Nicaraguan navy began patrolling the vicinity of Greytown in May 1886 and preventing Moskitu vessels from intercepting traffic bound upriver.
Pictured: An engraving of village life at Greytown done in the summer of 1886 by a German merchant en route to Managua. The Nicaraguan fleet of steamboats is partially visable in the background.
Excepting a diplomatic protest issued by their ambassador in Managua, Britain did nothing to assist their Moskitu ally, allowing the Zevala government to boast of having successfully presented the British with a fait accompli. The very brief discussion of the issue in British cabinet records that Britain valued commercial ties with the Central Americans far above the interests of their Moskitu allies.
Zevala’s plan had been a success at sea, but ran into problems on land. Many ships continued to dock at Greytown before continuing up the river to Granada and, in August 1886, a Portuguese captain named Pedro Barbas decided to test Nicaraguan claims of sovereignty by refusing while at port to pay dues on his cargo. He was arrested by the local authorities in Greytown, but his first mate alerted the Nicaraguans and requested their assistance. The local naval commander, José Alfonso Torres, demanded that Pedro Barbas and his crew be released. When no response was given – the Greytown government had sent a ship to Bluefields to seek King George William’s advice on how to respond and it had not yet returned – Alfonso Torres ordered the Nicaraguan navy to open fire on the town.
The bombardment of Greytown was militarily ineffective and most shots fell far short of the town because the cannons had not been properly fitted for naval combat and the crew had not been trained in their use. It did, however, have two political impacts. On the small-scale, it frightened the Greytown government into releasing Pedro Barbas and paying him a compensation for his imprisonment. On the large-scale, it caused Britain to change course and involve itself. Nicaraguan ships had bombarded a town flying the British flag and, while Britain was unconcerned with Moskitu interests, it was committed to protecting its dignity and prestige. When news of the attack was cabled to Britain, the government ordered that a blockade be imposed on all traffic through the Rio San Juan until Nicaragua agreed to paid compensation and reach a peaceful settlement with Britain and the Moskitu. Three British gunships, arriving from Jamaica in late September 1886, overawed Nicaragua’s diminutive fleet and turned away any ship approaching the mouth of the Rio San Juan.
The Nicaraguan economy immediately felt the strain of the British blockade. While the rail network did enable Nicaraguan goods to be exported north through Honduran ports, these rail links were insufficient to transport the complete sum of Nicaraguan exports, as it had been designed on the assumption that most goods would continue to be exported via Lake Nicaragua and the Rio San Juan. Now that that artery had been closed, there simply was not enough rail stock to meet Nicaragua’s needs. The embargo provoked an immediate angry backlash from the Nicaraguan Congress, which demanded that President Zevala take the steps necessary to end the crisis. While Nicaraguans may have supported Zevala’s hardline stance on sovereignty over the Mosquito Coast, the high wealth requirements for public office guaranteed that nearly every congressman was also the proprietor of a business directly impacted by the British embargo.
Bending to political pressure, Joaquín Zevala reached out to the British consul in Managua to arrange a conference and negotiation to end the blockade. To the embarrassment and indignation of the Nicaraguan government, the British cabinet refused to remove the blockade until Nicaragua had paid compensation for the bombardment of Greytown. The British demand for compensation first, rather than as a part of negotiations, was humiliating and denounced in debates in the Senate, but, ultimately, a vote to approve the spending for compensation was passed by an overwhelming majority of Congress. It was plain that maintaining the blockade on the Rio San Juan cost the British nothing while crippling the Nicaraguan economy and that Nicaragua had no leverage whatsoever over the British. The compensation was paid on 26 September 1886 and the British ships allowed the dozens of waiting vessels to pass up the river.
The lifting of the blockade was followed by an international conference held under British auspices in Kingston that was meant to settle overstanding disputes between Nicaragua and the Miskitu Kingdom. At the insistence of Nicaragua, the Miskitu representative was not actually allowed to participate in the conference, with the kingdom instead being represented by the British Commissioner resident in Bluefields. With the Miskitu themselves absent, the British and Nicaraguans came to favorable compromise: the Miskitu would no longer be allowed to regulate trade on the Rio San Juan and Nicaragua would be allowed to post an inspector in Greytown to ensure riverine traffic was not being illegally taxed; in exchange, Nicaragua would pledge not to exercise sovereign power in Greytown or anywhere else in the Miskitu Kingdom. The obvious losers in the Kingston Agreement of 1886 were the Miskitu, who had relied on river traffic for most government revenue. Although the agreement included important concessions for Nicaragua regarding the Rio San Juan – concessions that pro-Zevala papers loudly touted as a victory over Britain during the elections of 1890 – the experience had overall been humiliating for Zevala. The blockade of the Rio San Juan forced him to acknowledge that Nicaragua could not hope to challenge Britain in the near-term and his nationalist aspirations would have to be placed on the back burner. The remainder of his first term was devoted to internal affairs, principally overseeing Nicaragua’s recovery from the ‘Long Depression’.
