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Title: The Social Evolution of the Argentine Republic
Author: Ernesto Quesada
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Language: English
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THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
BY
HON. ERNESTO QUESADA
Attorney-General of the Argentine Republic; Professor in the
Universities of Buenos Ayres and La Plata
Publication No. 636
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Reprinted from THE ANNALS, May, 1911
Price 25 cents
This Reprint is made from the May, 1911, volume of THE ANNALS, the
complete contents of which are
INDIVIDUAL EFFORT IN TRADE EXPANSION.
+Hon. Elihu Root+, United States Senator from New York.
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN STATES.
+Hon. Henry White+, Chairman of the American Delegation to the
Fourth International Conference of the American States.
THE FOURTH PAN-AMERICAN CONFERENCE.
+Paul S. Reinsch+, Delegate to the Fourth Pan-American Conference;
Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE AT THE FOURTH PAN-AMERICAN CONFERENCE.
+Hon. Alejandro Alvarez+, Of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Santiago, Chile.
BANKING IN MEXICO.
+Hon. Enrique Martinez-Sobral+, Chief of the Bureau of Credit and
Commerce of the Mexican Ministry of Finance.
THE WAY TO ATTAIN AND MAINTAIN MONETARY REFORM IN LATIN-AMERICA.
+Charles A. Conant+, Former Commissioner on the Coinage of the
Philippine Islands, New York.
CURRENT MISCONCEPTIONS OF TRADE WITH LATIN-AMERICA.
+Hugh MacNair Kahler+, Editor of "How to Export"; Vice-President,
Latin-American Chamber of Commerce; Publisher of the Spanish
periodicals, "America" and "Ingenieria."
INVESTMENT OF AMERICAN CAPITAL IN LATIN-AMERICAN COUNTRIES.
+Wilfred H. Schoff+, Secretary, Commercial Museum, Philadelphia.
COMMERCE WITH SOUTH AMERICA.
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN PERU.
+Albert A. Giesecke, Ph.D.+, Rector of the University of Cuzco,
Cuzco, Peru.
THE MONETARY SYSTEM OF CHILE.
+Dr. Guillermo Subercaseaux+, Professor of Political Economy,
University of Chile.
THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.
+Hon. Ernesto Quesada+, Attorney-General of the Argentine Republic;
Professor in the Universities of Buenos Ayres and La Plata.
COMMERCIAL RELATIONS OF CHILE.
+Hon. Henry L. Janes+, Division of Latin-American Affairs,
Department of State, Washington.
CLOSER COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH LATIN-AMERICA.
+Bernard N. Baker+, Baltimore, Md.
IMMIGRATION--A CENTRAL AMERICAN PROBLEM.
+Ernst B. Filsinger+, Consul of Costa Rica and Ecuador, St. Louis,
Mo.
Price $1.50 bound in cloth; $1.00 bound in paper. Postage free.
THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC[1]
BY THE HON. ERNESTO QUESADA,
Attorney-General of the Argentine Republic; Professor in the
Universities of Buenos Ayres and La Plata.
To condense into a few pages several centuries of the history of a
nation like the Argentine Republic, to give some idea of the nature of
the forces that have determined the development of this country from the
end of the sixteenth century, the period of its discovery, to this the
second decade of the twentieth, when it is celebrating the first
centennial of its independence, is a task at once delicate and arduous.
For, aside from these natural difficulties, it will be necessary to
avoid all details, to shun statistics, and even to lay aside historical
evidence, in order to crystallize into seemingly dogmatic statements,
the complicated social evolution of a people in process of
transformation, a people still in a formative period. It is a venture
bordering upon the impossible.
A century after the commencement of the conquest of the American
continent and after the scattering over the land of the invading race,
at once warlike and religious, an expedition which was purely Andalusian
discovered the River Plate in the southern extremity of the continent.
Instead of penetrating to the south, the expedition fixed its gaze
northward, searching for a route by which to renew relations with the
rich district of the old empire of the Incas. This was in obedience to
that thirst after wealth which characterized the taking possession of
America. Two centuries later, these remote provinces had been converted
into the very important viceroyship of the River Plate. In one direction
it extended from the tropical viceroyship of Peru and the torrid lands
of Portuguese Brazil, to Cape Horn, lashed by the raging Antarctic seas,
and in the other direction it stretched from the chain of the Andes,
which runs like a solid wall the length of one of its flanks, to the
Atlantic Ocean, which bathes its extensive coasts. This enormous
territory thus embraced every sort of climate, and was inhabited by a
heterogeneous collection of aboriginal races. Its conquest and
colonization had been effected upon two convergent lines, that by water,
by the River Plate, that by land, from the north. This impressed upon
the civilization of these regions different characteristics which must
be defined since, even after a century of political independence, their
mark is still stamped upon the ideals, aspirations and conduct of the
inhabitants.
The "Leyes de Indias,"[2] faithful reflections of the purposes of
Spanish colonization in America, show how extraordinary was the
importance of the native races, how relatively few were the Spanish
conquerors and how closely the two races became mingled, through the
régime of the _encomiendas_[3] the _mitas_[4] and the _yanaconazgos_.[5]
The Spanish colonies were founded and developed in the midst of a mass
of people, who, because of their enormous superiority in point of
numbers, necessarily reacted in turn upon the small number of the
invaders, either by interbreeding with the latter, or by the contact of
daily life, or by their superior adaptability to their natural
environment. The conquerors themselves presented different traits,
according to the region of Spain from which they came, and naturally
they sought to group and to settle themselves in obedience to the ethnic
affinities of their origin. Biscayans, Basques, Castillians, Aragonese,
Andalusians, etc., gave typical characteristics to every American region
where they established themselves. They transplanted their social
prejudices, their spirit of communal independence, their concentrated
energy and their buoyant temperament. From this it resulted that in
whatever corner of America a particular Spanish strain of blood was
found, there were reflected the traits of the corresponding district of
Spain.
