The Fish That Ate the Whale

by Rich Cohen

  Christmas went into the street. Then, without realizing where he’d gone, found himself at the river. A steamer was blowing for last passengers. He got on, then, as if in a dream, stayed on deck as the gangplank was rolled away. When the purser asked for his ticket, Christmas handed him $2, all the money he had. “Where are we going?” asked Christmas.

  “Puerto Cortés.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Honduras.”

  That’s the legend—the story the mercenary told about himself.

  Later, when Christmas became a hero for boys, the story appeared in dime-store novels and newspaper profiles, where it was worked up into a kind of tall tale. It grew with each telling, was fitted with dialogue and turns of phrase. These articles, the tone of them, probably says more about the average wonderstruck newspaper reader than it does about Christmas. The general collected them in a scrapbook that was found beside his bed when he died. In one, which appeared in a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, on January 29, 1911, Christmas “loafed around the New Orleans harbor for a while. The aroma of bananas caught his nostrils. A steamer from which a cargo of bananas had just been unloaded was preparing to sail. Lee walked aboard and didn’t step ashore when the steamer backed away from the wharf. ‘Give me a ticket for any old place,’ he said when the purser tapped him on the shoulder.”

  In another, which ran in The Railroad Man’s Magazine in May 1911, Christmas asked the purser, “Where you headed for?”

  “Puerto Cortés is our first stop, sir.”

  “That’s in Honduras, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do they have the color test down there?”

  “I don’t know, sir. The natives are pretty dark, if that’s what you mean.”

  According to The New Orleans Daily Picayune, Christmas “wandered to the wharves, boarded a steamer about to sail, and as she went out, stood at the rail, saying good-bye to the scene of his failures, unknowing of the glamour that awaited at the end of his voyage.”

  He arrived in Puerto Cortés in November 1894 and soon found work with the railroad. There was no color test because there were no lights, and everything was green. He worked out of San Pedro Sula, carrying bananas and ice to the coast. In the spring of 1897, the country was convulsed by civil war. One afternoon, a group of insurgents boarded Christmas’s train. He described the scene in his own words, as part of a never-published memoir: “As revolutin broke out on the 13 of April 1897 where I was captured by the Revolutionist and forced to handle the Eng. at the point of a bayonet, I applied for protection of the America counsel which of course I did not get. I was then taken to a drunken general and given to understand that I would be shot. This of course was a bitter pill for me so I said to the general, all right if I have to be made a target, at least give me a gun so I may kill some sons of bitches as I go.”

  The rebel commander ordered Christmas to take his soldiers to San Pedro Sula, which meant crossing hostile government territory. With this in mind, Christmas made the train into a kind of rolling fort, placing a flatcar in front of the engine and ringing it with sandbags. He put a boiler, with metal an inch thick, at the center of the car as a roost for sharpshooters. Government soldiers stacked blocks of ice on the train tracks outside the town, believing this would slow down or derail the engine. But by the time Christmas arrived, most of the ice had melted and the engine blasted through. The government soldiers opened fire. The rebels returned it. Christmas had been told to lie down in the engine room, but when he heard the battle, he came out firing and soon he was shouting orders to the men. The rebels were forced to retreat, but the myth of the Incredible Yanqui was born. Writing in the third person, Christmas later described himself as an ordinary man “who started in war because he was forced to but stuck around because he liked this new game.”

  This happened near San Pedro Sula on April 14, 1897, in a narrow place in the hills. Called the battle of Laguna Trestle, it turned Lee Christmas into a celebrity. He was sworn into the rebel army. A few weeks later, he fought again. According to the New Orleans Statesman, he “drove the Federales into a mountain gully where they were faced with surrender or death. The Federales surrendered. Christmas dropped his rifle, began mopping his face with the red bandana he brought from the States—a symbol of the railroading he still loved.” Christmas was then led to a command post, the article goes on, where he was introduced to “a small vivacious man with heavy mustaches and a gaudy uniform. He was bursting with enthusiasm. ‘Great,’ ‘glorious,’ ‘genius,’ ‘warrior supreme’—these were some of the things Lee Christmas heard himself called. He learned his admirer was none other than Manuel Bonilla, the leader of the revolution. ‘I’ll make you an officer,’ Bonilla said. ‘A captain in my army. I’ll make you rich, give you power once we’ve taken Tegucigalpa.’”

