The Project Gutenberg EBook of Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, by
F. Garcia Calderon
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
Title: Latin America: Its Rise and Progress
Author: F. Garcia Calderon
Contributor: Raymond Poincaré
Translator: Bernard Miall
Release Date: July 1, 2020 [EBook #62541]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN AMERICA: ITS RISE AND PROGRESS ***
Produced by Al Haines
LATIN AMERICA:
ITS RISE AND PROGRESS
BY
F. GARCIA CALDERON
WITH A PREFACE BY
RAYMOND POINCARÉ
_Of the French Academy, President of the French Republic_
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL
WITH A MAP AND 34 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
597-599 FIFTH AVENUE
1915
[_All rights reserved_]
TO
MONSIEUR ÉMILE BOUTROUX
(_of the Institute of France_)
Permit me to offer you this book as a mark of admiration and
gratitude. Often of an evening, in the sober hour of twilight,
hearing you comment upon a page of Plato or a line of Goethe, or
explain to me with unfailing geniality and marvellous lucidity the
troubles of the present day, I have gained a fuller understanding of
the magnificent radiance of the French genius; and always, on leaving
you, I have found pleasure in repeating the thought of Emerson, of
the Emerson whom you love, concerning the utility of great men: "They
make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad
and nutritious."
F. G. C.
PARIS, _November_, 1911.
{9}
PREFACE
Here is a book that should be read and digested by every one
interested in the future of the Latin genius. It is written by a
young Peruvian diplomatist. It is full of life and of thought.
History, politics, economic and social science, literature,
philosophy--M. Calderon is familiar with all and touches upon all
with competence and without pedantry. The entire evolution of the
South American republics is comprised in the volume which he now
submits to the European public.
M. Calderon, a pupil in the school of the best modern historians,
seeks in the past the laws of the future development of the Latin
republics. By means of a scholarly and painstaking analysis, he
shows us, in the South American Creole, a Spaniard of the heroic age,
slowly transformed by miscegenation and the influence of climate; he
sees in him, modified by time and enfeebled by cross-breeding, the
most ancient characteristics of the Iberian race; and he expounds, in
a few pages, the heroic epoch in which the individualism of Spain
broke out into the audacious adventure of the conquistadores and the
savage mysticism of the Inquisitors.
Then comes the colonial phase, with its disappointments, its
illusions, its abuses and errors; the domination of an oppressive
theocracy, of crushing monopolies; the insolence of privileged
castes, and the indignities of the Peninsular agents. A thirst for
independence gradually possesses the Spanish and Portuguese colonies;
they rebel not merely against the economic and fiscal tyranny which
is crushing them, but also against the rigours of a political and
{10} moral tutelage that leaves them no political liberty. It is a
great and terrible crisis. The movement of liberation fulfils itself
in three phases: firstly, the colonies seek to obtain reforms of the
metropolis, still anxious to remain loyal; then they consider the
question of submitting themselves to European monarchs; and, finally,
the republican idea appears, develops, and is victorious.
A cycle of pioneers and a cycle of liberators: M. Calderon expounds
this tragic history with a sense of gratitude. He examines with
remarkable insight the fundamental causes of the Revolution--the
excesses of Spanish absolutism; the influence of the Encyclopædia and
the doctrines of 1789; the example of North America; the gold of
England, and the intervention of Canning; the various converging
forces whose fulminating combination created a new world, ill
prepared for social life, fragmentary, and in travail.
M. Calderon transports us into certain of the portions of this
newborn America. He makes this the occasion of setting before us a
whole gallery of vigorously painted pictures. The field of vision is
occupied successively by Paraguay, with the long dictatorship of its
first _caudillo_, the gloomy, taciturn Francia, with his
authoritative traditions and warlike instincts; Uruguay, with its
intensely national life; Ecuador, bearing the heavy imprint of Garcia
Moreno; Peru, with its tormented history, the powerful but fortunate
dictatorship of Don Ramon Castilla and Manuel Pardo and the epidemic
of speculation, the insanity of the saltpetre and guano booms, the
abuse of loans, warfare and anarchy, and the present effort towards
economic recovery and national stability; Bolivia, with the cold and
crafty ambition of Santa-Cruz; Venezuela, with the gross and material
audacity of Paez, and the empirical despotism of Guzman-Blanco, that
politician without doctrines, avid of power, but a patriot and a
paternal {11} ruler. As M. Calderon says, the history of these
Republics is difficult to distinguish from that of their _caudillos_,
those representative men who personify, at any given moment, the
virtues and vices of their peoples.
After the magnificent epic of Simon Bolivar, which M. Calderon
recalls with the enthusiasm of gratitude, there commenced a troublous
era of military anarchy. The ambition of the _caudillos_ rent South
America and multiplied her states. But the soul of germinating
nationalities was steeped in the blood of battles, and in the heart
of each people a national conscience was awakened. This was the
troublous epoch of wars and revolutions.
The South American lived a life of danger, like the Florentine of the
Renaissance or the Frenchman of the Terror; but presently, in the
shadow of military power, wealth was evolved and order established;
property became more secure, and existence more tame and normal; it
was the advent of industry, commercialism, and peace. It seems to me
that M. Calderon rather regrets having been born too late into a
world already too old. What he terms the twilight of the _caudillos_
fills him with a melancholy nostalgia for the bygone days. The
tyrants, who were as a rule supported by the negroes and half-castes,
helped to destroy racial differences and oligarchies. They have thus
founded democracies which the liberal mind of M. Calderon cannot
regard without goodwill, but which, to his mind, are too far lacking
in the sense of solidarity; they are clumsy, inorganic, incapable of
associating human effort; the rivalry of families and the hatred of
factions absorbs and disturbs them, as it did the mediæval republics,
and under the brilliant polish of French ideals they mask a confused
medley of Europeans and Indians, Asiatics and Africans.
In these turbulent republics, however, M. Calderon is able clearly to
perceive the reassuring symptoms {12} of a powerful vitality, and he
does not despair of seeing them profit in the near future by the
influence of Latin discipline. From the scholastic erudition of the
colonial epoch, he attentively follows the intellectual evolution of
the South American populations, through the troublous mists of
political ideology, to the hitherto pallid imitations of European
philosophies. Despite the diversity of races intermingling in the
southern continent, he is convinced that the constant and secular
action of the Roman law, a common religion, and French ideals, has
given these young republics a Latin conscience, intangible and
sacred. And he expresses the hope, very wisely and reasonably, that
the peoples of South America will continue in the path of
self-improvement without breaking with the traditions that are
natural to them, and without subjecting themselves to alien
influences.
He goes on to review the German peril, the North American peril, and
the Japanese peril. He does not fail to realise the extent of the
first named, and he complains of the progress of the commercial
immigration of Germans, especially in the southern provinces of
Brazil; but he considers that the German element, in the very process
of fecundation, will disappear amidst the mass of the nation. He is,
on the other hand, very keenly concerned with the North American
peril. Not that he fails to do justice to the marvellous qualities
of the Anglo-Saxon race; not that he is indifferent to the prestige
of the great northern Republic, or that he is forgetful of its
services to the cause of American autonomy; but he feels the
increasing weight of a tutelage originally beneficent, and anxiously
demands, _Quis custodiet custodem_? He is not oblivious of the fact
that the Monroe doctrine is changing, that it has insensibly passed
from the defensive to intervention, and from intervention to
conquest, and this metamorphosis gives him food for reflection.
Whatever the qualities of Yankee civilisation, it is not Latin
civilisation, and {13} M. Calderon would not have the latter
sacrificed to the former. He implores South America to defend itself
against the danger of a Saxon hegemony, to enrich itself by means of
European influences, to encourage French and Italian immigration, and
to purify its races by an influx of new blood.
In the Japanese, as in the German, M. Calderon sees an indefatigable
emissary of the Imperialist idea. According to him, no antagonism is
more irreducible than that of America and Japan. Japanese artisans
are invading the shipyards and foundries of Chili, Peru, and Brazil.
They form a refractory element which will never be assimilated. He
foresees that the supremacy of Japan may shortly extend over the
entire Pacific, and that the whole of America will find it no trivial
task to oppose this formidable power. From beginning to end of this
book we hear the rallying-cry of the Latin republics. I believe that
at heart M. Calderon regrets the excessive division of the states of
South America. But the problem of unity, often brought to the fore
in congresses and conferences, appears to him insoluble, and in
default of this he would be content with intellectual alliances, with
economic or fiscal unions, which would still permit the various
republics to draw nearer to one another, to know one another better,
and in time and on occasion to associate their defensive efforts.
I do not feel competent to criticise the advice which M. Calderon
offers his compatriots.
In particular I cannot speak of his opinions concerning the
presidential system in the republics of South America, and their
constitutional methods, which differ so sensibly from our French
parliamentary methods.
I would only remark that M. Calderon is right in warning the American
states against a plague of which we in France know something, but
which in young societies, deficient in established traditions, and
without ancient and well-tried organisations, may {14} well be
exceptionally dangerous--the invasion of a parasitical bureaucracy,
which would increasingly develop itself at the expense of the healthy
portions of the nation, and which would gradually infect the soundest
and most vital tissues.
Finally, without indiscretion, I may perhaps express my approval of
M. Calderon's stern requisition against the policy of excessive
loans. It is by running into debt over unlicensed extravagances that
certain of the South American republics have gained in Europe the
reputation of being financially unsound or dishonest, and have
thereby, by mere force of proximity, injured the repute of wiser and
more economical states.
Since the republics of South America have need of European money,
they would be greatly at fault did they alienate it by excessive or
reckless budgets.
Never, I believe, shall we see the dismal hour which M. Calderon's
imagination hears already striking; when, expelled by Slavs and
Teutons, the Latins of the old world will be forced to take refuge on
the shores of the blue sea that bore their floating cradle; and a
Frenchman may be forgiven for refusing to believe that the capital of
classic culture will ever pass from Paris to Buenos-Ayres, as it has
passed from Rome to Paris. But without lingering over such alarming
anticipations as these we may delight our eyes with brighter and more
immediate prospects. May South America, while remaining herself,
while cultivating, as M. Calderon advises her to cultivate, the
American ideal, grow ever more and more hospitable to the literature,
the arts, the commerce, and the capital of France. Thereby the great
Latin family can only gain in material prosperity and moral authority.
RAYMOND POINCARÉ
(_of the French Academy_).
(M. Poincaré wrote this Preface in December, 1911, before he became
President of Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs.)
{15}
FOREWORD
There are two Americas. In the north, the "Outre-Mer" of Bourget, is
a powerful industrial republic, a vast country of rude energies, of
the "strenuous life." In the south are twenty leisurely states of
unequal civilisation, troubled by anarchy and the colour problem.
The prestige of the United States, their imperialism, and their
wealth, have cast a shade over the less orderly Latin republics of
the south. The title of America seems to be applied solely to the
great imperial democracy of the north.
Yet among these American nations are wealthy peoples whose domestic
organisation has been greatly improved, such as the Argentine,
Brazil, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay. They must not be
confounded with the republics of Central America, with Hayti or
Paraguay. French writers and politicians, such as M. Anatole France,
M. Clemenceau, and M. Jaurès, who have visited the Argentine, Brazil,
and Uruguay, have remarked there not only an established Latin
culture, but noble efforts in the direction of augmenting the
internal peace of the nations, and extraordinary riches. They are
agreed in declaring that these young countries possess economic
forces and an optimism which will yield them a brilliant future.
Several of these states have lately celebrated their first centenary.
Their independence was won during the first decade of the nineteenth
century. The year {16} 1810 was the beginning of a new epoch, during
which autonomous republics were formed, not without tragedy, upon the
remnants of the Spanish power.
The time has come, it would seem, to study these peoples, together
with their evolution and progress, unless we are willing to take it
as proved that the United States of North America are the sole focus
of Transatlantic civilisation and energy.
We propose to draw up the balance-sheet of these South American
republics. This is the object of this book. We must seek in the
history of these states the reason of their inferiority and the data
which relate to their future.
First of all we must study the conquering race which discovered and
colonised America. We must analyse the Spanish and Portuguese
genius, the Iberian genius, half European, half African. After the
conquest new societies sprang up under the stern domination of Spain
and Portugal. They were over-seas theocracies, jealously guarded
from all alien trade. Unlike Saxon America, where the Dutch and
English immigrants held themselves sternly apart from the Indians,
pursuing them and forcing them westward, in South America conquerors
and conquered intermingled. The half-castes became the masters by
force of numbers, conceiving a thirst for power and a hatred of the
proud and overbearing Spaniards and Portuguese. War broke out
between the Iberians and the Americans; it was a civil war. Then new
states were rapidly formed, without traditions of government or
established social classification.
These states were dominated by military chieftains, by _caudillos_.
From barbarism and periodic anarchy proceeded the Dictators. We
shall be able to study some of the representative personalities of
this period, and to disentangle from the monotonous development of
events the history of certain nations, such as {17} Brazil, in which
the social medley has been dominated by the principle of authority.
In the Argentine, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chili we shall perceive a
new industrial order, by means of which political life grows less
disturbed and the _caudillos_ lose their authority (Books I. and II.).
The study of intellectual evolution shows us how great is the power
of ideology in these rising democracies. They imitate the French
Revolution; they submit themselves to the influence of the ideas of
Rousseau and the Romantics, and of the doctrines of the
individualists. America, Spanish and Portuguese by origin, is
becoming French by culture (Book III.).
Here we proceed to the study of the part played by the Latin spirit
in the formation of these peoples, and the perils which threaten
them, whether these proceed from the United States, from Germany, or
from Japan, and to consider the faults and the qualities of this
spirit (Book IV.). Then follows an analysis of the problems and the
future of Latin America (Book V.).
The conclusion to be drawn from this examination is that the
political life of the Ibero-American peoples is as yet chaotic, but
that some of them have already cast off the fetters of an unfortunate
heredity. Across the ocean liberty and democracy are steadily
becoming realities. In the battles of the future the support of
America will be valued by the great peoples of the Mediterranean who
are struggling for the supremacy of the Latin race.
{19}
CONTENTS
PREFACE
FOREWORD
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
THE CONQUERING RACE
Its psychological characteristics--Individualism and its aspects--The
sentiment of equality--African fanaticism.
CHAPTER II
THE COLONIES OVERSEA
The conquerors--The conquered races--The influence of religion in the
new societies--Colonial life.
CHAPTER III
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles--Monarchy and the
Republic--The leaders: Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King
Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar--Bolivar the Liberator: his
ideas and his deeds.
II. Revolutionary ideology--Influence of Rousseau--The rights of
man--The example of the United States--English ideas in the
constitutional projects of Miranda and Bolivar--European action:
Canning--Nationalism versus Americanism.
{20}
CHAPTER IV
MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD
Anarchy and dictatorship--The civil wars: their
significance--Characteristics of the industrial period.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
VENEZUELA: PAEZ--GUZMAN-BLANCO
The moral authority of Paez--The Monagas--The tyranny of
Guzman-Blanco--Material progress.
CHAPTER II
PERU: GENERAL CASTILLA--MANUEL PARDO--PIEROLA
The political work of General Castilla--Domestic peace--The deposits
of guano and saltpetre--Manuel Pardo, founder of the anti-military
party--The last _caudillo_--Pierola: his reforms.
CHAPTER III
BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia--The tyrants
Belzu, Molgarejo--The last _caudillos_: Pando, Montes.
CHAPTER IV
URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA--RIVERA--THE NEW _CAUDILLOS_
The factions: Reds and Whites--The leaders: Artigas, Lavalleja,
Rivera--The modern period.
CHAPTER V
THE ARGENTINE: RIVADAVIA--QUIROGA--ROSAS
Anarchy in 1820--The _caudillos_: their part in the formation of
nationality--A Girondist, Rivadavia--The despotism of Rosas--Its
duration and its essential aspects.
{21}
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
MEXICO: THE TWO EMPIRES--THE DICTATORS
The Emperor Iturbide--The conflicts between Federals and
Unitarians--The Reformation--The foreign Emperor--The dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz--Material progress and servitude--The Yankee influence.
CHAPTER II
CHILI: A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE
Portales and the oligarchy--The ten-years' Presidency--Montt and his
influence--Balmaceda the reformer.
CHAPTER III
BRAZIL: THE EMPIRE--THE REPUBLIC
The influence of the Imperial _régime_--A transatlantic Marcus
Aurelius--Dom Pedro II.--The Federal Republic.
CHAPTER IV
PARAGUAY: PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP
Dr. Francia--The opinion of Carlyle--The two Lopez--Tyranny and the
military spirit in Paraguay.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
COLOMBIA
Conservatives and Radicals--General Mosquera: his influence--A
statesman: Raphael Nuñez, his doctrines political.
{22}
CHAPTER II
ECUADOR
Religious conflicts--General Flores and his political labours--Garcia
Moreno--The Republic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
CHAPTER III
THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS--CENTRAL AMERICA--HAYTI--SAN-DOMINGO
Tyrannies and revolutions--The action of climate and miscegenation--A
republic of negroes: Hayti.
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
Conservatives and Liberals -- Lastarria -- Bilbao -- Echeverria --
Montalvo -- Vigil -- The Revolution of 1848 and its influence in
America--English ideas: Bello, Alberdi--The educationists.
CHAPTER II
THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES
Spanish classicism and French romanticism--Their influence in
America--Modernism--The work of Ruben Dario--The novel--The _conte_
or short story.
CHAPTER III
THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Bello--Hostos--The influence of England--Positivism--The influence of
Spencer and Fouillée---The sociologists
{23}
BOOK VI
CHAPTER I
ARE THE IBERO-AMERICANS OF LATIN RACE?
Spanish and Portuguese heredity--Latin culture--The influence of the
Roman laws, of Catholicism, and of French thought--The Latin spirit
in America: its qualities and defects.
CHAPTER II
THE GERMAN PERIL
German Imperialism and the Monroe doctrine--Das Deutschtum and
Southern Brazil--What the Brazilians think about it.
CHAPTER III
THE NORTH AMERICAN PERIL
The policy of the United States--The Monroe doctrine: its various
aspects--Greatness and decadence of the United States--The two
Americas, Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
CHAPTER IV
A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT: CUBA
The work of Spain--The North-American reforms--The future.
CHAPTER V
THE JAPANESE PERIL
The ambitions of the Mikado--The Shin Nippon in Western
America--Pacific invasion--Japanese and Americans.
{24}
BOOK VII
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF UNITY
The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of
development--Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral
unity in the same degree as Latin America--The future groupings of
the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles,
Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the
Confederation of La Plata--Political and economical aspects of these
unions--The last attempts at federation in Central America--The
Bolivian Congress--The A.B.C.--the union of the Argentine, Brazil,
and Chili.
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF RACE
The gravity of the problem--The three races, European, Indian, and
negro--Their characteristics--The mestizos and mulattos--The
conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le
Bon--Regression to the primitive type.
CHAPTER III
THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
The _caudillos_: their action--Revolutions--Divorce between written
Constitutions and political life--The future parties--The bureaucracy.
CHAPTER IV
THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
Loans--Budgets--Paper money--The formation of national capital.
CONCLUSION
AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES
The Panama Canal and the two Americas--The future conflicts between
Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins--The role of Latin America.
INDEX
{25}
ILLUSTRATIONS
HIDALGO
GABINO BARREDA
GENERAL JOSÉ ANTONIO PAEZ
GENERAL FRANCISCO DE MIRANDA (VENEZUELA)
SAN MARTIN
BOLIVAR IN 1810
BOLIVAR
GENERAL JUAN JOSÉ FLORES
ARTIGAS
GENERAL JOSÉ TADEO MONAGAS
GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ
MANUEL PARDO
DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA
DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON
OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA
COLONEL ISMAEL MONTES
JUAN ANTONIO LAVALLEJA
RIVADAVIA
{26}
ROSAS, THE ARGENTINE TYRANT
PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDEPENDENCE DAY
BENITO JUAREZ
JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR
GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ
THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO, CHILE
JOSÉ MANUEL BALMACEDA
GENERAL MOSQUERA
CLÉMENTE PALMA
RICARDO PALMER
RUFINO BLANCO FOMBONA (VENEZUELA)
MANUEL UGARTE (ARGENTINA)
RICARDO ROJAS (ARGENTINA)
GOMEZ CARRILLO
JOSÉ ENRIQUE RODÓ (URUGUAY)
ALCIDES ARGUEDAS (BOLIVIA)
MAP
[Transcriber's note: The above map (of South America) was omitted
from this ebook, being too large (approximately 18"x24") and fragile
to scan.]
{27}
BOOK I
_THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLES_
When the Iberians arrived in America they found either tribes or
peoples of semi-civilised inhabitants. These natives differed from
the Spanish and Portuguese invaders to such a degree that their
conquest was a true creation of new societies on the ruins of ancient
barbarian states. Before analysing the various aspects of American
history we must therefore know something of the genius of the
conquering race.
Conquerors and vanquished intermingled; territorial possession
modified the spirit of the conquerors; and the colonies began to
dream of conquering their independence. After twenty years of
warfare the republic became the political type of these societies,
which were exhausted by Spanish tyranny. Two periods, one of
military anarchy, the other of domestic order, wealth, and
industrialism, succeeded in the new States.
{28}
[Illustration: HIDALGO. A priest who prepared for the independence
of Mexico from the Spanish power. To face p. 29.]
{29}
LATIN AMERICA
CHAPTER I
THE CONQUERING RACE
Its psychological characteristics--Individualism and its aspects--The
sentiment of equality.--African fanaticism.
Travellers and psychologists find in modern Greece the craft of
Ulysses, the rhetorical ability of the Athenian sophists, and the
anarchy of the brilliant democracies once grouped about the blue
Mediterranean. Though its purity has been tainted by the onset of
Africa and the Turks, the old Hellenic spirit survives in the race.
A similar vitality is to be observed in America. The transatlantic
Creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation
and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character
unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of
independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a
deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the
spirit of race survives: the Republic reproduces the essential traits
of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of
cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous,
flowing past the ancient landmarks. The same little anxieties
trouble mankind, which no longer has the haughty moral rigidity of
the old hidalgos. Belief, conversation, intolerance--all retain the
{30} imprint of the narrow mould imposed upon them by three centuries
of the proudly exclusive spirit of Spain. To study the political and
religious history of the last century in the American democracies is
to add a chapter to the history of Iberian evolution. Beyond the
ocean and the fabled columns which were overthrown by the pikes of
the conquistadors is another Spain, tropical, and divided against
itself, in which the grace of Andalusia has vanquished the austerity
of Castile.[1]
If the troublous existence of the metropolitan state could be reduced
to the simplicity of a formula, that formula would also explain the
troublous history of a score of American republics, just as the deep
root will reveal the germ of the vicious development of a tropical
tree. But nothing would be more impossible than to reduce to an
abstract and enforced unity the disturbed evolution of Spain, full as
it is of anarchy and bloodshed. The Peninsula, divided into hostile
regions, the refuge of inimical races, presents in its past such
contradictions as defy synthesis. Amid this theocratic people the
development of municipal liberties was premature. While feudality
still imposed its authority upon the rest of Europe, Spain saw the
rise of the free cities. Beside the eternal Quixotism which
renounces the vulgar kingdom of the useful in order to give itself
only to the ideal the wise refrains of the people express a dense,
prosaic, positive realism. The Catholic nation _par excellence_
furnished the Duke of Alba with the troops that were to conquer Rome.
After long years of absolute monarchy the old democratic spirit was
reborn in the Peninsular _juntas_ which opposed the {31} French
invasion. From Cantabria to Cadiz we discover, beneath the unity of
Castile, a splendid variety of provincial types. The Asturian
hardness contrasts with the rhythm of Andalusia, the impetuosity of
Estremadura with the dryness of Catalonia, the tenacity of the
Basques with the proud idleness of the Castilian.
From this territorial complexity arises a turbulent life: the secular
struggle in favour of national unity, the generous epic of the
Catholic crusade against Islam, and the gloomy pursuit of religious
unity by means of inquisitorial holocausts. European history is
transformed south of the Pyrenees. Feudality is arrested; the
crusade against the infidel lasts eight centuries; religion and
empire are established in magnificence like that of the Oriental
theocracies. In the wealth of this national development persist the
racial characteristics which we wish to determine: individualism,
democracy, the local spirit so inimical to great unities, and the
African fanaticism which is satisfied only with excessive sensations
and extreme solutions--in short, the heritage of a grave and heroic
race, in a state of perpetual moral tension, proud in the face of God
and king and fate.
Individualism is the fundamental note of the Spanish psychology. An
Iberian characteristic, it has all the force of an imperious atavism.
It exalts any form of action, of self-affirmation; it inspires an
unreasonable confidence in self and the powers of self; it tends to
develop human energy, to preserve the national independence from
external pressure, to defend it against the rigour of the law, the
moral imperative, and the rigidity of duty; and it creates in exalted
spirits an ardent desire of domination.
Strabo observed among the primitive Iberians, who were divided into
hostile tribes, an immense pride, inimical to union and discipline.
In his life and {32} attitude the Spaniard reveals all the outward
and inward aspects of individualism. The austerity and arrogance
revealed by the very folds of the hidalgo's mantle, by his majestic
port, his sonorous speech, and his lordly gesture, the personal
valour which turns history into an epic, the audacity, the love of
adventure, and the isolation, are forms of personal exaltation. "The
Spaniards, in their simplicity," says the squire Marcos de Obregon,
"persuade themselves that they are the absolute masters of all."
Individualism explains the analogies between Iberian and English
history: the civilisation of the Peninsula recalls, in some of its
characteristics, that of the Anglo-Saxons. In both we find the
premature affirmation of liberty, an excessive pride, and a long
struggle against invasions. From this arises an aggressive
imperialism: commercial in the north, religious in the south. In
England the climate and the territory gave individualism a
utilitarian bent; in Spain the conflict with Islam gave it a warlike
tendency. Idealism, the inward life, and imaginative exaltation
created the Puritans in England; in Spain the mystics and the
inquisitors. But in the conquest of hostile circumstances the Saxon
acquires a sense of realism; while the Iberian, under a fiery sun,
becomes in Spain as in America a hunter of chimeras. A symbol will
express the resemblance between the two histories: Ariel and Caliban,
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent the same eternal dualism of
idealism and realism. Caliban has given England a vast empire; the
knight-errant has returned to his native La Mancha, exhausted by his
barren adventure.
Spanish evolution, and the moral and religious aspects of Peninsular
life, are to be explained by this perpetual exaltation of the
individual. Stoicism is the moral aspect of individualism. It
preaches virility (_esto vir._ says Seneca): it develops the human
{33} will as opposed to Destiny; it is a gospel of austerity in the
face of suffering, of silent heroism in the face of death. Seneca is
for Roman Spain the teacher of energy; from his teaching proceeds
that tenacious faith in character which touches Peninsular history
with a grave virility. Christianity, which proclaims human dignity,
becomes the national religion south of the Pyrenees. According to
the Stoics, all men are equal before Destiny; according to Christ,
they are equal before God; and of these two doctrines a formidable
pride is born. Finally, in mysticism, the original expression of the
religious genius of Spain, there is nothing to recall the pantheism
of the Orient, nor the annihilation of man before the Absolute. The
Peninsular mystics exalt their individuality, draw strength from the
visit of their Friend, become divine through ecstasy, and aspire with
the ardour of conquerors to the possession of God. To the German
Reformation, which preached predestination, the theologians of Spain
opposed free human choice, the efficacy of action, and the dignity
and merit of effort. The Spanish religion was by no means satisfied
with speculation; it made for action and preached energy. The
struggles of Spain have a religious significance; the heroes are
mystics and the mystics "knights of the Divine order." Ignatius
Loyola and Saint Teresa dream of heroic undertakings and read the
romances of chivalry. Mysticism inspires the warriors; faith
purifies the covetousness of the conquerors.
Wilful and mystical, the Spanish temperament is active, and expresses
itself externally in conflict; it manifests itself in comedy and
tragedy. The Peninsular genius is dramatic. Adventure, movement,
and the shock of passions are developed in an ample theatre which
expresses all the aspects of aggravated individualism. The struggle
is not only for independence, but for fame, to preserve the integrity
of honour in the general eye. Jealous and {34} revengeful, this
preoccupation in respect of honour, which is profoundly Spanish,
inspires innumerable tragedies. Antagonisms, ruptures, theses, and
antitheses abound in Iberian history; the positivism of Sancho Panza,
the idealism of Don Quixote; obstinacy and idleness; sloth and
violence; parasitism and adventure; gloom and solemnity such as we
find in the paintings of Zurbaran and Ribera, together with the
frivolity of harmonious dance and festival and light-headed madness
in the hot sunlight; faith in the will and acceptation of destiny;
the ardour of mystics and conquerors and the cynicism of rogues and
beggars; heroic disinterestedness and passionate covetousness: these
are the irreducible contradictions of the Spanish mind, which explain
the long conflict, the intensity of the internal drama. On the stage
we find the reflection of these conflicts, these indurated wills;
subtle passions, grandiose pride, lofty character; tragedies with a
touch of farce and comedies with a mystic background. The literature
of Chivalry--the immense crop of romances, the rude primitive poetry,
the _Cid_, the _Children of Lara_--is a commentary upon individualism
and action. The great literary types--the hero, the adventurer, the
mystic, the noble chieftain, the knight, the lover--are exalted
individualities. The _picaro_ himself belongs to this hardy family;
he is proud as any knight, and a goodly number of knights are
_picaresque_. Subtle and sceptical, the _picaro_ employs both
cunning and heroism in the daily struggle for life. Of "Gongorism,"
a school of Spanish literature, Martinez-Ruiz has written that it is
the expression of movement in language, a dynamic poetry for men of
action. Dramas and romances of energy, violent epics, with nothing
of the antique serenity: these form the true literature of Spain.
In art and philosophy and literature there are {35} really no
schools, but writers, philosophers, and painters; such as El Greco,
who left no imitators; solitary individuals such as Gratian and
Quevedo. But in Spain we see the triumph of those military and
political organisations in which the individual finds the greatest
freedom: the people, the tribe, the guerilla band, the battalion.
The cult of rebellious and exuberant energy is general. In the
relations of king and subject the same Peninsular individualism
appears.
"For besar mano de rey
No me tengo por honrado,
Porque la besó mi padre
Me tengo por afrentado."
says a Spanish rhyme. Obedience to the king is conditional; it is
based upon the monarch's respect for the supreme order of justice,
and his submission to a tacit or explicit contract between king and
people. Charters, traditions, and usages limit the absolutism of the
monarch. In the Cortes of Orcana in 1469 it is declared that the
king is the "mercenary" of the people, who pay him a "salary."[2]
All Spanish obedience is steeped in this kind of pride; the nobles of
Aragon feel themselves individually the equals of the king, and
collectively his superior. The cities, federated into _hermandades_
or unions, treat with the monarch; they form a State within the
State; they oppose the Government and force it to recognise their
privileges. In 1226 the cities of Aragon and Catalonia demand of
Jaime II. the grant of a charter of popular rights. Insurrections
are frequent, and are incarnated in a hero of the rude national epic:
the _Cid_. Mariana, a historian, authorises any violence directed
against royal tyranny.
{36}
This individualism upholds a strict justice against the narrowness of
the laws and the Byzantine debates of lawyers; against sentences,
penalties, and tribunals. Poems and proverbs express this continual
clash between the juridic ideal and the law; the Peninsular
conscience condemns the partial and precarious justice of the codes.
Joaquin Costa writes: "Of all the epics known to me--whether national
or racial--the Spanish has done most to elevate the principle of
justice, and has rendered the cult of justice most fervent." Austere
and inviolable, the law represents a category of eternal relations,
beside which all individualities are insignificant, even that of the
king, and all institutions fragile, even the Church.
Stoical because it believed in pure justice; nourished by rude
heroisms, inward visions, romances, and legends; exalted by mystic
dialogues, and hardened by centuries of religious wars; the Spanish
spirit, full of enthusiasm, entered upon the Renaissance, that
sixteenth century which was to reveal the new continents across the
ocean, the laws of Nature behind her mystery, and to create imperious
personalities which opposed themselves to Fate. Then Spanish
individualism broke out into mysticism, audacity, and adventure: it
was the epoch of _conquistadors_, of politicians, of inquisitors, of
Jimenez and Pizarro, Torquemada, Loyola, and Cortez. Spain broke
through the circle of the Old World, fought in defence of Christian
civilisation at Lepanto, and of Catholicism in Germany and Flanders;
coveted the Mediterranean countries; colonised an immense and unknown
continent; threatened Europe with the religious imperialism of
Charles V. and Philip II., and, thanks to the legions of the Duke of
Alba, imposed her will on the Pope. Her policy had the old Roman
majesty and force; literature had found its "golden age"; philosophy
proposed the vast harmonious solutions of Fox {37} Morcillo, and laid
down the bases of natural and national law by the pens of Francisco
de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto. It was a splendid prodigality of
energy, creation, conquest, and heroism--the last stage of a history
of violent stoicism, which announced a long and majestic decadence.
Distrustful of hierarchies, Spanish individualism created social and
democratic forms. Traditions, doctrines, customs, and laws denoted
an exact sense of human equality. "Monachal democracy," said
Menendez-Pelayo, in speaking of Spain, because the levelling of all
classes offered certain conventual characteristics, and because there
was a Christian basis to the fervour of the equalitarians; a
"picaresque" democracy, wrote Salillas, alluding to the equality of
the knight and the _picaro_, to the double phenomenon of a proud
people making pretensions to nobility and a careless aristocracy
continually drifting into democracy by reason of the lack of middle
classes and the traditional idleness of the hidalgo. An anarchical
democracy, inimical to hierarchy, proud and undisciplined, according
to the analysis of Unamuno, in his profound work, _En torno al
Casticismo_; a democratic Cæsarism, thought Oliveira Martins, for the
absolutism of the monarch was not feudal royalty, but rather a
principality of the Roman type. The king presided over a democracy
of knights, mystics, adventurers, and rogues. This spirit of
equality may be observed even in the formation of the Spanish
aristocracy; the Gothic and hereditary nobility is foreign to the
evolution of the Peninsular. The national aristocracy is to be found
in the bosom of the Church; it is elective, subject to the current
popular vicissitudes, to such a degree that the ecclesiastical
councils are more truly national than the military councils and
assemblies. Servitude is less rude in mediæval Spain than in the
rest of Europe; the cultivator progresses, but disappears {38} from
the other side of the Pyrenees before the invasion of feudalism, and
the hired or leasehold cultivator is almost free. There are
tributary nobles: between the democracy and the nobility there are no
irreducible divisions.
This equalitarian development is especially notable in the political
world. In Spain feudalism is not a national institution, and the
spirit of Gothic kingship becomes transformed under Iberian
influences. In Leon and Castile the nobility are less powerful than
in France or other parts of Spain, Catalonia, Navarre, and Aragon.[3]
The social classes are not superimposed in rigorous order; cities
acquire franchises, and "popular seigneuries" are formed.
The monarchy, too, undergoes this process of levelling or
democratisation. The Emperor aims at equilibrium in equality; he
destroys the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the people;
in the political conflict he leans to one side or the other
alternately. The popular tongue consecrates the equality of the
social classes: "In a hundred years a king becomes a thrall; in a
hundred and six a thrall becomes a king." "All are equal to the
king, except in wealth."
The Spanish commune lasts, because it is the centre of this great
democracy. From the beginnings of Peninsular history we see the
cities struggling for their independence. They reproduce the
_djemaa_ of the Atlas, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, amid the
Berbers, the parents of the Iberians; the _djemaa_ is the African
progenitor of the Spanish commune; both make an equal distribution of
goods, and endeavour to avoid poverty. The _djemaa_, or
municipality, or commune, isolated and autonomous, constitutes the
political unit: the State is a confederation of free cities. The
Spanish towns defend their {39} liberties against every form of
artificial unity, whether Phoenician, Greek, or Roman. Rome reigns
for seven hundred years; but because she partially recognises the
autonomy of the municipalities, the Spanish democracy; she increases
civil rights, founds small republics, which elect their own
magistrates, administer the communal finances, and discuss the
payment of imposts and the distribution of lands in their ward. Thus
Spanish individualism is satisfied. Rome, absorbing and centralising
under the Cæsars, destroys local liberty; but a deep-seated current
re-establishes the autonomy of the peoples when the Roman power
decays. Assemblies of free citizens govern the cities; the Visigoth
monarchy, at the suggestion of the national Church, respects the
municipal organisation. Thus a hybrid system springs up, feudal in
the Germanic character of the predominant aristocracy, democratic by
virtue of the Councils, the Church, and the tenacious power of the
cities. In the struggle against the Moors the kings compound with
the proud, free cities, conceding charters and municipal privileges
in exchange for a tribute of gold or flesh and blood.
Liberty and democracy are of more ancient date in Spain than in
England. The charter of Leon, dated 1020, anterior to the great
English charter, grants the municipalities an administrative and
judicial jurisdiction; it recognises the hereditary rights of the
serf in the soil which he tills, and his full liberty to change his
seigneur; herein we see a modified feudalism. The first charters of
Castile recognised the rights of the cities. In the councils of
Burgos in 1169 and of Leon in 1188 the delegates of the
municipalities figured; even in the Cortes of Aragon, where the
Germanic tradition was predominant, representatives of the cities
were admitted as early as the twelfth century. The overlord, who
extended his protectorate over a city, did not despoil {40} it of its
former sovereignty; the _Behetrias_ were cities or groups of cities
which chose as their guardian a baron or warrior chief, without
losing anything of their autonomy. The cities, proud of their
privileges, united with the royal power in struggling against the
nobility; thirty-four of them, in 1295, constituted the _Hermandad_
(brotherhood, guild) of Castile, which eventually numbered as many as
a hundred cities. In ancient Spain we are always discovering
something of the nature of a contract, a concert of free wills, a
perpetual _concordat_ between governors and governed. From the
Iberian tribe to the Roman city, from the city with its franchises to
the villages grouped in _hermandades_, and from these to the popular
_juntas_ which defend Spain against the power of France and organise
an epic resistance, there is an obvious historical continuity. Local
patriotism is inimical to ambitious constructive policies. Many
peoples invade the Peninsula--Semites, Berbers, Arabs, Copts,
Touaregs, Syrians, Kelts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans,
Franks, Suabians, Vandals, Goths: they become superimposed like
geological strata, draw apart from one another in the mountainous
parts of Spain, and convert the quarrels of provinces and the
rivalries of cities into regional conflicts and racial antagonisms.
In the clash of Spanish individualities, in the rude assertion of
municipal prerogatives, in the democratic developments which are so
hostile to any hierarchy, an African or Semitic patriotism is
revealed, which converts history into a bloody tragedy. In the arid
Castilian plain, confined by its glaring horizons, under its burning
sun, we see the spectacle of a proud people defending absolute
principles with aggressive faith. Religion is dry and fiery as the
desert. Señor de Unamuno, writing of Spain,[4] calls her "a nation
fanatical rather than superstitious, to {41} whom the Semitic
monotheism is better adapted than the Aryan polytheism." Jews and
Moors are expelled from the Peninsula in the name of simple and rigid
ideals, by an intolerance at once religious and political. Thus the
spiritual integrity of Spain is achieved; but industry decays,
poverty increases, decadence appears, and in a Spain drained of its
blood by _autodafés_ and emigrations a solitary cross is raised, the
symbol of an African Christianity, to which the love of mankind is a
stranger.
Spain is African, even from the prehistoric ages. The Iberian is
like the men of the Atlas; like them, he is brown and
dolicocephalous. The Kabyle _douar_ and the Spanish village present
remarkable analogies. An early geological change separates, by a
narrow strait, two similar countries; two successive invasions spread
an infusion of African blood throughout the Peninsula. Phoenicians
and Carthaginians found colonies in maritime Spain; in 711 seven
thousand Berbers establish themselves in the south; and the invasion
of the Almohades in 1145 still further unites Iberians and Africans.
During the long centuries of conflict between Christians and Arabs
the two races intermingle under the cultivated tolerance of the
Khalifs. The Gothic kings seek the aid of Arab chieftains in their
quarrels; the Cid is a condottiere who fights alternately in the
Mussulman and Christian armies, serving, with his troop of heroes,
under the highest bidder. The Spanish monarchs in turn intervene in
the quarrels of the Khalifs, and Alfonso VI., in 1185, allies himself
with the Moorish king of Seville in order to conquer Toledo. The
Arabs study under the masters of the Spanish capitals, while the
Spaniards study Arabic, and are initiated into Oriental science. The
language still preserves traces of the commerce between the two
races. The Arabs, sceptical and refined, overlords already enervated
by the grace {42} and luxury of Andalusia, rule without fanaticism;
they leave the vanquished their religion and their usages, their
laws, authorities, and judges; they free such Christian slaves as are
converted to Islam. The Mozarabs, Christians who live in the
Mussulman States, without renouncing their faith and customs, pave
the way for the fusion of the hostile races. In spite of a continual
warfare, under the indifferent and alien rule of the Arab both
victors and vanquished become subject, as did the first Gothic kings,
to the national influence. It seems as though the gradual action of
a common life were about to reconstitute the primitive type of man
who once peopled Iberia from the Pyrenees to the Atlas.
The originality of Spain, contrasting, in her development, with the
Indo-European nations, comes from Africa, from the atavism of the
Iberians, from the long domination of the Moors, and from the Semitic
Orient.
The anarchy of the tribe persists; the clergy are all-powerful, as
are the African marabouts. To the feudal nobility and the European
parliament the Peninsula opposes the Councils; to the struggles
between Pope and Emperor, the Oriental fusion of religion and the
monarchy, the Inquisition, and the omnipotence of the clergy; to the
Reformation, the coalition of Catholics with Protestants, and the
league of the princes of Christendom with the Sultan, a fanatical
Christianity which realises the ideal of national unity by expelling
Jews and Moors, and burning sorcerers and heretics in the crackling
flames of _autodafés_. When Spain enters upon her decadence her
ancient characteristics--individualism, the municipal spirit, and the
democratic fervour--disappear, and the African and Semitic influences
predominate. Under the theocracy the nation of conquerors
degenerates; at Villalar the monarchy conquers the free cities and
the arrogant nobility. {43} The clergy reign in school and palace;
as in the East, they form a superior caste. Rogues and ruffians--the
_picaros_--succeed to the heroes and adventurers of the days of old;
an Oriental parasitism invades the Peninsula, and legions of arrogant
beggars people the highways of Castile. It is the final crisis of
heroic Quixotism. The Moors are revenged for their defeat, imposing
their African fanaticism on an impoverished Peninsula. New Spains
across the ocean rise against the decadent mother-country. Exhausted
with creating new nations, the conquering race sinks into repose, and
a score of democracies prepare to enjoy its moral heritage.
[1] Of the Portuguese conquerors we may say that in their
individualism and their love of adventure they resembled the
Spaniards. Their fanaticism was certainly less bitter, perhaps
because they had not been forced to struggle against the enemies of
their faith.
[2] See Joaquín Costa, _Concepto del Derecho en la Poesia española_
(_Estudios jurídicos y politicos_, Madrid 1884)
[3] Altamira, _Historia de España y de la Civilizatión española_,
vol. i. p. 229 _et seq_.
[4] _En torno al Casticismo_, Madrid, 1902, p. 115.
{44}
CHAPTER II
THE COLONIES OVERSEA
The conquerors--The conquered races--The influence of religion in the
new societies--Colonial life.
In the sixteenth century the Spanish race conquered the various
kingdoms of America. It founded new societies, destroyed ancient
empires, and created cities in the wilderness; and in the following
century it made innumerable laws and sent forth innumerable warlike
expeditions. Between one period and the next--the rude epic of
conquest and the tame existence of the civilised colonies--a strange
contrast is to be observed.
In the first period cupidity may be said to be the _deus ex machina_
of the great epic acted by the conquerors: there is a bloody and
barbarous conflict with the unknown territory, the hostile Indians,
the mysterious forests, the enormous rivers, and the desert that
swallows whole legions. This marvellous age is followed, in the
silent cities, by a monotonous, pious, puerile existence. Exhausted
by heroism, the race declines, mingles itself with the Indians,
imports black slaves from Africa, and obeys its Inquisitors and
viceroys. The obscure events of its lamentable existence take place
in a veritable wilderness. Grey and unrelieved is this period, the
period known as "the Colony," for the unstable societies of America
reflect the life of Spain; while the first, that of the Conquest, is
an age of greed and bloodshed, in {45} which the impetuous
adventurers of the Peninsula roam from Mexico to Patagonia,
realising, in the words of de Heredia's sonnet, their "brutal and
heroic dream."
The Spaniard and the Portuguese of the sixteenth century were men of
the Renaissance; of that age which was perturbed by the restored
spectacle of the life of the world. Voyages, discoveries, Greek
myths and classic poems, which filled the past with legends and
heroic deeds, gave the Latins of the Mediterranean the longing to
explore lands and seas unknown. Individuality developed with an
energy that often merged in crime. Tyrants or conquerors longing for
power and adventure lived in regions far removed from ideals of good
and evil. Mystics--for the mediæval gloom still hung over
Europe--they joined cupidity to faith, and renounced a life of
contemplation in order to push back the limits of the world. Heirs
of the Phoenician ambition, the Portuguese encircled Africa before
discovering America; and many a Spanish captain, before invading the
regions oversea, had fought in Flanders, pillaged Rome, and repeated
the journey of Don Quixote across La Mancha.
The soul of the _conquistador_ combined audacity with covetousness,
superstition with cruelty, the pride of the hidalgo with the rigour
of the ascetics, a rigid individualism and a thirst for glory with an
infallible faith in the greatness of its own destiny. The
adventurers of the Peninsula were professors of energy: like the
Italian condottieri, like the captains of the Napoleonic epic. A
group of adventurers enslaved the empire of Mexico, destroyed the
power of the Incas, and defeated the indomitable Araucan. Cortez
burned his ships when his companions spoke of renouncing the
difficult enterprise of conquest. Pizarro, with twelve of his
lieutenants, resolved, in a desert island, to invade Peru.
{46}
Cortez conquered Mexico; Pizarro and Almagro, Peru; Valdivia and
Almagro, Araucania; Jimenez de Quesada and Benalcazar, the
territories of Colombia; Pedro de Alvarado, Guatemala; Martinez de
Irala, Paraguay; Juan de Garay, the province of La Plata; Martin
Affonso, the Souzas and others, Brazil. Others brought from Italy
the spirit of the Renaissance; such was Pedro de Mendoza, enriched by
the sack of Rome, who, in 1554, organised an expedition to the Rio de
la Plata. The sixteenth century, the age of discoveries, was also
the age of conquest. From all the provinces of Spain and Portugal
adventurers poured into America. The energetic Basques led the way;
but there were fiery Estremadurans, austere Castilians, meditative
Portuguese, and witty Andalusians. Triumph lay before them; they
advanced to conquest over the ruins of cities and the bodies of
Indians. Their incredible prowess often ended in their death upon
the soil they trod as intruders and invaders.
The America conquered by the Spaniards and Portuguese was peopled by
various races and occupied by many different civilisations. The
invaders unified all these regions, imposing uniform laws, customs,
and religion. In Brazil they found scattered tribes: Tupis,
Tupinambas, Caribs; in Paraguay, the Guaranis; in Uruguay, the
Charruas. The organisation of these peoples of hunters and fishers
was simple; in time of war as in peace they obeyed their chiefs.
These vast territories presented many different tongues, and an
infinite variety of tribes, clans, and societies; ranging from
cannibalism and savagery, through the primitive forms of culture, to
nomadism and the sedentary state. The Araucanians of Chili, a
warlike people, held assemblies to decide upon war, joined in
confederations, and obeyed a _cacique_, who was the strongest and
bravest man of the tribe. They lived in isolation the better to
preserve their independence.
{47}
Three barbaric monarchies--the Chibchas or Muiscas in Colombia, the
Incas in Peru, and the Aztecs in Mexico--which boasted of laws,
majestic cities, social classes, colleges of priests, reigning
dynasties, organised armies, academic myths, and even hieroglyphs and
astrologers (not unlike those of Assyria)--differed profoundly in
their complex political organisation from the tribes of America.
Although the Incas were not the liberal princes of Marmontel's dream,
and although the history of their rule was not an idyll, their
meticulous and beneficent tyranny did after long wars of conquest
erect in the ancient Tahuantisuyu a great empire of silent obedience,
an anticipation of the ideals of State Socialism. Property was
collective, and existence subject to strict regulations. The Incas
made labour obligatory, supervised all agricultural operations, and
respected, when they extended their domains, the rites and customs of
vanquished races.
If the Inca monarchy recalls the great empires of Asia, China, and
Assyria, Mexico, on the other hand, appears to have been a feudal
kingdom in which _caciques_, governors of vast provinces, ruled
beside the absolute monarch. "There is no general overlord,"
observed Cortez. There was a central authority, as in Peru, but the
Mexican despotism was more rude and barbarous than that of the Incas;
the blood of human victims dripped from its smoking altars. The
social organism had not reached the degree of perfection attained by
the Inca monarchy.
The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, with their mediæval ideas,
their African fanaticism, their marvellous ships, and their powerful
weapons, terrified these peoples who were still dwelling in the age
of bronze and polished stone. Historians report the surprise of
these hungry adventurers before the treasures of Mexico and Peru.
Atahualpa offered to fill with gold the chamber in which Pizarro held
{48} him prisoner. The court of Montezuma displayed an Asiatic
luxury: surrounded with women, buffoons, idols, and strange birds,
under a resplendent canopy loaded with gold and jewels, the Aztec
monarch advances like a king in an Oriental tale. His escort is of
haughty princes. The imperial city abounds in temples, lakes, and
causeways; it is melancholy and sumptuous, the capital of Mexico.
The chroniclers of the time tell us how the cupidity of the
_conquistadors_ was awakened: men who had left a ruined Spain to find
these immense treasures in America; they are writing for impoverished
hidalgos, and fear that they will not be believed when they speak of
this fabulous abundance of gold. Since the days of Ophir and the
Queen of Sheba, says one of these historians, "no ancient writing had
ever stated that gold, silver, and jewels" had ever been discovered
in such vast quantities as those which Castile was about to receive
from her new colonies.
The soldiers of the conquest pillaged these treasures, sacked temples
and palaces, and quarrelled over their wealth in a series of tragic
struggles. Around the mines cities sprang up and parties were
formed; at Potosi Vicuñas and Biscayans, excited by the sight of the
metal which delighted their cupidity, prolonged the savagery of the
first conflict. Where minerals existed the colonial life was
unstable, harsh, and brutal; in poor countries, such as Chili and the
Argentine, societies were slowly formed which cultivated the soil:
tenacious oligarchies bound to the new country by solid interests.
The vanquished races and the victors differed greatly from one
another; hence amidst the political and moral unity of the new
societies arose different characteristics and incipient antagonisms.
Spaniards and Portuguese took Indian wives or women; the leaders
married princesses of Mexico and Peru; the soldiers founded
provisional homes in the colonies. {49} The Andalusians settled in
the tropics; the Basques in the temperate regions; and the Castilians
swarmed in the towns. A curious affinity of race, as between the
Basques and the Araucanians, and analogies of climate and landscape,
and, apart from these factors, the erratic wanderings of the
conquerors, explain this original diversity of the American
provinces. Why should they be similar: the offspring of the gentle
Indian Quechuas and the fiery Andalusians; the children of the virile
Araucanians and the calm, reasonable Basques? Wherever the native
population was more abundant, and the political organisation more
complicated, as in Mexico and Peru, its influence on miscegenation
was more potent than in colonies from which the Indian was
disappearing (as the Charruas of Uruguay or the nomadic tribes of
Brazil) before the onset of civilisation. The climate, severe on the
plateaux, and favourable to an energetic existence, warm and
enervating on the coast, contributed to the variety of human types.
The first families sprung of the sensuality of the conquerors already
revealed the elements of future developments.
It was an age of creation: races and cities, new rites and customs;
all were sprung of the crossing of Iberian and Indian. The diversity
of the elements whose fusion was paving the way for a new caste gave
mankind an interesting variety. The negro, imported by the Spaniard
for the cultivation of the tropical soil, added yet another
complication to the first admixture of castes. Grotesque generations
with every shade of complexion and every conformation of skull were
born in America from the unions stimulated by the kings of Spain. In
the Anglo-Saxon provinces of North America the climate only changed
the invaders; in the Iberian colonies the conquered race, the land
itself, the air they breathed, all modified the conquerors.
Creation, the synthesis of human elements, action and reaction
between the country and {50} the men who ruled it, a crucible
continually agitated by unheard-of fusions of races; all this gave
the process of evolution the intensity and the aspect of a continual
conflict. From the negro _bozal_ recently imported from Africa to
the _quinteron_, the offspring of slaves purified by successive
unions with the whites; from the Indian who mourned his monotonous
servitude in the solitude of the mountains, to the coloured student
of the universities, we find, in the seventeenth century as in the
twentieth, in the colonies as in the republics, every variety of this
admixture of Iberians, Indians, and Africans. From a social point of
view the rank of the individual corresponded generally with the shade
of his epidermis. "In America," wrote Humboldt at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, "the more or less white skin determines the
position which a man holds in society."
The Spaniard degenerated in the colonies. The passage from a period
of violence to one of conventual quietude betrayed this slow
decadence of the invader, under the pressure of the climate and in
contact with the conquered races. The Creole, the Spaniard born in
America, has lost the prickly characteristics of the hidalgo: the
proud individualism, the love of bloody adventure, the stoicism, the
tenacity in resistance and conflict, and the rigidity of faith.
In flexibility, brilliance, and grace he has surpassed the rude
Iberian; but his effort is transitory, his will weak; his hatred is
as ephemeral as his love. The new race produces neither mystics nor
men of action, but poets, orators, admirable intriguers, superficial
scholars, brilliant commentators of exotic ideas; from the
seventeenth century onwards they succeed to the first generation of
audacious colonists, heroic monks, and warlike captains.
To extend the domains of the monarch, to "cause the Indians to live
in the knowledge of our Catholic {51} faith," they conquered America,
and they brought to the New World a religion, a political _régime_,
universities, an economic system--all the elements, in short, of a
traditional civilisation. Absolutism in government, monopoly in
matters of commerce and finance, intolerance in questions of dogma
and morality, tutelage and rigorous isolation; these were the
foundations of Spanish colonisation. The methods practised by the
Dutch and the English in their colonies were not essentially
different. Toqueville and Boutmy have studied the effects, in the
United States, of Calvinistic intolerance and commercial monopoly.
They have remarked upon the slavery of negroes in the agricultural
districts of Virginia, and the cupidity of the emigrants who pursued
the Indians with a truly Puritan ardour.
The viceroy, the representative of the monarch, exercised full powers
of government in the colonies. He presided over the _Real
Audiencia_, the king's tribunal, was superintendent of finances,
protector of the Church, and chief of the army. To him all power was
subordinate, whether ecclesiastical, military, or civil. A luxurious
court surrounded him, the flattery of courtiers intoxicated him, and
subornation had its way with him. Sometimes the viceroys represented
the real aspirations of the colonists, and were serious legislators,
such as Francisco de Toledo, in Peru; or they defended the colonists
from the expeditions of filibusters with such energy that their
fiercely contested battles evoked the sentiment of nationality. At
other times they enriched themselves by the sale of posts, and
drained the treasury, or passed in progress through the cities of
their state, haughty overlords surrounded with luxury and gold.
To her political despotism corresponds the commercial monopoly which
Spain established in her dominions. Humboldt defined the ancient
ideal of {52} the colonising races in his "Essay on the Government of
New Spain": "For centuries a colony was regarded as useful to the
metropolis only inasmuch as it furnished a great number of raw
materials and consumed plenty of goods and merchandise, which were
borne by the vessels of the mother-country."[1] England, Holland,
Spain, and Portugal acted upon the same exclusivist principles; the
ordinances of Cromwell were as inflexible on this point as the
schedules of Philip II. Commercial liberty and industrial
competition were condemned on the same grounds as rebellion and
heresy.
Politics and economics were subordinated to religion; the third
combined the absolutism of the first and the monopoly of the second.
The conquest of America was apostolic. The Spanish captains fought
to convert the overseas infidels. The imperialism of Charles V. and
Philip II. had a religious character. To preserve the colonies from
heresy it closed the ports, prohibited all traffic with foreigners,
and imposed a conventual seclusion upon a whole world. The Church
was the centre of colonial life. She governed in the spiritual
order; imposed punishments, flagellations, exile, and
excommunication, and delivered unbelievers and sorcerers to the
purifying care of the Inquisition. In the department of morals she
kept a watchful eye upon the people; she defended the Indians, and
often opposed the governors. Viceroy and _cacique_ feared her
equally. A formidable moral power, she helped to discipline the
unruly Creoles, to unite classes and races, and to form nations. The
cities were adorned by her chapels and convents, and to these
convents, in pious mood, the hidalgos often left all their
possessions.
Thus property became a monopoly of the convents. Hence a plethora of
monks and nuns, and the {53} accumulation, in Mexico and at Lima, of
enormous wealth. In Peru the annual income of the archbishop
amounted to £8,000, and that of some bishops to £4,000. What with
bishops and viceroys there was no lack of luxury. A pompous and
sensual Catholicism satisfied the imagination of the Creoles, the
superstitious fears of the Indians, and the cheerful materialism of
the negroes. The Aztec, the _quechua_, accepted from the monks a
strange, Byzantine dogma, mingled with aristocratic ideals and
Oriental mysteries. The native soon confounded the two mythologies.
In Mexico, so Humboldt reported, "the Holy Ghost is the sacred eagle
of the Aztecs." Novel and sumptuous rites were added to the
traditional religion. Processions and festivals, a kind of continual
religious fair, united all races. The people loved the cult of
religion, with its external manifestations, its virgins loaded with
heavy _ex-votos_, its sorrowing Christs, its gorgeously-decked
saints, and the glitter of gold and silk.
As confessor the priest influenced the family and directed the
education of children; as preacher he condemned immorality and judged
the governors. As in Byzantium, as in the Florence of Savonarola,
the colonial monk, speaking in the name of the exploited populace,
was an austere professor of virtue. The Creole admired his
ecclesiastical learning, and his invincible attitude before the
powers of this world; in him the Indian found a protector.
The American colonies differed in social composition. The negro
abounded in Peru and Cuba, but soon disappeared in Chili and the
Argentine. The poverty of Araucania contrasted with the opulence of
Caracas, Lima, and Mexico. In the Aztec capital some territorial
seigneurs drew forty thousand a year sterling in revenues. Frezier
valued the jewels of a rich lady of Lima at 240,000 livres of silver.
The melancholy Sierra, peopled by Indians, contrasted {54} with the
life of the coast, where luxurious cities attracted the traveller.
In the cities of the interior, Cordoba or Charcas, we find settled
traditions, tenacity, and sobriety, but in the capitals of the coast
all is luxury, instability, and licence.
Spain tended to destroy this variety by uniform laws.[2] Originality
was as odious to her as heresy. Customs and beliefs, hierarchies and
privileges, all must be uniform. Under such a _régime_ the life of
the colonies was dull and monotonous. The cities slumbered, lulled
by the murmur of prayers and fountains. Idleness was the natural
condition of the Creole; lengthy meals and daily siestas limited his
inconsiderable activities. The empty streets and squares knew hours
of silence; rejoicings were ordered, and the orders pasted on the
hoardings; gaiety itself was imposed. It seemed as though time
itself must stand still in these cities of parallel streets; that the
ideal of all men must be absolute quietude.
The hidalgo of noble origin, the owner of vast domains, governed his
sons and his slaves with the severity of a Roman patrician. He could
be neither merchant nor manufacturer; commerce and industry were "low
callings." He was attracted rather by the bar, the subtleties of the
"doctors," the scholarship and poetry of the courts. Whether at the
university or the _cabildo_ (municipality), his life would be the
same. He would sing the glory of viceroys in Gongoric rhymes, or
commentate upon Duns Scotus, or meticulously construct acrostics or
syllogisms. In the café, at social gatherings, in the literary
salons, he would whisper criticisms of the governors and the bishops,
or discuss the titles to nobility of a marquis of recent creation, or
the purity {55} of blood of an enriched mulatto. A conventual
chapter, or the quarrel of a bishop and a viceroy, or a bull-fight,
would fill him with ecstasy. Attending mass in the morning, and in
the evening driving through the stately streets in a luxurious
_calèche_, the proud caballero would bear himself majestically. At
night, in his gloomy house, he would find his wife telling her beads,
surrounded by docile slaves.
Sensuality and mysticism were the pleasures of the colonists. The
convents themselves, despite their high walls, were not able to shut
out these violent delights. Licentious monks, nuns with lovers,
sprightly abbés, figure in the chronicles of the period as in the
Italian _contes_. The cloister, with its rich arabesques, the
_patio_ (courtyard) perfumed with orange-blossom, the murmuring jet
of the fountain: these evoke the passion of Andalusia. A devout
society pays the insatiable convents a tribute of gold and virgins;
and love, fleeing the dead cities, takes refuge in cells quick with
ambition and unruly desires.
The woman, guarded in the Oriental fashion, in houses strong as
fortresses, attracts society to her salon by her Parisian grace; in a
world of ponderous scholars she is famous for her amenity and
subtlety. Her fidelity, for the hidalgo, is a question of his
honour. The husband revenges himself for transgressions by terrible
punishments, as in the Calderonian drama, while the heroic lover
brings his exasperated desires to the Moorish balcony, where he
awaits his lady in torment. Away from home, a host of illegitimate
unions, of concubines, of clandestine amours.
Passion will be tragic and devotion voluptuous; in place of mystics
we shall find _illuminés_. The devil is the essential personage of
this religion of minutiæ; thanks to him the dreary colonial life is
surrounded by mystery; his appearances and his manoeuvres thrill the
Creole's blood. Hobgoblins, {56} sorcerers, spells, thefts of the
consecrated host, and exorcisms occupy the Inquisition; tales of
incubi and succubi, of pacts with Satan, of ghosts that expiate their
old offences in long-abandoned houses; absurd miracles of saints;
processions mingling with the dances of slaves; gaily decked temples
and parasitic rights which stifle the traditional faith, deprive the
Catholicism of Spain of its Semitic rigidity.
All through life the pious colonist is surrounded by marvels. He
loves nature with an ingenuous faith, and attributes to the saints
and demons a continual intervention in his placid existence. An
unexpected sound reveals the presence of a soul in torment; a tremor
of the earth, the divine wrath; sickness is a proof of diabolic
influence; health, of the efficacy of an amulet. In the pharmacies
chimerical products may be purchased--condor's grease, unicorn's
horns, and the claws of the "great beast."
The monotonous hours are passed in devotions and futilities, prayers
and conventual disputes, long ceremonies and useless entertainments.
Sometimes the even course of life is interrupted by a startling feat
of prowess, or a festival, all gold and servility; the royal seals
have arrived, a princess is born in Spain, a treasure has been
discovered, a port has been sacked by audacious pirates, or sorcerers
or Portuguese Jews are to be burned in an imposing _autodafé_. Then
the provincial cities, slowly threaded by sumptuous processions, are
all astir, but the dazzling vision is only ephemeral, and the grey
monotony returns, with its petty quarrels, its indolence, its
exaggerated rites.
The royal seals arrive under a _pallium_, and a luxuriously appointed
horse advances, bearing the treasure. The spectators kneel before
the symbol of monarchical majesty, and incense, as at the feet of a
Byzantine ikon, expresses the adoration of {57} believers. The
viceroy also enters beneath a canopy, passing in solemn procession
through the servile city, while the bells of a hundred churches
celebrate his advent, and a solemn cohort of _cabildantes_ in their
robes, monks of all orders, and bedizened doctors, praise with
courtier-like devotion the glory of the royal messenger. In the
religious festivals the majestic altars which the devout, in token of
penitence, carry upon their shoulders, bear virgins clad in velvets
and glittering with jewels, or saints that bow to one another like
courtly hidalgos, or Christs that weep before the wondering crowd.
Around these gorgeous altars dance the slaves, and the monks chant a
melancholy anthem. Seized by a sacred intoxication, men and women
scourge their bodies till they bleed.
The cry of anguish mingles with the monotony of the prayers, amidst
the tremulous excitement of the faithful.
The _autodafés_ were the supreme feast of blood. The chronicles of
the time praise the "marvellous" spectacle. The funeral procession
advanced towards the pyre, surrounded by burlesque and fanatical
groups. Groaning monks hemmed in the sorcerers, the blasphemers, the
heretics; some bearing a yellow and others a green veil, and
lugubrious draperies on which were miniature paintings descriptive of
the infernal torments; others wore dunces' caps, which excited the
cruelty of the people. As the victims proceeded to the pyre a crowd
thirsting for the sight and sound of martyrdom, drunken with the heat
of the sun, acclaimed the holocaust beneath the impassive tribune of
the Inquisitors. Farce and grotesque invention mingled with tragedy,
Oriental luxury with a mystic terror; and the great lady who at night
would be dancing the pavane in her salon now devoutly sniffed the
acrid stench of charred flesh and blood.
[1] Vol. iv. p. 285; Paris, 1811.
[2] The Portuguese colonisation of Brazil was less rigid, and the
commercial isolation less rigorous; and religion was neither
fanatical nor so powerful as in the Spanish colonies.
{58}
CHAPTER III
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles--Monarchy and the
Republic--The leaders: Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King
Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar--Bolivar the Liberator: his
ideas and his deeds.
II. Revolutionary ideology--Influence of Rousseau--The Rights of
Man--The example of the United States--English ideas in the
constitutional projects of Miranda and Bolivar--European action:
Canning.
I. Oppressed by theocracy and monopoly, by privileged castes and
Peninsular functionaries, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies aspired
towards independence. The English provinces of the North separated
themselves from England for practical reasons; in the struggles of
the South we see a double economic and political motive. In some
vice-royalties, such as that of La Plata, the struggle was due
chiefly to an opposition of interests; in other provinces, as in
Venezuela, ideas of political reform were predominant.
Writers have attempted to explain the unanimity of the liberative
movement by a "historical materialism" analogous to that of Karl Marx
and Labriola; but the reality, richer and more complex, does not
submit itself to this logical simplicity. The revolution was not
merely an economic protest; it nourished concrete social ambitions.
An equalising movement, it aimed at the destruction of privileges, of
the arbitrary Spanish hierarchy, and finally, when {59} its levelling
instinct was aroused and irritated, the destruction of authority to
the profit of anarchy. The Creoles, deprived of all political
function, revolted; in matters of economics they condemned excessive
taxation and monopoly; in matters of politics they attacked slavery,
the Inquisition, and moral tutelage. Charles III. had recognised, in
1783, in spite of the counsels of his minister Aranda, the
independence of the United States, which were to serve his own
colonies as precedent, and he expelled the Jesuits from America, the
defence of the Indians against the oppression of Spanish governors.
The corruption of the courts, the sale of offices, and the tyranny of
the viceroys, all added to the causes of discontent, disturbance, and
poverty.
The Creoles opposed nationality to patriotism, the half-castes
opposed democracy to the oligarchies. These were two phases of a
great revolution. The first battle was over in 1830, and the
conflict between the privileged class and the democracy commenced.
It reached its culminating point about 1860, with the enfranchisement
of the slaves, but it continued during the rest of the century and
engendered an interminable civil discord.
The Spanish provinces, subjected to a political absolutism,
transformed themselves into republics, a change of system that was
not effected without a moral crisis. Even while fighting their
battles the Creoles sought uneasily for a new mould into which to
pour their liberalism. In the face of increasing disorder they had
thoughts of a monarchy, of an oligarchic republic, of a permanent
presidency: of various forms which might possess the necessary
stability. Three phases may be distinguished in the movement of
liberation: the colonial, the monarchical, and the republican.
During the first phase the colonists manifested their loyalty to the
Peninsular monarchy.
{60}
The first colonial _juntas_, in 1809 and 1810, desired the Spanish
suzerainty to be preserved. They invoked the feudal tie which bound
them to the monarch, the imprisoned Ferdinand VII. The French were
triumphant in the Peninsula, but they swore fidelity to the absent
king. Vassalage having been destroyed by the foreign invasion, the
colonies, in accordance with the law of _las partidas_, acquired the
right of self-government; they were reserved for the king. The
_juntas_ disguised their radical ambitions under legal forms. Their
effort towards traditionalism was perhaps sincere on some occasions,
but the current of revolution, which was gathering itself together in
the womb of history, destroyed these provisional vistas. Thus the
_cabildo_ of Buenos-Ayres declared that "no obligations would be
recognised other than those due to his person" (the King's).
Spaniards and Americans joined in taking an oath of fidelity to
Ferdinand VII. The captain-general of Venezuela, deprived of his
functions in 1810, was replaced by a "Supreme Junta," preserving the
rights of the sovereign, and the oath of fidelity to the monarch was
observed. In 1809 the Junta of La Paz, which emancipated the
Creoles, and the revolt of Quito, recognised the same royal tutelage.
The Chilian regulations of 1811 enacted that the executive power
should govern in the name of the king. In 1821 Iturbide proclaimed
his submission to the king upon founding the empire of Mexico.
It was an ephemeral loyalty, given to a king who had abdicated, who
had suffered exile, and who, after the liberal Cortes of Cadiz,
re-established a despotic government. These immense colonies did not
revolt merely in order to restore an incapable prince to his throne.
While newly-created generals were winning battles political autonomy
was becoming a fact. The Creoles, who had directed the revolutionary
movement, concealed their bold ambitions {61} from a populace that
was passive, a slave to routine, and largely royalist.
[Illustration: GABINO BARREDA. Great Mexican Educationalist GENERAL
JOSÉ ANTONIO PAEZ. President of Venezuela (1831-1935 and 1838-1842)]
The American _élite_ were monarchists. In liberating a continent
their generals and statesmen professed to endow the new nations with
the stability of a monarchy. Iturbide was Emperor of Mexico. The
lieutenants of Bolivar offered the latter a crown; Paez persistently
held the imperial ambition before him. Belgrano, in 1816, at the
Congress of Tucuman, stated that the best form of government for the
Argentine was "a tempered monarchy"; and many deputies in that
Assembly demanded the restoration of the throne of the Incas and of
its traditional seat at Cuzco: in short, the creation of an American
dynasty.