As the native races varied according to the region, from those of a
peaceful and civilized character to those of an untamable and warlike
nature, and even to ferocious savages, the Spanish settlements existed
without any common plan. They made a republic with the tribes, and they
were the beginning of a creole type which was quite distinct in each
locality. In the viceroyship of Buenos Ayres the ethnic geography of the
aborigines shows a kaleidoscopic variety of races. In the north and in
the regions which formerly had been subject to the rule of the Incas,
the population--both servient and dominant classes--was peaceful,
attached to the soil, resigned and passive.
In those regions lying between the two great rivers the population was
of a gentle and peace-loving nature and, therefore, was easily molded by
missionary civilization. Along the slopes of the Andes the people were
daring, excitable and independent. The south or Patagonian extremity was
overrun by brave and unconquerable tribes, closely related to that
Araucanian race which the Spanish conquest never entirely succeeded in
subduing. The Spanish settlements on the other hand presented different
characteristics. In the north they came from Lima, and were Biscayan and
Castillian, aristocratic, very proud of their ancestry, holding aloof,
enriched by the mines of Potosi and the commerce of the fleet of
Portobello. Southward were Andalusians and Spanish common folk, little
given to titles and conventionalities. They were condemned to pursue the
smuggler's trade, because the mother country, following an economic
error of the time and perhaps owing to deficient geographic knowledge,
permitted them only an overland commerce, by mule back, from the Panama
fleet which unloaded its cargoes in Callao. Hence in the provinces of
the north, called High Peru, and in the present provinces of Jujuy and
Tucuman, the Spanish population held up Lima as their ideal, and
exhibited both its vices and its virtues. Out of it was formed the
aristocratic, commercial and luxurious city of Salta. On the other hand,
in the river provinces, the existence of the cities was precarious and
fraught with the dangers of a smuggling trade carried on with the
Portuguese neighbors--the source of the centuries-old controversy of
Sacramento colony. These settlements were not unacquainted with the fear
of pirates, of daring navigators and of roving slave dealers, who on
their arrival at the River Plate unloaded the "products of their
country," with the toleration and secret complicity of the government
officials and with the connivance of the inhabitants. These inhabitants
were true outlaws. They scoffed at the administration and fiscal
measures and trusted more to their fists than they feared being caught
in the complicated meshes of the uneconomic laws.
The interbreeding of these different classes of population resulted in
creole types, characteristic of each region. In the central cities of
the north, they were always aristocratic and devoted to learning, while
in the vast stretches of country they lived the semi-feudal life of
_encomenderos_. The interbreeding with the Indians formed an inferior
class of half breed which approached the type of the mother more than
that of the father and which was certainly not a robust or handsome
race. In the river region, the population lived on a democratic plane of
equality in the cities, while in the rural districts they became that
creole type known as the _gaucho_.[6] Found amidst a scattered
population and inheriting the far from sedentary habits of the Spanish
mother race, the _gaucho_ preferred the free and roving existence of the
pampas. He lived by the herds of semi-wild animals, which had multiplied
amazingly since Mendoza's expedition had introduced the very limited
stock, destined later to be converted into the stupendous riches of this
country. In the central, more mountainous region also, the interbreeding
of the races produced very definite results and the creole population of
the rural districts acquired traits as though living closely associated
with the _gauchos_ of the pampas. In the south the aboriginal races
remained pure, except for the insignificant mixing which came from the
Spanish captive women, victims of the attacks of the Tehuelches
populations. Wherever the native population was dense and attached to
the soil the creoles living in the country and about the cities show a
closer affinity with it, than with the Spanish blood. They adopt native
habits and conform to native peculiarities, even to the extent of
adopting the melancholy rhythm of the music and songs, those unique
_tristes_ which are heard even to-day in the Argentine provinces of the
north, from Santiago del Estero to the Bolivian frontier. There the
creole laborers of the land and the half breeds of the districts about
the cities tenderly preserve the _quichua_, or native language of their
ancestors, by intermixing it with the Spanish. The same close affinity
with the native element is found in the river provinces, and especially
in Corrientes, where in the rural and semi-rural districts the dregs of
the missionary population have preserved as their most precious
possession the _guarani_ dialect. But, where the native population was
more scattered and nomadic, the creole population became transformed and
converted into the _gaucho_ or cowboy of the pampas, a very handsome
half breed, full of energy, of noble instincts, accustomed to the freest
sort of life over boundless plains, where each one depended solely upon
himself and recognized no superior. Here we have the explanation of the
great hold which this type (_gaucho_) has upon the imagination.
In spite of these differences, however, the colonial life was stamped
with a certain uniformity which served as a background for these local
peculiarities. Spanish-American society was zealously preserved from
contact with other European nations. Only inhabitants of Spain were free
to go and come, so that this triple characteristic--that they were
Spanish, monarchical and orthodox Catholic--was the salient feature
common to all South America. The person of the monarch and the supreme
authority of the colonial office were very distant and the tribunals of
the viceroys and governors holding actual sessions there upon the
territory, were the real and tangible personifications of the monarchy.
The Pope himself was also very distant and had given over the
superintendence of ecclesiastical affairs to the crown, which had in
turn confided it to the respective viceroys. The bishops and religious
orders were, strictly speaking, the visible representatives of religion.
In this way throne and altar came in touch with the colonial
populations, who took heated sides in the formidable conflicts which
used to arise between the representatives of each. But they retained
respect for them; they recognized their high merits and prerogatives and
obeyed them as representing that which could neither be questioned nor
altered. Public officials of all grades were drafted from Spain and
remained for definite periods. The laws forbade them to mix with the
populations and they kept themselves aloof, with the ostensible purpose
of assuring their complete impartiality. But the result was that they
tried to take advantage of their period in office to swell their
personal fortunes, without allowing themselves to be deterred by any
scruples or drawing rein to their appetites. The priests even, both
secular and those regularly ordained, allowed themselves to be carried
away by that spirit of self-seeking which led them to look upon America
as a mine to be exploited.
