Cables, Crises, and the Press: The Geopolitics of the New Information System in the Americas, 1866-1903

7: Popularization of the Imperial Mentality: From Border Crisis to Hemispheric Hegemony

133 chapTer seveN Popularization of the Imperial Mentality From Border Crisis to Hemispheric Hegemony preSIdeNT harrISoN’S aggreSSIve approach to the Chilean-U.S. crisis of 1891–1892 departed from Washington’s post–Mexican War diplomacy. Supported by Benjamin Tracy, secretary of the navy, several senators and congressmen, and a cross section of the nation’s urban newspapers, Harrison made public statements that implied that the use of naval and military force was an option. Repeated in many newspapers and several speaking forums, these pontifications about the possibility of force stirred an excited response in the public. This outpouring of patriotic sentiment for executive aggressiveness offered a contrast to U.S. involvement in international crises of the 1870s and 1880s. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in 1873 used quiet diplomacy and international telegraphy to bring to a peaceful conclusion the U.S.-Spanish dispute regarding the Virginius. President Grover Cleveland, his secretary of state, William Bayard, and his secretary of the navy, William Whitney, insisted on a limited and temporary intervention in Panama in 1885 to the point of countermanding their officers in the field. Harrison’s assertiveness in 1891–1892 was paralleled by a change in public attitude that manifested itself not only in newspapers but also in the popular press in general. That change, however, is difficult to measure in quantitative terms. The absence of public opinion polls makes statistical analysis difficult, although the publication record of popular writers who focused on questions related to U.S. expansionism gives some indication of the receptivity of the reading public to the idea of the United States as an 134 chapter seven imperial power. These writers chose themes that appealed to their readers and expanded on these themes in magazines and books to generate income for themselves and to enhance their reputations beyond what they garnered through their work for newspapers. Three writers emerged during this time as proponents of U.S. imperialism : Captain John G. Bourke, Richard Harding Davis, and William Eleroy Curtis. Bourke’s experiences on the U.S.-Mexican border led him to write an essay for Harper’s magazine that endorsed imperialism. Bourke concluded that Washington should assume control of this underdeveloped and unstable region much as the European powers were building colonial empires in Africa. Richard Harding Davis agreed with Bourke on this point, but the popular reporter and novelist carried the case for imperialism in a different direction. Rather than outright territorial control, more indirect means of domination were at the heart of Davis’s formula for expansion. He advocated investment in mining and the expansion of trade along with armed intervention if required—as in Panama in 1885, for example—as the means by which to establish U.S. hegemony in the Americas. Davis found support in the voluminous writing of Curtis, a champion of U.S. domination of the Western Hemisphere through trade. Davis was the best known of the three authors. He was a journalist who also wrote popular fiction, and his book sales, reportorial exploits, and photogenic good looks enabled him to reach the status of celebrity. His choice of journalistic subject matter ranged from the U.S.-Mexican border to Central America, Venezuela, and Cuba. His perspective included an approving account of the expanding influence of the United States in this region that also embraced military intervention and endorsed the vague idea of a U.S. “protectorate” in Central America. It was in Davis’s novel Soldiers of Fortune, however, that he elaborated on his ideas regarding informal imperialism . The main character was a U.S. mining engineer who brought technical expertise and something like a stable government (by a mix of force and manipulation) to a region that, in Davis’s view, needed both. revolT on The border: garza vs. díaz Davis decided to cover the dramatic events that were unfolding on the U.S.Mexican border at about the same time the Chilean-U.S. confrontation was taking shape in the fall and winter of 1891–1892. The news-seeking reporter chose the lower Rio Grande Valley because of the revolutionary actions and public-relations acumen of a Mexican who was virtually unknown in the 135 Popularization of the Imperial Mentality United States prior to the border crisis. Mexican revolutionary Catarino Garza was another type of media personality. Like Davis, he was a journalist by profession with a flair for the dramatic. But Garza...