The real end of the ‘Long Depression’ in Central America began in 1884 when the Confederal Congress coordinated a plan for the states to provide enterprises with loans underwritten by the government. As previously discussed, agricultural exports had actually recovered as early as 1877, but manufacturing remained in a slump well into the 1880s. The policy was a reaction to the dire economic state of the country, which had not only not recovered from the recession but had actually seen it deepen following the abolition of slavery in the CSA in 1880 and the resultant cotton shortage. Private capital, which was still recovering from the recession, was overwhelmingly concentrated in agriculture and unwilling to spend limited resources on manufacturing during a period of prolonged economic contraction.
The state governments stepped into this void originally at the request of textile manufacturers, who argued that without loans they could not compete with the large advance payments the Europeans were willing to put down for cotton. Unless they could pay large sums of cash up front, the textile barons warned their factories would continue to be starved of cotton. The scheme was a success, as Salvadoran, Honduran, and Nicaraguan firms were able to acquire the high-quality cotton cultivars they made been missing since 1880.
As a reflection of Central America’s underdeveloped banking system, no formal mechanism was created for the distribution of the loans. Instead, each state appointed an officer – usually under the Secretariat of the Treasury – to read and decide on loan applications. These officers and their small staffs dispensed loans based on their own judgments and prejudices, meaning that loans invariably flowed to those who were politically connected. As such, the loan program did not act as a vector for social advancement, as the middle or lower classes lacked the social connections required for their loan applications to be considered. In fact, because the state bore the risk and cost of bad debts and defaults, the loan program worked to redistribute income in a regressive manner, with the tax base of smallholding farmers assuming the risk of loans to wealthy industrialists.
The largest effects of the government-sponsored loan policy were felt outside of the textile sector, however. While the loans had been created for textile manufacturers, they were available to anyone with the connections required to obtain one. Industrialists quickly realized the potential of this program and requested loans for advanced machinery that would have been unaffordable at the rates offered by Centroamerican banks. With access to very cheap capital supplied by the state governments, entrepreneurs were able to expand into a variety of new high-value industries, such as artificial dye, refrigeration coils, precision-made machine parts, fertilizer, and modern artillery pieces. While the textile industry, particularly clothes manufacturing, remained the core of the Centroamerican economy, it was subject to a bottleneck by limited cotton supplies on global markets. This limitation within the textile industry incentivized industrialists to take advantage of the government loans to branch out into other sectors. These new industries also invested in new production technologies – such as assembly lines, first used for artillery chassis production at the Artillería Nacional factory in León – that were not practical for more labor-intensive industries like textiles.
Pictured: An artificial dye factory in San Miguel, El Salvador, circa 1888. Dyes, particularly indigo, had been core parts of the Centroamerican economy during the 18th Century. The transition to artificial dyes was enabled by the government loan program and dyeing became the most successful new industry to emerge in the 1880s and 1890s.
Many of these new industries, including Artillería Nacional, failed within the next ten years, hampered by the absence of middle-class skilled laborers needed for complex manufacturing – Central America was capable of producing brilliant highly-educated engineers and of supplying poor, illiterate, and unskilled laborers, but had no population of educated skilled workers. The Central American states, and their taxpayers, absorbed the cost of the bad loans these bankruptcies represented.
The loan program initiated in 1884 was one of the four mechanisms by which wealth inequality in Central America increased over the 1880s and 1890s: the others being the lack of any programs to assist the poor during the recession, the organic tendency of wealth inequality to increase over time, and the distribution of land in Guatemala.
In the immediate aftermath of the ethnic cleansing in Guatemala, the government maintained no official policy toward the vast tracts of land once populated by Amerindian villages. The private property of White and Ladino Guatemalans murdered during the summer of 1882 was inherited by their living relatives, but the majority of unoccupied land in the central highlands and the Verapaz had been ejido property owned by Amerindian communities now killed or expelled to Mexico, leaving it in a legal limbo. This situation was further complicated by the fact that, once the conflict ended, thousands of Amerindian refugees returned from Mexico, reoccupying their old village lands.
President Ubico and his allies in Congress were united in their belief that these lands should be removed from Amerindian ownership and distributed to ‘true Guatemalans’ – meaning Spanish-speaking Catholics of European descent. However, openly stealing the land as conquest was considered unacceptable. President Arturo Ubico himself and many congressmen were from legal backgrounds and none wanted to set a precedent of the state being able to abrogate private property rights, even those of Amerindians. It took until 1887 for his government to alight on the solution: the government claimed that ejido rights had originally been granted to enable the productive use of land but, as most ejidos were now unoccupied, they were no longer in ‘productive use’ and, as such, were at the disposal of the Guatemalan government. With this passably legal justification at hand, Guatemalan Congress passed two laws on 12 May 1887: one declaring that any ejido land not currently cultivated was assumed as the property of the state, and another establishing a body to dispose of this new land by public sale and auction. As the vast majority of the Guatemalan Amerindians cultivating ejido lands had been killed or expelled, these laws legalized the theft and subsequent sale of some of Guatemala’s most fertile lands.