Doubtless there were zealous officials both civil and religious who
performed the best type of service. The Spaniards were established
amidst a native population, who devoted themselves to commerce or to
mining in the north, and to the raising of cattle and lesser trades in
the river and central districts, and they always looked upon their
residence in this part of American territory as a temporary sojourn,
during which to acquire riches. The creoles, of every class, both of the
city and of the country, perhaps because they seemed to be looked down
upon by the Spaniards, were unconsciously trying to enlarge their hold
upon affairs of all kinds. They felt themselves, as it were, rooted to
the soil, and far from proceeding only from selfish motives of money
making, they took an interest in local affairs, which, for them, were of
greater importance than those of a crown, only vaguely known to them by
report. The city creoles, thanks to an advanced communal spirit, aroused
by the establishment of the _cabildos_ or Spanish town council, were
diligently at work on their own municipal problems. They thus became
accustomed to limit their horizon to the limits of their own city and of
the immediately surrounding country district, because communication
between the cities was slow, difficult and dangerous, a condition which
resulted in their virtual isolation from each other. The city might
almost be regarded as the center of their universe. From the rest of the
world news arrived months and years later, tempered or misrepresented.
It awakened not the faintest echo. It might as well have been the news
of far away ages and peoples.
The mass of the natives, with whose women the military and civil
population cohabited, since relatively few Spanish women came to
America, took no interest whatsoever in the affairs of a monarchy which
was not that of their ancestors but of a race different from themselves.
They showed, rather, such a passive indifference that each community
seemed a world unto itself, occupied and pre-occupied only with its own
matters. The religious and civil officials, in their turn, were soon
contaminated by this environment. They gave to local affairs so
excessive an importance that it also appeared to their eyes as if the
boundary of the Indian city was the _ultima Thule_ of civilization. In
the northern provinces, which had reached the final stage of perfection
under the old Inca conquest, the native population preserved and
protected its pre-Columbian traditions by the use of their dialect, the
_quichua_ tongue. The régime of the _encomienda_, the _mitas_ and the
_yanaconazgo_ had produced only a formal subjection of the natives. In
the depths of their souls the natives preserved and fostered traditions
of bygone centuries. In this way the creoles, the product of
interbreeding, were recast into the dense mass of the Indian population
and became more conversant with American traditions than Spanish.
Amongst the missionary converts, the Jesuits had erected cities that
flourished artificially under their care. They were inhabited only by
Indian races, and the Jesuits zealously guarded them from contact with
the Spaniards whom they removed far from their admirable theocratic
empire as though they were the very incarnation of evil. An unreal
civilization was thus created, governed patriarchially by the priests
and without any vitality of its own. Hence, the expulsion of the priests
by the _coup d' état_ of Charles III brought about the destruction of
these populations, which had realized during the century of their
existence, the ideal of the most exacting of Utopian civilization. But
the results were not such as had been desired. These Indians, on being
distributed over the colonies, did not coalesce with the rest of the
inhabitants, but returned to the depths of barbarism or, as in the
present province of Corrientes, constituted the mass of the population,
an element indifferent to national interests just as the old
missionaries had been to those of the crown and sensible only to the
recollection of their ancient and traditional life, that is to say, to
their own local affairs.
In the central and river provinces, the marvelous increase of animals
capable of domestication but still in a wild state brought about a
profound transformation. The native tribes, sparser than in the north,
without losing any of their savage customs, soon possessed themselves of
the horse and overran the boundless pampas. The creoles of the country
districts and the _gauchos_ in their turn vied for the possession of the
horse. No longer able to remold their life to that of the savage tribes,
they checked their bold and ferocious habits and became keen and
cautious, forming a race of special type, midway between the Indian and
the Spaniard. They were extreme individualists, for in the immense
pampas, authority, both civil and religious could obtain but a weak
hold. The _gaucho_ made so complete a face-about from his former self
as to devote his life solely to cattle raising. He evolved a special
fitness or adaptability to his new life and created the most curious
types, from the _sumbon compadrito_ with his peculiar cloak and
_chiripa_, who flashed his sarcastic jests with such grace and elegance,
to the poet troubador and famous animal tracker who was but little less
keen than the hound in scenting and following the trail of man or beast.
As the _gauchos_ came in contact with not a few of the city population,
upon whom they were dependent for obtaining the things they needed in
exchange for pelts and the products of the country, they formed with
such of the latter as came most closely in touch with them, a community
of ideas and aims. Thus by busying themselves only with their own
special lives, they became independent and without attachment for any
but their respective municipal centers. Each region possessed its local
feature, each was separated from the rest and all were but nominally
linked and united with their remote and common monarch.
In the River Plate region, leaving aside the factor of geographic
interest, to which I have just made allusion, the racial history was
limited to the Spanish population and its Creole interbreeding with the
native races, because the negro population had no importance whatsoever,
in this part of America. The quantity of negro slaves introduced by the
"dealers" was reduced to a minimum, and even these, upon the breaking
out of the war of independence, were killed off, for now that their
masters were freeing them, they formed the great body of the troops. In
this way they helped the American cause. The mulattoes, consequently,
were also reduced in number. This process was carried to such a point
that the singular scarcity of pure negroes or even of mulattoes was a
real characteristic of this country.
Foreign influence could only penetrate by way of the Atlantic, and even
then only covertly, unless it were by crossing the rocky barrier of the
Andes. The Portuguese influence was limited to the profitable commercial
relations with the smugglers. That of other nations only made itself
felt through the occasional visits of ships forced to take shelter in
the La Plata from time to time, or dropping anchor upon various
pretexts, but always with the intention of smuggling. This was an open
secret to the then few inhabitants of Buenos Ayres, the possibilities of
which as a port, although gainsayed by the crown, had been ordained by
nature. When, during the last days of colonial domination, commerce was
permitted to the port of Buenos Ayres, there was no longer time for
foreign influence to penetrate to the heart of the country. The English
invasions left a greater residue of influence through the distribution
of the English prisoners, who in great part established homes in the
midland regions to which they were sent. There, in the midst of the
Spanish families, with whom they were left, they disseminated ideas of
liberty and standards of independence, unknown among the rest of the
population, the best classes of which in those days of unrest, were a
turbulent and irrepressible element.
The revolution of May, 1810, wrought a fundamental change in the social
situation. Distinguished officers of the Napoleonic wars came to the
country to offer their military services. English merchants, attracted
by the reports of the English invasions of the Argentine Republic in
1806 and 1807, hurried over in increasing numbers. Soon they were
influencing the society of Buenos Ayres which adopted London fashions,
many of its customs, and became accustomed to the English character.
Foreign commerce was concentrated in the hands of the English and many
of these merchants finally married in the country. During the colonial
epoch only books expurgated by the Inquisition had been admitted, but
now the revolutionary movement unmuzzled these mysteries and flung wide
the doors through which penetrated a flood of French and English works.
The doctrines of the French revolution were at that time the passion of
the majority of our public men, and its influence, even its Jacobin and
terrorist phases, is traceable from the first instant. This is revealed
in the "plan of government" of Moreno. On the other hand, the
constitutional doctrines of the Anglo-Saxons were embraced only by the
few. Dorrego went to the United States and there absorbed them. During
the first decade after the revolution, the educational system scarcely
advanced at all but followed closely to the traditional path of teaching
taught by the University of Cordoba. The University of Buenos Ayres was
founded in the second decade, and made an effort to reform public
education. But the war of independence was not yet over and the internal
situation of the country at the end of the anarchical dissolution which
took place in 1820, was such that a multitude of affairs demanded
attention, and as yet it was hardly possible, outside of the large
cities, to turn to such questions of reform.
The winning of independence was the cause of the sad dismemberment of
the viceroyship of the River Plate and the statesmen of the period could
not have prevented it. From what was once a single historic province
there have gradually been detached the province of High Peru, to-day the
Republic of Bolivia; the province of Paraguay, to-day the Republic of
the same name; the eastern missions which now constitute the present
Brazilian provinces of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catalina and Sao Paulo.
The Banda Oriental has since become the Republic of Uruguay; the
Falkland Islands were snatched by England; the territory about the
Straits of Magellan was ceded later to Chile, under color of regulating
the boundary line. The Argentine Republic, during the first century of
its existence as an independent nation, far from acquiring a single
square mile of territory, has continued to lose territory at every point
of the compass. Her international policy, from that point of view, has
been lamentable and the memory of it is still a bitter lesson.
Within the enormous territorial expanse which now constitutes the
Argentine Republic political integration was effected slowly. The
different populations settled at intervals along the routes which
connected Buenos Ayres with Lima on the one side, with the Andes on
another and with Asuncion on still another. Each settlement was an oasis
of Spanish population set in the midst of a savage country. In order to
establish something approaching unity within each section, the people
organized themselves after the pattern of the urban centers of Spain
with their _Cabildo_ or town council as the communal authority, which
controlled and regulated the extremes of opinion and conditions and
brought the whole municipal life to a focus. Each settlement lived a
life apart, separated from the others. In fact they were cast in the
mold of the ancient Spanish village society, and the central authority
only made itself felt at infrequent intervals.
The inhabitants of each village thus developed an aptitude for municipal
life and for self-government, and a concentration upon local interests
which became the basis of their political development. They fostered a
local character which was the very foundation and essence of their later
federal tendency. To the interests and pretensions of the crown as
formulated by the "Council of the Indies," they preferred the authority
of the viceroy and of the intendants, but their main preference was the
municipality itself, whose frank and loyal mouthpiece was the
traditional Cabildo. For this reason, when the movement for independence
commenced, each village and each city was led by its own Cabildo, and it
was the Cabildo which gave vigor and form to the revolution. Around the
Cabildo the inhabitants of the vicinity grouped themselves in the
different organic or anarchic revolts which followed. It was for this
reason, too, since the present republic possessed no basis of political
division, that each one of the cities formed a nucleus in its respective
province of the same name, and that the whole territory was subdivided
according to the radius of authority exercised by the principal cities
of colonial times, without any account being taken of economic autonomy
or of demography.
Federal sentiment made its appearance profoundly rooted in tradition and
blood, and the tendency towards centralization only emanated from
certain groups of dreamers at the metropolis who with their eyes closed
to the past believed along with such deluded men as Rivadavia that, by
destroying the traditional Cabildo, they would wipe the state clean of
such precedents, just as the Jacobins of the French Revolution did with
the institutions of the ancient régime. Argentine society issued from
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries already shaped toward local
self-government and local loyalty. It already appeared a federation in
fact which was easily transformed into a federation in law, because the
federal idea was at bottom the very heart and soul of things.
The development of our colonization also indicated that of our
civilization. As we approach the north, the brilliant center of
civilization of Lima society becomes more aristocratic, infatuated with
its learning, luxurious and fastidious. The youth of the Plate Valley
were attracted to the University of Chuquisaca, where, amidst its
cloisters, they acquired a grave and disputacious manner. Later the
University of Cordoba, like a pale reflection of the former, drew upon a
part of these youths and, if they left its lecture halls also practiced
in the art of sophistry, they did not imbibe in return that atmosphere
of aristocratic aloofness, pomp and presumption. Buenos Ayres and the
river country were without a university and without an aristocracy. At
the periodic auctions of titles of nobility, the receipts of which were
added to the colonial contributions and were intended to meet a certain
deficit in the Spanish treasury, not a purchaser appeared and there was
not a single herder of the pampas nor a single rich smuggler who would
bid. The titles which were thus put up to sale remained unpurchased, for
the people held them in no esteem.
