Drago, Luis María

Related Category: Argentinian History: Biographies

(lēs´ märē´ä drä´gō), 1859–1921, Argentine statesman, jurist, and writer on international law. As minister of foreign affairs under Julio A. Roca, he dispatched (Dec. 29, 1902) a note to the Argentine minister at Washington protesting the forcible coercion of Venezuela by Great Britain, Germany, and Italy (see Venezuela Claims). This protest set forth the Drago Doctrine, intended as a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. Drago, apparently under the erroneous impression that the European nations were merely attempting to collect unpaid bonds, maintained that no public debt should be collected from a sovereign American state by armed force or through the occupation of American territory by a foreign power. The doctrine was not new in principle, though its concept is narrower than that of the earlier Calvo Doctrine (see under Calvo, Carlos), from which it grew. The Drago Doctrine was discussed at the Pan-American Congress of 1906 and was brought before the Hague Conference of 1907, where a modified form offered by Horace Porter was approved instead.