Combat· Banana Wars
First Nicaragua Intervention
The Marine landing on the Caribbean coast during the Nicaraguan civil war, and Major Smedley Butler's first major intervention command.
In 1910, as revolution raged against President Zelaya and his successor, Marines under Butler occupied Bluefields, the principal town of the Caribbean coast, to protect American lives and property and the foreign commercial interests of the region amid the fighting. The deployment lasted some weeks; it was protective in character, the Marines holding the town and its approaches rather than taking the field against either side, and the references record no casualties. The intervention contributed to the collapse of the Zelaya government. For Butler, who would become one of the most famous Marines of the era, Bluefields was an early command in the kind of small-war expeditionary service that would fill his career, and it marked the beginning of the deepening American involvement in Nicaragua that ran through 1912 and beyond.
Podcast episodes on Banana Wars
Record no. 499