Bolivar wished to see Colombia and Spanish America constitutional
monarchies with foreign princes. Ministers were to exercise a policy
"of vigilance or defence, of mediation or influence, of protection or
tutelage" on the part of the great European states in respect of the
Colombian nation. Other partisans of the monarchy were Flores,
Sucre, Monteagudo, Garcia del Rio, Riva-Agüero, and the Argentine
director Posadas, who wished to establish that form of government "on
solid and permanent foundations" in the provinces of La Plata; Dean
Funes, the Colombians Nariño, Mosquera, Briceno Mendez, and others.
The founders of South American independence understood that only a
strong government could save the new nations from demagogy, anarchy,
warfare between military chiefs, and untimely provincial ambitions.
They wanted autonomy without licence, monarchy without despotism, and
political solidity without Spanish suzerainty.
Despite this conviction on the part of the revolutionaries, South
America saw the birth of the Republic. Alberdi wrote that its origin
was involuntary, and that it was the result of European {62}
indifference and Yankee egoism; more than involuntary, it was
spontaneous. The demagogues and the crowd accepted it as the
negation of monarchy. The latter symbolised the Gothic despotism,
the old humiliating domination, the persistence of castes and
municipal privilege. In the popular mind, naturally of a simplifying
tendency, monarchy was slavery; anarchy and the republic were
liberty; there was no distinction between the King of Spain and other
princes, between the absolutism of Ferdinand VII. and the
constitutional monarchy of England. A universal hatred condemned all
kings. The republic was not so much an organisation or a political
system as a negation, and indissolubly bound up with it were the
cardinal ideas of country, equality, and liberty.
Monarchy offered America stability and independence; it would have
prevented civil war and avoided half a century of anarchy. It was
the sole American tradition. The battles of the Revolution gave the
hegemony to ambitious generals; against these a central government,
above the quarrels of parties, would have defended liberal
institutions. A constitutional prince would have given these divided
nations unity and continuity, under the pressure of which ambitions,
parties, and classes would finally have found their places. The
social elevation of half-castes and mulattos would have been less
violent under such a system.
Finally, the American monarchy would have entered into the group of
Occidental nations, and the Monroe doctrine would not have isolated
her politically from the Europe that sent her men, money, and ideas.
But would it have been possible to found respectable and lasting
dynasties in America? The fall of two empires, Mexico and Brazil,
tells us that republicanism is obscurely implicated with the {63}
destinies of the country. The new States had no nobles to surround a
prince, nor could they have supported the luxury of a court.
The equalitarian instinct condemned all hierarchies in America, and
there were no princes to become creators of nationality as in modern
Europe. The viceroys and semi-feudal barons exercised an ephemeral
empire and were not Americans; the colonies were used to frequent
changes of authority. To these reasons in favour of a republic we
must add the danger that foreign monarchies might have involved the
continent in the diplomatic complications of Europe. Perhaps even
the Holy Alliance would have led the colonies back to Spain, as a
prodigal child is led back to its parents.
Bolivar expounded the defects of a foreign monarchy. To the imported
king he would have preferred the irremovable president and the
English senate, and if in the face of advancing anarchy he glanced at
the question of European princes he soon understood that it could
never prove a radical solution of the problems of the New World.
"There is no power more difficult to maintain than that of a new
prince" he told the Bolivians. There were in America "neither great
nobles nor great prelates, and without these two props no monarchy is
permanent." To the Liberator kings symbolised tyranny; he connected
independence with republicanism, and believed that nature itself
would oppose the monarchical system in America. In 1829, in a letter
to Vergera, the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, he expressed
his arguments against the monarchy with great precision: "No foreign
prince," he wrote, "would accept as his patrimony a principality
which was anarchical and without guarantees; the national debts and
the poverty of the country leave no means to entertain a prince and a
court, even miserably; the lower classes would {64} take alarm,
fearing the effects of aristocracy and inequality; the generals and
the ambitious of every stamp could never support the idea of seeing
themselves deprived of the supreme command; the new nobility
indispensable to a monarchy would issue from the mass of the people,
with every species of jealousy on the one hand and of pride on the
other. No one would patiently endure such a miserable aristocracy,
steeped in ignorance and poverty and full of ridiculous pretensions."
The creator of five nations, Bolivar was profoundly conscious of the
new social body, a disturbed and disorganised mass. He understood
that the ambition of his lieutenants and the equalitarian tendency of
the mob would oppose an American monarchy or a foreign principality.
Iturbide and Maximilian, two emperors dethroned and shot, have
justified his objections.
England, who might have founded constitutional monarchies in America,
in spite of the Holy Alliance, pursued a commercial rather than a
political policy. In 1829 Lord Aberdeen announced that his
Government would not permit the establishment of a French or English
prince, nor a prince of any other European dynasty, in Colombia. He
would accept only a Spanish prince, or the monarchy of Bolivar
himself.[1] The Conde de Aranda proposed to the King of Spain that
America should be divided into nations governed by the Infantas, but
his plan was not followed up. Once the independence of America was a
fact, and the despotism of Ferdinand VII. re-established, no Spanish
prince could be acceptable either to Argentina or Colombia. In the
face of European indifference the tentative efforts of the
monarchists spent themselves in America, and the continent acquired
its definitive individuality. In opposition to the monarchies by
divine right of the {65} Old World a liberal world came to birth;
incoherent and incipient nationalities adopted equalitarian
constitutions, which were, in the distant future, to flood their
deserted territories with immense moral and material forces.
From Mexico to Chili the same revolutionary fervour engendered the
partial movements of 1808 to 1811. Conspirators similar to the
Italian _carbonari_, lodges in which men spoke of liberty in the
midst of ingenuous rites, and university students who had read the
Encyclopædists, were preparing the great crusade. The year 1809 was
the first of the Revolution. On the 1st of January there was a
popular rising in Buenos-Ayres; on the 16th of July a revolt at La
Paz; on the 2nd of August a meeting took place at Quito. In 1806 an
English expedition attacked Buenos-Ayres. At a venture, on his way
home from Africa, an officer who entertained ambitions in the
direction of new territory and new sources of wealth--Sir Home
Popham--invaded the capital of the viceroyalty of La Plata. This
city was defended not by the legitimate Spanish authority, but by a
noble _caudillo_, who was soon to be a popular viceroy: Santiago de
Liniers, the hero of the "Reconquest." In this struggle against the
imperialist invader the Argentine people found the first revelation
of nationality. First they freed themselves from the English; then
from the Spaniards. On the 25th of May, 1810, the _cabildo abierto_
(the municipality and the people), who had united on the 22nd,
demanded the dismissal of the viceroy, and elected a governmental and
revolutionary _junta_, patriotic but undecided. As early as 1808, in
Montevideo, a _junta_ formed in the heat of a violent popular
commotion had turned against the viceroy of Buenos-Ayres.
Spain implacably condemned these precursors of the Independence. She
exiled or strangled the rebels, {66} Zela in Peru; Dr. Espejo in
Ecuador; Gual y España in Venezuela; two indomitable priests, Hidalgo
and Morelos, in Mexico; Father Camilo Henriquez and Dr. Martinez de
Rosas in Chili; Tiradentes in Brazil; Nariño in Colombia; all,
between 1780 and 1810, struggled against the governors and viceroys,
and in their liberal enthusiasm were precursors of the audacious wars
of the future. The most notable of these was a Byronic individual,
the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda. He was born in Caracas in 1756.
He had a brilliant career in Europe, knew ministers and monarchs, was
the favourite of Catherine of Russia, fought beside Dumouriez in the
armies of the French Revolution, went to the United States with the
legion which Spain sent thither to fight in the cause of American
independence, obtained the sanction of Pitt to lead revolutionary
expeditions against the Spanish authorities in Venezuela, and was
concerned in all the liberative movements of his time, whether in
Caracas or Buenos-Ayres. He formed an alliance between the destinies
of the continent and the ambition of England, the gold of the London
bankers, and the interests of English merchants, and so contributed,
even more than by his abortive enterprises, to the cause of American
liberty.
The cycle of the Precursors closed and that of the Liberators opened.
The Spanish reaction had not vanquished the revolutionary principle.
The first _caudillos_ were dead; they were replaced by fresh leaders:
the Directors, energetic and impassioned: Belgrano and San Martin in
the Argentine, Dr. Francia in Paraguay, Artigas in Uruguay, Iturbide
in Mexico, General Morazan in Central America, King Pedro I. in
Brazil, and Bolivar, the liberator of five republics.
[Illustration: GENERAL FRANCISCO DE MIRANDA (VENEZUELA). Who
prepared for the liberation of his country. To face p. 66.]
Belgrano, an economic reformer, a supporter of commercial liberty, a
founder of schools, was the {67} leader of the Argentine
emancipation. He fought in Paraguay, where he suggested autonomy; in
Uruguay, in the Argentine Sierra, and on the frontiers of Upper Peru.
He was not a fortunate leader; he won the battle of Tucuman, but he
was defeated by the royalists in other battles: Vilcapugio and
Ayohuma. He retired, then returned to the struggle; took part in the
civil wars against the dissident leaders, defended the constitutional
monarchy at the Congress of Tucuman, and from 1808 to 1820
personified the uncertain progress of the Argentine revolution.
San Martin was his superior as a successful fighter, and in the scope
of his action as liberator; he was a continental figure. A great
general, able to organise armies and lead them to victory, his mind
was methodical and conservative; he disliked abstractions, and was
concrete and positive in his plans. He delivered Chili and
contributed to the independence of Peru. While others were drawing
up political programmes he was winning battles. He recalls
Washington by the disinterested nobility of his character; he refused
power after liberating two nations, and condemned himself to exile,
being surrounded by ambitious generals who quarrelled for the supreme
power. In action he was simple and orderly, and progressive; he
defeated the Spaniards at San Lorenzo in 1813, giving proof of
admirable warlike qualities; he then led the army of the North which
fought in Upper Peru, and became the intendant of an Argentine
province, Cuyo, in 1814. There he formed an army, and proposed to
cross the Andes to the aid of the Chilian patriots. According to a
French military critic, M. Charles Malo, "the passage of the Andes
was in no way surpassed by the more famous passage of the Alps by the
French." The summits of the Cordilleras are over twelve thousand
feet high; and it was across them that {68} the army of San Martin,
decimated and heroic, victorious over cold and fatigue, made its way
into Chili. From that time forward the Argentine leader was an
American general. At the foot of the Cordilleras, on the flanks of
Chacabuco, he gained a decisive battle over the Spaniards (1817). He
dislodged them from the summits which they occupied and entered
Santiago in triumph, and was there proclaimed supreme director of
Chili. He accepted the command of the armies, and was thereafter
victorious at Maipo (1818), where his artillery put the royalists to
flight. Chilian independence once assured, he aspired to fresh
victories in Peru. American autonomy was his unfaltering ambition.
The Peruvian viceroyalty was the centre of the Spanish power, the
treasury and arsenal of the royalists. Bolivar, in Colombia, and San
Martin, in Chili, understood that all their victories would remain
futile if they did not defeat Spain in the richest and most
impregnable of her domains. Lord Cochrane, an English privateer, who
had seen service in the Mediterranean, formed a squadron in Chilian
waters for the purpose of dominating the Pacific (1819). He defeated
the Spanish fleet at Callao, and declared a blockade of the Peruvian
ports as far as Guayaquil. During this time San Martin was making
ready, with his Argentine and Chilian troops, for his expedition of
liberation. The Peruvian revolutionaries were awaiting him. He
landed at Pisco (1820) with his army, and proclaimed the independence
of Peru at Lima, which the Spaniards had deserted, on the 21st of
July, 1821. Appointed Protector of the Republic which he had
founded, he promulgated a provisional Constitution. Then from the
North came another Liberator, Bolivar, to discuss with San Martin, in
that mysterious interview at Guayaquil, the destinies of the Spanish
New World.
[Illustration: SAN MARTIN. General of Argentine, Liberator of Chile,
and Protector of Peru. To face p. 68.]
San Martin, stoical and silent, yielded to the {69} impetuosity of
Bolivar, abandoned Peru to him, the theatre of his future deeds of
prowess, renounced his position (1822), and left America. His
ambition, like his genius, was circumscribed; he preferred military
glory to dictatorships; he believed in the benefits of foreign
monarchies: he could organise armies, but he was powerless before
anarchy.
Bolivar is the greatest of the American liberators. He surpasses
some in ambition, others in heroism, and all in multiform activity,
in prophetic insight, and in power. He was, amid the glorious
generals and rival _caudillos_, the hero of Carlyle, "source of
light, of intimate and native originality, virility, nobility, and
heroism, in contact with whom every soul feels that it is in its
element." All powers yielded to him. "Often," writes General
Santander, "I go to him full of rancour, and only to see him disarms
me, and I go away full of admiration." The people, with an
infallible instinct, understood his heroic mission and worshipped
him; the clergy praised him, and the glory of Bolivar was sung in the
Catholic churches. He was statesman and warrior; he could criticise
Olmedo's ode on the battle of Junin, decide the make-up of a journal,
draw a plan of battle, organise legions, draft statutes, give
diplomatic advice, and direct great campaigns; his genius was as rich
and as various as that of Napoleon. Five nations, which he had
snatched from the rule of Spain, seemed to him a narrow theatre for
his magnificent career; he conceived a vast plan of Continental
federation. At Panama he assembled the ambassadors of ten republics,
and was already dreaming of an amphictyonic league of nations which
should influence the destinies of the world.
Simon Bolivar was born at Caracas on the 24th of July, 1783, of a
noble family of Vascongadas. In his youth he travelled through
Europe in company {70} with his tutor, Simon Rodriguez: an austere
mentor. He studied the Latin classics, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
Holbach, and the Encyclopædists. Before his tutor, at Rome, on the
Monte Sacro, he swore, like Hannibal of old, to consecrate his life
to the liberation of his native country. He was nervous, impetuous,
sensual--traits of the American Creole of the South; active and
persevering in his undertakings, as an heir to the tenacity of the
Biscayan should be; generous to a fault, and valiant to the verge of
folly. He had the bearing and the features of a typical _caudillo_;
the forehead high, the back straight; a luminous glance that
impressed both friends and enemies, a resolute air, and eloquent
gestures. His was a nature shaped for action, unhesitating and
immediate; he had the face and the genius of an Imperator. At
Caracas, after his long years of travel, he kept his Roman oath.
From 1813 to 1830 he fought against the Spaniards and against his own
generals, indefatigable in his task of liberation. Two terrible
Iberian warriors, Boves and Morillo, carried "war to the death" into
Venezuela. Bolivar opposed them, aided by Bermudez Piar, Mariño, and
Paez, lieutenants alternately for and against him during his warlike
career. In the Antilles he made ready for many expeditions. He was
appointed supreme leader, provisional president, and director of the
country; his generals doubted him, were jealous of his fame, and
conspired against his authority, but Bolivar continued the war in the
midst of the anarchy of Colombia.
[Illustration: BOLIVAR IN 1810. To face p. 71.]
He routed the Spaniards at Boyaca in 1819, and at Carabobo in 1821,
and entered Caracas victorious. Colombia liberated, he turned to
Quito. One of his lieutenants, Sucre, a man heroic and noble as the
heroes of antiquity, won fresh battles at Bombona and Pinchincha
(1822). Peru appealed to the Liberator, to "Bolivar, the hero of
America."
{71}
The Colombian _caudillo_ did not ignore the perils of the
undertaking; the Spanish troops were good fighters; they had been
victorious, and were not without resources in the Sierra; and the
Peruvian and Colombian allies were inferior to them in experience and
cohesion. "This matter of the war in Peru demands an enormous effort
and inexhaustible resources," he wrote to Sucre. Impelled by his
genius, he accepted the offer of the Peruvians, for he did not forget
that "the loss of Peru would necessarily involve that of the whole of
the south of Colombia." The Congress of Lima invested him with "the
supreme military authority throughout the territory of the Republic."
Two great battles, Junin and Ayacucho (1824), assured the
independence of America. At Junin Bolivar led a cavalry charge which
decided the day, which was followed by a hand-to-hand fight, not a
single musket-shot being heard above the ring and clash of the
sabres. Sucre was the hero of Ayacucho: it was he who devised the
admirable plan of battle. The patriots were 6,000, the Spaniards
9,000. The Spanish artillery was superior to that of the allies.
The enemy opened fire, descending the hillsides; the two lines of
battle drew together. Night brought a truce; the officers of the two
armies chatted in friendly groups before the coming conflict. On the
morning of the 9th of December a charge of cavalry under General
Cordova scattered the Spanish battalions: whereupon the royalist
reserve came into action. The left wing of the allies wavered, but
was reinforced, and the victory was complete. The Spanish army
capitulated, its generals surrendered, and Peru was abandoned by its
ancient rulers. Bolivar praised the heroism of Sucre, "the father of
Ayacucho, the saviour of the sons of the sun," and Lima lauded the
Liberator to the skies, proclaimed him the father and saviour of
Peru, and elected him permanent President. After {72} these
victories the capture of Potosi by the troops of Sucre and the
reduction of the fortress of Callao, where the _penates_ of Spain
were guarded, terminated Bolivar's magnificent career. His last
years were melancholy, like a tropical twilight. Paez and Santander
revolted against him; he was given the supreme power and deprived of
it; he was offered a crown, and was the victim of conspiracy. The
Liberator died, abandoned, a tragic figure, at Santa Marta, on the
deserted Colombian coast, like Napoleon at St. Helena, at the age of
forty-seven, on the 17th of December, 1830.
Statesman and general, Bolivar was even greater in the assembly than
on the field of battle. Equal to Sucre and San Martin as tactician,
as politician he was the greatest of all the _caudillos_. He was the
thinker of the Revolution; he drafted statutes, analysed the social
condition of the democracies he liberated, and foretold the future
with the precision of a seer. The enemy of ideologists, like the
great First Consul, an idealist and a romantic, a lover of syntheses
in the region of ideas and of politics, he never forgot the rude
environment of his deeds. His Latin dreams were tempered by a Saxon
realism. A disciple of Rousseau, he wished "the will of the people
to be the only power existing on the face of the earth"; but in the
face of an anarchical democracy he sought uneasily for a moral power.
In 1823 he thought that the sovereignty of the people was not
illimitable: "justice is its basis, and perfect utility sets a term
to it." A republican--"since Napoleon has been a monarch," he said,
he who so admired Napoleon, "his glory seems to me a gleam from
Hell"--he wished, despite the servile admiration of his friends, to
be neither a Napoleon nor an Iturbide. He disdained all imperial
pomp; he wished to be merely the soldier of the Independence. He
made a profound analysis of the failings of a future {73} monarchy in
the old Spanish colonies. At the Conference of Guayaquil (1822) San
Martin represented the monarchical tendency, Bolivar the republican
principle. Their opposition was irreconcilable, said Mitre, the
Argentine historian, for one was working for the Argentine hegemony
and the other for the Colombian: the first respected the
individuality of the separate peoples and would only accept
intervention in exceptional cases; the second wished to unite the
various peoples according to a "plan of absorption and monocracy."[2]
This antagonism called for a superior point of agreement, a
synthesis, for the Colombian doctrine brought with it as a reaction
the premature formation of unstable democracies, and the Argentine
theory favoured indifference, egoism, and the isolation of nations
united by race, tradition, and history.
The genius, aristocratic pride, and ambition of Bolivar impelled him
towards autocracy. He exercised a dictatorship and believed in the
benefits of a permanent presidency. "In republics," he stated, "the
executive power should be of the strongest, for all conspire against
it; while in monarchies the legislative power should be supreme, for
all conspire in favour of the monarch. Hence the necessity of giving
a republican magistrate more authority than a constitutional prince."
He did not forget the dangers of an autocratic presidency; but he
feared anarchy, "the ferocious hydra of discordant anarchy," which
grew like a noxious vegetation, stifling his triumphant work. He
regarded with amazement the contradictions of American life: disorder
leads to dictatorship, and the latter is the enemy of democracy.
"The permanence of power in a single individual," writes the
Liberator, "has often marked the end of democratic governments." Yet
"indefinite liberty, absolute democracy, are {74} snares in which all
republican hopes come to grief." Liberty without licence, authority
without tyranny: such was the ideal of Bolivar. In vain did he
struggle single-handed amid ambitious generals and a disordered
people; before he died he understood the vanity of his efforts.
"Those who have served the cause of the Revolution," he cried, "have
ploughed the sand.... If it were possible that a portion of the
world should return to its primitive chaos, such would be the last
phase of America." He denounced the moral poverty of these new
republics with the severity of a Hebrew prophet. "There is no faith
in America, neither in men nor in nations. Their treaties are waste
paper; their constitutions are paper and ink; their elections are
battles; liberty is anarchy, and life a torment."
This pessimism, the _credo_ of his maturity, was born of his
implacable analysis of American failings. Bolivar understood the
original traits and the vices of the new continent. "We are," he
said, "a small human family; we possess a world of our own,
surrounded by vast oceans; new in almost every art and science,
although, in a certain sense, old in the usages of civil society.
The present state of America recalls the fall of the Roman Empire,
when each part formed a distinct political system, in conformity with
its interests, its situation, or its corporations." "We shall not
see, nor the generation following us," he wrote in 1822, "the triumph
of the America we are founding: I regard America as in the chrysalis.
There will be a metamorphosis in the physical life of its
inhabitants; there will finally be a new caste, of all the races,
which will result in the homogeneity of the people."
While scholars were constructing Utopias, imitating, in their
provisional statutes, the federal constitution of the United States,
and legislating for an ideal democracy, Bolivar was studying the
social {75} conditions of America. "We are not Europeans," he wrote,
"nor Indians either; but a kind of half-way species between the
aborigines and the Spaniards; American by birth, European by right,
we find ourselves forced to dispute our titles of possession with the
natives, and to maintain ourselves in the country which saw our birth
in spite of the opposition of invaders: so that our case is all the
more extraordinary and complicated." "Let us be careful not to
forget that our race is neither European nor North American; but
rather a composite of America and Africa, than an emanation from
Europe, since Spain herself ceased to be European by virtue of her
African [Arab] blood, her institutions, and her character."
The Liberator proposed political institutions suited to a continent
which in its territory and race and history was original. He was in
favour of a tutelary authority: "The American States need the care of
paternal governments which will heal the wounds and sores of
despotism and war." He loathed federalism and the division of power:
"Let us abandon the federal forms of government: they are not suited
to us. Such a form of society is a regularised anarchy, or rather a
law which implicitly prescribes the necessity of dissociating and
ruining the State in all its members.... Let us abandon the
Triumvirate of the Executive Power, by concentrating it in the person
of a President, and conferring on him a sufficient authority to
enable him to maintain himself and contend against the inconveniences
inherent in our recent situation." He taught valuable lessons in
public wisdom: "To form a stable Government we must have the basis of
a national spirit which has for its object a uniform inclination
towards two capital points: to moderate the general will and limit
the public authority. The blood of our fellow-citizens presents many
diversities: let us {76} mix it in order to unify it; our
constitution has divided its powers: let us confound them in order to
unite them.... We ought to induce immigration of the peoples of
North America and Europe, in order that they may settle here and
bring us their arts and sciences. These advantages, an independent
government, free schools, and intermarriage with Europeans and
Anglo-Americans, will totally change the character of the country,
and will render it well-informed and prosperous.... We lack
mechanics and agriculturists, and it is these that the country has
need of to ensure advancement and progress." In Bolivar's writings
are to be found the best programmes of political and social reform
for America; he was the first sociologist of these romantic
democracies.
Carabobo and Junin were his great military triumphs; the letter from
Jamaica (1815), the constitutional project of Angostura (1819), the
statute of Bolivia (1825), and the Congress of Panama (1826) were his
most admirable political creations. To unite the American nations in
a permanent assembly; to oppose Anglo-Saxon power by Latin force, the
necessary factor of Continental equilibrium; to labour in favour of
unity and synthesis: such was the aim of the abortive Assembly of
Panama. The letter from Jamaica was a prophecy which the docile
reality was to accomplish during the century. "From the nature of
the different regions of the country, from the wealth, population,
and character of the Mexicans," said the Liberator, "I imagine that
they will attempt in the beginning to establish a representative
Republic in which the Executive will have very wide attributes and
will be concentred in a single person, who, if he governs with wisdom
and justice, will attain almost naturally to irremovable authority."
"If the preponderant party is military or aristocratic, it will be in
favour of a monarchy, which {77} will probably be limited and
constitutional in the first place, but will very soon become
absolute." The presidency of Porfirio Diaz, the empire of Iturbide
and Maximilian, supported by the monarchist party, and even the
dictatorship of Juarez, and the powers which the Mexican
constitutions have conferred on the head of the State, all confirmed
the predictions of Bolivar. "The States of the Isthmus of Panama as
far as Guatemala will form a federation." This federation existed
until 1842, and to-day the Central American republics are slowly
returning to it. Panama was for the Liberator the emporium of the
world. "Its canals will shorten the distances of the world, will
strengthen the ordinary ties between Europe, America, and Asia, and
will bring to this happy region the tribute of the four quarters of
the globe. There alone, perhaps, the capital of the world might be
set, as Constantine pretended to make of Byzantium the capital of the
ancient world."
"New Granada will unite itself to Venezuela in order to form a
Central Republic, whose capital will be Maracaibo, or a new city,
which, under the name of Las Casas (in honour of that hero of
philanthropy), will spring up on the confines of the two countries,
on the superb harbour of Bahia-Honda." Bolivar kept Venezuela and
New Granada united until 1830; then new leaders, such as General
Mosquera, wished to establish the federation which even to-day is
still the object of the politicians of Ecuador, Venezuela, and
Colombia. "At Buenos-Ayres there will be a central government, in
which the military power will be supreme as a consequence of
intestine divisions and external war." This is a prophecy of
Argentine history up to the advent of Rosas, the struggles of the
_caudillos_, and the anarchy of 1820. "This constitution will
necessarily degenerate into an oligarchy or a monocracy." And a
plutocratic group did actually rule in Buenos-Ayres, {78} and over
all rose the monocracy of Rosas. "Chili is called by the nature of
her situation, by the simple customs of her virtuous inhabitants, and
the example of her neighbours, the proud Republicans of Araucania, to
enjoy the benefits of the just and mild laws of a republic. If any
republic lasts long in America I incline to think it will be the
Chilian.... Chili will not alter her laws, manners, or practices;
she will maintain the uniformity of her political and religious
opinions." The long stability of the Araucanian nation, the
homogeneity of its population, the lasting nature of its political
charter, the conservative character of its institutions, the slow and
steady development of Chili until the war of the Pacific and the
revolution of 1891, fully realised the prophecies of Bolivar. "Peru
includes two elements inimical to all just and liberal
government--gold and slavery. The first corrupts everything; the
second is corrupt in itself. The soul of a serf rarely succeeds in
taking liberty sanely. It rushes furiously into tumult, or lives
humiliated in chains. Although these rules are applicable to all
America, I believe they apply with most reason to Lima. There the
rich will not tolerate the democracy, and the slaves and the
liberated slaves will not tolerate the aristocracy; the first will
prefer the tyranny of a single person, in order to avoid popular
persecutions and to establish a rule that will at least be pacific."
The evolution of Peru proved the profound truth of this statement.
The oligarchy accepted military dictators, who upheld property and
preserved peace. As early as 1815, when America was still a Spanish
domain, Bolivar, watching the spectacle of social forces in conflict,
announced not merely the immediate struggles, but the secular
development of ten nations. He was a great prophet. To-day, a
century later, the continent is fulfilling his predictions as though
they were a fate strangely laid upon it.
{79}
At Angostura the Liberator placed before the Colombians a draft of a
constitution. The bases of this constitution were republican
government, the sovereignty of the people, the division of powers,
civil liberty, and the abolition of slavery and of privilege. In
this remarkable essay we find the theories of Montesquieu, Rousseau,
and Bentham, the realism of England and the democratic enthusiasm of
France. The legislative power is to be composed of two chambers: the
first popularly elected, and the Senate hereditary, according to the
English tradition, formed by the Liberators who would found the
nobility of America. The president is a kind of constitutional king;
his ministers, who are to be responsible, will govern. The judiciary
will acquire stability and independence. A new authority, the Moral
Power, completes the political structure. This Moral Power of the
Liberator's Republic is an imitation of the Athenian Areopagus and
the Roman censors: it is to be responsible for education and ensure
respect for morality and the law; "it chastises vice by opprobrium
and infamy, and rewards the public virtues by honour and glory."
Bolivar had a tendency towards moral and intellectual despotism: this
tribunal was to compel good behaviour. Later the Liberator condemned
the teachings of Bentham in the Universities of Colombia, and
accepted Catholicism as an instrument of the Government. Article 2
of the Angostura draft states that "ingratitude, disrespect, and
disloyalty toward parents, husbands, the aged, the magistrates, and
citizens recognised and proclaimed as virtuous; the breaking of the
given word, in no matter what connection; insensibility before public
misfortunes or those affecting friends or immediate relations, are
recommended especially to the vigilance of this moral power." This
was paternal tyranny, exercised over the feelings, the conduct, and
the passions.
{80}
Bolivar created a republic--Upper Peru, which was to call itself
Bolivia in memory of its founder. He gave it the constitution he
wished, but in vain, to apply to Peru and Colombia. He developed
there the ideas expounded in the Angostura draft, and thereby defined
his ideal of a republic; it was, in fact, a monarchy in which the
power was hereditary. The president must be irremovable and
irresponsible, "for in systems without hierarchy there must be--more
than in others--a fixed point upon which magistrates and citizens,
men and things, may revolve." Against anarchy, a fixed magistracy;
against tyranny, independent powers; the judiciary elected by
Congress among the citizens nominated by the electoral colleges; the
legislature composed of three chambers: tribunes, senators, and
censors. The first exercise their functions for four years, the
second for eight, and the last are permanent, "and exercise a moral
and political control"; they constitute the "moral power." With this
system the Liberator avoided political anarchy and the destructive
ambition of the _caudillos_, constituting two stable forces in the
midst of shifting democracies--the censors and the permanent
president. He adapted unity and permanence--characteristics of the
constitutional monarchy--to republicanism. The generals quickly
realised that this constitution was a menace to them, and rose
against it in Bolivia, in Peru, and in Colombia.
The founders of the Independence were surrounded by brilliant
leaders, such as O'Higgins, the Carreras, Güemes, La Mar, Santander,
Santa-Cruz, and Sucre, admirable as hero and statesman; but above
them, dominating them all like an oak in the midst of saplings,
according to the classic image, towered Bolivar, Liberator of
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
[Illustration: BOLIVAR. The Liberator of Venezuela, New Granada,
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. To face p. 80.]
He was the genius of the South American Revolution. {81} He felt
himself dominated by "the dæmon of war." Like all great tormented
spirits since Socrates, he obeyed, in his impetuous campaigns, an
interior divinity. In his acts and his speeches, in his dignity and
his faith, there was a notable grandeur. He worked for eternity,
accumulating dreams and Utopias, dominating the hostile earth and
censorious man; he was the Superman of Nietzsche, the representative
man of Emerson. He belonged to the ideal family of Napoleon and
Cæsar; a sublime creator of nations; greater than San Martin, greater
than Washington.
II. From France, as emissaries of the ideal, came the doctrines of
the Revolution. In the Encyclopædia we find the intellectual origin
of the South American upheavals. The patricians in the archaic
colonial cities smiled upon Voltaire; they adopted the essential
ideals of Rousseau, the social contract, the sovereignty of the
people, and the optimism which conceded supreme rights to the human
spirit untainted by culture. Bolivar had read the _Contrat Social_
in a volume that had formed part of the library of Napoleon; by will
he left this book to an intimate friend. The great, sounding
promises--democracy, sovereignty, human rights, equality,
liberalism--stirred the patriotic tribunes like fragments of a new
gospel. The masonic lodges worked in silence against the power of
Spain and Portugal, and upheld the humanitarian ideas of French
philosophy. In the lodge of Lautaro, San Martin and Alvear received
their initiation as revolutionaries. In Mexico the lodge of York was
transformed into a Jacobin club. In 1794 Antonio Nariño, the
forerunner of Colombian independence, translated the _Rights of Man_.
The Venezuelan Miranda fought in the revolutionary armies of France;
the Peruvian Pablo de Olavide, the friend of Voltaire, took part in
the Convention; {82} Raynal, Condorcet, and Mably had American
disciples. Montesquieu was read in the universities as an antidote
to the absolutism of the viceroys; Beccaria, Filangeri, and Adam
Smith were among the prophets. Not only did French thought
predominate, but the Revolution, the Terror, the Jacobin madness, the
eloquence of the Girondins, the dictatorship of the First Consul, and
the Empire, even, all exercised an immense influence upon the rising
democracies of America. Iturbide, Emperor of Mexico, imitated
Napoleon; in Buenos-Ayres there was a Directoire, as in Paris; there
were consuls in Paraguay, and Rivadavia was a Girondist lost among
the _gauchos_.
To the aid of French theory came the example of North America;
Washington and the federal system served the Iberian statesmen as
models. Belgrano exalted the first President of the United States as
a hero "worthy of the admiration of our own age and of the
generations to come--an example of moderation and true patriotism."
He translated the _Farewell Address_, which was his favourite
reading. Bolivar wished to be the Washington of South America. One
of the forerunners of Brazilian independence, José Joaquin de Maia,
had known Jefferson in Paris, and informed him that "the Brazilians
considered the North American Revolution as the expression of their
desires, and they counted on the assistance of the United States."
The first South American constitutions betrayed this double
influence; they adopted the policy of federalism, copying the
political organisation of the United States, and were inspired by
French ideas. They destroyed the privileges of the nobility, and
established equality of caste. This was the case with the first
Venezuelan constitution, despite the efforts of Miranda and
Bolivar--opponents of federation. The Chilian constitution of 1822
and the Peruvian constitution of {83} 1823 conferred a conservative
function upon the Senate, as in the North American Republic; and the
first Chilian statutes established federation. In Mexico and in
Central America the federal principle dominated the constitutions of
1824 and 1826. The Argentine constitution of 1819 was a copy "for
the united provinces of South America of the Declaration of
Independence of the United States."
To French doctrines and the example of the United States we must add
the influence of English ideas. Miranda and Bolivar admired the
political constitution of Great Britain, and were inspired by it.
Bolivar, in 1818, recommended the study of this constitution: "You
will find therein," he said, "the division of powers, the only means
of creating free and independent spirits, and the liberty of the
press--that incomparable antidote to political abuses." His
enthusiasm for Voltaire and Rousseau was tempered by a study of
English methods. In his Angostura draft he recommended a permanent
Senate, a reproduction of the House of Lords. The British
Executive--the sovereign surrounded by responsible ministers--seemed
to him "the most perfect model, whether for a kingdom, or an
aristocracy, or a democracy." The Colombian Constitution of Cucuta
(1821), in which the political ideas of the Liberator were
predominant, merited the eulogy of the Marquis of Lansdowne. "It has
for its basis," said the English minister, "the two most just and
solid principles"--property and education. Miranda laid before Pitt
a constitutional essay inspired by British ideas, with a House of
Commons, an Upper Chamber composed of hereditary Inca _caciques_ and
censors; in which curious project we find American traditions mingled
with political forms borrowed from the English.
Spain also contributed to the development of the revolutionary ideas.
She united the populations of {84} America under her crushing
authority; she combined in a single body all the disinherited castes
which were later to struggle for independence.
"The despotic rigour of authority," wrote Bauza, "unites all these
heterogeneous elements with a rigid tie, and forms a race of
them."[3] The Napoleonic invasion provoked a reaction in the
peninsula: the _juntas_--provisional representations of
nationality--took the place of the captured king. The central
_junta_ proclaimed in 1808 that "the American provinces are not
colonies, but integral portions of the monarchy, equal in their
rights to the rest of the Spanish provinces." In 1810 the Regency
informed the American colonies: "Your fate depends upon neither
ministers nor viceroys nor governors: it is in your own hands." The
constitution of the Cortes of Cadiz (1812), at which the deputies of
the colonies were present, declared "that the Spanish Union cannot be
the patrimony of a person nor a family--that sovereignty resides
essentially in the nation--and that the right of making law belongs
to the Cortes and the king." In these documents, independence,
national sovereignty, the idea of the native country, and the
functions of the assemblies came overseas from the metropolis. The
struggles against privateers, against the English invasions of
Buenos-Ayres and the Dutch invasions of Brazil, and the influence of
the territory itself, created the sentiment of nationality in
America. French, English, and Spanish ideas fertilised this vague
aspiration. Before imposing themselves upon the universities and
assemblies these ideas became current in the journals and the
meetings of the _cabildo_ and revealed to the Creole oligarchy its
desire for independence.
From 1808 to 1825 all things conspired to help the cause of American
liberty; revolutions in Europe, ministers in England, the
independence of {85} the United States, the excesses of Spanish
absolutism, the constitutional doctrines of Cadiz, the romantic faith
of the Liberators, the political ambition of the oligarchies, the
ideas of Rousseau and the Encyclopædists, the decadence of Spain, and
the hatred which all the classes and castes in America entertained
for the Inquisitors and the viceroys. So many forces united
engendered a sorry and divided world. The genesis of the southern
republics is rude and heroic as a _chanson de geste_. Then history
degenerates until it becomes a comedy of mean and petty interests--a
revolutionary orgy. Such was the evolution of South America during
the nineteenth century.
[1] Gil Fortoul, _Historia Constitucional de Venezuela_, Berlin,
1907, vol. i, p. 465.
[2] _Historia de San Martin_, Buenos-Ayres, 1903, vol. i. p. 3.
[3] _Historia de la Dominacion española en el Uruguay_, vol. ii. p.
647.
{86}
CHAPTER IV
MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD
Anarchy and dictatorship--The civil wars: their
significance--Characteristics of the industrial period.
Spencer observed the invariable succession of two periods in the
development of human affairs--the military and the industrial period.
Bagehot contrasted a primitive epoch of authority and a posterior
epoch of discussion. Sumner-Maine discovered a historic law--the
progress from status to contract; from the _régime_ imposed by
despotic governors to a flexible organisation accepted by free wills.
Thus, in three different formulæ, we may express the same principle
of evolution. In the beginning a warlike and theocratic authority
determines ritual, customs, dogma, and laws. The common conscience
is potent; individuality accepts without discussion or scepticism the
essential rules of social life. History is thereafter a struggle
between authority and liberty, a progressive affirmation of
autonomous wills, an assertion of destructive and censorious
individualism.
In America political development presents the same successive phases.
Invariably we find the sequence of the two periods, one military and
one industrial or civil. The Independence realised, the rule of
militarism sets in throughout the republics. After a period of
uncertain duration the military caste is hurled from power, or
abdicates without violence, and economic interests become supreme.
Politics are {87} then ruled by "civilism." The military _régime_ is
not theocratic, as in some European monarchies; the President does
not combine the functions of religion and empire. None the less, the
civil period involves a fatal reaction against the Church--a period
of anti-clericalism or radicalism. The revolution is confined to a
change of oligarchies: the military group gives way to plutocracy.
[Illustration: GENERAL JUAN JOSÉ FLORES. President of Ecuador
(1831-1835 and 1839-1843). To face p. 87.]
As the generals of Alexander disputed, after his death, for the
provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the remains of the imperial
feast, and founded new dynasties in the flood of Oriental decadence,
so the lieutenants of Bolivar dominated American life for a period of
fifty years. Flores in Ecuador, Paez in Venezuela, Santa-Cruz in
Bolivia, and Santander in Colombia, governed as the heirs of the
Liberator. So long as the shadow of the magnificent warrior lay upon
the destinies of America, so long the _caudillos_ triumphed,
consecrated by the choice of Bolivar. The monarchial principle was
thus forced upon unconscious humanity. The Liberator left America in
the hands of a dynasty.
The wars of the peoples were therefore civil conflicts; the quarrels
of generals ambitious of hegemony. United in independence, united
during the colonial period, the new nations were divided, and stood
aside at the suggestion of these warriors; as Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia, in the name of Santa-Cruz or Gamarra, Castilla or Flores.
The national conscience was roughly shaped upon the field of battle.
The generals imposed arbitrary limits upon the peoples; they are the
creators in American history; they impress the crowds by their pomp
and pageantry; by military displays as brilliant as the gaudy
processions of the Catholic cult; by magnificent escorts and
decorations and forms of etiquette; they call themselves
Regenerators, Restorers, Protectors.
{88}
This first period is troublous, but full of colour, energy, and
violence. The individual acquires an extraordinary prestige, as in
the time of the Tuscan Renaissance, the French Terror, or the English
Revolution. The rude and bloodstained hand of the _caudillo_ forces
the amorphous masses into durable moulds. South America is ruled by
ignorant soldiers: the evolution of her republics must therefore be
uncertain. There is, therefore, no history properly so called, for
it has no continuity; there is a perpetual _ricorso_ brought about by
successive revolutions; the same men appear with the same promises
and the same methods. The political comedy is repeated periodically:
a revolution, a dictator, a programme of national restoration.
Anarchy and militarism are the universal forms of political
development.
As in European revolutions, anarchy leads to dictatorship; and this
provokes immediate counter-revolution. From spontaneous disorder we
pass to a formidable tutelage. The example of France is repeated on
a new stage; the anarchy of the Convention announces the autocracy of
Bonaparte. The dictators, like the kings of feudalism, defeat the
local _caciques_, the provincial generals; thus did Porfirio Diaz,
Garcia Moreno, Guzman-Blanco, &c. And revolution follows revolution
until the advent of the destined tyrant, who dominates the life of
the nation for twenty or thirty years.
Material progress is the work of the autocracy; as witness the rule
of Rosas, Guzman-Blanco, Portales, and Diaz. The great _caudillos_
will have nothing to do with abstractions; their realistic minds urge
them to encourage commerce and industry, immigration and agriculture.
By imposing long periods of peace they favour the development of
economic forces.
In matters political and economic the dictators profess Americanism.
They represent the new mixed {89} race, tradition, and the soil.
They are hostile to the rule of the Roman Church, of European
capital, and of foreign diplomacy. Their essential function, like
that of the modern kings after feudalism, is to level mankind and
unite the various castes. Tyrants found democracies; they lean on
the support of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the
oligarchies; they dominate the colonial nobility, favour the crossing
of races, and free the slaves.
[Illustration: ARTIGAS. Liberator of Uraguay. To face p. 89.]
Anarchy is spontaneous, like that which Taine discovered in the
Jacobin Revolution. There is a movement hostile to organisation, to
civilisation: thus Artigas fought at once against the King of Spain,
the Argentine Revolution, and the Portuguese. He would have no
subjection; he was a patriot to the death. Güemes fought against
Spaniards and Argentines. The _caudillos_ are like chiefs of
barbarian tribes; they uphold local autonomy, division, and chaos.
Sarmiento compares Lopez, Ibarra, and Quiroga, violent chieftains of
the Argentine sierra and pampa, to Genghis Khan or Tamerlane.
"Individualism," he says, "is their essence; the horse their only
arm; the pampa their theatre." The _montoneras_ are Tartar hordes,
burned by the sun--a wild, devastating force. Their leaders
represent the genius of the continent; they have the rudeness, the
fatality of natural forces. Like Igdrasil, the fantastic tree of
Scandinavian mythology, they send their roots deep into the earth,
into the obscure kingdom of the dead.
The general ideas of this period are simple. There is a faith in the
efficacy of political constitutions, and these are multiplied; men
aspire to ideological perfection. They believe in the omnipotence of
congresses, and distrust the Government. Constitutions separate the
powers and enfeeble the executive, rendering it ephemeral; they
divide authority by creating triumvirates, consulates, and
governmental {90} _juntas_. The liberalism of the charters is
notable. They usually establish three powers, according to the
traditional rule of Montesquieu, in order to ensure political
equilibrium; they recognise all the theoretical liberties--liberty of
the press, of assembly, the rights of property, and industrial and
commercial liberty. They accept trial by jury, popular petition,
universal suffrage--in short, the whole republican ideal. They
consecrate a State religion, Catholicism, thus paving the way for
religious revolutions, and all the "Red and Black" revolts and
conspiracies of South American history. Election is in some
republics direct; in others by the second degree, by means of
electoral colleges which appoint the president and the members of the
legislative chambers. From North to South institutions are
democratic; they bestow political rights with a generous profusion.
The judicial power is independent, sometimes elected by the people,
generally by congress. The judges are often dependent on the
executive. Justice and the law are ineffectual. The president
cannot be re-elected.
These constitutions imitate those of France and the United States in
the democratic tendencies of the one and the federalism of the other;
they are charters of a generous and hybrid species. The presidential
_régime_ exists in reality as in the United States; the parliaments
are important in virtue of the constitution, but in actual political
life are powerless in face of the pressure exercised by the military
chiefs. The theory of the social pact and the ideology of the
revolutionary are predominant in public speech.
The motives of the civil wars vary. In Ecuador men fight for the
_caudillos_; in Colombia, for ideas; in Chili, for or against the
oligarchy. All the national forces are involved in these wars.
Revolution is the common heritage of these nations. The races which
peopled America were warrior races, {91} both Indians and Spaniards,
and their warlike spirit explains the disorder of the republics.
Castes and traditions are inimical: the psychological instability
characteristic of primitive peoples wars upon discipline and
authority.
Two social classes--the military class and the intellectual or
university class--had been in opposition since the origin of the
Republic. They disputed the supreme power, or sometimes the
intellectuals sided with the generals. The "doctors," by aid of
reasonings of Byzantine subtlety, justified the dictatorships as well
as the Revolution. A Venezuelan deputy, Coto-Paul, in 1811,
pronounced a lyrical eulogy of anarchy.
The generals distrusted the lawyers, who represented the intellectual
tradition of the colony: Paez hated the juriconsults as Napoleon
hated ideologists. And the "doctors," vanquished by the military
power, became the docile secretaries of generals and _caudillos_;
they drafted laws and constitutions, and expressed in polished
formulæ the rude intentions of the chiefs. To the violence of these
latter they opposed subtlety; to the ignorance of despots, the
scholastic ease and knowledge acquired in the universities of Spain.
To the struggles of classes was added the war of races; the
half-breeds fought against the national oligarchy; the new American
class was hostile to the aristocracy of the capitals. The Indians
lived in the towns of the interior, in which the colonial isolation
was unchanged; the metropolis--Buenos-Ayres, Lima, or Caracas--was
still Spanish and increasingly alien. On the coast, where feeling
was more mobile and will more variable, the ideas of reform took
root; exotic ideas and customs were introduced; while the Sierra,[1]
more American than the coast, remained slow and gloomy, and ignorant
{92} of the brilliant unrest of the capitals. Thus a triple movement
came into being; inferior castes rose against the colonial
aristocracy, the provinces against the all-absorbing metropolis, and
the half-caste Sierra against the cosmopolitan seaboard.
The provinces desired autonomy; the capitals, monopoly and unity; the
metropolis was liberal, the Sierra conservative. The political
conflict might know a change of names, but this antagonism was
universal. The leaders disguised their deep-seated ambitions under a
cloak of general ideas; they supported unity or federation, the
military or the civil _régime_, Catholicism or radicalism. In
Argentina the provinces fought against the capital; in Venezuela the
coloured middle class against the oligarchies; in Chili the liberals
against the _pelucones_, the proprietors of the soil; in Mexico the
federals fought the monarchists; in Ecuador the radicals opposed the
conservatives; in Peru the conflict was between the "civilists" and
military _caudillos_. In the diversity of these quarrels we see one
essential principle: two classes were in conflict--the proprietors of
the _latifundia_ and the poverty-stricken people, the Spaniards and
the half-breeds, or the oligarchs and generals of a barbarous
democracy.
In each republic the soil and the traditions of the country gave a
different colour to the universal warfare. In the Argentine the
provinces, under viceroys and intendants, enjoyed a partial autonomy;
there federalism had remote antecedents. Unity seemed an imposition
on the part of Buenos-Ayres, which possessed the treasury and the
custom-houses of the nation, and monopolised the national credit and
revenue. In Chili, the long, narrow country, with the Cordillera at
the back, like a granite wall, naturally evoked a Unitarian republic.
The disputes between centralisation and federalism were soon over.
{93} Unity was possible in Peru, a brilliant sub-kingdom, the centre
of a long-established and powerful authority. But some aspects of
these violent struggles remain obscure. In Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela,
and Mexico there was enmity between the coast and the Sierra. Lima
and Caracas were capitals near the seaboard; Mexico and Quito were
far removed from it. Yet in Peru the struggle was civil and
military; in Ecuador, conservative and liberal; and in Mexico,
federal and central. Why do we not find the religious struggles,
which lasted so long in Colombia, in Bolivia and the Argentine? To
explain this diversity we must study the psychology of the different
_conquistadors_--Castilian, Biscayan, Andalusian, Portuguese--and of
the different subjected races: the Quechuas, Araucanians, Chibchas,
Aztecs, and the proportion in which they were mingled; for the action
of the territory itself upon the various admixtures of blood would
vary as it was tropical or temperate, coast or Sierra.
The confusion of the struggles in some democracies was extreme. The
oligarchs were not always conservatives, nor the half-breeds always
liberal. There were reactionary autocracies, like that of Portales
in Chili, and liberal autocracies like that of Guzman-Blanco in
Venezuela. The federals were usually democrats and liberals, but
they were occasionally conservative and autocratic. The democrats of
Peru were reactionary in matters of religion; those of Chili were
radical. The civil _régime_ was conservative in Bolivia under
Baptista and in Ecuador under Garcia-Moreno, but liberal in Mexico
under Juarez and Chili under Santa-Maria and Balmaceda. Militarism
was radical under Lopez in Colombia, but conservative under General
Castilla in Peru. When political evolution followed its logical
development, federalism, liberalism, and democracy formed a trilogy,
and oligarchy was conservative and Unitarian.
{94}
Revolutions, in opposing castes and uplifting the half-breed,
prepared the way for a new period. But a democratic society cannot
easily establish itself in the face of the established aristocracies,
and slavery still survived, although softened by liberal
institutions. The military class, accessible to all, replaced the
old nobility. Confusion of races commenced as early as 1850, when
generous laws enfranchised the negroes, and new economic interests
arose to complicate these democratic societies. Revolutions,
dictatorships, and anarchy were the necessary aspects of the
dissolution of the old society.
The age of generals gave way to an industrial period in which wealth
increased, industries became more complex and numerous, and labour
was subdivided, while association became more usual both in commerce
and agriculture. Co-operation, organisation, and solidarity, unknown
during the period of anarchy, were aspects of an intense economic
development. The interests newly created sought for peace, and the
internal order which favoured their expansion.
Politics commenced to eschew and disdain the squabbles of ideology,
and constitutional liberties acquired precision and efficacy.
Plutocracies came into being, and aspired to government in place of
internal revolution and external warfare; immigration, transforming
the social classification, facilitated their advent. National
progress was effected despite the governments; it was an anonymous
and collective task. The energetic individualities of the military
epoch were followed by the laborious crowd. The _caudillo_ receded
to the background of politics; the captains of industry replaced him,
the merchants and the bankers. Courage was once the supreme
criterion of the man; now wealth is the touchstone by which
individuals and peoples are judged. The table of human values
changes; instruction, {95} foresight, and practical common sense
determine success in an industrial democracy. In the social
ascension of the generations which industry and commerce have thrown
forward to the attack upon the old patrician society, the prejudices
of class and religion grow feebler, and after a century of conflict
the nations of the present day emerge.
In the southern republics of America industrialism is supreme in the
Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili; even in tropical Brazil. In Bolivia
and Peru the last leaders are not yet dead, the parties are still
personal, but their influence is not as decisive as it was thirty
years ago. Among the northern peoples, from Mexico to Ecuador,
anarchy and _caudillism_ still survive; there political unrest has
not yet been dominated by the principle of authority. The long
dictatorship of General Castro and certain Central American
presidents proves that the dictatorial _régime_ is the only form of
government that is able to maintain peace in these countries.
It is hardly possible to determine the "historical moment" at which
these republics passed from the military to the industrial system.
The twilight of the _caudillos_ was a long one. Even in the
Argentine, where the economic life is magnificent and complex, their
influence persists. In Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil there exists a
latent militarism which might quickly destroy the work of the civil
presidents. For ten years in Peru and Uruguay and Bolivia government
has followed government without revolutionary violence, but can we
say that the anarchy of fifty years has disappeared for ever? The
political order is slowly becoming assured, and the relation between
wealth and the increase of immigration and of peace is obvious. Even
in the industrial field evolution is the work of a few _caudillos_
who have been pacificators: General Pando in Bolivia, General Roca in
the Argentine, Pierola in Peru, and Battle {96} y Ordonez in Uruguay,
not to speak of the greatest of all, Porfirio Diaz.
Economically speaking this period of development material is superior
to the first period of sterile revolution; it is superior also from
the political point of view, for institutions have been perfected and
their constitutional action has defined itself. The municipalities
and the legislative power have acquired a relative autonomy; they
have been victorious over the executive, which was omnipotent during
the military period. In beauty and intensity, however, the prosaic
age of industrialism has been inferior to the preceding period. Of
old, vigorous personalities rose above the common level, and history
had the vitality of a tragedy; men played with destiny and with death
as in the time of the Italian renaissance. "Tyranny," writes
Burckhardt, "in the ancient Latin republics, commenced by developing
to the highest degree the individuality of the sovereign, of the
condottiere." He then demonstrates the equally personal character of
the statesmen and popular tribunes of Florentine history.[2] This
analysis is applicable to the American leaders. Heroic audacity and
perpetual and virile unrest characterise the struggles of the
_caciques_. The military cycle closed, the republics lose this
dramatic interest. Instead of describing the history of governments
we must study the economic evolution of nations, and their statistics
of industry and commerce. In tragedy the chorus, the crowd, becomes
the essential person; it judges and executes, it is spectator and
creator, while the heroes of old, the conquerors of destiny and
founders of cities, disappear in the mists of the past.
To these political changes correspond changes in manners and customs;
the cities, too, have changed {97} and have lost their archaic
character. The cosmopolitan invasion has resulted in a brilliant
monotony, and interest has become the sole motive of action;
permanent war is followed by peace _à outrance_; the republics have
gained in wealth and mediocrity. It is a period of transition: we
cannot yet distinguish the firm lineaments of the future State.
Will the Argentine and Brazil become great plutocratic States like
the United States? Will Chili, which is copying the social
organisation of England, be subjected, like the Anglo-Saxon Empire,
to the attacks of demagogy? The spectacle of these enriched nations
permits us to affirm only that in revolutionary America four nations,
the Argentine, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chili, will, before the lapse of
a century, be definitively organised as republics.
Yet these States still betray old racial characteristics.
"The dead found the race," writes M. Gustave Le Bon. "The dead
generations impose on us not only their physical constitution but
also their thoughts. Forms of government matter little."[3] In the
democracies of Latin America the "fundamental revolution" of which
politicians boast has been sterile; under the republican mask the
Spanish heredity survives, deep-rooted and secular. The forms vary
but the soul of the race remains the same. President-autocrats
replace the vice-kings; the old struggles between the governors of
the State and the bishops persist, for patronage in ecclesiastical
affairs, the prestige of the "doctors," and academic titles.
The ruling caste, the heir to the prejudices of Spain, despises
industry and commerce, and lives for politics and its futile
agitations. The territorial seigneurs still have the upper hand as
before the {98} Revolution. The ancient _latifundia_ still survive,
the great domains which explain the power of the oligarchy.
Assemblies exercise a secondary function, as the municipal _cabildos_
of old. Catholicism is still the axis of social life. The _picaros_
of Spanish romance, haughty and ingenious parasites, are still
accepted at their own value. The bureaucracy swallows up the wealth
of the exchequer; it was formed a century ago of voracious
Castilians; to-day it consists of Americans devoid of will. Despite
the equality proclaimed by the constitutions the Indian is subjected
to the implacable tyranny of the local authorities, the curé, the
justice of peace, and the _cacique_. Under other names the little
despots of the Spanish period are still alive and active.
The democracies of South America, then, are Spanish, although the
_élite_ has always been inspired by French ideas. Democracies by
proclamation and in their anarchy, equalitarian and of mixed blood,
the individual often acquires a heroic significance like that of the
supermen of Carlyle; mediæval republics divided into irreducible
families and factions, governed by enriched merchants; Greek
republics, hostile to their own leaders, jealous of the virtue of
Aristides and the wisdom of Themistocles, but without the
plebiscitary ardour of the Hellenic community.
[1] The cold region of lofty table-lands.
[2] _La Civilisation en Italie au temps de la Renaissance_, Paris,
1885, vol. i. pp. 165 _et seq_.
[3] _Les lois psychologiques de l'Evolution des peuples_, Paris,
1900, pp. 13 and 71.
{99}
BOOK II
_THE CAUDILLOS AND THE DEMOCRACY_
The history of the South American Republics may be reduced to the
biographies of their representative men. The national spirit is
concentred in the _caudillos_: absolute chieftains, beneficent
tyrants. They rule by virtue of personal valour and repute, and an
aggressive audacity. They resemble the democracies by which they are
deified. Without studying the biographies of Paez, Castilla,
Santa-Cruz, and Lavalleja, it is impossible to understand the
evolution of Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay.
{101}
CHAPTER I
VENEZUELA: PAEZ, GUZMAN-BLANCO
The moral authority of Paez--The Monagas--The tyranny of
Guzman-Blanco--Material progress.
Two central figures, Paez and Guzman-Blanco, dominate the history of
Venezuela. The first founded a republic in spite of the Unitarian
aims of Bolivar; the second established a long autocracy over the
factions and the quarrels of half a century.
Paez was an individualist, a nomadic leader, an impassioned champion
of the district, of the native country, as against any vast political
concentration. As the Argentine pampa gave birth to Quiroga, and the
Arabian desert engendered the mystic adventure of the Khalifs, so the
_llanos_ of Venezuela created Paez.
Among the haughty _llaneros_ of Apure he grew to be a horseman, a
lover of the infinite plains, the leader of a nameless troop, the
hero of a host of adventures, romantic or brutal. He was born in
1790. He was a half-breed, representing the indigenous forces in
conflict with the Spanish oligarchy and the Creole aristocracy. A
democrat of the school of Castilla and Rosas, robust and audacious,
with the perspicacity of the Indian and the pride of a tribal
chieftain, he cared only to lead armies. He detested "literary
people," "judges," and ideologues. A lieutenant of the Liberator's,
he was with him in a hundred battles, but he loathed all discipline,
{102} and his incipient insubordination in 18 18 diminished the
success of Bolivar. His pride revolted against all tutelage, even
when this was just. At times he wished Bolivar to be an absolute
chieftain, an invulnerable monarch; at other times he rebelled
against him. In 1819 he led the patriots of the llanos to victory;
he obtained power and honours but was always notably insubordinate.
In 1821 he opposed the order of enrolment issued by Santander, the
Vice-President of Colombia. The municipality of Caracas shared his
desire for autonomy, and Venezuela followed the leader who
represented the national instincts. Bolivar intervened to enforce
the unity of Colombia and gave way to Paez. In 1826 the latter
counselled the Liberator to assume the crown.
The fusion of the peoples, unity as against discord, was the Bolivian
ideal. At this time the spirit of nationality was working obscurely,
and spontaneous republics were springing up. The race, exhausted by
its long tutelage, uneasily sought subdivision, thinking thereby to
gain autonomy; Paez, profoundly American, followed the stream and
exiled Bolivar. He broke up the Colombian unity, as Santander in New
Granada and Flores in Ecuador, and liberated his country in 1830.
The nomad _guerrillero_ had then to organise the country, to give it
stability and continuity; his supple nature adapted itself to his new
duties. By instinct (writes an eminent historian, Gil Fortoul) he
inclined to play the part of certain constitutional kings, leaving
the government to his ministers. Without denying his democratic
past, he frequented the society of the literate and the oligarchs.
His presidency (1831-1835) resulted in domestic peace, strict order
in matters financial, political conciliation, and economic progress.
Dr. Vargas, an enemy of militarism, succeeded {103} him, but the
brothers José Tadeo and José Gregorio Monagas, who had risen against
Paez in 1831, renewed their attempt in 1835. The weak, irresolute
President appointed Paez commander-in-chief of the army, while the
revolutionists of Caracas proclaimed him supreme ruler. His immense
moral force loomed paternally above the squabbles of the parties; he
became the arbiter of Venezuelan quarrels.
He upheld the constitution and the presidency of Vargas, but the
latter could not retain supreme power and abandon the reins of
government to the hands of the vice-president. The chieftain of the
plains was elected for a second presidential period in 1838.
Militarism declined under his rule, foreign credit increased, the
payment of the debt was assured, and orderly progress was effected.
In 1843 his loyal friend, General Carlos Soublette, a republican of
the antique mould, austere and liberal, was his successor. Once more
the omnipotence of Paez was triumphant.
The political tranquillity of these two periods masked a social
transformation. Venezuela was not a democratic republic; it was,
like Chili, ruled by an oligarchy. The Constitution of 1830
conferred the enjoyment of political rights only upon the
land-owners, property-owners, and government employés; as in the
southern nation the territorial overlords ruled, and slavery
persisted. The "doctors" belonged to the dominant group. The
oligarchs were conservatives; they defended property, order, and
wealth against militarism and demagogy. They recognised no State
religion, nor did they practise intolerance.
In 1840 a liberal reaction set in against the dictatorship of Paez
and the conservative clan; democratic institutions and "new men" were
called for. It was a struggle of classes and races. The obscure
mass--_pardos_ (mulattos), mestizos, proletariats--subjected {104} to
slavery or servitude, oppressed by the privileged, hybrid and
anarchical--attacked the established ruling caste. Thus political
unrest was complicated by social conflict. Antonio Leocadio Guzman,
a brilliant demagogue, comprehending the liberal ambitions of the
crowd, founded a popular party upon the hatred of hierarchies and
traditions. A tribune and journalist, he violently attacked Paez,
Soublette, and their ministers; he offered the people the abolition
of slavery and the repartition of the soil, with the violence of all
the creators of democracies, from Tiberius Gracchus to Lloyd George.
He was presidential candidate in 1846; Paez supported General Tadeo
Monagas, a gloomy personage who represented the oligarchy. The
supporters of Guzman rebelled against the influence of Soublette and
the tutelage of the great _llanero_, and a social revolution
commenced under the mask of a political quarrel. The Liberals wished
to overthrow the "Gothic oligarchy." Guzman was made prisoner. He
was judged as were the tribunes of antiquity who terrified the
patrician class by the tumult of a hungry democracy. Condemned to
death as a conspirator and anarchist, he saw his punishment commuted
to banishment.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSÉ TADEO MONAGAS. President of Venezuela
(1846-1850 and 1855-1859). To face p. 104.]
The conservatives had won; the evolution of democracy was checked,
thanks to the advent of certain crude demagogues. As in Chili, a
moderate liberalism was germinating in the heart of the conservative
group itself. Until 1861 the oligarchical constitution of 1830 was
maintained, as in Chili the analogous constitution of 1833 persisted,
in all its rigidity, until 1891. The liberals could hardly be
distinguished from the conservatives; the democratic Guzman himself
accepted slavery. There was not, therefore, any violent war of
castes, but rather a slow infiltration of liberal principles in the
substance of the aristocratic class. The man of this {105} period of
transition was President Monagas. He governed with liberals and
conservatives, and founded a personal system. The Congress wished to
impeach him, but the people defended him against the Congress. The
independent Assembly was dissolved, amidst bloodshed and the bodies
of the slain, on the tragic 24th of January, 1848, and the Executive
was triumphant. The rule of oligarchies was followed by personalism
or autocracy. Monagas struggled against Paez; these two predominant
influences could not co-exist. The old _caudillo_ took the head of a
revolution; he was defeated, and, like Guzman, exiled. Curious
analogy between the fate of the chieftain of the oligarchy and that
of the leader of the democrats!
José Tadeo Monagas was replaced by his brother José Gregorio. The
pair formed a strange species of dynasty in which inheritance was
collateral. Guzman having again lost the presidency, his supporters
and those of Paez rebelled against the government in 1853 and 1854;
but the government was victorious, and in 1854 liberated the slaves.
Better than the apostrophes of the popular tribune this radical
measure prepared the way for the advent of the democrats. After José
Gregorio Monagas his brother José Tadeo became President in 1855. A
new Constitution of 1857, centralistic in tendency, permitted the
re-election of presidents, and Monagas remained in power. General
Castro defeated him at the head of a coalition of all parties. The
old political groups were reorganised; the struggles between
federalists and centralists recommenced; and the decline of the
oligarchies saw the advance of democracy. The Convention of Valencia
(1858) promulgated a liberal constitution, which established the
autonomy of the provinces under governors and congresses of their
own; the electoral capacity, restricted by the old statute, was
enlarged; the jury {106} system was established; and the Executive
was weakened, with an eye to the personalism of Monagas. A civil war
in which federals, liberals, centralists, conservatives,
constitutionalists, and ideologists were mingled in motley assemblies
disturbed the country. The battles lacked the simplicity of the old
directorates, the rigidity of the old hierarchies. The democracy
lamentably increased; the liberal factions were seized with an
equalitarian frenzy. Their leaders--Falcon, Zamora--were demagogues
on horseback. At the spectacle of this barbarism Paez, returning in
1861 from the United States, restored reaction and autocracy. On
September 10th he proclaimed himself supreme chief in the face of the
federal power; an octogenarian, he gathered all the powers of the
State into his trembling hand; a melancholy symbol of the oligarchy,
exhausted in its struggle against the invading democracy. In vain
did he issue tyrannical decrees; he could not prevent the triumph of
federation. At Coche, Guzman-Blanco, general of the federal forces,
negotiated with Rojas, the omnipotent secretary of Paez, an agreement
which put an end to the tottering dictatorship. The action of the
founder of Venezuela, "the man of the plains," representing the
conservative aristocracy, was over. He died in 1873, when his work
of a half-century was about to be continued, under another form, by
the great _caudillo_ Antonio Guzman-Blanco.
He was the son of Antonio Leocadio Guzman, leader of the liberal
party. He had travelled in the United States, was a diplomatist, and
had followed a course of study in the law, and on his return to
Venezuela had directed military operations during the revolt against
Paez. He had the gifts of the military leader; he skilfully
organised attack and retreat in that difficult warfare of many
factions amidst the plains; he revealed himself as a heroic leader of
men, dashing and persevering. In 1862 {107} he attained the rank of
General-in-Chief of the Army. The General Assembly elected him
vice-president of the Republic, under the presidency of Falcon, after
the agreement of Coche. Guzman-Blanco then contracted a loan of one
and a half million pounds in London, where Venezuelan credit was
ruined. It was necessary to restore the public finances after the
long crisis of the revolution. The operation was onerous, and the
liberal leader was criticised. However, the Venezuelan Congress
awarded him a prize in the form of an award of money.
In 1865 and 1866, during the absences of President Falcon, he
exercised command with admirable political tact, introducing severe
financial economies, regularising the debt, and suppressing sinecures
and pensions. In the political world, despite the triumph of the
federals, he demanded the reinforcement of the central power, as
against the anarchy of the autonomous provinces. In fact, a new
constitution, extremely liberal, which was promulgated by the
Assembly in 1864, had conceded an excessive degree of independence
upon the provinces.
A revolution overthrew the federal President, and the conservative
malcontents restored José Tadeo Monagas. Anarchy continued, and
Guzman-Blanco intervened to repress partial revolts, to counsel
political tolerance, and to negotiate abroad the unification of the
public debt; he had inherited the moral power from Paez. Monagas
wished to draw him into his party, and offered him the succession of
the presidency. The struggle increased in intensity; the "Blues" of
Monagas, as in Byzantium, defied the "Yellows" of Guzman-Blanco. The
civil war lasted five years. The country seeking stability, even if
it involved autocracy, José Ruperto Monagas succeeded to his father
and the monarchical policy was again attempted. The chief of the
federals was the enemy of the President, who exiled him, after a
{108} nocturnal attack upon his house, on the 14th of August, 1869.
Guzman arrived in Curaçoa, and in September openly commenced to work
for revolution. Monagas was anxious to compromise, and willing to
agree to one of those conventions so frequent in Venezuelan history;
but the _caudillo_ imposed hard conditions. His father, the
demagogue and tribune, accompanied him as journalist. After
indecisive battles the Revolution triumphed in Caracas (April, 1870),
and Guzman-Blanco assumed the dictatorship. The autocratic _régime_
accepted neither conciliation with the vanquished nor legal
artifices; the figure of the Imperator looms above the passive crowd,
a defence against federal disorganisation, economic waste, and
incessant anarchy. The liberal leader attacked his adversaries
energetically, directed battles, performing prodigies of strategy at
Valencia and Apure. The "blues" recoiled, successively losing
Valencia, Trujillo, and Maracaibo. General Matias Salazar, the
seditious liberal chief, a friend of the dictator, was shot. Like
Porfirio Diaz, the Venezuelan autocrat checkmated anarchy by
decapitating its generals. Exile, battles, and confiscation of goods
prepared the way for lasting peace. Two years the civil war lasted,
and in 1872 Guzman-Blanco, a beneficent despot, commenced the
material transformation of the country. He knew men, he had the gift
of command; his decision was irresistible, his character of steel.
He reduced import duties, and abolished export duties, founded a
banking company which issued bonds guaranteed by the Government, and
amortised the public debt. While introducing strict economies he
attacked his political enemies with forced loans and special
contributions. In the political arena he unhesitatingly repressed
the revolts of the Blues and would grant them no amnesty; he exiled
the archbishop because he refused to {109} celebrate the triumph of
the liberal Revolution by a _Te Deum_. The dictator was nationalist
as against foreign pressure and threats; he aspired to the
reconstitution of Venezuela, in matters domestic and foreign, despite
the anarchy of the factions and the manoeuvres of European
stockjobbers. Diplomatic conflicts arose with the United States,
Holland, England, and the Papacy.
Guzman-Blanco favoured education; he wished to see "a school in every
street." He reformed the civil and penal codes, and established
marriage and civil registers. In 1873 he renounced the dictatorship
before Congress, but the latter elected him President, and accorded
him supreme honours. Statues and streets and medals bore his name;
he was given the pompous titles of "Illustrious American" and
"Regenerator of Venezuela"; nothing could be refused him by the
servile and extravagant deputies. His statue, erected in Caracas in
1875, near that of Bolivar, glorified the Regenerator equally with
the Liberator. The popular dictator satisfied the ambitions of all;
he brought the peace desired by the oligarchs, he was the idol of the
crowds, and he attacked the Church like the liberals and free-masons.
