For years Nicaragua had been the especial protégé of the United States government, financed by American bankers, and policed by American marines. Having traveled for several months in republics not blessed with such attentions, a gringo naturally looked forward to the progressiveness and modernity of Nicaragua.
No difference was evident.
We landed at a fairly good dock, and sat there for three hours while the American-supervised customs officials finished their siesta. Then we passed into such a town as might have formed the locale of O. Henry’s “Cabbages and Kings.”
The unpaved streets were grown with grass, neatly cropped by grazing herds of livestock. The buildings were mostly flimsy wooden structures sadly in need of paint. There was nothing to distinguish Corinto—the principal seaport of Nicaragua—from any other port along the Central-American coast.
A railway—one of the American-managed institutions—carried me inland through a scraggly jungle. The country was comparatively level; occasional volcanic peaks, rising abruptly from the plain, had rendered it fertile with their lava dust; frequent lakes indicated a plentiful water supply. Yet one observed few of the rich plantations that covered such land in the other Central-American republics; occasionally there was a field of pineapples or sugar-cane; as a rule, the road led through wilderness.
León, the second city of Nicaragua, lay thick in dust. Its streets were unpaved. Its houses, of brilliant green or yellow, with trimmings of blue and red, were resplendent in the blinding tropic sunlight, but upon close inspection, they proved somewhat dilapidated. Its cathedral towers, rising at every corner, were cracked and ridden from earthquake and revolution. The whole town seemed very old and very sleepy, and drowsing in the memories of a past. The American occupation had brought an end to civil strife on a large scale, but it evidently had not brought the prosperity to mend its ravages.
THE AMERICAN INTERVENTION HAD BROUGHT PEACE, BUT MANAGUA’S DUSTY STREETS SUGGESTED NO PROSPERITY
Managua, the capital, was in no better repair. It was situated at an altitude of only 140 feet—by far the lowest altitude of any Central-American capital. It sweltered in heat, relieved somewhat by the breezes from its lakefront, but like Corinto and León it was a city of sand, and the breezes filled the streets with swirling dust. Each lumbering ox-cart left a cloud in its wake. It lay two inches deep on the main avenues. It covered the grassless plaza, and the barren expanse of desert before the old cathedral, where vegetation was sprouting from a fallen spire. It settled upon the low roofs of the drab shops and dwellings. It seeped inside through door or window, and formed a coating upon the tiled floor of the hotel. Now and then a civic employee would turn a hose upon some portion of the Sahara, to convert it momentarily to mud, but no sooner did he cease than the blazing sun reconverted it to sand, and the breezes sent it whirling again.
Nicaragua was a country of many natural advantages. Its people appeared to be of better caliber than those of Honduras. Its area—49,200 square miles—was the greatest in Central America. Its land was all suitable for cultivation. Its potential wealth—in mahogany and hardwoods, in gold and silver and other metals—is estimated by many authorities to exceed that of any of its neighbors. Yet the imports and exports of this largest republic were far below those of Salvador, the smallest. Its cities—although upon closer inspection, they proved to contain better shops and hotels—were outwardly less imposing than those of Honduras. And when I offered a merchant a ten-dollar bill, he threw up his hands with the exclamation: