Quoted from “The Path between the Seas” by David McCollough, p. 354. Mr. McCollough quotes from the book “Captain Macklin” by Richard Harding Davis and the Captain's observations of Central America during the late 19th century.
“There is not a fruit nor a grain nor a plant that you cannot dig out of it with your bare fingers. It has great forest, great pasture-lands, and buried treasures of silver and iron and gold. But it is cursed with the laziest of God’s creatures, and the men who rule them are the most corrupt and the most vicious…. They are a menace and an insult to civilization, and it is time that they stepped down or out, and make way for their betters, or that they were kicked out.”