CHAPTER XI. THE REPUBLICS OF THE CARIBBEAN The course of events in certain of the republics in and around the Caribbean Sea warned the Hispanic nations that independence was a relative condition and that it might vary in direct ratio with nearness to the United States. After 1906 this powerful northern neighbor showed an unmistakable tendency to extend its influence in various ways. Here fiscal and police control was established; there official recognition was withheld from a President who had secured office by unconstitutional methods. Nonrecognition promised to be an effective way of maintaining a regime of law and order, as the United States understood those terms. Assurances from the United States of the full political equality of all republics, big or little, in the western hemisphere did not always carry conviction to Spanish American ears. The smaller countries in and around the Caribbean Sea, at least, seemed likely to become virtually American protectorates. Like their Hispanic neighbor on the north, the little republics of Central America were also scenes of political disturbance. None of them except Panama escaped revolutionary uprisings, though the loss of life and property was insignificant. On the other hand, in these early years of the century the five countries north of Panama made substantial progress toward federation. As a South American writer has expressed it, their previous efforts in that direction "amid sumptuous festivals, banquets and other solemn public acts" at which they "intoned in lyric accents daily hymns for the imperishable reunion of the isthmian republics," had been as illusory as they were frequent. Despite the mediation of the United States and Mexico in 1906, while the latter was still ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between the first two belligerents. Since diplomatic interposition no longer availed, American marines were landed in Nicaragua, and the bumptious Zelaya was induced to have his country meet its neighbors in a conference at Washington. Under the auspices of the United States and Mexico, in December, 1907, representatives of the five republics signed a series of conventions providing for peace and cooperation. An arbitral court of justice, to be erected in Costa Rica and composed of one judge from each nation, was to decide all matters of dispute which could not be adjusted through ordinary diplomatic means. Here, also, an institute for the training of Central American teachers was to be established. Annual conferences were to discuss, and an office in Guatemala was to record, measures designed to secure uniformity in financial, commercial, industrial, sanitary, and educational regulations. Honduras, the storm center of weakness, was to be neutralized. None of the States was thereafter to recognize in any of them a government which had been set up in an illegal fashion.