[It may seem unusual to find an Anglo name like William Walker as the header of a post observing Hispanic Heritage Month 2023. If you read on, however, you will see that Walker, a mercenary from the United States, played a substantial role in extending United States influence in Latin America, particularly Nicaragua. I became interested in Walker after seeing Alex Cox’s strange–surreal might be the right word here–film Walker, for which the late great Joe Strummer supplied the music.]
“William Walker: (1824-1960) U.S. military adventurer. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he moved to California in 1850. His interest in colonizing Baja California developed into a filibustering (insurrection) scheme. He landed at La Paz (1853) and proclaimed Lower California and Sonora an independent republic, but Mexican resistance forced him back to the U.S. In 1855 he sailed to Nicaragua, where he effectively established himself as leader. There, officers of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Co. promised him financial assistance in a plot to take the company away from Vanderbilt. Walker seized the company and turned it over to them, then made himself president of Nicaragua (1856). In 1857 Vanderbilt induced five Central American republics to drive walker out. In 1860 he attempted a filibuster in Honduras, where he was captured and executed.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Mark's Text Terminal 