Dissident Voices 275end was put forward in 1907 by Carlos R. Tobar of Ec ua dor. He was a man of
many talents— a novelist and linguist, also a physician and educator, as well
as a diplomat with previous (and future) ser vice as his country’s foreign min-
ister. In an open letter written to the Bolivian consul in Brussels, he sug-
gested that the American republics “ought to intervene in an indirect way in
the internal dissensions” of one another. He went on to propose that this in-
tervention “might consist at least in the nonrecognition of de facto govern-
ment sprung from revolutions against the constitution.” By 1913, this pro-
posal had been christened as the “Tobar Doctrine.”
Th e Tobar Doctrine (though not yet under that label) made its fi rst entry
onto the international legal scene the very year that it was proposed. In 1907,
an Additional Convention was appended to a General Treaty of Peace and
Amity concluded by the fi ve Central American countries under the watch-
ful auspices of the United States. In this agreement, the fi ve (Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica) agreed that they would
not recognize as legitimate “any... Government which may come into power
in any of the fi ve Republics as a consequence of a coup d’état, or of a revolu-
tion against the recognized Government.”
Several years later, the United States followed suit— not as a matter of
legal obligation to other states in the manner of the Central American coun-
tries, but as a matter of self- determined policy. Th is was in relation to Mex-
ico, following the forcible taking of power by Victoriano Huerta (complete
with the murdering of his pre de ces sor) in 1913. President Woodrow Wilson
refused to recognize the Huerta government and even offi cially called for
Huerta’s resignation from offi ce. Wilson also took the position that offi cial
acts done by Huerta would not be regarded as legally binding. Th is did not
have the hoped- for eff ect of forcing a change of government, although Huerta
was eventually overthrown and killed in 1916 in the course of further revolu-
tionary turmoil.
Liberalism and Positivism
Th e tight connection between liberalism and natural law has been noted. In
a number of important ways, however, liberalism and positivism were con-
genial. It may be noted in this connection that one of the earliest champions
of the ideas of Comte in the English- speaking world was the leading liberal