With no resources other than its commerce and industry which were both
of a contraband nature, Buenos Ayres developed more rapidly than other
cities and with a greater freedom from "red tape" and formalism, in
spite of its being the seat of the general government, with its Spanish
officials, its civil, military and religious authorities and an
administrative machinery identical with that of the other capitals of
the viceroyship. For here there was not the same atmosphere, the life
was simple and democratic, the officials had no stage from which to
display their importance, and within the narrow walls of the modest home
of the government, the few inhabitants of this metropolis used to mingle
in its marshy, unpaved streets, or in their unpretentious and simple
adobe houses. They treated each other with a certain equality, which was
due precisely to those conditions of intense individualism developed of
necessity in a cattle raising community.
In the northern and central districts society was cast in the Peruvian
mold, a reproduction of Spanish civilization, aristocrats adopting
primogeniture and, in modified form, the feudal régime of the
_encomenderos_. In the river and mountain region, the urban was a
reflection of the rural population, independent, haughty, brave,
accustomed to making forays upon horseback over the endless pampas,
trusting to its own decision and in the end to the knife, which was a
symbol of the worship of personal courage, inherited from Spanish
ancestors who had developed it during the centuries of the struggle
against the Moors. In the river district the commerce, which in the main
was carried on illegally by doggedly persevering merchants who plied
their trade fearlessly with pirates and foreign smugglers, caused a
certain spirit of self-confidence to grow. This spirit made itself felt
in the popular movement of the reconquest of 1806, and in the impulse of
the revolution of May, 1810.
From Buenos Ayres started the movement for independence, and the
Cabildos of the interior cities fell in with the movement with more or
less alacrity. Hence the further inland these cities were, the less
enthusiastic. The Paraguayan region isolated itself and followed the
conservative policy of the Cabildo of Asuncion. The province of High
Peru, in spite of its efforts, was the last to revolt and never followed
with any ardor the movement initiated by the metropolis. Indeed, the
revolution of May, which had spread to the banks of the Paraguay river
and over the plateau of Bolivia, might not, perhaps, have succeeded in
so closely cementing, in spite of the righteousness of its cause, the
independence proclaimed in Tucuman in 1816, had not the inspiration of
San Martin added that powerful impulse which flung armies across the
Andes, liberated Chile from Spanish dominion and brought independence to
Peru. He might have pursued this glorious course toward the independence
of the whole continent, if the colossal egotism of Bolivar in that
tragic conference of Guayaquil had not placed our national hero in the
dilemma of either eliminating himself and leaving his selfish rival to
wear the laurels planted and nurtured by Argentine blood or of
sacrificing the fruits of the campaign for independence, by not being
able to obtain from him the military assistance he was in need of. He
placed his country before his own glory and yielded the field to one to
whom personal renown was preferable to all else.
For the social evolution of Argentine the sacrifice of San Martin was of
incalculable importance. Upon eliminating himself, he left to his rival
the army which he had himself led until then and this country was
deprived of its one organizing force. Disintegrating tendencies
manifested themselves without counter-check. In the second decade of the
century, various little republics were defiantly established in the
interior. They were constructed upon the plan of the old settlements
which had risen to something greater. They were governed by Cabildos,
and these in turn obeyed the local leader, who was raised to
dictatorship over the districts. Each province was sufficient unto
itself. It barely communicated with the others and retrograded towards
barbarism without regularly organized government or other will than that
of its respective tyrant and the free-lances who were his immediate
followers. Schools closed; families took refuge within the walls of
their dwellings; terror pervaded; life was everywhere insecure; those
who could, emigrated, leaving behind them on the land the sick, the
women and the children. Men were bedfellows in misery; there was no
industry, no commerce; sin flourished and virtue was trampled under
foot. These thirty years of bloody and merciless civil strife made
prominent the idea of the rule of force. People were taken from peaceful
work, efficient teaching languished, every social bond was weakened and
in the end a society evolved in which not education, ancestry or fortune
exercised the least influence, but audacity, the impulse of the local
leader, the mob instincts of the city population and of the rural
_gaucho_. The local leaders and their followers alone wielded any real
power. They dominated without possibility of counter-check and an entire
generation tolerated this condition during that terrible period.
The local leadership, like the legendary tyranny of ancient Rome,
demolished everything which tried to rise above the obedient, passive,
resigned and common level. It brutally choked it or forced it to
emigrate, and Argentine society had to develop in these anaemic
surroundings. There was no possibility of foreign immigration, or of
establishing industry and commerce.
The idea of nationality was observed by party passion and the factions
were ready to launch out upon some fight upon the slightest pretext.
Social classes were divided into irreconcilable parties, the reds or
federalists, and the blues or centralists, those who believed in the
local leader, and those who detested him. The former were called
federalists, because they believed that each locality ought to adopt the
kind of government which best suited it; the latter were called the
centralists, because in their weakness they leaned upon the influence of
the national government in order to give to the whole country a common
unified administration of which the local government would be the agent.
Rosas met this situation and put an end to it. After the dismemberment
of the ephemeral republic of 1825, and the national convention, and
following upon the Brazilian war, the centralist party, deceived in its
principles and in its men, closed its doors to counsel and committed the
error of executing Dorrego at Navarro. The mass of the rural population
resisted the straight jacket proposed by the doctrinaires of the
centralist party and in this they showed themselves unrelenting. Then
Rosas came into power in the government of Buenos Ayres and also secured
control of the situation in the provinces. He succeeded in bringing
about the organization of each province with a view to forming the
Argentine Confederation. He was entrusted by the federation with the
management of foreign relations. He left the interior provinces to
organize themselves after the pattern of the government of Buenos Ayres.
Doubtless, during the long quarter of a century while he was dictator,
real security and peace were never enjoyed, for the centralist party was
ambitious, arrogant and factious, plotting within itself, and when it
was not exciting to rebellion, or leading an invasion it was provoking
foreign intervention. Finally the terrible and merciless war between the
centralists and the federalists developed a state of terror which
culminated in the excesses of the year 1840. The dictator treated his
adversaries without mercy and they in their turn had none for him. To be
strictly truthful, neither party can be absolved from wicked and
culpable action. Nor can I shut my eyes to the fact that the great power
bred pride, and that pride bred hatred of the subject class. But this
prolonged dictatorship saved the country from the anarchy of the petty
republics of 1820, it solidified the country into a sovereign entity and
it gave to the different parts the cohesion of a nation capable of
victoriously resisting the French and Anglo-French interventions. This
much is owed definitely to the centralist party, who in this way solved
the difficulty traditional to our national organization and so guided
along the right road the severest crisis of Argentine history, not only
from a political but also from a sociological point of view. The chasm
that separated the social classes of the capital city from those of the
provincial districts was bridged; the prejudices of blood, of caste and
fortune were destroyed and there was established complete equality,
where every man was the heir of his own labor and depended only upon his
own hands.
