Security· Banana Wars
Nicaragua Legation Guard at Managua
The long, quiet Marine presence that followed the 1912 intervention, a small guard that kept American influence in Nicaragua for over a decade.
After the revolt of 1912 was suppressed, the bulk of the Marine force withdrew, but a legation guard of about a hundred men remained at the American legation in Managua, and it stayed there continuously from 1913 to 1925, more than twelve years. Its duties were to protect the American minister and to lend a steadying presence to the Nicaraguan government, a constabulary and symbolic role rather than a combat one. The long posting was largely uneventful, though friction with the local police occasionally flared into incident. The guard's significance lay less in anything it did than in its mere persistence: its presence was a visible token of the American hand in Nicaraguan affairs, and its withdrawal in 1925 helped open the way to the renewed turmoil that brought the Marines back in force.
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Record no. 501