In other contexts in the Americas, the theft and sale of Amerindian land greatly benefited the poor non-indigenous inhabitants, who were able to cheaply obtain more fertile land. This was not the case for the sale of land in 1880s Guatemala. Rather than breaking up the ejido plots into acres, the Guatemalan government chose to sell each ejido plot as a single unit. Whereas enterprising Centroamerican farmers – much wealthier than those in neighboring countries and possessing of modest cash savings – could certainly have afforded to purchase acres of land in Guatemala, very few could afford to purchase the multiple hectares of land that constituted a single ejido. Some enterprising peasant cooperatives, inspired by the Catholic cooperative movement popular in Europe during the same period, did manage to purchase Guatemalan land, but the vast majority of the ejido plots were purchased by wealthy established hacendados. In previous decades, the acquisition of such large tracts of land would have been of little benefit to the hacendados without the peasantry to work them, but the rapid advance of agricultural technology in the later half of the 19th Century had made cultivation possible with a much smaller labor force. The wealth generated from these new lands went entirely to the franchised elite, increasing the divide between them and the disenfranchised majority.
Nowhere was the class divide in Central America starker than in its industrial cities. While Centroamerican farmers were generally much wealthier than their peers in other parts of the Americas, largely due to the survival of smallholdings and the high prices garnered by Centroamerican agricultural exports, the Centroamerican proletariat was among the poorest anywhere in any industrialized nation. Centroamerican factoryworkers lived in ramshackle slums built on the outskirts of major cities and often hazardously close to the factories. Most lacked access to clean water, adequate fuel for cooking, oil for nighttime light sources, or covered outhouses. Local governments did not consider the slums part of the ‘ciudad propio’ and so did not provide any services; policing, in a very limited form, was performed by the workers themselves or by private guards hired by the factories. These facts of urban life for the proletariat remained unchanged in the 1880s, whereas the decade was a period of remarkable change in the ciudades propios. Modern sewage and water treatment systems were developed and introduced. And a range of new electrical technologies became present in Centroamerican cities, including: telephones in offices and some private homes, streetcars for public transit, and systems of gas streetlights to provide nighttime illumination in public places. Some of the wealthiest Central Americans even had electrical lighting installed in their homes. The advancement in urban life in the 1880s made the slums feel almost as if they belonged to a different century. In the few recorded conversations from this time, slum-dwellers emphasized the visible difference between the slums and the ciudad propio that emerged during this decade, stressing the feelings of exclusion and resentment created by seeing the shine of streetlights while living in an unlit slum.
The resentment felt by the Centroamerican proletariat did not go unexpressed, and the grinding poverty, lack of social mobility, and brutal repression fed an incipient urban socialist movement in the 1880s. Labor organization in Central America was forced to be underground and clandestine from the beginning due to the repressive political environment and the presence of the factory-owners’ own private police in the slums. These clandestine workers’ groups had been the organizational force behind past strikes and riots, all of which had been violently repressed. At some point in the early 1880s, these native labor organizations came into contact with Marxist revolutionaries from South America and, adopting the Marxist methods successful in Uruguay and Paraguay, transformed themselves into revolutionary cells acting as the vanguard for a broader socialist revolution.
These revolutionary cells then proceeded to begin a campaign of assassination against the most visible members of the Centroamerican ruling class, inaugurated by an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Honduran Minister of the Interior in May 1886. During the remainder of the decade, these revolutionary Marxist groups carried out over 70 assassination attempts, managing to kill Tegucigalpa’s Chief of Police, the Salvadoran Vice President, and 8 members of state congresses. The groups also frequently clashed with private factory police and sometimes with members of the military. Although the pace of attacks was far lower and the attacks themselves were less successful in Central America than Europe or South America, Centroamerican elites were deeply concerned by this new threat. Just when the danger of social revolution from the Zelayistas had been defeated, it arose from a new quarter in the form of urban Marxists.
The threat posed by the Marxists was very real, as similar groups in direct communication with each other had already successfully overthrown governments in Paraguay and Uruguay. Over the course of the decade, this international web of Marxist cells would also establish Marxist dictatorships in Ecuador in 1886 and Buenos Aires in 1888. In 1887, Marxism had its first success on the other side of the Atlantic when Italian Marxists overthrew the unpopular and dictatorial King Umberto. The public mood in Central America, however, was radically different than in the 1870s. Victory over the Zelayistas had given the Central Americans a sense of their own might and made them confident that they could overcome this new threat.
