Mexico, the United States, and the 1926–1927 Nicaraguan Crisis
V VICTORY over Spain in 1898 provided the United States with the opportunity to pursue the various options that imperial status now offered. Indeed, under the influence of the strategic precepts of an Alfred Thayer Mahan, the messianic expansionism of a Josiah Strong, the extended frontier concept of a Frederick Jackson Turner, and the now seemingly obtainable economic aspirations of a James G. Blaine, North Americans looked to their newly established imperial arena with anticipation and confidence. It would be the adjacent circum-Caribbean region, for the most part, where the United States government would attempt to create the appropriate climate for the attainment of its strategic, economic, and altruistic goals. Acquisition of the Canal Zone in 1903 served in particular to focus U.S. attention on the isthmus. Accordingly, whenever revolutionary violence erupted in Central America, the United States government invariably took vigorous action to ensure the survival of governments and factions which were supportive of North American interests. Such action was even more energetic and precipitous if U.S. officials perceived an external threat to their interests in the region. In reviewing the pattern of inter-American affairs during the early twentieth century, the relationship between the United States and Nicaragua stands out as one of the most instructive examples of the sustained efforts on the part of U. S. policy makers to promote an isthmian Pax Americana. At no time was this commitment more evident than during the mid-192os when Nicaraguan civil strife, exacerbated, in the estimation of Washington, by the intrusion of foreign material as well as ideological forces, prompted the United States government to mount a major military intervention on the isthmus. It was in late December 1926 when the first elements of a marine expeditionary force landed on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. Initial newspaper accounts indicated that the U. S. forces were needed "to protect American and foreign lives and property" threatened as a result of the ongoing con-