After the battle of Caseros, in 1852, the government which had so used
and abused oppression and patronage fell, leaving the country, however,
in such a condition of stability and internal organization that the
different provinces grouped themselves logically under the Convention of
San Nicolas. The Argentine Federation was maintained and Urquiza was
placed at the head of the government. Despite the local character of the
revolution of Buenos Ayres, on the eleventh of September the country at
large adopted the fundamental constitution of 1853, at the Congress of
Santa Fé. The government of the recalcitrant province of Paraná realized
but slowly the new organization, with which it finally incorporated
itself, while the nation continued developing in the path established by
its constitution. Without losing sight, therefore, of the bitter lessons
of this phase of our evolution, it is but fair to show an appreciation
of its benefits.
The characteristic of this intermediate epoch is the very slight
introduction of the foreign element. To-day this element is scattered
over the land, but at that time such as were firmly rooted in the
country, principally in Buenos Ayres, were very few. Of these the
English formed the greater part, for the infusion of German blood, which
resulted from the distribution of prisoners taken from the German
regiments at Ituzaingo, though they included some estimable families
constituted a very subordinate factor. English commerce was always
respected and in spite of the bitterness produced by the naval
interventions, it was left to develop peacefully. But as it did not
increase in volume and was never reinforced by that of other nations, it
did not become great. The path of social evolution was in the direction
of the commingling of the city and rural population, and of the
participation of the _gauchos_ in public life, either by forming a large
and worthy element in the army or by becoming the active nucleus of the
popular civic movements. The democratization of the country was
complete, for in general, the upper classes of society in the cities
affiliated themselves with the centralist party, while the populace
supported the federal party. Hence the bloody triumph of the latter
brought about its complete predominance and from this period the social
and political problems remained more enduring in nature, while
differences of blood and tradition were put aside.
Since the constitution of 1853, the social evolution of Argentine has
been guided and carried forward by two factors, immigration and foreign
capital. Under their influence, the characteristics of the prior period
were gradually modified to a certain extent. The administration of Mitre
struggled against the difficulties of inadequate means of communication
between the distant cities and against traditional custom of guerilla
warfare. Force was employed in order to remain master of the field and
to break up the resistance which the men of the interior set up against
the prominence of those of Buenos Ayres, and a cruel war against
Paraguay was undertaken. The ability and consistency of this Argentine
statesman was great.
When the passions of his contemporaries had been assuaged, he became the
"grand old man" of the nation, growing in stature as posterity forms
its judgment on his policy. That administration, like the following one
of Sarmiento, had to cope with two factors, the great uninhabited tracts
of land and the survival of ancient custom. On the one hand the
different Argentine regions lived in isolation from one another,
communication between them being difficult; on the other hand there
still survived the custom of local chieftainship and of the constant and
armed movements of different political factions, who would set out upon
guerilla forays on any pretext whatsoever, raising their banners on high
as though their behavior was patriotic and praiseworthy, whereas it was
but the vicious habit of a barbaric and backward age.
The administration of Avellaneda continued the task of combating such
tendencies by the establishment of the telegraph which would unite all
these centers to each other; by the construction of railroads to
facilitate communication; and by the encouragement of European
immigration for purposes of settlement and in order to mix other races
with that of Argentine and so modify its political idiosyncracies by
more conservative standards and interests. The conquest of the
Patagonian wilds, with the final subjugation of the warlike native
tribes of the south, opened and ushered in an era in the Argentine
evolution. This occurred contemporaneously with the historic solution of
the problem of federalism versus centralism, which silenced forever the
old antagonism between the inhabitants of the metropolis and those of
the provinces.
From 1880 till the present, the work of multiplying the telegraphs and
railway routes has gone on, as has also the increase of foreign
immigration. These have produced the desired effect in the social
transformation of the country. The telegraph and the railroad have
definitely killed the seditious germs of guerilla warfare and of local
chieftainship. Local uprisings are no longer possible. The city and
rural populations have become convinced of this, and the popular mind is
at peace since the generation has disappeared which saw the last revolts
of the _gauchos_, and other forms of popular uprising. Foreign capital
commenced and encouraged the exploitation of our natural resources. The
sugar industry of the northern provinces, the wine culture of the Andes
provinces, even the stock raising and agriculture of the river districts
have been the combined work of these three progressive elements.
Immigration has helped immensely toward this same end, but the
settlement of new lands does not advance by leaps and bounds, but
spreads gradually.
Starting from the port of arrival, the stream of immigration continues
to spread clinging closely to the land and little by little it mixes
with the existing population, inter-breeds with it, fuses with it, and
gives a great surging impulse to agriculture, industry and commerce. The
social transformation of the river provinces is due to this junction of
the two currents as a result of which the _gaucho_ of the metropolis of
Santa Fé or of Entre Rios, who, formerly famous for his bold and lawless
tendencies, has to-day been so fused with the different foreign elements
that all but the memory of this ancient type has disappeared, and the
country is covered over with populous settlements, laborious, prosperous
and progressive. The great fertility of the soil has returned with
interest the foreign capital which first watered it, and has enriched
marvelously all who have engaged in its cultivation. The development of
the national resources, in turn, has given birth to such conservative
interests that it is incomprehensible to the new generation that the
former generation could, at the signal of a semi-barbarous chief jump on
their horses and, rushing over the fields, kill, pillage and destroy. It
is true that the transition has been effected at the cost of producing a
certain political indifference in the new generations, which no doubt,
will be overcome in time.