Pictured: An artistic rendering of the 1887 murder of the Italian royal family at the hands of revolutionary Marxists. The Italian Revolution in particular fueled the nightmares of Central American plutocrats because the Italians killed King Umberto’s entire family to prevent any future restoration.
The Centroamerican response to this new threat was twofold to reflect the international character of the Marxist movement. At home, the answer was more repression and the growth of police forces. Abroad, Central America supported conservative governments in the Caribbean and even entertained the possibility of armed intervention.
When the Marxist movement emerged in Central America circa 1886, the shantytowns around major cities were essentially apart from the state, policed only by private guards hired by the factories. These factory police were hated by the slum-dwellers and could provide no useful information on the revolutionaries. Even more troubling was the knowledge, based on arrests, that groups cooperated from different cities, hinting at the broader network that the divided system of city police could not deal with. At various points between 1887 in Honduras and 1893 in Guatemala, all four states reorganized their police forces to deal with this issue, creating a single national police force in each state subordinate to the respective Ministry of the Interior. The idea was to share information between local offices, thus allowing for a more effective response to a widespread network of Marxist cells. In practice, the police were reluctant to share information or cooperate. Far more impactful was the decision of Honduras and El Salvador in 1892 to establish a new office within the national police specifically to target socialist agitators. Effectively the same as secret police anywhere in Europe, these special departments established networks of police informants within the factories and, often unsuccessfully, attempted to infiltrate the revolutionary cells. While few Marxist revolutionaries were caught, the fear of infiltration did hamper their ability to organize and act.
Conservative Central Americans paid attention when the Marxist leadership in Montevideo and Florence spoke of their movement as international and determined that their efforts to stay the socialist threat must also be international. In the setting of the 1880s Caribbean, however, this was difficult to achieve. Central America lacked the heavy industry base necessary to arm reactionary forces anywhere in South America, where the Marxists had the most success. Although wealthy, its leadership was unwilling to send funds abroad, even if it did help fight international socialism. As a result, the scope of practical discussion narrowed from socialism internationally to socialism in the Caribbean. Even supporting friendly governments in the Caribbean, however, would have required a level of force-projection that contemporary Central America lacked. While similar issues in the early 1880s had limited Centroamerican influence to its alliance with Costa Rica, politicians later in the decade were more ambitious and proposed that Central America should make the investments necessary to project power in the Caribbean and, in essence, assume the USA’s former role within the Havana Treaty. Achieving this vision would require an unprecedented amount of political will at the Confederal level and the creation of a blue-water navy to replace the small fleets of obsolete steamers currently maintained by the Centroamerican states.
Unfortunately for advocates of Central America’s greater role in the Caribbean, crisis struck before Central America was prepared to act. In January 1889, Felipe Horacio Vásquez Lajara, the dictatorial President of the Dominican Republic, was assassinated, throwing the country into a period of brief civil war between rival military leaders. With the USA and CSA absent from the world stage, this was an ideal moment for Central America to step-up and protect its interests in a stable Caribbean. Centroamerican plans to purchase modern ocean-going vessels for its navy – construction of such vessels would have required building a shipyard industry from scratch – were in the earliest stages of negotiation, meaning the Confederation lacked the fleet necessary to intervene in the war even had the Confederal Congress agreed. The debates around this missed opportunity occupied congressional debate going into the 1890s.
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An interesting look at how politics, economics, and class all influence each other within the USCA.
For now it seems like the elites have a firm grip on power. But as the country industrializes further and as the wealth-gap grows, more and more people will join the growing Communist movement.
For now it seems like the elites have a firm grip on power. But as the country industrializes further and as the wealth-gap grows, more and more people will join the growing Communist movement.
I really thought when I saw the socialists appear in the Maya regions that they would win too, but somehow the rebels are even wekaer than the Centroamerican government.
The communist movement of this world has a major flaw, however, just like real life Communist movements of the 19th Century. It is a movement of the urban proletariat in a country where most of the population are peasant smallholders. Maybe, like the Russian Marxists of our own timeline, the Centroamerican communists can overcome this, but Central America is not Russia and it is not so easy for a small minority to control the country.
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That was quite a grim picture of the situation in Central America!
I'm wondering if any of these revolutionary movements will end up succeeding. The revolution in Italy is interesting but they may not have the resources to spread the revolution abroad
I'm wondering if any of these revolutionary movements will end up succeeding. The revolution in Italy is interesting but they may not have the resources to spread the revolution abroad
Maybe! It would certainly make for a fun twist. I only play around 10 or 15 years ahead of writing, so its a big mystery to me too. Based on current communist strength, however, I doubt it. I guess, like many real life communist movements, they failed to create that essential bridge between the urban working class and the peasantry. So long as the peasantry remains docile, hard to see how anything will change.
