According to a recent report in the U.S. news site Politico, Nayib Bukele's visit to the White House may include discussion of a plan for El Salvador to cede part of its territory to the United States. This would allow the Trump administration to send prisoners to our country without the transfer constituting deportation. It is the same legal construct that allows for the use of prisons in Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay, a territory leased in perpetuity.
This would be yet another reprise of the interventionism spurred by the two presidents whom Donald Trump saluted as heroes in his second inaugural address: William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, who were behind the occupation of Cuba and the construction of the Panama Canal. U.S. intervention in Cuba culminated in the 1901 Platt Amendment, which signed off on interference in the island’s internal politics for three decades; as well as in an agreement two years later, in 1903, to lease Guantánamo in perpetuity. That same year, Roosevelt facilitated the independence of Panama in order to carry out the construction of the interoceanic canal and established a jurisdiction of U.S. imperial power in the Canal Zone.
Despite a revolution six and a half decades ago, the Cubans have not been able to recover Guantánamo. The Panamanians regained their territory after almost a century; Trump now wants to take it back from them.
Exactly a decade after the Guantánamo release, President Woodrow Wilson and his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, proposed a plan to impose similar terms on all the countries of Central America. The aim of this plan was to establish U.S. jurisdiction that would allow for the installation of a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. This occurred during the negotiations of what became the Chamorro-Bryan Treaty between the United States and Nicaragua. The opposition in El Salvador was massive.
In July 1913, Diario del Salvador ran the sensational news: “Wilson and Bryan plan to establish a protectorate throughout Central America.” The president of the United States, the paper added, approved of the project, in order “to protect the Panama Canal”. The newspaper commented that this was “a rude slap to the face of weak countries by a strong country.” The following day, Salvadoran President Carlos Meléndez told the New York Times that national opinion would reject treaties “that in any way undermine our sovereignty.” Furthermore, the president knew that the Constitution was clear on the matter, stating that “none of the constituted powers” could enter into or approve treaties that in any way affected “the integrity of the territory or national sovereignty.”
The events of the following days proved Meléndez right; Salvadorans were disgusted and incensed by the idea that a foreign power would want to attack “territorial integrity or national sovereignty.” Thousands gathered outside the foreign minister’s house in a demonstration that the U.S. ambassador described as “formidable but orderly”, demanding a strong response in rejection of Washington’s wishes. The first week of August saw similar rallies across the country. The population of Santa Tecla, near the capital, was outraged and founded a “Committee for National Defense”. The Diario del Salvador correspondent in Opico reported on the displeasure of the community in San Juan Opico. One of the people’s concerns was the possibility of a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. The situation grew so tense that the U.S. representative asked his government to send a warship, the USS Denver, to a Salvadoran port to demonstrate his country’s might.
In those days, the Senate in Washington was able to assert its constitutional role as a counterweight to presidential actions, rejecting the Secretary of State’s proposal, including the idea of a Central American protectorate. But it was a partial victory; Bryan resumed negotiations for the treaty with Nicaragua in late 1913 and early 1914, again insisting on the idea of the protectorate.
Popular opposition emerged once more. Demonstrations in El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica against Wilson’s plans were impressive. Ultimately, the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty signed on Aug. 5, 1914, was not followed by treaties imposing protectorates in other Central American countries.
What was the reason for this change of direction? As the final stage of the treaty negotiations coincided with the start of the First World War, President Wilson feared that any insistence on establishing protectorates would increase instability near the canal, affecting his country’s interests amid the European conflagration. He expressed as much in a letter preserved in the archives: “Is it true that the Nicaraguan neighbors have been very upset with these proposals and that they have made coordinated protests in opposition to them?” he wondered. The popular demonstrations, combined with the complex global political situation, led him to abandon the project to convert the Central American countries into protectorates.
After this setback, the Secretary of State tried to negotiate a treaty with El Salvador to obtain a base in the Gulf of Fonseca. A secret telegram he sent to the U.S. ambassador said he was willing “to buy a naval base from El Salvador”, even if it was only to prevent another country from taking advantage of the strategic benefits of the site. A document from the Ministry of the Navy stated that the United States needed “a place in the Gulf of Fonseca where ships could refuel in calm waters under U.S. jurisdiction.”
Carlos Meléndez tried to find a way to satisfy Bryan’s wishes, but he did not dare sell Salvadoran sovereignty. The president knew that popular opposition was too powerful. He had acceded to the presidency after the assassination of Manuel Enrique Araujo and had just obtained the post in his own right after hardly clean elections. Once again, popular opposition prevented the great power of the North from obtaining jurisdiction in Salvadoran lands.
While it is unwise to study history with the expectation that it will repeat itself mechanically, knowledge of the past can help identify perilous routes and possible alternatives. In this case, history points to clear danger: When a country as powerful as the United States obtains jurisdiction over a territory, it is very difficult for it to relinquish it. But opposition movements reflecting the sentiment of vast majorities can change the course of history.
Salvadoran historian Héctor Lindo Fuentes, professor emeritus at Fordham University, is the author of “El alborotador de Centroamérica: El Salvador frente al imperio” (2019, UCA Editores), an investigation of El Salvador's popular anti-imperialist struggles. He has written about the same topic in English for Cambridge University’s Journal of Latin American Studies.
