Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: Costa Rica’s Stand on Recognition, 1923-1934

Abstract

devoted to the diplomatic interrelationships among the various Latin American nations. Instead, most North American historians, with the notable exception of Robert Burr, have confined themselves to tracing points of contact and/or conflict between single Latin American states and either the United States or some major European power.' The utilization of such an oblique approach tends to sustain the belief that the Latin American nations, both singly and collectively, have accepted a passive, or, at best, a secondary role in their relationships with the Great Powers and that the Latin American states have not adopted any significant hemispheric policy of their own. The area within Latin America where such a view would seem especially applicable is Central America, where, during the first third of the twentieth century, a group of small and impotent states was forced to live with intermittent military, and continual economic and political, pressures from the United States. Yet, although North American influence and interference in Central American affairs cannot be denied, it is both unfair and unrealistic to assume that such intervention precluded the development of any independent Central American initiatives or responses to isthmian internal and international problems. Indeed, Costa Rica's experience with the United States and the other Central American nations in the 1920S and 1930S suggests the evolution of a distinctly Costa Rican isthmian policy that was remarkably innovative and independent. This is not to deny the obvious fact of North American hegemony but rather to note that within the parameters of that international reality, Costa Rica had some impor-