I can say that the game decided to make Italy a huge meme the entire game: the friendless pariah of Europe until its revolution, at which point it became a friendless communist pariah. That meaning said, they do at least get involved in Spain, which is pretty fun.
The World of the 1880s
The World of the 1880s
The Americas
Outside of those discussed in the main narrative, the major event of the 1880s in North America was a third round of conflict between the USA and CSA. This latest conflagration began with a coup in the CSA. The 1880 abolition of slavery destroyed the wealth of the planter class and, after failing to reverse this decision through lawful elections, they resorted to other means to regain their wealth in chattel. In September 1884, a clique of Confederate officers conspired with reactionary politicians to overthrow the government and impose a military dictatorship on the CSA. The first act of this junta was to restore the institution of slavery. This was opposed not only by Southern Blacks, who fled northwards en masse, but also by most poor Whites, who were opposed to both dictatorship and the return of slavery. The army mostly sided with the junta and looked poised to crush those few camps loyal to the previous government, at which point the USA intervened in the conflict. US President James Garfield, the first Republican to hold that office since Abraham Lincoln, was opposed to the military coup in the CSA and demanded that democratic elections be restored. He was equally concerned about the masses of Black Southerners moving north to escape re-enslavement, a situation with the potential to reignite volatile racial tensions in the North. After a month of steadfast refusal by the junta to step down, in November 1884, the US Congress voted to approve an invasion of the CSA to remove the junta from power. The intervening years since the last war had not been kind to the CSA and its army was soundly defeated by the US along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. In May 1885, facing the prospect of a third invasion force across the Potomac River, the junta in Richmond surrendered. Not wanting the war to be seen as Yankee imperialism, President Garfield did not reabsorb the Confederate States; US soldiers stayed only long enough to oversee new elections. The US role in restoring democracy was positively received in both the USA and CSA, inaugurating a period of close brotherly relations between the republics.
Pictured: Black Confederates enlisted into the US army at a training camp in Ohio, Winter of 1884/85. The USA armed tens of thousands of Black Confederates in its war against the CSA, with the idea that arming male Black refugees was the best guarantee that they would go back to and remain in the South.
The Amazon experienced a ‘rubber boom’ in the late 1870s and 1880s as a number of new industrial applications for rubber were discovered. The Amazon, previously poor and isolated, now became a source of wealth and competition between South American nations. This competition escalated into war when the Bolivian government was toppled in a military coup in August 1884. General Hilarión Daza Groselle, dissatisfied with corruption and seeing leadership change itself as a source of instability, seized control of the government and then crowned himself King of Bolivia. Seeking to secure access to the Amazon’s resources, King Hilarión ordered Bolivian soldiers to establish a fortification in the Acre region of the Amazon. This region was also claimed by Peru and Brazil, both of which vowed to expel the Bolivian soldiers by force.
The Bolivian army fared badly in the war and, with a victorious Peruvian force threatening La Paz, King Hilarión was forced to sign a treaty in September 1885 recognizing Peru as sole controller of the Acre region. This treaty was not, however, recognized by Brazil, whose army had to been too distant to really participate in the conflict. The dispute over Acre, now between Peru and Brazil, stayed frozen for two years as Brazil sought and developed a secret alliance with Chile, which itself desired control of Peru’s Atacama Desert. On 5 July 1886, Brazil and Chile announced their alliance and declared a joint war upon Peru to seize Acre and Atacama, respectively. The USA, newly assertive under Republican leadership, agreed to uphold an 1858 alliance with Chile and deployed its navy to assist the Chileans in the Pacific. After 18 months of fighting dislodged its forces from both disputed regions, Peru accepted defeat and, in two treaties signed in January 1888, ceded Acre and the Atacama Desert to Brazil and Chile, respectively.
The political turmoil that seized the Rio de la Plata in the 1870s did not remain confined to the region in the subsequent decades. The form of vanguard party socialism developed in Uruguay continued to dominate working class politics in the region and spread to other countries in Europe and the Americas, as seen in the example of Central America. Marxism’s domination of working class politics within the powerful cities of Rio de la Plata did not, however, translate smoothly into political control. Like the Centroamerican groups they inspired, Marxists in the Rio de la Plata drew exclusively from the urban proletariat and had almost no links to the peasantry and rural poor. This meant that, even when in power, the Marxists had a narrow powerbase and were repeatedly toppled by coalitions of the upper classes and ruralites. Only when they organized among the peasantry, as did Ecuadorian Marxists prior to their 1886 revolution, were the Marxists successful in retaining power.
Europe
Europe in the 1880s was defined by the tumultuous aftermaths of the Second Bavarian War and the Alfonist War in Spain. The conflicts drained the coffers of all their participants and precipitated the collapse of six of Europe’s empires.