  * * *

  When the Hornet appeared off Roatán, an island near the coast of Honduras, on December 29, 1910, it seemed to materialize out of thin air. Dávila expected an attack on his coastal cities, but Christmas believed the poorly defended bay islands would make a perfect starting place for the war, serving as a base for a broader campaign. The Hornet sailed into Roatán harbor at eleven p.m., under a dense fog. The lights of the town could hardly be seen in the gloaming: yellow pinpricks, a line of hills. The shore gun fired but it was useless. The ship sailed unmolested to the wharf. Five minutes later, Christmas was leading a handful of men along an empty road. They reached the old Spanish fort from behind. There was a scuffle, then the rebels were in control of the fort and its big gun. Word was sent to rebel camps across the archipelago and in Guatemala. Soon after, soldiers began to arrive—Manuel Bonilla’s rebel army. As rebels celebrated the conquest, the captain of the Hornet sat on deck with a man named Florian Davadi. Papers were signed, and everyone shook hands. Having promised to pay $40,000, Davadi had become the owner of the Hornet. As the property of a citizen and current resident of Honduras, the ship could take part in the war without violating the U.S. Neutrality Act.

  The rebels planned to proceed a few days later to Utila, an island six miles across the bay. There was a government outpost there, a house on a hill where an official lived. But that night at three in the morning, when the stars were as bright as lanterns, a drunk Lee Christmas decided there was no need to wait—accompanied by a few men, he could conquer Utila now. He hired a fisherman to take them across, five men in a skiff. They hit the beach running, laughing, shouting, shooting in the air. The harbor guards dropped their weapons and surrendered. Within a few minutes, they’d been sworn into Bonilla’s army. Christmas continued uphill to the manor house and banged on the door. The comandante of Utila came out in his underwear. Christmas demanded the surrender of the island. The comandante agreed. Christmas told the man that he, too, had to surrender. He agreed. Still not satisfied, Christmas ordered the comandante to run around the house, shouting Viva Bonilla, Viva Bonilla, Viva Bonilla!

  * * *

  Miguel Dávila commanded from his official residence in Tegucigalpa. He told his generals to fortify the harbors and establish checkpoints, then sent an armored truck to Puerto Cortés, where the Honduran government stored its financial reserves. At his order, $55,000 in silver bars was moved to La Ceiba, a city many military experts believed impregnable. The myth of La Ceiba’s invincibility made it a target: its loss would come as a blow. Such a defeat can end a regime. That’s how it was with the banana wars: the enemy wins a battle or two, then everyone switches uniforms.

  * * *

  The Hornet was involved in a successful attack on Trujillo on January 9. Less than two weeks later, the ship was seized by the U.S. gunboat Tacoma for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act. After dismissing Bonilla’s protest regarding ownership, the navy towed the Hornet to New Orleans to be held as evidence in a criminal investigation. In a strange way, the seizure, which would have been helpful to President Dávila a week earlier, hurt him now. Having established a base in Trujillo, the insurgents no longer needed the Ho
rnet. But its seizure made it look to Hondurans like the United States was intervening in a civil war on the side of the government. It was a feat of propaganda: Bonilla and Christmas, working with Zemurray, were able to frame the war as an insurgency, the people rising up against a government selling the nation to gringos and Yankee bankers, whereas what you really had was more sinister and interesting—a battle waged by a private American citizen, a corporate chief, against a debt-ridden but sovereign nation.

  The big attack came the morning of January 25, 1911. A group of rebels approached La Ceiba from the ocean side, drawing fire from the government’s Krupp mountain gun, but this was a feint. The real attack came along the supposedly impassable beach road. Christmas’s strategy was surprise by force of will, by doing what others considered impossible. The road descended into marsh, dissolved into weeds. The rebels hacked, waded, and climbed for hours, reaching the fort with the Krupp gun—really a small cannon—at the hottest time of the day. They lay in the tall grass, riddling the fort with bullets. The government’s return fire slackened, then stopped. Finally, an opening. The men broke cover, dashed across the fields, raced up the ancient stairs of the fort, and burst into the plaza. They expected to fight hand to hand, but found nothing but corpses. Molony’s machine gun had breached the walls. The survivors had fled, leaving their equipment behind. The Krupp gun had been pushed into the sea. (Christmas salvaged it and used it for the rest of the war.) The insurgents gave chase, following the government forces into the center of La Ceiba, a beautiful town of pink stone, promenades, and hotels facing the Caribbean.