From 1870 to 1877 the Government fostered material development by
means of the construction of railways and highways, public buildings
in the large towns, and the transformation and embellishment of
Caracas. It was said that the Dictator wished to imitate Napoleon
III. by opening up promenades and avenues. Credit prospered, the
service of the debt was assured, the public revenues increased,
orderly and economical budgets were established, and statistics
organised. The President reinforced and disciplined the army, and
intervened in the politics of the states, in defiance of federalism.
He endeavoured to found a Venezuelan Church, with {110} a liberal
archbishop and clergy elected by the faithful; he suppressed
religious congregations and converted their goods into national
property. His autocracy did not respect the powers of the outer
world; he stimulated industries by a strict protectionism. An
admirer of French art, he established museums in Venezuela.
In 1877 General Alcantara succeeded him. Guzman-Blanco stated in his
message, reviewing his seven years' work, that he left behind him
peace, administrative and political organisation, external credit,
liberty of the vote, and "the triumph of the dignity and the rights
of the Nation." He was acclaimed to the verge of apotheosis. He
left for Europe, and in his absence the statues of the dictator were
overthrown and his decrees annulled by those who had conferred such
honours upon him. Democracy, unstable and feminine, burned what she
had adored. Guzman-Blanco returned to Venezuela in 1878, devoured
with dictatorial ambitions. He had sought in Paris to found a
company which, like the East Indian and African companies of England,
should transform his country. He longed for the power he had
abandoned to an ungrateful mob. Upon his arrival a favouring
revolution welcomed him, the state of Carabobo proclaimed him
Dictator, and ten other states followed suit. The revolutionaries
triumphed, and those who had overthrown his statues and reversed his
statutes now praised him to the skies. Guzman-Blanco proposed to
reform the Constitution; the Swiss federation was his political
model. He reduced the number of states in Venezuela, and despoiled
the Executive of many attributes, which he confided to a Federal
Council. The Province approved the "Swiss" Constitution of 1882.
The "Illustrious American" then returned to France to realise a
financial plan which was to {111} transform his country, and to
conclude a contract with the great Jew bankers. He formed a
privileged company which was to exploit the country, obtain
concessions of land, and organise what financiers call the _mise en
valeur_ of new territories. The Constitution promulgated,
Guzman-Blanco was elected President of the General Council. In 1882
he expounded to Congress the benefits of his autocracy: material
development, budgetary surpluses, extended cultivation, and political
stability.
Until 1886 Guzman-Blanco was President of the Venezuelan democracy,
or its minister in European capitals. His power was absolute; he
imposed new leaders, left the country, returned; he was the Protector
of the Republic. From the enchanted banks of the Seine he directed
the febrile development of Venezuela. Like Porfirio Diaz in Mexico
and Rosas in the Argentine he conquered all other leaders, imposed
peace, organised and unified, and ruled by terror or by sentiment. A
_caudillo_ without definite political ideas, he loved power and his
native country. State, Church, parties, and national riches, all
were his; they were the domains of this feudal baron. His enemies
accused him of enriching himself at the expense of the national
property, but his work in the material world was fruitful; he built
roads, erected buildings, and stimulated the development of the
national fortune. In matters of policy he affirmed the inviolability
of the country against foreign aggression; he was a democrat as
against the conservatives. He loved pomp and triumph, sumptuous
external shows, sonorous phrases, and the servile adoration of the
crowd.
He had an enormous faith in his own work. In 1883 he stated that
Venezuela, under his authority, "had undertaken an infinite voyage
towards an infinite future." His dictatorship appeared to him as
necessary, providential: "the people insist upon {112} it so that we
may be saved from anarchy." He aimed at "the regeneration of the
country"; and his was the responsibility for this work; but the
greatness also was his. "I have never followed the thought of any
but myself," he said. Indeed, we may apply to him the classic phrase
descriptive of absolutism: "_L'Etat c'est moi_."[1]
[1] _En defensa del Septenio_, Paris, 1878, p. 29.
{113}
CHAPTER II
PERU: GENERAL CASTILLA--MANUEL PARDO--PIEROLA
The political work of General Castilla--Domestic peace--The deposits
of guano and saltpetre--Manuel Pardo, founder of the anti-military
party--The last _caudillo_, Pierola: his reforms.
The gestation of the Republic of Peru was a lengthy process. The
vice-kingdom defended itself against Colombian, Peruvian, and
Argentine troops: against the armies of Bolivar and San Martin. Here
the _penates_ of Spain were preserved: the treasure, the vigilant
aristocracy, the warlike armies. It was not until 1824, when America
was already independent, that the victory of Ayacucho liberated Peru
from the Spanish rule.
Bolivar wished to give Peru the same constitution as Bolivia; to
force the institution of the irremovable President on the anarchy of
these republics; but the municipality of Lima refused the project.
The Peruvians exalted the Liberator; "hero" and "demi-god" the poets
called him; his praise was sung in the churches; the Congress granted
him riches and honours. His generals were struggling for the supreme
command. The Colombian hero returned to his own country, and at once
President followed President and revolution revolution. The history
of the first twenty years of the Republic, as in Mexico and the
Argentine, records only the clash of the forces of society organised
and disciplined {114} by the colonial _régime_. Generals and
"doctors," autocracy and anarchy, the oligarchy of the vice-kingdom
and the advancing democracy, all were at war among themselves.
Byzantine factions struggled to attain the supreme power in the
assemblies and the barracks. Aristocratic Presidents--Riva Aguero,
Orbegoso, Vivanco, and military Presidents--La Mar, La Fuente,
Gamarra, followed one another with bewildering rapidity. In the
south Arequipa, the home of a tenacious race, engendered terrible
revolts. External wars, such as that with Colombia in 1827 and
Bolivia in 1828 and 1835 (to repulse the protectorate of Santa-Cruz),
were really due to the quarrels of ambitious generals who were
disputing the succession of Bolivar. New nations, whose frontiers as
yet were vague, had not yet acquired a national consciousness.
Santa-Cruz, President of Bolivia, unified Peru, founding a
confederation, from Tumez to Tarija, necessary to the equilibrium of
American politics; but he was a foreign President. Amid the host of
provincial chiefs a general presently arose who for twenty years was
the energetic director of the nation's life--Don Ramon Castilla.
[Illustration: GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ. President of Bolivia
(1829-1839). To face p. 114.]
He recalls Paez rather than Rosas. He was no invulnerable tyrant,
but a _caudillo_ of great influence. Born in Tarapaca in 1796, he
was a mestizo, having in his veins the blood of an Indian
grandmother. This origin perhaps explains his endurance and
astuteness. His father was Asturian, a member of a warlike race.
Castilla passed his youth at Tarapaca, in a region of vast plains and
narrow valleys, and the desert made him a nomad, a chief of
legionaries. A Spanish soldier in Chili, he was made prisoner at
Chacabuco; set at liberty, he travelled through the Argentine and
Brazil, and on his return to Peru he offered his services to San
Martin; in 1821 he fought beside Sucre at Ayacucho, followed General
Gamarra against Bolivia, and retaken prisoner at {115} Ingavi, he
finally became general, then marshal. Short, with virile features
and a penetrating glance, he was a great leader, strong and tenacious
in the field. His bearing was martial; men felt that opposition
irritated him, that he was an autocrat by vocation. Without much
culture, he was astute enough to seem learned. He intuitively knew
the value of men and the manner in which to govern them. His strong
point was the gift of command. Experience made him sceptical and
ironical; his speech was stern and incisive. His ideas were simple;
a conservative in politics, he respected the principle of authority.
Like San Martin, to whom he wrote some suggestive letters, he hated
anarchy. In the midst of the tumult of revolution he understood the
necessity of a strong government. He defeated the dictator Vivanco,
in skirmishes and pitched battles, at Carmen-Alto, and became
President of Peru in 1845. He granted an amnesty to the vanquished
and re-established order. His government marked the commencement,
after twenty years of revolutions, of a new period of administrative
stability, during which commerce developed and the public revenues
increased; new sources of wealth, namely, guano and saltpetre,
transformed the economic life of the country. The telegraph united
Lima to Callao in 1847; the first Peruvian railroad was inaugurated
in 1851. The service of the external debt due to foreign loans
commenced, and the internal debt was consolidated. The first
presidency of General Castilla resulted in peace and economic
progress.
General Echenique succeeded him, and financial scandals, guano
concessions, speculations, and a corrupt thirst for wealth engendered
discontent. The prophecy of Bolivar was accomplished: gold had
corrupted Peru. Castilla hesitated before revolting against a
constitutional government. A lover of order, he respected authority
in others and in {116} himself. But finally a fresh revolution broke
out, and triumphed at La Palma in 1855. In the same year Congress
elected Castilla as President.
In the preceding year the general-President had already proclaimed
the emancipation of the negro slaves, in order to ensure that the
revolution which he now headed should be welcome. Congress declared
the personal tribute demanded of the Indians abolished. A new
constitution, the basis of that of 1860, which is still in force in
Peru, changed the political organism in several essential aspects.
It suppressed the Council of State and replaced it by two
vice-presidents; it organised the municipalities, and set a term of
four years on the duration of the presidency. Vivanco rose against
Castilla in 1857, but was defeated. The government of General
Castilla terminated peacefully: from 1844 to 1860 he directed the
national policies with a hand of iron. None before him had been able
to give the life of the nation such continuity. All the moral and
economic forces of the country were developed; the exports attained
to three millions sterling, which sum was in excess of the imports;
railways and telegraph lines crossed the wilderness, and the credit
of the country permitted of new and important loans. Peru, conscious
of her progressive energy, aspired to extend her domains. Castilla
declared war upon Ecuador in 1859, the pretext being a question of
frontiers; as victor he granted generous terms of peace. He built
ships to oppose the future maritime supremacy of Chili; then,
divining the importance of Eastern Peru, he sent out expeditions to
explore the great unknown watercourses. Like Garcia-Moreno in
Ecuador and Portales in Chili, he established peace, stimulated
wealth, promoted education, created a navy, and imposed a new
constitution on the country. His action was not only political but
social; by freeing the slaves and Indians he prepared the future
{117} of democracy. The journals of the period condemned his
absolutism. "The formula of the General is '_L'Etat c'est moi_,'"
wrote Don José Casimiro-Ulloa in 1862. For fifteen years he was the
dictator necessary to an unstable republic.
After him the national life was personified by a civil President,
Manuel Pardo, who represented the reaction of lawyers and business
men against the militarism of Castilla and his predecessors. He did
not govern for two terms, like the autocratic General, nor did his
personal influence last ten years; yet his reputation increased after
his death, so that his name, like that of Balmaceda in Chili,
presides over the fortunes of a party.
Pardo was born in Lima in 1834. He was the son of a poet, Don Felipe
Pardo; but he soon abandoned dreams for action; to him material
interest seemed superior to all other questions.
He detested "pure politics"; he regarded the Constitution as a "dead
letter in national life." His vocation impelled him to protect the
financial affairs of the country; he was Minister of Finance from
1866 to 1868, fiscal agent in London, and founded a bank in Lima.
His best address deals with the subject of taxation. As President he
decreed a monopoly of saltpetre in 1875, an economic measure often
criticised as having provoked the disastrous war with Chili.
An economist and champion of order, he continued the work of
Castilla, was triumphant over revolution, and organised the country.
In 1862, when he had already been minister and mayor of Lima, a
popular election carried him to power. In four years his
extraordinary activity reformed all the public services: education,
finance, and immigration. He ordered the census to be taken in 1876;
he endeavoured to attract foreigners; founded the Faculty of
Political Sciences and the {118} University of Lima for the education
of diplomatists and administrators, and the School of Arts and Crafts
for the improvement of popular education; he opened new primary
schools, sent for German and Polish professors, and entrusted the
pedagogic direction of the country to them. He promulgated new
regulations dealing with education on the classic European lines. He
re-established the National Guard, as Portales had done in Chili, and
organised departmental _juntas_ with an eye to decentralisation. His
action was restless and universal. He preferred a positive policy,
devoid of doctrinaire quarrels, dreamed of a practical republic, like
Rafael Nuñez in Colombia and Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela, and
preferred the faculty of political sciences, which formed
administrators, to that of letters, which created literary men and
philosophers.
Nevertheless, the country became bankrupt. Loans, the great
undertakings of President Balta, and speculations in guano and
saltpetre had exhausted it. Pardo could not prevent this financial
disaster. He assured the service of the foreign debt and informed
the democracy, intoxicated by the economic orgy, that it was ruined.
He vainly sought the alliance of the Argentine and Bolivia in order
to erect a triple bastion of defence against the ambitions of Chili.
His efforts were fruitless, both at home and abroad. He was
succeeded by a military President. The alliance of Peru and Bolivia
was powerless against the might of Chili, and Pardo himself was
assassinated during a supreme reaction of the demagogy which he hoped
to rule.
[Illustration: MANUEL PARDO. President of Peru (1872-1876). To face
p. 118.]
Death made his influence lasting, as was the case with Garcia-Moreno
and Balmaceda. A strong ruler of men, he had gathered about him
enthusiastic and even fanatical partisans. His work of reformation
became the evangel of a party, the civil party which he had founded.
As early as 1841 the dictator {119} Vivanco had united, in a
conservative group, the leading men of the time: Pando, Andres
Martinez, Felipe Pardo. Ureta, Pardo's rival in the presidential
campaign, united the first elements of a civil party. But it was his
rival who concentrated all these forces, making them lasting and
harmonious. A scion of ancient families, of the Aliagas and
Lavalles, Pardo represented the colonial traditions in a disordered
democracy.
Thanks to the discovery of new sources of wealth --saltpetre and
guano--and to fiscal monopolies, a powerful plutocracy suddenly arose
in Peru, which was soon, by the prestige of its wealth, to overpower
the old Peruvian families. Pardo, not opposing the national
transformation, joined this plutocracy; and his party, reinforced by
the alliance, became the obstinate champion of property, of slow
reform, and of order, against the anarchy of the Creoles. It was
conservative without rigidity, liberal without violence, like the
moderate parties of monarchical governments, or the Progressists of
the third French Republic. Originally an aristocratic power, it
abandoned its old severity, and became the party of the wealthy
classes, taking mulattos and mestizos to its bosom. So, as in other
South American democracies, the ancient oligarchy was replaced by a
plutocracy which included the sons of immigrants, half-breeds, and
bankers.
The influence of Pardo was greater and more lasting than that of
Castilla. It responded to many of the needs of Peru; placed between
militarism and demagogy, the civil element was the only agent of
order and progress. The work of Pardo, interrupted during the war
with Chili (1879-84) and the period of anarchy which followed,
despite the efforts of a military leader who had fought like a hero
in the war against Chili--Colonel Caceres--was by the irony of human
affairs continued by the sworn enemy {120} of Pardo: Pierola, the
last of the great Peruvian _caudillos_; restless, romantic, and
always ready to seize the reins of power by the violent aid of
revolution.
In 1869, at the age of thirty, he was Minister of Finance, following
Garcia Calderon, who had resigned his post rather than authorise the
waste of fiscal resources. Ten years later Pierola proclaimed
himself dictator, and prepared, with unusual energy, to defend Peru
against the invasion of Chili. A reformer after the methods of the
Jacobins, he thought to transform the nation by heaping decree upon
decree and by changing the names of institutions. His noble
enthusiasm makes it easy to overlook his errors.
The Peruvian troops defeated, Pierola did not resign power, and
divided the country. Ten years later, in the full maturity of his
intellectual powers, he was elected President (1895-99); from which
period we may date the Peruvian renaissance. Without raising loans
he transformed an exhausted country into a stable republic. Like all
the great American _caudillos_, he was an excellent administrator of
the fiscal wealth of the country; he established a gold standard as
the basis of the new monetary system, promulgated a military code and
an electoral law, and by means of a French mission endeavoured to
change an army which was the docile servant of ambitious factions
into a force capable of preserving domestic peace. His organising
talent, his patriotism, and his extraordinary ability, surprised
those who had known only the revolutionary leader.
[Illustration: DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA. President of Peru
(1895-1899). To face p. 120.]
He founded a democratic party, as did Pardo a party inimical to
militarism. But in spite of the denomination of this party it has
lent its aid to the military leaders, and no law in favour of the
workers has emanated from the democrats. Pierola, who called himself
"the protector of the native race," {121} established a tax upon
salt, which was a great hardship to that poverty-stricken race.
[Illustration: DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON. President of Peru
(1881-1884). To face p. 121.]
The leader of the democrats is himself an aristocrat; not only by
origin, by the somewhat old-fashioned elegance of his style, and by
his patrician tastes; he has always preferred to surround himself
with men of the old noble families: the Orbegosos, Gonzalez, Osmas,
Ortiz de Zevallos, &c. This contrast between his tastes and
tendencies and the party which he founded does not detract from the
great popularity which the old ex-president enjoys in Peru; he is
popular by reason of qualities which are wholly personal, like those
of Manuel Pardo, and his supporters become fanatics. His mannered
phrases, his heroism and his audacity, have a religious significance
in the eyes of his believers; like Facundo in the epic of Sarmiento,
he is the nomadic khalif who brings to a democracy in the throes of
anarchy the promise of a divine message.
{122}
CHAPTER III
BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia--The tyrants,
Belzu, Molgarejo--The last _caudillos_: Pando, Montes.
Bolivia sprang, armed and full-grown, as in the classic myth, from
the brain of Bolivar. The Liberator gave her a name, a Constitution,
and a President. In 1825 he created by decree an autonomous republic
in the colonial territory of the district of Charcas, and became its
Protector. Sucre, the hero of Ayacucho, succeeded him in 1826.
During the wars of Independence this noble friend of Bolivar resigned
from power, disillusioned; he was the Patroclus of the American Iliad.
From that time onward the young republic was for twenty years ruled
by a great _caudillo_, Andres Santa-Cruz. A lieutenant of the
Liberator, he inherited, like Paez and Flores, a portion of his
legacy of nations: he was President of Bolivia and wished to be
President of Peru.
[Illustration: OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA. (From "Latin
America, the Land of Opportunity," by the Hon. John Barrett.)]
In 1826 he presided over the Council of State at Lima and governed in
the absence of Bolivar. In 1827 he was the head of the Bolivian
Republic, prosecuting a difficult struggle against national anarchy.
His ambition included the vast theatre of the old vice-kingdom; he
wished to unite Bolivia and Peru, and to that end organised
freemasonry as a political force, from La Paz to Lima. President of
the Bolivian Republic for the second time {123} in 1828, he formed a
government sufficiently strong to discourage revolution. Like
Garcia-Moreno and Guzman-Blanco, he was a civilizer. The son of an
Indian woman of noble origin, the _Cacica_ of Guarina, he perhaps
inherited imperial ambitions. He loved power and display, received
the order of the Legion of Honour from Louis-Philippe, and instituted
an analogous order for the Bolivian Confederation. He accumulated
sonorous titles: Captain-General and President of Bolivia, Grand
Marshal, Pacificator of Peru, Supreme Protector of the South and
North Peruvians, &c. In domestic politics he was an organiser who
was capable of cruelty in defence of order; a strict administrator.
He promulgated codes, following the Napoleonic example, disciplined
the army, and restored the national finances. The revenue increased,
credit became more secure, and imperialism saw the light. Santa-Cruz
attracted Europeans and protected his countrymen, for the question of
population preoccupied him; it is, indeed, the great problem of
Bolivia and South America. In 1833 he proposed the exclusion of
celibates from the magistracy, a measure of protection in favour of
numerous families. Like all the _caudillos_, he made great efforts
to develop the public treasury.
Local triumphs did not satisfy him. Distrustful, crafty, frigid,
without the declamatory eloquence of other presidents, ambitious of
wealth and power, he longed to extend his despotic sceptre over new
States. Imitating Napoleon, like Iturbide in Mexico, and remembering
the successes of the First Consul, he prepared expeditions of
conquest, and fostered anarchy in Peru, which he intended to govern
once more as in 1826. Orbegoso, President of the neighbouring
republic, called for his assistance in 1835 in order to overcome
Salaverry, a brilliant officer who had proclaimed himself dictator.
Santa-Cruz thereupon constituted himself the arbiter of Peruvian
{124} disputes, and invaded the country. He defeated Salaverry at
Socabaya and Gamarra, his ally, at Yanacocha. The dictator was shot
in 1836, and the Bolivian president founded a vast confederation as a
bulwark against Peruvian anarchy: he reconstituted the old
vice-kingdom. His ambition then led him so far as to attack Rosas,
the tyrant of Argentina. He had inherited the Unitarian ideals of
Bolivar, and prepared to realise them. Three States, Bolivia, and
North and South Peru, each with its own capital, its president, and
its congress, formed the Confederation, under the imperial authority
of the new Inca. Santa-Cruz organised the three States with amazing
rapidity, imposed codes and constitutions, and expected to rule from
Lima, the fashionable metropolis; it was said that he was the avenger
of the oppressed race of half-breeds, oppressed by the colonial
oligarchy. The Confederation existed from 1837, but Chili, in the
south, envious of the Peruvian-Bolivian hegemony, threatened its
existence. Portales, that omnipotent minister, sought pretexts to
attack this solid political structure. He accused Santa-Cruz of
fostering expeditions against the Chilian conservatives--for
instance, that of Freire--and called him "the unjust violator of the
sovereignty of Peru"; he feared that his power would strike a blow at
the independence of the South American republics. Portales and
Santa-Cruz represented two irreconcilable ambitions; they had the
same love of authority and organic construction, and each professed a
narrow nationalism and a violent patriotism. The Chilian oligarchy,
led by Portales, proceeded to organise the "liberation campaign"
against and on behalf of Peru. The historian Walker Martinez
justifies this policy of interference and intervention in American
affairs, although since the Pacific war the Chilian diplomatists have
always pronounced against it.
{125}
Two successive expeditions were directed against the coast of Peru.
Santa-Cruz defeated the first, which was led by the Chilian general
Blanco Encalada, in 1837. General Bulnes was the leader of another
"army of liberation." Peruvian generals supported him: Gamarra, La
Fuente, Castilla, and Orbegoso himself. The battle of Yungai, in
1838, put an end to the Confederation, and Santa-Cruz lost all power
over the peoples of Bolivia and Peru.
His political work, the Confederation, tended to unite two peoples
which Bolivar had separated in spite of colonial traditions; it
organised, on the shores of the Pacific, a stable power to oppose the
increasing imperialism of Chili. Eminent Peruvians seconded the
unifying efforts of the Bolivian leader: Riva-Aguero, Orbegoso,
Garcia del Rio, and Necochea.
His work shattered, Santa-Cruz retired to Europe in 1845, but
attempted, when urged by excited supporters, to return to his own
country. Chili and Peru both opposed the suggestion. He was a
friend of Napoleon III. in Paris, where he several times represented
Bolivia, and where he died in 1865. The Confederation which he
vainly desired to found would have changed the destiny of the peoples
of the Pacific, by giving the political supremacy to Bolivia and Peru
united. The successors of Santa-Cruz in the Bolivian presidency,
Ballivian and Velasco, were friends of his, and continued his
ambitious policy, although they had revolted against his autocracy.
Since the days of the great mestizo leader no ruler has attained an
equal reputation, nor attempted so great a political mission. Of
later presidents, Baptista and Arce, civilians, and Pando and Montes,
soldiers, exercised a real influence on Bolivian history, but had not
the importance of the first presidents. The last was a remarkable
organiser and a builder of railways which saved his country {126}
from a dangerous isolation. They belonged to a prosaic age of steady
economic development. Bolivia has also had its tyrants, figures of
tragi-comedy, vulgar and gloomy: Belzu, Velasco, Daza, and finally
Melgarejo, the bloody incarnation of Creole barbarity. He was the
Nero of Bolivia; a man capable of every cruelty and every licence;
daring, energetic, he inaugurated a reign of terror, surrounded
himself with a prætorian guard, and represented the instincts of the
mob, exacerbated by alcohol and envy. In vain did well-meaning
dictators like Ballivian in 1841 or Linares in 1857 strive to
continue, in the interval between two episodes of barbarism, the
civilising task of Santa-Cruz. They dreamed of founding a
_Republique Almara_, like Renan in the domains of Caliban, a tyranny
of the intellectual elements. Their effort was fruitless. Down to
1899, the year in which President Pando inaugurated civil government,
the history of Bolivia was a dreary succession of revolutions and
tyrants. A remarkable writer who has studied his "sick people"[1]
writes that "from 1825 to 1898 more than sixty revolutions broke out,
and a series of international wars, and six Presidents were
assassinated: Blanco, Belzu, Cordova, Morales, Melgarejo, and Daza,
without counting those that died in exile."
[Illustration: COLONEL ISMAEL MONTES. President of Bolivia
(1905-1909). To face p. 126.]
[1] _Pueblo enfermo_, by A. Arguedas, Barcelona, 1906.
{127}
CHAPTER IV,
URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA--RIVERA--THE NEW _CAUDILLOS_
The factions: Reds and Whites--The leaders: Artigas, Lavalleja,
Rivera--The modern period.
A small southern republic, situated between an Imperialist state,
Brazil, and a nation ambitious of hegemony, the Argentine, Uruguay,
"the Eastern Province" (Banda Oriental) has struggled for its liberty
since the commencement of the nineteenth century. Artigas
represented the principle of nationality in the long wars against
Buenos-Ayres and the Spanish armies: he was the first _caudillo_, the
forerunner of the Independence. Rivera and Lavalleja inherited his
unconquerable patriotism, and proclaimed the independence of their
country. In 1822, without the constant aid of armies of liberation,
such as those of San Martin and Bolivar, but by the heroic efforts of
its own soldiers, the ancient province of the vice-kingdom of La
Plata constituted itself a new State, governed by a Unitarian
constitution.
Artigas had fought for the liberty of the province of Uruguay, for
its freedom from all tutelage. Rivera and Lavalleja were willing to
compromise at the commencement of the new campaign of liberation. A
Congress held at Montevideo proclaimed the incorporation of the
Eastern Province with Portugal. The two _caudillos_ desired the
union of Uruguay with Brazil. Another leader, Manuel Oribe, was
anxious for the protection of the legions of the Argentine {128} to
conquer the independence of his country. An ambassador from
Buenos-Ayres, Don Valentin Gomez, proposed to Brazil in 1825 that the
rebellious Uruguay should once more become a province of the
Argentine, but the Empire refused to consent. Lavalleja, who had
sought for Brazilian protection, changed his mind; he sought for
Argentine assistance, whether that of the capital or that of the
federal leaders, while Rivera remained faithful to his original
programme of union with Southern Brazil. A piece of heroism worthy
of the Spanish _conquistadors_ set a term to this indecision.
Lavalleja, at the head of the "Thirty-Three," a little band of heroes
comparable to the legendary companions of Pizarro and Cortes, landed
on the Uruguayan coast on the 19th of April, 1825. "Liberty or
death" was their watchword. Rivera joined them, and the struggle for
the independence of the eastern province at once gained an intenser
significance. At Florida a provisional government was installed,
which decreed separation from Brazil and Portugal, proclaimed the
sovereignty of the nation, and decided upon union, under a federal
organisation, with the Argentine provinces. "Eastern Argentines,"
Lavalleja called his compatriots. The rulers of the Argentine did
not decide upon supporting the liberators of Uruguay. With Brazil
hostile, and abandoned by Buenos-Ayres, the indomitable "Orientals"
commenced a bitter warfare which ended in their winning their
independence. Rivera defeated the Brazilian general Abreu at
Rincon-de-Haeda, then at Sarandu, a decisive battle which Zorrilla de
San Martin compares to Chacabuco. The Argentines maintained their
neutrality, but the Congress of 1825, obedient to the suggestions of
Rivadavia, declared to Brazil that it recognised the incorporation of
the Eastern Province "which has by its own efforts restored the
liberty of its territory." War broke out against Brazil;
Buenos-Ayres and Rio de Janeiro both aspired to {129} rule in
Montevideo. The conflict lasted from 1826 to 1828; Argentines and
Uruguayans took part in it, fighting side by side. The campaign was
directed by Lavalleja and General Alvear, who in Buenos-Ayres had
been a fashionable dictator. Rivera withdrew from the army. Brazil
suffered a defeat at Itazango, where 3,000 "Orientals" and 4,000
Argentines fought against 9,000 Brazilian soldiers. All things
pointed to the fact that Uruguay would soon be an independent nation.
The "Orientals" no longer admitted the hegemony of Brazil, nor the
tutelage of Argentina; they decided to pursue the struggle without
the help of Buenos-Ayres. The war would be longer, but even more
certain in its results. Lavalleja replaced Alvear in the government.
Rivera, who had landed at Soriano, fought and won at Misiones (1828),
and continued unaided the campaign against Artigas. He distrusted
Buenos-Ayres and even Lavalleja himself, and, thanks to his continued
efforts, peace with Brazil was finally signed on the 27th of August,
1838. The Empire recognised the independence of the "Province of
Montevideo" and the constitution of a "sovereign State," a necessary
factor in the political equilibrium of La Plata.
[Illustration: JUAN ANTONIO LAVALLEJA. _Caudillo_ of Uruguay in the
struggle for independence. To face p. 128.]
Seven years later, under the tyranny of Rosas, Uruguay saw her
autonomy menaced. The Argentine dictator aspired to conquer the
little republic and to rule as the Spanish viceroys had ruled in all
the provinces of La Plata, from Tarija to Montevideo. The "Oriental"
President Oribe, elected in 1825, was the ally of Rosas against the
Argentine refugees in Montevideo, who were supported by Rivera.
Uruguayans and Argentines were confounded in the two parties, but
Rivera represented a new source of conflict, as in his quarrels with
Lavalleja, the unconquerable spirit of nationality. Defeated in
1837, he continued, upon Brazilian territory, an obstinate warfare
against Oribe. He defeated him, and was {130} proclaimed President
of Uruguay. Oribe then figured in the Argentine army, as a general
of Rosas.
At this stage the conflict between Unitarians and federals around
Montevideo acquired a transcendental significance. Brazil intervened
once more in the affairs of La Plata. Impregnable as Paraguay under
Lopez, the Eastern Province continued the war against Oribe, its
ex-president, and against the legions of the Argentine tyrant. A
noble crusader in the cause of liberty, Garibaldi, at the head of the
Uruguayan squadron which defended Montevideo, gave the struggle a
romantic character. Oribe, a genius of destruction, ravaged the
country, and besieged Montevideo by land in 1843. Foreigners:
French, Italians, Turks, and natives, defended the threatened city.
England, France, and Brazil at first offered their mediation, which
was refused by Oribe; they then sent squadrons to defend the autonomy
of Uruguay and to insure the free navigation of the River Parana in
the interests of European commerce. After a long war of heroic
conflicts Urquiza, the leader of the armies in alliance against the
autocracy of Rosas, put Oribe to flight (1861) and saved Montevideo
from the Argentine peril.
Lavalleja and Rivera, the great _caudillos_ in the struggle for
liberty, were rival claimants for power and moral influence. Rivera,
like Artigas, represented an aggressive patriotism, hostile to all
outside influence; his ideal was national integrity. Generous,
anarchical, of the native type, he was more liberal and more of a
democrat than Lavalleja; he defended all liberties--liberty of
conscience, of industry, of the press. A nomadic _gaucho_, he
organised and led guerilla forces through a campaign of incessant
skirmishes. Lavalleja, imperfectly educated, rude, authoritative,
half a Spaniard in his pride and his colonial methods, was the leader
of the aristocratic and cultivated classes. More conservative and
more politic than Rivera, he opposed the rural democracy, {131} and
desired an orderly independence, a disciplined liberty; in government
he was a tyrant. He alienated the supporters of Rivera, dissolved
the Chamber of Representatives, reformed the administration of
justice, and estranged the authorities of the departments. Rivera,
President from 1830 to 1834 and from 1838 to 1843, was--like the
majority of the American _caudillos_--a zealous protector of commerce
and industry. The national revenues mounted by 27 per cent.; imports
and exports increased; the population was doubled, and schools and
libraries were founded. Rivera exterminated the Charrua Indians, who
pillaged in town and country, fostered the stock-raising industry,
and, in his democratic enthusiasm, prohibited the slave trade in 1839
and freed the slaves in 1842.
In the rivalry of these leaders we may already perceive the elements
of future civil struggles. Two political parties, the Whites and the
Reds, struggled for power, as in other American republics; their
disputes, which were long and violent, revealed an antagonism more
profound than any simple conflict of political opinions. Uruguay,
like Venezuela and Peru, is a country of _caudillos_, but all her
leaders, from Rivera to Battle Ordonez, have effected not merely
works of material progress, but also religious and moral reforms,
which explains the violent mutual hatred of the Reds and Whites. In
matters of local import, or of national convictions and traditions,
there is a clash of formidable instincts, and the political problem
becomes simplified. Two great groups, one conservative and the other
liberal, both represented by tenacious leaders, disputed the supreme
power in the government and in parliament. The Whites were partisans
of absolutism, nationalists and catholics, and intolerant towards
foreign cults; and the old Spanish aristocracy, the clergy, the
"doctors"--all those, in short, who would constitute an intellectual
oligarchy--sympathised with this authoritative {132} and
traditionalist party. The Reds called their adversaries cut-throats
(for in the name of reasons of State and of order they had no respect
for human life), reproached them with opposing due liberties (they
did condemn what they considered excessive liberties) and were
liberals and enemies of the Church. The country districts and the
cabins supported them; they were the popular party. The Whites
called them "the Savages." Although very old families figured in
both clans, the new social classes, the mestizos and children of
foreigners inclined rather to the Reds, while the Whites included the
proprietors of the _latifundia_.
Lavalleja died in 1853, Rivera in 1854. After the death of the two
leaders a barbarous warfare continued between the two parties, which
represented tradition and democracy. In vain did certain of the
Presidents--Garro, Flores, and Berro--attempt to realise the unity of
Uruguay and to form a national party. The conflict still continued,
for the groups were swayed by an inevitable antagonism: the
conservative oligarchy and the half-breed democracy are opposed in
Uruguay as in Mexico and Venezuela. The old families, _beati
possidentes_, defended "_la grande proprieté_" against the foreigners
and mestizos.
With the triumph of Flores (1865) the Whites lost their political
supremacy, and the liberal party regained its old position. Flores
protected commerce, rebuilt the cities destroyed by so many wars, and
built railways; his dictatorship terminated in 1868. The leader of
the Reds returned to the Presidency from 1875 to 1876, and his party
established itself more firmly. Despite fresh revolutions, it did
not yield up the government, and effected great social reforms.
Another _caudillo_, the present President, Don José Battle y Ordoñez,
is, by virtue of his liberal creed, his influence, and the daring of
his political programme, an eminent personage amidst the sordid {133}
quarrels which divide the populations of America; he has inherited
the authority of Rivera, Flores, and Lorenzo Battle.
The modern Uruguay is born of the struggle between the two
traditional parties: a small nation with an intense commercial
vitality, like Belgium and Switzerland. A harmonious republic, it
has not overlooked, in its material conquests, the suggestion of
Ariel. An admirable master, José Enrique Rodo, has established a
chair of idealism at Montevideo. Immigration, a surplus[1] in the
budgets, a strict service of the internal debt, an increasing
population--in short, all the aspects of economic progress--go hand
in hand with the spread of education, the abundance of schools, the
importance of journalism, and the moral vigour of a younger
generation, which is ambitious for its country, and anxious that
Uruguay shall play a noble part upon the American stage. The most
advanced laws--divorce, suppression of the death penalty, a code
protecting workers, separation of Church and State--give the
development of Uruguayan civilisation a markedly liberal aspect.
Miscegenation decreased after the destruction of the Charruas, and
the race is more homogeneous and keenly patriotic. The enthusiasm of
the Uruguayans has baptized Montevideo in the name of New Troy, for
the possession of this impregnable city was, in the _Iliad_ of
America, the ambition of every conqueror: it was the refuge of the
pilgrims of liberty, of ambitious foreigners, of Argentine
Unitarians, and of a romantic soldier, Garibaldi. When the peoples
of America, weary of civil discord, wish to unify their laws and
glorify the heroism of their past conflicts, they proceed to
Montevideo, as to The Hague or Washington, in periodical Peace
Congresses. In a continent divided by fatal ambitions, the capital
of Uruguay preserves the tradition of Americanism.
[1] This surplus amounted to eight millions of piastres between 1906
and 1910.
{134}
CHAPTER V
THE ARGENTINE: RIVADAVIA--QUIROGA--ROSAS
Anarchy in 1820--The _caudillos_: their part in the formation of
nationality--A Girondist, Rivadavia--The despotism of Rosas--Its
duration and its essential aspects.
The Argentine passed through a crisis, a time of anarchy, like the
other American nations. But the struggle between autocracy and
revolution assumed epic proportions in the vast arena of the pampa.
It was the clash of organic forces. Tradition, geography, and race
gave it a rare intensity. The provinces fought against the capital,
the coast against the sierra, the _gauchos_ against the men of the
seaboard, and the various parties represented national instincts.
The anarchy and ambition of the provinces commenced during the first
few years of Argentine life. Governments followed one another at
rapid intervals; constitutions and regulations were legion; political
forms were essayed as experiments, on Roman or French models; there
was the Junta of 1810, the Triumvirate of 1813, and the Directory of
1819. Every two years, with inflexible regularity, from 1811 to
1819, this uneasy republic imposed a new Constitution. The Argentine
troops, like the armies of the French Revolution, gave the gift of
liberty to Chili and Peru; but at home the effort of Buenos-Ayres to
dominate the provinces was less fortunate.
It has been written that in 1820 the confusion and {135} discord in
the Argentine were so intense that the effort of the revolutionaries
of May appeared to have spent itself. In Buenos-Ayres there was a
divorce between the factions, and a struggle between Unitarian and
federal _caudillos_: Alvear, Sarratea, Dorrego and Soler; between the
municipalities and the rebellious troops; in the country as a whole
it was the struggle of the provincial leaders against Buenos-Ayres
and the Directory.
In the midst of this period of disturbance the federal democracy was
born; the provinces concluded treaties, the capital compromised with
the _caciques_, the governors of the provinces; the _cabildo_
retained its representative character, the military and civil
elements entered upon a mutual conflict.
Finally, in 1821, the Directorial party, aristocratic and Unitarian,
was victorious. Bernardino Rivadavia was the representative figure
of the period. Secretary in the government of Rodriguez from 1821 to
1824, President from 1826 to 1827, a civil dictator like Portales in
Chili, a remarkable statesman, a reformer like Moreno and Belgrano,
he presided over a premature realisation of the democratic ideal, and
symbolised the Unitarian principles in all their force: the supremacy
of Buenos-Ayres, constitutionalism, European civilisation, and the
ideal Republic. He was the pupil of Lamartine and Benjamin Constant
in a barbarous democracy. He had every gift--physical arrogance,
oratorical power, honesty, enthusiasm, patriotism. He divined the
elements of Argentine greatness: immigration, the navigability of the
rivers, the stability of the banks, and external trade. But
Buenos-Ayres was then a plebiscitary republic, in which the _cabildo_
and the people resolved all problems of politics, and Rivadavia
suffered ostracism, as he had enjoyed the unstable popularity with
which democracies endow their leaders.
He was, according to the expression of {136} M. Groussac, a vigorous
forger of Utopias. He granted all political rights; he wished to see
a republic with a free suffrage; he 'doubled the number of the
representatives of the people, and suppressed the municipalities
which had prepared the way for the revolution. The executive power
renounced its extraordinary attributes and submitted to the
legislative power. Was this wise, in a revolutionary country, face
to face with the disunited provinces? Rivadavia organised the
judiciary as a supreme and autonomous entity. He declared, in
messages dealing with the doctrine of high politics, that property
and the person were inviolable; he proclaimed the liberty of the
press, and recognised the liberty of the conscience.
He commenced the campaign against the Church, suppressing convents,
seizing their possessions by mortmain, ignoring the ecclesiastic
charter, and secularising the cemeteries. He aspired, like
Guzman-Blanco, to found a national and democratic religion upon the
traditional elements. A great educator, he had faith in the benefits
of popular instruction, erected buildings for the use of schools and
colleges, attracted foreign teachers, and promulgated a plan of study
in which the physical sciences and mathematics, forgotten under the
old system, occupied the first rank. He founded numerous pedagogic
institutions: the Faculty of Medicine, the Museum, the Library,
special technical and agricultural schools, and colleges for young
girls.
He did not overlook material progress. His financial reforms were
radical; the national budget was instituted; a tax upon rent was
imposed, and the customs duties were regularised. The minister
Garcia contributed to this financial reformation. Rivadavia
understood that the whole future of Buenos-Ayres depended upon that
great civiliser, the ocean, and he ordered the construction of four
harbours {137} on the coast. He favoured immigration, protected
agriculture, improved the ways and means of transport, reformed the
police, and contracted the first loan.
It was under the government of Rivadavia that the Constitution of
1826 was promulgated. This was inspired by the doctrines of J. J.
Rousseau, and his _Contrat social_; but it aimed energetically at
centralisation and authority. Senators were to exercise their
functions for twelve years; they were the conservative power. The
mandate of the deputies and the Director was to last only four years.
It was a Unitarian constitution which made Buenos-Ayres, in spite of
the protest of the federals, the capital of the United Provinces of
the Rio de la Plata, the centre which "rules all the peoples, and
upon which all depend."
Rivadavia imposed unity, propagated his ideas, multiplied reforms,
and checkmated the Church; he was the civiliser _par excellence_. He
wished to transform a Spanish province into a European nation, a
barbarous people into a democracy, a sluggish and fanatical society
into a liberal republic. He governed in the interests of
Buenos-Ayres and the seaboard, for the future Latin democracy, and
neglected the desert, the anarchy of the provinces, the indomitable
sierra, the _caciques_, and the Indian tribes. He was vanquished by
feudal barbarism, by a confused democracy, hostile to organisation
and unity; but his work remains, in the shape of a constitutional
programme. Alberdi writes that he gave America the plan of his
progressive improvements and innovations: it is an immense political
structure, a gospel of democracy. Were popular myths to rise in
spontaneous birth in Buenos-Ayres, before the evocative ocean, as in
the Greek cities lovingly bathed by the Mediterranean, then Rivadavia
would be the genius of Argentine culture, the patron of the city, the
creator of its arts and its laws.
{138}
While the magistral President was showering down reforms, the
demagogues triumphed over his efforts toward unity. His
constitutional labours miscarried in the provinces; the governors
would not submit to the haughty supremacy of Buenos-Ayres. They
fought for power in rude civil wars, in the North and on the
seaboard. Some provincial congresses were precariously installed,
and Montevideo renounced its union with the Argentine. A _caudillo_,
who at times rose to the moral greatness of the Liberators, Artigas,
longed to see Uruguay, his country, independent. The Empire of
Brazil and the Argentine democracy were wrangling for its possession.
Rivadavia stoically resigned the Presidency in 1827, having shown
himself a prodigal and sumptuous creator and an eminent prophet; he
left the country, having wearied the populace with his inventive
genius.[1] In his place General Dorrego was elected Governor of
Buenos-Ayres, the federal chief of the city, as Rosas was of the
country. The war with Brazil continued; but in 1828 a treaty was
signed which recognised the autonomy of Uruguay.
[Illustration: RIVADAVIA. President of Argentina (1826-1827). To
face p. 13]
This Brazilian victory aroused the indignation of the Argentine
Unitarians; they overthrew Dorrego and elected General Lavalle to be
Governor. A storm of tragedy broke over the divided city. Dorrego
was shot by order of Lavalle, and then began the terrible war of
hatred between federals and Unitarians--a Jacobin conflict.
The daring revolt of the provinces had coincided with the
promulgation of the Constitution of 1826. {139} Since 1820 the
Argentine provinces had been in a state of revolt against the imposed
or suggested rule of Buenos-Ayres; it was the period of _caudillos_.
To the aristocratic presidency of Rivadavia they opposed the Terror.
They represented the barbarian might of the provinces. They made
federation a reality, cemented it by long quarrels, sanguinary
hatreds, conventions, alliances, and friendships. The provinces
fought within the nation; the cities within the province; within the
city, the families. An inflexible individualism--the fundamental
Spanish tradition--dissolved the provisional crystallisations of
society and politics. It was not a simple federal disaggregation--a
clash of ambitious overlords eager to surround their manors by new
domains; it was a mystic barbarism, the leaders of which recalled the
nomadic and fanatical Tamerlane. They were impelled by a strange,
rude force, disordered and prodigious--the genius of the _pampa_, the
instinct of a vagabond race.
General Quiroga, the "Facundo" of Sarmiento, was the prototype of
these turbulent _gauchos_. By conquest or alliance he extended his
government over several provinces. The paltry Bustos, the Reinafé
family, the crafty Lopez, and Ferré were also among the Argentine
_caudillos_; Lopez extended his rule over Entre-Rios, Santa-Fé, and
Cordoba. Facundo dominated them all by the range of his deeds and
his influence. He came from the Andes to the conquest of the
seaboard and the great rivers; he reigned in Rio, Jujuy, Salta,
Tucuman, Catamarca, San Juan, San Luis, and Mendoza; he grouped vast
provinces together, and paved the way for unity in the future; he was
the forerunner of Rosas. Cruel and loyal, noble and bloodthirsty,
honest, frugal, and aggressive, a product of the _pampa_, he felt
himself actuated by primitive forces, by simple passions and
instincts, by heroism and the love of peril. Powerfully built, {140}
with an abundant shock of hair, bushy eyebrows, and the eyes of a
ruler, he resembled one of those gloomy Khalifs who brought the
mystic terror of the Orient to the West. On the standard which he
raised against the liberalism of Rivadavia was the proclamation:
"Liberty or death!" He was the "bad _gaucho_" the enemy of social
discipline, who lives far from the city and its laws, conscious and
proud of his barbarism. Sarmiento stated that he entertained "a
great aversion for decent persons," and that he hated the lordly city
of Buenos-Ayres. He fought with success against the Unitarian
generals, Paz and La Madrid, and against such secondary leaders as
Lopez and Reinafé. His life was a continual running hunt across the
rugged mountains; his goal the city of Rivadavia and the Directory;
his campaigns were bloody, and worthy of a chaotic period, during
which barbarism changed only in kind from Buenos-Ayres to Rioja. He
pillaged, executed, and triumphed in his rude insurrections at Tala,
at Campana de Cuyo. He wrote to General Paz in 1830, in his
downright manner: "In the advanced state of the provinces it is
impossible to satisfy local pretensions except by the system of
federation. The provinces will be cut to bits, perhaps, but
conquered--never!" Assassinated at Barranco-Yaco by the treacherous
hand of Reinafé, probably with the complicity of Rosas, he left his
heritage to this last of the _caudillos_.
Rosas was one of those hyperborean beings upon whom Gobineau
conferred a perdurable authority over the human herd. He possessed a
coat of arms, blue eyes, and the spirit of a ruler. Sober, astute,
proud, energetic, he combined all the characteristics of a great and
imperious personality. He obeyed neither general conceptions nor
vast political plans. He was a will served by ambitions. His
authoritative character of a Spanish patrician made him the {141}
_paterfamilias_ of the Argentine democracy. The pursuit of power was
an instinct, a physiological need; he governed in the interests of
federation, the concrete, practical idea, which he absorbed by
contact with many regions, of the nomadic _gaucho_, the self-willed
provincial; and he expounded it in 1824 in a famous letter to
Quiroga. He was not content to work for the mere realisation of the
North American ideal; his aim was national federation. He was
persuaded of "the necessity of a general government, the only means
of giving life and respectability" to a republic; but only the
properly constituted states would accept this central authority. Of
a federative republic he writes that nothing more chimerical and
disastrous could be imagined when it is not composed of properly
organised states. The anarchy of the Argentine was not a condition
propitious to the foundation of federation or unity; Rosas affirmed,
recalling the United States, that "the general government in a
federative republic does not unite the federated peoples: it
represents them when united." So he wished to unite the provinces:
"the elements of discord among the peoples must be given time to
destroy themselves, and each government must foster the spirit of
peace and tranquillity."
Amid dogmatic governors and impenitent revolutionaries, this
president who desired a real federation and accepted, as a factor of
human conflicts, time, the creator of stable nations, seems a figure
strangely out of place. Rosas left "the elements of discord time to
destroy themselves"; an invulnerable dictator, he watched over the
obscure process of national gestation, isolating his people,
detesting the foreigner, as though he wished to prepare the way, free
from all perturbing influences, for the fusion of antagonistic races,
the purging of local hatreds, and the harmonious life of men,
traditions, and provinces within a plastic and fruitful organism.
From {142} chaos a spontaneous federation was to spring, of the North
American type; as in the formation of the United States, the
provinces, in possession of their autonomy, concluded pacts of union.
Such was the federal pact of 1831, between the provinces of the
seaboard--Corrientes, Entre-Rios, Buenos-Ayres, and Santa-Fé; such,
twenty years later, was the Constitution of 1853.
Pacts and charters recognised "the sovereignty, liberty, and
independence of each of the provinces."
The work of Rosas was profoundly Argentine. It presents a triple
civilising significance; it overcame the partial _caudillos_,
conquered the wilderness, and founded an organic confederation.
Traditional, for it respected ancient liberties; opportunist, adapted
at the critical moment of national evolution, for it prevented the
disaggregation of the provinces by the labours of unconscious
leaders. Like Porfirio Diaz, Rosas destroyed the provincial
_caudillos_; he was a Machiavelli of the pampas. He dissembled his
unificatory aims; he caused division among the governors, stimulated
their mutual hatred, presided over their quarrels; he grouped or
isolated his disciples, who cut a lively figure on the hustings.
When the power of Quiroga increased, he protected Lopez, and exposed
the former to the hatred of the Reinafé; Quiroga once murdered, he
had the latter accused. He expected the governors to submit to his
_exequatur_; the demi-gods fell before the stroke of his imperial
axe. "Rosas is the Louis XI. of Argentine history," said Ernesto
Quesada, with justice; for over the heads of the feudal barons he
raised a magnificent Unitarian structure; he was the creator of
Argentine nationality.
[Illustration: ROSAS, THE ARGENTINE TYRANT. (1829-1852.) To face p.
142.]
Rosas surrounded himself with chosen men: the Lopez, Anchorenas,
Mansillas, Sarrateas, Riglos. The cultivated classes demanded a
strong government, renounced their liberty with a Dionysiac {143}
delight, and conferred "unlimited power" upon Rosas. The tyrant
governed, in short, above the law and above custom. He enacted laws
to prohibit the carnival, that popular souvenir of the pagan
Bacchanalia, and to establish the rules of mourning; he himself was
the law, was reason, was the _logos_; intoxicated with docility, a
whole nation bowed before his Cæsarian will, without hierarchic
distinctions. His rule was a supreme levelling, a universal
servitude; the Terror. Rosas, impelled and favoured by the supreme
traditions of a race, became the Cæsar of a democracy.
_Gauchos_ and negroes supported him; with the aid of the people he
subjected the ruling classes. He unified; he destroyed social
privileges; he inverted the order of the hierarchies in the
Unitarian, aristocratic city. His political methods were of the
simplest. Instinctively he applied infallible psychological truths.
He knew the power of repetition, of habit, of formulæ; he understood
the enervating effect of panic; the effect of vivid colours and
sounding words upon the half-breed mob. "Federation or death!" he
reiterated, in his proclamations. "Savages, infamous
Unitarians--impious Unitarians," one read day by day in the journals,
and in official documents; that vivid colour, red, was the symbol of
federalism. Rosas wrote to Lopez: "Repeat the word, savage! repeat
it to satiety, to boredom, to exhaustion."
What such influences did not obtain was produced by that effectual
levelling agent, terror. Rosas crushed rebellious wills; he
overpowered his enemies, the impious, infamous, savage Unitarians; he
was the Jacobin of the Federation. A prætorian legion, the
_Mazorca_, chopped off such heads as raised themselves. He was a
fanatical democrat, a lay Inquisitor; if he discovered a political
heresy he condemned it without pity. As national _caudillo_ he {144}
protected religion, attracted the clergy, and attacked the
Unitarians, not only because they were savage, but also because they
were impious. Like Portales, he made a tool of religion. He
defended the "patrons," and condemned the Jesuits as conspirators,
not from religious motives. The clergy saw in him the man chosen by
God "to preside over the destinies of the country which saw his
birth." Rosas governed according to tradition and history by making
use of the hatred of the masses and classes, the fanaticism of the
mob, the servility of the natives; he was therefore a Catholic and a
democrat.
Like all great American dictators, Rosas proved to be an eminent
administrator of the public finances. In a time of national
disturbance and military expenditure he displayed an extraordinary
zeal in organising and publishing the national accounts. His method
was simple rather than scrupulous; he appointed honest men to high
representative posts. The official journals published the fiscal
balance-sheet monthly; receipts and expenditure, the fluctuations of
paper-money, and the state of the national debt. Rosas was vigorous
in assuring the service of the external debt; he accumulated neither
loans nor fresh taxes. His economic policy was orderly and
far-seeing. To him we owe the construction of many of the public
works of Buenos-Ayres, including a magnificent promenade, Palermo,
where he built his autocratic residence. His invulnerable
dictatorship was based upon material progress and fiscal order.
He was also the defender of the continent against European invasion.
Like Juarez and Guzman-Blanco, he professed a jealous individualism;
his work was bound up with race and territory. Continuing the
revolutionary movement of 1810, he desired not merely freedom from
Spain but autonomy against the whole world.
In the twenty-four years, 1829 to 1852, Rosas {145} made federal
unity a reality. He was first of all governor and leader of the
_gauchos_; in 1835 he won the absolute power for five years, which
term was extended by several re-elections. Before him was the
anarchy of 1820 and the Unitarian bankruptcy of 1826; after him, the
powerful unity of 1853 and 1860, and the triumphal progress of the
Argentine democracy. Between this discord and this unity came his
fruitful despotism, a necessary Terror. His dictatorship was more
efficacious than the autocracy of Guzman-Blanco or the ecclesiastic
tyranny of Garcia-Moreno. Porfirio Diaz and Portales, two founders
of political unity, were his disciples. He was the builder of a
practicable federation, because he was a _gaucho_ and could interpret
the inner voices of his race; he governed as an American, without
borrowing anything from European methods. Without him anarchy would
have been perpetuated, and the vice-kingdom of La Plata would have
been irremediably disintegrated. Like the Roman deity Janus, Rosas
had two faces; he closed one epoch and opened another; a past of
warfare and terror and a future of unity, peace, democratic
development, and industrial progress.
He defended the country against the territorial aggression of foreign
coalitions, and his own power against conspiracy and revolt; against
the avenging stanzas of Marmol, the aggressive journalism of Rivera
Indarte, and Varela, the rude pamphlets of Sarmiento, and the
meticulous dialectic of Alberdi. To Unitarian insult he opposed the
bloody campaign of the _Mazorqueros_; to European tutelage, the
individualism of the _gauchos_.
Rivadavia was thesis, Facundo antithesis, Rosas synthesis. The first
represented absolute unity; the second, anarchical multiplicity; the
third, unity in multiplicity, plurality co-ordinated, union without
violent simplification. Rivadavia comprehended the {146} necessity
of the supremacy of Buenos-Ayres, built as it was upon the ocean that
brought men and wealth; he stood for the fundamental unity of La
Plata. Facundo, in the place of this premature unification, erected
the autonomous province, pure and simple, but diverse. Rosas brought
about the final harmony of the forces of Argentine politics. He
united, like Rivadavia; he separated, like Facundo; he dominated the
capital city, and moderated provincialism; he painfully founded the
Confederation. His renown reached Europe; Lord Palmerston was his
friend; great foreign journals, such as the Times, the _Journal des
Débats_, the _Revue des Deux-Mondes_, discussed his policy and his
influence. Alberdi recognised that he contributed to the repute of
the Argentine abroad by his heroic defence of his territory. His
cruelty was effectual, his barbarism patriotic.
"_Como hombre te perdono mi carcel y cadenas;
Pero como Argentine, las de mi patria, no!_"[2]
cried Marmol. They were necessary chains, for they bound the country
together after the feudal dispersion, vanquished the resolvent forces
of provincialism, and gave unity and strength to democracy.
After Rosas, his political work, the confederation, survives in spite
of the ambitions of Buenos-Ayres. A logical development confirms the
ties that unite the provinces, grouping and organising all the
national forces about the capital city. In eighty-six years, from
the anarchy of 1820 to the glory of the Centenary, the Argentine has
seen a transformation of race, of policy, of wealth, of culture, of
history; Argentina is now a great Latin nation, which will soon
possess the moral and intellectual hegemony of South America.
[1] Carlos Octavio Bunge, in his remarkable book, _Nuestra America_,
gives the struggle between the capital and the provinces a racial and
economic character. He distinguishes three periods of evolution:
from 1810 to 1816 the Creole half-breeds contend with the "Goths";
from 1816 to 1825 the rural masses rise against the rich middle
classes of the provinces; from 1825 to 1830 Buenos-Ayres--the capital
city, rich, and Creole--enters upon a conflict with the provincial
cities--Indian or mestizo.
[2] "As man I forgive you my prison and my chains, but as Argentine,
those of my country--no!"
{147}
BOOK III
_THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY IN MEXICO,
CHILI, BRAZIL, AND PARAGUAY_
These republics have stood aside from the normal evolution of
Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia; they have known neither perpetual
revolutions nor lasting anarchy. Social progress has been
accomplished under the pressure of long-continued tutelage; the
principle of authority has been a safeguard against disorder and
licence. These are the more stable and less liberal peoples. In
them liberty is not a spontaneous gift by charter, but something won
from selfish oligarchies or tenacious despots. Such is the case in
Mexico, Chili, Brazil, and Paraguay.
{149}
CHAPTER I
MEXICO: THE TWO EMPIRES--THE DICTATORS
The Emperor Iturbide--The conflicts between Federals and
Unitarians--The Reformation--The foreign Emperor--The dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz--Material progress and servitude--The Yankee influence.
In Mexico we find an alternation of revolutions and dictators. The
principle of authority is supreme; it even gives rise to two empires
and a permanent presidency; there has always been a well-organised
monarchical party. Modern Mexico demonstrates the excellence of
strong governments in a divided continent.
The Aztec nation was born into freedom in 1821, after the
capitulations of Cordoba. The Viceroy O'Donoju recognised the
triumph of Iturbide, and the rights of Mexico; the Spanish leader and
the patriot _caudillo_ decided upon the creation of an empire which
should conserve the rights of Ferdinand VII., like the _juntas_ of
South America; the creation of a constituent congress, and the
nomination of a provisional government, which should preside over the
destinies of the nation during the indecision of the twilight of the
old _régime_.
Iturbide very shortly came forward as an incarnation of the national
characteristics; he was actuated by an imperious ambition, and
haunted by the triumphs of Napoleon. He had studied the classics,
and was a brilliant and persuasive orator. His courage and activity
and his dominating character {150} won him a sudden popularity.
Bolivar, in a letter to Riva-Agüero, said: "Bonaparte in Europe,
Iturbide in America: these are the two most extraordinary men that
modern history has to offer." The clergy, the Mexican nobility, the
troops, and the lower classes, who regarded him as the liberator of
their country, flocked around him. Congress was in part hostile;
Generals Bustamente and Santa-Ana supported him in the Assembly;
Generals Victoria and Guerrero attacked him. The deputies understood
that he aspired to absolutism, and that he aimed at becoming the heir
to the overlords of Anahouac. A prætorian revolution proclaimed him
"Constitutional Emperor of Mexico" on May 21, 1822. The political
opinion of the country was divided. The monarchists wanted a Spanish
prince; the republicans a federation, a democracy with full
liberties. Of these latter Iturbide said: "They were my enemies
because I was opposed to the establishment of a government which
would not have suited Mexico. Nature has produced nothing suddenly;
she acts by successive stages."[1] The Emperor responded to the
aspirations of the populace, and flattered the imagination of the
crowd by the pomp and pageantry of his coronation, and the splendour
of his Court; he was the national monarch, the creator of his
country, as were the feudal kings in Europe. Convinced of his
prestige and impelled by ambition, he dissolved Congress.
Thenceforward his government was menaced by _caudillos_, who defended
the violated constitution. Iturbide abdicated in May, 1823, and when
he returned to his country the sentence of death pronounced upon him
by contumacy was enforced. He was executed by shooting in 1824.
[Illustration: PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDEPENDENCE
DAY. (_From "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity," by the Hon.
John Barrett._)]
Santa-Ana, who had directed the revolution against the Emperor, was
the Mexican _caudillo_, as Facundo was the _caudillo_ of the
Argentine pampas, or Paez {151} of the Venezuelan plains. He
professed no definite political doctrines; he was, first of all, a
radical reformer, but afterwards, with prudent opportunism, he
accepted the ideas of the conservatives. Crafty, ambitious,
ignorant, a democrat by instinct, he finally became the fetish of the
mob, the hero of the civil wars; as president, as general, as supreme
authority, he governed his divided country. Between Iturbide and
Juarez, between emperor and reformer, he was for twenty years a
sombre and overpowering figure. His triumph in 1824 ratified the
policy of federalism; the Constitution recognised two chambers; the
presidential term was four years; the judicial power was irremovable,
and the provincial assemblies elected the national Senate. Under
this system General Victoria became president. It was then that a
fear of Spain and the monarchy resulted in a policy of
_rapprochement_ with the great Northern republic. The _yorkina_
lodges, radical in spirit, acquired considerable influence, and
worked in favour of a North American hegemony; the prestige of the
ancient Scotch lodges, on the other hand, decreased.
Santa-Ana led a new revolution which gave the Presidency to General
Guerrero; General Bustamente was Vice-President. The economic crisis
was accentuated by these successive revolts; the Government was
carried on by means of onerous loans; the increasing debt drained the
Treasury, and discontent evoked another revolution. A supporter of
Iturbide, General Bustamente, autocratic and conservative, was
proclaimed President; he had the previous ruler, Guerrero, shot,
stifled the provincial rebellions, and re-established internal order.
A civil war forced him, in 1832, to compromise with the director of
all these political conflicts, Santa-Ana.
With him the liberals triumphed, and a social transformation
commenced. The liberals were the "new men," as in Venezuela, under
Guzman. The {152} colonial oligarchy, the republican bureaucracy,
the high clergy, and the wealthy classes composed the conservative
group which had founded the Empire with Iturbide, and desired royalty
with Lucas-Alaman. Against them rose the reforming democracy,
liberal or radical; it was a conflict of principles and classes. The
lawyers, the lesser clergy, and the coloured middle classes gained
the upper hand in 1833, and the great economic, social, and religious
reformation commenced; Juarez was presently to give it the dignity of
constitutionalism. In the struggle against the conservative and
monarchical Church the liberals disregarded ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, confiscated by mortmain the goods of the religious
communities, promoted lay education, and secularised the reactionary
University, as Garcia Moreno in Ecuador condemned the liberal
University, and, impelled by a pernicious radicalism, they suppressed
the army of a nation a prey to anarchy.
After Santa-Ana a coloured _caudillo_, Benito Juarez, was the leader
of the reformers (1839), and with him the liberal movement took on a
profoundly racial character. Juarez represented the natives, the
democracy, as against the colonial oligarchy; like Tupuc-Amaru, he
was the redeemer of the Indians; like Las Casas, the protector of the
vanquished. Better than Guzman-Blanco and Rosas he realised the
ideal of those American republics which were oppressed by memories of
colonial days; hatred of all privilege, a dream of absolute liberty,
war upon the tutelary Church, and a strict despotism designed to
create classes and ideals.
He proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and the
confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Lerdo de Tejada was the
economist and ideologist of the Reformation; Juarez was its muscle,
its iron will; he realised without compromise the old liberal
programme. Congress, divided into Juarists and anti-Juarists, {153}
elected him President. All the laws against the Church were applied,
but that did not enrich the country. Stock-jobbing, scandals, waste,
and bankruptcy accumulated and formed a terrible argument against the
"pure" liberals; the latter defended themselves by means of
proscriptions and new and violent laws of reform. Once more the
shadow of the Empire hovered over the turbulent democracy.
It was no longer a question of the national Empire of Montezuma or
Iturbide, but of the foreign eagles. Napoleon III., a conqueror by
family tradition, intervened in Mexican affairs; like Louis-Philippe,
he desired colonies oversea; he defended the Latin civilisation
against the Yankee peril, protected the Church against the
Reformation, and extended over barbarous countries the amiable empire
of the French spirit, the spirit of lucidity, method, and harmony.[2]
In 1861 the Mexican Congress suspended the service of the debt, as a
remedy against financial bankruptcy, and this measure provoked French
intervention; there was a crusade of ambitious creditors against
Mexico. England and Spain signed an agreement in London; both were
enemies of the insolvent democracy. The hatred of Mexico was then
excited against Spain; the Spanish Minister was expelled; the federal
Government refused to treat with the Spanish _chargé d'affaires_.
The Reformation general, Zaragoza, organised the country for defence
against the Spanish invasion; he was victorious at Puebla. The
Mexican resistance was concentrated upon the central plateau, where
dwelt the _penates_ of ancient Mexico. Zaragoza died; Puebla,
attacked by the French, defended itself heroically; the national war
became also a civil war. The monarchists desired a prince, the
restoration of the Catholic Church, and {154} the consolidation of
the conservative oligarchy; the clergy shared their ambitions. The
Archduke Maximilian arrived, to whom the conservatives had offered
the throne of Iturbide, and from 1863 to 1864, after some hardly
contested battles, the invaders ruled the country. Maximilian,
surrounded by the aristocrats, triumphantly entered the Aztec
capital, and the people, overpowered by the splendour of the new
court, accepted the foreign monarch.
This monarch, pompous and ambitious, wished, like Napoleon III., to
found a "liberal empire," a democratic kingdom; he did not condemn
the Reformation, but professed to be anxious to assist it and to
purge it of its Jacobin origin. Heir to the viceroys and dictators,
Maximilian re-established the right of "patronage" and favoured
religious tolerance. A few reformers applauded his liberalism, but
neither liberals nor conservatives were satisfied; the former because
they had dreamed of a secular republic, the latter because they
wished for a clerical monarchy. The revolution continued. The
Emperor, effaced like any Mikado, did not govern; his tycoon, General
Bazaine, at the head of a French army, was the real source of
authority.
[Illustration: BENITO JUAREZ. President of Mexico in the struggle
against the French invasion. To face p. 154.]
His presidential term ending in 1865, Juarez proclaimed himself
Dictator in order to continue his resistance against the Empire,
which, between a monarch and a general, between the discontented
clericals and the aggressive reformers, was tottering to its fall.
The North American Republic condemned the monarchy in the name of the
Monroe doctrine: this was intervention against intervention. The War
of Secession in the United States was over, and the States feared
their Imperial neighbour. From that time fortune abandoned the
Mexican monarch. Napoleon III. had occasion to withdraw his troops;
Prussia, ambitious of hegemony in Europe, and victorious at Sadowa,
was causing him {155} uneasiness. He advised Maximilian to abdicate;
but the Emperor was by no means willing to give way; he had become a
reactionary, and vigorously defended his Imperial dignity. The
tragic hour of desertion and disaster struck, and the Mexican
revolution was prolonged (1866). Porfirio Diaz, escaping from
Puebla, which was besieged by the French, organised the reconquest of
Mexico at Guerrero. Sombre and virile, he took refuge on the high
plateau, as did the Gothic king in the mountains of Asturia. He
captured Puebla after a day's glorious fighting. Surrounded by
Republican troops, Maximilian took refuge at Queretaro; he was taken
prisoner with his army and the best of his generals. He was
condemned to death, and Juarez, inflexible as the Aztec gods, refused
to show mercy. The Emperor was executed at Queretaro on the 19th of
June, 1867. On the following day Mexico yielded to the legions of
Diaz. The Reformation had vanquished two emperors and erected two
scaffolds. In these struggles Juarez, the half-breed _caudillo_, and
Porfirio Diaz, the invincible general, had acquired a lasting
influence, and Juarez, as President and Dictator, proceeded to
organise the country. He strengthened the executive power against
anarchy, endeavoured to found a conservative Senate, maintained order
by means of a disciplined army, and improved the condition of
finances by severe economies. His ministers, better educated and
more intelligent than their leader, realised sweeping reforms while
he gathered the victorious generals about him. The new Government
entrusted the Preparatory School to a great educator, Gabino Barreda;
like Rivadavia in the Argentine, it applied itself to the moral and
material transformation of the country. It protected foreign
capital, established liberty of trade, favoured colonisation,
fostered irrigation, and commenced to build a railway from Vera-Cruz
{156} to Mexico. The ideal of Juarez was the education of the native
race, the nucleus of nationality; like Alberdi, he believed that
Protestantism would be a fruitful moral doctrine for the Indians.
"They need," he told Don Justo Sierra, "a religion which will force
them to read, not to spend their money on candles for the saints."
He established an industrial democracy, a secular State.
But between his political ideas and his dictatorial acts there was a
discrepancy which explains the ultimate sterility of his efforts.
"The only book he had read thoroughly was the _Politics_ of Benjamin
Constant, the apology of the parliamentary system."[3] Juarez relied
upon the democracy, on the governing Chambers; he aspired to a
position like that of a constitutional monarch; that of a glorified
spectator of the quarrels of parties. His ideas urged him toward
parliamentarism; his ambitions, to dictatorship. He professed to
conciliate all the national interests, to be the personification of
the Mexican democracy, but his dislikes were mean and paltry.
Severe, impassive, a great personality in his strength and his silent
tenacity, he had no great ideals; he was no orator, no leader of the
subject crowd. He was merely the supreme _cacique_ of a half-breed
nation.
[Illustration: JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR. Minister of Finance during the
Administration of General Diaz in Mexico. To face p. 156.]
Despite his government, anarchy continued in the States. The
soldiers who had conquered in the national war disturbed the domestic
peace of the nation by their ambitions; in Yucutan, Sonora, and
Puebla revolutions broke out, which Juarez energetically suppressed.
His presidential term at an end, he aspired to re-election, and
defeated Lerdo de Tejada, the financier, and the warrior Diaz; but
his victory was not lasting. The great revolution in which Diaz
figured commenced, and Juarez died in the midst of the struggle for
power. Lerdo de Tejada, who continued the reforms already {157}
commenced, was the next President; with him liberal principles
figured definitely in the Mexican constitution. Lerdo strengthened
the central power, and started a campaign against the _cacicazgos_,
the tyrants of the Sierra, and founded a tutelary Senate. He, like
Juarez, aspired to re-election, and a fresh rising at Tuxtepec
prepared the way for his fall. The Supreme Court considered itself
authorised to examine the titles of the presidential candidates, and
invalidated his re-election. By 1877 the Revolution had conquered
the country.