The first casualty was the Habsburg monarchy, whose collapse began when the Second Bavarian War ended. Angry at government ineptitude in failing to adequately provision troops returning home from the war, Austro-Hungarian soldiers mutinied in camps along the German frontline; these mutinies quickly acquired a political character, as councils of soldiers added grievances about poor governance, corruption, lack of representation, and – in Czech regions – the unequal status of ethnic minorities. To the terror of the government, the soldiers then deserted their posts and began marching on Vienna, deposing local government as they went, to present their demands to the Emperor. Unable or unwilling to stop them, Emperor Franz Josef did meet with the soldiers’ representatives, negotiations that resulted in first his relinquishment of all executive powers and then, on 20 January 1880, his abdication and the end of the Habsburg Empire. What replaced it was a chaotic and still-forming federation of ethnic republics, one of which – the Venetian Republic of Italians – left the federation to unite itself with Italy in December 1880.
The Prussian-dominated Deutscherbund was next to collapse, as events in Austria-Hungary inspired similar protests across the German states. In Germany, these protests were headed by workers, particularly in the Rhineland, who organized strikes and factory occupations to demand the same labor, civil, and political rights won in former Austria. Over the first half of 1880, the princes of many smaller German states abdicated in the face of strikes and public demonstrations. Prussia’s King Wilhem tried to resist this pressure, but lost control of the situation in the spring of 1880 when Prussian soldiers mutinied after being told to fire on striking workers in Essen. This mutiny sparked a brief period of civil war in the western territories of Prussia and in Berlin, as royalist soldiers fought against armed workers and the soldiers who had defected to them. In June 1880, King Wilhem, informed that rebel capture of Berlin was imminent, agreed to abdicate in exchange for free passage to exile in Britain. He left the country on 15 June 1880 and, two weeks later, an assemblage of liberal politicians from across the German states gathered in Berlin and declared the creation of a united and democratic German Republic.
Pictured: French soldiers on patrol outside of Metz, Spring 1882. France quickly took advantage of the disorder in Germany and reoccupied Alsace, which it had been forced to relinquish only the previously year. Despite many impassioned speeches about fighting for German lands, the new government did recognize the superiority of the Franco-Russian alliance and recognized French control at the Treaty of Saarebruck in March 1881.
The third casualty of the war, the Ottoman Empire, had technically been in collapse as the war was ongoing. The Ottoman armies had fared badly against the Austro-Hungarians and Habsburg troops had pushed deep into the Balkans. Their advance had been accompanied by a general revolt by the Christian populations of the Balkans. By the time a peace was signed in 1879, actual Ottoman control of the Balkans was limited to the southern half of the peninsula and Ottoman authority was challenged there too by a collection of Christian militias armed and funded by Russia. This anarchy in the Balkans demanded international attention and, in April 1881, Italy hosted a conference in Florence to decide what should be done about the collapse of Ottoman authority in the Balkans. In attendance were the Ottomans, the European powers, and delegations of the many Balkan armies seeking recognition. The agreement reached was that, in exchange for international support of its control of the southern Balkans, the Ottomans would recognize as independent the new kingdoms of Bulgaria and Bosnia, as well as the expansion of Montenegro and Serbia. This further humiliation, after the loss of all North Africa, caused unrest in the Ottoman Empire and, in February 1882, resulted in Sultan Izzeddin being overthrown and replaced by his cousin, Adbulhamid, a hardliner who was viewed as being more capable of fighting back against the Christian powers.
France and Italy survived that war only to throw themselves into their own disastrous conflict in Spain. By the late 1870s, Spain had slipped from the French orbit after King Juan III abdicated in favor of his deeply conservative son, Carlos. King Carlos VII had then aligned Spain with the absolutist regime in Italy and leaned on Italian assistance when his retraction of his father’s few liberal reforms sparked an uprising in favor of Alfonso, the son of the deposed Queen Isabel. France, eager to frustrate Italy, provided support to the Alfonsistos and Portugal allowed Alfonso to organize on its territory. The loyalist armies of King Carlos VII did eventual defeat the Alfonistos in 1886, but not before France had occupied Spanish possessions in Morocco south of the Rif mountains – “to maintain proper order during Spain’s period of internal troubles” – and not without putting a heavy strain on the budgets of Spain, Italy, and France.
Pictured: Filipino nationalists gathered in Paris, 1885. In one of many strategies to undermine Spain, France openly supported Filipino nationalists in the mid-1880s and demanded the Philippines be given independence under its own monarchy, similar to Cuba. This campaign, as well as calls for Basque independence, were suspended in early 1886 under pressure of France’s Russian ally.