The social evolution of the Argentine Republic has finally found its
true channel and to-day is in full course of development. In proportion
as the foreign immigration continues bringing therewith its happy
complement of foreign capital, the country will continue to develop
industrially. The astonishing increase in industries, with a total
production out of all proportion to the growing population, is only
explained by the use on a large scale of the most advanced machinery.
But such a metamorphosis spreads from the river districts toward the
interior of the country. It does not jump from one point to another
without connecting links between them, but always preserves a channel
through which a relation is maintained between the different zones
already transformed or in process of transformation. The first effect of
each infusion of foreign blood into creole veins is to appease the hot
political passions of other times, abolish the old institution of the
local chieftainship, even blot him from memory and replace it by an
absorption in our growing material interests. These material interests
appear to have conspired to bring about that indifference towards the
state, as such, which makes men look mistakenly at a political career as
a profession which thrives off the real working classes. For, our
government both municipal, provincial and national appears to be the
heritage of a well-defined minority--the politicians--who devote
themselves to politics just as other social classes devote themselves to
agriculture, stock raising, industry, commerce, etc.
Public life with its complex machinery of elections and governing bodies
has been, so to say, delivered into the hands of a small group of men
who at present are not productive of anything new in the general social
situation of former times; that is to say, these men form a definite
class, moved by the influence of this or that personality. Though it has
suppressed the bloody characteristics of the previous period it has not
relapsed into their heresies.
Little by little this shadow of the old system changes into that of the
"boss" of the settlement and ward. The boss makes his business that of
the mass of the voters, he stirs them up from their indifference, makes
them go to the polls, deliberately falsifies public opinion, and so wins
for himself a political managership, which gives him a marked influence
in the back offices of officials and in the lobbies of legislatures.
From such methods there spring no little censurable legislation of
privilege and a great loss of contentment on the part of the people.
When public spirit strengthens and shakes from itself the dust of
inertia, and when the laboring classes have passed beyond that first
stage of money grabbing, all the inhabitants of the nation will commence
to busy themselves about the common weal. The thorn of the "boss" will
prick them and they will then be able to form into political parties
with unselfish programs and platforms. Every voter will cast his ballot
to send to the legislature candidates who uphold the principles of his
particular platform. As yet the people have not even reached the gateway
to this goal. The past is still seen in full process of evolution and it
is not easy to foresee the end.
This does not mean that the present moment of transition is valueless.
On the contrary, it is of very great importance, because the social
situation in the Argentine Republic is in process of making. The
politicians, now that they look upon themselves as called to stand forth
above the heads of the rest of the people, have to be real statesmen. In
this historic period, such statesmen, have the personality of the
chauffeur who directs one of those swift engines of our century upon its
dizzy course, the mechanism of which is so sensitive to the controlling
pressure of the hand that it can deftly avoid all accident or cause a
catastrophe of fatal consequences. There is required in such a man
extraordinary coolness, clearness of vision as to responsibility,
perfect knowledge of the course to be run, besides ceaseless vigilance,
iron nerve when the time of trial arrives and a complete concentration
upon the task. The legitimate tasks of government, in this very grave
period of Argentine evolution, require a special training on the part of
public leaders. They must study thoroughly the problems of our social
evolution, and they must form a clear idea of the necessary solutions.
Towards this they must steer with undiverted eye. The necessity of
further exploitation of our national resources, the successive expansion
of enterprise over zone after zone of our territory, the assimilation of
the foreign immigrants by the creole population, the slow formation of a
national spirit in the new generation, all these monopolize for the
present the national energies and prevent them from turning to other
problems. The country is converted, as it were, into a giant boa
constrictor. It is entirely given over to the task of converting its
food into nourishment, of abstracting the juices from the hard and
resisting substances, of passing a multitude of different elements
through its living organs so that they may later form a new tissue,
adapted to the present and future needs of the country.
From this point of view the present moment in the evolution of Argentine
is of immense sociological interest. We are permitted to be present at
the visible transmutation of a society, too weak even to direct itself,
and absorbed in the fusion of different influences. The direction of
this process has been handed over without counter-check to public men
who are obliged to dictate and put into practice legislation and
administrative rules of every kind, as though they enjoyed absolute
power. Furthermore, by the very nature of things, the administrative
functions in such periods have to discount the future and effect in the
present a series of public works or social regulations which will weigh
upon future generations not only from the point of view of the general
finances but even from the point of view of national character. The
national transformation of the land with ports, canals, railroads,
telegraphs and every sort of means of communication, indeed, with every
kind of public work, cannot be accomplished with present resources. A
call must be made upon those of the future, by means of loans which will
be a burden upon coming generations. If such a governmental policy is
not accompanied by a skillful and prudent financial management, the
burdens of our descendants will be considerably increased. They may even
be committed to a policy that will cause eventual bankruptcy and an
inevitable retrogression in the national development. The intellectual
metamorphosis of the nation by a proper system of primary, secondary and
higher education and by special schools of technical training, in order
to form the national spirit of the future type of Argentine citizen, is
certainly our most difficult governmental problem, because it is a
question of molding the very soul of the nation. To teach different and
contradictory systems, to do and then undo, each day changing the
courses of study to successively adopt antagonistic standards and show a
real lack of fixity in pedagogic methods, is to commit the greatest of
all crimes, because it is not a crime against the exchequer of posterity
but against its very soul. To accomplish a fusion of the currents of
foreign immigration, to sort out the best from them, and to direct the
formation of the new type which is being evolved, melting it in the
crucible of the school, of the army, and of public life, is perhaps,
to-day our task of transcendent difficulty. Such a problem is greater
than that of directing the stream of foreign capital which, while
fructifying the national soil, clings to it like the countless tentacles
of a gigantic octopus and absorbs a great part--sometimes too great a
part--of the riches produced only to transmit them through the arteries
of the Republic, to foreign nations who employ it to their exclusive
profit.
