The opening speech of the Conference of 1919
given by King Alfonso XII
27. Second Canalejas Ministry (1918-1921) -2-
The cornerstone of Canalejas' foreign policy was the Conference of the
Mancomunidad Hispana that was planned to take place in October 1918, The last one was the one of 1905, during the troubled days that followed the Japanese invasion of the Phillipines and the Argentinian civil war. Canalejas was eager to have this conference with the member states of the
Mancomunidad as he feared, correctly, that the Spanish influence in the American Continent had been decaying with the rising of the United States as a continental power. Thus, he wanted to reconnect with those countries that still kept a strong link with the "
madre Patria". To his surprise, the appeal was more succesful than the had hoped.
Argentina was the first country to confirm his participation to the conference (June 1918), soon followed by Chile, Cuba, Peru and Puerto Rico. However, to Canalejas's astonishment, México asked for an invitation to the conference. In the following days, similar requests arrived from Costa Rica, Venezuela and Bolivia. Canalejas, delighted and surprised, accepted their requests and postponed the Conference until March 1919 to have time for all the countries involved to prepare their delegations and topics to discuss. Thus, just as Albania was rocked by its civil war, the former colonies of Spain met with their ancient homeland in Madrid, on March 12, 1919. It began with the Mexican petition to join the
Mancomunidad, which was also joined by the other three non-member states invited to the conference.
Mexico had endured a hard post-independence period. After the fall of Iturbide in 1835, Mexico had fought a long and hopeless war to keep Texas, which only brought shame to the country when, after the Mexican-American War of 1848, Mexico was forced to give up not only Texas, but also more than one-third of its land to the United States. After that, the
Segunda República Méxicana (Second Mexican Republic) entered a time of reforms that mirroed the ones introduce in Spain a decade earlier. This period (1848-1910) was characterized by economic stability and growth, significant foreign investment and influence, investments in the arts and sciences and in the railroads. It saw also an improvement of the Mexican foreign relations with the United States and Spain. However, the foreign investments in Mexico were beginning to worry its president, Adolfo de la Huerta, who feared that his country could follow the example of Guatemala and Honduras, that had been reduced to a semi-colonial situation in face of its creditors.
Even if Guatemala and Honduras were absent to the conference, their situations were mentioned many times as they exemplified the worst fears of de la Huerta, as Guatemala was virtually owned by United Fruit Company (UFC) and Guatemala by the UFC and Standard Fruit Company, which had been given tax exemptions, land grants, and control of all railroads on the Atlantic side by presidents Reina Barrios, Barillas and Cabrera to such an extent that the directing boards of those companies controlled both countries in a bigger degree than their national governments. Nevertheless, Adolfo de la Huerta, who led the Mexican delegation himself, was determined not only to avoid change this situation and travelled to Madrid with that intention. However, de la Huerta's demands of help was to put Canalejas in a difficult situation as the U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Mexico was not only notorious, but too well known by Madrid.
On their part, both Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia had generally enjoyed greater peace and more consistent political stability than many of its fellow Latin American nations. However, the latter was under pressure from the United States, specially with Roosevelt in the White House, as Washington was interested in the Department of Panama, where they had helped to build an artificial waterway. To this problem, Canalejas had no solution to offer. Beyond regulating new trade agreements between the countries taking part in the conference,the military treaty of mutual defence between Spain, Chile, Cuba, Peru and Argentina (1) and opening the way for a future incoporation of the four non-member states to the
Mancomunidad, when the conference came ot its end on April 21st, Canalejas felt very dissapointed by its overall results, as he had set his aims to achieve a closer relation of the members of the Commonwealth and reality proved to be quite far away from his initial goals.
On the home front, Canalejas had no better luck. The lack of a majority was slowling if not utterly stopping his attempts to introduce a labor reform much needed by the country. However, the conservatives and the great names of the industry fought it into a standstill. Thus, with the Parliament blocked, Canalejas resorted to have his laws passed by Royal Decrees. Then, when Canalejas was going to dissolve the Parliament and call for new elections, on June 1st, the world went to war. The conflict changed the situation and Canalejas hurriedly met Antonio Maura, Pablo Iglesias and Francesc Cambó (the new leader of the Catalan
Lliga Regionalista) to find out the chances of setting a coalition government in all but name. While Maura proved to be very receptive to the idea, but initially Canalejas found his price to be too high: the Conservative leader was in favour of closer ties with the French-US Entente, and that meant war, something that Canalejas wanted to avoid as the considered that the country was not ready to take part in the conflict and had little to win and too much to loose.
His meeting with Iglesias was highly frustrating for the Spanish prime minister. The Socialist MPs were more than enough to grant him a majority in the Parliament but the political cost that such an alliance would certainly decimate the Liberal chances of winning the next elections while, at the same time, spreading chaos and dissent among the ranks of the party. On his part, Iglesias was not to offer his support for free, and that finally closed the issue, as having Socialist ministers was out of the question. Finally, the meeting with Cambó was just a formality that went to nowhere, too, as Canalejas was unwilling to have any deals with the Catalan leader, who was one of the most vicious critic of Canalejas' social reform. Furthermore, Cambó had neither enough MPS to grant stability and his own political primacy in Catalonia was threatened by the rise of new parties (the
Partit Republicà Català -PRC, Catalan Republican Party-, a Center-Left Catalan nationalist party created in 1917 by Francesc Layret and Lluis Companys, and the
Federació Democràtica Nacionalista -FDN, Nationalist Democratic Federation-, also a Center-Left Catalan nationalist party created in 1918 by Francesc Macià) and the crisis of the
Lliga itself, as Lluis Nicolau d'Olwer, Jaume Bofill i Mates and Antoni Rovira i Virgili left the party in 1919 to create
Acció Catalana (AC, Catalan Action), a Right nationalist formation. This split marked the decadence of the
Lliga. However, Maura was also to face his own schism when, in late 1920, Angel Ossorio left the Conservative party to create the democristian
Partido Social Popular (PSP - People's Social Party).
Finally, in late June, Canalejas reached an agreement with Maura. It gave political stability to Spain but at the price of killing the social reforms. However, this had not inmediate effects due to the economic boom that the war meant for Spain. From 1919 to 1921 the Spanish textile production rise in a 300%; the production of coal was doubled, making possible to reduce the Spanish reliance on English coal; there was also an important increase in food exports (a 50% increase on average) while money flooded the pockets of the big names of the Spanish industry. It was, as a Catalan bussinesman said then, "
an extraordinary age, an incredible dream where all bussines enterprises were easy and very profitable". It was the, during this "golden age", when México (April 4, 1920), Venezuela (July 22), Costa Rica (August 4) and Bolivia (August 14) began the process to become part of the the
Mancomunidad Hispana. In January 1921, they were formally accepted and the
Mancomunidad grew from six to ten members. At the same time, Brazil began to test the waters about a possible association with the Commonwealth, even if it was not a former Spanish colony, which made Canalejas to begin to court Portugal. However, in spite of all this prosperty and diplomatic successes, the social problems were still there, even if the war and the economic prosperity had somehow temporally muted them.