The discontent resulting from what was popularly perceived as a cruel, expensive, pointless, and Machiavellian war led to the formation of a broad anti-war movement in France that, for the first time, united lower and middle-class Frenchmen in an opposition organization. When a scandal arose in 1887 over illicit payments from the public treasury to Prince Philippe’s mistress, the anti-war opposition was able to pivot and mobilize a broad front of support across class lines. The protests initially demanded greater parliamentary oversight over the budget, but this soon transformed into broader demands for civil, labor, and political rights – similar to those won in Germany and former Austria – and, eventually for a republic. After months of nation-wide strikes, including by clerks and government workers, King Louis Philippe II abdicated his throne, as did his son Philippe, and the Second French Republic was declared in February 1888. In Alsace, events took a different turn, with public meetings electing a ‘Parliament of the Alsace’ which declared first its independence and then its attachment to the German Republic.
For Italy, involvement in the Alfonist War was only the latest of many grievances against the government that culminated in its violent overthrow by Marxist revolutionaries in August 1887. In contrast to the popular and democratic nature of revolutions elsewhere in Europe, the Marxists of the Italian People’s Republic seized power through force and ruled as despots. The great success that had allowed the Italian Marxists to seize power was that they had killed the key figures of the monarchist regime and moved onto governing before the hyper-centralized Italian state had time to react to the loss of its executives. Without orders from the deceased king or his ministers, local officials did nothing and army commanders took no initiative to counter the numerically inferior but more mobile Marxists. So, afforded the luxury of picking their battles against uncoordinated opponents, the Marxists were able to win local engagements and install themselves as the new rulers of Italy.
As in a long sickness, Spain too succumbed to the lingering impact of the Alfonist War. The war left Spain heavily indebted to Italian banks. Barely able to cover interest on its loans and restricted by ancient rights from raising taxes in Spain, the government instead increased taxes in its Moroccan colony to crippling levels and triggered a revolt in 1888. Cutoff from Italian financing following the revolution there, Spain could not afford to properly outfit the expedition, so the Spanish army facing the revolt was poorly equipped and provisioned and was consequently treated to humiliating defeats in the Rif mountains. Among that miserable and defeated army, the Italian People’s Republic planted agitators and succeeded in starting a munity under the rallying cry “Let us go home!”. The government response of cutting rations to the mutinying regiments only served to radicalize them and, in many cases, allowed Spanish Marxists to seize control of units. These units then attacked supply depots and, by the end of 1888, had established themselves as the main military force on the Moroccan coast.
Organized through councils dominated by Italian-backed Marxists, the mutineers in Morocco quickly moved towards their radical demands for Spain. At this point, Spain began a rapid disintegration. Frustrated at King Carlos VII’s inability to resolve the situation in Morocco, cities and regional governments raised their own armies and began to ignore dictates from Madrid. The rump of the military not in Morocco proved of dubious loyalty to King Carlos, as many commanders pledged loyalty to regional governments or, in an attempt to stave off mutiny, handed over authority to soldiers and sailors’ councils. In April 1889, screened by naval vessels commandeered by their crews, the mutineers crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to Cadiz, initiating the active phase of the Spanish Civil War, a multisided conflict that would last for the next decade.
Asia
The 1880s in Asia saw a continuation of previous trends, namely the continuation of European colonial dominance and the shift of European imperial rivalries from mainland Asia into the Pacific. For at least a decade, the lines of control in Southeast Asia had been set between the British and Netherlandish and, with France excluded from mainland Asia outside of China and its Indian holding at Pondicherry, this left the Pacific as the main area of colonial competition in Asia. Without opposing colonial powers to play off, the position of native governments in colonized Southeast Asia was further eroded in the 1880s. Even nominally independent countries, like Siam, found themselves increasingly indebted to European and Japanese traders and, without alternatives, surrendered control of their finances almost entirely to the colonial powers.
Russia was untouched by the wars and revolutions that shook Europe, but still profited handsomely by them. At the Florence Conference, Russia was able to realize its long-held dream of restoring Christian kingdoms in the Balkans. To Tsar Aleksandr II, the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkans was in fact evidence that divine providence favored Christendom and proof that Russia should press the advantage in its civilizational struggle against Islam, which it did against its old foe in the Qajar Kingdom of Persia. Claiming extraordinary rights over the Christians of Persia — rights evidently not granted in the Treaty of Turkmenchay — Tsar Aleksandr intentionally provoked a diplomatic crisis. When residents of the Qajar capital, enraged by Russian demands, attacked the Armenian quarter in the fall of 1889 and massacred its Christian inhabitants, Russia used this as a pretext for a short and victorious war. The Russian armies occupied the western half of the country, captured Shah Naser al Din, and forced a new treaty upon him, in which he has made to recognize the rights Russia has groundlessly claimed to exist in the Turkmenchay Treaty and to cede the ancient capital of Tabriz to Russia.