It imposed upon Mexico the hero of the re-conquest, Porfirio Diaz,
who became the new national _caudillo_, inheriting the Imperial
ambitions of Iturbide, the craft of Santa-Ana, and the moral
dictatorship of Juarez.
The country was disorganised, its credit in the European markets was
destroyed; its national finances were in disorder. The blood-stained
soil was divided among petty _caciques_; radicalism led to demagogy
and liberty to anarchy. Jacobinism had triumphed with the
Revolution, and condemned the re-election of presidents and the
conservative Senate; the omnipotence of the popular Chamber was
proclaimed. The result was a feeble and ephemeral government; in the
absence of a moderating power the radical Assembly was supreme. A
man was needed to organise chaos; Porfirio Diaz was the necessary
autocrat, the "representative man" of Emerson.
Stern and gloomy, he was preparing for the priesthood. Born in 1830,
he was brought up in poverty. A half-breed, he combined the courage
of the Iberian with the dissimulation of the native. He knew the
efficacy of work, perseverance, and method; he was extremely
ignorant, but was shrewd and perspicacious. He was six times elected
President, for the last time in 1900, and peace was coterminous {158}
with his rule. A great hunter and a master of manly exercises, his
intensity of will-power was supported by solid physical foundations.
Above all he was a man of action; his character was served by a
robust organisation; a powerful frame and a vast power of resistance
enabled him to rule and to intimidate. His intelligence applied
itself to concrete things; it was unable to examine facts in the
transforming light of an ideal; he had no general ideas, no spacious
plans; he was slow in deliberation and rapid in action. His politics
were an organised Machiavellism; like Louis XL, he divided that he
might reign and dissembled that he might conquer. His ideas of
government were simple: "Not much politics and plenty of
administration," said his deeds and his programmes.
Machiavelli, in _The Prince_, taught the means of ruling in states
which have had autonomous governments; he suggested the implacable
extermination of the reigning families. General Diaz followed this
counsel in part. To overcome anarchy he attacked the obscure tyrants
of the provinces, and had them shot or exiled, or else he attached
them to himself by means of honours and rewards. He imposed peace by
means of terror. He knew that order was the practical basis of
progress, as in the formula of Comte, which the Mexicans are fond of
quoting, and this order he firmly established.
The destruction of the revolutionary instinct constituted the
negative side of his work; Diaz built upon this foundation an
industrial republic, practical and laborious. Weary of barren
ideologies, he put the Reformation and its Jacobin doctrines out of
his mind, accepted and encouraged the Yankee influence which had made
Lerdo de Tejada so uneasy, conquered barbarism and the desert by
means of the railway, and raised a number of loans. He was the
president of an industrial epoch.
{159}
His economic labours were imposing; in twenty-five years Mexico was
transformed from a divided republic into a modern State, from a
bankrupt nation into a prosperous and highly solvent people. Diaz
recalls the gods who built cities and filled the earth with the gold
of fruitful grain, and taught the virtues of the metals and of fire.
"Modern Mexico," writes the _Times_ in 1909, "is the creation of the
genius of General Diaz; he is the greatest statesman the
transatlantic Latin communities have produced since their
foundation." This organiser of peace astonished the old-established
nations, who listened attentively to the fruitful words of light
which fell from the lips of the Aztec demigod.
In 1884 Diaz commenced to reorganise the finances of his country. He
was seconded in his task by eminent secretaries like Limantour and
clever financiers like Romero and Macedo. The gold of the United
States invaded the market; it was employed in the construction of
railways and in industrial undertakings. In 1905 Limantour
established the gold standard as basis of the monetary system. The
service of the debt was regularised by agreement with foreign
creditors; the budgets ceased to present deficits; in ten years the
surplus reached a sum of seven million pesos. By 1894 the exports
were in excess of the imports. Thanks to this favourable commercial
balance, credit increased, and industries were multiplied; the
exuberant national prosperity attracted foreign capital and settled
it in the country. Here are some figures touching this progress. In
1876, at the beginning of Diaz's rule, the Mexican imports amounted
to 28 millions of pesos (silver) and the exports to 32 millions; in
1901 the amount of the former was 143 millions and of the latter 148
millions. The imports, a proof of the wealth of the {160} country,
had increased fivefold; the exports, a sign of agricultural and
mineral production, had increased almost in proportion. In twenty
years (1880-1900) the yield of the mining industry increased from 24
to 60 millions, and in the same period 20 banks were founded. A loan
of 40 million dollars was contracted in 1904, being issued at 94,
bearing 4 per cent interest, on the sole security of the national
credit; that is, the security usual in such transactions in the case
of the great European nations. In ten years the budget has doubled,
increasing from 50 to 100 millions. The surplus of the fiscal
revenue is devoted to decreasing the burden of taxation, and in
providing the country with fine and spacious public edifices. The
service of the foreign debt has been secured with a continuity rare
in America, more than 30 per cent. of certain budgets having been
used for that purpose. The result of the industrial evolution of the
country is proving to the detriment of agriculture, as in the Germany
of Bismarck and the Russia of Count Witte; looms, paper-mills,
hat-factories, &c., have been established. The national requirements
being satisfied, the products of agriculture are exported--tobacco,
rubber, and sugar. The network of railways is being greatly
extended, and irrigation works are being installed. Colonies of
Boers have settled in Mexico. The invasion of capital goes on
unchecked, as does the development of the economic life of the
country, and its political progress, revealed by its external credit.
Thus, the President, by means of sound money, steady finance, and
foreign gold, has founded a practical republic. He has overcome the
traditional revolts--the ardour of the Jacobins and racial
passions--by a utilitarian campaign; he has created a quiet and
peaceful State, in which nothing is to be heard but the sound of its
factories. A great {161} leveller, he has been, according to the
Spanish tradition, a Cæsar at the head of a democracy, the arbiter of
national conflicts, the supreme _caudillo_, obedient to the voices of
tradition.
Sierra, the Athenian minister, and Bulnes, the tempestuous historian,
exalt him in admirable dithyrambics. Sierra states that Diaz created
"the political religion of peace." But in the Aztec nation this cult
demands its sacrifices. Bulnes considers that the Dictator procured
peace by "the system of Augustus as expounded by Machiavelli"; he
gave the _caciques_ "riches and honours," but not the government.
And, in fact, Porfirio Diaz has built up the new Mexico by freeing it
from the sectarian struggles and the foreign invasion which
threatened to destroy it; but his work has been marred by
uncertainty, and a heavy shadow has weighed on uneasy spirits.[4]
The President at last abdicated his powers after a bloody revolution,
and it is not easy to say whether or no his removal will not result
in anarchy or new Dictators. His minister, Sierra, has written that
the political system of the Dictator "is terribly dangerous for the
future, for it imposes customs which are contrary to self-government,
without which there may be great men, but not a great people"; and
Bulnes says: "The personal _régime_ is magnificent as an exception,"
for "under its empire a people grows accustomed to expect everything
as a favour and a grace; to be the slave of the first who strikes it,
or the shameless prostitute of the first to caress it."
These criticisms prove that General Diaz has not applied the British
methods of preparation for self-government by means of a firm
tutelage. Those who condemn his long autocracy say that he enervated
{162} men's minds by means of terror, and has accentuated the Aztec
gloom by a narrow and monotonous absolutism. Dictatorships are not
societies of freemen; they give humanity uniformity and servility.
In abandoning the supreme power after establishing order and peace,
by presiding as moral authority over the free development of
republican institutions, Porfirio Diaz, like Don Pedro in Brazil,
might have been the supreme educator of the democracy.
He governed with the aid of the "scientific" party--a group which
believes in the virtue and power of science, exiles theology and
metaphysics, denies mystery, and confesses utilitarianism as its
practice and positivism as its doctrine. The Mexican politicians, in
renouncing Catholicism after the Reformation and the passing of the
Jacobin laws, have not abandoned dogma and absolutism in doctrine and
in life. As in modern Brazil, positivism in becoming the official
doctrine. The heirs of Juarez are slowly returning to Catholicism;
they aspire to definite certitudes; they have their "Syllabus." In
the President political majesty and the religious pontificate were
united, as in the Muscovite Czars and the Spanish kings.
In the restoration of the colonial order Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada
attracted European capital, for the Yankee supremacy troubled them.
Against this policy, which was based on racial interests, General
Diaz protected North American capital; bankers and adventurers
invaded the country, dominated its industries, and built railways.
How check the fatal current which brings the all-conquering gold from
the North? The national transformation is the work of the magnates
of Wall Street; Mexico is becoming a "zone of influence" for the
United States.
[Illustration: GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ. President of Mexico (1876-1880
and 1884-1909). To face p. 162.]
The scientific party, intoxicated by an orgy of utilitarianism, has
not sought to arrest the great {163} plutocracy of the North by means
of European alliances.
Unity, wealth, peace: these are the magnificent features of modern
Mexico, the admirable work of the Dictatorship. The Yankee peril;
lay dogmas which fetter intellectual evolution; a level of
utilitarian mediocrity without ideals of expansion, without culture,
without the true Latin characteristics; popular ignorance and fresh
revolutions: these are the disturbing aspects of this long period of
tutelage. If the country triumphs over the obscure agents of
dissolution, the influence of Porfirio Diaz will be as durable as
that of Pedro II. or Portales or Rosas.
[1] _Memoires autographes_, Paris, 1824, p. 28.
[2] The brilliant Mexican historian Bulnes states that French
intervention was "the revolt of Napoleon III. against the Monroe
doctrine" (_El verdadero Juarez_, Mexico, 1904, p. 816).
[3] Bulnes, ibid., p. 101.
[4] Diaz pacified Mexico by means of the weapon employed by
Rosas--fear. Bandits and revolutionaries were shot. His victims are
said to have numbered 11,000.
{164}
CHAPTER II
CHILI: A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE
Portales and the oligarchy--The ten-years Presidency--Montt and his
influence--Balmaceda the Reformer.
In Chili the course of political evolution has been entirely
original. Her first years of republican life were as troublous as
those of the Argentine, Bolivia, and Peru; it was an age of anarchy.
Carrera, the dictator, overthrew four governments; there were
mutinies in the barracks, and quarrels among the generals; the
Dictator O'Higgins fell in 1823; a _junta_ followed him, and after
the _junta_ four governors, Freire, Blanco Encalada, Eyzaguirre, and
Vicuña--ephemeral figures which a turbulent democracy set up and
destroyed. They occupied the centre of the moving scene for some few
months, and were seen no more. During the administration of Pinto,
from 1827 to 1829, there were no less than five revolutions.
Federation was attempted in a country essentially Unitarian; the
Congresses were disruptive assemblies; and in 1828 and 1829 an
obscure demagogy rose in revolt against the guardians of social
order. The national life was chaotic: vandalism in the country,
commerce paralysed, industry at a standstill, finance in disorder,
credit vanished, and politics revolutionary. The parties were
struggling for power; the "old wigs," _pelucones_, or conservatives,
and the "white-beaks," _pipiolos_, or liberals. The latter governed
a people {165} in love with liberty. The political orgy continued
until 1830; the Chilian people went from liberty to licence, and from
licence to barbarism. At last the demagogy was checked by a man of
superior powers, Diego Portales, founder of the Araucanian nation.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO, CHILE. (_From "Latin
America, the Land of Opportunity" by the Hon. John Barrett._) To face
p. 164.]
The social constitution of Chili, the contact of the castes, and the
traditions of the country all favoured his work of organisation. A
narrow territory, whose racial action must be unifying, and a long
coast-line, evoking the desire of adventure and expansion; these are
the geographical basis of a homogeneous race. The Araucanians do not
exhibit the gloomy passivity of the Quechuas and Aymaras; they are
rude and warlike. Miscegenation has not, as in Peru and Brazil, been
complicated by Asiatic and African strains; it has been simple,
without the terrible "hybridisms" of other countries. Hence national
unity and historical continuity. Over the servile mass reigns,
haughty and remote, a narrow oligarchy formed of austere and positive
Basques, deliberate Anglo-Saxons, merchants, and sailors.
No slaves, as in the tropics, but _inquilinos_, feudal serfs of
territorial barons. The oligarchy is agricultural, and therefore
stable and profoundly national. In short, we have a copy of
Anglo-Saxon society, or of the first Roman Republic; a false
democracy governed by absolute overlords.
With these strong conservative elements, Portales constructed an
austere nation. He was born in 1793, and was thirty-seven years old
at the time of his first intervention in political life. He was a
"new" man, a merchant, with precise ideas. He had the suggestive
power of the _caudillos_, a concrete intelligence, a moderate
education, a strong will, some power of reflection and authority. He
might well become the leader of a race that knew nothing of lyric
enthusiasms nor enticing dreams--the sensible {166} director of a
practical people. Minister under Ovalle in 1830, he profited by the
victory of General Prieto over the _pipiolos_. His conservative,
authoritative ideas carried him into power. He never wished to be
President, but a powerful minister, like Disraeli or Bismarck. Three
or four simple and concrete ideas guided him in politics; in the
first place, the organisation of Chili against anarchy. Religion is
one of the forces of order, and Portales, like Garcia-Moreno,
utilised it without going so far as theocracy; the principle of
authority is necessary in order to organise a country, and the leader
of the _pelucones_ demanded a strong executive with extraordinary
faculties. Between two excesses--autocracy and demagogy--he inclined
rather toward the former, and became a minister-dictator.
Portales governed against disorder; he dismissed the revolutionary
leaders, and men he divided into good and bad. He surrounded himself
with "good" men: they were, naturally, conservatives. He hated
_sargentadas_ (barrack mutinies); he educated the soldiers, and
founded a national guard as a counter-check to militarism. He
destroyed the bandits who infested the country. Primary and normal
schools were opened, in which he favoured religious instruction. A
severe economy was introduced into the national finances. His work
was given legal and economic form by a Peruvian jurist, Juan Egana,
and a Minister of Finance, Tocornal.
The minister wished his work to share the majesty of things eternal;
his personal and passing influence on life was not enough to satisfy
him. He had thoughts of a statute, an inflexible mould for the
future. The Constitution of 1833, which others promulgated under his
sovereign ægis, so to speak, was his political legacy.
This Constitution created a conservative Senate and a strong
Executive; the first was to defend tradition, {167} the second to
direct the progress of the nation. The provincial assemblies,
vestiges of federalism, were suppressed, and the municipalities were
entrusted with the public services. In case of internal trouble, the
President could declare a state of siege and suspend the
constitutional guarantees; but he could neither judge nor apply
penalties. The departments elected the deputies; a limited suffrage
appointed the senators; their mandate was for nine years. Patronage
was organised, and the Church became a State institution, for it
defended property, order, and the "good ideas" of the _pelucones_: it
consecrated the oligarchy, pure and simple.
This Constitution explains the slow progress of Chili in matters of
liberalism, her long domestic peace, and the lasting hegemony of an
oligarchic group. Alberdi attributed the Chilian peace to "a
vigorous Executive" and the Constitution of 1833.
This statute once a reality, Portales quietly organised the country;
he imposed order "by reason or by force." He retired from power,
and, in consequence, the conservative party passed through a crisis,
during which Rengijo and Tocornal were in conflict; but Portales
reappeared, as Minister of War, under Prieto, and Tocornal, the
eminent financier, was at his side. The _caudillo_ of order resumed
his work of organisation with incomparable activity; his patriotic
ambition was not satisfied by his triumphs over intestine quarrels.
He realised that Chili was a maritime nation, commercial and
oligarchical, like Carthage, and he aspired to the domination of the
ocean.
In the north, under the leadership of Santa-Cruz, Peru and Bolivia
had united. Portales feared this confederation, intervened in the
affairs of Peru, sent two expeditions against Santa-Cruz, and
fomented anarchy in Peru. He destroyed the great work of the great
Bolivian _cacique_, and for half a century {168} his imperialism made
progress. Peru had wealth, brilliance, and tradition; Chili deprived
her of the hegemony of the Pacific in a four-years war (1879-84).
The work of Portales was considerable. He established peace in the
interior, and excited the ambition to rule; he organised the country
under a strong authority, aided by a tutelary Church; he fostered
wealth and material progress; he built highways and railroads. A
Constitution was to establish his moral dictatorship for a period of
fifty years. The liberals themselves--Lastarria, Huneeus
Gana--recognised his masterly action in a time of disorder. A
conservative, Walker Martinez, wrote a brilliant _apologia_ for his
work. Vicuña Mackenna, the historian, wrote that "he was rather a
great mind than a great character," though his life's work, from the
repression of anarchy to the Peruvian war, proves plainly that he was
rather a great character than a great mind. Portales died in 1833 by
the hand of an assassin.
Manuel Montt continued his political work. His minister, Antonio
Varas, assisted him, as Tocornal had assisted the leader of the
_pelucones_. These conservative minds began to govern in 1851, and
the re-election of Montt in 1856 prolonged their term of action; this
was the "Decenniate," a period of bloodstained autocracy. The
Monttvarists became a national party; they defended order to the
death, by violence and dictatorship, first of all against the
radicals, and later against the radicals and the _pelucones_. These
ten years of disastrous organisation divided two periods: the
conservative period of Prieto and Portales, and the liberal period of
Perez and Errazuriz.
A liberalism better defined than that of the _pipiolos_ was causing
the champions of order some uneasiness. The eloquence of a tribune,
Matta, the patriarch of {169} radicalism, the propaganda of Bilbao
and Lastarria, and the work of revolutionary clubs, such as the
"Society of Equality," formed a party of romantic youth eager to
sacrifice itself for its ideals. Montt and Varas opposed it, and
exiled or condemned to death the future liberals--Santa-Maria, Vicuña
Mackenna, &c. They considered that Chili was not yet sufficiently
prepared for the theoretical liberties upheld by Lastarria and
Bilbao; they sought to promote education of the British type, with a
view to liberty and self-government. They were the representative
personages of the Creole oligarchy, a powerful conservative force,
rude and beneficent. Dictatorial repression did not destroy
liberalism; the presidents of the future were to be liberals, and
Montt himself slowly changed the direction of his policy. In 1858,
in the last years of the decenniate, the _pelucones_ attacked him
because he tolerated the Protestant religion in Valparaiso.
Under the Monttvarist government, as under the dictatorship of
Guzman-Blanco and Garcia-Moreno, the country progressed in an
economic sense. Railways, highroads, and telegraph lines were
constructed. Montt fostered agriculture and the colonisation of the
soil in the south by means of credit banks; he opened nearly five
hundred schools, and also founded a national bank. Maritime commerce
increased, and the public revenue was doubled during the Decenniate;
finally, the admirable civil code of Andres Bello, promulgated in
1857, gave discipline and stability to the civil life of the country.
Portales, Bello, Montt, and Varas organised Chili both politically
and socially.
After Montt, the presidencies of Perez, in 1861, of Errazuriz, in
1871, and of Santa Maria, in 1881, modified the conservative
tendencies of the country. All the conquests of the liberals--the
civil register, civil marriage, religious toleration--became laws of
{170} the State. Liberalism has not lessened the presidential
authority. Perez, like Montt, ruled for ten years. Long autocracies
and conservative constitutions explain the strength of Chili amid the
anarchy of South America.
Portales was the organising genius; Montt represented an epoch of
social defence; Balmaceda was the democratic reformer in an
oligarchic country, a liberal president in a time of conservative
traditions. Balmaceda is the greatest Chilian figure after Portales;
his presidency excited a revolution, and transformed the political
life of his people.
José Manuel Balmaceda belonged to the Chilian oligarchy. He was
descended from a very old colonial family. Juan de Balmaceda was
president of the _Real Audienca_, the king's tribunal, towards the
end of the eighteenth century. The name of the family reveals its
Basque origin. Balmaceda was born in Santiago in 1838. His father,
Don Manuel José Balmaceda, was a conservative, the possessor of vast
_latifundia_, as the head of a traditional family.
Balmaceda adopted democratic ideas. "Apostate" the conservatives
called him, forgetting that he had changed his doctrines, but had not
abandoned his original mysticism; he believed in liberty as he had
previously believed in the inflexible dogmas of the conservatives.
He belonged to the Reform Club of Santiago, in which a brilliant
younger generation upheld all the liberal idelas and romantic faiths
of 1848, the antitheses of the ideas of the _pelucones_ and the
Monttvarists. To the despotic executive he opposed electoral
liberty, a single-term presidency, autonomous municipalities, and the
restriction of presidential powers; to the Catholic oligarchy,
religious tolerance; to the traditions of authority, the formal
recognition of the rights of the press and the rights of assembly,
meeting and petition; to the confusion of the powers of the State,
their independence. {171} Balmaceda was the president of the Reform
Club. He did not attack the position of a traditional group with
plebeian fervour, as the avenger of an age of servitude; he left
their ranks, rich and patrician, to condemn their authority and their
privileges. It is the attitude of Winston Churchill in liberal
England.
Balmaceda had powerful tools at his disposal: personal wealth, the
basis of independence, a sympathetic creed, and a party which had
been growing powerful under the governments of Perez and Errazuriz.
We may distinguish three phases in his political action: as a deputy
he championed the laws of reform; as Minister of Foreign Affairs he
prevented the intervention of the United States in the Pacific war;
as President he increased the presidential power against the tyranny
of Congress. From 1870 to 1879 he was an impassioned
parliamentarian, believing in the efficacy of liberty against the
excesses of the conservative _régime_. In the Chamber, as deputy and
as Minister of the Interior and Religions, he supported the legal
measures of the liberals: secular burial, civil register and
marriage, and liberty of worship. In place of an absolute separation
of Church and State--not to be realised in Chili--he proposed the
union of the two powers on the basis of the traditional "patronage"
and religious liberty. He desired no radical reforms. "Let us
renounce," he said, "the idea of accomplishing everything in a short
space of time; let us beware of carrying our solutions, guided by a
spirit of rigorous abstraction, beyond what is required by the actual
needs of the moment for the correct application of liberal doctrine
and for the common happiness." Balmaceda, a radical in 1879,
moderated his ambitions ten years later, when he came to ask the
Chilian Parliament to pass his reforms.
{172}
Minister of Foreign Affairs under Santa-Maria in 1881, he
consolidated the victories of Chili in the war of the Pacific. The
military campaign was over, and Peru was vanquished, but was
defending her territorial integrity against the conquering ambition
of Arauco. What the armies had not been able to do diplomacy hoped
to effect. The intervention of the United States would have
proposed, as the solution of the war, peace without conquest; this
was the policy of Mr. Blaine, who dreamed of an America at lasting
peace under the golden reign of arbitration. A North American
minister, Mr. Trescott, brought the proposals of his government to
Chili. Garcia-Calderon, President of Peru, the champion of
territorial integrity and national union, stimulated the intervention
of the United States, but the mediators were inclined to treat the
victors with docility. President Garfield died, and the North
American policy changed. The Peruvian President was a prisoner of
Chili; from Rancagua to Quillota, from Santiago to Valparaiso, he was
the irreducible symbol of vanquished Peru. The United States
abandoned him; their policy finally became indecisive, turbid,
Machiavellic. Lima and Callao were occupied until 1883, when
Balmaceda succeeded in arranging the terms of peace, and the treaty
was signed which delivered over to Chili the riches of Southern Peru.
[Illustration: JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA. President of Chile
(1886-1891). To face p. 172.]
The Imperialist minister had conquered; he aspired to the presidency
of his country. Santa-Maria put him forward, and public opinion
accepted him, proud of his diplomatic triumphs. An age of plenty
commenced; the ancient Chilian austerity was at an end. Balmaceda
governed with his energies increased a hundred-fold by the gold of
Peru, the moral power of victory, his ambitions as a statesman, and
the vocation for empire which a victorious war develops in the heart
of an energetic people.
{173}
Materially, he transformed Chili; morally, he presided over her
dissolution, or, at least, her decadence. Neither this degeneration
nor this progress was the exclusive work of the autocratic President.
Wealth enervates a sober people; it permits the erection of
monuments, but it weakens men's characters. Honest and far-sighted,
Balmaceda employed the millions he had drawn from the war in material
enterprises; he built schools throughout the country, special
institutes, mining and agricultural colleges, professional colleges;
he began the construction of new railways, of a breakwater at
Talcahuano, of palaces for the administrative services; he fortified
several ports, bought new ironclads, encouraged immigration, founded
military schools, and re-equipped the army. He suppressed
contributions, assured the service of the foreign debt, amortised
paper money, and demanded guarantees of the banks. When in Chili you
inquire as to the origin of a public works, a school, or a prison,
you will hear of Balmaceda. In finance, in education, and in
colonisation he effected a fundamental renaissance; he was the
master-builder among Presidents.
Balmaceda was raised to the presidency by three parties: the
liberals, the radicals, and the nationals; that is to say, by three
aspects of one central idea, varying from an attenuated liberalism
which verged on conservatism in its ideas (nationalism) to a violent
liberalism, verging on demagogy (radicalism). The Balmacedist
victory stifled all attempts at clerical reaction; Balmaceda was a
reformer. His ambition could not be satisfied by material progress
and practical advance. As ideologist, he applied abstract ideas to
politics. He wished to unite all the liberals in one preponderant
party, to ensure a still greater independence to the public powers,
judicial and municipal, and to despoil the executive of its
traditional attributes; to found an educated, liberal, {174}
military, and virile democracy as a check against the oligarchy, in
which democracy dreamers of every school could find their Utopia.
Between his character and his doctrines there was a grave
discrepancy. An autocrat by vocation and by temperament, because a
patrician, he nevertheless weakened the executive by the Municipal
Law, which established autonomous municipalities, and by the law of
incompatibilities, which conceded to Congress a complete independence
of the other powers. "The mandate of the deputy" declares this law
"is incompatible with the exercise of any paid public function." At
this hour of party confusion Balmaceda despoiled the executive of
efficacious agents in Parliament. He was thus, by a reform which,
ideally speaking, was perfect, preparing the way for serious future
conflicts.
The liberal President condemned the Constitution of 1833, the basis
of Chilian order; he believed that the new period demanded a new
statute. "Neither the desires of the country nor those of the
parties or groups now active," he wrote, "can adapt themselves to the
system of centralisation and authority consecrated by the
Constitution of 1833."[1] He criticised "the attributions which
devolve upon the chief of the Executive Power, the weakening of
initiative and of the local charters by excess of vigour in the
central power; the part played by the Executive in the formation of
the judicial power, its influence upon the elections, the functioning
of the legislative power, the centralisation of the administration,
and the works which foster material progress."
But by abandoning, by a sort of heroic suicide, the forces conferred
upon him by a traditional statute, Balmaceda paved the way for an
omnipotent Congress. _Pelucon_ by heredity, a cultured despot, he
{175} soon disregarded the power which he himself had raised above
the decadent presidency. The contradiction between his life and his
doctrines, his heredity and his ideals, gives his noble and patrician
figure the majesty of a character of Æschylus, ennobled at once and
annihilated by destiny. Balmaceda weakened the executive and put
forward official candidates; established the preponderance of
Congress and wished to have independent ministers; destroyed the
Constitution of 1833 and ruled as an autocrat. Renan compared
himself to the scholastic _hircocerf_, which bears within itself two
hostile natures; this was also the fate of Balmaceda.
His political ideal was that of Benjamin Constant; of Lamartine, of
Laboulaye. He accepted neither the despotism of the President nor
the tyranny of Congress.
Could the perfect equilibrium of the public powers be realised in
Chili, or was it merely the noble dream of an ideologist? Very soon
the omnipotence of a centralised government was replaced by the
dictatorship of anarchical Parliaments. The parties imposed
ministers upon Balmaceda, and presented him with lists of candidates,
among whom the President, powerless to refuse, was to choose his
counsellors.
It was a radical transformation, for from the time of Portales the
government had intervened in elections, had insisted upon presidents
and deputies. Balmaceda disregarded his own work, rebelled against
Congress, governed without a budget, defended the rights of the power
which he had destroyed by short-sighted legislation, and tried to
enforce his wishes as to the Presidency, in the traditional manner,
and Congress refused to accept his candidate. It has been truly said
that the government of Balmaceda was the crisis of electoral
intervention.[2] Parliament refused to pass the President's law of
contributions, {176} overturned his ministries, and protested against
the designation of an official candidate; as in the time of the
French Revolution, a revolutionary committee was formed in the heart
of the Chamber. The two dictatorships clashed. The revolution broke
forth in 1891; the fleet revolted; civil war divided families;
Congress fought for the Constitution, the Government for the
autocracy. From La Moneda Balmaceda directed a terrible war against
the combined forces of the fleet, the banks, and the Parliament. The
factions fought with lamentable ardour; it was a war of hatreds and
reprisals, bitter as a racial conflict. Two battles, Concon and La
Placilla, destroyed the power of the President.
The revolutionaries got the upper hand, invaded Valparaiso and
Santiago, and the Araucanian savages burned the dwellings of the
President's friends, and swept, brutal and drunken, through the
silent cities. Balmaceda took refuge in the Argentine Legation, and
his supporters hid, while a horde of vandals proceeded to reduce the
capital to ruins. The defeated President took on a stoic grandeur;
like a hero of Plutarch, he transformed his fall into an apotheosis;
he purified the local tragedy by catastrophe. Serene as a figure of
antiquity, he committed suicide, after drafting a noble political
testament. "Among those who are to-day my most violent persecutors,"
he wrote, "are the politicians of various parties whom I have heaped
with honours, whom I have exalted and served with enthusiasm. I am
in nowise surprised, neither by this inconsequence, nor by the
inconstancy of mankind.... All the founders of South American
independence have died in dungeons, in prison cells, or have been
assassinated, or have perished in proscription and exile. Such has
been civil war in the ancient as in the modern democracies. It is
only when one has witnessed the fury to which the victors in a civil
{177} war abandon themselves that one comes to understand why, of
old, the vanquished politician, even though he were the most unworthy
servant of the State, made an end by falling upon his own sword."
After these considerations of political philosophy, the firm
protestation of the hidalgo. He cannot submit to "the criterion of
judges whom he dismissed from their posts on account of their
revolutionary ideas." Two ways remained open to him: flight or
death, and he preferred the second, for it might lessen the
persecution and the woes to be endured by his friends. "I might
still escape," he says in his testament, "by leaving Chili, but this
expedient would not be consistent with my antecedents, nor my pride
as a Chilian and a gentleman. I am inevitably delivered over to the
judgment or the pity of my enemies, since the Constitution and the
laws have no longer any virtue. But you know, gentlemen (he is
addressing Claudio Vicuña and Julio Banados-Espinosa) that I am
incapable of imploring favour, or even benevolence, of men whom I
despise for their ambition and their lack of citizenship." He felt
that a great crisis, or a drama, requires a protagonist or a victim,
and he accepted his destiny to the death. Above the half-breed
_caudillos_, above the obscure crowd who swarm in palaces and
parliaments, hungering for power and display, rises this patrician
figure, towering and solitary.
In his political testament he condemns the existing system: "As long
as parliamentary government, as men have wished to practise it, and
as the triumphant revolution will uphold it, shall continue in Chili,
there will be no electoral liberty, no serious and permanent
organisation within the parties, nor peace between the groups in
Congress." His bitter prophecy is accomplished: an excessive and
sterile parliamentarism triumphed with the revolutionaries. From
Portales to Balmaceda the President was the supreme {178} authority;
after Balmaceda Congress governed, and the President, the slave of
the ruling groups, could neither dissolve Parliament nor appeal to a
popular referendum. The liberty of the vote has been won, but it
ratifies the tyranny of the Assemblies. The parties are fractional;
authority, the basis of Chilian greatness, has declined. A President
without initiative, an incoherent ministry, a Parliament divided and
uncertain: there is the political outlook. "The Government of
Congress is the Government of the parties, and these political
entities exist in Chili only in the shape of antipathies or
memories."[3]
The Balmacedist party itself did not escape the universal
dissolution. It still supports the presidential system, but it does
so without the rigidity of its founder; it is liberal, democratic,
and parliamentary; its strength lies in the assemblies. "In
liberalism," Don Julio Zegers can write,[4] "the Balmacedists are
those who prefer Unitarian pacts to doctrines."
In the political world the tradition of the _pelucones_, of a strong
tutelary authority, is dying; in the social world the oligarchy is
losing its ancient privileges before the progress of the middle
classes. Balmaceda, the founder of schools and colleges, the
champion of all liberties, realised this national transformation.
Chili was the scene, after the political revolution of 1891, of a
social revolution, a warfare of castes, a bloody conflict between the
feudal overlords and a Third Estate formed in the schools, liberal
and industrial. Two parties, radicals and democrats, are organising
themselves for the battles of the future. "The radical party,"
writes an observer, "is composed of the fervent enemies of the clergy
and a {179} great part of the youth of the middle class, which
combines with its religious hatreds a certain degree of dislike of
the wealthy and respected classes."[5] Señor Edwards believes that
this socialistic tendency, which is predominant among the radicals,
"constitutes a serious danger for the future." The democratic party,
like the English labour party, and the united socialists of France,
is a working man's party.
The revolution of 1891 was directed by the bankers. After the war of
the Pacific the Chilian oligarchy was dissolved; it formed itself
into a plutocracy, without austere traditions, which is predominant
in the Parliaments and is ambitious to seize the reins of government.
Balmaceda would never give way before the "new men"; as an aristocrat
he was the enemy of the merchants. Portales founded a society of
patricians, but the liberal president could not organise the
democracy he dreamed of. The financiers united with the great
families before the threat of formidable strikes, and the
intellectual elevation of the middle class, bankers and landowners
and property owners grouped themselves in a more accessible
oligarchy, much after the pattern of the oligarchy of the United
States. Balmaceda was the last representative of the great Chilian
tradition, of the tutelary oligarchy which led and educated the
people and distrusted the plutocracy.
[1] See J. Bañados Espinosa, _Balmaceda, su gobierno y la revolucion
de 1891_, vol. i. pp. 455 _et seq_.
[2] Said by Don Juan Enrique Tocornal, a Chilian politician.
[3] Alberto Edwards, _Bosquejo historico de los partidos politicos
chilenos_, Santiago, 1903, p. 116.
[4] Cited by Vicuña-Subercasseaux in his study of Balmaceda. See
_Gobernantes y Literatos_, Santiago, 1907, p. 64.
[5] Edwards, as cited.
{180}
CHAPTER III
BRAZIL: THE EMPIRE--THE REPUBLIC
The influence of the Imperial _régime_--A transatlantic
Marcus-Aurelius, Dom Pedro II.--The Federal Republic.
While the republics of America have passed, without prudent
transition, from colonial dependence to self-government, Brazil, by
means of paternal autocracies, was prepared for the ultimate
realisation of its republican dreams. There liberty was not the
immediate gift of unrealisable constitutions, but the logical end of
a painful conquest. Brazil was successively a tributary colony, an
independent monarchy, an absolutist empire, and a federal and
democratic republic. One principle, that of authority, was dominant
throughout this process of evolution. A rigid despotism gradually
ceded secular prerogatives before the attacks of an ardent
liberalism; progress was definite and order lasting, and revolution
has been powerless to shake the principle of monarchical continuity.
Portugal has not yet been invaded by the French armies. The royal
family, carrying the monarchical _penates_, have fled toward their
distant colony, the idyllic and tropical Brazil. We are in 1807:
Maria, Queen of Portugal, is insane; João de Braganza, the regent,
placid and undecided, hopes for a _bourgeois_ ostracism, without
political convulsions.
In Brazil, the monarch, guided by conservative spirits, transforms
the economic system and decrees {181} the freedom of the ports, and
the metropolitan monopoly is thereby abolished. England, watching
over the exodus of the king, demands protection for her products.
The factories which a policy of lamentable rivalities had closed are
reopened. As early as 1808 the king wishes to found an empire in
this colony, devoid as it is of political personality; in 1815 he
raises it to the category of kingdom, thus laying the foundations of
nationality. Independence, after this, will only be the natural
segregation of an organism already formed.
The government of the Portuguese king develops all the national
forces which were embryonic in the colony--art, law, literature. He
founds the Bank of Brazil, establishes a military academy, a national
library, and a botanic garden; he fosters agriculture and
immigration. His new domain seems to have transformed the mediocre
monarch. Under the influence of his queen, Charlotte, eager for
power and display, he longs to extend his dominion over Uruguay and
Paraguay, perhaps even to reconstitute, to his own profit, the
vice-kingdom of La Plata. He seizes upon French Guiana, which
remains in the power of Brazil until 1817.
But such vast plans as these do not strengthen the hands of the
monarch. The Court, silent and extravagant, does not please the
Brazilians, and the King favours the Portuguese merchants by an
extreme prodigality. He creates a new nobility, that of the "sons of
the King," and its influence in the palace and its insolent display
soon weary the colonists. The old _régime_ is still extant; a
parasitical bureaucracy, recruited among the Portuguese, weighs
heavily on the destinies of Brazil.
A revolution in Portugal in 1820 invites the King to return to Europe
to accept the Constitution put forward by the revolutionary _junta_
of Lisbon. The monarch leaves his son, Dom Pedro de Alcantara, {182}
in Brazil, and quits the country. It is said that on bidding Dom
Pedro farewell he cried: "Before long Brazil will separate from
Portugal; if it is so, crown yourself before some adventurer gets
hold of the sceptre."
The Lisbon Parliament wished to destroy the reforms of João VI. in
Brazil, and to transform a monarchical nation into a feudal colony,
but the Brazilian deputies then in Portugal protested and emigrated
to England. A revolution at Pernambuco in 1817 had raised the
standard of nationalism. The manifesto or _Preciso_ of the
revolutionaries formulated the complaints of the colony. "There is
no longer any distinction," said the victorious patriots, "between
Brazilians and Europeans; all consider themselves brothers; as
descendants of the same origin, as inhabitants of the same country,
as believers of the same religion."
Journalism, in its infancy, was propagating constitutional ideas both
in the north and in the south. Jacobin declamation and romantic
ideology created a powerful movement in the taciturn colony.
Governmental _juntas_ were appointed in the provinces. Portuguese
and Brazilians struggled for political and social domination, but a
Lusitanian army, in spite of popular protest, imposed the oath of
fidelity to the Constitution which had been promulgated for the
metropolis by the distant Cortes.
The prince prevented a federal disaggregation and founded the unity
of Brazil. He united the representatives of the rebellious
provinces, convoked, in 1822, a Constituent Assembly, visited the
country districts, and became the "perpetual defender of Brazil."
Like the Gothic kings at the time of the Moorish invasion, or the
French princes who were faced with feudal anarchy, he founded a
national dynasty, and bound the unity and independence of Brazil with
the destinies of the monarchy. Dom {183} João VI. had raised Brazil
to the rank of a kingdom; Pedro I. rendered it independent of
Portugal. "Independence or death!" he cried, in his triumphant
Odyssey across the rebellious provinces. At Ipiranga floated the new
flag, gold and green, of the new-born Empire. Pedro I. was crowned
Constitutional Emperor in December, 1822.
José Bonifacio Andrade e Silva, naturalist, philosopher, and soldier,
an encyclopædist according to the French tradition, was the minister
of this national transformation; he condemned the revolution, having
previously supported natural rights and excessive liberties. He
suppressed the journals, and the monarch dissolved the Constituent
Assembly, whose violence and lyrical propensities were not a help to
the political action of a conservative minister.
Extreme groups were formed which the Emperor endeavoured to
conciliate: reactionaries who wanted an absolute government,
idealists who wished for a republic, moderates, and conciliatory
monarchists who sought a gradual progress under a stable government.
Weary of revolutions the Emperor inaugurated a despotic _régime_; he
withdrew from the Assembly, exiled the rebels, among others Andrade,
now radical but formerly a reactionary, and always greedy for power.
He surrounded himself with Portuguese troops, and the new nobility,
the _filhos do reinho_, and the press attacked him in the name of
nationalism. It demanded the persecution of favourites, as in the
Spanish colonies the expulsion of the old ruling classes was decreed.
The Emperor once again united the moderate parties, and demanded a
Constitution, to which the country swore allegiance in 1824; it was a
constitutional charter, an imitation of the liberal European
charters. In 1826 he convoked a new National Assembly. Revolutions
were still disturbing the country; some provinces wished to secede
{184} from the new kingdom; Pernambuco was always the centre of
liberalism. An old patriot, Paez de Andrade, hoped to unite the
Northern States of Brazil in the "Confederation of the Equator." The
monarch sent troops to the north to intimidate the country, and the
Lower Chamber condemned this act of despotism; a radical priest,
Diego Antonio Feijó, led the radical opposition. He was a
revolutionary in Parliament, demanding a responsible government, and
condemning the ministers who forced peace upon the provinces by means
of foreign legions, German and Irish mercenaries.
The Chambers were invaded by republicans and federals, and Pedro I.
by no means abandoned his reactionary ministers. These latter
succeeded one another in a series of perpetual crises. The external
warfare complicated the political situation; Uruguay had revolted,
counting on the aid of Argentine regiments. The Brazilians were
defeated, and recognised the independence of Uruguay by the treaty of
1828.
King João died in 1826, and the Emperor remained undecided between
the traditional kingdom and the new Empire. He formed a liberal
Cabinet to satisfy radicals and federalists, who had triumphed at the
elections of 1830. A useless transaction: ministries fell, and the
financial muddle increased. The people of Rio de Janeiro revolted,
and the Emperor abdicated. José Bonifacio, creator of the political
_régime_, was to be the tutor of the infant prince.
The Regency was a moderate government which steered clear of
reactionaries and exaltés both, of absolutism and republicanism.
Father Feijó, minister of the Regency, became, like many radicals, a
conservative; he organised the National Guard, suppressed military
meetings and enforced peace in the interior. Subversive movements
continued, and the invulnerable minister repressed them. The
administration {185} of the country progressed, schools were founded,
the Assembly issued wise codes of laws. The Regent, Andrade,
imprisoned and deposed, Diego Feijó was elected tutor of the prince
in 1835; the old radical politician was now dictator. He represented
the moderates as against the revolutionists; in extreme cases he
abandoned liberalism for autocracy. As early as 1836 his political
autocracy began to decline and the liberal campaign gathered force.
Feijó passed over the regency to his friend, Aranjo Lima, and left
the Government. This representative of authority in a country which
was a prey to anarchy was autocratic by virtue of his patriotism;
like all American dictators he stifled revolution in its blood.
The liberals of yesterday are often the moderates or conservatives of
to-day in monarchical Brazil. Andrade, Feijó, and Pereira de
Vasconcellos are examples of this inevitable transformation. Liberty
was the creed of these politicians when they were oppressed by
colonial absolutism, by the servitude anterior to the monarchy and
the Empire; they realised their creed, and the reign of liberal
principles resulted in disorder. The excess of authority or the
excess of anarchy stood in the way of peace and progress. The
political leaders of Brazil swayed from side to side; they were
liberals against despotism and autocrats against demagogy.
In 1840 the infant prince attained his majority; the liberals,
powerful in Parliament, demanded that the Regency should be
terminated. The country longed for internal peace, but discord
between the parties continued. Numerous revolutions disturbed the
country. Minas and Pernambuco, where sedition had passed into a
chronic condition, rose in 1842 and 1848 respectively.
Pedro II. governed with the liberals, but the dangers of excessive
liberalism, of premature democracy, {186} forced him toward
autocracy. He was a learned and sceptical Marcus Aurelius, a stoic
who had read Voltaire. "A simple and modest democrat, losing nothing
of his personal distinction," wrote the historian Ribeiro, "generous
and disinterested, an example of all the domestic virtues, he courted
the respectful sympathy of the crowd rather than popularity."[1] He
was the first republican of Brazil; he presided over a nation in
process of transformation. Before the clash of races, the
revolutionary unrest, and Utopian radicalism his Government
maintained the traditions, reacted against violent reforms, and
favoured the gradual formation of a new world.
In 1841 he confided the ministry to the Marquis de Paranagua, who
exiled the revolutionaries, reinforced the political unity of the
country, and re-established the Council of State. New ministries
continued the conservative reaction. Without freeing the slaves,
Brazil prohibited the traffic in this black merchandise, at the
suggestion of England. The Empire, faithful to its traditions,
intervened in the affairs of La Plata.
The Viscount de Itaborahy, once the external conflict was at an end,
presided over an administrative ministry. Immigrants were attracted,
and founded German colonies in the south; the navigation of the
interior was protected, and the higher regions of the Sertaõ were
conquered. A new commercial code, an administrative organisation,
agrarian laws, and the reform of the treasury: such were the various
forms of the Imperial activity. Itaborahy was followed by an
authoritative minister, the Marquis de Parana, a political figure of
lasting national significance.
A great administrator, he organised public education, and extended
the railways and the navigation {187} of the rivers of the interior.
He was assisted in his labours by distinguished statesmen: a jurist,
Nabuco de Araujo, and a diplomatist, Baron de Rio Branco. His
activities were not merely administrative, but political and social
as well. He wished to reconcile the parties; he absorbed the liberal
element in the conservative group, and by this fusion of the old
parties prepared the way for the appearance of new groups, dominated
by a definite intention of liberation or conservation. The
reactionary cabinets and the philosopher-Emperor had founded order in
the place of revolutionary dispersion. But this order, the victory
of narrow traditionalism, could not be lasting. Multiple racial
elements--Portuguese, Indian, and African--were seething in the new
society; democracy would prove to be the protest of redeemed slaves
against a powerful oligarchy. The Marquis de Parana, who, having
attracted the liberals, transformed his own conservative group, and
consolidated order by reuniting the factions, understood that
reaction could not be permanent in an incoherent democracy. He was
the last of the conservatives and the first of the liberals.
The reactionary cabinets of Caxias, Olinda, and Ferraz followed his,
and other parties were formed: authoritative conservatives,
uncompromising liberals, and a party of conciliation. The elections
of 1860 were a democratic triumph. Great orators came to the fore
with a truly tropical eloquence; these "new men," like Antonio
Leocadio Guzman in Venezuela, stirred the passions of the people. To
oppose their liberal programme conservatives and moderate liberals
united in Congress. The reactionaries governed from 1848 to 1862;
now the radicals sought for power. The last conservative cabinets
fell to pieces before the opposition of Parliament and the protests
of the crowd. Despotic monarchy was condemned; constitutional
monarchy had many {188} supporters; new elections, in 1863, increased
the strength of the liberals and democrats. The Paraguayan war
against the dictatorship of Lopez gave unusual prominence to the
external life of the country, and political agitation died down.
Pedro II., representing the conservative interests of historical and
national continuity, was opposed to an unruly liberalism. After one
liberal ministry he chose two moderate cabinets, under Olinda and
Vasconcellos, which were inclined to conservatism, and finally
Itaborahy dissolved the Lower Chamber. The Emperor had gone back ten
years; the ministry that in 1852 had marked the triumph of the
conservatives was now to rule in the face of a rising tide of
democracy. A constitutional monarch by law, he was none the less an
autocrat, for he forced his ministries upon a hostile Chamber, and
gave politics a direction contrary to the will of the people, and
those their suffrage had newly elected.
The liberals rose against the reactionary Emperor and demanded reform
or revolution. A transformation of the electoral system, of the
Draconian code of justice, and of the army, which was really a
Prætorian legion supporting an absolute power, and, in the social
department, the liberation of the slaves: such was the programme of
1869. A dissident group of conservatives united with the liberals,
and a patrician, Nabuco de Araujo, signed the manifesto of the
reformers.
It was the crisis of the monarchy. Its historical function was
nearly at an end; it had organised peace, created unity and
nationality, and laid the orderly foundations of the new Brazilian
race. Autocracy, necessary in the dawn of the century, was now
contrary to democratic development; after 1870 the liberals openly
aspired to found a republic.
The ministry of Viscount Rio Branco, from 1871 to 1876, maintained
the _status quo_. A great administrator, {189} like the Marquis de
Parana, he effected a reform in public education by founding special
schools; he took a census of the country, and extended the network of
railways. Immigration increased under his government and exchange
was bettered. A great social reform changed the face of the Empire;
in 1871 slavery was abolished. The separated classes were about to
mingle with the nation; the result was the rise of a mestizo
democracy. Slavery abolished, castes confounded, liberals
discontented, the reactionaries growing old--on the doubtful horizon
one supreme hope was visible: the republic. It was now the
collective ideal, as the Empire had been in the last days of the
colonial period. It was proclaimed, without violence, in 1889.
The Emperor, who abdicated, a symbol of the majestic past, had
prepared the advent of the Republic that ostracised him. His ideas
were liberal; he was the protector of the sciences; a smiling
philosopher; and in fostering the intellectual transformation of
Brazil he exposed his own autocracy to the criticism of the liberals.
By abolishing slavery he weakened the power of the reigning
oligarchy; by destroying privileges and uniting hostile classes he
created a democracy.
The Empire, in America, represents tutelary authority. Between the
feudal colony and the Republic--two extreme points of political
development--arose the Brazilian monarchy, as a moderative power. It
brought a necessary equilibrium, and, with that, progress. First of
all it established autonomy; then a national order, a national
dynasty; it preserved traditions, and organised the forces of
society. Beside it arose a conservative oligarchy, bound to the
soil; castes and permanent interests were created. The territorial
overlords upheld the stability of the Empire, and an admirable
political system imposed peace upon a heterogeneous people, {190}
shaken by the clash of races and the opposition of seaboard and
province. Between 1848 and 1862 the monarchy created the Brazilian
nation.
In the South American republics anarchy destroys national unity and
prevents the crystallisation of the social classes. In Brazil there
were frequent revolutions under the Regency; military leaders were
eager for power, but there was a permanent and inviolable bulwark
against disorder. The Emperor was the _caudillo_ of _caudillos_, the
leader of leaders; the Constitution partially justified his
despotism. Without violating it, he imposed, by means of
conservative ministries, lasting peace and gradual reforms. Against
this inflexible Cæsar struggled a seething democracy; it snatched
certain privileges and won limited liberties, and eventually saw the
birth of the Republic, the appointed term of political and social
evolution. The rigour of the principle of authority has spared
Brazil the perpetual revolutionary crises endured by other American
nations.
[1] Work already cited, p. 516.
{191}
CHAPTER IV
PARAGUAY: PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP
Dr. Francia--The opinion of Carlyle--The two Lopez--Tyranny and the
military spirit in Paraguay.
Paraguay, a child of the old _régime_, has preserved seclusion and
absolutism. In other republics independence was a violent
condemnation of the colonial methods. Freed from Spanish tutelage,
the Paraguayan democracy none the less maintained its retired life
under paternal monarchs. Its evolution is original; showing neither
continual anarchy, as in the tropics, nor the perpetual quarrels of
_caudillos_, disputing territory and wealth. Dictators and tyrants
imposed their inviolable will on the inland nation. Autocracy
levelled classes and races, and prepared the way for the appearance,
in isolated Paraguay, of a new caste, formed of the fusion of Guarani
Indians and Spaniards. The dictators of Paraguay professed a rigid
Americanism; they expelled strangers, and with arrogant patriotism
wished the republic to be self-sufficing. Their ideal was
essentially Spanish; a democracy governed by Cæsar.
Dr. Francia was the first dictator in the Republic founded by the
Jesuits. A gloomy personality, of an intense inner life, like
Garcia-Moreno, he seemed one of Cromwell's Puritans. Taciturn and
solitary, truthful and punctual, methodical, like the Anglo-Saxons,
and ambitious, but without passion or exaltation, he admired
Bonaparte, and like him became consul and emperor.
{192}
He was born in 1758. He was the son of a Portuguese or Brazilian,
Garcia Rodriguez Francia. He studied theology in the colonial
university of silent, austere Cordoba. When General Belgrano
fomented the rebellion of the Paraguayans against the Spanish rule,
and a governmental _junta_ was installed, Caspar Rodriguez Francia
was a member of the latter. The little republic elected triumvirs
and consuls in the Roman manner. A Congress assembled in the same
year decreed the independence of Paraguay. The country freed itself
not only from Spain but also from Buenos-Ayres. No longer
recognising the limits of the ancient vice-kingdom, the _junta_
refused to treat with Belgrano unless he recognised the autonomy of
Paraguay.
The Congress of 1813, at which a thousand deputies were present,
continued to parody Rome; it appointed Francia and Fulgencio Yegros
consuls, and promulgated a political system. Cæsar and Pompey became
the names of the new magistrates, who were alternately in power. The
liberty of Paraguay was consolidated, and the consuls refused to send
delegates to the Congress of La Plata, which the haughty metropolis
convoked at Buenos-Ayres. These magistrates condemned Argentines and
Spaniards to civil death, and forbade them to marry Paraguayan women
of white race. In a third Congress (1814) Francia and Yegros
demanded a temporary dictatorship.
Yegros was ignorant and popular. Francia, energetic, learned, and a
born dissembler, was obedient to classic memories and to the
Napoleonic tradition; he aspired to absolute power. He was appointed
dictator for three years, and soon obtained supreme power. He
improvised his policy upon reading the ancient history of Rollin; the
republicans of Rome served him as constant models, whose energy and
austerity he imitated.
{193}
Educated for the priesthood, he became an advocate. He knew the law
and theology like a lettered colonial, subtle and dogmatic. Before
becoming consul he had filled various municipal offices; first he was
secretary to the municipality, then mayor. He studied local needs,
and prepared to govern as a nationalist.
He made use of religion, as did Garcia-Moreno and Portales, in order
to render his political actions more efficacious. He was tolerant in
respect of beliefs, but condemned atheism; he felt that the Church
was the only moral force in a disturbed democracy.
He would accept no international religion; he wanted a Paraguayan,
American cult, in which also he resembled Guzman-Blanco. He declared
himself head of the national Church, and disregarded the authority of
the Holy See; he suppressed the seminary and the monastic orders of
the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Sisters of Mercy, and
proceeded to appoint vicars and curates himself. The Inquisition was
abolished, processions were forbidden, and the number of holidays was
reduced to a minimum. Francia ordered the payment of tithes,
protected religion, and extended the rights conferred by patronage on
the Spanish kings; he sold the goods of the Church to build schools
and barracks. In short, he aspired to govern a Christian republic
freed from clericalism.
Religion consecrated his authority; the Paraguayan Church taught that
all power, even tyranny, was in its essence divine. When moral
activity did not suffice, Francia, like Rosas, appealed to terror.
Conspiracies against his tyranny were numerous; the Dictator shot the
rebels. His punishments revealed an Oriental cruelty. In 1821 he
executed the representatives of the Paraguayan nobility. He levelled
his subjects, and governed without ministers, {194} surrounded only
by informers and prætorian guards. In 1860 a Congress conferred
perpetual dictatorship upon him, and he dissolved the Congress. He
suppressed the _cabildos_, or municipalities, and replaced them by
_juntas_ selected by himself; he annihilated all hierarchy and all
privilege, and assassinated Yegros, his companion in the Consulate.
His enemies he imprisoned, exiled, or killed. His ambition was to
cut off every head that raised itself above the level of the uniform,
anonymous, and laborious crowd.
He established internal order under his autocracy. "Quarrels," he
said, "paralyse industry, and injure the prosperity of the nation."
He created a Church and a Fatherland. To ensure his work, he
expelled the Spaniards and isolated his country. He protected all
foreigners who did not come from Spain, closed the ports to trade,
and barred the rivers to free navigation.
His efforts were contradictory. He hated Spain; he wished to abolish
the privileges of the nobility and clergy, and he restored the
colonial system; he even aggravated it, giving it an unheard-of
severity. He restored absolutism, commercial monopoly, and the
communism of the Jesuits; there were estancias known as "the
Country's," whose products satisfied the requirements of the budget.
He unwillingly conceded licences to trade or navigate on the rivers;
he opened great magazines, which recalled the colonial fairs, for the
sale of merchandise. Paraguay existed in a condition of prodigious
isolation; commercial transactions declined, and money went out of
circulation.
During this time the population increased. The Dictator favoured
Creoles, stimulated the crossing of Indian and foreign blood by
severe measures, and carefully chose foreigners for the improvement
of the Paraguayan population by means of forced unions; {195} in this
way he continued the work of the Jesuits. A homogeneous democracy, a
national conscience, was gradually formed.
Like all the great American dictators, he stimulated material
progress, and rebuilt Assomption, the capital city. He constructed
public works, and forts to stop the encroachments of Indians,
protected agriculture, and created industries. His ideal was full
autonomy in an isolation possibly barbarous. By successive
regulations he forced proprietors to sow their lands, to extend the
cultivated area; like the Peruvian Incas, he would have none idle in
his kingdom; he distributed tasks and enforced their execution.
He ruled from 1811 to 1840, a long thirty years, a period attained by
no other American dictator but Rosas. His work was rude and
imposing; he created a race, and freed his threatened country in
every sense, political, economic, and religious. A priest said once
in an ardent panegyric: "The Lord, having cast a pitying glance upon
our country, sent us Dr. Francia to save it." The tyrant thus became
a redeemer, and is not without his strange legend. At seventy years
of age he was regarded as a remote and divine personage. From a
secret palace he governed a disciplined people. He had militarised
the country and exalted patriotism, the strong national feeling of
small nations, from Uruguay and Paraguay in America and Servia, to
Bulgaria and Montenegro in Europe.
His long tyranny in no way debased the race. When he died Francia
was mourned by his people, a people about to reveal in warfare a
Spartan tenacity, a tranquil heroism. Paraguay was unconquerable; it
was dispeopled, the masculine population disappeared, but the
Republic remained erect and aggressive. Francia had formed a proud
and warlike race. He was the most extraordinary man the world had
seen {196} for a hundred years, said Carlyle in one of his Essays--a
Dominican ripe for canonisation, an excellent superior of Jesuits, a
rude and atrabilious Grand Inquisitor. The Scottish historian
praises the grim silences of Francia--"the grim
unspeakabilities"--that mute solitude in which remarkable men commune
with the mystery of things.
After thirty years of uniform dictatorship the Guaranian people might
have revolted against autocracy. But here, contrary to that which
passed in other republics, the monarchy was not the term of
absolutism. Francia was replaced by new tyrants, the two Lopez, and
Paraguay accepted perpetual dictatorship.
A "ricorso" exhibited the old round of evolution: the triumvirate,
then the consulate, then dictatorship.
The last of the Lopez was better educated and more moderate than the
previous tyrants; he militarised the country, created an army of
thirty thousand men, and developed the fleet. Brazil and the
Argentine had difficulties with Paraguay; these two countries were
quarrelling for supremacy in La Plata. Paraguay and Uruguay, States
rebellious to every yoke, provoked conflicts between these ambitious
powers. Brazil demanded reparation for the attacks directed by
Uruguay against Brazilians, and Lopez intervened as meditator in this
conflict. He assisted Uruguay to maintain "the equilibrium of La
Plata." The Empire refused his good offices, and the haughty tyrant
declared war. He asked General Mitre, President of the Argentine
Republic, permission to send his troops across the territory of
Corrientes. The President refused permission, and protested against
the accumulation of Paraguayan troops on the frontier. The
belligerents were now three. Paraguay attacked two powerful States,
the Argentine and Brazil. The war lasted five years (1865-70).
{197}
The war had all the grandeur of an ancient epic. The heroism of
Paraguay overcame numbers, destiny, and death; she defeated the
allies, and, hemmed in by superior forces, still held out under the
leadership of Lopez, now transformed into a stern apostle of
nationalism. He performed prodigies; he attacked without reserves,
and, in a bellicose delirium, shot down those who criticised his
actions, and continued the war on a territory dispeopled and steeped
in blood. The allies seized Assomption, and Lopez himself fell in
battle: the tragic personification of an irreducible people. The
first of the Lopez had written to Rosas in 1845, "Paraguay cannot be
conquered." The war confirmed this prophecy. In 1870 the Brazilian
and Argentine victors found only a decimated country; the cities were
deserted, and foreigners had taken possession of the soil; the solemn
silence which Francia had dreamed of for his country reigned
throughout. The women were accomplishing their funeral rites above
unnumbered and innumerable tombs; they dug trenches, and, like
Antigone in the Æschylean tragedy, carried in the folds of their
mantles the maternal soil that was to cover the dead.
After this war nothing could be more monotonous than Paraguayan life;
military presidents and civil presidents have succeeded one another
with intervals of anarchy. The spirit of dictatorship is not dead.
The intellectuals--Dominguez, Gondra, Baez--deny Lopez and Francia;
but new tyrants reign over the midland Republic.
The principle of authority, exacerbated and tenacious, has created
modern Paraguay. This nation confirms a law of American history.
Dictatorship is the proper government to create internal order, to
develop wealth, and to unite inimical castes.
{199}
BOOK IV
FORMS OF POLITICAL ANARCHY
Revolution is general in Latin America. There the most civilised
nations have been rent by civil wars. But there are a few republics
in which these conflicts have been perpetual: such is the case in
Central America and the Antilles. It seems as though the tropical
climate must favour these disturbances. Assassinations of
presidents, battles in the cities, collisions between factions and
castes, inflammatory and deceptive rhetoric, all lead one to suppose
that these equatorial regions are inimical to peace and organisation.
There are two South American peoples in which Jacobinism has become a
national malady, in which men of every creed are involved: they are
Colombia and Ecuador. Their tragic history shows us a curious form
of Ibero-American anarchy: namely, religious anarchy.
{201}
CHAPTER I
COLOMBIA
Conservatives and radicals--General Mosquera: his influence--A
statesman: Rafael Nuñez, his doctrines political.
A certain writer of New Granada, Rafael Nuñez, a President and a
party-leader, writes that "there is not in South America a country
more iconoclastic, politically speaking, than Colombia." Republican
evolution there has been peculiar: it has witnessed perpetual
anarchy, like other American democracies, and civil wars as long and
as sanguinary as those of the Argentine, but no long succession of
tenacious _caudillo_, personifications of local discord, whose
ambitions determine the intention of political conflict.
In Colombia men have fought for ideas; anarchy there has had a
religious character. The parties had definite programmes, and in the
conflict of incompatible convictions they soon arrived at the
Byzantine method of destruction. Public and private wealth was
exhausted, the land was dispeopled, and inquisitors of religion or
free thought condemned their enemies to exile. "With us," Rafael
Nuñez admits "there has been an excess of political dogmatism." A
Jacobin ardour divides mankind; the fiery Colombian race is
impassioned by vague and abstract ideas. The champions of liberty
and the supporters of absolutism apply their principles to an
unstable republic; they legislate for a {202} democracy devoid of
passions and inimical castes; they build the future state by means of
syllogisms.
These sanguinary struggles have a certain rude grandeur. On the
continent men fight for crafty _caudillos_, for the conquest of power
and fiscal treasure; the oligarchy which occupies the seat of
government defends its bureaucratic well-being from the parties in
opposition. In Colombia exalted convictions are the motives of
political enmities; men abandon fortune and family, as in the great
religious periods of history, to hasten to the defence of a
principle. These hidalgos waste the country and fall nobly, with the
Semitic ardour of Spanish crusaders. Heroes abound in the fervour of
these battles. Obedient to the logic of Jacobinism, Colombia
perishes, but the truth is saved.[1]
The liberal party, victorious in 1849, promoted a vast democratic
programme: the romantic liberalism of the French thinkers, the
socialistic ideas of the Revolution of 1848, had reached Colombia.
The Colombians desired not only the liberation of the slaves, the
abolition of industrial monopolies, and the autonomy of the communes,
but also the realisation of the needs of democracy; all the political
liberties, subject to prudent reserves; direct and universal
suffrage, trial by jury, the suppression of the army, the abolition
of capital punishment, the institution of universities and scientific
diplomas, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, who in America were the
obstinate supporters of the old colonial system. Federation, a weak
executive, a secular State, and powerful communes: such was the
aspiration of the liberals. A fraction of the party bore a symbolic
name: it was known as _Golgotha_. In their civil wars the Catholics
chose Jesus of Nazareth for their {203} patron. Radicalism even
aspired to religious consecration; it founded a Christian anarchy,
like that of the primitive evangelical communities. It preached
fraternity and liberty, condemning political power.
Nothing could be more disastrous to a disorganised republic than
rationalism of this type. It applied the principles formulated by
the extremest idealists in highly cultivated countries. Colombia,
shaken by revolutions, had need of a strong government; radicalism
destroyed it. There was no provincial life, yet it created the
omnipotent commune; it suppressed the army in a democracy threatened
by civil and external war, established trial by jury in a country
swarming with illiterates, and granted liberties wholesale to a
revolutionary people; it accorded political rights to the negro and
the Indian, servile and ignorant as they were, and demanded
federation, which is to say that it multiplied political disorder.
Foreseeing the errors of the future, Bolivar told the Colombians: "I
can plainly see our work destroyed and the maledictions of the
centuries falling upon our heads."
From 1849 to 1853 the liberal party struggled to impose its
doctrines. The Constitution of 1853, celebrated in Colombian annals,
was doctrinaire and radical; it proclaimed the liberty of the press,
of thought, and of suffrage. By separating Church and State it
provoked a religious war and accepted a moderated political
centralisation. Thus the excesses of unity and of federation were
avoided.
The liberal charter gave rise to lengthy quarrels. The States gave
themselves conflicting and opposite constitutions; some were
conservative and reinforced authority; some were radical and founded
an anarchical democracy; some were liberal and extended the suffrage;
some were moderate and conciliatory, uniting the ideas of all parties
in unstable equilibrium. {204} In a country already divided by
religious questions this variety of _status_ created a perpetual
disorder.
A new Constitution, more precise than that of 1853, established the
federal system without restrictions; it was the triumph of the
"Golgothas" over the "Draconians," the radicals over the classic
liberals. The battle was renewed with fresh vigour. The religious
communities lost their legal character, and could no longer acquire
property; the State usurped their wealth and ruined them as in
Mexico. The impetuous radicals sapped not only the ecclesiastical
power, but the political power also. They reduced the presidential
period to two years, granted the provinces full sovereignty,
prohibited the death penalty without exception, conceded the absolute
liberty of the press, and authorised the buying and selling of arms.
Excessive liberalism disorganised the country. Colombia suffered
much from this vain idealism; she became the social laboratory of
professors of Utopianism. The radicals created fresh elements of
discord; they attacked authority, religion, and national unity. In
1870, in the face of bankruptcy, the party abandoned its original
extremeness; it no longer professed anti-militarism, nor desired the
complete separation of Church and State. Sceptical as to the
benefits of the suffrage, it re-enforced the executive, in spite of
its original federal creed.
The conservatives governed the country from the dissolution of
Greater Colombia, in 1829, until 1849; they performed the work of
organisation. Without forming an oligarchy, as in Venezuela and
Chili, they represented permanent interests and effective powers;
religion, the colonial nobility, and the patricians who won autonomy
for their country. They were conservatives in so far as they opposed
the radicals, but in 1832 they granted a political charter in which
they accepted liberal principles; they respected municipal {205}
liberties and the liberty of the press, surrounded all the powers of
the State with prestige and authority, as also the senate and the
magistrature, created a Council of State, so necessary in an
improvised democracy, protected Catholicism, and limited the
suffrage. To be a citizen a man required "an assured subsistence
without subjection to any one whatever in the quality of servant or
workman." In the social world they accepted the old division of
castes. They did not free the slaves, and they tolerated the
exportation of human merchandise. The radicals protested against
this shameful traffic; in 1842 regulations were passed affecting
black immigration, and 1849 marked the fall of the conservative
party. Then arose eloquent demagogues, who preached a social gospel
much like that of the French revolutionists of 1848.
Political life was less imperfect in Colombia than in other Latin
democracies. The opposition did sometimes triumph in the electoral
struggle; thus in 1837 Dr. Marques was elected president against the
will of General Santander, the government leader. I have spoken of
the solid organisation of the parties: however, there was no lack of
_caudillos_, whose influence in neo-Granzdan history was a lasting
one.
The first President, General Santander, was one of Bolivar's
lieutenants, as was Flores in Ecuador and Paez in Venezuela. He
inherited the moral authority of the Liberator, and governed
pacifically from 1831. He aspired to absolutism, founded schools,
and organised the public finances; in London he commenced the
negotiation of the Colombian debt, declared Panama a free port, and
endeavoured to enforce unity and peace; conspirators and
revolutionaries he shot.
After the founder of the nation came two strong personalities who
hold a prominent place in the history of Colombia: General Mosquera
and {206} Dr. Rafael Nuñez.[2] Their long rule is comparable to that
of Garcia-Moreno in Ecuador, or of Paez and Guzman-Blanco in
Venezuela.
General Mosquera was at first a conservative leader; his education,
his origin, and his travels in Europe all divided him from the
democracy. He had the gift of command, which had been developed by
the direction of armies in his youth. President in 1845, he
developed the national wealth. His government, which lasted from
1845 to 1849, was distinguished by an intense material progress:
railways were constructed, steam navigation commenced on the River
Magdalena, the teaching in the universities was improved, the
finances were organised, the service of the debt was assured, and the
moral prestige of the country improved.
This conservative President had liberal leanings. He presented laws
to Congress which made his old supporters uneasy; the abolition of
the "tenth" or tithe paid to the Church, and the diminution of fiscal
protection. It is difficult to believe that this lucky soldier
conceived the wise ambition to transform his government into a
liberal _régime_ without violence. Mosquera knew that after 1848 and
its echoes in Colombia the basis of his future popularity must be a
violent liberalism, and he became a federal and a democratic leader.
As military dictator he placed himself at the head of the revolution
of 1860, seized the capital, Bogota, and was elected President in
1861. He imposed his variable will, changed his ideas and his party
in order to retain power, and attempted to govern above the law and
above mankind.
[Illustration: GENERAL MOSQUERA. President of Colombia (1845-1849,
1861-1864, 1865-1867). To face p. 206.]
Mosquera declared a _Kulturkampf_, separated Church and State, exiled
the bishops, confiscated the goods of the convents, and, like
Guzman-Blanco, {207} created a national Church. Without the
authorisation of the supreme power no priest could exercise his
religious functions. The civil power was the supreme power; the
Church and her ministers were subject thereto.
The President shot or suppressed his enemies, and imposed his policy
by terror; he enthroned militarism. Faithful armies followed him,
accustomed to victory. The domestic policy of New Granada did not
satisfy his ambition; he aspired to restore the Greater Colombia, and
dreamed the dream of Rosas and Santa-Cruz; the hegemony of his
country to be forced upon other peoples. He declared war upon
Ecuador, and was victorious. In 1864 he was followed by another
liberal, Dr. Murillo-Torro. In 1865 the military _caudillo_ resumed
the reins of government. He was hostile to Congress, and proclaimed
himself dictator; he violated the Constitution and the law,
intervened in the struggles of other States, and sought an absolute
and irresponsible authority. His own supporters conspired against
him, and sent him into exile. In Colombia he was the indisputable
authority, as Paez in Venezuela, from 1845 to 1867.