  There was a skirmish in the main square. Most government forces surrendered. General Francisco “Chico” Guerrero, assigned to defend the city, sat astride a white mule, waving a machete, urging his men to fight. He called them cowards, sons of whores. Turning to face the enemy, he drew his pistol and shouted, “I will show you bastards how a man fights!” He whipped his mule into a dash but did not get ten yards before he had been shot a dozen times. From there, his story forks into legends. In one, General Guerrero spurs his animal to the office of the British consulate, where he expires in the arms of the ambassador, crying, “I have died for my nation.” In another, the mule races through the city in a panic, dragging the general’s dead body behind it. According to The New York Times, “Guerrero … defended the town heroically, and at the time he was shot [he] was trying to force his men to attack the revolutionists. The men deserted and left him alone on his mule, waving his revolver. He started to fire, but before he could do so fifty insurgents in the trenches opened fire on him with rifles. His mule ran back to the British Consulate. There the General, in a dying condition, dropped from the animal’s back.”

  Christmas sent a note to the U.S. naval commander. He said rebel reinforcements were on the way—Dávila must surrender before the battle turned into a massacre. It was a bluff. There were no reinforcements. But it worked. The Americans carried the message to Dávila and urged him to give up the city. By sundown, La Ceiba was in rebel hands, along with the silver bars of the state treasury.

  Several small battles followed, fights best imagined as sepia-tone snapshots in the scrapbook of the dying mercenary. Christmas handing out uniforms to turncoats in an alley in a colonial city; rifles piled in the sand outside of Dantillo, where insurgents have stripped off their clothes and run into the sea; the field where Christmas has defeated Pedro Díaz, the general who once captured the rebel commander, burned his feet, and made him walk barefoot in the streets of Tegucigalpa; Guy Molony behind his machine gun where the jungle gives way to tall grass. He hears a battle cry, then the enemy breaks cover, hundreds of Indians with swords. He waits and waits. Then: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. His machine gun sings, the men fall. More come, more fall, until the field is littered with bodies.

  While working on this book, I spoke to Frank Brogan, the last of the banana cowboys. He’s an old man, living in Covington, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. When I asked if he knew Zemurray, Frank said—he spoke just the way you’d want him to, deep and gravelly—“Sure I knew the old man. He taught me how to dynamite fish.” I’ll say more about Frank later, as he worked for Zemurray for years, but I introduce him here as it was he who explained the 1911 war not as a legend but as something I could understand—a nasty piece of corporate business. Brogan got the story from Molony, whom Brogan knew in New Orleans. “Goddamn, Guy was older then than me now,” Frank told me. “He’d been chief of police but was retired when I knew him. We sat on his porch and drank and talked about olden times. His stories about Bonilla’s war were terrible. He told me how he set up his gun in the field and waited until these Indians came running. Then he starts shooting, and shoots and shoots, until the bodies were piled like leaves. And it kept on like that until the field was covered with them, and finally them Indians get the idea and give up.”

  Puerto Cortés surrendered without a fight. The insurgency was in control of the ports and the treasury. Christmas moved into the Hotel Lafebre. He drank in the bar every evening, happy to talk to anyone who would listen. He made fantastic newspaper copy, which is one reason his fame dwindled soon after his death. Without Christmas to sell his own story, there was little to sustain the legend. “The revolution is won,” he told a reporter from New Orleans. “The evacuation of Puerto Cortes … was better than a victory by attack. It shows that President Dávila realizes the sentiment of the people. The last stand of the government forces will be at the capital. We can surround Tegucigalpa and starve them out. There need be no more bloodshed.”