Pictured: An illustration of the Russian entry into Tabriz, printed in a French magazine in November 1889. In contrast to the celebratory mood in the drawing, the Russian occupation and annexation of the ancient Qajar capital, from which Persia had ruled the Caucasus for centures, was purposefully humiliating, as was the continued imprisonment of Nasir al Din Shah, who remained in his palace under Russian guard until his death in 1898.
Europe fully turned its colonial attentions upon Africa in the 1880s, beginning the first phase of the ‘Scramble for Africa’, or the divvying-up of the continent among the European powers. France, which had strong interests in securing its control of the West African palm oil trade, organized a conference of the European powers in Paris in April 1880 to agree on spheres of influence. The most important waterway of West Africa, the Niger River, was split between Britain, France, and Netherlands; each party laying claim to a portion of its course as well a seaport on the coast. Britain, France, and Portugal were confirmed in their existing holdings, while the remainder of the African coastline was divided between Britain and Netherlands. France also used the conference to attain international support for its invasion of Tunis, which Louis Philippe II initiated in May 1880.
The Paris Conference was hobbled by limited knowledge of the African interior, which would cause issues as the Europeans expanded colonial rule into the vast uncharted parts of the continent, and by its explicitly European focus. Although African kingdoms were excluded from the conference, they remained the actual controllers of the territory and trade routes divided by the Europeans in Paris for another decade. The Paris Conference did, however, mark the beginning of the end for African sovereignty, as enterprising French, British, Netherlandish, and Portuguese merchants received the armed backing of their governments to dictate the terms of trade in Africa.
Pictured: A map of Africa showing the borders determined at the Paris Conference. Red indicates British possessions; blue indicates French possessions; orange indicates Netherlandish possessions; dark green indicates Portuguese possessions in Mozambique and Angola; and light green indicates Italian possession of a portion of the Sahara coast. This map also shows the existance of the two Boer republics in southern Africa, for which the treaty had a British note verbale clarifying that their inclusion did not imply British recognition.
As elsewhere in the world, France and Britain brought their imperial rivalry to Africa. As the crux of French interests, the Niger River, had been clearly demarcated in 1880, these disputes usually took on the form of a proxy competition between Britain and another colonial power, the latter backed by France. France sought to deny Britain the advantages of additional African colonies by supporting its Portuguese ally or Netherlands, which could at least be depended upon to oppose Britain. France won a major victory through this strategy at the Congo Conference of March 1885, when it secured control of the Congo for King Leopold II of the Belgians, a reliable French ally whose guarantee of free passage along the Congo River primarily benefitted French and Netherlandish merchants.
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It seems like the world is undergoing a great period of change, I'm especially surprised by all the revolutions in Europe
I wonder which governing ideology will win out when the dust settles
I wonder which governing ideology will win out when the dust settles
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So many changes in Europe! It will be interesting to see if any of these new governments remain in place and who will win out in Spain.
Learned about this AAR from the balloting in the 2023 Yearly AARland Year-end AwAARds (the YAYAs). (And for readers of this AAR who haven't voted yet, there is still limited time to cast a ballot.)
As someone who has lived in Mexico and traveled extensively in Central America (while writing about both) this is an impressive alternative history. Fascinating to see how removing the U.S. from the picture, for the most part, doesn't change the trajectory of economic inequality. Also, interesting to see how a Central American federation might work when such attempts fell apart in our history.
I do find the bloody history of the Second Mayan War, most unsettling. The military strategies deployed against civilians seemed more like something out of the 20th Century (although yes, such anti-indigenous strategies were deployed for centuries). Perhaps it is the result that is so shocking: to see the utter depopulation of those parts of Guatemala is staggering. That's something that the repressive Guatemalan regimes of that country's long drawn out guerrilla war in the 20th Century were never able to achieve, thankfully (despite a variety of bloody massacres).
It seems the game and your history are poised for quite a bit of change as the 20th Century approaches. Would definitely like to see more updates. For those who like a history-book approach, this is a very good alt-history.
As someone who has lived in Mexico and traveled extensively in Central America (while writing about both) this is an impressive alternative history. Fascinating to see how removing the U.S. from the picture, for the most part, doesn't change the trajectory of economic inequality. Also, interesting to see how a Central American federation might work when such attempts fell apart in our history.
I do find the bloody history of the Second Mayan War, most unsettling. The military strategies deployed against civilians seemed more like something out of the 20th Century (although yes, such anti-indigenous strategies were deployed for centuries). Perhaps it is the result that is so shocking: to see the utter depopulation of those parts of Guatemala is staggering. That's something that the repressive Guatemalan regimes of that country's long drawn out guerrilla war in the 20th Century were never able to achieve, thankfully (despite a variety of bloody massacres).
It seems the game and your history are poised for quite a bit of change as the 20th Century approaches. Would definitely like to see more updates. For those who like a history-book approach, this is a very good alt-history.