The reform-minded president
José Santos Zelaya López (elected as a
Liberal Party candidate) had incurred the wrath of the United States by negotiating with
France,
Germany, and
Japan to resurrect the proposed
Nicaragua Canal, which might constitute potential future foreign competition with the newly built, U.S.-owned
Panama Canal. The United States then supported an insurgency against the government led by Conservative Party insurgents
Emiliano Chamorro and
Juan José Estrada, supplying them with arms, funds, troops, warships, and also imposing economic measures. This eventually forced the popular liberal Presidents José Zelaya and then
Jose Madriz to flee the country. The US then installed the conservative governments of first Juan José Estrada (soon deposed by the powerful Secretary of War
Luis Mena) and then former Vice President
Adolfo Díaz. When General Luis Mena convinced the
National Assembly to name him successor to the unpopular pro-U.S. Adolfo Díaz, the United States
invaded and occupied Nicaragua militarily from 1912 to 1933, wrote a new constitution for the country, changed the National Assembly, and propped up successive conservative regimes under the presidents Adolfo Díaz, Emiliano Chamorro, and
Diego Manuel Chamorro. Luis Mena fled into the countryside to start a rebellion, which continued under various leaders for the next sixty years. In exchange for
political concessions from Adolfo Díaz, the United States provided the military strength to suppress popular revolt and ensure the conservative regime maintained control over the Nicaraguan government. For much of the 20th century, Nicaragua remained controlled under the hereditary dictatorship of the Chamorro. After 1936, the Somoza dynasties were controlled until widespread rebellions forced them out of power in the 1970s. The Treaty was named after the principal negotiators:
William Jennings Bryan, U.S. Secretary of State, and the then
General Emiliano Chamorro, representing the Nicaraguan government. By the terms of the treaty, the United States acquired the rights to any canal built in Nicaragua in perpetuity, a renewable 99 year option to establish a naval base in the
Gulf of Fonseca, and a renewable 99-year lease to the Great and Little
Corn Islands in the
Caribbean. Nicaragua received $3 million for those concessions. Most of the $3 million was paid back to U.S. creditors by U.S. officials in charge of Nicaraguan financial affairs, which allowed the Nicaraguan government to continue to collect internal revenue. The debt had been quickly amassed in a two-year period by the Nicaraguan government of
Juan José Estrada under the American
"dollars for bullets" scheme to retard infrastructure development funding from rival powers and lingering debts from earlier indemnities Nicaragua was forced to pay the foreign occupying powers of the United States and
Great Britain, and repairing the devastation inflicted from the
war with Great Britain,
war with the United States and the
civil war of Luis Mena's Rebellion. The provision of the Bryan–Chamorro Treaty granting rights to the United States to build a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca was contested by
El Salvador and
Costa Rica. The
Central American Court of Justice favored the two countries. The United States ignored the decision, contributing significantly to the court's collapse in 1918. Later, the United States recognized that a canal in Nicaragua parallel to the Panama Canal was increasingly unlikely. In 1970, at the request of Nicaragua, the United States under
Richard Nixon and Nicaragua under
Anastasio Somoza Debayle held a convention that officially abolished the treaty and all its provisions. ==Legacy==