# Bryan–Chamorro Treaty Dispute (1914)

URL: https://allhistories.com/costa-rica/timeline/1914-bryan-chamorro-treaty-dispute
Location: Cartago, Cartago, Costa Rica
Themes: main-event

Under the Cañas–Jerez Treaty of 1858 and the Cleveland Award of 1888, Costa Rica held navigation rights on the San Juan River and had to be consulted about any interoceanic canal through Nicaragua. These guarantees mattered greatly in San José, because the river forms much of the border between the two countries. On 5 August 1914 Nicaragua and the United States signed the Bryan–Chamorro Treaty, giving Washington perpetual exclusive rights to build a canal along the San Juan and a lease on the Corn Islands and a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. Costa Rica, joined separately by El Salvador, took the matter to the Central American Court of Justice in Cartago, the regional tribunal created in 1907. On 30 September 1916 the court ruled that Nicaragua had violated Costa Rica's rights by concluding the treaty without consulting it. Nicaragua and the United States refused to accept the judgment, and Nicaragua withdrew from the court, which collapsed when its founding convention expired in 1918. The episode exposed the weakness of the first experiment in Central American international adjudication, but it also became a reference point in Costa Rica's long legal defence of its rights on the San Juan, a dispute revisited before the International Court of Justice in the twenty-first century. At this point in the timeline (1914–1916), the President of Costa Rica was Alfredo González Flores (8 May 1914 – 27 January 1917).

## Why it matters
The case was one of the first in which a small American republic took a great power's treaty to an international court, and it shaped Costa Rica's legalistic approach to its border with Nicaragua.

Ruler at the Time: [Alfredo González Flores](https://allhistories.com/costa-rica/rulers/alfredo-gonzalez-flores)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Bryan–Chamorro Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan%E2%80%93Chamorro_Treaty)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Bryan-Chamorro Treaty](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Bryan-Chamorro+Treaty)
- [US Office of the Historian](https://history.state.gov/)
- [Wikipedia — Crisis And Social Reform (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rican_Civil_War)