After this long empire came a period of civil Presidents and military
Presidents, who moderated the ambitions of the liberals. Presently a
new _caudillo_ arose: Dr. Rafael Nuñez. Mosquera was first a
conservative, then a liberal. Nuñez, a liberal, fomented a
conservative reaction and dominated Colombian politics for twenty
years.
At one time secretary to Mosquera, he had made a study of the
evolution of great States. He was not only a leader, but also a
diplomatist, and a philosopher in his political disinterestedness,
his lasting moral influence, and the width of his views. A theorist
like Balmaceda and Sarmiento, he none the less did not forget the
inevitable imperfections of {208} Colombia. He became President of
the Senate in 1878, and a minister of the Reformation and head of the
Republic in 1880. Democracy looked to him for a renaissance.
In the heart of the liberal party Dr. Nuñez directed a new
independent group. He had been a radical in 1850, but he departed
from the rigidity of his original beliefs before the persistent
suggestions of experience. Why weaken the executive in an anarchical
nation--why increase the national troubles by the bitterness of
religious warfare? Nuñez became a liberal-conservative; he forgot
his original socialistic principles, the theories of Louis Blanc and
Saint-Simon, and applied a British common-sense to Colombian
politics.[3]
His political ideas (expounded in various articles) were prudent and
conciliatory; no sterile idealism dominated Dr. Nuñez. He believed,
with many English statesmen, that "in politics there are no absolute
truths, and all things may be good or evil according to opportunity
and extent." This was the policy he opposed to Colombian dogmatism.
He believed that "politics is indissolubly bound up with the economic
problem."
A conservative in religion, tolerant in the art of governing, he
taught the Jacobins of America some admirable lessons. "Our
population," he wrote, "does not exceed three millions of
inhabitants, the majority of whom are but slightly civilised. If the
social fraction called upon by its aptitudes to the functions of
government divides and subdivides itself and occupies itself in
weakening itself we shall never succeed in doing anything of
importance as legatees of the Peninsular domination." His ideal was
a free oligarchy, coherent in intention, and in action persistent.
Equally lamentable were the division of the best {209} class of the
nation and the intolerance of the governing parties. Rafael Nuñez
preached respect for minorities. "The absolute exclusion from the
government of the parties in a minority," he said, "weakens the
national spirit, envenoms discussion, and creates extraordinary
dangers." Majorities have need of discussion and opposition. "The
myopia of party spirit," adds the _caudillo_, "fails to perceive the
virile vigour which a political group obtains by the mere fact of
giving proofs of tolerance, justice, and respect for its defenceless
adversary." "When for some extraordinary reason one of the great
parties disappears, the surviving party splits up into fractions, and
these fractions fight among themselves as bitterly as when they have
to face a common enemy: even more bitterly."
The leader of the independents had studied political science not only
in foreign books, but also in practice, in public life; he had a
profound acquaintance with the country which he governed, and with
the Latin American vices which are the incurable weakness of these
new democracies. "We have no viceroy in Colombia," he said, "but
anonymous rulers. We have a written liberty, but no practical
liberty. We have a Republic, but only in name, for opinion is not
expressed by the only legitimate means, which is the suffrage." "It
is a grave error, generally accepted by us, that the sole object of a
political party and all its efforts should tend toward the possession
of the public power, represented by the leadership of the national
army."
He defends the principle of authority as against anarchy. "The best
of instruments, destined for the long and arduous task of civilising
the human species."
Respect for the constituted powers is unknown in Colombia. All
"dynamic mechanism" should have a governor, that is, a counterpoise
to the predominant {210} impulse. Nuñez writes: "Monarchies need
liberal accessory institutions, and republics restrictive or
conservative institutions, without which the former degenerate into
autocracies and the latter into anarchies, which announce the
approach of despotism." In default of the principle of authority, so
necessary and generally so feeble in democracies, Rafael Nuñez sought
for "elements of order in the moral domain."
He became a conservator; he protected religion, like Portales, in
order to give a disorganised nation the firm unity of a law. The
ex-radical ordered the teaching of religion in the schools.
"Traitor!" cried his former supporters, but if he renounced his
former dogmas it was in his intellectual prime, before the lamentable
spectacle of an unstable republic. "Fanaticism," he wrote, "is not
religion any more than demagogy is liberty; but between religion and
morality there is an indissoluble bond."
Colombia had need of a stable internal law, of a morality. To obtain
order Dr. Nuñez desired a Catholic unity; he abandoned his radical
convictions, and put his trust in authority, religion, and moderate
centralisation. But were not the articles of his new programme the
result of a free examination of reality and of history? The leaders
of the independents were inaugurating an experimental politics.
He accepted neither abstract principles nor theories imported from
other continents. Free trade obtained in Colombia: it is the English
economic dogma. "With us," explained the statesman, "free mercantile
exchange simply transforms the artisan into a mere proletarian
working man, into food for powder or a demagogue, for free trade
practically leaves only two industries vigorous--commerce and
agriculture--to which those who lack capital and credit cannot as a
rule devote themselves." This _caudillo_ wished to see a real
autonomy based on a moderate protectionism: {211} as President he
fostered industries and condemned the bureaucracy; he knew that the
latter favoured revolutions, and that men seldom fight in civil
conflicts except to obtain public employment. "The motives for
disturbing the peace," said he, "will be less and less powerful as
the official system ceases to monopolise the opportunities of work."
Dr. Nuñez was a sociologist; he had studied Comte and Spencer; he
wrote of society and its laws, starting from the liberalism of
Lamartine to arrive at the British prudence of Guizot. An eminent
Colombian, Don Miguel Antonio Caro, called him "the providential and
necessary man," and demanded recognition of his political
infallibility.
When he came into power in 1880 he was supported by the independents
and the conservatives; men hoped for reform and peace as the result
of his political action. Under his government public order was
untroubled. He introduced economies in the finances, and realised,
like Mosquera, many works of material progress; he founded a national
bank, reformed the university, and convoked, like Bolivar, a Congress
of plenipotentiaries at Panama.
Dr. Zaldua followed him in 1882. But the influence of the great
_caudillo_ was not yet at an end; he was re-elected in 1884 for a
period of two years, and exercised a moral dictatorship. He proposed
to a friendly Congress the revision of the Constitution of 1863.
He then applied his political ideas, condemning the two years'
presidency, excessive federalism, and the licence and demagogy of the
country; he organised a strong executive, conceded liberty to the
Church, increased the duration of the presidential term, and
initiated a prudent measure of concentration. The Constitution of
1885 ratified the triumph of the conservatives.
From that time forward the President was {212} _imperator_; elected
for six years in 1886, re-elected in 1892, he continued to exercise
the supreme power at intervals. He lived at Carthagena, and
Vice-Presidents (designated by himself) replaced him. He became the
tutor of the Republic; the governors were his pro-consuls. He was
the last great man produced by Colombia, that fruitful soil for
politicians and men of letters.
Mosquera represented federalism and radicalism; Nuñez unity and
tolerance. Fresh revolutions, conflicts between conservatives and
liberals, have retarded the national development; new chiefs have
arisen, demigods of the world of politics. The conservative work of
Nuñez has proved sterile: Colombia is always the land of eloquence
and Jacobinism, extravagant and excessive as the tropics themselves.
She still awaits fresh dictators who shall organise the democracy of
the future.
[1] In his book _Desde Cerca_ (Paris, 1908) General Holguin writes
that Colombia has known 27 civil wars. In that of 1879 she lost
80,000 men. She has spent 37 million pesos (gold) in revolutions.
[2] There was one demagogue President in this State who, when the
slaves were freed, excited a conflict of castes: General Obaudo.
[3] Rafael Nuñez, _La Reforma politica en Colombia_, Bogota, 1885.
{213}
CHAPTER II
ECUADOR
Religious conflicts--General Flores and his political
labours--Garcia-Moreno--The Republic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Ecuador constituted itself a free democracy after a long period of
indecision. Guayaquil aspired to be an independent state; it
listened to the melodious aspirations of its poet, Olmedo, and at
other times sought to unite itself to Peru. Bolivar and La Mar both
sought to claim this city, which a proud provincialism called "the
pearl of the Guayas." The vast ambitions of Bolivar won the day, and
Ecuador became a province of Greater Colombia, under the hegemony of
Venezuela or New Granada.
General Juan José Flores, a Venezuelan, and a friend and lieutenant
of the Liberator's, founded the Ecuadorian Republic in 1830. He was
the "Father of the Country," and teacher and guardian of this
precocious nation, as was Paez in Venezuela and Sucre in Bolivia. He
governed the country for fifteen years, being elected President in
1831, in 1839, and in 1843. The unity of Colombia, maintained by the
autocracy of Bolivar, was an obstacle in the way of Flores' ambitions
for Ecuador; he therefore sought to destroy the federal organisation.
Sucre, too, whose young and glorious shoulders were soon to sustain
the authority of a liberator, was opposed to the ambitions of the
Venezuelan _caudillo_. {214} The latter convoked a Constituent
Assembly at Riobamba. The first national statute of the equatorial
republic was then promulgated: it established a representative
government with two Chambers, an executive independent of these
Chambers, and Catholicism as the sole State religion: these were the
bases of the Constitution. Ecuador once independent, an era of
incessant disturbances set in; men fought for their leaders and for
ideas. Flores symbolised the principles of the conservatives,
inimical to radicalism and democracy; he dreamed of a strong
executive, a national religion, and a limited suffrage. His ideal
was a presidency of eight years, and a senate of twelve, an echo of
the Bolivian Constitution. He accepted monarchy as the necessary
solution of Ecuadorian anarchy; he fell because he attempted the
restoration of a superannuated system.
He and Rocafuerte, a liberal _caudillo_, the leader of a party of
cultivated youth, shared the public functions between them. When
Flores was President, Rocafuerte was governor of Guayaquil; when
Rocafuerte ruled, Flores was commander-in-chief of the army. Both
were sent into exile; they were successively enemies and allies.
Flores played the tyrant, suppressed liberties, and aspired to the
dictatorship; when he fell from power he prepared filibustering
expeditions in Europe to be launched against his country. Spain
offered him her aid in 1846. "Treason!" cried the Ecuadorian
patriots. The chimera of a monarchist, the scepticism of an
ambitious foreigner who had fruitlessly created a new country on the
ruins of Greater Colombia, say we, after half a century has elapsed.
America was stirred by the campaign of reconquest which he headed; in
1851 his temerarious plan had entirely miscarried, and he sought the
aid of Peru in order to invade his country, then a prey to anarchy.
He was not successful in the field, and after a long period {215} of
ostracism he joined Garcia-Moreno, the leader of the conservative
forces; under the authority of the latter his influence decayed and
his history ended. His disciple Rocafuerte was an excellent
administrator, who founded schools, organised the National Guard,
established military colonies in the east, partially secularised
education, proved a liberal patron of arts and letters, and commenced
the codification of the civil and penal laws.
In 1851 General Urbina forced a radical government upon Ecuador; he
was the genius of destruction, an intriguer, an ambitious man whose
excesses provoked a conservative reaction. He attempted in vain to
establish a military _régime_. Garcia-Moreno denounced the treason
of Flores and the radicalism of Urbina, and his moral influence
overcame the prevailing anarchy. This remarkable statesman was born
at Guayaquil in 1821; he came of a Castilian family. His mother
trained him strictly in poverty; a priest, Father Bethencourt,
directed his later education. In 1836 he entered the University of
Quito, and soon became the supervisor of his own companions--an
undergraduate autocrat. Tall, of a severe aspect, the forehead wide,
and the eyes forceful, he was already revealed as a leader of men.
He devoted himself with ardour to mathematics and philosophy; he
acquired general ideas and an analytical turn of mind. Endowed with
a prodigious memory and a vigorous dialectic, always master of
himself, he had every desirable gift. Towards his nineteenth year
his chaste youth passed through a moral crisis. He issued therefrom,
according to his biographer, less the devotee but not less of a
believer. Like Goethe, he made up his mind abruptly. He would not
be guilty of timidity; he liberated himself from the tutelage of the
world by dint of heroism; he was Mucius Scævola before he was Cæsar.
His fiery spirit and irreducible will {216} made him a leader whom
all respected, a mystic whom the conservatives acclaimed.
Garcia-Moreno intervened in politics as a journalist; he was a
satiric poet, and founded various polemical sheets: _El Zurriago_,
_El Vengador_, and _El Diablo_. He drafted pamphlets, accused and
condemned in prose and in verse, and wrote his classic _Epistle to
Fabius_ concerning the poverty of the times. His style was steely,
energetic, rarely declamatory; he wrote apostrophes in the manner of
Juvenal; he brought into politics a rude indignation, the rebellious
anger of a Hebrew prophet, announcing the final catastrophe of
democracy; as a journalist he represented the national interests. In
1846, when the threat of a Spanish invasion hung over Ecuador,
Garcia-Moreno roused America by his writings. He was the pacificator
of Guayaquil, where the partisans of Flores had risen in insurrection.
A voyage to Europe brought the young writer into contact with the
social revolution of 1848. The spectacle of triumphant anarchy
re-enforced his conservative opinions. In Ecuador radicalism
triumphed in 1850; on his return the conservative leader protected
the Jesuits expelled from Colombia, demanded the return of their
property, and authorised them to found colleges. He published a
pamphlet, _Defence of the Jesuits_, in which he called them "the
creators of peace and order," and stated with fearless candour that
he was a Catholic and was proud of the fact.
The military-radical dictatorship of Urbina devastated the country;
the "Tauras," a prætorian guard, as brutal as the "Mazorqueros" of
Rosas, killed and pillaged, and were the docile servants of tyranny.
Garcia-Moreno then founded the journal _La Nación_, and preached the
doctrine that there can be no social progress in a country which does
not foster material progress, and in which a devouring poverty is
{217} triumphant. He was arrested and exiled. He reached Europe
once more in 1854, and there gave much time to the study of European
politics. He had been something of a Gallican on the subject of the
relations of Church and State, believing in the supremacy of the
civil power. His opinions changed. Subscribing to the tradition of
those Popes who aspired to empire, he considered that the Church
should be absolute sovereign above all earthly powers. But a
triumphant radicalism was secularising ecclesiastical foundations,
and convents were being invaded by the troops. The conservative
_caudillo_ returned from exile in 1856, and was met with every
species of homage; he was elected Mayor of Quito, and rector of the
University. He founded a political party--that of national union.
Elected senator, he called, with the authority of an avenging
tribune, for honest finances, the suppression of the masonic lodges,
a law of public education, and the abolition of the poll tax, which
burdened the native, and represented all the forces of social
conservation under the tutelage of the Church.
The Convention of 1860 made him provisional President, then
constitutional President. Garcia-Moreno inaugurated a clerical
semi-dictatorship after thirty years of revolutions. He did not
limit the suffrage; he depended on the democracy to defeat unpopular
demagogues. He believed that "to moralise a country one must give it
a Catholic Constitution, and, to ensure the necessary cohesion, a
statute of unity." He organised the finances, the army, the schools;
he reduced the fiscal expenditure; founded at Quito a Tribunal of
Accounts, which he supervised himself; he waged a pitiless war upon
smuggling, peculation, and bureaucracy; he built roads connecting the
capital with the coast, ruined militarism, and founded a civil
_régime_.
He was a Catholic President. As in the Colonial {218} period,
politics centred upon the Church. The clergy taught and legislated.
"The Church," said Garcia-Moreno, "must march side by side with the
civil power under conditions of true independence." He entrusted
public education to the religious congregations, and prepared to sign
a _concordat_ with the Church; Catholicism was to be recognised as
the State religion, to the exclusion of all foreign sects and cults,
and the bishops would supervise the colleges and universities; they
would choose the textbooks to be used, and the government, like the
Spanish Inquisition, would see that no forbidden works were
introduced. The ecclesiastical charter would be renewed, and as a
set-off the government would annul the _exequatur_, the authorisation
which the American governments accorded to the pontifical bulls, that
these might be obeyed. More Catholic than the Sacred College,
Garcia-Moreno insisted upon the reform of the clergy, despite the
hesitation of the Pope. Once the Concordat was signed; Pius IX.
created new dioceses, and ecclesiastical courts, which tried all
causes relating to the faith--to religious matters in general, and to
marriage and divorce. The conservative leader aspired to a Catholic
Imperialism. He intervened in the domestic affairs of Colombia,
where a radical President was in power; he eulogised the Mexican
Empire, which was to deliver the country from the "excesses of a
rapacious, immoral and turbulent demagogy." He dreamed of an America
enfeoffed to the Papacy.
Presidents followed him who were weak in the face of anarchy:
Borrero, Carrion, Espinosa. The great _caudillo_ did not lose his
influence; many times he was forced to leave his retreat in order to
pacify a province or direct a political party. In 1860 he returned
to power, to lay the foundations of a stable theocracy. His
governmental programme read like an episcopal address. As essential
articles appeared {219} "the respect and protection of the Catholic
Church, unshakable attachment to the Holy See, education based on
morality and faith, and liberty for all and in everything, excepting
crime and criminals." He declared that civilisation, "the fruit of
Catholicism, degenerates and becomes impure in proportion as it
departs from Catholic principles"; that "religion is the sole bond
which is left to us in this country, divided as it is by the
interests of parties, races, and beliefs." The new Constitution was
to conform to the principles of the Syllabus; in Ecuador no one was
to be elected or eligible who did not profess the Catholic religion,
and whosoever should belong to a sect condemned by the Church would
lose his civil rights. In his mystic ardour, he consecrated his
country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in 1873 he protested, in a
note addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the King of
Italy, against the taking of Rome and the confiscation of the Papal
States. His ideal was the monarchy of Philip II.; the Jesuit Empire
of Paraguay; the return of the Middle Ages, and a conventual peace.
Like Rafael Nuñez and Portales, he believed that "religion is the
only national tradition in these democracies at the mercy of
anarchy--the creative agent, the instrument of political unity."
Religion is the foundation of morality, and "the absence of morality
is the ruin of the Republic; there are no good manners and morals
without a pure clergy, and a Church free of all official tutelage."
A moralising despot, he repressed concubinage, and imposed Catholic
marriage or chastity upon his subjects. Virtue, faith, and order:
there was his ideal.
The authoritative Constitution which he promulgated is analogous to
the Chilian statute of 1883. The President was re-eligible; his
mandate was for ten years; he could govern for a third period after
his immediate successor. The government was at {220} the head of the
army, and appointed all provincial authorities; political rebellion
was punished as high treason. The legislative term was six years for
deputies and nine for senators. Garcia-Moreno strictly observed this
new law; he made war upon revolutionaries, and condemned the leaders
of revolts and conspiracies to death. Internal order re-established,
he commenced a series of vast reforms in the national finances, in
public education, and in legislation; he opened schools,
re-established the death penalty, sent officers to Prussia to follow
the military manoeuvres, reorganised the school of medicine, founded
an astronomical observatory, and attracted German Jesuits who were to
teach physics and chemistry. He proved himself a potent organiser:
"Twenty-five years are needed," he said, "to establish my system."
Re-elected in 1875, he was quickly overthrown by his enemies. He
resisted to the death; the dagger of an enemy struck him down in the
mournful solitude of the _plaza_ of Quito, and he fell near the
cathedral in which he had worshipped. A long silence, a time of deep
mourning, followed the death of the _caudillo_; he was named a second
Gregory the Great, the regenerator of his country, the martyr of
Catholic civilisation.
Indefatigable, stoical, just, strong in decision, admirably logical
in his life, Garcia-Moreno was one of the greatest personalities of
American history. He was no tyrant without doctrines, like
Guzman-Blanco or Porfirio Diaz. In fifteen years (1859-74) he
completely transformed his little country according to a vast
political system which only death prevented him from realising. A
mystic of the Spanish type, he was not content with sterile
contemplation; he needed action; he was an organiser and a creator.
He felt the aid and the continual presence of God; he asked his
friends for their prayers, and read daily in _The Imitation of
Christ_. He was even too much {221} of a Catholic for the
conservatives; he was often to be seen carrying the daïs in
procession. "A Christian Hercules, a disciple of Charlemagne and St.
Louis," writes Father Berthe, his ingenuous and enthusiastic
biographer. "A hero of Jesus Christ, not of Plutarch," said Louis
Veuillot in a dithyramb; while his enemies, Montalvo and Moncayo,
accused him of treason, Jesuitism, and cruelty. Montalvo recognised,
however, in the conservative President, "a sublime intelligence, a
superiority to every trial, a strong, imperious, invincible will."
Superior to exaggerated eulogy and acerbated criticism, Garcia-Moreno
represented the great civilising principles in the Ecuadorian
democracy; unity, the struggle against a militarism of thirty years'
standing, material progress, religion, morality, and strong
government against licence and demagogy. As an autocrat he resembled
all great American leaders; but he surpassed them in idealism, by the
logic of his actions and the originality of his essay in theocracy.
With Philip II. and the Paraguayan Jesuits, he believed Catholicism
to be an instrument of culture, and his policy was for fifteen years
the exaltation of that religion. Only Nuñez and Balmaceda brought
equally coherent ideas to the task of government. No one in Ecuador,
neither Veintemilla, nor Borrero, nor Alfaro, could gather up the
inheritance of this admirable despot. Carlyle, had he known him,
would have set him in his gallery of heroes.
{222}
CHAPTER III
THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS--CENTRAL
AMERICA--HAYTI--SAN DOMINGO
Tyrannies and revolutions--The action of climate and miscegenation--A
republic of negroes: Hayti.
In Central America and the islands of the Antilles civil wars are the
result not merely of racial conflict, but also of the enervating
action of the Tropics. Precocious, sensual, impressionable, the
Americans of these vast territories devote their energies to local
politics. Industry, commerce, and agriculture are in a state of
decay, and the unruly imagination of the Creole expends itself in
constitutions, programmes, and lyrical discourse; in these regions
anarchy is sovereign mistress.
Five republics came into being here, which have lived in a continual
state of conflict, their aim being political domination. Internal
disorders and international wars are continual. Ambitious generals
have sometimes forced a provisional unity upon the continent, but it
is soon divided by the anarchy and dictatorships which continually
overwhelm the soil of the Tropics.
It is impossible to distinguish a military period and an industrial
period in the history of Central America. Intellectuals and generals
govern alternately, it is true, but thanks to identical methods; they
all exercise the same sanguinary tutelage. A few dictators whose
rule has been slightly more {223} prolonged have at times contrived
to increase the number of schools or develop the national finances,
but personal initiative and the importation of foreign capital are
equally out of the question under the rule of autocracies which
govern solely by grace of the military element. Liberty, wealth, and
human rights are the appanage of inhuman dictators.
The Republic was proclaimed and the political Constitution adopted in
Central America on the 10th of April, 1825. It was then that the
autonomous life of the five united provinces commenced. General
Manuel Joseph was the first President of Central America. The
Federal Statute of 1824 attributed all powers to Congress: it
initiated a parliamentary dictatorship. As against the popular
assembly the Executive was powerless, and the Senate, to which the
Constitution confided the final sanction of the laws promulgated by
Congress, was weak in point of numbers. As in all republics, the
government was popular, representative, and federal. The equality of
all citizens and the abolition of slavery being decreed, it was a new
era that opened, liberal and romantic.
In the Lower Chamber Guatemala had the majority, and from this
superiority ensued a tendency to political domination which provoked
a long series of internal wars. Here was no conflict of nations, but
of the interests of rival provinces or the quarrels of individual
generals. Salvador wished to realise its autonomy; a virile and
well-peopled republic, she could not readily accept the hegemony of
Guatemala. Here is one aspect of this monotonous history: the
frequent wars which divided Guatemala and Salvador. They struggled
for supremacy, for moral tutelage. The federal tie survived, and the
Assemblies multiplied; there were General Assemblies and Provisional
Assemblies. Suddenly one of the States declared void the pact which
united it to the {224} other republics: Congress was dissolved, and
at once re-elected. There was a perpetual confusion of powers.
During the first twenty years of liberty the anarchical instinct
which sought to separate the republics and the calm reason which
sought to unite them under the pressure of powerful traditions were
in mutual conflict. It was the conflict of nationalism and unity.
As in Chili the Carreras opposed the authority of San Martin, as in
Venezuela Paez rebelled against the unification of Bolivar, so
Carrera the Guatemalan general warred against Morazan, the _caudillo_
of the Unitarian party, during twelve years of a struggle of province
with province.
However, the States separated one from another, and united anew under
the domination of a theoretical federation; men still legislated in
Congresses, and built the future nation with the ardour of Jacobins:
eleven Assemblies of the Confederation prepared codes and statutes.
One essential trait of the new laws was their secular spirit, and
their tendency to aggressive action against the clergy. Even sooner
than Mexico these assemblies promulgated the laws of the Reformation;
even before the era of religious quarrels opened in Colombia the
radical fervour which was contemporary with the liberalism of
Rivadavia was at work in Central America. For that matter, it
appeared to be a remnant of the old "regalism." In 1829 the Assembly
suppressed all convents of monks; in 1830 Honduras declared that
secular priests might marry; in Guatemala it was enacted that the
sons of members of the clergy ordained _in sacris_ were necessarily
their heirs. In 1832 toleration was proclaimed, but, on the other
hand, the States were continually fighting over the question of
patronage, and the antagonism between the State, which wished to
impose its tutelage, and the rebellious Church was perpetual.
{225}
Two influences dominated the minds of the new law-makers: English
utilitarianism and Yankee federalism. Here French ideas were not
predominant. But the tropical republics could not assimilate the
severe English doctrine. In vain, in 1832, did Congress go into
mourning on the occasion of the death of Bentham; in vain was
absolute liberty of testimony proclaimed in Guatemala. The double
and inevitable influence of tradition and race cannot be destroyed by
means of improvised laws.
Central America borrowed from the United States their mode of
suffrage, the federal system, the organisation of the jury, and the
codes of Louisiana. But popular agitation condemned the institution
of the jury; the codes borrowed from the United States did not
annihilate barbarism, and the federal system was powerless to enforce
unity.
In 1842 this troublous Confederation of sister nations was dissolved.
Once these nations were definitely separated, what we may call the
period of provincial history commenced; it was confused, yet
identical in the case of the various States. Above the anarchical
multitude rose energetic _caudillos_; necessary tyrants, who
endeavoured to enforce order in the interior, and to organise the
national finances.
The history of Costa Rica forms the only exception among these
republics oscillating between tyranny and demagogy. In this country
were no clearly divided social castes, no great capitalists, and no
crowds of proletariats. A small homogeneous State, in which men were
always known as _hermanicos_ ("brotherlies") because their interests
and their ideas were identical, Costa Rica seemed to justify the
classic idea which associated the success of the republican system
with limited territories and small human groups. Work, unity, and
lasting peace have been the characteristics of social evolution in
{226} Costa Rica. While neighbouring States were at war this tiny
republic was progressing peacefully.
Salvador also developed normally without the discords of Nicaragua or
Guatemala. Race explains the differences to be observed in these
great theatres of political experience; in Salvador and Costa Rica
the Spanish element was predominant, the castes were confounded, the
population was dense, and the birth-rate high. In Honduras mulattos
abounded, and in Nicaragua and Guatemala the races were mixed, and
the Indians were superior in point of numbers. Among these five
tropical republics those which progressed were those in which the
race was homogeneous, or in which the Iberian conquerors outnumbered
the Indians, negroes, and mulattos.
The very tropical anarchy which has turned Central America into a
perpetual theatre of civil wars has also continually divided the two
zones of the ancient Hispaniola: San Domingo and Hayti. In the one
the Spaniards ruled, in the other the French, and the antagonism of
these two Powers was of long duration. Hayti is a negro State, and
San Domingo refused to submit to the tyranny of ex-slaves. Conflicts
of a political origin were supplemented by the warfare of castes.
Caudillos and tyrants have succeeded one another in the government;
revolutions and domestic wars have continually troubled these two
small States, over which the United States have gradually extended
their tutelage.
As early as the seventeenth century the French were established in
Hispaniola, on the northern coast; bold Normans, herdsmen and
shepherds, the celebrated buccaneers, had founded a kind of forest
republic ruled by special laws. In 1691 this territory was a French
colony, and in 1726 it contained 30,000 free inhabitants and 100,000
slaves, black or mulatto. The Creoles, according to the chroniclers
of the time, were proud and inconstant, idle and {227} sceptical as
to religion. The negroes, chiefly occupied in servile labour,
superstitious and imprudent, formed the bulk of the slaves. A
Jesuit, Father Charlevoix, who had observed them, wrote in 1725:
"Properly speaking we may say that the negroes between Cap Blanc and
Cap Noir have been born only for slavery."[1] It was said that the
negroes were wont to celebrate the rites of a secret worship in the
forest, and were preparing to fight for their liberty. They hated
the other castes, the whites, the free negroes, and the mulattos; and
the Hayti of the future was born of this racial hatred. Ex-slaves
governed the isle, and found in bloody hecatombs revenge for their
long servitude. These formed the oligarchy, an intolerable and
intolerant aristocracy, inimical to whites and mulattos. Like the
revolts of slaves in the ancient world, these rebellions of American
serfs were the occasion of wars of extermination. The French
Revolution provoked them by its Utopian liberalism: Mirabeau and
Lafayette were friends of the negro, and the Convention decreed the
abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1794. The slaves had risen
already, in 1791, at the first rumours of the risings in France,
burning property and killing their rulers.
They therefore attained political and civil liberty suddenly, with no
prudent transitions. A _caudillo_, Toussaint Louverture, was the
hero of the war of liberation. The metropolis made this ex-coachman
a general. Sober and active, crafty and patriotic, he aspired to
seize the reins of government; he expelled the English and fought
against the people of colour who were led by General Rigaud; he was
the indomitable defender of his race. The slaves regarded him as a
tutelary deity; they thought him inspired; he gradually became the
fetish of a superstitious caste. In 1801 an Assembly elected him
governor for life; but he did not renounce the protection of {228}
France. In vain did his adulators call him the Napoleon of the
negroes; he did not aspire to absolute rule. He organised an army
and set the finances in order; he proved a vigilant administrator.
Like the dictator Francia in Paraguay, he forced his people to work
by strict regulations; he prosecuted vagabonds, won the esteem of the
whites, and introduced a severe morality into matters of finance.
Napoleon wished to reconquer the emancipated colony, and sent a
strong army against it. The negroes rallied round their chief, and
offered a heroic resistance; finally the French withdrew, and
abandoned the island to the ex-slaves. In 1825 the metropolis
recognised the independence of Hayti.
The Constitution of the new republic was promulgated in 1801.
Without disdaining the suzerainty of France, which had prematurely
abolished slavery, the negroes made laws intended to establish a
democracy; they organised municipalities, and recognised Catholicism
as the State religion. They recognised that labour, painful as it is
to an indolent nation, is yet obligatory. From this time forward the
history of Hayti is a perpetual succession of civil wars and
dictatorships. Liberal laws were given to a caste habituated to
slavery. Pétion, who was honoured by the friendship of Bolivar, was
President in 1807; he applied himself more especially to the
education of his people, and was called the father of his country;
his government was a period of peace between two crises of vandalism.
Before him the successor of Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, had
ordered the killing of all the whites, and had commenced a disastrous
racial war. Nothing could be more hateful to the ex-slaves than the
aristocracy of the skin; neither whites nor mulattos escaped the fury
of the rulers. The integrity of the negro race was the ideal of
these ferocious dictators.
{229}
No South American republic had to suffer such ill-augured tyrannies
as those of Hayti; no autocracy was so formidable as that of these
ex-slaves, whose leaders were notable amateurs of pageantry and
bloodshed. Soulouque, the sworn enemy of the mulattos, proclaimed
himself Emperor in 1849, taking the name of Faustinus I., and
surrounding himself with a grotesquely ambitious court: he was the
most execrable of despots. The Republic was re-established in 1859,
and the monotonous sequence of servile coxcombs who made use of their
power to gratify their passion for extermination recommenced: civil
wars, international wars, assassinations, and massacres filled the
bloodstained chronicles of the isle. The Haytian rulers exercised a
harsh domination over San Domingo, where mulattos abounded and the
Spanish tradition was not extinct; the negro invasion exiled the
Dominican writers, destroyed the culture of the university, and swept
like a wave of barbarism into the brilliant colony.
The Dominicans abhorred their long servitude, and, despite the
terrible reprisals of their rulers, they prepared in silence for
liberation. In 1821 Nuñez de Caceres declared San Domingo to be
separated from Spain, and demanded protection of Colombia; the
President of Hayti, Boyer, could not permit this unexpected autonomy,
and sent an army to occupy the capital of the new republic. After a
long period of secret preparation another group of patriots again
proclaimed the independence of San Domingo, and in 1844 a movement
which coincided with the revolt of the Haytian liberals against the
tyranny of Boyer. This campaign, known as "the Revolt," was directed
by an impassioned ideologist, Juan-Pablo Duarte, who was surrounded
by intellectuals and men of action. The traditional oppressors were
vanquished, and the victors proclaimed that "the peoples of the
ancient Spanish portion, in vindication of their rights {230} and
desiring to provide for their own welfare and future happiness in a
just and legal manner, have formed themselves into a free,
independent, and sovereign State."
In winning her autonomy San Domingo did not realise the dream of the
strict republicans. Her history is less troubled than that of Hayti,
and education and literature have attained an astonishing development
in the old Spanish colony, but political life has been indecisive and
full of revolutionary upheavals, as in the other democracies of South
America. Perhaps we must attribute to the great number of mulattos,
always incapable of self-government, or to the long duration of the
Haytian domination, the anarchy of this, one of the youngest of the
overseas republics. After 1844, the year of liberation, Santana, a
half-breed dictator, cunning, uncultured, and implacable in hatred,
retained the supreme power. The Februarists were at the head of the
revolution known as the Reformation--Duarte, Mella, Sanchez--noble
idealists in love with the idea of democracy. However, a _caudillo_
profited by this movement of regeneration, overruling the ideologists
in the name of practical despotism. "Februarism," said a remarkable
Dominican thinker, "that is to say, the constitution of a free
government founded upon equity, without _caciquism_ and without the
shameful fetters which sometimes limit the exercise of sovereignty,
has predominated for too short a time on two or three occasions of
our national life. On the contrary, Santanism--that is, personal
autocracy, rigid and stifling, such as characterised the entire
policy of Santana, and which has been practised since his time by
nearly all our rulers, attenuated in some cases and in others
exasperated--Santanism seems to have deep and inextricable roots."[2]
But is it not the fact that despotism is the necessary {231} form of
all government in these republics, where the division of castes
opposes unity and the normal development of nationality? The future
of Haytians and Dominicans both is full of grave problems: among the
first we find poetry, imagination, a high state of culture, but
political evolution is very slow. The peoples of the Tropics seem
incapable of order, laborious patience, and method; so that the
prodigal literature of San Domingo forms a striking contrast to the
archaic quality of its political life. "Its geographical situation,"
says Señor Garcia Godoy, "places it almost at the mercy of North
American imperialism." Hayti is still a barbarous democracy. It is
not easy to turn a colony of negro slaves into an orderly and
prosperous republic merely by virtue of political charters of foreign
origin; and it has not been proved that parliamentarism, municipal
life, and the classic division of powers, the creation of the East,
form an adequate system of government for negroes and mulattos. In
vain did General Légitime, once President of Hayti, affirm that had
they been properly encouraged and directed, his people would already
have arrived at "the highest degree of prosperity and civilisation";
in vain did he pretend that the decadence of his country was due not
to a question of race but to a problem of social economy: excess of
taxation and paper money. Hayti possesses immense natural wealth,
yet the taxes are crushing, the railways go bankrupt, labourers
emigrate, and agriculture and industry are dwindling, as the General
recognised; all because the indolence of the race does not permit it
to take advantage of the fertility of the soil nor to govern itself.
[1] _Histoire de l'Isle cspagnole_, Amsterdam, 1733, vol. iv. p. 362.
[2] _Rufinito_, by F. Garcia Godoy, Santo Domingo, 1908, pp. 53, 54.
{233}
BOOK V
_INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION_
Spain founded universities in America, where she exercised a true
monopoly of ideas. The Revolution in her colonies was inspired by
the doctrines of the French Encyclopædists. Since then--that is,
during the whole of the nineteenth century--the metropolis has been
losing the greater portion of her ancient intellectual privileges.
Political and literary ideas, romanticism and liberalism, faith in
reason and poetic enthusiasm, all these have been imported from
France. It is interesting to study the results of this lasting
influence in philosophy and letters.
{235}
CHAPTER I
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
Conservatives and
liberals--Lastarria--Bilbao--Echeverria--Montalvo--Vigil--The
Revolution of 1848 and its influence in America--English ideas:
Bello, Alberdi--The educationists.
The revolutionists of America hastily sought for an ideology which
should ratify their victory. By virtue of French ideas they had
demolished an ancient organisation, had thrown off the Spanish
tyranny, and had exalted anarchy in speech and in verse. To raise
future cities in the wilderness they had need of a political gospel.
They founded the Republic, imported institutions from abroad, and
granted all the political liberties to an amorphous crowd. The first
disputes were already audible between the defenders of the old order
and the radicals who sought to destroy it; conservatives and liberals
appeared at an identical moment of republican life. Militarism,
revolutions, and the warfare of _caudillos_ were in part explained by
the profound differences between the champions of tradition and the
soldiers of liberty.
Dominated by the need to live, these nations created a political
philosophy. They disregarded criticism and analysis; they affirmed
and constructed; they required a faith as intolerant as the archaic
dogmas. Democracy and liberalism were the essential articles of this
secular religion. To the eyes of the new orthodoxy the convictions
of the {236} monarchists and absolutists were dangerous heresies:
royalists were prosecuted as free-thinkers had been of old. Thought
was not divorced from action. It reflected the political unrest; it
prepared or justified political transformations. A species of
pragmatism was characteristic of American thought. Poetry was rhymed
oratory, lyrical declamation; the poet condemned any form of civil
autocracy; he execrated tyrants, or evoked ingenuous liberties; he
could not conceive of pure thought as divorced from life. Alberdi,
an Argentine thinker, wrote: "Philosophy is meant for politics,
morality, industry, and history, and if it does not serve them it is
a puerile and a trifling science." He condemned the analysis of the
eighteenth century, which "dissolves and corrupts everything"; to
vain ideology, to the question whether "ideas and sensations, memory
and reminiscence are distinct faculties," he preferred "an Argentine
philosophy in which are distilled the social and moral needs of our
country; a clear, democratic, progressive, and popular philosophy,
with ideas like those of Condorcet; human perfectibility, continual
progress of the human species; a philosophy which inspires men with
the love of country and the love of humanity."
The champions of liberalism defined the principles of the new social
state; they were brilliant commentators, their subject being the
ideas of French and Spanish philosophy. Their action in a society in
which the old colonial prejudices were still triumphant was
categorical and magistral. They created institutions and laws, and
applied foreign doctrines to the troubles of the time. Sometimes
they seemed inspired in the Biblical sense; they prophesied and
condemned, as did Bilbao and Echeverria.
Lastarria, Bilbao, Montalvo, Vigil, and Sarmiento were the leading
figures of this romantic period; {237} with them intellectual
activity was inseparable from politics. Lastarria and Bilbao opposed
the authoritarianism of Chili; Montalvo and Vigil respectively, the
clericalism of Ecuador and Peru; Sarmiento, the tyranny of Rosas.
Their works were pamphlets, their theories were always practical:
criticisms of contemporary reality, or constructive sketches of the
State of the future.
Lastarria and Bilbao were the professors of liberalism in Chili. The
liberalism of the first was tempered by the influence of Comte, and
the study of philosophy and history; that of the second,
indisciplined and prophetic, was eventually the bitter protest of a
misunderstood evangelist.
Lastarria was the great Chilian reformer, as Bello was the prudent
master who disciplined youth and defended tradition and the classic
ideology. He was, like Bilbao, a pupil of Bello's, but to the
conservative doctrines of the latter he opposed a generous
liberalism. He was professor of legislation at the National
Institute of Santiago from 1841, and from his professorial chair he
criticised Chilian laws and prejudices. At first he followed Bentham
in his lectures on constitutional law, and then the French liberals.
He was influenced by Herder, by Edgar Quinet, a jurist and a disciple
of Krause, and by Ahrens. Finally he accepted certain ideas of
Comte's--for instance, the theory of the Three Estates--and
endeavoured to reconcile his teaching with that of John Stuart Mill,
Toqueville, and Laboulaye.
He believed, as did the romantics, in indefinite progress, liberty,
universal harmony, and the power of man as against the inevitability
of physical laws; in 1846 his political studies won the eulogy of
Edgar Quinet. From a liberal standpoint he studied the evolution of
Chili from the Conquest to the Republic.
In the defence of his political faith the professor intervened in the
struggles of his country; academic {238} dissertations did not
satisfy him; he felt the need of action, of parliamentary agitation.
As deputy and publicist he opposed the influence of Portales, the
representative of the Chilian oligarchy, and the Constitution of
1833, that admirable piece of conservative legislation. "The State,"
said Lastarria, "has for its object the respect of the rights of the
individual: there is the limit of its action." Portales, on the
other hand, considered a strong central authority, a stern tutelage,
to be a necessity in the South American republics, subject as they
were to crises of anarchy. Liberty seemed to him a premature gift
where the crowd was concerned. Lastarria opposed the positive work
of the dictator by a vague idealism: liberty of conscience, of work,
of association; an executive powerless to limit these liberties;
municipal government, federation--such were the fundamental items of
his propaganda. In the generality of American constitutions he
disapproved of the vague definition of individual rights, the
attributions of the public powers, the irresponsibility of these
latter, and the amalgamation of colonial political forms with the
administrative centralisation of the French _régime_.
Two Presidents, Bulnes and Montt, from 1841 to 1861, continued the
despotic system founded by Portales; against them the liberal
professor commenced his magnificent campaign. He was exiled in 1850.
He travelled, and continued to publish his political writings. He
had studied Comte, Mill, and Toqueville, and he now completed his
education in certain directions. His next book, _Lessons in
Positivist Politics_ (1874), applied the principles of the Positivist
school to the evolution of South America and to Chilian history in
particular. He studied the organisation of the powers of the State,
of society, and government, and abandoned his former radicalism. He
recognised the fact that where Catholicism is the religion of the
majority (as in Chili) the State may {239} protect the national
Church while exercising the moderate supervision that is known as
"patronage."
Lastarria influenced the destinies of Chili. At his death the
liberals came into power, and politicians like Santa-Maria and
Balmaceda, who supported liberal legislation, may be regarded as
disciples of the author of _Positivist Politics_.
Lastarria was a politician, Bilbao an apocalyptic dreamer. He
founded the "Society of Equality," which was a democratic club. A
generous and radical nature, he criticised, in a celebrated article
on _Chilian Sociability_ (1844), "the tradition, the ancient
authority, the faith, the servile customs, the national apathy, the
dogma of blind obedience, the respect for the established order, the
hatred of innovation, and the persecution of the innovator," which he
deplored in his native country. He gave a pitiless analysis of
Chilian prejudices, and studied the national problems--commerce,
education, marriage, taxation, the functions of Church and State--and
answered them in a democratic sense. He was accused of immorality,
blasphemy, and sedition. He also attacked the Constitution of 1833,
and the minister Montt could not forgive him for this liberal
campaign. Ten years later Bilbao was exiled for his leanings toward
anarchy, and in Paris he became acquainted with Quinet and Lamennais,
the evangelists of his democratic faith. In 1880, on his return to
Chili, he resumed his inflammatory courses.
Montalvo in Ecuador represented the same liberal effort as Bilbao and
Lastarria. But this democrat had read Montaigne and Voltaire; he was
a master of satire, irony, and sarcasm. His contradictory nature
united Lamartine's faith in democracy with the scepticism of the
eighteenth century. He was not a politician merely, but a man of
letters. His wide culture was revealed by the multiple forms in
which his intellectual activity found an outlet. As an {240}
essayist, by his lyrical disorder, he recalled Carlyle. His harsh
criticism of the national clergy in _La Mercurial Eclesiastica_ is as
lively as an Italian _conte_. He imitated Cervantes with perfection;
he could make a clever pastiche of _Don Quixote_. He knew his Byron,
Milton, Lamartine, Racine, and the Latin and Spanish classics, and
would have been the completest type of the humanist which the Latin
New World has produced had not his restless spirit yielded too
readily to the solicitations of politics.
In contrast to Garcia-Moreno, the Catholic dictator, Montalvo was the
liberal free-lance; he could not forgive the _caudillo_ his long
tyranny, his intolerant faith, his submission to the Pope as a
supreme monarch. The Ecuadorian polemist believed in liberty and the
republic; he detested the theocracy implanted by the Christian
President.
But his activities were not destructive; Montalvo was a believer in
the manner of the revolutionists of 1848. "A sane and pure democracy
has need of Jesus Christ," he wrote in his liberal enthusiasm; he
loved Christianity because it was the religion of the democracy.
Democracy would be the law of the nations "if some day the spirit of
the Gospel were to prevail." He eulogised the stoicism and virtue of
the Roman Republic, in the image of which he wished to construct the
Chilian democracy, and in a magnificent essay he exalted the nobility
of these qualities. He was not a radical like Bilbao; a forerunner
of pragmatism, he accepted all useful ideas, even Catholicism, so
that it did not become a political tyranny. "There is nothing to be
gained by attacking certain beliefs," he wrote, "which by virtue of
being general and useful to all will eventually become verities, even
if the curious and courageous investigation of bygone things could
constitute a motive for doubting them."
An American thinker, he applied Latin ideas to {241} the affairs of
the continent. In his _Seven Treaties_, his capital work, are some
superb passages upon the heroes of South American emancipation. His
cult was that of Carlyle, religious and full of lyrical passion. "In
what is he inferior to the great men of antiquity?" he asks of
Bolivar. "Only in this, that no long centuries flow between us, for
only time, the great master, can distil in his magic laboratory the
chrism with which the princes of nature are anointed." He traces a
parallel between Bolivar and Napoleon, between Bolivar and
Washington. "In Napoleon there is something more than in other men;
a sense, a wheel in the mechanism of understanding, a fibre in the
heart. He looks across the world from the Apennines to the Pillars
of Hercules, from the pyramids of Egypt to the snows of Russia.
Kings tremble, pallid, and half-lifeless; thrones crack and crumble;
the nations look up and regard him and are afraid, and bend the knee
before the giant." Montalvo admires Napoleon, but he judges Bolivar
the superior, because the work of the former was destroyed by
mankind, while the work of the latter still prospers. "He who
realises great and lasting undertakings is greater than he who
realises only great and ephemeral things."
Montalvo believed in the American race, in the mestizos, "in the
high, lofty spirit and the stout heart which make the aristocracy of
South America." His prophetic enthusiasm exalts the future
inhabitants of America, "who will be our descendants when the
traveller shall sadly seat himself to meditate upon the ruins of the
Louvre, the Vatican, or St. Paul's." To his work of criticism of
Garcia-Moreno and the clericals we must add this religious
Americanism, this tenacious faith in the destinies of the democracy.
Without the lyric fervour of Montalvo, heavy and dusty as an ancient
palimpsest, Vigil represents the struggle of Peruvian liberalism
against the power of {242} the Church. Born in 1792, he was a
priest, and abandoned his calling, but without retaining, like Renan,
the unction of the seminarist. A stoic in his life, the champion of
liberty in several Congresses, he devoted his riper years to a long
campaign against ecclesiastical privilege. His admirable erudition
served him in this propaganda. He defended the State against the
encroachments of the clergy. An idealist, he preached universal
peace, the union of all American nations, and expounded the
excellencies of the democracy, in whose Christian virtues he, like
Montalvo, firmly believed. He won respect, as did Bilbao, by the
austerity of his life and the sincerity of his exhortations: a
Socratic master whose life was harmonious as a poem.
An Argentine thinker, genial and tumultuous, Sarmiento represented a
liberalism less coherent than that of Echeverria, but as a champion
of the ideal and the intellectual life in the democracy tyrannised
over by Rosas he deserves to be placed beside Lastarria and Montalvo.
Menendez Pelayo called him the _gaucho_ of the Republic of Letters;
for his pugnacious individuality, his barbaric impetuosity, and his
semi-culture, which was mitigated by admirable intuition, were
inimical to all classic order or discipline. Sarmiento was a
romantic by temperament; he attacked Spanish culture in the name of
French liberalism, and condemned tradition, which led to slavery; he
believed in the virtuality of ideas, the mission of education, and
the greatness of democracy. He applied to the United States for
models of popular education, and for political examples of federal
life. He was a teacher, a journalist, a pamphleteer, and a President.
He analysed Argentine life and the American revolutions; in 1845 he
published _El Facundo_, an evocation of the Argentine civil wars,
with all the passion and lyrical fervour of a Michelet. Sarmiento
{243} was the enemy of Rosas, as Montalvo was the eloquent rival of
Garcia-Moreno. In _El Facundo_ are pages of pitiless criticism of
the tyranny of the federal _caudillo_. Exiled, he founded a review
in Chili, in 1842, in which he still attacked Rosas, but he did not
confine himself to ephemeral journalism. He discovered eternal
elements in the battles of the time; he studied the American man and
the American soil, as in the prologue to _El Facundo_. He then
studied the racial problem, and in another book described the ideal
republic of which he dreamed. His work is profoundly American.
American liberalism, between 1830 and 1860, was inspired by French
ideas. One revolution, that of 1789, explained in part the movement
for the conquest of political liberty. Another, that of 1848, found
echoes even in these distant democracies, and disturbed them by the
insinuating eloquence of a new gospel. A curious parallelism may be
observed between the claims of French socialism and American
radicalism.
In France the Revolution of 1848 had not only a political tendency,
but also a social aspect. An extension of electoral capacity was
desired, and the right to work was proclaimed; men fought for the
sovereignty of the people, and workshops were founded in which the
State assured the subsistence of the working-classes. While the
republican parties were fighting against the monarchy of Louis
Philippe, Icarians and Communists were preparing for the social
revolution; the proletariat was rising against the _bourgeoisie_, as
the Third Estate rose against the nobility of old. A note of
equalitarian fervour was noticeable in the protest of the crowd. The
leaders of the movement against Guizot and his oligarchy of
property-owners were socialists: Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, Blanqui,
and Ledru-Rollin; they supplemented their democratic victories by a
programme of social reform.
{244}
In Latin America the Revolution was chiefly political; it demanded
the suffrage, equality before the law, and respect for political
rights, and it condemned the excesses of authority. It did not
forget to make a social protest, but the conflict of classes was not
as yet very violent.
"The Revolution of 1848 was loudly echoed in Chili," wrote the
historian Vicuña-Mackenna. To combat the oligarchy the young
Lastarria brothers, Bilbao, the Amunategui, the three Mattas, the
three Blests, Santiago Arcos, and Diego Barros-Arana founded the
"Society of Equality," a secret club, "to save the people from the
shameful tutelage to which it has been subjected."[1]
This tutelage was more especially political; for this reason the club
proclaimed democratic principles: the sovereignty of reason, the
sovereignty of the people, and universal love and brotherhood. These
young men opened schools for the people. Lillo published a
translation of _The Words of a Believer_, by Lamennais, which served
the radical circle for their Bible.
But the real master of the new generation in Chili and in the other
democracies was Lamartine. "From 1848 to 1858 he was a demi-god, a
second Moses," wrote a historian. The "young men" formed a
commentary upon the _History of the Girondists_. They imitated the
great figures of the French Revolution: Bilbao was Vergniaud;
Santiago Arcos, Marat; Lastarria, Brissot. Societies were formed,
congresses were held; one exalted group called itself _The Mountain_.
In Venezuela, in 1846, a demagogue by the name of Antonio Leocadio
Guzman offered the people the abolition of slavery and the
repartition of the soil; he led a revolution against society and the
Government. In Colombia the liberal Constitution of 1853 was an
{245} echo of the French Revolution of 1848, and democratic clubs
were formed as in Chili. They ruled the country by means of terror,
were predominant in the journals, and propagated socialism and hatred
of the oligarchy of property-owners and the omnipotent clergy. The
liberals evoked Christ as the first democrat, whence the faction
known as _Golgotha_. Anarchy increased in the provinces. Bishops
and conservative notabilities were pursued, the Jesuits were
expelled, and in 1851 the slaves were freed. A discontent of long
standing was revealed by the activities of these eloquent
revolutionaries, who imitated, like the Chilian Girondists, the
French politicians of the Revolution.
"Democracy," Lamartine had said in 1848, "is, in principle, the
direct reign of God." His ideal was an equalitarian Republic. His
political ideas were drawn from the New Testament; he saw in the
French Revolution "a Divine and holy thought." Charity, the
protection of the disinherited, equality, and fraternity--in short
the whole democratic creed--was merely the application of Christian
ideas to the world of politics. Lamartine wrote in defence of all
the liberties, and wished the Government to be "an instrument of
God." We can understand what enthusiasm this eloquence, impregnated
as it was with idealism and the love of humanity, must have produced
in America; we find the accents of Lamartine echoed in the words of
Montalvo as well as Bilbao. Anarchy presently became a sort of
mystic rebellion against tyrants. Throughout all South America
Lamartine and the Revolution of 1848 inspired men's speech or
writings, and engendered revolutions or fresh tyrannies.
The influence of France was sovereign. The influence of Guizot and
the doctrinaires must be added to that of Lamartine. English ideas
also were prevalent; Bentham was the great authority on {246}
political science from the earliest years of the Republic; at his
death the Central American Congress, which had followed his teaching,
proclaimed a period of mourning. In Colombia General Santander
quoted against Bolivar phrases inspired by English radicalism and by
Destutt de Tracy. Bentham harshly criticised the _Contrat Social_ of
Rousseau, and his pretended "natural rights"; policy he based upon
the happiness of the greatest number. Tracy professed a moderate
relativism, and utilitarian ideas, like Bentham. Bolivar, unlike
these professors of individualism, believed in the benefits of a
moral dictatorship.
Bello again represented English thought, not only in his
philosophical work, but also in his writings as jurist. He was, like
the classic legislators, the creator of the written law. His civil
code, promulgated in Chili in 1855, served other nations as a model,
and his _Law of Nations_ became the international law of South
America. He was born into the world for the purpose of pouring
language as well as law into logical moulds. In his legislative work
he displayed a severe analysis, a British prudence, and a constant
recognition of social realities. He hated the vague and the
nebulous, and liked to express his ideas in clear, concrete formulæ;
he brought to the solution of social problems a solid common sense.
Alberdi also adopted British methods and ideas. In France he
especially admired Guizot, and distrusted Lamartine. He attacked the
sterile intellectualism of his fellow-Americans, and wrote in defence
of Protestantism, a religion peculiarly appropriate to republics on a
Catholic continent. He believed in the English constitutional
monarchy, in the benefits of technical schools, and in the disastrous
effects of a parasitical scholarship; he preferred strong
governments, like that of Chili, and detested demagogues. "The
Republic," he wrote, "has been {247} and is still the bread of
Presidents, the trade of soldiers, the industry of lawyers without
causes, and journalists without talent; the refuge of the second-rate
of every species, and the machine for the amalgamation of all the
dross of society." Such was his verdict on the political system of
South America.
He called for a monarchy as the only salvation of the country: "thus
the Republics might unite themselves to Europe, whence their riches
and their civilisation derive, and resist the monopoly of North
America." From European influence he hoped to obtain not only
culture, but also the consecration of political independence. He
begged the Old World for emigrants, for capital, and for princes. In
an admirable volume published in 1858 he analysed the "bases" of the
Argentine organisation. This book was no Latin gospel; with the
"relativity" of an Anglo-Saxon he proposed practical solutions; he
ascribed supremacy to population, strong governments, laborious
immigrants, and industrial wealth; he disdained the ideology of the
revolutionists, and their implacable Jacobinism. His effort may be
compared to that of Burke in his criticism of the French Revolution.
Amid the sterile enthusiasm of romantic politicians his book stands
out, in its gravity, sobriety, common sense, and realism, like a
lesson for all time.
Other American conservatives were Lucas Alaman, leader of the Mexican
conservatives and author of a fine history of his country; Bartolome
Herrera, a follower of Guizot, in Peru; Cecilio Acosta, in Venezuela:
these were in agreement with Alberdi upon certain points of his ample
doctrine. Like the Argentine, Acosta wished to see more elementary
and secondary schools and fewer universities, to find "practical
knowledge replacing a parchment scholarship; free speech and thought
the fetters of the peripatetic school; and generalisation,
casuistry." The jurists obeyed the same tendency; they were {248}
positive and analytic spirits; they brought clarity and discipline to
an incoherent politics. Among them we may cite, after Bello, Calvo,
Garcia Calderon, Velez Sarsfield, and Ambrosio Montt. They opposed
the ineffectual Constitutions of the precisians.
Liberal idealism vanquished conservative good sense. Lastarria
attracted impetuous youth more than Bello and Alberdi; Guizot had few
readers; Lamartine and Benjamin-Constant were popular. Liberalism,
radicalism, Jacobinism: these were the various disguises of South
American anarchy.
[1] Za piola, _La Sociedad de la Igualdad_, Santiago, 1902, p. 8.
{249}
CHAPTER II
THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES
Spanish classicism and French romanticism--Their influence in
America--Modernism--The work of Ruben Dario--The novel--The _conte_
or short story
The ancient Spanish colonies, freed from the political authority of
Spain, still followed her in the matter of literature; republican
autonomy and intellectual subjection were not incompatible. Towards
1825 writers in prose and verse were by no means imitating France,
although she gave them her declamatory politics and her revolutionary
code. Educated in Spain, the best minds were seeking their
inspiration in the Spanish literature of the eighteenth century: the
works of the classic Quintana, of Moratin, Gallego, Lista, and
Jovellanos dominated the American schools.
A lasting divorce, this of a romantic politics and a classic
literature. When letters were invaded by romanticism, with its lyric
lamentations, a sane realism--the realism of men preoccupied with
finances or laborious codifications--struggled against the swamping
waves of all this rhetoric. Literary forms, long out of fashion in
France and even in Spain, still aroused enthusiasm in America; the
American author adopted the realism of the naturalistic novel when
the French schools were already given over to symbolism, and at a
later date he became first {250} a modernist and then a decadent,
while in France a classic restoration had set in. To the real
current of European literature South America has preferred ephemeral
excesses, and the work of coteries, which she has imitated with
enthusiasm. It is barely ten years since South American letters
began to reflect--curiously behind the times--the direction taken by
French poetry. The literature of the new continent, to-day invaded
by books and ideas, follows a path parallel to that followed by
French and Spanish letters. Every novelty finds an echo, and the
very diversity of imitation ought before long to give rise to a final
originality.
Poets, both romantic and classic, threw themselves into the social
conflicts of the time; whence that kinship between poetry and
eloquence, already recognised by Brunetière in France.[1] In
American poetry we find the civic accent, eulogies of liberty, odes
to civilisation and the mother-country, rather than elegies or
"states of soul." Tyrtæus would be popular there rather than
Anacreon; Béranger would be imitated rather than De Musset.
Classicism thus takes the form of a civic poetry; calm and mannered,
it sings of political subjects, of progress, independence, and the
victories of liberty over theocracy.
In Mexico, Ecuador, and the Argentine, the first generation of
republican poets were incontestably disciples of the master of the
Spanish masters--Quintana, whose grave and virile odes exalted the
printing-press, philanthropy, and progress: new deities erected by
the French Revolution upon the ancient altars. His emphasis, the
movement of his verse, and the breath of oratory which enlivens his
stanzas, charmed and subjugated the writers oversea. Liberty, so
barely conquered, gave birth to a poetry {251} which sang of heroes
and of battles. Ideas and forms were inspired by Quintana; their
best eulogy is comparison with their model. Thus Olmedo, the second
poet of this classic age, is known as the American Quintana.
Those who acclaimed the Revolution in Mexico also were disciples of
the Spanish poet; republican orators in verse, Quintana Roo or
Sanchez del Tagle, who describe the heroes of the War of
Independence. An eminent poetess, Salome Ureña de Henriquez, of San
Domingo, sang of civilisation and the native land with a most austere
and noble eloquence.
A political poet again, Juan Cruz, of Argentina, gracefully
proclaimed the glory of the Unitarian party and that of the reformer
Rivadavia.
The contemporary writers of the Revolution did not forget the
instruction received in Spain, in the universities of the eighteenth
century, where they studied in Latin and commented upon the classics
of Greece and Rome. They read and imitated Horace and Virgil, and
were inspired by the ancient democracies, and the heroes of Plutarch;
the Isthmus of Panama was compared to that of Corinth. At their
birth the Republics appointed consuls and triumvirs. In speeches and
proclamations of the time we find numerous classical reminiscences;
politicians and poets borrowed their images from Pindar, Horace,
Homer, and Virgil.
The influence of the classics and of Quintana is especially to be
remarked in Olmedo, the poet of Ecuador, who chanted the victory of
Junin and the genius of Bolivar. The movement of his verses is that
of a Latin ode, while the eloquence, sonority, and graceful
progression of his stanzas recalls the Spanish classics.
The Venezuelan lyrist Bello, a true humanist, was inspired by Virgil,
and attained a truly classic perfection.
{252}
But Quintana was not alone in serving as model to the lost colonies;
others, the fiery Gallego, and Moratin, the author of delightful
comedies; a critic, Alberto Lista; Melendez, Cienfugos, and Martinez
de la Rosa, cultivators of a correct, elegant, and frigid form, were
also imitated, and the imitators could not free themselves from their
impoverished classicism. Olmedo (1780) and Bello (1781) were both
masters of metre, taste, and harmony. It is not easy in their case
to separate the politician from the artist, they themselves
considering their art to be a high republican function; Olmedo
counsels federation in his _Canto à Junin_, and José Eusebio Caro
attacks the tyrant Lopez in a poem upon liberty, while Felipe Pardo
writes political satires. Of the American democracies he says:
"Zar de tres tintas, indio, bianco y negro,
Que rige el continente americano
Y que se llama Pueblo Soberano."[2]
Towards 1840 classicism gave way to romanticism. The Revolution, the
protest of individualism against the Spanish rule, disdained the old
literary canons, having first condemned the old political system.
The poets, still numerous, sought models in Spain. Arolas,
Espronceda; Zorilla, the Duke de Rivas; and in France, Victor Hugo,
de Musset, and Lamartine. Byron, too, had his disciples. All were
romantic in life and work, pilgrims _à la_ Childe Harold, who
described _Châtiments_ and were persecuted for liberty. Disorderly,
imperfect, dominated by an inward dæmon who produced a continual
exaltation, they portrayed the constant restlessness of their
spirits. {253} Romanticism in Europe was the triumph of the
individual, of liberty, the lyrical poetry of confessions--the
melancholy of René or the satanic pride of Manfred--the revenge, in
short, of sentiment against reason. In art this stood for liberty,
the cult of the exotic, the return to nature, the Gothic restoration,
and war upon classic conventions.
Which among these elements could give the new generation in South
America that enthusiasm which might evoke a romantic state of mind?
Certainly not the national antiquities, remote and misunderstood.
Although a few poets wrote _Orientales_ without much sincerity, none
sought to renew his lyrical gifts in the Aztec or Quechua traditions.
But this imitation of the tendencies of French and Spanish letters
was assisted by the lack of discipline found in the American
character, which was more attracted by idealism and sentiment than by
classic rigidity or reason. All things favoured romanticism; the
political conflicts and the anarchy of the time formed Byronic
heroes; tropical passion found its food in the sentimentalism of
Lamartine and the ardour of De Musset, while the individual was
developed by struggling against the tyrants. In the uncertain and
barbaric life of these young democracies there was a confusion of
_rôles_; the poet became the _vates_, the leader of the crowd, only
to feel himself exiled among mediocrities, the victim of illiterates.
Melancholy, exasperated individualism, the high mission of the poet,
and solitude--these are romantic elements which are reflected in
American literature.
The Colombian Caro believed in the "consoling mission" of the poet,
and this mission, for the Argentine Andrade, was a priesthood and a
prophetic gift. The poet appears "when the human caravan changes its
route in the desert." But as a result of this mission Nemesis
inflicts solitude and suffering. {254} The South American poets
abandon the world as a result of their despair:--
"Sufrirás el martirio
Que al nació poeta
Reserva el hado impío,"[3]
sings the Argentine Echeverria.
And Marmol:--
"Yo vivo solamente cuando feliz deliro
Que los terrenos lazos mi corazón rompió.
. . . . .
Venid porque yo gozo yo vivo solamente
Si pienso que he dejado la humanidad detras."[4]
The Peruvian Salaverry contemplates his heart:--
"Cual la ruina de un templo silencioso
Vacío, abandonado, pavoroso,
Sin luz y sin rumor."[5]
José Eusebio Caro, who has sung of liberty in admirable strophe,
would hide himself in the forest:--
"Que los hombres ya me niegan
Una tumba en sus ciudades
En mi patria me expulsaron
De la casa de mis padres."[6]
These romantics were not, like Rousseau, inclined toward the simple
life by an excess of artificial civilisation. Their melancholy, when
it is not an echo of exotic griefs, is the cry of anguish of a noble
mind lost in a barbarous republic. This contrast between the man and
his surroundings very clearly explains the strong hold obtained by
the {255} romantic ideal; the literature of passion, pride, and
revolt, it expresses a social condition of inner conflict and
solitude.
The Argentine, Marmol, imitates Byron in his _Pilgrim_.
Grandiloquent, passionate, and mournful, he curses the tyranny of
Rosas. Echeverria, under a classic mantle, barely hides his romantic
subjectivity, full of passion and a vague melancholy. In Venezuela
Heriberto Garcia de Quevedo left a legacy of prodigiously long poems.
In Cuba Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanada, wearied and lyrical, exalted
love in the accents of De Musset; the mulatto Placido wrote musical
descriptive verse; Juan Clemente Zenea, translator of Leopardi and
Longfellow, confessed, in musical elegiac verse, his disabused
outlook upon life; and greater than any, Hérédia, the singer of
Niagara, a fiery, suffering spirit, full of contrasts as his art,
tells us of his sorrow and his faith; he sings of love and nature in
beautiful imagery, admiring both the divine might and the
intoxicating sensuality of the tropics.
In Mexico Espronceda and Lamartine inspired Fernando Calderon and
Ignacio Rodriguez Galvan; Zorilla found a disciple in Manuel Flores,
the poet of burning sensuality and savage nature. Brazil, as
fruitful of romantics as Cuba, produced Gongalvez Diaz, who sang of
the melancholy and nostalgia so well expressed by a word in his own
tongue--_saudades_;--of sorrow, deliverance by knowledge, and the
consolation of tears:--
"Men Deus, senhor men Deus, o que ha no mundo
Que não seja soffrir?
O homen nasce, e vive um so instante
E soffre até morrir!"[7]
{256}
In his love poetry there is a very, beautiful sincerity, although we
may recognise the influence of many masters--Byron, Zorilla, and the
French romantics. Cited by him, this line of Saint-Beuve's:--
"Mon Dieu, fais que je puisse aimer!"[8]
enables us to understand his plaints.
Casimiro de Abrou also essayed romantic subjects: solitude, misery,
and exile. Alvares de Azevedo imitated Byron and De Musset, while a
poet who did not versify, José de Alencar, expounded in his tales and
novels a romantic conception of the Indian, simple and virtuous as
one of Rousseau's characters.
We find this conception again in the work of a great poet of Uruguay,
Zorilla de San Martin, who in _Tabaré_ sang the struggles of the
greedy conquerors and the ingenuous Americans.
Romanticism was not with these men merely a matter of art; their
lives were no less troublous and lyrical than their poetry. Rebels
and nomads, thirsting for democratic liberty, they were wasted in the
struggle with tyrants, or sent early to the scaffold or into exile,
as though fate respected the unity of their troubled career. Thus
these disciples of Lamartine, imaginative and sensual, vehement and
melancholy in their art, gave a sombre yet vivid colouring to a
period of American history, the years between 1840 and 1860.
Andrade was conspicuous among all for his sonorous eloquence; he was
the greatest by virtue of the oratory, wealth, and ambitious grandeur
of his poems, vast compositions which recall the _Légende des
siècles_, the _Prometheus_ of Shelley, or the _Ahasuerus_ of Edgar
Quinet. Doubtless he is not the equal of his masters. But devoid of
melancholy and restless passion, his rhetoric, his verbal wealth, and
his {257} sybilline accents exercised a powerful influence.
Repeating the grandiloquent excesses of Hugo, he was the poet of
democracy and the Latin race.
His _Atlantide_ is the Latin future; _Prometheus_ the eternal battle
of thought and fanaticism. He is full of Spanish arrogance.
Marvellously sonorous, his stanzas proclaim, with pomp and majesty, a
romantic faith in America and liberty. The soul of Rome "destined to
inaugurate history and embrace space," lives again beyond the ocean;
Spain was the heir at first, until she choked beneath the "enervating
shadow of the Papacy." France,
"Montana en cuya cumbre
Anida el genio humano,"[9]
was now the leading Latin nation, and Napoleon the instrument of the
ancient imperial spirit. His sword
"Que sobre el mapa de la Europa absorta
Trazó fronteras, suprimió desiertos
Y que quizás de recibir cansada
El homenaje de los reyes vivos,
Fuá á demandar en el confin remote,
El homenaje de los reyos muertos."[10]
Andrade believed in the sacred _rôle_ of the poet: Hugo, his admired
master,
"La voz de trueno del gran profeto hebreo
La cuerda de agrios tonos
De Juvenal
Y el rumor de los cantos
Del viejo Gibelino,"[11]
{258} seemed to him prophet and forerunner, martyr and exile. The
poet, seer, and leader of men, is thus
"Hermano de las águilas del Cáucaso
Que secaron piadosas con sus alas
La ensangrentada faz de Prometeo."[12]
Lyric scholars in these troublous republics, the romantics sought to
ennoble politics by a generous idealism, to overthrow the tyrants,
and realise an impossible democracy.
French naturalism and the Parnassian school had little influence in
Latin America. Although Zola enjoyed a strange popularity--which
corresponds, in the literary world, to the enthusiasm of the
Trans-atlantic universities for materialism and positivism--we meet
with few imitations of _Germinal_ or _La Terre_. The American
writers have not assimilated the naturalistic methods, their brutal
and minute observation, their study of the crowd, and their
intentional pessimism; they have hardly read the masters of the
realistic school, Balzac and Flaubert. Only during the last twenty
years have Maupassant, the Portuguese novelist Eça de Queiros,
d'Annunzio, and the great Russian writers interested and disturbed
the American reader. The love of the novel is but gradually
dislodging the old lyric enthusiasm.