Perhaps no moment in the history of our nation requires a greater
combination of qualifications in its public men. The student may
contemplate this most interesting transformation, displayed before his
eyes like the moving film of a gigantic cinematograph which permits him
to grasp at once the different phases of the social problem which it
presents. Rarely in the history of humanity has it been possible to
contemplate a like spectacle. The United States presented it a half
century ago, to the astonished gaze of men of that day who were but
little familiar with social problems. The Argentine Republic is
repeating now the same phenomenon, with this difference that it can
observe itself and be guided by the experience acquired elsewhere. Other
countries of the world, in the future will, no doubt, in their turn
repeat a similar evolution, though perhaps in a different environment.
But the interesting part of the present moment is that the Argentine
Republic is sailing upon the same course in the twentieth century that
the United States did in the nineteenth. Our evolution is proceeding
with greater care because it is being worked out amid better conditions.
We can now take advantage of the costly experience gained by our
brothers of the north and so by avoiding many of their errors, seek to
escape the shoals upon which they stranded and the mistakes which they
involuntarily committed, even though we have in our turn special
problems which they did not have. Thus the tremendous politico-social
crisis of the North American War of Secession will not be repeated in
the southern hemisphere and the Argentine social evolution will not have
to solve the profound anthropological problem of the rivalry of races,
which, in the United States, arises from the white, black and yellow
races, living together side by side.
In Argentine there are no ethnic problems. The social antagonism raised
by an arrogant plutocracy on the one hand and poverty stricken
proletariat on the other, is not presented as an Argentine problem,
because riches are still in process of formation there, and easily pass
from one hand to another. A monopoly of riches cannot be prolonged
beyond a single generation because with the system of compulsory
division of descendants' estates, it soon returns to the common mass of
the population. Social conditions in our evolution, present distinct
problems from those which characterize other nations and demand,
therefore, a direct study on the ground and must not be viewed through
the doctrines developed in other nations and amid other conditions. The
molding of the national spirit by uniform and compulsory schools and the
slow adaptation of the mass of the immigrants to historical traditions
and to future national aims, demand much time and they are now in the
full process of being worked out. The celebration of the Centenary of
our independence has made prominent the fact that such an evolution is
much more advanced than one would think. There still remains,
nevertheless, not a little to be done in this direction, though the
national compulsory school system and the army conscription are factors
of great importance which are working for fusion. But, in the country
districts and in those places where the error has been committed of
permitting the formation of settlements, homogeneous in race and
religion, which regard themselves as autonomous offshoots of their
mother country, resisting the Argentine school or any intermingling with
the mass of neighboring population--in such districts, the fusion,
though inevitable, will be necessarily slower.
All these sociological problems might and should have been exhaustively
studied in the history of the United States during the nineteenth
century, a history which, as I have said, the Argentine Republic is
repeating in the twentieth. Foreign immigration at this time has no
outlet more profitable than the River Plate. The doors of North America
are gradually being closed, and the other regions do not yet present the
same advantages as those offered by our country. The same thing that
happens with the excess of population of other nations also occurs with
its surplus capital; no other quarter of the globe offers better
prospects for the investment of capital and for a greater rate of
return. The "manifest destiny" of Argentine depends for the present
entirely upon the development of its commercial relations with the rest
of the world. It must convert itself into the granary and the meat
market of Europe.
The closest bonds of mutual interest unite Argentina with Europe,
because being producers of unlike commodities, the European markets
consume our exportation and our markets consume theirs. With the rest of
America our interchange of trade must be upon a smaller scale, because
for more than a century to come we shall be countries producing similar
commodities. Therefore, our respective markets will not reciprocally
serve to buy the excess of production, but only that which by reason of
climate or industrial development is to be found or manufactured in any
other country than our own. This has happened to us notably in the case
of the United States with its tremendous industrial expansion. In order
to fulfill this "manifest destiny," we need _pax multa_ with the whole
world. We need to give attention exclusively to our development without
intermeddling in that of others. In this is summed up everything. Hence
our international policy has to be pacific and neutral; we must be
every man's friend, and shun imperialistic fancies. The "splendid
isolation" of England fits her condition and her inclination. We must
work and we must be allowed to work. Our social evolution still requires
a century to acquire a definite contour. Though results may be foreseen
from their beginnings, it is not possible to foretell what will be the
future Argentine type, physically, mentally or materially.
For the present, the only proper thing for us to do is to devote
ourselves exclusively to the exploitation of our resources for we have
seen how much effort will be required to assimulate our population, to
form a national spirit, to build up a great future nation, to develop an
administration which shall be a model of honesty and scientific
preparation, and to adapt the republic to its future needs by public
works and institutions, and by showing ourselves firm in faith and
effective in works.
The present social tendencies in Argentine evolution give promise of a
great future for the country. The nation is not hesitating or
vacillating before the realization of its manifest destiny. It follows
with profound interest the new and colossal social experiment, which is
unfolding to the view of the world the different phases of the formation
of a nation in whose development the shoals are being avoided where
others were wrecked, and which is putting into practice the improvements
suggested by the experience of the other nations in order to realize the
new evolution easily, prudently, and successfully.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Academy wishes to express its appreciation to Layton D.
Register, Esq., of the Law Department of the University of Pennsylvania,
and to Mr. Enrique Gil, of the National University of La Plata, of the
Argentine Republic, for the translation of this article.
[2] Old Spanish legislation for the Spanish-American colonies.
[3] _Encomienda_ is the Spanish name for the concession, granted by the
crown during the Spanish Colonial period, of a certain number of native
Indians, to a Spanish conqueror for purposes of service. The
_Encomendero_ was the recipient of such a concession from the crown.
[4] _Mita._ Spanish term for the distribution by lot of the native
Indians for purposes of public work.
[5] _Yanaconazgo._ Spanish term for that peculiar kind of land
tenantship by which the tenant has no title to the land, but receives a
proportion of the product of his labors upon the land.
[6] The cowboy of the Argentine Pampas.
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