  * * *

  President Dávila had shut himself in the palace in Tegucigalpa. At fifty-four years old, he had entered the twilight of defeated Spanish monarchs. In the end, all stories become one story by García Márquez, the general in the labyrinth of his own making. Dávila wore a military uniform, saber at his side. He had a single path to salvation: get his congress to ratify the so-called Morgan treaty. If the treaty was signed, the United States, Dávila believed, would come into the war on his side. He argued his case before the Honduran congress on February 8, 1911. He talked of honor, tradition, faith—the pillars of the conservative creed. Speaking of the Morgan treaty, he said, “Providence … offered Honduras this opportunity to secure the help of the United States.” There was no applause when he finished, nor boos. It was worse: dead silence. The treaty was defeated thirty-two to four.

  The U.S. ambassador let it be known that the United States could work with Bonilla. In other words, Philander Knox had switched sides. The secretary still wanted what he had always wanted: a Honduran government strong enough to deal with its debt and keep the British marines off the isthmus. If Dávila could not deliver it, perhaps Bonilla could. On February 9, after meeting with the American ambassador, Dávila agreed to a cease-fire and announced his decision to begin peace talks. Negotiations were held on the deck of the USS Tacoma—the gunboat that had seized the Hornet—a mile off Puerto Cortés. The talks dragged on. According to The New York Times, “Dávila, who is willing to resign his office to secure peace to his country, refuses to accept Bonilla as a substitute President for the very good reason that he is an agent of an American fruit trust.”

  In the end, Dávila conceded power to a Honduran functionary named Francisco Bertrand, who would serve only until a presidential election could be held. A few months later, Bonilla won office in a landslide. He was inaugurated in Tegucigalpa on February 1, 1912. “Bonilla did not forget his benefactor,” reported Life. “One of his first official acts was to have congress give Zemurray concessions covering the next 25 years.”

  Zemurray’s settlement included permission to import any and all equipment duty-free; to build any and all railroads, highways, and other infrastructure he might need; a $500,000 loan to repay “all expenses incurred while funding the revolution”; as well as an additional 24,700 acres on the north coast of Honduras to be claimed at a later date. No taxes, no duties, free land—these were the conditions that wo
uld let Sam Zemurray take on United Fruit.

  “Deposing [José Santos] Zelaya’s government in Nicaragua [in 1909] had required the combined efforts of the [American] State Department, the navy, the marines, and President Taft,” wrote Stephen Kinzer in Overthrow. “In Honduras, Zemurray … [did] the job himself.”

  By financing the overthrow of Dávila, Zemurray did more than relieve himself of taxes and duties: he entered his name in the black book of Latin American history. He had taken ownership of a nation, whether he realized it or not. As Kinzer explained, “No American businessman ever held a foreign nation’s destiny so completely in his hands.” Over time, Zemurray would become more powerful than even the government of Honduras. When that happened, the people would begin to look to him to supply the sort of services usually supplied by the state: water, health, security, etc., things it would prove impossible to deliver. Every great victory carries the seed of ultimate defeat.

  As for the issue that caused the war in the first place: Zemurray tried to refinance the national debt of Honduras himself, working with banks in New Orleans and Mobile to buy out British bondholders. In the end, he was able to chip away at the fringes, but the bulk remained and grew, accumulating interest. As of 1926, Honduras still owed $135 million on the railroad that went nowhere.

  * * *

  Manuel Bonilla did not serve his full term in office. Having contracted a strange tropical disease, he turned power back to Francisco Bertrand, fell into a fever, and died on March 21, 1913. Lee Christmas was at Bonilla’s side, weeping and holding his hand.

  Christmas, who’d risen to great power in Honduras, lost his influence when Bonilla expired. Christmas was fifty years old, living in the Palm Hotel in Puerto Cortés. His peak moment had been the surrender of that city. From there, every step was a station on the way to Calvary: government postings, marriages, divorces, gunfights, brawls. He split with Zemurray in 1916. No one knows the exact details. There was an argument, curses, threats. Christmas stormed out of the office in Omoa. Maybe he’d come for money, maybe a job. Zemurray probably told him his services were no longer wanted. (Why hire mercenaries when you own the army?) Because they’re impossible to control, men like Lee Christmas are a threat to business. If you want to survive, you must drive them from the country. Perhaps Christmas felt he could intimidate Zemurray as he had intimidated everyone else in his world. But Zemurray was younger than Christmas, bigger and nervier. He was not the sort of person you can intimidate.