[Illustration: CLÉMENTE PALMA. Peruvian essayist and novelist.
RICARDO PALMER.]
The Parnassian movement, in America, produced the Argentine poet
Leopoldo Diaz. He adapted to Spanish verse the sonority, the relief,
and the plastic beauty of the French masters. One of his poems is
dedicated in homage to the poet of the _Sonnets_, to his incomparable
model, José-Maria de Hérédia. Diaz sought to give his native
Spanish, the language of eloquence, a Parnassian inevitability, and
to mould its rhetorical abundance to the narrow limits of the sonnet.
_Les sombras de Hellas_ invokes the Greek {259} life, sensual and
luminous; _Les conquistadores_ the thunderous epic; and all his
optimistic songs speak of a Latin renaissance in the overseas
democracies.
An absorbing taste for symbolism and the decadents, for
"deliquescent" poetry and the work of the small Parisian cliques, has
produced an intensely vital intellectual movement--modernism--which,
by its wealth of language and ideas and the renewed vitality of its
language, signifies a true renaissance. Beside it the old classic
and romantic movements seem lukewarm imitations which pale before the
exuberance of more modern work.
Modernism is undoubtedly an adequate diet for Transatlantic Latins.
But is this decadent renaissance better inspired than the passion and
the eloquence of yesterday? Is it also an indication of servitude?
By no means; the great poets have retained a robust belief in life,
and their master, Ruben Dario, followed his _Prosas profanas_ by his
_Songs of life and hope_.
The younger generation was drawn to this art by purely psychological
motives. The Spanish character had become refined by its new
environment; weakened, perhaps, but it had gained a keener
intelligence and a greater wealth of fantasy. Chiaroscuro and subtle
shades, such as the French delight in, delighted the Creole also,
partial as he was to _finesse_, to a delicate Byzantism, and
gracefully sceptical of the robust Spanish faith. Then there were
hosts of half-castes, in whom the inimical heredities of two races
were in painful conflict. The strangest characteristics--the
sensuality of the negro and the melancholy of the Indian--gave the
new race a spiritual personality full of contradictory
characteristics; melancholy but not without optimism; the desires of
a faun or a satyr, violent or languid; and a love of the rare and
unusual, of verbal music, of complication in the matter of feeling,
of {260} carefully chosen language and unfamiliar rhythms. Reading
Verlaine, Samain, Laforgue, Moréas, Henri de Régnier, and not as yet
forgetting Gautier and Banville; mingling all cults and asking
intoxication from every flagon, the poets of America have struck the
national chord. Symbolism has been of little assistance; it calls
for a lofty conception of the world and a profound sense of mystery.
They much prefer decadence in art, because of its musical lyric
quality, its exotic images, and its melancholy rhythms. An elective
affinity, to use Goethe's phrase, has enabled them to draw an
individual music from the foreign instrument.
So new metres and old fashions refurbished, modern images in sonorous
and tortuous measures, all that in Europe was the voice of ennui, the
tardy fruit of a world grown old, a Baudelairian art, the art of
refined scepticism, was made to serve a young generation in love with
life for the expression of its ambitions. This reform has reached
Spain; the initiate has captivated the initiator, as in the drama of
Renan. The recent voices of Spanish poetry follow that of the
pontiff of the new school, Ruben Dario. Similarly Brazil has
influenced Portuguese poetry, and, according to Theophilo Braga,
surpasses it.
German and French romanticism revived the old forgotten _chansons de
geste_, the despised poetry of the Gothic school; they charmed by the
rude naturalism of the primitive legends. Similarly the modernists
of America have renewed Spanish literature by listening to the
ingenuous voice of Berceo and the more melancholy accents of
Manrique. The result is that they are more traditionalist than the
classic writers of the seventeenth century, whose intolerance so
impoverished the language.
This renaissance is of barely twenty years' date. Certain
forerunners--Marti and Julien del Casal, both Cubans, one a
revolutionary in politics as in poetry, {261} the other a man of
tragic life, and Gutierrez Najera in Mexico--revealed the new poetic
speech to a continent weary of sentimentalism. New or unfamiliar
rhythms and agile metres were the vehicle of a new and intimate
lyrical passion. But the note was not as yet decadent: Banville and
Gautier, and De Musset, even, had not yet given way to Verlaine, who
was as unknown as Mallarmé. A Venezuelan critic, Pedro Emilio Coll,
drew attention to the persistent cult among the "American decadents,"
of the great Theodore, and of the author of _Funambulesques_. In the
_Azul_ of Ruben Dario he noted the influence of Mendès and Loti, even
that of Daudet and the realists of his school, rather than the
influence of symbolism.[13]
By the vivacity and brilliance of his verse, Manuel Guttierrez Nájera
reminds one of Banville. He sings in a new key, at once Creole and
exotic, the complicated sensations which are presently to torment
Ruben Dario. Spanish verse had never yet held such grace and spirit,
nor this sensuality appeased by tears, nor this proud and reserved
melancholy. _A Cecilia_, _Vidas Muertas_, _Castigadas_,
_Mariposas_--these contained a new lyric poetry, elegiac and tender,
an unknown rhythm, a forgotten manner. He was a forerunner. Who
does not know his lines upon the spoiled child whom he loves?
"No hay en el mundo mujer mas linda!
Pié de Andaluza, boca de guinda,
_Esprit_ rociado de Veuve Cliquot,
Talle de avispa, cutis de ala,
Ojos traviesos de colegiala,
Como los ojos de Louise Théo."[14]
{262} He is not always so frivolous. Mystery torments him; he knows
the bitterness of vanished illusions; a pessimist, he has a vision of
the moths of death "which have such black wings, and encircle us in a
funereal round." The monologue of the unbeliever is a lament like
that of Sigismond de Calderon upon the vanity of life:--
"Si es castigo ¿ cual pecado,
Sin saberlo, cometimos?
Si premio ¿ porque ganado?
Sin haberlo demandado,
Responded ¿ porqué vivimos?"[15]
Poems and chronicles are filled with a like restlessness and trouble.
He writes Odes worthy of an anthology; he translates De Musset and
Coppee. His master is Gautier: he shares his love of the light; he
sings, in love with ideal whiteness:--
"¿ Qué cosa más blanca que cándido lirio?
¿ Qué cosa más pura que místico cirio?
¿ Que cosa mas casta que tierno azahar?"[16]
The modernism of South America was inspired firstly by the Parnassian
school of France, which did not until later give place to the new
voice, symbolist or decadent. Verlaine, Samain, and Laforgue were
then the chief models; but beneath the current of imitation a
movement was forming which was more and more original, a great school
of verse, the leading note of which was refinement. "We owe to
foreign literatures, and more particularly to the French," says a
writer already cited, "the refinement of the organs necessary to the
interpretation of beauty; we owe to them our methods of observation
{263} and our love of impressions, rather than any kind of
co-ordinated æsthetic perspective.... Our eyes have learned from
them to see better, and our minds to gather fugitive sensations."
No writer represents this evolution, this progressive refinement,
better than Ruben Dario, a poet of Central America (of Nicaragua),
the recognised master of the new school and one of the greatest lyric
writers of all time in the Spanish language. He is to America what
Verlaine and Hugo are to France. His images, his phrases even,
excite a servile imitation. A noble band of disciples aspires to
continue his immortal work. He denies his disciples: "He who shall
slavishly follow my track will lose his treasure, and, whether page
or slave, will not be able to hide his livery." But in vain: ardent
youth listens and lays its votive offerings at the feet of the great
and disdainful artist.
His poetic reform was effectual in the extreme. He renewed the youth
of archaic metres, adapted French rhythms to Spanish verse, and
modified, with perfect taste, the classic division of the line of
verse--the place of the cæsura. With equal mastery he has employed
slow and majestic measures to interpret the melancholy of the flesh,
or the dancing metres of Banville, or plastic forms of a Hellenic
perfection. He seems to make his own the cry of Carducci: _Odio
l'usata poesia_.
Modern Spanish poetry used often to employ verses of eight and eleven
syllables, forms to which a certain rhetorical pomp very readily
allies itself. An interpreter of new ideas, Dario would not, like
the French poet, accept old forms; he employed lines of ten and
twelve syllables, adopted the pentameter and hexameter of the
classics, and employed verses of fourteen and sixteen syllables.[17]
He displaced accents, {264} and wrote admirable _vers libres_. A
revolutionary, in ten years he had transformed Spanish poetry.
_Prosas Profanas_, published in 1900, is, according to the phrase of
his incomparable critic, José Enrique Rodo, "the full tension of his
poet's bow." From the paradoxical title to the wealth of metre, all
is strange in this delicate piece of work, which opens a new literary
cycle, as did _Emaux et Camées_ or _Fleurs du mal_ in France. The
originality of the book comes from the poet's prodigious faculty of
recognising in each school what is essential to him, and in
appropriating it, without, therefore, ceasing to be personal. A
lyric unrest carries him to one manner or another, but, archaic or
modern, it becomes his own. His grace, suppleness, and learned
complexity are unequalled; he will write a Symphony in _Gris Majeur_
like Gautier, or poems in the manner of Verlaine, or a _Chant an
Centaure_ in the manner of Maurice de Guerin. His work is not built
of imposing granite, but of many coloured marbles, with strange and
decadent shades, such as the chiseller of the _Camées_ loved.
[Illustration: RUFINO BLANCO FOMBONA (VENEZUELA). Contemporary poet,
novelist, and thinker. To face p. 264.]
His verse possesses at once the sensuality of a faun, the distinction
of a marquis of the _Grand Siècle_, and the disenchantment of a
mystic. No form, no period can arrest his wandering spirit:--
"Yo persigo una forma que no encuentra mi estilo,
Boton de pensamiento que busca ser la rosa."[18]
In the presence of love, art, and life he experiences an enthusiasm
which quickly vanishes; he discovers the final melancholy of all
things. He knows, with the Roman, the sadness that lurks in human
joys: _quod in ipsis floribus angit_.
But before singing his autumnal bitterness of heart {265} he sings of
nature, of ancient civilisations, of the art of all ages, and of the
pageantry of life.
Dario is the leader of a school, but other poets, as great as he, may
be regarded as the precursors of literary "modernism": José Asunción
Silva, Leopoldo Lugones, Guillermo Valencia, Rufino Blanco
Fombana--the latter, like Almafuerte, Chocano, and the Lugones of the
"Hills of Gold," seeks to be the poet of the new America. These
writers aim at an American art, an art free from rhetorical
_clichés_, innocent of imitation, of declamation, of affected
sensibility. Who shall say whether the revolt of this younger
generation will lead it? Angel de Estrada is the poet of the exotic
in his _Alma nomade_; Guillermo Valencia, as great as Dario in the
exegesis of the legends of Greece and the love of things Hellenic,
has a universal curiosity and an astonishingly versatile lyrical
capacity. Rufino Blanco Fombana has sung of sensual passion, the
hatred of tyrants, and the glories of Bolivar; he has remodelled the
lyric, has written verses as finely chiselled as the gems of the
Greek anthology, and sonorous lines in which we hear a call to action
and to victory. Chocano aspires to become the poet of America:
grandiloquent, sonorous, rich in imagery. Lugones is a much admired
author of sentimental verse, audacious as to form and vocabulary.
José Asuncion Silva was noted for his melancholy, languorous verse:
he was a forerunner, a master, like Dario. Ricardo Jaimes Freire
employs the more audacious metres; Amado Nervo, equally radical in
his love of new forms, exhibits a modernism touched by a breath of
Buddhistic pantheism, and sings of "Sister Water" like a modern St.
Francis.
Essayists of the English type are numerous in America. They import
European ideas, freely discuss the great problems of existence. If
they apply themselves to the criticism of letters, they discover
{266} general ideas; in place of minute analysis they write artistic
commentaries. José Enrique Rodo, of Uruguay, is the master in this
department of literature. He has published an essay on Dario, and
his two books, _Motivos de proteo_, a collection of essays of great
beauty, and _Ariel_, a noble address to the youth of South America,
have become classics. There are other critics as brilliant: Manuel
Ugarte, at once thinker and artist, writer of short stories, poet,
ideologist, and the author of a remarkable book dealing with the
future of South America; the Colombian, Sanin Cano, who treats of
ideas; two Argentines, Emilio Becher, who writes admirable analyses
of ideas and books, and Ricardo Rosas, who is, by reason of his
nationalism and his wide culture, the master of the rising
generation; two Venezuelans, Manuel Diaz Rodriguez and Pedro Emilio
Coll, the first a noble idealist and prose artist, the second a
dreamer, who has been influenced by the sceptical irony of Renan; the
Peruvian, Manuel Gonzala Prada, whose aggressive and sonorous style
reveals a lofty moral unrest: in his essay on life and death are
pages which Guyau might have signed, and his study of Castelar is a
magnificent satire; José de la Riva Agüero, a historian, a critic,
and a polemist of unusual vigour; in San Domingo a powerful mind with
an extraordinary knowledge of literatures, classic and foreign, Pedro
Henriquez Ureña; while in Uruguay, Carlos Reyles has just proved by
his book, _La Mort da Cygne_, his acquaintance with all the new ideas
and his ability to make a powerful synthesis of them. Two Brazilian
essayists, Oliveira Lima (also a great historian) and José Verissimo
have written remarkable studies of civilisations and books.
[Illustration: MANUEL UGARTE (ARGENTINA). Contemporary poet,
novelist, and essayist. To face p. 266.]
The short story, neglected by the romantics, is being revived.
Modernism, having already transformed poetry, has brought to the
_conte_ a subtlety {267} in the analysis of the passions and a
knowledge of psychology that refuses to take alarm at problems of
morbid obscurity, and the indispensable quality of concentration of
interest. Machado de Assis is a master of powerful analysis, and a
sober and ironical style; his vision of life is melancholy. Diaz
Rodriguez has written some superb short stories. An evocation or a
symbol places those of Carlos Reyles of Uruguay on a plane far above
that of the ordinary romance. Two other writers of the younger
generation, Attilio Chiappori and Clemente Palma, hailing
respectively from Argentine and Peru, have introduced a new æsthetics
into the short story; the latter seems to show the influence of
Hoffmann and Poe, but his examples of the _macabre_ are none the less
powerfully original; while Chiappori, a physician and alienist, loves
the states of twilight phases of a mind which is tottering on the
verge of reason. _Borderland_ tells us of this vague territory in a
sinuous, and, in America, hitherto unfamiliar style.
A great Peruvian writer, Ricardo Palma, has created a department of
literature, that of tradition, which partakes equally of the nature
of history, and the romance, and the _conte_. He has described in a
sumptuous style the life of the old Spanish colonies, devout and
sensual; the traditions of a cultivated community, the city of Lima.
His subtle irony, his joyous and somewhat licentious narrative, often
remind us of M. Anatole France and the Italian story-tellers.
In Latin America are published not only exquisite examples of the
_conte_, but also novels in which the study of society and the
analysis of the mind are not overlooked. Among others may be cited
_El Hombre de Hierro_, by Rufino Blanco Fombona, a Venezuelan;
_Canaan_, by the Brazilian, Graça Aranha; _La Gloria de don Ramiro_
and _Redención_, {268} by the Argentine writers Enrique Rodriguez
Larreta and Angel de Estrada; _Idolos Rotos_ and _Sangre Patricia_,
by Diaz Rodriguez, whose high talent as a writer of short stories we
have already praised; _La Raza de Cain_, by Carlos Reyles, so
remarkable, also, for his essays and his tales.
Blanco Fombona possesses irony, the gift of telling a story, a rich
descriptive talent, ease of dialogue, and a power of forcible
scene-painting. A novelist by temperament, he has written the
biography of a representative Creole, the lamentable type created by
environment, for whom love and life reserve their most terrible
cruelties. A scrupulous employé, neither strong nor cunning, he is
the product of the languorous tropical life; this "man of iron" is
the symbol of all the weaknesses. And about this life is all the
monotony of a small city, civil war, the secret hatred of Creoles and
foreigners, the superannuated grace of the Spanish manner and the
Spanish pomp--in short, the whole of a little seething world.
_Canaan_ is the romance of the promised land, of fertile Brazil,
where the blonde immigrant and the half-breeds of every shade compete
for the bounty of a prodigal Nature. This long struggle is the
dramatic interest of the book; its beauty lies in its magnificent
descriptions of the tropics; the language of Graça Aranha is full of
harmonious poetry. Angel de Estrada is one of the most cultivated
spirits of America. Traveller (is not one of his books entitled _Ame
Nomade_?), novelist, and poet, he distils in his books the
quintessence of long meditation and infinite reading. His novel
_Redención_ is the work of a humanist; civilisations, arts, beliefs,
all pass before us, evoked by the hand of a master. A subtle and
rich vocabulary serves him to give life to his ideas and resuscitate
the life of dead cities.
[Illustration: RICARDO ROJAS (ARGENTINA). Contemporary poet and
essayist. To face p. 268.]
{269}
Enrique Rodriguez Larreta has described in his novel _La Gloria de
don Ramiro_ the period of Philip II., bloody, austere, and
tyrannical. No American artist has his verbal wealth, his power of
evocation, and his meticulous scholarship and genius for
reconstruction. This patient and harmonious piece of work surprises
us in a literature full of improvisations like that of South America.
_La Raza de Cain_, by Reyles, is a remarkable romance, in which the
author shows us the superman, Nietzsche's man of prey, at grips with
the weak and the vanquished; he exalts, in language full of
eloquence, the Dionysiac joy of life and domination.
Writer of short stories, a novelist at times, but above all a
brilliant chronicler, Gomez Carrillo has had the greatest influence
in Latin America. In a nervous, harmonious style, full of delicate
shades, he has instructed the younger generation in symbolism, in the
elegant paradoxes of Wilde, in the work of D'Annunzio and Verlaine;
in short, in the whole of decadent art. Above all, he eulogises
Paris: the "charming soul" of the city, the sounding boulevards, its
women, and the _galante_ frivolity of its unrest. A master of smiles
and subtle irony, he has the taste, the delicate amenity, of Scholl
or Fouquier, the art of telling an anecdote, of analysing a comedy,
of pouring gentle ridicule upon learned heaviness or conceited
solemnity. His books on Japan and Greece, praised by the French
critics, have revealed the mystery of exoticism to the American
public, and all his work breathes a continual suggestion of France.
Such is the new literature, in which you will find novelists and
poets and a truly Florentine love of beauty. He who knows America
only by its imperfect social framework, its civil wars, and its
persistent barbarism sees only the outer tumult; there is a strange
divorce between its turbulent politics {270} and its refined art. If
ever Taine's theory of the inevitable correspondence between art and
its environment was at fault, it is in respect of these turbulent
democracies which produce writers whose literary style is so
precious, such refined poets and analysts.
[Illustration: GOMEZ CARRILLO. Contemporary novelist, essayist, and
chroniqueur.]
[1] _L'Evolution de la poésie lyrique en France au XIXe siécle_,
Paris, 1899, p. 134.
[2] "Tzar of three colours, black, white, and Indian (red)--who
governs the American continent--and is called the Sovereign People."
[3] "Thou shalt suffer the martyrdom--that for him who is born a
poet--is reserved by impious fate."
[4] "I live only when I dream--that my heart has broken all ties with
the world-- ... Come, for my life and my joy hardly begin to be--save
when I know I have left mankind far behind me."
[5] "Like the ruins of a silent temple,--empty, abandoned,
fearful,--without light and without sound."
[6] "Men refuse me a tomb in their cities,--in my country I was
expelled from the house of my fathers."
[7] "My God, Lord my God, who is there in the world--that is not
sorrow's?--Man is born and lives a moment--and suffers unto death."
[8] "My God, make me able to love!"
[9] "Mountain on whose summit--human genius nests."
[10] "Which on the map of astonished Europe--traced frontiers and
suppressed deserts,--and which, weary perhaps with receiving--the
homage of living kings,--came at length to demand afar--the homage of
dead kings."
[11] "The voice of thunder of the great Hebrew prophet,--the chord of
bitter tones--of Juvenal--and the rumour of the songs--of the old
Ghibelline."
[12] "Brother to the eagles of the Caucasus--who fanned piously with
their wings the bleeding face of Prometheus."
[13] _Decadentismo y americanismo_, in _El castillo de Elsinor_.
Caracas 1902.
[14] "There is not in the world a prettier woman!--Foot of an
Andalusian, mouth of fruit--Sparkling wit of Veuve Cliquot--Waist of
wasp, skin like a bird's wing--The roguish eyes of a schoolgirl--Such
the eyes of Louise Theo."
[15] "If it is a punishment, what sin--have we without knowing
committed?--If it is a reward, how gained?--Without having asked
it,--say, why do we live?"
[16] "What whiter than the candid lily?--What purer than the mystic
wax?--What more chaste than the tender orange-blossom?"
[17] See the study of these innovations in _Horas de estudio_, by P.
Henriquez Ureña, p. 118 _et seq_. Paris, Ollendorff.
[18] "I pursue a form which my pen does not find--the bud of an idea
which would be the rose."
{271}
CHAPTER III
THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Bello--Hostos--The influence of England--Positivism--The influence of
Spencer and Fouillée--The sociologists.
The democracies of America have not created new systems of
philosophy; they have rather contributed, with Emerson and William
James in the United States, to propound the old problems in a new
light. Politics and history have been the occupation of intelligent
men. To pure speculation they have preferred the patient study of
the past, and the impassioned analysis of the conflicts of the day.
Yet they adopted European theories from the earliest years of the
Republic: those of the French ideologists, Cabanis and Laromiguière
were the predominant influences in some schools, while the influence
of England extended from Central America to Chili. With that
influence went a moderate utilitarianism, a bold analysis of the
doctrines of political and economic liberty. England contributed to
the liberty of America in Montevideo as in Colombia; with the English
gold which the revolutionaries received the English philosophic
radicalism entered the country. Jurists and politicians profited by
its lessons, and certain of the thinkers of America freed themselves
from the shackles of the peripatetic school under the influence of
the Scottish philosophers. Thus Ventura Martin and José-Joaquin de
Mora in Chili and Alcorta in the Argentine. With {272} Andrès Bello,
poet and legislator, philosopher and philologist, these doctrines
acquired a great importance. His _Philosophy of the Understanding_
was inspired by Reid and Hamilton. In England he had known James
Mill, and some of his ideas upon the inductive method and causality
recall the doctrines of John Stuart Mill, the son of James. Bello
was especially noted for the vigour of his logic and his analysis of
the phenomena of consciousness, his penetrating psychology, and his
positivism, which caused him to disdain anything in the nature of
metaphysics. His conservative spirit accepted the Catholic dogmas,
while his critical faculty was checked by them; what his implacable
analysis destroyed his religious temperament reconstructed. He
believed in perception, liberty, and the reality of the external
world, and in a first cause; he transformed grammar by his
psychological analysis, and by his positivism civil law and the law
of nations. His excessive critical faculty sometimes ran to
super-fine abstraction, to an intellectual algebra. Bello passed
from ideology to positivism, from Destutt de Tracy to Stuart; Mill,
by way of the Scottish philosophers. His admirable grammatical and
juridical efforts may be attributed to his mastery of English
analysis and realism.
After Bello, the most remarkable of South American philosophers was
Eugenio de Hostos, who was born in 1839. He did not merely expound
European ideas; he had his own system, which he developed in a series
of remarkable works; he was a moralist rather than a metaphysician,
and whether in San Domingo or Lima or Santiago he never ceased his
endeavours to reform education and the law. Problems, social and
moral, gave him no rest; he sought to found a new morality and
sociology.
Hostos might be called an optimistic rationalist. He believed in an
ideal world. Science, according {273} to him, is an efficacious
agent of virtue. He thought it possible to discipline the will by
teaching what is true. Good is not a metaphysical entity nor duty an
imperative; the two together constitute a "natural order." A
profound harmony exists between man and the world he lives in, and
the moral law is merely the revelation in the consciousness of the
geometry of things. For Hostos the world was just, logical, and full
of reason; an internal law, _lex insita_, was manifested in the
sidereal harmonies as in virtuous actions.
The moral ideal is therefore merely the adaptation of conduct to the
inevitable and harmonious relations of things. Does not this
optimism recall the morality of Spencer, the rigorous ethics of
Spinoza, and the thought of Cournot, that "the philosophical basis of
morality is the idea of conformity to the universal order"?
The founders of the Republic were formed by scholasticism. In the
old universities men debated in language bristling with syllogisms.
A free philosophic doctrine which accepted all the Catholic
verities--immortality, free will, and Providence--and explained them
with a fiery eloquence, was the reaction against this school, whose
thought was crystallised in variable forms; this philosophy
corresponded to the romanticism of the politicians, to their faith in
democracy, liberty, and human progress.
In Spanish America French ideas predominated; in Brazil, German
thought. Tobias Barreto and Sylvio Romero propagated this culture in
the place of a colourless eclecticism; the first was a disciple of
the German philosophers, the second popularised Spencer, without
neglecting the Germans. In his German studies Barreto adopted the
monism of Ludwig Noiré: "The universe is composed of atoms,
absolutely equal, which are endowed with two properties: the one,
which is internal, is sensation; the {274} other, which is external,
is movement." This is the metaphysics of the Brazilian thinker, and
such was his influence that, according to a critic, "the theories of
Comte and Noiré explain modern intellectual Brazil." Sylvio Romero
expounded the evolutionary theories of Spencer, "a philosophic
monument even more important than that of Comte"; but in spite of the
efforts of this disciple Spencer is not as popular in Brazil as in
other American nations.
Barreto, a monist and philosopher, was a disciple of the judicial
finalism of Jhering; Sylvio Romano, a disciple of Spencer, expounded
and supported the conclusions of the social science of Demolins; in
the scientific ardour of these propagandists doctrines were assembled
together which had no mutual affinity. In Brazil all exotic
philosophies find their readers and commentators, but the confusion
caused by incoherent imitations completely lacks the unity of a
national tendency. A psychologist of great value, a free follower of
Renan, Joachim Nabuco, in a style full of subtlety, writes essays in
philosophy and criticism.
A Spanish philosopher, less rigid than the schoolmen and richer in
doctrine than the eclectics, Balmes engrossed many minds which were
fatigued by sterile eloquence. He founded no school in America, but
he is much read by the conservatives. His penetrating analysis, his
British realism, and his rationalism, which seeks to harmonise these
faculties with his dogmas, attract many who are repelled by a diffuse
spirituality.
These various tendencies--English empiricism, French eclecticism,
Benthamism--are not very profound intellectual movements. They have
replaced the old scholasticism. A political ideology is wanted which
shall be adequate to the needs of those who are struggling for power;
metaphysical discussions are relegated to oblivion.
[Illustration: JOSE ENRIQUE RODÓ (URUGUAY). Contemporary critic and
essayist. To face p. 274.]
{275}
Positivism was the first philosophy to impress men's intellects; it
has created great social movements, such as the Reformation in Mexico
and the Republic in Brazil. It became an intellectual dictatorship,
a new scholasticism. Free-thinkers believe in Comte and Spencer; in
the humanitarian religion of the first and the agnosticism of the
second.
Comte, to quote Mill, founded a complete system of spiritual
despotism. It upholds order and authority as against the abuses of
individualism, "the energetic preponderance of the central power"; it
condemns "anarchy, and destructive liberalism"; it exalts "the
eminently social genius of Catholicism." In nations annihilated by
revolution and a romantic freedom these theories are liable to
justify dictatorship, as they did in Brazil. There the Comtian
phrase "order and progress" has become the national watchword.
Other causes explain the supremacy of positivism; a reaction against
theology in the name of science, and against a vague and official
philosophy. Minds formed by Catholicism, even if they have lost
their faith, demand secular dogmas, and verities organised in a
facile system: in short, a new faith, and the Positivist philosophy
satisfies this craving. At the same time material progress, based
upon scientific development, and the utilitarianism which exaggerates
the importance of wealth, find in positivism, which disdains futile
ideologies, a system adequate to industrial life.
In Mexico, Brazil, and Chili positivism in its integrity is
predominant: the philosophic method and the religion of humanity. In
Brazil the positivist school, with Constant, d'Araujo, Bastos, and
their disciples, preserves the calendar, the secular saints, and the
rites of the founder. It produces teachers and creates political
constitutions like that of Rio Grande do Sul, and ardently propagates
the doctrines {276} of Comte. In Chili, Juan Enrique Lagarigue
preached a generous idealism, and the oblivion of patriotic hatreds;
but the democracy did not give ear to this ingenuous apostle. In
Mexico Barreda, founder of the Preparatory College, and the leader of
intellectual life, was a disciple of Comte in Paris from the year
1867. He revolutionised Mexican education in a positivist direction,
but did not accept the religious aspect of the new philosophy. There
is still in Mexico a _Positivist Review_, which has a certain small
influence.
Comtism influenced thinkers as a method, as a reaction against
theology and metaphysics, and as a goal of pedagogy. But the
philosophy of Spencer is that which has sent its roots deepest into
the life of the Latin republics; progress, the cardinal idea of the
romantics, is succeeded by evolution, a doctrine more agreeable to
the positivist intelligence. Since 1880 the theories of Spencer have
made converts of two generations; in some universities they
constitute an official system. No application has been made of his
psychology nor his biology, but his social and moral teaching has
been followed with servility. Politicians and journalists employ
Spencerian formulæ: the social organism, the instability of the
homogeneous, differentiation, the relativity of consciousness. In
1883 a Colombian politician, Rafael Nuñez, President of his country,
expounded the philosophy of Spencer to his fellow-citizens as a
remedy for the political dogmatism of his predecessors. American
statesmen might readily have asked the philosopher of evolution for
scientific suggestions, as did the Japanese.
Under the influence of the English thinker the scientific period was
ushered in. The study of social science is beginning; men profess a
materialism or a positivism hostile to the older ontological ideas;
they believe in science even more than in the sciences, {277} in the
rational explanation of all mysteries, in the supremacy of
mathematics and physics. Various influences are at work, and the
confused result thereof favours the triumph of positivism. The
political and social theories of Dr. Gustave Le Bon, the impetuous
writings of Max Nordau, the criminology of Lombroso and Ferri, the
formulæ of Taine, the biology and sociology of Letourneau, are
studied and commented upon in the universities, the parliaments, and
the schools of South America. Eloquence is repudiated as contrary to
scientific precision, and romantic faith is disdained by the
positivist. A party which has ruled over the evolution of Mexico for
the last thirty years has named itself the "Scientific Party."
The significance of these doctrines rapidly acquired an excessive
importance; in place of lucid methods and clear ideas we find the
teaching of the professors full of the narrowness of dogma.
Positivism implants a limited and vulgar rationalism, a new
metaphysic which accords an absolute truth to the formulæ of science;
which exalts egoism and practical interests, and the frantic pursuit
of wealth in daily life. The tendency of the American mind being
undue simplification, this philosophy has not been a discipline of
knowledge and action, but has limited the effort of man to the
conquest of the useful. The positivists organise plutocratic
tyrannies in certain American nations.
Without reigning in the schools as Spencer has done, a French
philosopher, M. Fouillée, has greatly influenced law, politics, and
education. In spite of the reign of positivism his flexible doctrine
has attracted many Americans, and his works, such as the _Idée du
Droit_ and the _Histoire de la Philosophie_, are coming into use as
text-books in some universities. The theory of unavoidable ideas is
well known; and thinkers and philosophers have been {278} inspired by
this "philosophy of hope." By its noble idealism, by its admirable
wealth, its serene rationalism, and its essentially Latin character,
the harmonious system of M. Fouillée has won considerable popularity
among the youth of America.
We cannot separate his influence from that of the young
poet-philosopher whom a premature death has consecrated: Guyau was
the professor of idealism to two generations of America. In _Ariel_
José-Enrique Rodo has enlarged upon his finest metaphors; and a
Peruvian thinker, Gonzalez Prada, has popularised the suggestions of
this Platonic thinker upon death.
Nietzsche also has disciples and commentators. Translated into
Spanish and vulgarised, his doctrines are the Bible of exasperated
egoism. Men saw nothing of his stoicism, his worship of heroic life
and tragic adventures; "concussionary" ministers and half-breeds
aspiring to power believe themselves Nietzschians, because in their
immoral advancement they ignore all moral scruples. A generation
above good and evil is practising opportunism--what the French call
"arrivism"--disorganising philosophy and society, and forgetting the
code of human dignity.
Fouillée, Guyau, and Nietzsche have not supplanted the positivist
philosophers; the superstition of science and the hatred of
metaphysical construction is still prevalent. All the new doctrines
are making their way: pragmatism, Bergsonism, the philosophy of Wundt
and Croce, the philosophy of contingency: without, however, creating
new tendencies. From this variety of imitations perhaps an American
system will arise. To-day every intellectual novelty is passionately
received and applied; an Argentine judge has even founded some of his
judgments upon the teaching of Tarde.
A reaction is setting in against dogmatic {279} positivism; the
present is a period of dissolution and criticism. In accepting
influences so various--English, German, and French--the old faith in
science, in Comte and Spencer, is evaporating. Two young
philosophers, Antonio Caso in Mexico and Henriquez Ureña in San
Domingo, have contributed to this analysis. Inspired by the ideas of
M. Emile Boutroux, they attack the narrow interpretation of
scientific laws.
Thus after thirty years of influence, positivism is losing its
prestige. It is not being replaced in the schools by any rigid
system; but in place of an intolerant dogmatism we have a free
examination of which we cannot yet foresee the consequences. Some
essays of Enrique Varona, in his writings on morality and philosophy;
of Carlos Octavio Bunge, in his _Psicologia individual y social_; of
Vaz-Ferreira, in his critique of the problem of liberty; of Deustua,
of Lima, in his essays on morality, reveal the fact that the new
school is not lacking in a serious philosophical orientation. But
originality, the new doctrine, the Ibero-American school--are these
shortly to be realities? So long as these nations are still busy at
the task of self-organisation in the midst of anarchical unrest, so
long as the cult of wealth prevails above all disinterested efforts,
so long we shall assuredly have no other philosophy than an
adaptation of foreign systems.
But in the new movements philosophical speculation is losing its old
simplicity; the study of psychology is developing, analysis is more
profound, the old verbal solutions are rejected, and the study of
societies is acquiring an extraordinary importance.
Half a century ago books on political science swarmed. The same
pragmatic preoccupation--the adaptation of scientific ideas to the
uses of social life--prevails to-day.
Many sociologists are inspired by biology, or {280} psychology, or
historical materialism. Cornejo, in Peru, is adopting the
psychological theories of Wundt, his analysis of language, myth, and
custom. Letelier, in Chili, inclines toward the positivism of Comte;
Ramos Mejia, in the Argentine, explains social phenomena in a
biological sense. His books, _La Locura en la Historia_, _Las Masas
Argentinas_, reveal this tendency. Ingegnieros has studied the
history of the Argentine in relation to the economic factor. His
work, _De la Barbarie al Imperalismo_, is an essay in Marxist
sociology.
To sum up; social science preoccupies our thinkers rather than pure
philosophy. Neither the great German idealists nor the critics and
thinkers are known in America; neither Hume, nor Kant, nor Hegel,
although the Spanish orator Emilio Castelar has propagated a
Hegelianism _ad usum delphini_ in the new continent. The pessimism
of Schopenhauer does not acclimatise itself in the tropics.
Eclecticism, positivism, and spiritualism prevail.
[Illustration: ALCIDES ARGUEDAS (BOLIVIA). Novelist and sociologist.
To face p. 280.]
{282}
BOOK VI
_THE LATIN SPIRIT AND THE GERMAN, NORTH
AMERICAN, AND JAPANESE PERILS_
From a racial point of view, it is true, one cannot call the South
American republics Latin nations. They are rather Indo-African or
Africo-Iberian. Latin culture--the ideas and the art of France, the
laws and the Catholicism of Rome--have created in South America a
mental attitude analogous to that of the great Mediterranean peoples,
which is hostile or alien to the civilisation of the Germanic or
Anglo-Saxon peoples.
New influences, whether they come from Germany or Anglo-Saxon
America, and even more those that come from Japan, are dangerous to
the Latin-American nations, if they tend to destroy their traditions.
{283}
CHAPTER I
ARE THE IBERO-AMERICANS OF LATIN RACE
Spanish and Portuguese heredity--Latin culture--The influence of the
Roman laws, of Catholicism, and of French thought--The Latin spirit
in America: its qualities and defects.
Contrasting the Imperial Republic of North America with the twenty
democracies of South America, we seek the reason of the antagonism
which exists between them in the essential element of race. The
contrast between Anglo-Saxons and Latins is the contrast between two
cultures.
The South American peoples consider themselves Latin by race, just as
their brothers of the North are the remote descendants of the
Anglo-Saxon Pilgrim Fathers; but although the United States were
created largely by the aggregation of austere English emigrants,
there has been no intervention of pure Latin elements in the
colonisation of the South. Navigators of Latin blood discovered an
unknown continent, and Spaniards and Portuguese conquered and
colonised it; but there was little Latin blood to be found in the
homes formed by the sensuality of the first conquerors of a desolated
America.
Emigrants from Estremadura and Galicia, Andalusians and Castilians,
many-hued men of Spain and Portugal, were all concerned in the first
interbreeding with the vanquished races; they were Iberians, in whom
the anthropologists discover moral analogies with the Berbers of
North Africa. The Basques, {284} rude and virile, who emigrated from
Spain to dominate America, did not come of Latin stock; the
Andalusian element, from Seville or Cadiz, was of Oriental origin. A
Spain that was half African and half Germanic colonised the vast
territories of America; two heredities, Visigoth and Arab, were
united in its strange genius.
The French and Italian colonists have not the importance of the
Spaniards and Portuguese; they are inferior in numbers and in wealth.
The Iberians have jealously defended their racial prerogative in
these isolated transatlantic colonies. After three centuries, when
once the continent was opened to the outside world and to European
commerce, the Italians invaded the rich plains of the Argentine;
there they contributed to the formation of a new race, which is more
Latin than Spanish.
But we must not forget the innumerable Anglo-Saxons who have founded
families in the Argentine and in Chili, and have brought wealth to
those countries; nor the Germans in Southern Brazil, nor the Asiatics
of the Peruvian seaboard. Iberians, Indians, Latins, Anglo-Saxons,
and Orientals all mingle in America; a babel of races, so mixed that
it is impossible to discover the definite outlines of the future type.
It is useless to look for unity of race in such a country. And even
in the United States the confused invasion of Russian Jews and
Southern Italians is little by little undermining the primitive
Anglo-Saxon unity.
This confusion of races in the North and the South leaves two
traditions, the Anglo-Saxon and the Iberian. By force of
assimilation these traditions are transforming the new races.
Englishmen and Spaniards disappear, but the two moral inheritances
survive.
The Latin tradition is not far to seek in the {285} Americans of the
South. They are not exclusively either Spanish or Portuguese; the
legacy received from Spain is modified by persistent influences of
French and Italian origin.
From Mexico to La Plata, by long continued and extensive action, the
Roman laws, Catholicism, and the ideas of France have given a uniform
aspect to the American conscience.
Laws of Spanish origin prevail in South America; they have formed the
rigid framework of civil life. These laws, in spite of strong feudal
elements, are of Roman origin. Under the influence of Roman law
Alfonso X. unified Spanish legislation, during the first half of the
thirteenth century; three centuries later the Spaniards colonised
America. The _Partidas_, that vast encyclopædia of law and
collection of Castilian laws in particular, is a Roman code. It
confirmed the individualist sense of property as against the Spanish
forms of collectivism; it reinforced the power of the _paterfamilias_
in the austere Iberian family; it consecrated equality, authorising
marriage between free men and the serfs formerly banished from the
State; and it adopted the Roman formalism.
Politically, after the downfall of the feudal system, ambitious
princes, from the time of Alfonso X. to that of the Catholic Kings
and of Charles V., enforced their royal authority in the Roman sense.
These monarchs were Cæsars; they concentrated all the powers of the
State in themselves; they centralised, unified, and legislated. This
royal absolutism destroyed privilege and levelled mankind. A vast
Spanish democracy was formed, subject to Cæsar, after the manner of
the Roman people. The Latin sense of authority and law prevailed in
the Spanish colonies; property was individual and absolute; civil
equality obtained; in spite of racial differences, Indians and
Spaniards were theoretically {286} on the same plane; the family,
like the Roman _gens_, united slaves and children under the gloomy
paternal power. The distant monarch was a formidable overlord, to
whom viceroys and chapters, courts, judicial and ecclesiastical,
addressed themselves to demand laws and regulations, penalties and
sanctions.
Catholicism was indissolubly bound up with the Roman authority of the
laws; in Spain and America the prince was at the same time the
shepherd of the Church. Religion was an instrument of political
domination; it was an imperial force, a legacy of the Latin genius.
It multiplied forms and rites; it disciplined the colonists,
demanding outward obedience and uniformity of belief and manners.
"The Roman Church," says Harnack, "is a juridical institution."
Catholicism is also a social religion. In America it created the
Brazilian nation in opposition to the Dutch peril; it founded
republics among Indians inimical to all forms of organised social
life; it extended the field of Latin endeavour, and from North to
South favoured the constitution of new governments and societies.
Under the double pressure of Roman Catholicism and legislation,
America became Latinised. It learned to respect laws and forms, to
submit to a religious as well as a civil discipline. French ideas,
added to these influences, first prepared the way for the Revolution,
and afterwards dominated the mind of America, from the Declaration of
Independence to our own days.
These ideas constituted a new factor of Latin development. France is
the modern heir of the genius of Greece and Rome, and in imitating
her, even to excess, Ibero-Americans have assimilated the essential
elements of the antique culture. We find in the Gallic spirit the
sense of taste and harmony, the _lucidus ordo_ of the classics; the
love of general ideas, of universal principles, of the rights of man,
{287} and a hatred of the mists of the North and the too violent
light of the South; rationalism, logical vigour, emotion in the
presence of beauty, and the cult of grace. France has been the
teacher of social life and letters to the American democracies; her
influence is already of no recent date. Voltaire and Rousseau were
the theorists of the revolutionary period; Lamartine taught "lyrism"
and romantic melancholy; Benjamin-Constant, the theory of politics,
and Verlaine the lamentations of decadence.
Either indirectly, through the influence of the thought and
literature of Spain and Portugal, or directly, these republics have
lived by the light of French ideas.
Thus a general current of thought has arisen on the American
continent which is not merely Iberian, but also French and Roman.
France has effected a spiritual conquest of these democracies, and
has created a new variety of the Latin spirit. This Latin spirit is
not a thing apart; it is formed of characteristics common to all the
Mediterranean peoples. French, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and
Spaniards find therein the fundamental elements of their national
genius, just as in antiquity the Greek women found in Helen the
reflection of their own beauty. To this spiritual synthesis Spain
contributes her idealism; Italy, the paganism of her children and the
eternal suggestion of her marbles; France, her harmonious education.
In the Iberian democracies an inferior Latinity, a Latinity of the
decadence prevails; verbal abundance, inflated rhetoric, oratorical
exaggeration, just as in Roman Spain. The qualities and defects of
the classic spirit are revealed in American life; the persistent
idealism, which often disdains the conquests of utility; the ideas of
humanity and equality, of universality, despite racial variety; the
cult of form; the Latin instability and vivacity; the faith in pure
{288} ideas and political dogmas: all are to be found in these lands
oversea, together with the brilliant and superficial intelligence,
the Jacobinism, and the oratorical facility. Enthusiasm,
sociability, and optimism are also American qualities.
These republics are not free from any of the ordinary weaknesses of
the Latin races. The State is omnipotent; the liberal professions
are excessively developed; the power of the bureaucracy becomes
alarming. The character of the average citizen is weak, inferior to
his imagination and intelligence; ideas of union and the spirit of
solidarity have to contend with the innate indiscipline of the race.
These men, dominated by the solicitations of the outer world and the
tumult of politics, have no inner life; you will find among them no
great mystics, no great lyrical writers. They meet realities with an
exasperated individualism.
Indisciplined, superficial, brilliant, the South Americans belong to
the great Latin family; they are the children of Spain, Portugal, and
Italy by blood and by deep-rooted tradition, and by their general
ideas they are the children of France. A French politician, M.
Clemenceau, found in Brazil, the Argentine, and Uruguay, "a
superabundant Latinism; a Latinism of feeling, a Latinism of thought
and action, with all its immediate and superficial advantages, and
all its defects of method, its alternatives of energy and failure in
the accomplishment of design." This new American spirit is
indestructible. Contact with Anglo-Saxon civilisation may partially
renew it, but the integral transformation of the spirit proper to the
Latin nations will never be accomplished. It would be a racial
suicide. Where Yankees and Latin Americans intermingle you may
better observe the insoluble contradictions which divide them. The
Anglo-Saxons are conquering America commercially and economically,
but the {289} traditions, the ideals, and the soul of these republics
are hostile to them.
The Ibero-American race should seek to correct its vices without
forsaking the framework of tradition which is proper to it. Without
losing its originality as a nation, France is to-day triumphant in
many departments of sport, and is spending her energy and inventive
genius upon the conquest of the air without counting the cost; she
has made her own victories which seemed to belong to the Anglo-Saxon.
At the same time, if the American democracies are to acquire a
practical spirit, a persistent activity, and a virile energy, they
must do so without renouncing their language, their religion, and
their history.
The defence of the Latin spirit has become a duty of primordial
importance. Barrès, an impassioned ideologist, preaches the cult of
self as a remedy for barbarism; no foreign tutelage must trouble the
spontaneous internal revelation. The republics oversea, wending
their way under hostile or indifferent eyes, _sous l'oeil des
Barbares_, must cultivate their spiritual originality in the
encounter with inimical forces.
The North American peril, the threat of Germany, the menace of Japan,
surround the future of Latin America like those mysterious forces
which, in the drama of Maeterlinck, dominate the human stage, and in
silence prepare the way for the great human tragedies. To defend the
traditions of the Latin continent, it is useful to measure the
importance of the influences which threaten it.
{290}
CHAPTER II
THE GERMAN PERIL
German Imperialism and the Monroe doctrine--_Das Deutschtum_ and
Southern Brazil--What the Brazilians think about it.
The Teutonic invasion is troubling our Ibero-American writers. The
tutelary protection of the United States does not suffice to make
them forget the European peril; memories of the Holy Alliance, of
that crusade of religious absolutism and reconquest, are still lively
in Latin America.
Three great nations--England, France, Germany--aspired to establish
their supremacy oversea in a lasting manner. England, a colonising
power in all parts of the world, thought to rule at Buenos-Ayres; the
defence of that Spanish city by the Viceroy Liniers was, says Onésime
Reclus, the Latin revenge for the taking of Quebec. France attacked
Mexico, and forced a monarch upon her; England and a French monarch
sent expeditions against the nationalist dictator Rosas, and Lord
Salisbury, in a diplomatic duel with the North American Secretary of
State, Mr. Olney, attempted to ignore the tutelary significance of
the Monroe doctrine.
The triumphs of these attempts would have founded in Latin America
extensive colonies, proud and populous. The efforts of the
ill-organised republics could not have prevailed against them.
For the new continent this would have meant a loss of autonomy; but
the Monroe doctrine stood in {291} the way of any conquests save
those made by the United States, and a sudden disagreement between
the two invading nations, France and England, in their campaign
against Rosas, caused these attempts to miscarry. The three Guianas,
British Honduras, and some of the West Indian islands, bear witness
to the ambitions of Europe; they are the scattered fragments of the
empire which the Old World coveted. Invasions of capital and of
merchant vessels quickly replaced those of warships.
Secretly, without the employment of these warlike means, Germany
began to make herself felt; her imperialism wore a mercantile
disguise, or took the form of immigration. Persevering Teutonic
colonists made their way toward Brazil, Chili, and Central America,
and although the European peril was over the German peril survived.
Neither Russia, who possesses vast desert territories in Asia, nor
Italy, whose ambitions are limited to Africa, to Tripoli, considered
the possibility of conquest upon the American continent.
Against flat invasion by any power the tutelage of the United States
is a protection, but the Monroe doctrine is powerless against the
slow and imperceptible invasion of German immigration. By virtue of
their capital and their adventurers, Germany and the United States
are slowly occupying South America; other continents being closed to
their ambitions of expansion, it is in the free territory of the New
World that they found their colonies. There we find their bankers
and merchants, the rude emissaries of these commercial powers.
Americans and Germans resemble one another by race and in energy.
The Middle West of the United States was peopled by German emigrants;
two imposing cities, New York and St. Louis, are vast reservoirs of
Teutonic energy. The new empire is actuated by ambitions similar to
those of the United States; {292} both are conquering and plutocratic
powers. The German Empire has the passions of a new people; the
active faith, the practical Christianity, the cult of gold, the
instinct of gigantic accumulations, of cyclopean enterprises, trusts,
and combinations, and the optimism, the anxious desire to improvise
the civilising work of centuries by the pressure of sheer wealth.
The Kaiser and Colonel Roosevelt, Biblical shepherds of their people,
evangelists of the strenuous life, direct the ardent industrial
evolution of their nations, and establish a mystic imperialism. It
is from this analogy of tendencies that the future clash will come.
To-day the continual incursion of the United States into South
American affairs and the organised immigration from Germany are
different forms of the same ambition.
In Guatemala and Costa Rica the influence of Germany is immense; the
importance of her capital in Central America can only be compared
with that of England in the Argentine. It is valued at £15,000,000.
Germans acquire landed property, build railroads, and found banks.
In these regions two dominating influences are in conflict: German
imperialism and the Monroe doctrine. The Kaiser hastens to recognise
President Madriz in Nicaragua, while the revolutionists, protected by
the United States, hasten to deprive him of his ephemeral power.
Dispersed throughout Chili, Venezuela, Peru, and Central America, the
Germans are concentrating in southern Brazil. They aspire to the
integral colonisation of three Brazilian States--Santa-Catalina,
Parana, and Rio Grande do Sul. Since 1825 a slow current of humanity
has invaded these rich provinces: 350,000 Germans are established
there, where they rule the municipalities, enjoy rights of
self-government, despise the negroes and half-castes, and live in an
aristocratic isolation. They {293} have retained the language,
traditions, and prejudices of their native country. In certain
colonies of the South there are only 10 per cent. of Brazilian
citizens; the Germans represent the prevailing race, the effective
nationality. Their efforts further the territorial ambition of _Das
Deutschtum_.
Economists recommend that the excessive immigration which constantly
pours into the United States should be directed towards South
America. A tenth part of the population of the United States admits
to a Teutonic origin; there are eight millions of Germans in the huge
northern democracy. Thanks to affinities of race, or thanks to the
assimilative action of the national spirit, this colossal colony does
not form a State within the State; its members adapt themselves to
the American life, and in the numerous schools of the country they
assimilate an Anglo-Saxon culture. They do not threaten the normal
development of the republic, as do the negroes of the South and the
Asiatics of the Far West.
In Brazil the Germans occupy eight thousand square miles of
territory. They proudly contrast the magnificent destinies of the
_Vaterland_ with the turbulent federalism of the Brazilian States.
The colonisation companies affiliated to the powerful and active
banks, in especial the _Deutsche Uberseeische Bank_, a marvellous
instrument of conquest, are extending the prosaic Teutonic hegemony
through Brazil and the whole of Latin America. In Chili Germans
direct the education of the country, and organise the army; just as
in the Prussian schools, they teach an intolerant patriotism and a
strongly nationalistic history.
While the emigrants are realising their imperialistic Odyssey, German
professors are condemning the Monroe doctrine. Hugo Münsterberg,
professor of philosophy at Harvard, and Adolf Wagner, an economist of
Berlin, regard the Yankee thesis merely as {294} a perishable
improvisation upon a fragile foundation. The interest of Germany
demands that the United States should abandon their tutelage, and
that the swarming Germanic legions should invade the southern
continent. Münsterberg writes in his book _The Americans_ that the
Yankee will soon realise "the error and folly" of his argument, which
he qualifies as a moribund doctrine. No Russian, French, or Italian
colony in South America, he says, could create difficulties in the
United States; but the doctrine which forbids their establishment
will be the cause of conflicts in the future. If South America were
set free from this tutelage, if its bearing were limited to Central
America, the possibilities of a conflict between the United States
and Europe would be considerably diminished. Does not this
disinterested counsel conceal a desire to found colonies upon a
continent which the vigilance of the United States would no longer
protect?
An economist who, like Treitschke and Sybel, believes in the divine
mission of the German Empire, Gustave Schmoller, would like to see a
nation of twenty or thirty millions of inhabitants founded in
Southern Brazil.
Concentrated in the three provinces of Brazil, an unmixed and hostile
race would struggle against the Brazilian half-breeds and prevail
over them, which is what these professors of conquest desire. This
fruitful invasion would realise the dream entertained by those rich
bankers of Augsburg, the Velzers, who three centuries ago bought a
Venezuelan province from the Hispano-Germanic monarch, Charles V.
Heirs of this vast abortive plan, the German financiers of our days
dream of planting a foreign province in the heart of the vast
territory of Brazil.
Brazilian thinkers have protested against this German conquest in
disguise; they recognise the {295} danger, and seek to avoid it.
Sylvio Romero suggests, as a means of limiting this expansion, the
education of the race along Anglo-Saxon lines, which would develop
the love of initiative and the sense of effort, a migration of
Brazilian proletarians who should occupy these southern territories
and hold them against the Germans, and finally, the establishment of
military colonies in the threatened regions. It is the traditional
struggle for nationality, for the possession of the very soil itself.
Language is an instrument of conquest; it is therefore urgent to
enforce the use of Portuguese in the schools of the South, where the
far-sighted colonists teach only their own tongue. Foreign
syndicates acquire large and numerous stretches of territory; Señor
Romero would have these land trusts inhibited, and would favour the
establishment of indigenous centres among the German populations, in
order to contend with this perilous invasion by an alien race.[1]
The national uneasiness has even affected the art of the country;
Graça Aranha has written, in _Canaan_, the drama of the contact of
races. "For the moment," says Milkau, the blond invader of the
half-breed country, "we are nothing more than a solvent acting upon
the race of the country. We are effecting a new conquest, slow,
persistent, and pacific in the means employed, but terrible in its
ambitious intention." Hentz, his companion, proudly describes the
triumph of the white man, and the {296} expulsion of the "coloured
man who was born on the land." He prophesies a terrible future: "The
Germans will arrive with their thirst for possession and domination,
and their originality, the harsh originality of barbarians, in
unnumbered legions; they will kill off the sensual and foolish
natives who have built up their societies upon this splendid soil and
have degraded it by their turpitude."
It is the purging of a territory infested by African slaves.
Germany, mother of men without number, _officina et vagina gentium_,
invades with her blond legions the land of brown men, sends forth her
chaste Teutons to the conquest of the lascivious forest.
Without denying the reality of this peril, we cannot but realise that
it would be difficult to establish on Brazilian soil colonies which
should reflect the glory of _Das Deutschtum_. Already 350,000
Germans are lost in the national mass; demographically they signify
nothing as against the 19 millions of Brazilians. To found a
colonial empire in the interior of the Lusitanian Republic it would
first of all be necessary to have a strong basis of population; the
theorists of the Germanic movement of expansion would dispose of 18
to 20 million emigrants in these rich southern provinces. Moreover,
the Germanic invasion is not concentrated upon Brazil. The United
States absorb the Germanic alluvium; and the Brazilian half-breeds
being fertile, the numerical disproportion between the natives and
the blond invaders would in the future be enormous.
On the other hand, the contingent of Teutonic immigration is
diminishing. The modern cities of industrial Germany are increasing
in numbers and in population; they are absorbing new elements into
their artificial life. The rural multitude which migrates is
changing the direction of its painful journey; it no longer forsakes
its fatherland, but leaves the silent fields for the enervating life
of the {297} cities. Its taste has become sophisticated; it prefers
urban attractions to the adventures of emigration. In the last ten
years barely 30,000 Germans have left the _Vaterland_ each year. Not
with such scanty legions as these will Germany establish a centre of
domination oversea, for even these are divided among the United
States, Central America, and Brazil.
The Italians, enriched and triumphant, are invading the Argentine and
Southern Brazil. Theirs is a current of increasing volume; more than
50,000 Latins emigrate annually; they adapt themselves to their new
country, acquire immense stretches of soil, and accumulate enormous
fortunes, until names of foreign origin begin to predominate in the
world of Argentine letters and in the plutocratic salons of the new
continent. They transmit their Latin heritage to their numerous
children. The stiff-necked group of German colonists cannot vanquish
these races, whose affinities are the same as those of the natives,
and who bring oversea the sensuality of Naples and the commonsense of
Milan.
When German emigration is not excessively concentrated upon one point
it forms laborious and assimilable populations. The German learns
more readily than the Englishman the language of his new country; he
studies local manners and adopts them; he brings to the restless and
turbulent democracies of America his deliberation, his spirit of
industry, and his methodical activity. In the Argentine, in Chili,
in Peru, in countries where he has not yet undertaken to establish
the foundation of an empire, his influence has been fruitful.
The tutelage of the United States seems to us more dangerous than the
German invasion.
[1] See _A America latina_, Porto, 1907, p. 323. M. Onésime Reclus
gives the same advice to the Lusitanians of America: "In each State,
in each municipality, let those charged with the partition of the
soil see that they establish no Polish, German, English, or Irish
colonies unless they also establish Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian,
French, and Italian, or analogous colonies; let no colony be formed
exclusively of people of a single nationality, but well divided among
colonists speaking different tongues; and if such a law be strictly
observed Latin America may resist the fatal onset of Slav or German
Europe" (_Le Partage du Monde_, p. 278).
{298}
CHAPTER III
THE NORTH AMERICAN PERIL
The policy of the United States--The Monroe doctrine: its various
aspects--Greatness and decadence of the United States--The two
Americas, Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
To save themselves from Yankee imperialism the American democracies
would almost accept a German alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms;
everywhere the Americans of the North are feared. In the Antilles
and in Central America hostility against the Anglo-Saxon invaders
assumes the character of a Latin crusade. Do the United States
deserve this hatred? Are they not, as their diplomatists preach, the
elder brothers, generous and protecting? And is not protection their
proper vocation in a continent rent by anarchy?
We must define the different aspects of their activities in South
America; a summary examination of their influence could not fail to
be unjust. They have conquered new territories, but they have upheld
the independence of feeble States; they aspire to the hegemony of the
Latin continent, but this ambition has prevented numerous and
grievous conflicts between South American nations. The moral
pressure of the United States makes itself felt everywhere; the
imperialist and maternal Republic intervenes in all the internal
conflicts of the Spanish-speaking democracies. It excites or
suppresses revolutions; it fulfils a high vocation of culture. It
{299} uses or abuses a privilege which cannot be gainsaid. The
better to protect the Ibero-Americans, it has proudly raised its
Pillars of Hercules against the ambition of the Old World.
Sometimes this influence becomes a monopoly, and the United States
take possession of the markets of the South. They aim at making a
trust of the South American republics, the supreme dream of their
multi-millionaire _conquistadors_. Alberdi has said that there they
are the "Puerto Cabello" of the new America; that is to say, that
they aim, after the Spanish fashion, at isolating the southern
continent and becoming its exclusive purveyors of ideas and
industries.
Their supremacy was excellent when it was a matter of basing the
independence of twenty republics of uncertain future upon a solid
foundation. The neo-Saxons did not then intervene in the wars of the
South; they remained neutral and observed the peace which Washington
had advocated. They proclaimed the autonomy of the continent, and
contributed to conserve the originality of Southern America by
forbidding the formation of colonies in its empty territories, and by
defending the republican and democratic States against reactionary
Europe.
But who will deliver the Ibero-Americans from the excess of this
influence? _Quis custodiet custodem?_ An irresponsible supremacy is
perilous.
Naturally, in the relations of the United States and the nations of
the South actions do not always correspond with words; the art of
oratory is lavish with a fraternal idealism, but strong wills enforce
their imperialistic ambitions. Although fully attentive to the
fair-sounding promises of the North, the statesmen of the South
refuse to believe in the friendship of the Yankees; being perturbed
by the memory of ancient and recent conquests, these peoples perhaps
exaggerate the danger which might come from the {300} North. A blind
confidence and an excessive timidity are equally futile.
In 1906, at the conference of Rio de Janeiro, Secretary Root, in the
presence of assembled America, was the lay prophet of the new gospel.
"We do not wish," he said, "to win victories, we desire no territory
but our own, nor a sovereignty more extensive than that which we
desire to retain over ourselves. We consider that the independence
and the equal rights of the smallest and weakest members of the
family of nations deserve as much respect as those of the great
empires. We pretend to no right, privilege, or power that we do not
freely concede to each one of the American Republics." This was the
solemn declaration of a Puritan politician; Mr. Root continues the
noble tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton.
Ten years earlier another secretary, Mr. Olney, declared to Lord
Salisbury that the great Anglo-Saxon Republic was practically
sovereign--paramount was his word--on the American continent, and
that its fiat was law in affairs which called for its intervention.
Which is the truth: the imperialistic declarations of Mr. Olney or
the idealism of Mr. Root?
Against the policy of respect for Latin liberties are ranged the
instincts of a triumphant plutocracy. The centre of North American
life is passing from Boston to Chicago; the citadel of the ideal
gives way to the material progress of the great porcine metropolis.
There is a conflict of dissimilar currents of morality. The Puritan
tradition of New England seems useless in the struggle of the Far
West; the conquest of the desert demands another morality; the
morality of conflict, aggression, and success. The trusts raise
their heads above the impotent clamour of the weak. The conflict
between the new-comers is tumultuous and brutal; as in the time of
imperial {301} Rome, the latter-day republicans are becoming aware of
their defeat by a new caste, animated by an impetuous love of
conflict. It is the struggle between idealism and plutocracy,
between the tradition of the Pilgrim Fathers and the morality of Wall
Street; the patricians of the Senate and the bosses of Tammany Hall.
The great historical parties are divided; while the democrats do not
forget the ideal of Washington and Lincoln, the republicans think
only of imperialism.
Will a generous _élite_ succeed in withstanding this racial tendency?
Perhaps, but nothing can check the onward march of the United States.
Their imperialism is an unavoidable phenomenon.
The nation which was peopled by nine millions of men in 1820 now
numbers eighty millions--an immense demographic power; in the space
of ten years, from 1890 to 1900, this population increased by
one-fifth. By virtue of its iron, wheat, oil, and cotton, and its
victorious industrialism, the democracy aspires to a world-wide
significance of destiny; the consciousness of its powers is creating
fresh international duties. Yankee pride increases with the endless
multiplication of wealth and population, and the patriotic sentiment
has reached such an intensity that it has become transformed into
imperialism.
The United States buy the products they themselves lack from the
tropical nations. To rule in these fertile zones would to them
appear the geographical ideal of a northern people. Do not their
industries demand new outlets in America and Asia? So to the old
mystic ambition are added the necessities of utilitarian progress.
An industrial nation, the States preach a practical Christianity to
the older continents, to Europe, and to lands yet barbarous, as to
South America; they profess a doctrine of aggressive idealism, a
strange fusion of economic tendencies and Puritan fervour. The
Christian Republic imposes {302} its tutelage upon inferior races,
and so prepares them for self-government.
This utilitarian and mystical expansion is opposed to the primitive
simplicity of the Monroe doctrine. In 1823, to counter the political
methods of the Holy Alliance, President Monroe upheld the republican
integrity of the ancient Spanish colonies. The celebrated message
declared that there were no free territories in America, thus
condemning in advance any projected establishment of European
colonies upon the unoccupied continent of America, and that the
United States limited their political action to the New World, and
renounced all intervention in the disputes of Europe.
At the close of the last century the political absolutism of the Holy
Alliance was only a memory; democracy is progressing, even in the
heart of the most despotic of monarchies, and France is republican.
Europe, after the tragic adventure of the Mexican Empire, abandoned
her expeditions of conquest. The United States, forgetting their
initial isolation, intervened in the politics of the world; they
defended the integrity of China, took part in the conference of
Algeciras, and maintained peace in the East. Like the character in
Terence, nothing in the world leaves them unconcerned. The two bases
of the Monroe doctrine, the absolutism of Europe and the isolation of
the United States, exist no longer, but the Monroe doctrine persists
indefinitely. "If," says Mr. Coolidge, professor of political law at
the University of Harvard, "if, by his principles, the American finds
himself drawn to conclusions which do not please him, he ordinarily
revolts, forsakes his promises, and jumps to conclusions that suit
him better." To the logic of the Latins Americans and Englishmen
oppose utility, common sense, instinct.
The Monroe doctrine has undergone an essential transformation; it has
passed successively from the {303} defensive to intervention and
thence to the offensive. From a theory which condemned any change of
political _régime_ among the new democracies under European pressure,
and which forbade all acquisitions of territory, or the transfer of
power from a weak to a strong nation, there arose the Polk doctrine,
which, in 1845, decreed the annexation of Texas for fear of foreign
intervention. In 1870 President Grant demanded the seizure of San
Domingo as a measure of national protection, a new corollary of the
Monroe doctrine. President Johnson was anxious to see his country in
possession of Cuba in the name of the "laws of political gravitation
which throw small States into the gullets of the great powers." In
1895 Secretary of State Olney, at the time of the trouble between
England and Venezuela, declared that the United States were in fact
sovereign in America. From Monroe to Olney the defensive doctrine
has gradually changed to a moral tutelage.
If theories change, frontiers change no less. The northern Republic
has been the beneficiary of an incessant territorial expansion: in
1813 it acquired Louisiana; in 1819, Florida; in 1845 and 1850,
Texas; the Mexican provinces in 1848 and 1852; and Alaska in 1858.
The annexation of Hawaii took place in 1898. In the same year Porto
Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and one of the Marianne Islands, passed,
by the Treaty of Paris, into the hands of the United States. They
obtained the Samoan Islands in 1890, wished to buy the Danish West
Indies in 1902, and planted their imperialistic standard at Panama in
1903.
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of
frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the
territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at
Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba,
under cover of the Platt amendment, to {304} maintain order in the
interior; in San Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and
overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to
enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the
political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In
Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North
American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery.
Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons
to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and
tranquillity: such are the means employed. The _New York American_
announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances
of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago
merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the
Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of
converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the
last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a
monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news
hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to
buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is
the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and
the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, are
fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress.
The Monroe doctrine takes an aggressive form with Mr. Roosevelt, the
politician of the "big stick," and intervention _à outrance_.
Roosevelt is conscious of his sacred mission; he wants a powerful
army, and a navy majestically sailing the two oceans. His ambitions
find an unlooked-for commentary in a book by Mr. Archibald Coolidge,
the Harvard professor, upon the United States as a world-power. He
therein shows the origin of the disquietude of the South Americans
before the Northern peril: "When two {305} contiguous States," he
writes, "are separated by a long line of frontiers and one of the two
rapidly increases, full of youth and vigour, while the other
possesses, together with a small population, rich and desirable
territories, and is troubled by continual revolutions which exhaust
and weaken it, the first will inevitably encroach upon the second,
just as water will always seek to regain its own level."
He recognises the fact that the progress accomplished by the United
States is not of a nature to tranquillise the South American; "that
the Yankee believes that his southern neighbours are trivial and
childish peoples, and above all incapable of maintaining a proper
self-government." He thinks the example of Cuba, liberated "from the
rule of Spain, but not from internal troubles, will render the
American of the States sceptical as to the aptitude of the
Latin-American populations of mixed blood to govern themselves
without disorder," and recognises that the "pacific penetration" of
Mexico by American capital constitutes a possible menace to the
independence of that Republic, were the death of Diaz to lead to its
original state of anarchy and disturb the peace which the
millionaires of the North desire to see untroubled.
Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial
hegemony--all these justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.
The people of the United States have always desired a _Zollverein_, a
fiscal union of all the Republics; they wish to gather into their
imperial hands the commerce of the South, the produce of the tropics.
The unity of the German Empire was born of a _Zollverein_ or customs
union, and perhaps in the future the same means will create that
eternal empire of which the patriotism of Mr. Chamberlain used to
dream. The United States, according to candid Professor Coolidge,
are, in respect of Latin {306} America, in a position analogous to
that of Russia in respect of the nations of the _Zollverein_: their
population is greater and more imposing. "History shows us," he
writes, "that when feeble states and powerful states are closely
associated the independence of the weak states runs certain
risks."[1] The Yankee ideal, then, is fatally contrary to
Latin-American independence.
For geographical reasons, and on account of its very inferiority,
South America cannot dispense with the influence of the Anglo-Saxon
North, with its exuberant wealth and its industries. South America
has need of capital, of enterprising men, of bold explorers, and
these the United States supply in abundance. The defence of the
South should consist in avoiding the establishment of privileges or
monopolies, whether in favour of North Americans or Europeans.
It is essential to understand not only the foundations of North
American greatness, but also the weaknesses of the Anglo-Saxon
democracy, in order to escape from the dangers of excessive imitation.
The Anglo-Saxons of America have created an admirable democracy upon
a prodigious expanse of territory. A caravan of races has pitched
its tents from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and has watered the
desert with its impetuous blood. Dutch, French, Anglo-Saxons, and
Germans, people of all sects, Quakers, Presbyterians, Catholics,
Puritans, all have mingled their creeds in a single multiform nation.
At the contact of new soil men have felt the pride of creation and of
living. Initiative, self-assertion, self-reliance, audacity, love of
adventure, all the forms of the victorious will are united in this
Republic of energy. A triumphant optimism quickens the rhythm of
life; an immense impulse of creation builds cities in the wilderness,
and founds new {307} plutocracies amidst the whirlpool of the
markets. Workshops, factories, banks; the obscure unrest of Wall
Street; the architectural insolence of the skyscraper; the
many-coloured, material West; all mingle perpetually in the wild,
uncouth hymn which testifies the desperate battle of will and
destiny, of generation against death. Poets have exalted the
greatness of America. Hear Walt Whitman, the bard of this advancing
democracy:--
"Long, too long, America....
For who except myself has yet conceived
What your children _en masse_ really are?
They will make the most splendid race the sun
Ever shone upon,"
he cries, in his free rhythms.
"O mother of a mighty race!"
said Bryant, celebrating the glories of North America, and the
fastidious Whittier would have the United States excel the Old World
on its own ground:
"And cast in some diviner mould
Lest the new cycle shame the old."
They have reconciled equality with liberty, in manners and in law.
