Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WILLIAM WALKER: SCOUNDREL, VAGABOND, PRESIDENT
In a country long accustomed to land grabs and mysterious foreigners with hidden agendas, none
has managed to shine quite like Tennessee-born William Walker.
While Walker's name is pretty much unheard of outside Central America, you can bet that
every Nicaraguan you meet will know exactly who he is.
A quiet, poetry-reading youth who had mastered several languages and earned various degrees
by early adulthood, Walker first found work as a newspaper editor, publishing outspoken pieces
condemning slavery and the interventionist policies of the US at the time (warning: irony ap-
proaching).
A different type of opportunity presented itself in 1848 when the Treaty of Guadalupe was
signed, ceding half of Mexico to the US and leaving the other half dangling temptingly. Walker
quickly jettisoned his liberal ideals, got a posse of thugs and crooks together, and embarked on a
career that would etch his name into history books forever - filibustering.
Taken from a Dutch word meaning pirate, filibustering came to mean invading a country as a
private citizen with unofficial aid from your home government.
Walker's foray into Mexico was as successful (he managed to take the Mexicans completely
by surprise, raise his flag and name himself president before getting chased back over the border)
as it was short-lived.
Word of Walker's derring-do spread, though, and it wasn't long before the city of León offered
him the job of taking care of their pesky rivals in Granada.
With another rag-tag group of mercenaries at his command, Walker arrived in San Juan del Sur
in September of 1855 and, aided by the element of surprise and the latest in US weaponry, easily
took Granada.
Walker's Liberal Leónese employers must have felt a bit put out when he decided not to hand
over Granada after all, but instead stayed around, got himself elected president, reinstituted
slavery, confiscated huge tracts of land and led an ill-fated invasion attempt on Costa Rica.
These audacious actions, supported by then US president Franklin Pierce, inspired something
that has been sadly lacking ever since - Central American unity. But even getting chased back to
the US by every Central American army in existence (stopping long enough to burn Granada to
the ground) didn't dampen Walker's imperial ambitions. He returned to Nicaragua once more
(and was sent briskly packing) before trying his luck in Honduras, where the locals were much
less lenient, and put him before a firing squad in September 1860.