Fair play, the identical chances which the Republic offers her
citizens, in creating schools, in fostering the advance of self-made
men in society, constitutes the firmest foundation of the life of a
republic. Equity and equality prevail above the eager onrush of her
citizens; equality in industrial struggles against monopolies;
equality in the churches in place of intolerance; equality in school
instead of the privileges created by wealth. This persistent
exaltation of liberty matches the sentiment of social discipline.
The Germanic sense of {308} organisation is added to the Anglo-Saxon
individualism; associations multiply and become a gigantic network
spread over the entire face of the country; clubs, leagues, societies
of co-operation and production and philanthropic institutions.
But this civilisation, in which men of strong vitality win wealth,
invent machines, create new cities, and profess a Christianity full
of energy and accomplishment, has not the majesty of a harmonious
structure. It is the violent work of a people of various origin,
which has not yet been ennobled by the _patina_ of tradition and
time. In the cities which restless workers hastily raise on barren
soil, one can as yet perceive no definitive unity. Race antagonism
disturbs North America; the negroes swarm in the South; Japanese and
Orientals aspire to the conquest of the West. Neo-Saxon civilisation
is still seeking its final form, and in the meantime it is piling up
wealth amid the prevailing indiscipline. "We find in the United
States," says M. André Chevrillon, "a political system, but not a
social organisation." The admirable traditions of Hamilton and
Jefferson have been subjected to the onslaught of new influences, the
progress of plutocracy, the corruption of the administrative
functions, the dissolution of parties, the abuse of the power of
monopolies. The axis of the great nation is becoming displaced
towards the West, and each step in advance marks the triumph of
vulgarity.
An octopus of a city, New York, might be taken as the symbol of this
extraordinary nation; it displays the vertigo, the audacity, and all
the lack of proportion that characterise American life. Near the
poverty of the Ghetto and the disturbing spectacle of Chinatown you
may admire the wealth of Fifth Avenue and the marble palaces which
plagiarise the architecture of the Tuscan cities. Opposite the
obscure crowds of emigrants herded in the docks you will see the
refined luxury of the plutocratic {309} hotels, and facing the
majestic buildings of Broadway, the houses of the parallel avenues,
which are like the temporary booths of a provincial fair. Confusion,
uproar, instability--these are the striking characteristics of the
North American democracy. Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism,
gifts of the old civilisations, can make way against the plebeian
brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the
people.
All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the
multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult
of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny
of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is
devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the
primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close
observers, is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive
tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the
perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial
struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a
hundred years men will seek in vain for the "American soul," the
"genius of America," elsewhere than in the indisciplined force or the
violence which ignores moral laws.
Among the Anglo-Saxon nations individualism finds its limits in the
existence of a stable home; it may also struggle against the State,
according to the formula consecrated by Spencer, "the man versus the
State." It defends its jealous autonomy from excessive legislation,
from the intervention of the Government in economic conflicts or the
life of the family. And it is precisely the family spirit which is
becoming enfeebled in North America, under the pressure of new social
conditions. The birth-rate is diminishing, and the homes of foreign
immigrants are contributing busily to the formation of the new
generations; the native stock inheriting good racial {310} traditions
would seem to be submerged more and more by the new human tide. A
North American official writes that "the decrease in the birth-rate
will lead to a complete change in the social system of the
Republic."[2] From this will result the abandonment of the
traditional austerity of the race, and the old notions of sacrifice
and duty. The descendants of alien races will constitute the nation
of the future. The national heritage is threatened by the invasion
of Slavs and Orientals, and the fecundity of the negroes; a painful
anxiety weighs upon the destinies of the race.
The family is unstable, and divorces are increasing at an
extraordinary rate. Between 1870 and 1905 the population doubled;
during the same period the divorces increased sixfold and the
marriages decreased. There is no fixity in the elements of variety,
and the causes of this state of transition will not disappear, as
they are intimately allied with the development of the industrial
civilisation which has brought with it a new ideal of happiness. By
emancipating men and women from the old moral principles it has
modified sexual morality; by accelerating social progress it has
brought an additional bitterness into the social mêlée, a greater
egoism into human conflict.
Excessive and heterogeneous immigration prevents any final
crystallisation; in the last ten years 8,515,000 strangers have
entered into the great hospitable Union. They came from Germany,
Ireland, Russia, or Southern Italy. It is calculated that the United
States are able to assimilate 150,000 to 200,000 immigrants each
year, but they certainly cannot welcome such an overwhelming host
without anxiety.
Criminality increases; the elaboration of a {311} common type among
these men of different origin is proceeding more slowly. Doubtless
beneath the shelter of the political federation of the various States
a confused agglomeration of races is forming itself, and this
justifies the query of Professor Ripley: "The Americans of the
North," he says, "have witnessed the disappearance of the Indians and
the buffalo, but can they be certain to-day that the Anglo-Saxons
will survive them?"
In seeking to imitate the United States we should not forget that the
civilisation of the peoples of the North presents these symptoms of
decadence.
Europe offers the Latin-American democracies what the latter demand
of Anglo-Saxon America, which was formed in the school of Europe. We
find the practical spirit, industrialism, and political liberty in
England; organisation and education in Germany; and in France
inventive genius, culture, wealth, great universities, and democracy.
From these ruling peoples the new Latin world must indirectly receive
the legacy of Western civilisation.
Essential points of difference separate the two Americas.
Differences of language and therefore of spirit; the difference
between Spanish Catholicism and the multiform Protestantism of the
Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of
the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as
in their race, we find fundamental antagonisms; the evolution of the
North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time, to the influences
of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of
revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection.
The people of the United States hate the half-breed, and the impure
marriages of whites and blacks which take place in Southern homes; no
manifestation of Pan-Americanism could suffice to destroy the racial
prejudice as it exists north of Mexico. The {312} half-breeds and
their descendants govern the Ibero-American democracies, and the
Republic of English and German origin entertains for the men of the
tropics the same contempt which they feel for the slaves of Virginia
whom Lincoln liberated.
In its friendship for them there will always be disdain; in their
progress, a conquest; in their policy, a desire of hegemony. It is
the fatality of blood, stronger than political affinities or
geographical alliances.
Instead of dreaming of an impossible fusion the Neo-Latin peoples
should conserve the traditions which are proper to them. The
development of the European influences which enrich and improve them,
the purging of the nation from the stain of miscegenation, and
immigration of a kind calculated to form centres of resistance
against any possibilities of conquest, are the various aspects of
this Latin Americanism.[3]
[1] The United States as World-Power.
[2] _Race Improvement in the United States_. Academy of Political
and Social Science, Philadelphia, 1909, pp. 70-1 _et seq_.
[3] The Mexican sociologist, F. Bulnes, writes in his book, _L'Avenir
des nations Hispano-Americaines_: "It is more than probable that by
1980 the United States will hold a population of 250,000,000
inhabitants. They will then scarcely be sufficient for the needs of
this population, and will no longer be able to supply the world with
the vast quantity of cereals which they supply to-day. They will
therefore have to choose between a recourse to the methods of
intensive culture and the conquest of the extra-tropical lands of
Latin America, which are fitted, by their conditions, to the easy and
inexpensive production of excellent cereals."
{313}
CHAPTER IV
A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT: CUBA
The work of Spain--The North American reforms--The future.
By turns Spanish and North American, and frequently disturbed by the
conflict of these two Americanisms, the history of the "pearl of the
Antilles" has been a long political experiment. Its result, the
success of one method or the other, will prove the aptitude or the
incapacity of the Latins of America in the art of organising a State
or instituting a Republic.
The last colony, the final vestige of the vast Spanish Empire
overseas, Cuba still betrayed, towards the end of the nineteenth
century, the political and moral influence of the mother country.
The exuberant and classic land of tobacco and sugar, its tropical
opulence attracted pioneers and colonists. Spain therefore fought to
retain this country, which she granted in recompense of the audacity
of her adventurers and the rapacity of her officials.
Its geographical situation, its wealth, its traditions, are all
exceptional. The race, imaginative and precocious, is fertile in
poets, heroes, and orators. We see generals of thirty, poetical
swordsmen, divided between their battles and their verses;
irreducible guerillas, orators full of tropical eloquence, passionate
pilgrims, who wander through America relating the miseries of the
Spanish tyranny: a gloomy tale which has made the liberated
democracies attentive {314} to the fate of their captive sister.
Thus Europe used to shudder at the fate of Poland or Ireland.
Astonishingly audacious were these soldiers--Garcia, Maceo,
Gomez--who defended the national liberty to the death; bitter were
the battles, the hand-to-hand conflicts, the wars of skirmishes and
outposts. Of the high lineage of Bolivar, San Martin, and Sucre, the
last of the Liberators, at once poet, statesman, and warrior, a
Gothic knight enamoured of an ideal Dulcinea--the autonomy of
Cuba--Marti was the representative leader of the nation.
As in the other colonies, freed a century earlier, the action of
Spain in Cuba was at once fertile and limited, useful and disastrous.
What effort could be more paradoxical than that of loading with
fetters, with prohibitions and monopolies, the very cities whose
birth and development was the work of Spain? Authoritatively she
sought to stamp out the longing for liberty, and in this island
consumed by racial hatred--the old hatred of the conquerors and the
Creoles--she responded to every revolutionary demand for independence
by a terrible policy of repression. One of her governors left the
bloody traces of an Alva, the pacificator of Flanders.
In Madrid a great minister, Canovas del Castillo, an uncompromising
traditionalist, believed that Spain should possess a colonial empire
"to preserve her position in the world." From that time only
energetic action in the revolted islands could save the metropolis.
Already, in 1865, at the beginning of his career, he wished to limit
the representation of Cuba and Porto Rico; and in 1868, when the long
war broke out, he supported the demands of the 9,000 Spaniards who
demanded the rejection of all reform.[1] Once in power, in 1876,
Canovas was still more emphatic; the Cuban problem was to be solved
only by violence. The generosity of Martinez {315} Campos was
followed by the inflexible severity of governors who turned the
island into a vast barracks. The timid liberties granted to Zanjon
were soon suppressed; neither popular elections nor commercial
liberties were allowed, but martial law, and a general to aid the
Spaniards of the island in their war against the Creoles and mulattos.
In 1878 the first civil war was over, but in 1895 the revolt was so
successful, so popular, so terrible, that Martinez Campos abandoned
the government of the island, feeling himself incapable of "wholesale
shootings and other feats of the same kind." Marti, tragic symbol of
revolt, was killed. General Weyler installed a Reign of Terror; the
island was exhausted. No one could dislodge the guerillas from the
plantations of sugar-cane which served them as refuge. Weyler
ordered a "concentration" of women, children, and the non-combatants
in the fortified cities. Offences of opinion were punished by death,
and absolute submission was demanded. The intervention of the United
States forced Spain to grant a brittle autonomy in 1896. The
assassination of Canovas by an anarchist permitted a reaction against
his uncompromising ideals, and an offer was made of a constitution,
and of elective chambers, without, however, authority over the
governor sent by the metropolis, and a Council of Administration, to
which the Cubans would have access; but economic interests were
ignored and sugar and tobacco were not set free.
Cuba was awaiting her crusader, her Lohengrin. The United States
filled the _rôle_. Attentive to the affairs of the island, they
negotiated, arranged for intervention with non-official agents, and
New York began to fit out filibustering expeditions. The incidents
of the Yankee campaign against Spain are well known, from the sinking
of the _Maine_ by an explosion in Havana roadstead to the Treaty of
{316} Paris. Once their rival was vanquished would the States give
Cuba her longed-for liberty? Porto Rico was conquered and Cuba
obtained only a mediocre autonomy.
Here is a difficult question: what was it that impelled the Americans
to undertake the adventure: imperialistic ambition or chivalrous
impulse, as many Cubans still believe? The opinion of their
politicians was always clear; annexation of the island or
preservation of the _status quo_. They feared that Spain might cede
the colony to a power better armed than herself, and Cuba, since the
time of Jefferson, had been reckoned among those countries which a
"law of political gravitation" should eventually give them. An
eminent Brazilian historian and diplomatist, Oliveira Lima, has even
demonstrated that when Bolivar, after convoking the Congress of
Panama in 1826, had thereupon proposed, as the last stage of his vast
epic, to give liberty to Cuba, it was the United States that
prevented him. For they knew that independence would also mean the
enfranchisement of subject races, and they needed slaves for the
proud and wealthy feudal State of Virginia. These tropical
countries, Cuba and Porto Rico, were the promised prey of a future
Federal imperialism, and Spain might remain their guardian until the
States could demand their cession or undertake their conquest.
Thus the very interest which in 1826 vetoed the independence of Cuba
was later to give the choice between autonomy or war; a dilemma from
which the haughty metropolis could not escape. Between the
commercial brutality of old and this recent Quixotism there is only
an apparent contrast: a hidden logic has guided American policy. If
we consider the end in view--to assure the incontestable control of
the Caribbean Sea, by purchase or annexation of its islands--the
former attitude of a {317} country which had not yet peopled its own
territory, and that provoked to-day by a plethora of wealth and men,
no longer appear irreconcilable.
As early as 1845 the purchase of Cuba was discussed in Washington.
The famous "Ostend manifesto" (1854) issued by the American
diplomatists, expounded their right to seize the island in case Spain
should refuse to sell it. This resolution to give independence to a
country they despaired of buying was therefore only the end of a long
campaign.
Certainly in 1898, once peace was signed and Porto Rico conquered,
they respected this independence. But their detachment was
incomplete; they occupied the island, sent governors thither, and
generously reformed the finances, education, and hygiene of the
country. A provisional tutelage, soon followed by the proclamation
of the Republic. Was this the independence of which Marti had
dreamed? The treaty which proclaimed it also limited it; the Platt
amendment found its way into the margin of a liberal text, reserving
to the United States the right of intervention to remedy any possible
anarchy. A strange severity, to demand of an untried tropical
republic, where the hostility of castes was extreme, a serene and
untroubled existence! Eventual military occupation for the purpose
of suppressing revolts would be a dangerous snare to independence.
Intervention in the public affairs of the old Spanish colony, twice
repeated, was both times followed by a campaign of annexation in the
Yellow Press. It is difficult to guess whether Yankee imperialism,
with its ever-increasing appetite, will respect the autonomy of the
island in the face of periodic occupations. It will probably prefer
a protectorate or a final conquest when wearied of the turbulence of
a democracy incapable of self-government.
Will this beautiful island one day become a State {318} of the
Anglo-Saxon or Federal Union? The accession of the Cubans to this
democracy would cause a disturbance in the political and social world
as profound as that created by Japanese immigration in the Far West.
The plutocrats of the States have too much contempt for half-breeds
and negroes willingly to accept deputies from a country where the
profound admixture of races contains an important African element; a
society which despises the negro cannot wholly agree with one ruled
largely by Spanish half-castes of Indian and African ancestry. The
protectorate would be a step toward the control of the Tropics which
Mr. Benjamin Kidd and other English sociologists imagine to be the
appanage of their race.
The civilising work of the United States has been admirable. Once
Spain was defeated and her colony conquered, they transformed the
education, finance, and hygiene of the island to prepare the people
for the liberty they ignored. It was four years before they gave it;
four years of pedagogy, of which Brigadier-General Wood, military and
civil chief, was in charge, until on the 20th of May, 1902, "thanks
to the goodwill of President Roosevelt, we were recognised as having
attained our majority."[2]
Four years of extraordinary activity transformed the exhausted island
into a prosperous country, a reform which we may follow in the
memoirs of General Wood. Two years of endeavour extirpated the
yellow fever, which had prevailed in Havana since 1762. The Yankees
fought the mosquitos, the vehicles of the disease, and their sanitary
works and measures decreased the death-rate from 91.3 per 1,000 in
1898 to 20.63 in 1902. In the same period the deaths among the
American troops fell from 91.03 to 20.68. They also attacked malaria
{319} and tuberculosis, until Havana, as one of them proudly writes,
became one of the healthiest cities of America.
Pavements, gutters, sewers, the demolition of old buildings and the
construction of new; asylums, hospitals, and prisons, gave the island
an aspect at once modern and sanitary. The fiscal revenues, formerly
badly employed by an unskilful bureaucracy, found useful employment;
dilapidations were noted and a railway statute was passed. The
Yankees opened up new roads, knowing how far the prosperity of the
island depended on them; in 1906, the second year of the occupation,
there were only 610 kilometres of carriage-roads in Cuba, while
Jamaica, with one-fifth the area, had 10,113.[3]
Communications being thus improved, the sugar industry, on which the
prosperity of the island depends, developed rapidly. The visitors
did not forget to attract immigrants and to reconstruct the ports.
The government of General Wood installed modern schools in the old
Spanish school-houses, while it built special schools, kindergartens,
and technical colleges in the large towns.
Under the Spaniards education was obligatory, no doubt, but it was
the Americans who brought a lapsed law into force. Fines punished
parental neglect. A thousand teachers went to Harvard, in the year
1900 alone, sent thither by General Wood to improve their methods of
teaching; new pedagogic methods and a wider culture strongly modified
social and political life. The Americans left ten times as many
schools as they found, and an education adequate to the race and the
Cuban child, who is "impressionable, nervous, and furiously
imaginative."
Governor Wood requested his country to reduce by one-half the customs
rates upon the coffee, fruits, and {320} sugar which the island
produced, as the basis of a _Zollverein_ profitable to both
countries. He complained, in his memoir, of the indifference of the
wealthy towards the communal and political life, which he wished to
render more active. A law passed by him regulated the elections in
the new Republic.
The Cubans willingly recognise that the Americans have performed an
excellent work in education and finance, but accuse them of having
provoked in political life a corruption analogous to that of the
leaders or bosses of Tammany Hall, which replaces violence by fraud.
It is difficult to speak of such a matter, but perhaps the reaction
against these dangerous methods was insufficient. In 1906, after
four years of independent life, President Estrada Palma demanded
intervention. It must be recognised that the Americans did not
respond without some uneasiness. Mr. Roosevelt, in a letter to the
Cuban diplomatist Gonzalo de Quesada, gave some admirable advice: "I
solemnly exhort the Cuban patriots," he said, "to form a close union,
to forget their personal differences and ambitions, and to remember
that they have one means of safeguarding the independence of the
Republic: to evade, at all costs, the necessity of foreign
intervention, intended to deliver them from civil war and anarchy."
Heedless of the voice of the shepherd of the American people, they
asked him to put an end to the long quarrel between the liberals and
the moderates. The Americans occupied the island for a year; Mr.
Taft, the new President, was one of the pacificators. It is
difficult to judge whether the anarchical inhabitants of the island
have gained ground since the departure of the Americans. One of
their most remarkable politicians, Señor Mendez Capote, believes that
in Cuba--and more generally {321} in any very young country where the
government has need of an unfailing authority in order to check
discord--representatives of one or both parties ought to belong to
the Cabinet in order to render political life less changeable and to
decrease its contrasts.[4] This organisation is impossible in a
democracy which passes alternately from revolt to dictatorship.
Some Cubans, satisfied with the material progress effected, would
prefer annexation. Others, and among them one of the most remarkable
writers of the country, Señor Jesus Castellanos, are never tired,
remembering their happy intervention, of calling the United States,
"the great sister Republic." Certainly the States have given Cuba
autonomy, but was it not a treacherous gift? _Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes_. The historic interest of Cuba for the Americans is to-day
increased by imperialistic ambitions. A Harvard professor, Mr.
Coolidge, writes in a book already cited: "A glance at the map is
enough to show us how important the island is to the United States.
Of great value by virtue of its natural resources and its temperate
climate, it is strategically the key to the Gulf of Mexico, where the
Mississippi Valley terminates facing the Caribbean Sea and the future
Panama Canal. Its situation is comparable to that of Crete in the
Eastern Mediterranean."
The danger is therefore serious; the island is already in the lion's
mouth. Only a skilful policy can keep the hope of deliverance alive.
The servitude offered by the modern Cyclops is only a gilded pill;
and to swallow it the merchants of the island would willingly forget
their national pride. Analysing Rodo's book, Señor Castellanos has
denounced the excessive utilitarianism of these men, without
idealism, and full of a cupidity and gross materialism, which makes
any collective effort towards national unity {322} impossible. Poets
and dreamers, the Cubans would need to undergo some prodigious change
before one could interest them in action, before they could
understand in the medley of political conflict what is really in the
interests of the country; before they could establish political
solidarity in the place of anarchy, and temper their easy confidence
in the Yankee by a necessary and self-preserving scepticism. Could
they ever transform their intellectual gifts into a less showy but
more efficacious capacity for conflict and discipline? Will they
acquire a sense of reality? Cuba should serve the rest of Latin
America as a kind of experimental object-lesson. She suffers from
the characteristic malady of the race, the divorce between
intelligence and will.
She opposes the Anglo-Saxon invasion, being still thoroughly Spanish,
her deliverance being a matter of yesterday, but American also by the
mixture of the two races, the conquerors and the vanquished, by the
usual Latin virtues and defects. The loss of her independence would
be a painful lesson to the republics of Central America, and to
Mexico even, where anarchy is paving the way for servitude. The
United States offer peace at the cost of liberty. The alternatives
are independence or wealth, material progress or tradition. The
choice between dignity and a future is a painful one. Only an
abundant immigration under benevolent tyrants strong enough to
enforce a lasting peace, only a new orientation of the national life,
setting business and industry and rural life before politics, could
save the country from the painful fate which seems to be hers.
A fresh intervention, followed doubtless by annexation, would
demonstrate the racial incapacity for self-government--a mournful
experience. The successive rule of Anglo-Saxons and Creoles would
render obvious the superiority of the former in the matter of
administration, economics, and politics.
[1] See _Como acabó la dominación, de España en America_, E. Piñeyro,
Paris.
[2] Enrique Collazo, _Cuba intervenida_, Havana, 1910, p. 93.
[3] _Informe del Gobernador Charles E. Magoon_, Havana, 1909, pp. 26,
39.
[4] Cited in _Cuban Pacification_, Washington, 1907, p. 506.
{323}
CHAPTER V
THE JAPANESE PERIL
The ambitions of the Mikado--The _Shin Nippon_ in Western
America--Pacific invasion--Japanese and Americans.
Facing the United States in the mysterious Orient is an extensive
empire which is sending its legions of pacific invaders into the New
World. Anticipating the Japanese victories, the German Emperor
warned a somnolent Europe of the terrible Yellow Peril; the peril of
hordes like those of Genghis Khan, which would destroy the treasures
of Western civilisation. This danger, after the defeat of Russia and
the formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, has been felt in
America from Vancouver and California down to Chili.
To dominate the Pacific is the ambition both of the North American
Republic and the Asiatic Monarchy.
Before ruling America the Japanese, exposed to the hostility of the
Californians, will fight in the North the great battle which will
decide their fate. The Monroe doctrine, which liberated Latin
America from the tutelage of the Holy Alliance, is perhaps destined
to protect it also against the menace of the East. The Anglo-Saxons
will not tolerate the foundation of Japanese colonies on the southern
coasts of America, and to prevent them they are overcoming the
obstacle of the Isthmus: are digging a canal, {324} fortifying it,
and increasing their navy. The United States understand that their
future will baffle Japan, and by the acquisition of the Philippines
they have become an Asiatic power. They defend the integrity of
China, negotiate peace between Russia and Japan, demand the
neutrality of the Manchurian railway, and claim a financial share in
the Chinese loans and undertakings of material civilisation. The
policy of Mr. Taft tends to ensure the American control of the
Chinese finances.
The industry of North America needs outlets in Asia, because South
America is still a commercial fief of Europe. On the other hand, the
Japanese population is increasing at such an excessive rate that
emigration is a necessary phenomenon for that country; a people of
mariners hemmed in by the ocean naturally looks for fruitful
adventures by sea. Moreover, the State stimulates emigration;
socialism is causing it anxiety, and the dense population of
proletariats is producing implacable caste antagonisms. Anarchists,
brilliant propagandists of European doctrines, are spreading their
convictions among the multitude which vegetates upon a
poverty-stricken soil. Industrialism, and the general transformation
of the nation, renders the protest of the disinherited still more
bitter.
This current of emigration is neither chaotic nor fruitless. Even
more than the German the Japanese is an emissary of imperialistic
design. He does not become absorbed into the nation in which he
lives; he does not become naturalised under the protection of
hospitable laws; he preserves his worship of the Mikado, his national
traditions, and his noble devotion to the dead.
Japan aspires to political domination and economic hegemony in Korea
and Northern China. The Japanese have annexed Korea, and flying the
Imperial standard upon this peninsula they have become a {325}
continental power. They have received from ancient China lessons in
wisdom, artists and philosophers, and to-day the initiate seeks to
rule the initiator. Japan is transforming China and teaching her the
methods of the West; the philosophy of Heidelberg, the arts of Paris.
In Manchuria, despite the ambitions of the United States, she
pretends to supremacy for her industries and her banks.
"Asia for the Asiatics" is the Japanese cry, as "America for the
Americans" is that of the people of the States.
Neither of these peoples respects the autonomy of foreign nations.
The United States are conquering Asia economically, and the Japanese,
the defenders of Oriental integrity, are slowly invading the Far West
of America. The Philippines for the United States and Hawaii for
Japan are the advance posts of commercial expansion on the one hand
and imperialism on the other.
We are then face to face with a struggle of races, a clash of
irreconcilable interests. In the proud northern democracy we note an
uneasiness which reveals itself by the jealous exclusion of the
Japanese from the life of the West, and by immovable racial
prejudices. The American General Homer Lee, in a pessimistic book,
_The Valor of Ignorance_, states that a heterogeneous nation in which
foreigners constitute half the population can never conquer Japan.
He foresees that the island empire, having eliminated its two rivals,
Russia and China, by successive wars, will vanquish the United States
and occupy vast territories in the American North-West. Only
alliance with England, "to-day allied with the destinies of Japan,"
could save the Republic from subjection to her Oriental rivals.
Such prophecies, however, do not assume a general character. While
waiting for the future war the struggle for the Pacific between the
two powers {326} concerned remains acute. The Japanese emigrants
halt at Hawaii, assimilate American methods, and resume their exodus
toward the Californian Eldorado. In the islands they are electors;
they prevail by force of numbers; they change their professions or
industries with remarkable adaptability, and then return to Japan, or
remain, and retain their national feeling inviolate. In California
they follow humble callings; they are secretly preparing themselves
for conquest. Numberless legions thus arrive from the Orient; they
are proud, adventurous, speculative; they aspire to economic
supremacy.
In California, that country of gold and adventure, the problem of
Japanese immigration is becoming more complex. M. Louis Aubert
explains that in this State the Japanese constitute a necessary
defence against the tyranny of the trades unions.[1] They accept an
absurd wage and furnish the financial oligarchy with useful arms and
sober stomachs. When the associations of working men demand
increased salaries and threaten the greedy plutocrats with strikes or
socialistic demands, the Japanese passively submit to the iron law of
capitalism. If the interests of the race demand their expulsion from
California, the interests of the capitalist class demand their
retention. The instinct of the democracy which supports the
civilising mission of the white man, "the white man's burden," is
stronger than its utilitarian egoism. The immigrant is accused of
immodesty or servility. The energy, frugality, self-respect,
triumphant patience, and hostile isolation of the Japanese in Hawaii
and California cause the Americans much uneasiness.
Repulsed in the north, the conquering Japanese take refuge on the
long coast-line of South America. They do not renounce California
and its admirable soil, but they prefer to forget the disdain of the
{327} North, to compromise with that haughty democracy, and prepare
in silence for the future conflict.
They are, as a race, transformed; they have forsaken their own
history in the midst of the millennial and ecstatic Orient, and this
renovation has resulted in an intense ambition of expansion. The
Japan which apes Europe does not overlook the teachings of
Anglo-Saxon imperialism. Its statesmen, disciples of Disraeli and
Chamberlain, wish to found an immense empire under the tutelage of
the Asiatic England, insular and proud as the United Kingdom itself.
Count Okuma stated that South America was comprised in the sphere of
influence to which the Japanese Empire may legitimately pretend. Is
not this the very language of the conquerors of Europe, for whom such
"spheres of influence" pave the way for protectorates, tutelage, or
annexation? "Western America," write the Japanese journals, "is a
favourable ground for Japanese emigration. Persevering emigrants
might there build up a new Japan, _Shin Nippon_." It is the
identical object of the Germans in Southern Brazil; the creation of a
Transatlantic _Deutschtum_.
The Japanese emigrate to Canada, there to establish a base for the
invasion of the United States; they do the same in Mexico, and settle
even in Chili; but Peru is the favourite soil of these imperialistic
adventurers. To a statesman here is a _Shin Nippon_ whose future is
assured, a new Hawaii. Its climate resembles that of Japan. "In
Peru, as in the greater part of South America, the government is
weak, and if energy be displayed it cannot refuse to accept Japanese
immigrants," writes a journal of Tokio. "In this hospitable country
the Japanese could receive education in the public schools, acquire
lands, and exploit mines." It is necessary, says an Osaka
news-sheet, that these immigrants should not return to Japan after
amassing a fortune; {328} they must remain in Peru and there create a
_Shin Nippon_.[2] The Japanese immigrants are reminded that already
there are 60,000 Chinese in the sugar plantations of Peru, and that
this republic is one of the richest on the Pacific coast. A minute
explanation is given of the agricultural products which can be raised
in Mexico, Chili, and Peru, and what are the privileges granted to
immigrants in these countries; but these comprehensive statements do
not trouble American statesmen. The very date of the first Japanese
exodus toward the Eldorado of the _conquistadors_ has become the
classic anniversary of the commencement of a new era; "the
thirty-second of the Meijie," of the regeneration of the Empire.
According to recent statistics 6,000 Japanese are at work in Peru, in
the plantations of sugar-cane, the rubber-forests, or the
cotton-fields; following the tracks of the Chinese, they fill the
lesser callings and defeat the mulattos and half-breeds in the
economic struggle. New fleets of steamers carry these persistent
legions under the Imperial flag. The State protects the navigation
companies which run between Japan and South America, and although the
commerce thus favoured is more profitable to Peru and Chili than to
Japan, the far-sighted Mikado encourages relations which are not
particularly favourable to-day, but which permit of the development
of Japanese influence all along the Pacific coast, and the creation
of centres of Japanese population and influence in Mexico, Peru, and
Chili.[3] The Japanese vessels discharge their human freight at
Callao and Valparaiso. The soil, which lacks Chinese serfs, is thus
fertilised by Japanese immigrants, and the agricultural oligarchy
{329} of Chili and Peru is satisfied. Brazil itself attracts these
emigrants, replacing the fertile Italian invasion by these sober
workers of a hostile race, and is preparing the way for the
establishment on Brazilian soil of two groups of identical
tendencies, but inimical: one Japanese, the other German.
Japanese spies have been captured in Ecuador and Mexico. At the
centennial fêtes of Mexico and the Argentine in 1910 a Japanese
cruiser and an ambassador of the Mikado brought fraternal messages
from the Orient. Uneasy on account of the North American peril,
certain writers of the Latin American democracies entertain a certain
amount of confidence in the sympathies of Japan; perhaps they even
count upon an alliance with the Empire of the Rising Sun. But we
cannot see, with the brilliant Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte, that
Latin diplomacy must henceforth count upon Japan, because the
hostility between that nation and the United States might be
successfully exploited at the proper moment. In the commercial
battles for the domination of the Pacific Japan does not support the
autonomy of Latin America; her statesmen and publicists consider that
Peru, Chili, and Mexico are spheres of Japanese expansion. We have
cited conclusive opinions on this subject, and they contradict the
optimism of the Argentine sociologist. Apart from the emigrants and
the companies which encourage them the projects and designs of Count
Okuma, leader of the Japanese imperialists, are manifested in the
nationalist Press, which sometimes betrays more than it intends.
To-day, in the face of the unanimous opinion of these journals, we
cannot deny that Japan has ambitious designs upon America. The
future war will be born of the clash of two doctrines, of two
imperialisms, of the ideal of Okuma and the Monroe doctrine.
Victorious, the Japanese would invade Western America and convert the
Pacific into a vast closed {330} sea, closed to foreign ambitions,
_mare nostrum_, peopled by Japanese colonies.[4]
The Japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of tutelage for the
nations of America. In spite of essential differences the Latins
oversea have certain common ties with the people of the States: a
long-established religion, Christianity, and a coherent, European,
occidental civilisation. Perhaps there is some obscure fraternity
between the Japanese and the American Indians, between the yellow men
of Nippon and the copper-coloured Quechuas, a disciplined and sober
people. But the ruling race, the dominant type of Spanish origin,
which imposes the civilisation of the white man upon America, is
hostile to the entire invading East.
The geography of the Oriental Empire in no sense recalls that of
America; there are neither wide plains, nor mighty rivers, nor
fertile and luxurious forests. Narrow horizons, gentle hills, minute
islands, closed seas, and the strange flora of the harmonious insular
landscape: lotuses, cryptomera, bamboos, chrysanthemums, dwarf trees.
Beliefs, manners, and customs all differ radically from the American.
"The Europeans," writes Lafcadio Hearn, "build with a view to
duration, the Japanese with a view to instability." A keen sentiment
of all that is fugitive in life, of the anguish caused by the
incessant flux and mobility of things, causes men to love ephemeral
apparitions. Buddhism speaks of the fluidity of life. Japanese art
strives to fix passing impressions; the dew, the pale light of the
moon, the fleeting tints of twilight, the provisional {331} temples,
the small houses of wood, the rice-paper _shoji_, on which the very
shadows of those within are vague and momentary. There is nothing
persevering in Japanese life; the inhabitant is a nomad and nature is
variable. Impassive Buddhas, seated on their blue lotus flowers,
contemplate the irresistible current of appearances. Mobility, and a
religious sense of becoming: these would be elements of dissolution
in a divided America.
Powerful and traditional, the Japanese civilisation would weigh too
heavily upon the Latin democracies, mixed as they are. Bushido, the
cult of honour and fidelity to one's ancestors, is the basis of an
intense nationalism; the contempt for death, the pride of an insular
people, the subjection of the individual to the family and the native
land, and the asceticism of the _samurai_, constitute so formidable a
superiority that in the conflict between half-breed America and stoic
Japan the former would lose both its autonomy and its traditions.
[1] Louis Aubert, _Americains et Japonais_, Paris, 1908, pp. 151 _et
seq_.
[2] M. Aubert cites these and other extracts.
[3] The Peruvian imports into Japan were £101,000 in 1909; the
Japanese imports into Peru only £4,400. There is a commercial treaty
between Chili and Japan.
[4] Perhaps the emigration of Orientals towards the two Americas will
be arrested, for there is a Chinese Far West which is slowly becoming
peopled. Japan aspires to assure herself of the domination of
Manchuria, and is sending colonists to Korea, the annexed peninsula.
The excess of the population of China and Japan tends naturally to
occupy territories in which everything is favourable--climate,
religion, and race.
{333}
BOOK VII
_PROBLEMS_
Serious problems arise from a consideration of the Latin democracies,
which are in the full tide of development. They are divided, in
spite of common traditions, and they comprise races whose marriage
has not been precisely happy. In spite of the resources of the soil,
and its fabulous wealth, these States live by loans. Their political
life is not organised; the parties obey leaders who bring to the
struggle for power neither an ideal nor a programme of concrete
reforms. The population of these States is so small that America may
be called a desert.
We will consider all these problems minutely: problems of unity, of
race, of population, of financial conditions, and of politics.
{335}
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF UNITY
The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of
development--Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral
unity in the same degree as Latin America--The future groupings of
the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles,
Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the
Confederation of La Plata--Political and economical aspects of these
unions--The last attempts at federation in Central America--The
Bolivian Congress--The A.B.C.--the union of the Argentine, Brazil,
and Chili.
A professor of the American university of Harvard, Mr. Coolidge,
writes that if there is one thing that proves the backwardness of the
political spirit of the Latin Americans, it is precisely the
existence of so many hostile democracies on a continent which is in
so many respects uniform. With so many points in common, with the
same language, the same civilisation, the same essential interests,
they persist in maintaining the political subdivisions due to the
mere accidents of their history.[1] And he advises in all sincerity
that these inimical nations should associate themselves in powerful
groups, a means of defence which no nation could oppose, neither the
United States nor Europe. If, for example, Bolivia, Uruguay, and
Paraguay were to unite with the Argentine Republic; if the old United
States of Colombia were re-established, and if, as formerly,
Venezuela and Ecuador, with perhaps Peru, were to form a
confederation; if the republics of Central America were {336} at last
to succeed in forming a durable confederation, and were perhaps to
join Mexico--then Latin America would consist only of a few great
States, each of which would be sufficiently important to assume by
right an enviable position in the modern world, and to fear no
aggression on the part of any foreign power.
The Latin Republics pay no attention to this wise counsel; we observe
among them a tendency toward further disagreement, toward an atomic
disintegration. Originally a different and a wider movement, in the
sense of the close union of similar nationalities, did manifest
itself. The contrary principle prevails to-day, and it results in
the separation of complementary provinces and the conflict of sister
nations.
During a century of isolated political development, and under the
influence of territory and climate, divergent characteristics have
manifested themselves in the nations of America. Mexico is without
the tropical eloquence we find in Colombia; the Chilian inflexibility
contrasts with the rich imagination of the Brazilians; the Argentines
have become a commercial people; Chili is a bellicose republic;
Bolivia has an astute policy, the work of a slow and practical
people, which has given it a new strength; Peru persists in its
dreams of generous idealism; Central America remains rent by an
anarchy which seems incurable; Venezuela is still inspired by an
empty "lyricism." Some of these republics are practical peoples
governed by active plutocracies; others are given to dreaming and are
led by presidents suffering from neurosis. In the Tropics we find
civil war and idleness; on the cold table-lands, in the temperate
plains, and in the maritime cities, wealth and peace.
But such divergences do not form an essential separation; they cannot
destroy the age-long work of laws, religion, institutions, tradition,
and language. {337} Unity possesses indestructible foundations, as
old and as deep-rooted as the race itself.
From Mexico to Chili the religion is the same; the intolerance of
alien cults is the same; so are the clericalism, the
anti-clericalism, the fanaticism, and the superficial free thought;
the influence of the clergy in the State, upon women, and the
schools; the lack of true religious feeling under the appearance of
general belief.
To this first very important factor of unity we must add the powerful
and permanent influence of the Spanish language, whose future is
bound up with the future of the Latin Transatlantic peoples.
Sonorous and arrogant, this language expresses, better than any
other, the vices and the grandeur of the American mind; its rhetoric
and its heroism, its continuity of spirit from the feats of the Cid
to the Republican revolutions. The Spanish tongue is an intimate
bond of union between the destinies of the metropolis and those of
its ancient colonies, and it separates the two Americas, one being
the expression of the Latin and the other of the Anglo-Saxon genius.
The language is always to a certain extent transformed in these
democracies; provincialisms and Americanisms abound; the popular
tongue differs from the autocratic Castilian. Don Rufino Cuervo
predicts that Spanish will undergo essential alterations in America,
as was the case with Latin at the time of the Roman decadence. An
Argentine writer, Señor Ernesto Quesada, believes that a national
language is in process of formation on the banks of the Plata, and
that the barbarisms of the popular speech are forecasts of a new
tongue. In Chili an exalted patriot has upheld the originality of
the Chilian race and language in an anonymous book, claiming that
they derive from the Gothic. Thus is the effect of the national
spirit exaggerated. Among the Ibero-American republics there is a
profound and general {338} resemblance in the pronunciation and the
syntax of the language; the same linguistic defects even are to be
found in all. The Spanish of the Peninsula loses its majesty
overseas; it is no longer the language, lordly in its beauty, solemn
in its ornaments, of Granada, of Mariana, of Perez de Guzman.
Familiar, declamatory, pronounced with a caressing accent, the
Castilian of America is uniform from North to South.
More effectual than religion and language the identity of race
explains the similarity of the American peoples, and constitutes a
promise of lasting unity. The native race, the Spanish race, and the
negro race are everywhere mingled, in similar proportions, from the
frontier of the United States to the southern limits of the
continent. On the Atlantic seaboard European immigration, an influx
of Russians, Italians, and Germans, has given the supremacy to the
white race, but this influence is limited to small belts of land,
when we consider the vast area of the continent.
A single half-caste race, with here the negro and there the Indian
predominant over the conquering Spaniard, obtains from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. There is a greater resemblance between Peruvians and
Argentines, Colombians and Chilians, than between the inhabitants of
two distant provinces of France, such as Provence and Flanders,
Brittany and Burgundy, or between the Italian of the north, positive
and virile, and the lazy and sensual Neapolitan, or between the North
American of the Far West and the native of New England. The slight
provincial differences enable us the better to understand the unity
of the continent.
This identity explains the monotonous history of America. A
succession of military periods and industrial periods, of revolts and
dictatorships; perpetual promises of political restoration; the
tyranny of {339} ignorant adventurers, and complicated and delusive
legislation.
It is in the great crises of its history that the essential unity of
the race is revealed. The Wars of Independence were a unanimous
movement, an expression of profound solidarity. In 1865, after half
a century of isolation, the democracies of the Pacific once more
united to oppose Spain's attempt at reconquest. Soldiers of
different nations, who had already fought in bygone battles, but
against each other, now fought side by side for the common liberty.
The same unity of inspiration has brought the nations together in
opposition to many projects of conquest: the expedition of Flores
against Ecuador, of France against Mexico, and the Anglo-French
alliance against Rosas. At the second Hague Congress in 1907 Latin
America revealed to the Western world the importance of her wealth
and the valour of her men, and supported her ideal of arbitration; to
the Monroe doctrine she opposed the doctrine of Drago, and, without
preliminary understanding, asserted her unity.
No other continent offers so many reasons for union, and herein lies
the chief originality of Latin America.
In Europe states and races are in conflict, and the unstable
equilibrium is maintained only by means of alliances. Religions,
political systems, traditions, and languages differ. History is
merely a succession of turbulent hegemonies: of Spain, England,
France, and Germany. We find artificial nations, like Austria;
unions of democratic and theocratic peoples, like the Franco-Russian
Alliance; rival empires of the same race, like England and Germany;
political alliances of alien races, like Germany and Italy; and the
dispersion of peoples painfully seeking to recover their lost unity,
like the Poles, the Irish, and the Slavs. The federation of Europe
is a Utopian dream.
{340}
Africa is not yet autonomous; it is a vast group of enslaved peoples
of primitive races, colonised by the great European powers. There
the Anglo-Saxon genius is seeking to establish a political union
between English and Dutch, and one day, perhaps, the empire dreamed
of by Cecil Rhodes will stretch from Cairo to the Cape. But the
unity of Africa is impossible; for the colonists come to the Dark
Continent as conquerors, as the representatives of hostile interests;
they can but quarrel over Morocco, Tripoli, and the Congo. Oceania
possesses only a partial unity in the Australian commonwealth, the
work of England. In Asia it is still more impossible to guess whence
a future unity might arise. Mussulmans and Buddhists share India;
Japan has won only an ephemeral superiority; China retains all her
irreducible independence; in Manchuria and Korea Russian and Asiatic
interests are opposed; in Turkestan, Persia, and Tibet the conflicts
of race and religion are enough to destroy any hope of union.
In America and in America only the political problem is relatively
simple. Unity is there at once a tradition and a present necessity,
yet in spite of this fact the disunion of the Latin democracies
persists.
Forty years ago Alberdi thought it necessary, and believed it
possible, to redraw the map of America.
To-day the Latin nations overseas are less plastic; the frontiers
seem too definitely established, and prejudices too deeply rooted to
allow of such a recombination; but the formation of groups of nations
is no less urgent. If the unity of the continent by means of a vast
federation in the Anglo-Saxon manner seems impossible, it is none the
less necessary to group the Latin-American nations in a durable
fashion, according to their affinities. While respecting the
inevitable geographical inequalities which give certain peoples an
evident superiority over others, and the no less inevitable economic
inequalities which {341} create natural unions, it would still be
possible to found a stable assemblage of nations, a Continent.
There is a spontaneous hierarchy in the Latin New World; there are
superior and inferior democracies, maritime nations and inland
states. Paraguay will always be inferior to the Argentine Republic;
Uruguay to Brazil; Bolivia to Chili; Ecuador to Peru; Guatemala to
Mexico; as much from the point of wealth as in population and
influence. The preservation of the autonomy of republics which
differ so greatly in the extent and situation of their territories
can only be removed by federative grouping. To oppress and colonise
these countries is the desire of all imperialists, no matter whence
they come; but the peace of America demands another solution; which
is, not the synthesis which some one powerful State might enforce,
but the co-operation of free organisms. By grouping themselves about
more advanced peoples the secondary nations might succeed in
preserving their threatened autonomy.
Central America, exhausted by anarchy, may aspire to unity; these
five small nations maintain a precarious independence in the face of
the United States. Until 1842 Central America was only one State,
and subsequent attempts at unification proved that this was not
merely the artificial creation of its politicians. When the Panama
Canal has divided the two Americas, and increased the power of the
United States, these nations, together with Mexico, might form a true
Spanish advance-guard in the North.
Moreover, the free islands of the Caribbean Sea might be united in a
Confederation of the Antilles, according to the noble dream of
Hostos. Greater Colombia might be reconstituted, with Ecuador, New
Granada, and Venezuela. Their greatest leaders have desired their
union, as a preventive of indefinite and fractional division and
internal discord. On the basis {342} of common traditions, and for
important geographical reasons, these three nations might form an
imposing Confederacy. Once the Canal is open, this group of peoples,
stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on the northern
extremity of the continent, would form a massive Latin rampart, a
country capable of absorbing European emigration and of opposing to
Anglo-Saxon invasion the resistance of a vast populated and united
territory.
Bolivia, the inland republic, deprived of her coast-line by Chili,
has already been twice united to Peru; in 1837, under the authority
of Santa-Cruz, and in 1879, to oppose the supremacy of Chili on the
Pacific. What should henceforth separate it from a people to which
it is united by so many historical and economic ties, and a
similitude of territory and race from Cuzco to Oruro? Chili and Peru
will be either two perpetual enemies, or two peoples drawn together
by a useful understanding. Their geographical proximity, their
mutually complementary products--the tropical fruits of Peru and the
products of the temperate zones of Chili--might contribute to bring
them together. Have we not here an actual economic harmony? In the
moral domain the very causes which have engendered hatred between
Chili and Peru, from the time of Portales to that of Pinto, might
equally prove to be the elements of future friendship. Peru,
impoverished by the Chilian conquest, and deprived of her deposits of
nitre, would no longer be the victim of the Chilian greed of gold,
nor the hatred of a poor colony for the elegant vice-kingdom. Chili
is wealthier than Peru, and her people have more energy and more
will-power, although they may have less imagination, less nobility of
character, and less eloquence. The Peruvian vivacity and grace may
be contrasted with the prosaic deliberation of Chili; the anarchy of
the one country with the political stability of the other; the
idealism {343} of Peru with the common-sense of Chili. Physically
and morally these two countries complete one another. The economic
necessities of each might form the permanent basis of a possible
alliance. The Confederation of the Pacific, formed by Peru, Bolivia,
and Chili, would be a safeguard against future wars in America.
Unhappily Chili professes and seeks to enforce a superiority founded
upon victory, just as, when the German Empire was confederated,
victorious and warlike Prussia enforced her superiority over artistic
Bavaria.
The Confederation of La Plata, the heir to the traditions of the
colonial era, might be formed of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
Rosas did seek to create this great federal organisation. During the
course of the century Uruguay has extended her sympathies alternately
to the Argentine and to Brazil, and Paraguay, during a period of epic
grandeur, defended her isolation. The union of these republics was
prevented by national rivalities and the ambitions of their
_caudillos_, but it will surely be effected in the future under the
pressure of the power of Argentina. It is true that Uruguay has only
too definite an originality in the matter of intellect, from the
point of view of liberalism and education, but the federation of the
future would not be the imposition of a harsh hegemony of one nation
over others, but rather the co-operation of republics with equal
rights which had at last understood the poverty of their isolated
condition. Paraguay, remote and concealed, ruled sometimes by a
Jesuitical and now by a civil dictatorship, has need of a place in
such a vast confederation of cultivated peoples.
These groups of nations will thus form a new America, organic and
powerful. Brazil, with her immense territory and dense population;
the Confederation of La Plata; the Confederation of the Pacific;
Greater Colombia: these will finally {344} establish the continental
equilibrium so anxiously desired. In the North, Mexico and Central
America and the Confederation of the Antilles would form three Latin
States to balance the enveloping movement of the Anglo-Saxons.
Instead of twenty divided republics we should thus have seven
powerful nations. We should have not the vague Union of which all
the Utopian professors since Bolivar have spoken, but a definite
grouping and confederation of peoples united by real economic,
geographical, and political ties.
To realise these fusions there are both economic and political
methods. Hasty conventions would be powerless to uproot the hatreds
and the narrow conceptions of patriotism peculiar to the American
peoples. The organisation of the continent should be the work of
thinkers, statesmen, and captains of industry, a work fortified by
time and history. To the tradition of discord we must oppose
another, the tradition of union.
A series of partial commercial treaties, navigation treaties, railway
systems, customs unions, and international congresses (like those
recently held at Montevideo and Santiago) may all be indicated as
means of realising unity. The railways above all will create a new
continent; for isolation and lack of population are the enemies of
American federation.
To-day these peoples do not know one another. Paris is their
intellectual capital, where their poets, thinkers, and statesmen
meet. In America everything makes for separation: forests, plains,
and mountains. What does Venezuela know of Chili, Peru of Mexico,
Colombia of the Argentine? Even in the case of neighbouring nations
the political leaders do not know one another. The psychology of
neighbouring peoples is a mystery; whence traditional errors and
disastrous wars. American journalism is ignorant of nothing in
European life--the sessions of the Duma, the ministerial crises of
{345} Roumania, the nobility of the Gotha Almanac, the scandals of
Berlin; but of the public life of the American nations it publishes
only the vaguest and most erroneous news. By stimulating the love of
travel and building railroads these peoples would escape from an
isolation so perilous. "Every line of railroad which crosses a
frontier," said Gladstone, "prepares the way for universal
confederation." The Yankees have understood this, which is why they
are preparing to build a great Pan-American railway to unite the two
Americas under their financial sceptre.
The line which has recently united the two capitals of the
South--Santiago and Buenos-Ayres--has contributed to the formation of
a solid understanding between Chili and the Argentine. That which
will unite Lima and Buenos-Ayres in the near future will bring the
culture of the Argentine to the Bolivian table-lands, as far as
Cuzco, the centre of Inca tradition; it will draw together the
seaboard populations of the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific,
and will prove a powerful agent of civilisation and unity. The great
rivers of the Amazonian basin from the Putumayo to the Beni, the
affluents of the Rio de la Plata, the Magdalena and the Orinoco,
united by new railroads, will also contribute to the continental
unity by multiplying international relations. One may well repeat
the celebrated phrase, that to govern is to lay rails. Railways
vanquish barbarism; they attract the stranger, people the desert,
civilise the native. Political organisation and internal peace
correspond with the development of the means of communication. With
the appearance of the rails the _caudillos_ lose their influence, and
a double transformation is effected; in the interior by the
civilising action of commingled interests, and at the exterior by the
new relations which the multiplication of railways involves.
Customs unions in Germany created the Imperial {346} unity; Mr.
Chamberlain thinks that a _Zollverein_ would increase the power of
the British Empire. The economic grouping of nations prepares the
way for future confederations. The frequent congresses which unify
law and jurisprudence, and bring together politicians, men of letters
and scientists, all tend to the same result. To increase the number
of these assemblies, to hold them in different capitals of the
continent, and to replace the Pan-American Congresses, whose plans
are somewhat indefinite, by racial Latin-American Congresses, would
be equally to the profit of the economic and intellectual unity of
the continent, and the harmony of its politics and its laws. An
undivided, uniform American law,[2] a single monetary system, a
similar policy in respect of protectionism and free trade, the
unification of methods of teaching, and the equivalence of academic
diplomas and university degrees, are questions that might be
discussed at these general assemblies. Each nation would have
ministers in the other republics, who would be at once intellectual
emissaries and propagandists, while to-day American peoples who send
ministers to Austria or to Switzerland have no accredited
representatives in the capitals of adjacent states. The national
ambitions which satisfy our politicians to-day would be replaced by a
more ample and original design, embracing the future of an entire
continent, as was the case a century ago.
In short, we should neglect no form of co-operation--conventions,
travel, diplomatic labours, periodical congresses, commercial
treaties, and partial groups of nations. Nothing but a disastrous
weakness can perpetuate the present division of the Latin {347}
peoples in the face of the unity of the United States.
The nations of the South are not unaware of this necessity, and after
a century of independence they are seeking to reconstitute the
ancient unions. Central America, disturbed by periodic wars, is
endeavouring to create a Confederation. In 1895 a treaty between
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador formed the Republic of Central
America; only Costa Rica and Guatemala held aloof from this union.
In 1902 all these nations, with the exception of Guatemala, accepted
a convention of arbitration. In 1905 the presidents of the five
republics met at Corinth in order to honour the work of Morazan and
Rufino Barrios; spontaneously, or at the instance of the United
States and Mexico, they signed various treaties intended to realise
the unity of the sister nations. A Central American Pedagogic
Institute was created, and a "Bureau of the Five Republics," with the
same object of unification. In 1907, after nine different conflicts
in the interval, a conference of these same nations was assembled at
Washington. On this occasion a tribunal of arbitration for Central
America was installed, and the neutrality of Honduras was recognised.
This tribunal, which sits at Cartago, in Costa-Rica, is to judge the
conflicts between states and the diplomatic claims of the governments
and of individuals. Moreover, the Republics of Central America have
agreed to a declaration which provides that they will recognise no
government which has been enforced by a revolution or a _coup
d'État_, and that they will not intervene in the political movements
of neighbouring countries.
The Court of Arbitration thus established had already, in 1909,
settled differences between Salvador and Honduras, and between
Guatemala and Nicaragua, by rejecting the pretentions of Honduras in
the one case and of Nicaragua in the other.[3] In {348} short, the
United States and Mexico are leading these peoples, who used to be in
a condition of perpetual discord, towards the unity necessary to
their progress.
A Congress met recently (1911) at Caracas, which was attended by the
representatives of the states liberated by Bolivar--Venezuela, New
Granada, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. This was a truly Bolivian
assembly in honour of the national hero. The object of this Congress
was to reconstitute Greater Colombia with the three Republics which
formerly made part of it--Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador; this
would be a return, after the lapse of a century, to the harmonious
union of the sister peoples, which would truly give them a common
future.
The formation of a great Bolivian State, after a period of isolation
lasting more than a century, is certainly the dream of generous
statesmen. It is not easy to conceive of the political union of
peoples as far removed as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, but this
assembly might well result in a natural union of the peoples of the
North; a new Greater Colombia, whose provinces would stretch from the
Atlantic to the Pacific.
In the south the A.B.C., the alliance of the Argentine, Brazil, and
Chili, is the question incessantly discussed in the sensational
press, and in the chancelleries, which love to surround themselves
with an atmosphere of mystery. These three nations, wealthy,
military powers, situated in distinct zones, are seeking
confederation; their ambition is to exercise in America a tutelage
which they consider indispensable. Already the understanding of May,
1902, had limited the armaments of Chili and the Argentine, and had
put an end to a long conflict. The rivality between the Argentine
and Brazil; the old friendship between that country and Chili, which
afterwards changed to a jealous alienation; the rivalry between the
Argentine {349} and Chili in the matter of wealth and power; discord,
threats of war, uneasy friendships; all this is insufficient to
restrain the military ambition of the three great nations. The
statesmen of Buenos-Ayres, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago are labouring
to effect the realisation of an alliance between the three most
highly civilised and organised and most advanced nations of the
continent. Once this union is accomplished, to the indisputable
influence of the United States will be added the moderative influence
of the three great States of the South, and the equilibrium between
Latins and Anglo-Saxons would be its immediate result.
There are writers in America who defend the chauvinistic autonomy of
small countries as against the natural supremacy of such combinations
of States. It is, however, certain that these alliances do not in
any way threaten the countries which take part in them; they respect
their internal constitution, and their historic organisation; they
confine themselves to a fusion of general and external interests, to
matters of commerce, and of peace and war. These utilitarian
partisans of the independence of each separate nation cannot conceive
of the grouping of nations as in the Greater Colombia, the
Confederation of the Pacific, or the Southern Alliance, without the
existence of obvious commercial interests. It is certainly true that
the _Zollverein_, or permanent customs agreement, was the basis of
German unity. But there are moral interests as powerful and as
obvious as the interests of commerce. Should not a common danger,
such as the Yankee peril in Panama and Central America, impel nations
toward federation and unity?
Moreover, federation is not always the result of purely commercial
ties. Our century tends to synthetical action. As modern nations
were formed by overcoming the old feudal anarchy, so metropolis and
colonies are uniting in our days to form {350} formidable empires
which merely commercial interests could not explain. What economic
tie served as the basis of the South African Federation, a group of
hostile races retaining a memory of autonomy? Did not North and
South in the United States enter upon a terrible war of interests,
and, in spite of this utilitarian antagonism, is not Lincoln, the
founder of the Union, as great to-day as Washington, the founder of
nationality? The enormous power of the North American nation is the
result of this unity. If the patricians of the South had been
victorious in the War of Secession, if they had succeeded in
annihilating the Federal bond, then instead of the Republic which
overawes Europe and aspires to Americanise the world there would be
two powerless and inimical States; in the South an oligarchic nation
served by slaves, and in the North a feeble assemblage of Puritan
provinces, while the Far West would be incapable of resisting the
Yellow Peril.
But there are economic ties between the Latin nations, which may
assist the preparation of respectable unions. Between Brazil and
Chili, Peru and Chili, Bolivia, Chili, and Peru, or the Argentine,
Paraguay, and Bolivia, there are actual currents of commercial
exchange, of agricultural products from complementary zones, and
therein a basis of union may be found.
Latin America cannot continue to live divided, while her enemies are
building up vast federations and enormous empires. Whether in the
name of race or commercial interests, of common utility or true
independence, the American democracies must form themselves into
three or four powerful States. The Latin New World is alone in
resisting the universal impulse toward the establishment of
syndicates and federations, trusts and trades unions, associations
and alliances--in short, of increasingly vast and increasingly
powerful organisations.
[1] _The United States as a World-Power_.
[2] See A. Alvarez, _Le Droit international americain_ (Paris, 1910),
in which the reader will find an interesting list of problems
respecting frontiers, immigration, and means of communication,
affecting Latin America in particular, which have on several
occasions met with solutions which form the basis of a new law (pp.
271 _et seq_.).
[3] Alvarez, _ibid._, p. 189 et seq.
{351}
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF RACE
The gravity of the problem--The three races, European, Indian, and
Negro--Their characteristics--The mestizos and mulattos--The
conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le
Bon--Regression to the primitive type.
The racial question is a very serious problem in American history.
It explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of
others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides
America. Upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the
public wealth, the industrial system, the stability of governments,
the solidity of patriotism. It is therefore essential that the
continent should have a constant policy, based upon the study of the
problems which are raised by the facts of race, just as there is an
agrarian policy in Russia, a protectionist policy in Germany, and a
free-trade policy in England.
In the United States all the varieties of the European type are
intermingled: Scandinavians and Italians, Irish and Germans; but in
the Latin republics there are peoples of strange lineage: American
Indians, negroes, Orientals, and Europeans of different origin are
creating the race of the future in homes in which mixed blood is the
rule.
In the Argentine, where Spanish, Russian, and Italian immigrants
intermingle, the social formation is extremely complicated. The
aboriginal Indians {352} have been united with African negroes, and
with Spanish and Portuguese Jews; then came Italians and Basques,
French and Anglo-Saxons; a multiple invasion, with the Latin element
prevailing. In Brazil Germans and Africans marry Indians and
Portuguese. Among the Pacific peoples, above all in Peru, a
considerable Asiatic influx, Chinese and Japanese, still further
complicates the human mixture. In Mexico and Bolivia the native
element, the Indian, prevails. The negroes form a very important
portion of the population of Cuba and San Domingo. Costa-Rica is a
democracy of whites; and in the Argentine, as in Chili, all vestiges
of the African type have disappeared. In short, there are no pure
races in America. The aboriginal Indian himself was the product of
the admixture of ancient tribes and castes.
In the course of time historic races may form themselves; in the
meantime an indefinable admixture prevails.
This complication of castes, this admixture of divers bloods, has
created many problems. For example, is the formation of a national
consciousness possible with such disparate elements? Would such
heterogeneous democracies be able to resist the invasion of superior
races? Finally, is the South American half-caste absolutely
incapable of organisation and culture?
Facile generalisations will not suffice to solve these questions.
Here the experience of travellers and of American history even is of
greater value than the verdicts of the anthropologists. In the first
place the half-breeds are not all hybrids, and it is not true that
the union of the Spaniard and the American has always been sterile.
Hence the absolute necessity of understanding the proper character of
each of the races which have formed modern America.
The Spaniards who arrived in the New World came from different
provinces; here alone is a prime cause {353} of variety.
Simultaneously with the languid Andalusian and the austere Basque,
the grave Catalonian and the impetuous Estremaduran left Spain.
Where the descendants of the Basque prevail, as in Chili, the
political organism is more stable, if less brilliant, than elsewhere,
and a strong will-power shows itself in work and success. The
Castilians brought to America their arrogance, and the fruitless
gestures of the hidalgo; where the Andalusians are in the majority
their agile fantasy, their gentle _non curanza_, militates against
all serious or continuous effort. The descendants of the Portuguese
are far more practical than those of the Spaniards; they are also
more disciplined and more laborious. The psychological
characteristics of the Indian are just as various; the descendant of
the Quechuas does not resemble the descendant of the Charruas, any
more than the temperament of the Araucanian resembles that of the
Aztec. In Chili, Uruguay, and the Argentine, there were warlike
populations whose union with the conquerors has formed virile
half-castes, an energetic and laborious _plebs_. In Chili
Araucanians and Basques have intermingled; and is it not in this
fusion that we must seek the explanation of the persistent character
of the Chilian nation, and its military spirit? The Aymara of
Bolivia and the south-east of Peru is hard and sanguinary; the
Quechua of the table-lands of the Andes is gentle and servile. It is
by no means a matter of indifference whether the modern citizen of
the Latin democracies is descended from a Guarani, an Aztec, an
Araucan, or a Chibcha; he will, as the case may be, prove aggressive
or passive, a nomadic shepherd or a quiet tiller of the common soil.
The Indian of the present time, undermined by alcohol and poverty, is
free according to the law, but a serf by virtue of the permanance of
authoritative manners. Petty tyrannies make him a slave; he {354}
works for the _cacique_, the baron of American feudalism. The curé,
the sub-prefect, and the judge, all-powerful in these young
democracies, exploit him and despoil him of his possessions.[1] The
communities, very like the Russian _mir_, are disappearing, and the
Indian is losing his traditional rights to the lands of the
collectivity. Without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted
and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of
his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous
progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy. He lives in the
mountains or table-lands, where a glacial cold prevails and the
solitude is eternal. Nothing disturbs the monotony of these desolate
stretches; nothing breaks the inflexible line of the limitless
horizons; there the Indian grows as melancholy and as desiccated as
the desert that surrounds him. The great occasions of his civil
life--birth, marriage, and death--are the subjects of a religious
exploitation. Servile and superstitious, he finally loves the
tyrannies that oppress him. He adores the familiar gods of the
Cerros, of the mountain. He is at once a Christian and a
fetish-worshipper; he sees in mysterious nature demons and goblins,
occult powers which are favourable and hostile by turn.
There are, nevertheless, regions where despotism has developed in the
Indian a sort of passive resistance. There he is sober and vigorous,
and by his complete adaptation to the maternal soil he has grown
apathetic and a creature of routine. He hates all that might destroy
his age-long traditions: schools, military training, and the
authority that despoils him. Conservative and melancholy, he lives
on the border of the Republic and its laws; his heart grows hot
against the tyranny from which he forever suffers. Dissimulation,
servility, and melancholy are {355} his leading traits; rancour,
hardness, and hypocrisy are the forms of his defensive energy. He
supports his slavery upon this cold earth, but he sometimes revolts
against his exploiters; and at Huanta and Ayoayo he fought against
his oppressors with true courage, sustained by hatred, as in the
heroic times of _Tupac-Amaru_.[2] After this bloody epic he resumed
his monotonous existence under the heedless sky. In his songs he
curses his birth and his destiny. In the evening he leaves the
narrow valley where in his slavery he is employed in agricultural
labours, to journey into the _cerros_ and mourn the abandonment of
his household gods. A weird lamentation passes over the darkening
earth, and from summit to summit the Cordillera re-echoes the
sorrowful and melodious plaint of the Indian as he curses conquest
and warfare.
The negroes of Angola or the Congo have mingled equally with the
Spaniard and the Indian. The African woman satisfied the ardour of
the conquerors; she has darkened the skin of the race.
The negroes arrived as slaves; sold _a usanza de feria_ (as beasts of
burden), they were primitive creatures, impulsive and sensual. Idle
and servile, they have not contributed to the progress of the race.
In the dwelling-houses of the colonial period they were domestics,
acting as _pions_ to their masters' children; in the fields and the
plantations of sugar-cane they were slaves, branded by the lash of
the overseer. They form an illiterate population which exercises a
depressing influence on the American imagination and character. They
increase still further the voluptuous intensity of the tropical
temper, weaken it, and infuse into the blood of the Creole elements
of {356} idleness, recklessness, and servility which are becoming
permanent.
The three races--Iberian, Indian, and African--united by blood, form
the population of South America. In the United States union with the
aborigines is regarded by the colonist with repugnance; in the South
miscegenation is a great national fact; it is universal. The Chilian
oligarchy has kept aloof from the Araucanians, but even in that
country unions between whites and Indians abound. Mestizos are the
descendants of whites and Indians; mulattos the children of Spaniards
and negroes; _zambos_ the sons of negroes and Indians. Besides these
there are a multitude of social sub-divisions. On the Pacific coast
Chinese and negroes have interbred. From the Caucasian white,
bronzed by the tropics, to the pure negro, we find an infinite
variety in the cephalic index, in the colour of the skin, and in the
stature.
It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are
mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the
usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the
national mass is Quechua, Aymara, or Aztec. In Peru, in Bolivia, and
in Ecuador the Indian of pure race, not having as yet mingled his
blood with that of the Spanish conquerors, constitutes the ethnic
base. In the Sierra the people speak Quechua and Aymara; there also
the vanquished races preserve their traditional communism. Of the
total population of Peru and Ecuador the white element only attains
to the feeble proportion of 6 per cent., while the Indian element
represents 70 per cent. of the population of these countries, and 50
per cent. in Bolivia. In Mexico the Indian is equally in the
majority, and we may say that there are four Indian nations on the
continent: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
In countries where the pure native has not survived {357} the
mestizos abound; they form the population of Colombia, Chili,
Uruguay, and Paraguay; in this latter country Guarani is spoken much
more frequently than Spanish. The true American of the South is the
mestizo, the descendant of Spaniards and Indians; but this new race,
which is almost the rule from Mexico to Buenos-Ayres, is not always a
hybrid product. The warlike peoples, like those of Paraguay and
Chili, are descended from Spaniards, Araucanians, and Guaranis.
Energetic leaders have been found among the mestizos: Paez in
Venezuela, Castilla in Peru, Diaz in Mexico, and Santa-Cruz in
Bolivia. An Argentine anthropologist, Señor Ayarragaray, says that
"the primary mestizo is inferior to his European progenitors, but at
the same time he is often superior to his native ancestors." He is
haughty, virile, and ambitious if his ancestors were Charruas,
Guaranis, or Araucanians; even the descendant of the peaceable
Quechuas is superior to the Indian. He learns Spanish, assimilates
the manners of a new and superior civilisation, and forms the ruling
caste at the bar and in politics. The mestizo, the product of a
first crossing, is not otherwise a useful element of the political
and economic unity of America; he retains too much the defects of the
native; he is false and servile, and often incapable of effort. It
is only after fresh unions with Europeans that he manifests the full
force of the characteristics obtained from the white. The heir of
the colonising race and of the autocthonous race, both adapted to the
same soil, he is extremely patriotic; Americanism, a doctrine hostile
to foreigners, is his work. He wishes to obtain power in order to
usurp the privileges of the Creole oligarchies.
One may say that the admixture of the prevailing strains with black
blood has been disastrous for these democracies. In applying John
Stuart Mill's law {358} of concomitant variations to the development
of Spanish America one may determine a necessary relation between the
numerical proportion of negroes and the intensity of civilisation.
Wealth increases and internal order is greater in the Argentine,
Uruguay, and Chili, and it is precisely in these countries that the
proportion of negroes has always been low; they have disappeared in
the admixture of European races. In Cuba, San Domingo, and some of
the republics of Central America, and certain of the States of the
Brazilial Confederation, where the children of slaves constitute the
greater portion of the population, internal disorders are continual.
A black republic, Hayti, demonstrates by its revolutionary history
the political incapacity of the negro race.
The mulatto and the _zambo_ are the true American hybrids. D'Orbigny
believed the mestizo to be superior to the descendants of the
Africans imported as slaves; Burmeister is of opinion that in the
mulatto the characteristics of the negro are predominant.
Ayarragaray states that the children born of the union of negroes
with _zambos_ or natives are in general inferior to their parents, as
much in intelligence as in physical energy. The inferior elements of
the races which unite are evidently combined in their offspring. It
is observed also that both in the mulattos and the _zambos_ certain
internal contradictions may be noted; their will is weak and
uncertain, and is dominated by instinct and gross and violent
passions. Weakness of character corresponds with a turgid
intelligence, incapable of profound analysis, or method, or general
ideas, and a certain oratorical extravagance, a pompous rhetoric.
The mulatto loves luxury and extravagance; he is servile, and lacks
moral feeling. The invasion of negroes affected all the Iberian
colonies, where, to replace the outrageously exploited Indian,
African slaves were imported by the ingenuous evangelists {359} of
the time. In Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and Peru this caste
forms a high proportion of the total population. In Brazil 15 per
cent. of the population is composed of negroes, without counting the
immense number of mulattos and _zambos_. Bahia is half an African
city. In Rio de Janeiro the negroes of pure blood abound. In Panama
the full-blooded Africans form 10 per cent. of the population.
Between 1759 and 1803 642,000 negroes entered Brazil; between 1792
and 1810 Cuba received 89,000. These figures prove the formidable
influence of the former slaves in modern America. But they are
revenged for their enslavement in that their blood is mingled with
that of their masters. Incapable of order and self-government, they
are a factor of anarchy; every species of vain outer show attracts
them--sonorous phraseology and ostentation. They make a show of an
official function, a university title, or an academic diploma. As
the Indian could not work in the tropics black immigration was
directed principally upon those regions, and the enervating climate,
the indiscipline of the mulatto, and the weakness of the white
element have contributed to the decadence of the Equatorial nations.
The mulatto is more despised than the mestizo because he often shows
the abjectness of the slave and the indecision of the hybrid; he is
at once servile and arrogant, envious and ambitious. His violent
desire to mount to a higher social rank, to acquire wealth, power,
and display, is, as Señor Bunge very justly remarks, a "hyperæsthesia
of arrivism."
The _zambos_ have created nothing in America. On the other hand, the
robust mestizo populations, the Mamelucos of Brazil, the Cholos of
Peru and Bolivia, the Rotos of Chili, descendants of Spaniards and
the Guarani Indians, are distinguished by their pride {360} and
virility. Instability, apathy, degeneration--all the signs of
exhausted race--are encountered far more frequently in the mulatto
than in the mestizo.
The European established in America becomes a Creole; his is a new
race, the final product of secular unions. He is neither Indian, nor
black, nor Spaniard. The castes are confounded and have formed an
American stock, in which we may distinguish the psychological traits
of the Indian and the negro, while the shades of skin and forms of
skull reveal a remote intermixture. If all the races of the New
World were finally to unite, the Creole would be the real American.
He is idle and brilliant. There is nothing excessive either in his
ideals or his passions; all is mediocre, measured, harmonious. His
fine and caustic irony chills his more exuberant enthusiasms; he
triumphs by means of laughter. He loves grace, verbal elegance,
quibbles even, and artistic form; great passions or desires do not
move him. In religion he is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics
he disputes in the Byzantine manner. No one could discover in him a
trace of his Spanish forefather, stoical and adventurous.
But is unity possible with such numerous castes? Must we not wait
for the work of many centuries before a clearly American population
be formed? The admixture of Indian, European, mestizo, and mulatto
blood continues. How form a homogeneous race of these varieties?
There will be a period of painful unrest: American revolutions reveal
the disequilibrium of men and races. Miscegenation often produces
types devoid of all proportion, either physical or moral.
The resistance of neo-Americans to fatigue and disease is
considerably diminished. In the seething retort of the future the
elements of a novel synthesis combine and grow yet more complex. If
the {361} castes remain divided there will be no unity possible to
oppose a probable invasion. "Three conditions are necessary," says
M. Gustave Le Bon, "before races can achieve fusion and form a new
race, more or less homogeneous. The first of these conditions is
that the races subjected to the process of crossing must not be too
inequal in number; the second, that they must not differ too greatly
in character; the third, that they must be for a long time subjected
to an identical environment."
Examining the mixed peoples of America in conformity with these
principles we see that the Indian and the negro are greatly superior
to the whites in numbers; the pure European element does not amount
to 10 per cent. of the total population. In Brazil and the Argentine
there are numbers of German and Italian immigrants, but in other
countries the necessary stream of invasion of superior races does not
exist.
We have indicated the profound differences which divide the bold
Spaniard from the negro slave; we have said that the servility of the
Indian race contrasts with the pride of the conquerors; that is to
say, that the mixture of rival castes, Iberians, Indians, and
negroes, has generally had disastrous consequences. Perhaps we may
except the fortunate combinations of mestizo blood in Chili, Southern
Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Finally, the territory
has not yet exercised a decisive influence upon the races in contact.
The modern Frenchman and Anglo-Saxon are born of the admixture of
ancient races subjected for centuries to the influences of the soil.
The great invasions which modified the traditional stock took place a
thousand years ago; they explain the terrible struggles of the Middle
Ages. The new American type has not so long a history.
In short, none of the conditions established by the {362} French
psychologists are realised by the Latin-American democracies, and
their populations are therefore degenerate.
The lower castes struggle successfully against the traditional rules:
the order which formerly existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid
conviction by a superficial scepticism, and the Castilian tenacity by
indecision. The black race is doing its work and the continent is
returning to its primitive barbarism.
This retrogression constitutes a very serious menace. In South
America civilisation is dependent upon the numerical predominance of
the victorious Spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the
mulatto, the negro, and the Indian. Only a plentiful European
immigration can re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the
American races. In the Argentine the cosmopolitan alluvium has
destroyed the negro and mitigated the Indian. A century ago there
were 20 per cent. of Africans in Buenos-Ayres; the ancient slave has
now disappeared, and mulattos are rare. In Mexico, on the other
hand, in 1810 the Europeans formed a sixth part of the population;
to-day they do not form more than a twentieth part.
Dr. Karl Pearson, in his celebrated book _National Life and
Character_, writes: "In the long run the inferior civilisations give
proof of a vigour greater than that of the superior civilisations;
the disinherited gain upon the privileged castes, and the conquered
people absorbs the conquering people." He declared further that
Brazil would quickly fall into the power of the negroes, and that
while the Indians would multiply and develop in the inaccessible
regions of the north and the centre, the white peoples, crowded out
by the progress of these races, would be numerous only in the cities
and the more salubrious districts. This painful prophecy will be
accomplished to the letter if, in the conflict of castes, {363} the
white population is not promptly reinforced by the arrival of new
colonists.
But crossing alone will not communicate the superior characteristics
of the race to the mestizo in a lasting manner. "It is necessary
that he should be the fruit of a union of the third, fourth, or fifth
degree; that is, that there should have been as many successive
crossings, with a father or a mother of the white race, before the
mestizo can be in a condition to assimilate European culture," writes
an Argentine sociologist. For this vast process of selection to be
realised to the profit of the white man not only must the races
subjected to admixture exist in certain proportions, but the mass of
Europeans must prevail and impose their temper upon the future
castes. In short, the problem of race depends upon the solution
given to the demographic problem. Without the help of a new
population there will be in America not merely a lamentable
exhaustion but also a prompt recoil of the race. The phrase of
Alberdi is still true: "In America to govern means to populate."
The colonists brought with them the traditions and manners of the
disciplined races, a moral organisation which was the work of
centuries of common life. People of rural extraction, when they
reached America, upheld the established interests, the government,
the law, and the peace; they worked, fought, and laid up treasure.
Moreover, only the most enterprising of men emigrated, and they
transmitted to the new democracies an element of vitality they had
not before known. As early as the second generation the descendants
of the foreign colonists were already Argentines, Brazilians, or
Peruvians; their patriotism was as ardent and devoted and exclusive
as that of their fathers. They completely adopted the local manners.
They had been transformed by the action of the American environment.
{364}
Basques or Italians have already transformed the Argentine. They
arrive as artisans, or labourers, or clerks and traders; they form
agricultural colonies and become landowners. They soon break their
fetters; their sons become merchants, financial agents, or wealthy
plutocrats. Of 1,000 inhabitants there are 128 Italians and only 99
Argentines who own land. These Latins are prolific; in 1904 1,000
Argentine women gave life to 80 infants; 1,000 Spanish women to 123,
and 1,000 Italian women to 175.[3] These immigrants thus increase
the national wealth and people the desert.[4] Moreover, their
descendants figure in politics and letters. Let us mention only a
few Argentine names remarkable on one count or another: Groussac,
Magnasco, Becher, Bunge, Ingegnieros, Chiappori, Banchs, and
Gerchunoff.
[1] The _Indianista_ Society in Mexico and the _Pro Indigena_ in Peru
were founded for the protection and rehabilitation of the Indians.
[2] The Bolivian sociologist, A. Argüedas, writes of the Aymara
Indians: "They are hard, rancorous, egotistic, and cruel. The Indian
herdsmen have no ambition other than to increase the number of the
heads of cattle which they pasture."
[3] V. Gonnard, _L'Emigration européenne au XIXe siècle_, Paris,
1906, p. 220 _et seq_.
[4] To understand the significance of immigration, it is enough to
remark that there are in Mexico 7 inhabitants per square kilometre,
in Brazil 1.7, in the Argentine 1.6, while there are 72 in France,
105 in Germany, no in Italy, 120 in England, and 248 in Belgium.
{365}
CHAPTER III
THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
The _caudillos_: their action--Revolutions--Divorce between written
Constitutions and political life--The future parties--The bureaucracy.
The development of the Ibero-American democracies differs
considerably from the admirable spirit of their political charters.
The latter include all the principles of government applied by the
great European nations: the equilibrium of powers, natural rights, a
liberal suffrage, and representative assemblies, but the reality
contradicts the idealism of the statutes imported from Europe. The
traditions of the prevailing race, in fact, have created simple and
barbarous systems of government. The _caudillo_ is the pivot of this
political system: leader of a party, of a social group, or a family
whose important relations make it powerful, he enforces his
tyrannical will upon the multitude. In him resides the power of
government and the law. On his permanent action depends the internal
order of the State, its economic development, and the national
organisation. His authority is inviolable, superior to the
Constitution and its laws.
All the history of America, and the inheritance of the Spaniard and
the Indian, has ended in the exaltation of the _caudillo_.
Government by _caciques_, absolute masters, like the _caudillos_
themselves, is very ancient in Spain, as was shown by Joaquin {366}
Costa in his analysis of the foundations of Spanish politics. In
each province, in each city, was a central personage in whom justice
and might were incarnated; admired by the crowd, obeyed by opinion,
enforcing his manners and his ideas. The American Indians obeyed
_caciques_, and the first conquerors quickly saw that by winning over
the local chiefs they would at the same time subject the native
populations. The existence of the _caudillos_ may also be explained
by territorial influences. It has been written that the desert is
monotheistic; over its arid uniformity one imposing God reigns
supreme. It is the same with the steppes, the _pampas_, and the
table-lands of America; vast and monotonous tracts; Paez and Quiroga
were divinities of such regions. No other force could limit their
authority. Contrasted with the uniform level of mankind which is the
work of the plains, their firm chieftainship assumed divine
attributes. American revolutions are like the Moorish wars directed
by mystic Kaids.
Señor Raphael Salillas writes that in Spain the _cacique_ is a
hypertrophy of the political personage; he symbolises the excess of
power and of the ambition of Spanish individualism. In America the
first _conquistadors_ quarrelled for the supreme authority. The
civil wars of the Conquest arose from conflicts between chiefs; none
of them could conceive of power as real unless it was unlimited and
despotic. After them the all-powerful viceroy, a demi-god in his
powers, exercised a similar domination. The South American
President, the heir to the traditions of the governors of the
colonial epoch, also possesses the maximum of authority; the
Constitution confers upon him powers like those of the Czars of
Russia.
Power for its own sake is the ideal of such men. The less important
chieftains are satisfied by the government of a province; the great
leader aspires {367} to rule a republic. Questions of personality
are the prevailing characteristics of politics; and despotic rulers
abound. When a "Regenerator" usurps the supreme power a "Restorer"
appears to dispute it with him; then a "Liberator," and finally a
"Defender of the Constitution." The lesser gods fight to their
hearts' content, and the democracy accepts the victor, in whom it
admires the representative leader, the robust creation of the race.
Such a man is not like the character of Ibsen's, who is strong in his
isolation; in the _caudillo_ the average characteristics of the
nation, its vices and its qualities, are better defined and more
strongly accentuated; he obeys his instincts and certain fixed ideas;
he conceives of no ideals; he is impressionable and fanatical.
Señor Ayarragarray distinguishes two varieties of _caudillo_; the
cunning and the violent. The latter was above all peculiar to the
military period of Ibero-American history. The leader of a band that
ravaged like the Huns, he ruled by terror and audacity, enforcing the
discipline of the barracks in civil life. The _caudillo_ of the
cunning type exercised a more prolonged moral dictatorship; he
belongs to a period of transition between the military period and the
industrial period. This new master retained the supreme power by
lies and subterfuges. A half-civilised tyrant, he used wealth as
others used force, and instead of brutally thrusting himself on the
people he employed a system of tortuous corruption.
The rule of the _caudillos_ led to presidential government. The
Constitutions established assemblies; but tradition triumphed in
spite of these theoretical structures. Since the colonial period
centralisation and unity have been the American forms of government.
In the person of the President of these democracies resides all the
authority which usually devolves upon {368} the public functionaries.
He commands the army, multiplies the wheels of administration, and
surrounds himself with doctors of law and Prætorian soldiers. The
Assemblies obey him; he intervenes in the course of elections, and
obtains the Parliamentary majorities that he requires. The upper
magistracy is sometimes indocile to the desires of the Government,
but in the life of the provinces the judges depend absolutely upon
the political leaders. The supreme direction of the finances, the
army, the fleet, and the administration in general rests with the
President, as before the republican era it belonged to the viceroy.
The parties fight among themselves, not only for power, but to obtain
this omnipotent presidency. They realise that the chief of the
Executive is the effective agent of all political changes; that
ministers and parliaments are only secondary factors in political
life. An Argentine sociologist, Señor Joaquin Gonzalez, has said
very justly that "each governmental period is characterised by the
condition and the worth of the man who presides over it. This
presidential system, in default of a solid and elevated political
education, has in great measure favoured the return to the personal
_régime_."
To this system correspond the political groups without programmes;
men do not struggle for the triumph of ideas, but for that of certain
individuals. The consecrated terms lose their traditional meaning.
There are civilists who uphold militarism; liberals who strive to
increase the presidential authority; nationalists who favour
cosmopolitanism; constitutionalists who violate the political
charter. The personal system groups conservatives and liberals
together. Even in Chili, where the activity of the parties has been
unusually continuous, the older parties have split up into shapeless
factions. The President establishes his despotic authority over the
{369} confusion of these rival groups; he tries to dissolve the small
factions, to divide them, in order to rule them.
Without ideals or unity of action the parties are transformed into
greedy cliques, which are distinguished by the colour of their
favours. As in Byzantium, so in Venezuela, the Blues struggle
against the Yellows, while in Uruguay the Whites oppose the Reds, red
being the distinctive colour of the Argentine federalists. An
aggressive intolerance divides these groups; they gather round their
_gonfaloniere_ and their party symbol in irreducible factions. No
common interest can reconcile them, not even that of their native
country. Each party supports a leader, an interest, a dogma; on the
one side a man beholds his own party, the missionaries of truth and
culture; the other are his enemies, mercenary and corrupt. Each
group believes that it seeks to retain the supremacy in the name of
disinterested virtue and patriotism. Rosas used to call his
opponents "infamous savages." For the gang in possession of power,
the revolutionaries are malefactors; for the latter the ruling party
are merely a government of thieves and tyrants. There are gods of
good and evil, as in the Oriental theogonies. Educated in the Roman
Church, Americans bring into politics the absolutism of religious
dogmas; they have no conception of toleration. The dominant party
prefers to annihilate its adversaries, to realise the complete
unanimity of the nation; the hatred of one's opponents is the first
duty of the prominent politician. The opposition can hardly pretend
to fill a place of influence in the assemblies, or slowly to acquire
power. It is only by violence that the parties can emerge from the
condition of ostracism in which they are held by the faction in
power, and it is by violence that they return to that condition.
Apart from the rule of the _caudillos_ the political lie is {370}
triumphant; the freedom of the suffrage is only a platonic promise
inscribed in the Constitution; the elections are the work of the
Government; there is no public opinion. Journalism, almost always
opportunist, merely reflects the indecision of the parties.
Political statutes and social conditions contradict each other; the
former proclaim equality, and there are many races; there is
universal suffrage, and the races are illiterate; liberty and
despotic rulers enforce an arbitrary power. By means of the prefects
and governors the President directs the elections, supports this or
that candidate, and even chooses his successor. He is the supreme
elector.
The representative assemblies become veritable bureaucratic
institutions; deputies and senators accept the orders of the
President. According to Señor L. A. de Herrera, two castes are in
process of formation, "on the one hand the oligarchies, which possess
the supreme power in defiance of the public will, and on the other
the citizens, who are deprived of all participation in the
government." Frequent revolutions and _pronunciamentos_, according
to Spanish tradition, disturb the ruling class in the exercise of
power; these superficial movements cannot be compared to the great
crises of European history, which result in the disappearance of a
political system or bring about the advent of a new social class.
They are merely the result of the perpetual conflict between the
_caudillos_; the leaders and the oligarchies change, but the system,
with its secular vices, remains.
The South American revolutions may be regarded as a necessary form of
political activity: in Venezuela fifty-two important revolts have
broken out within a century. The victorious party tries to destroy
the other groups; revolution thus represents a political weapon to
those parties which are deprived of the suffrage. It corresponds to
the protests of European {371} minorities, to the anarchical strikes
of the proletariat, to the great public meetings of England, in which
the opposing parties attack the Government. It is to the excessive
simplicity of the political system, in which opinion has no other
means of expression than the tyranny of oligarchies on the one hand
and the rebellion of the vanquished on the other, that the
interminable and sanguinary conflicts of Spanish America are due.
These internal wars continually retard the economic development of
the State and decrease its stability; they ruin the foreign credit of
the republics, prepare the way for humiliating interventions, and
give rise to tyrannies; but it must not be forgotten that revolution,
in these democracies without law and without real suffrage, has often
been the only means of defending liberty. Against the tyrants even
conservative spirits have revolted, and rebellion has become reaction.
For the rest, the civil wars have lost their former character. They
used to symbolise the return to primeval chaos; vagabond multitudes,
armed bands, desolated the fields and burned the towns.
Assassination, theft, the devastation of property and estates, war
without mercy, fire, and all the powers of destruction were in revolt
against the feeble foundations of nationality.
As by the inverse selection of the Spanish Inquisition, the most
intelligent and the most cultivated perished. Brutal horsemen
occupied the cities in which Spanish civilisation had attained its
apogee. Sarmiento has described the assault on the nomad wagons
which bore the national _penates_ across the Argentine _pampas_ in a
sort of Tartar Odyssey amid the infinite desolation of the plains.
Even when the social classes were organised and the economic
interests defined the rivality of the leaders continued, and politics
remained personal. However, civil war is already no longer the
brutal onset of men with neither {372} law nor faith, no longer an
irruption of outlaws. The drama has replaced the epic; the conflict
of passions and interests succeeds to the battles of semi-divine
personages, proud of their tragic mission. Men buy votes; electoral
committees falsify the suffrage, as in the United States, by force of
money.
Thus the plutocracy conquers the benches of Congress.
If the continent spontaneously creates dictators then is all the
ambitious structure of American politics--parliaments, ministers, and
municipalities--merely a delusive invention?
In some States in which the economic life is intense, as in the
Argentine, Chili, Brazil, and Uruguay, benevolent despotism does not
mark the high-water limit of national development; there new parties
are forming themselves, and the _caudillos_ will soon disappear. Dr.
Ingegnieros foresees the creation in the Argentine of new political
groups, with financial tendencies. The rural class which rules in
the provinces and possesses the great mass of the national wealth,
which is derived from stock-raising and agriculture, and the
commercial and industrial middle-class of the cities, will form, like
the Tories and Whigs in England, the two parties of the future. Once
the secondary parties have disappeared, the two great political
organisations will prevail alone.
This transformation of the old groups is logical. In the colonial
period the conflict for the possession of power took place within the
narrow limits of public life; the Spaniards were in the majority in
the _audiencas_, the courts, and the Creoles in the _cabildos_, the
municipalities. The former upheld religious intolerance, economic
monopoly, and the exclusive and universal empire of the metropolis;
the latter endeavoured to obtain economic and political equality, the
abolition of privileges, and a national government. After the
revolution these divisions grew more {373} complex; federalism and
unity, religious quarrels, and sometimes the mutual hostility of the
different castes, divided men into shifting groups. Politics became
the warfare of irreducible clans. In the organised nations of the
south the dissensions gradually lost their importance, and a general
indifference succeeded to the old theological hatreds. Federals and
municipalists were still fighting, but the original bitterness of
their antagonism was dead. On the other hand, the castes were
progressively becoming confounded by intermarriage.
However, the economic factors persisted, and their importance has
increased as towns and industries have developed. Financial
questions will in future divide the citizens of those democracies
which have become plainly industrial; the agrarians will oppose the
manufacturers and the free-traders the protectionists. Like the
republicans and democrats of the United States, certain groups will
favour imperialism and others neutrality. The group which would
stimulate Yankee or German influence will be opposed by another, the
partisan of Italian or French activity.
Already in Cuba there are some who favour annexation by the United
States, while others demand complete autonomy. Some politicians
would agree to immigration without reserve or restriction, while
others, the nationalists, would defend the integrity of their
inheritance against foreign invasion. America, like modern France,
will have its _métèques_; they will be the Europeans, the Yankees,
and the yellow races.
Apart from the southern nations there has as yet been no formation of
classes or social interests. None of the problems which agitate
Europe--extension of the suffrage, proportional representation,
municipal autonomy--have any immediate importance among them. The
State is the necessary guardian, a kind of social providence whence
derive riches, strength, {374} and progress. To weaken this
influence would be to encourage internal disorder; only those
Constitutions have been of use in America which have reinforced the
central power against the attacks of a perpetual anarchy.
The progress of these democracies is the work of foreign capital, and
when political anarchy prevails credit collapses. Governments which
ensure peace and paternal tyrants are therefore preferable to
demagogues. A young Venezuelan critic, Señor Machado Hernandez,
having studied the history of his country, rent as it has been by
revolutions, considers that the best form of government for America
is that which reinforces the attributions of the executive and
establishes a dictatorship. In place of the Swiss referendum and the
federal organisation of the United States autocracy is, it seems to
us, the only practical practical means of government.
To increase the duration of the presidency in order to avoid the too
frequent conflicts of parties; to simplify the political machine,
which transforms the increasingly numerous parliaments into mere
bureaucratic institutions; to prolong the mandate of senators and
deputies, so that the life of the people shall not be disturbed by
continual elections; in short, to surrender the ingenuous dogmas of
the political statutes in favour of concrete reforms: such would
appear to be the ideal which in Tropical America--in Mexico, Peru,
and Bolivia--would arrest the destructive action of revolutions.
It is obvious that a president furnished with a strong authority may
quickly become a tyrant, but in these nations is not political power
always a semi-dictatorship which is tolerated? The head of the State
governs for four years according to the term of the Constitution, but
his action is continued by his successor. The real duration of his
political action is twenty years.
{375}
If a tutelary president is necessary it is none the less essential to
oppose his autocracy by a moderative power which would recall, in its
constitution, the life-Senate of Bolivar. One may even conceive of a
Senate which would represent the real national interests: a stable
body, the union of all the forces of social conservation; a serene
assembly untroubled by democratic cravings, in which the clergy, the
universities, commerce, the industries, the army, the marine, and the
judiciary, might defend the Constitution and tradition against the
assaults of demagogy, against too audacious reformers. Garcia-Moreno
wished to see the mandate of the senators extended to a term of
twelve years.
The quality of the legislative chambers is ineffective in America.
In fact, both being elected by the popular vote, and having like
electoral majorities, the Lower Chamber always gets its way with the
Senate, which represents neither interests nor traditions. There is
in reality one uniform assembly artificially divided into two
independent bodies. The whole is dominated, there being no
conservative institutions as a useful corrective, by the anonymous or
Jacobin will of the multitude, which is moved by all sorts of divided
interests: the craving for power, provincial pride, and a passion for
cabal and intrigue.
A factor of American politics which is as serious as the periodical
revolutions is the development of the bureaucracy.
In the still simple life of the nation the organs of the public
administration are complicated in the most exaggerated manner. The
budget supports a sterile class recruited principally among the
Creoles, who prefer the security of officialism to the conquest of
the soil. Energy and hope diminish with the almost infinite increase
of the "budgetivores."
Foreigners monopolise trade and industry, and {376} thus acquire
property in the soil which has been inherited by a race of Americans
without energy.
A North American observer[1] writes that the great fortunes of the
Argentines of American extraction have been made by the
ever-increasing value of real estate, and are due to the natural
development of the country rather than to their own initiative or
enterprise. But the South Americans are on the way to waste these
fortunes, and the fortunate colonists from Spain and Italy are
gradually replacing them in the social hierarchy.
According to a Mexican statesman, Señor Justo Sierra, the government
in South America is an administration of employés, protected by other
employés, the army. These nations, which are being invaded by active
immigrants, are thus directed by a group of mandarins, and if the
young men of these countries are not encouraged in commercial and
industrial vocations by a practical education the enriched colonists
will expel the Creole from his ancient position. A few writers
defend the bureaucracy as the refuge, in the face of the cosmopolitan
invasion, of the choice spirits of the nation: writers, artists, and
politicians. "If foreigners dispose of the material fortune of the
country," says a distinguished young observer, Señor Manuel Galvez,
"it is just that we others, Argentines, should dispose of its
intellectual fortune." A noble idealism, satisfied by an unreal
wealth! But from the point of view of the national life this lack of
equilibrium is disturbing. In face of the progress of the victorious
foreigners who are making themselves masters of the soil, to shut
oneself up in a tower of ivory would be the most complete of
renunciations.
In the organisation of the America of the future we must not forget
the suggestions of Caliban. {377} Among the innumerable bureaucrats
who devour the budgets there will not always be writers worthy of
official protection; they will rather be recruited among an indolent
youth, restive under any sustained effort.
The encouragement of "choice spirits" must not be confounded with the
unjustifiable maintenance of a legion of parasites. The _caudillo_
multiplies functions in order to reward his friends; nepotism
prevails in the world of politics.
The great political transformations of the future will be due to the
development of the common wealth; new parties will appear and the
bureaucracy will have to be considerably diminished.
[1] Cited by J. V. Gonzalez in _La Nación_, Buenos-Ayres, May 25,
1910.
{378}
CHAPTER IV
THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
Loans--Budgets--Paper money--The formation of national capital.
Unexploited wealth abounds in America. Forests of rubber, as in the
African Congo; mines of gold and diamonds, which recall the treasures
of the Transvaal and the Klondyke; rivers which flow over beds of
auriferous sand, like the Pactolus of ancient legend; coffee, cocoa,
and wheat, whose abundance is such that these products are enough to
glut the markets of the world. But there is no national capital.
This contrast between the wealth of the soil and the poverty of the
State gives rise to serious economic problems.
By means of long-sustained efforts, an active race would have won
financial independence. The Latin-Americans, idle, and accustomed to
leave everything to the initiative of the State, have been unable to
effect the conquest of the soil, and it is foreign capital that
exploits the treasure of America.
Since the very beginnings of independence the Latin democracies,
lacking financial reserves, have had need of European gold. The
government of Spain used to seize upon the wealth of her colonies to
satisfy the needs of a prodigal court, and to prevent its own
bankruptcy. The independence of America was won with the aid of
English money, hence the first of the necessary loans. Canning
encouraged the South American revolutionaries, and the English {379}
bankers gave their support to their plans, in the shape of loans to
the new governments. Colombian, Argentine, and Peruvian agents
solicited heavy loans in the City of London, without which assistance
the Spanish power could never have been defeated.
The republican _régime_ thus commenced its career by assuming
imperious financial responsibilities. Before commencing to practise
a policy of fiscal economy, it was necessary to accept the conclusion
of the most urgent loans, but once the European markets were open the
financial orgy commenced. In 1820 Señor Zea concluded the first
Colombian loan; in 1821 the government of that country declared that
it could not ensure the service of the debt. The necessities of the
war with Spain and the always difficult task of building up a new
society demanded the assistance of foreign gold; loans accumulated,
and very soon various States were obliged to solicit the simultaneous
reduction of the capital borrowed and the rate of interest paid. The
lamentable history of these bankrupt democracies dates from this
period.
Little by little these financial contracts lost all semblance of
serious business. In the impossibility of obtaining really solid
guarantees the bankers imposed preposterous conditions, and issue at
a discount became the rule with the new conventions. A series of
interventions in Buenos-Ayres, Mexico, San Domingo, and Venezuela,
diplomatic conflicts, and claims for indemnity resulted from this
precarious procedure. Moreover, thanks to the protection accorded by
their respective countries, foreigners acquired a privileged
position. The Americans were subjected to the jurisdiction of the
ordinary courts, before which they could demand the payment of their
claims on the State; foreigners enjoyed exceptional treatment. A
statute was enacted in their favour, and their governments supported
them in the {380} recovery of unjustifiable claims. Sir Charles
Wyke, English minister to Mexico, wrote to the Foreign Office in
1862: "Nineteen out of twenty foreigners who reside in this
unfortunate country have some claim against the government in one way
or another. Many of these claims are really based on the denial of
real justice, while others have been fabricated throughout, as a good
speculation, which would enable the claimant to obtain money for some
imaginary wrong; for example, three days' imprisonment which was
intentionally provoked with the object of formulating a claim which
might be pushed to an exorbitant figure."[1]
In face of the string of debts which arose from the loans themselves,
or from claims for damages suffered during the civil wars, the
governments could only succumb. The immorality of the fiscal agents
and the greed of the foreigner will explain these continual
bankruptcies, which constitute the financial history of America.
The descendants of the prodigal Spanish conquerors, who knew nothing
of labour or thrift, have incessantly resorted to fresh loans in
order to fill the gaps in their budgets. Politicians knew of only
one solution of the economic disorder--to borrow, so that little by
little the Latin-American countries became actually the financial
colonies of Europe.
Economic dependence has a necessary corollary--political servitude.
French intervention in Mexico was originally caused by the mass of
unsatisfied financial claims; foreigners, the creditors of the State,
were in favour of intervention. England and France, who began by
seeking to ensure the recovery of certain debts, finally forced a
monarch upon the debitor nation. The United States entertained the
ambition of becoming the sole creditor of the American peoples: this
remarkable privilege would {381} have assured them of an
incontestable hegemony over the whole continent.
In the history of Latin America loans symbolise political disorder,
lack of foresight, and waste; it is thanks to loans that revolutions
are carried out, and it is by loans that the _caudillos_ have
enriched themselves. Old debts are liquidated by means of new, and
budgetary deficits are balanced by means of foreign gold. When the
poverty caused by political disorder becomes too great the American
governments clamour feverishly in the markets of Europe for the
hypothecation of the public revenues, and the issue of fresh funds,
offering to pay a high interest, and recognising the rights of
suspended creditors.
On the one hand the budget is loaded to create new employments in
order to assuage the national appetite for sinecures, while the
protective tariffs are raised to enrich the State. Thus the forces
of production disappear, life becomes dearer, and poverty can only
increase. America has until lately known little of productive loans
intended for use in the construction of railways, irrigation works,
harbours, or for the organisation of colonies of immigrants.
The product of the customs and other fiscal dues is not enough to
stimulate the material progress of a nation. So application is made
to the bankers of London or Paris; but it is the very excess of these
loan operations and the bad employment of the funds obtained that
impoverishes the continent. The excessive number of administrative
sinecures, the greed of the leaders, the vanity of governments, all
call for gold; and when the normal revenues are not sufficient to
enrich these hungry oligarchies, a loan which may involve the very
future of the country appears to all to be the natural remedy.
The budgets of various States complicate still further a situation
already difficult. They increase beyond all measure, without the
slightest relation to {382} the progress made by the nation. They
are based upon taxes which are one of the causes of the national
impoverishment, or upon a protectionist tariff which adds greatly to
the cost of life. The politicians, thinking chiefly of appearances,
neglect the development of the national resources for the immediate
augmentation of the fiscal revenues; thanks to fresh taxes, the
budgets increase. These resources are not employed in furthering
profitable undertakings, such as building railroads or highways, or
increasing the navigability of the rivers. The bureaucracy is
increased in a like proportion, and the budgets, swelled in order to
dupe the outside world, serve only to support a nest of parasites.
In the economic life of these countries the State is a kind of
beneficent providence which creates and preserves the fortune of
individual persons, increases the common poverty by taxation,
display, useless enterprises, the upkeep of military and civil
officials, and the waste of money borrowed abroad; such is the
"alimentary politics" of which Le Play speaks. The government is the
public treasury; by the government all citizens live, directly or
indirectly, and the foreigner profits by exploiting the national
wealth. A centralising power, the State forces a golden livery upon
this bureaucratic mob of magistrates and deputies, political masters
and teachers.
To sum up, the new continent, politically free, is economically a
vassal. This dependence is inevitable; without European capital
there would have been no railways, no ports, and no stable government
in America. But the disorder which prevails in the finances of the
country changes into a real servitude what might otherwise have been
a beneficial relation. By the accumulation of loans frequent crises
are provoked, and frequent occasions of foreign intervention.
A policy of thrift would have led to the establishment of economic
equilibrium. Foreign gold has {383} poured in continually, not only
in the form of loans but in the shape of material works--railways,
ports, industries, and industrial undertakings. It is in this way
that English capital has accumulated in the Argentine, Uruguay,
Brazil, and Chili, where it has become a prominent factor in the
industrial development of the country. In the Argentine it amounts
to 300 millions, in Brazil to 150 millions, in Chili to 51 millions,
and in Uruguay to 46 millions of pounds sterling.
New problems arise from the relation between the size of the
population and the amount of the capital imported. The increase of
alien wealth in nations which are not fertilised by powerful currents
of immigration constitutes a real danger. To pay the incessantly
increasing interest of the wealth borrowed, fresh sources of
production and a constant increase of economic exchanges are
necessary; in a word, a greater density of population. The
exhaustion of the human stock in the debitor nations creates a very
serious lack of financial equilibrium, which may result, not only in
bankruptcy but also in the loss of political independence by
annexation.
The solution of the financial problem depends, then, upon the
solution of the problem of population. Immigrants will solve it by
increasing the number of productive units, by accumulating their
savings, by irresistible efforts which lay the foundations of solid
fortunes. It is true that the wealth which they will create will
also be of foreign origin, but in the second or third generation the
descendants of the enriched colonists will become true citizens of
the country in which their fathers have established themselves. They
will have forgotten their country of origin, and will mingle with the
old families which conserve the national traditions.
The ideal of peoples whose economic condition is dependence is
naturally autonomy; without it all {384} liberty is precarious. A
considerable stream of exports flows from America to Europe to pay
for imports and the interest on foreign capital. Only this large
exportation of products, as in the case of the Argentine, Mexico, and
Brazil, can maintain a favourable commercial balance. The Argentine
economist Alberto Martinez has demonstrated that as in his country
there is neither an economic reserve nor a national capital, the
diminution of exports causes serious financial disturbances; exchange
is unstable, the rate rises, trade falls off, and credit is suspended.
In other countries the economic system is instability itself. It
depends almost entirely on two or three agricultural
products--coffee, cane-sugar, and rubber--and the incessant
fluctuations in the prices of these products, which constitute the
wealth of the country. One does not observe the regularity of the
exports of the Argentine and Brazil, nor any important industrial
development. To remedy the lack of equilibrium in the budget and to
pay the interest on the foreign debt, the State, the guardian of the
public fortune, once more resorts to loans. The creation of a
national capital is thus an urgent necessity for these prodigal
democracies.
By stimulating the development of agriculture, by creating or
protecting industry, by diminishing the budgetary charges by the
reduction of useless bureaucratic employments and sumptuary expenses,
the Latin-American governments could gradually establish the
necessary reserves.
On the other hand, fiscal agreements, commercial treaties, and
railways must contribute to the solidarity of these nations among
themselves. Europe has invested vast sums of capital in America; she
sends thither large quantities of the products of her industries, but
there are peoples more favoured than others by this invasion of
capital. It should be possible by a series of practical conventions
to lay the foundations {385} of a _Zollverein_. The dependence of
certain republics as compared with others should tend to make them
commercially independent of Europe. Already a number of industries
are being developed in America; in Brazil their yield attains the
annual value of 46 million pounds; in 1909 the imports were
diminished by 3 million pounds in consequence of this new economic
factor. It may be supposed that in the still distant future the
agricultural peoples of America will buy the products of their
industrial neighbours, the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay. The
unification of the monetary system will still further facilitate the
development of this inter-state commerce, this trade between zones
almost exclusively agricultural, and other regions both agricultural
and industrial; thus closer economic relations will be the basis of a
lasting political understanding. No American republic has yet
reached the term of its economic development.
We may distinguish three periods in the evolution of the nations
towards autonomy; during the first their dependence is absolute, in
respect of ideas as much as of men and capital; such is the present
situation of the majority of the Latin democracies. During the
second period agriculture suffices for the national necessities and
industry develops; the Argentine, Brazil, and Mexico are already in
this state of partial liberty. Finally, the period of agricultural
and industrial exportation commences, and the intellectual influence
of the country makes itself felt beyond the frontiers. After France
and England, Germany and the United States reached this glorious
phase. Neither Mexico nor the Argentine nor Brazil is as yet
flooding the world with its industrial products nor affecting it by
its original intellectual activities; there is no culture or
philosophy that we can properly term Argentine or Chilian. Europe is
tributary to the Argentine for her wheat and meats, {386} and to
Brazil for her coffee, but ideas and machines come from Paris,
London, and New York.
M. Limantour, who tried to save the Mexican railways from the Yankee
capitalists, and the Argentine economists, who endeavoured to convert
the foreign into a national debt, are preparing the way for the
future reign of financial liberty; but this transformation depends on
the increase of public or private wealth and the activity of
immigrants, who in hospitable America soon become landed proprietors
or merchants.
In the country districts, as in the cities, which are every day more
numerous, the common wealth and the fiscal revenues are increasing,
owing to the efforts of industrious men. Not only are foreign
industrial undertakings being founded, but national institutions
also, fed by national capital. When the necessary loans can be
subscribed in the country itself, when railways and ports are
constructed with State or private capital, or with the financial aid
of other South American governments; when American multi-millionaires
(there are already plenty of them in the Argentine) have effected the
nationalisation of the public works now in the hands of foreigners,
then the economic ideal of these democracies will be realised.
Latin America may already be considered as independent from the
agricultural point of view; it possesses riches which are peculiar to
it: coffee to Brazil, wheat to the Argentine, sugar to Peru, fruits
and rubber to the Tropics. Its productive capacity is considerable.
It may rule the markets of the world. The systematic exploitation of
its mines will reveal treasures which are not even suspected. We may
say, then, that even without great industries the American continent,
independent in the agricultural domain, and an exporter of precious
metals, may win a doubtless precarious economic liberty.
[1] Cited by F. Bulnes, _El Verdadero Juarez_, Paris, 1904, p. 29.
{387}
CONCLUSION
AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES
The Panama Canal and the two Americas--The future conflicts between
Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins--The role of Latin America.
A new route offered to human commerce transforms the politics of the
world. The Suez Canal opened the legendary East to Europe, directed
the stream of European emigration towards Australia, and favoured the
formation, in South Africa, of an Anglo-Saxon Confederation. The
Panama Canal is destined to produce profound perturbations in the
equilibrium of the nations of the New World. Humboldt announced
these changes in 1804:[1] "The products of China will be brought more
than 6,000 miles nearer Europe and the United States; great changes
will take place in the political condition of eastern Asia, because
this tongue of earth (Panama) has for centuries been the rampart of
the independence of China and Japan."
The Atlantic is to-day the ocean of the civilised world. The opening
of the canal will thus displace the political axis of the world. The
Pacific, an ocean separated from the civilising currents of Europe,
will receive directly from the Old World the wealth and products of
its labour and its emigrants. Until the present time the United
States {388} and Japan have shared in its rule as a _mare clausum_,
and they are disputing the supremacy in Asia and Western America.
Once the isthmus is pierced, new commercial peoples may invade with
their victorious industries the enchanted lands of Asia and the
distant republics of South America. New York will be nearer to
Callao, but the distance between Hamburg and Havre and the Peruvian
coast will be equally diminished. It has been calculated that by the
new route the voyage between Liverpool and the great ports of the
Pacific will be reduced by 2,600 to 6,000 miles, according to the
respective positions of the latter, and the distance between New York
and the same centres of commercial activity will be diminished by
1,000 to 8,400 miles. German, French, and English navigation
companies will run a service of modern vessels direct to the great
ports of Chili and China. The paths of the world's trade will be
changed; Panama will form the gate of civilisation to Eastern Asia
and Western America, as Suez is to Central Asia, Eastern Africa, and
Oceania. The Atlantic will become the ocean of the Old World.
The trade of the new era must undergo unexpected transformations.
The influence of Europe in China and Western America will be
considerably increased. Germany should become the rival of the
United States in the commercial supremacy in the East and in the
republics of Latin America. Her vessels, messengers of imperialism,
which now make long voyages through the Straits of Magellan to reach
Valparaiso and Callao, will then employ the canal route. The vessels
of Japan will bear to Europe, as formerly did the Phoenician
navigators, the products of the exotic Orient; New York will dethrone
Antwerp, Hamburg, and Liverpool; the English will lose their historic
position as intermediaries between Europe and Asia. The United
States, masters of {389} the canal, will create in New York a great
fair in which the merchandise of East and West will be accumulated:
the treasures of Asia, the gold of Europe, and the products of their
own overgrown industries. They will thus have won an economic
hegemony over the Pacific, South America, and China, where they will
be at least privileged competitors in the struggle between England
and Germany. Between New York and Hong Kong, New York and Yokohama,
and New York and Melbourne new commercial relations will be
established. In approaching New York the East will recede from
Liverpool and the ports of Europe, and the Panama route will favour
the industries of the United States in Asia and Oceania. It may
already be foreseen that the United States will be terrible
competitors in Australia, and above all in New Zealand, where they
will drive the English merchants from the markets. It is difficult
to write, like Tarde, a "fragment of future history"; too many
unknown forces intervene in the historical drama of the peoples. But
no doubt, unless some extraordinary event occurs to disturb the
evolution of the modern peoples, the great nations of industrial
Europe and Japan, the champion of Asiatic integrity, will oppose the
formidable progress of the United States.
The canal sets a frontier to Yankee ambition; it is the southern
line, the "South Coast Line" of which a North American politician,
Jefferson, used to dream. As early as 1809 he believed that Cuba and
Canada would become incorporated, as States of the Union, in the
immense Confederation; anticipating the rude lyrics of Walt Whitman,
he dreamed of founding "an empire of liberty so vast that the like
has never been seen." Heirs to the Anglo-Saxon genius, the Americans
of the North wish to form a democratic federation.
They have succeeded in doing in Cuba what Japan {390} has done in
Korea: first, the struggle for autonomy, then the necessary
intervention, then a protectorate, and perhaps annexation. Thus the
prophecy of Jefferson will be realised. Between Canada, an
autonomous colony, and the United States, there are common economic
interests, and commercial treaties have created such a plexus of
interests that the evolution from these practical alliances to
political union would seem to be a simple matter. The disintegration
of the Anglo-Saxon Empire will be the work of the United States.
American activities in Canada are steadily increasing; the Yankee
capital employed in various Canadian industries amounts to
£20,000,000. Trade is increasing, and by virtue of new conventions
the United States will be even better situated than ever to dispute
the Canadian markets with England. In this free colony there is a
Far West which the States have peopled. The East is Anglo-Saxon,
industrial, aristocratic; the West, barbarian and agrarian, desires
union with the neighbouring democracy. Münsterberg reports that a
Boston journal prints every day, in large letters, on the first page,
that the first duty of the United States is the annexation of Canada.
The friendship of England, and the moral harmony of the
English-speaking world, will perhaps check the progress of American
imperialism northward; but the capital which develops and exploits
the west of Canada is a competitor which cannot be resisted.
Moreover, such men as Goldwin Smith, a moral authority in Canada,
counsel union with the great Republican neighbour. Free trade, which
the English radicals wish to maintain, relaxes the economic ties
which might ensure the duration of the British Empire, and prevents
the formation of a _Zollverein_, of that fiscal union between Great
Britain and her colonies which was the great project of Chamberlain.
It is to guarantee commercial and economic {391} interests that
Canada is approaching the United States and withdrawing from England.
Mexico, where £100,000,000 of American capital is invested; Panama, a
republic subjected to the protectorate of the Anglo-Saxon North; the
Canal Zone, which the Yankees have acquired as a remote southern
possession; the Antilles, which they are gradually absorbing; Central
America, where ever turbulent republics tolerate pacificatory
intervention; and Canada, rich and autonomous, form, for the
statesmen of Washington and the Yellow Press, a great and desirable
empire. In two centuries the small Puritan colonies of the Atlantic
seaboard will perhaps have come to govern the continent from the Pole
to the Tropics; and will create, with the aid of all the races of
mankind, a new Anglo-Saxon humanity, industrial and democratic. Thus
the Roman Republic, from her narrow home between the Apennines,
governed the world, as did Great Britain, peopled by a tenacious
race, the sea.
To check the advance of the United States the South will lack a
political force of the same weight. The conflict between the united
Americans of the North and the divided inhabitants of the South will
necessarily terminate fatally for the Latin New World.
The Pacific will be the theatre of racial wars and vast and
transforming emigrations. Once the canal is open it is extremely
probable that European emigrants will descend in large numbers upon
the seaboard of Western America. Brazil and the Argentine attract
the modern adventurer; their Eldorado is in the Argentine plains or
the forests of Brazil. Venezuela, invaded by emigrants of Germanic
race, will be born again; a dense population will fill her valleys,
and Caracas will become a great Latin city. But in Colombia, Peru,
Ecuador, and Bolivia, there is a great lack of centres of
civilisation in the {392} interior, and the sierra is largely wild
and unpeopled; all progress is in the small towns of the coast, set
amidst the aridity of the desert. Chinese and Japanese, who are
content with low wages, are crushing the European worker by their
competition. Japanese colonies will people the American West from
Panama to Chili, and in these new countries the fusion of Japanese
and Indian blood is by no means impossible.
There will always be two distinct regions in South America, separated
by the Andes and divided by the Tropics. The Atlantic region will
retain its liberty, and increase in wealth and in power. It is
possible that the south of Brazil will become German, but the
Argentine, Chili, Uruguay, and the great Brazilian States will defend
the Latin heritage and European tradition. To the north and the west
depopulated and divided nations will struggle against an invasion of
peoples of similar races coming from the east and against a
conquering people from the north. Thanks to the protection of Japan,
they may be able to free themselves from the tutelage of the United
States, or they may be able to hold off the subjects of the Mikado by
submitting to the influence of North America. Only the federation of
all the Latin republics under the pressure of Europe--that is to say,
of England, France, and Italy, who have important markets in
America--might save the nations of the Pacific, just as a century ago
Great Britain was able to defend the autonomy of these peoples
against the mystic projects of the Holy Alliance.
The Monroe doctrine, which prohibits the intervention of Europe in
the affairs of America and angers the German imperialists, the
professors of external expansion, like Münsterberg, may become
obsolete. If Germany or Japan were to defeat the United States, this
tutelary doctrine would be only a melancholy memory. Latin America
would emerge {393} from the isolation imposed upon it by the Yankee
nation, and would form part of the European concert, the combination
of political forces--alliances and understandings--which is the basis
of the modern equilibrium. It would become united by political ties
to the nations which enrich it with their capital and buy its
products.
Japan has not lost her originality as an Asiatic nation, because she
is united to England by a treaty which assures the _status quo_ in
the East. The Latin republics will not renounce their character as
American nations because they may conclude understandings with the
nations of the West. Already there are commercial treaties between
these nations and Europe, as well as a harmony of economic and
intellectual interests. Brazil and the Argentine, where British
money and French ideals prevail, might themselves unite to form a
vast combination of alliances with the group of European nations
which conquered, civilised, and enriched America: that is, Spain,
France, and England. Will not a community of interests in America
give a new strength to the union of these peoples in Europe? Great
political changes would result from these new influences: the
American Latins, by entering into the combinations of European
politics, would divide Italy, whose interests in the Argentine and
Brazil are so great, from the Triple Alliance, and would strengthen
the understanding between England and France against Germany, which
disputes with them not only the hegemony of Europe but also the
preponderance in America. Canning, who opposed the designs of the
Holy Alliance, used to say a century ago that he had given the New
World liberty in order to restore equilibrium to the Old World.
Against the theocratic peoples who were seeking to overshadow the
destinies of the earth he evoked the apparition of these free
democracies destined to {394} establish the benefits of liberty on a
firm footing. His hope was premature, because it was hardly possible
for perfect republics to rise from the ruins of Spanish absolutism.
Even to-day, after a century of attempts at constitutional
government, only a few Latin American States--the Argentine, Brazil,
Chili, Peru, and Bolivia--seem capable of fulfilling the desires of
Canning.
These peoples would contribute to the defence of the Latin ideal.
But is not this an excessive ambition for nations still
semi-barbarous? The old races of the West contemplate their
impetuous advance with much the same distrust as that which Rome
experienced as she watched the turbulent migrations of Goths and
Germans. And even if the Latin race could check its irremediable
decadence by the aid of the wealth and youth of these American
peoples, would it really be profitable to oppose the triumph of the
Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs for the sake of saving a fallen caste?
Seventy years ago Tocqueville visited the United States and divined
their future greatness. To-day M. Clemenceau, a politician and a
great admirer of the North American Republic, praises the Latin
vigour, as he sees it in Buenos-Ayres, Uruguay, and Rio de Janeiro.
The Yankee republic has realised the prophecies of the former critic,
and it would not be strange if the southern democracies of America
were to confirm the optimism of the latter. A new energy, undeniable
material progress, and a fertile creative faith announce the advent,
in the new continent, if not of the Eldorado of which the hungry
emigrant dreams, at least of wealthy nations, rich in industry and
agriculture; the advent of a world in which the glorious age of the
exhausted Latin world may renew itself, as in the classic fountain.
When Emerson visited England fifty years ago he declared that the
heart of the Britannic race was in the United States, and that {395}
the "mother island," exhausted, would some day, like many parents, be
satisfied with the vigour which she had bestowed upon her own
children.[2] In speaking of Spain and Portugal, might not
Argentines, Brazilians, and Chilians employ the same proud language?
The decadence of the Latins, which seems obvious to the sociologist,
may really be only a long period of abeyance. The adventures in
which such an exuberant force of heroism was expended might well
result in a reaction, a weariness after creation. At the beginning
of the modern period, in the sixteenth century, the English,
undisciplined adventurers, were hostile to the regularity and
monotony of industrial life; in the nineteenth century they built an
empire, organised a powerful industrialism, and became slow and
methodical; and in 1894 Dr. Karl Pearson was uneasy as to "the
decadence of British energy which is revealed by the adoption of
State socialism and by the poverty of mechanical invention."[3]
In the future the Latins may regain their old virility. The
_ricorsi_ which Vico saw in history cause certain peoples to recover
the pre-eminence they have lost, while others, prosperous nations,
fall back into decadence; no privilege is eternal, no reaction is
irremediable and inevitable.
"Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore...."
The imperial policy of Charles V. and Philip II., the conquest of a
continent by the Spaniards, Portuguese, and French, the glorious
festival of the Renaissance, the triumph of Lepanto, the splendid
empire of Venice, the political activity of Richelieu, {396} the
great century of French classicism, the Revolution which proclaimed
the Rights of Man, and the Napoleonic epic, the liberation of Spanish
America: this is the hymn of glory of the Latin race. To-day
Belgium, Italy, and the Argentine give signs of a renaissance of that
race, which men have supposed to be exhausted.
Heirs of the Latin spirit in the moral, religious, and political
domain, the Ibero-American peoples are seeking to conserve their
glorious heritage. The idea of race, in the sense of traditions and
culture, is predominant in modern politics. Flourishing on every
hand, we see Pan-Slavism, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Asianism, Pan-Germanism,
Pan-Latinism--barbarous words which give an indication as to the
struggles of the future. The Slavs of Dalmatia, Germany, Servia, and
Bosnia would reconstitute, with the fragments of many divided
nations, a State which would also be a race. Islam unites divers
peoples by the ardour of a new fanaticism, under the inspiration of
popular Khalifs or marabouts, from Soudan to Fez, from Bombay to
Stamboul. Vast unions of scattered peoples are thus springing into
formation, in the name of a religion or a common origin. Slavs,
Saxons, Latins, and Mongols are contending for the possession of the
world. It is thus that the drama of history becomes simplified;
above the quarrels of precarious nations are rising the profound
antagonisms of millennial races.
Onésime Reclus, in an excellent volume, the _Partage du monde_, has
gone into the respective positions of each of these powerful groups.
The conclusions of his analysis are full of hope; in spite of the
Saxons and Slavs the Latins still hold vast territories, which they
must people. Their geographical position, despite Anglo-Saxon
imperialism and the immense surface of all the Russias of Europe and
Asia, is certainly not inferior.
{397}
There are a hundred million Slavs scattered over an immense Asiatic
and European territory, which stretches from Vladivostock to the
Baltic Sea; two and a half milliards of hectares are waiting for the
children of this prodigious race. By uniting the peoples of Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland to the Germans of
Austria, the German race, whether it propagates the gospel of
Pan-Germanism by commercial penetration or by violence, possesses
about 100 million hectares for 93 millions of men. The Anglo-Saxons,
the natural enemies of German expansion, the rivals of the
_Deutschtum_ in Asia, Africa, and America, rule an almost unlimited
area of milliards of hectares; India, Canada, the United States,
South Africa, Egypt, Australia, conquered territories and kingdoms
held in tutelage, peoples of all faiths and all races. More than 200
millions of Anglo-Saxons people this "greater Britain" without
including India, which is not assimilable.
The territory occupied by the Latin peoples in Europe, America, and
Africa is 3.9 million hectares, inhabited by 250 millions of men; the
number of Latins is thus not really inferior to that of the
Anglo-Saxons, nor are the territories open to Latin expansion
inferior to those reserved for the rival race. With the French
colonies in Asia they amount to 4 milliards of hectares.
Here we have a Latin superiority; by the extent of their territories
and their numbers the Latins outnumber the Slavs and the Germans.
They do not yield to the English either in human capital nor in
wealth of exploitable territory. And England has reached the zenith
of her industrial period, the maximum of her political development;
the figures of the birth-rate in the industrial towns are
diminishing, and emigration has almost ceased. The State is becoming
the protector of a demagogic and decadent {398} crowd. The United
States seek to conquer new territories for their imperialist race.
But the Latins possess in South America a rich and almost uninhabited
continent, and in the north of Africa the French are in process of
founding a colonial empire which will rival Egypt in wealth and
importance, and will reach from Morocco to the Congo and from Dakar
to Tunis.
Reclus calculates that Latin America could feed a hundred persons per
square kilometre. While the natality of the Anglo-Saxon cities of
the Atlantic seaboard in the United States remains stationary the
Latin American population is increasing prodigiously; it is to-day 80
millions, and a century ago, when Humboldt visited the New World, it
was approximately only 15 millions. It is possible that by the last
years of the present century the number of South Americans will have
reached 250 millions; the equilibrium between Latins and Anglo-Saxons
will then be broken in favour of the former.
America is thus an essential factor of the future of the Latin
nations. The destiny of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy would be
different if the 80 millions of Latin Americans were to lose their
racial traditions; if in a century or two America were to pass under
the sceptre of the United States, or if the Germans and Anglo-Saxons
were to attack and oppress the nucleus of civilisation formed by the
Argentine, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. Economically America would
lose markets; intellectually, docile colonies; practically, centres
of expansion. To-day Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Slavs, and Neo-Latins
are balancing forces which may develop in harmony in the framework of
Christian civilisation without wars of conquest and without ambitions
of monopoly. The moral unity of South America would contribute to
the realisation of such an ideal. A new Anglo-Saxon continent
running from Alaska {399} to Cape Horn, built on the ruins of twenty
Spanish republics, would be the presage of a final decadence. In the
struggles of hundreds of years' duration between the Latin States and
the barbarians, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the
French genius and the Teutonic spirit, between the Renaissance and
the Reformation, the Latins would have lost the last battle.
America is a laboratory of free peoples. Dr. Charles W. Eliott,
rector of the great University of Harvard, has studied the
contribution of the United States to modern civilisation.
Arbitration as a universal principle, toleration, universal suffrage,
material well-being, and political liberty seem to him to be the
characteristics of North American culture. In the Latin South we
encounter similar principles. Arbitration is the basis of
international relations; tolerance from the religious point of view
is in process of development. Political liberty is still more a
matter of Constitutions than of custom; but the liberal political
charters, adapted to the principles of modern civilisation, are the
ideal of these republics. When the wilderness is peopled by new
races, democracies will grow to maturity within this scaffolding, and
universal suffrage, individual rights and tolerance will be realities.
In Latin America, above all among the southern nations, one cannot
conceive of the restoration of the old social order, or of despotism
and religious inquisition. The new continent, whether Saxon or
Latin, is democratic and liberal.
If as in the time of the Holy Alliance the theocratic peoples were to
ally themselves--Catholic and warlike Austria, Germany, dominated by
Prussian feudalism, Russia, mystic and formidable--the whole American
continent would be the bulwark of liberty. If Germans and Latins or
Latins and Anglo-Saxtons were to fight between themselves the
overseas {400} democracies would greatly contribute to the vitality
of the Latin race. If in a Europe dominated by Slavs and Germans the
peoples of the Mediterranean were forced to withdraw in painful
exodus towards the blue sea peopled by the Greek islands and symbols
old as the world, it is probable that the ancient myth would be
realised anew, and that the torch which bears the ideal of Latin
civilisation would pass from Paris to Buenos-Ayres or Rio de Janeiro,
as it passed from Rome to Paris in the modern epoch, or from Greece
to Rome in the classic period. America, to-day desert and divided,
would save the culture of France and Italy, the heritage of the
Revolution and the Renaissance, and would thus have justified to the
utmost the fortunate audacity of Christopher Columbus.
[1] _Essai sur le gouvernement de la Nouvelle Espagne_, vol. i.
[2] _Works_, vol. ii. p. 160.
[3] _National Life and Character_, pp. 102 _et seq_.
{401}
INDEX
_Names in italics are those of literary men, philosophers, &c._
NDX
A.B.C., the (federation), 348-9
Aberdeen, Lord, 64
Absolutism, 51
_Acosta_, 247
African elements in Spain, 40-1
African race, _see_ Negroes
Agriculture, 384-5
_Alberdi_, 236
Alcantara, President of Venezuela, 110
Alva, Duke of, 30
America, Anglo-Saxon, 16, _see_ United States
America, South, the conquest of, 16, 44; early Constitutions, 82
Anarchy, military (86-94); leads to dictatorship, 88; spontaneity of,
89; in Colombia, 201; in the tropics, 222-31
Andes, San Martin crosses the, 67
_Andrade_, 183, 256-7
Antilles, the, 222
Arabs in Spain, 40-1
Aranda, 64
_Aranha, Graça_, 268
Arbitration, Court of, 347, 399
Argentine, the, 48, 77-8; first Constitution of, 83; 92 (134-46);
revolution in, 134; early Constitutions, 134; federation of, 135;
democracy in, 135; Constitution of 1826, 137-8
Artigas, 89, 127
Autocracy, follows revolution, 88, 93
_Avellanada_, 255
Ayacucho, 71
_Ayagarray_, 307
Aztecs, the, 47, 53, 149
_BALMES_, 274
Balmaceda, President of Chili, 170-8
_Barreto_, 273
Basques in S. America, 364
Belgrano, 61, 66
_Bello_, 246, 251-2, 272
_Bentham_, 245
_Bilbao_, 236-7
Blanco-Encalada, 125
Bolivar, 61, 63-9; youth of, 70; as general, 71; President, 71;
downfall of, 72; character and principles, 72-80, 81-3, 102, 113,
122-3
Bolivia, 80, 122-6
Bonaparte, 88, 91
_Bourget, Paul_, 15
Boyer, President of Hayti, 229
Brazil (180-90); revolution in, 180; slavery abolished, 189;
revolution in, 189
Buenos Ayres, 65
_Bunge, C. O._, 279
Bustamente, 150-1
Bureaucracy, 376-7
CABILDO, the, 98
California, Japanese in, 326
Canning, 393-4
Canovas, 314
Carabobo, 76
Caracas, Congress of, 348
_Caro_, 253-4
Carrera (Guatemalan), 224
Casimiro-Ulloa, 117
Castes, inimical, 91, 370
Castillo, 115-6
Castro, General, 105
Catholicism in S. America, 286
Caudillos, the, 16, 89, 94-5, 365-70
Central America, 83, 222-6; confederation of, 347
Chamberlain, Mr., 346
Charrua Indians, 131
Chibcha Indians, 47
Chili, 48, 92, 104 (164-79); social revolution in, 178, 342
Chivalry, literature of, 34
Church, the, in the colonies, 52-3
Cid, the, 34
Cities of Spain, 30, 33, 38, 40
Civil wars, 371
Clemenceau, M., 15
Clergy in Spain, 42
Cochrane, Lord, 68
_Coolidge, Professor_, 321, 335
Colombia (201-12); anarchy in, 201; parties, 202-3
Colonies, the Spanish (44-57); life in, 54-7; revolution, 58
Commune in Spain, 38
_Comte_, 274-5
Conquest of S. America, 16
Conquistadores, the, 45-8, 93
Constitutions of Chili and Venezuela, 82; of Bolivia, the Argentine,
and Colombia, 83; of Venezuela, 103; of Chili, 104; of Venezuela,
105; of Colombia, 203-4; of Greater Colombia, 204; of Ecuador, 214;
of Central America, 233
Convention, the French, 88
Cortez, 45
Costa-Rica, 225-6
Creole, the, 29, 50, 59, 360-1
Cuba (313-22); civil war in, 315; purchase mooted, 317; racial
factors, 318
_DARIO, RUBEN_, 261-5
Decadence of conquerors, 44, 50, 85
Democracy in Spain, 37-40; in S. America, 93
_Diaz, G._, 255-6
_Diaz, Leopoldo_, 258
Diaz, President of Mexico, 77, 155-63
Dictators, the, 16
Directory of Buenos Ayres, 82
Don Quixote, 34
ECHENIQUE, President of Peru, 115
_Echeverria_, 254
Economic Problems (378-86); loans, 379, 381; foreign capital, 383
Ecuador, 92-3 (213-21)
Encyclopædists, the, 65, 81
England, policy of, 64; influence of, 83, 390
Equalitarianism, 63
_Estrade, Angel de_, 268
FALCON, President of Venezuela, 106-7
Faustinas I. of Hayti, 229
Federation, in Spain, 35; Bolivar's prophecies of, 77; _see_ Unity
Feijó, Diego, 184-5
Feudal system, 30, 38
Flores, Dictator of Uruguay, 132-3
Flores, J. J., founder of Ecuador, 87, 213
_Fombona, Blanco_, 265, 268
_Fouillée_, 277
_France, Anatole_, 15
France, intellectual influence of, 81-2
Francia, Dr., tyrant of Paraguay, 191-5
Free cities of Spain, 30, 35, 40
GARCIA-MORENO, President of Ecuador, 215-21
German capital, 292-4
German colonists, 291-7
German Emperor, the, 323
German Peril, the, 290-7
Gongorism, 34
Goths, the, 41
Guarani Indians, 191
Guatemala, 223
Guayaquil, 213
_Guizot_, 245
_Guyau_, 278
Guzman-Blanco, Dictator of Venezuela, 101, 106-8; policy of
reconstruction, 108-10; return to power, 110-12
HALF-CASTES, 93, 338; _see_ Mestizos
Hawaii, annexation of 303; Japanese in, 325-6
Hayti, 226-31
Heredity, in the Spanish republics, 97
Hispaniola, 226
_Hostos, E. de_, 272-3
_Hugo, Victor_, 261, 263
_Humboldt_, 50
IBERIANS, 31-2, 40-1
Ibero-Americans, 283-9
Ideology, political, 235-48
Ignatius of Loyola, 33
Incas, the, 47
Independence, wars of, 29, 58-81
Indians, at conquest, 46-8, 91; distribution of, 93, 352-3
Individualism, in Spain, 31-5; in S. America, 88
Industrialism, rise of, 94-6
Inquisition, the, 42, 52
Isthmus, States of the, 77
Itaborahy, 186
Italians in South America, 364
Iturbide, Emperor of Mexico, 61, 82, 149-50
JACOBINISM, 81
Japan, 393
Japanese Peril (323-31); emigrants, 327; spies, 329
_Jaurès_, 15
João VI., 180-2
Juarez, Mexican Dictator, 152-5
Junin, 71,76
Juntas, 30; colonial, 60; revolutionary, 84
KING, _see_ Monarchy
LA PAZ, revolt at, 65
La Plata, confederation of, 343
_Lamartine_, 244-5
Lansdowne, Lord, 83
_Larreta, E. R._, 269
_Lastarria_, 236-9
Latifundia, 92, 98
Latin race, the, 17; future of the, (387-400); decadence of, 395
Latin spirit, the, 17; in S. America, 287-9
Lavalleja, President of Uruguay, 127-9, 131
Law, influence of Spanish, 54
_Lee, Gen. Homer_, 325
Liberators, the, 66
Liniers, 65
Literature, 249-70
Lodges, revolutionary, 65-81
Lopez, Argentine _caudillo_, 89, 139
Lopez, tyrants of Paraguay, 196
Loyola, 33
_Lugones_, 265
MAIA, J. J. de, 82
"Maine," sinking of the, 315
_Marmol_, 254-5
Marti, 315
Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 154-5
Mestizos, 103, 356-60
Mexico, 48; first Constitution of, 83, 92-3 (149-63); intervention of
the French, 153
Militarism, 86-94
_Mill, James_, 272
_Mill, J. S._, 274-5
Miranda, 66, 81, 83
Miscegenation, 48-50; in Peru, 194; _see_ Indians, Mestizos, Negro,
Race
Monagas, J. T. and J. G., Presidents of Venezuela, 103-5
Monagas, J. R., President of Venezuela, 107
Monarchy in Spain, 35-8; its relations at time of revolution with the
revolted colonies, 60-1, 63
Monks, 52-3
Monopoly, 51-2
Monroe Doctrine, 290-1, 302-4, 392
_Montalvo_, 239-40
Montezuma, 48
Montt, President of Chili, 168-9
Mosquera, President of Colombia 206-7
_Münsterberg, Professor_, 294
Mystics of Spain, 33
_NABUCO, J._, 274
Nationality, early phases of, 84
Negroes, first introduction of, 49, 50; distribution of, 53, 355-6,
358-9
_Nervo, A._, 265
New Granada, 77
_Nietzsche_, 278
North American Peril, 298-312
Nuñez, Rafael, President of Colombia, 201, 206-11, 276
_OLMEDO_, 251
Olney, Secretary, 300
Orbegoso, 123
Ordoñez, President of Uruguay, 132
Oribe, President of Uruguay, 129
PACIFIC, Confederation of the, 343
Paez, President of Venezuela, 61, 87, 91, 101-6
_Palma, R._, 267
Panama, 303; the Canal, 387-8
Pando, 126
Paraguay, 191-7; the great war in, 196-7
_Pardo, Felipe_, 252
Pardo, President of Peru, 117-9
Paz, 140
_Pearson, Karl_, 362
Pedro, Dom, I., 182
Pedro, Dom, II., 185-6, 188
Pelucones, 92
Peru, 68, 70-1; first Constitution, 82; 92-3 (113-121); War of
Independence, 113, 342
Philosophy, 271-80
Picaro, the, in literature, 34, 43
Pierola, President of Peru, 120
Pitt, 83
Plutocracy, rise of, 94; future of, 97
Poincaré, R., 14
Political conflict, the, 92; problems, 365-77
Popham, Sir Home, 65
Portales, President of Chili, 118, 124, 165-8
Porto Rico, 303
Portuguese in S. America, 45-6
Posadas, 61
_QUINTANA_, 250, 252
Quiroga, General, 139-40
Quito, 65
RACE, problems of, 283-9, 351-64
Regenerators, the, 87
Renaissance, the, 45
Republics, early S. American, 39, 61
Revolutions, 65-81; ideology of, 81-5; 94
_Reyles, Carlos_, 206-9
Rio Branco, 187
Rivadavia, Dictator of the Argentine, 135-8
Rivera, President of Uruguay, 127-30
Rocafuerte, President of Ecuador, 214
_Rodo, J. E._, 133, 264, 266, 274
Rome, in Spain, 33
Roosevelt, Theodore, 304, 318
Root, Secretary, 300
Rosas, Argentine tyrant, 139-46
_Rousseau, J. J._, influence of, 81
_SALAVERRY_, 123-4, 254
Salisbury, Lord, 300
Salvador, 223
San Domingo, 226-31
San Martin, Protector of Peru, crosses the Andes, 67, 68-9, 72
_San Martin, Zorilla_, 256
Sancho Panza, 53
Santa-Ana, President of Mexico, 150-1
Santa-Cruz, President of Bolivia, 87, 114, 125
Santana, Dictator of San Domingo, 230
Santander, President of Colombia, 87, 205
_Sarmiento_, 242-3
Sierra, the, 91-2
_Silva, J. A._, 265
Slavery, 104; abolished in Brazil, 189
Slavs, the, 394-5, 397
Soublette, 103
Spain, early history of, 30-43; religion in, 33; laws of, in S.
America, 285
_Spencer, Herbert_, 86, 274-6
Stoicism, 33
Sucre, 70-1, 213
TAFT, President, 320
Tammany Hall, 301, 320
Teresa, Saint, 33
Territorial overlords, 97-8
"Thirty-three, the," 128
Toussaint Louverture, 228-9
Trade, future of, 388-9
Tyranny, advantages of, 96
_UGARTE, MANUEL_, 266
United States, supremacy of, 299 intervention in South and Central
America, 303-4; race troubles in, 308, 311; future influence of, 390-1
Unity, problems of, 335-50
Urbina, President of Ecuador, 215!
Uruguay, 127-33
VALENCIA, Convention of, 105
Varas, 168
Vargas, Dr., President of Venezuela, 102
Velasco, 125-6
Venezuela, 82, 92-3, 101-3; civil war in, 106; revolution of 1870, 108
_Verlaine_, 263
Viceroys, the, 51
_Vivanco_, 115
_Voltaire_, 81
WASHINGTON, 82
Weyler, 315
Wood, General, 318-9
YEGROS, Consul of Paraguay, 192
ZALDUA, DR., President of Colombia, 211
Zambos, 358-9
Zollverein, 305-6, 346, 349
ENDX
The Gresham Press
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED,
WOKING AND LONDON
THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES.
Demy 8vo, Cloth.
VOL. I.--CHILE.
By G. F. SCOTT ELLIOT, M.A., F.R.G.S., Author of "A NATURALIST IN
MID-AFRICA." With an Introduction by MARTIN HUME, a Map, and 39
Illustrations.
"An exhaustive and interesting account, not only of the turbulent
history of this country, but of the present conditions and seeming
prospects, ... and the characters of the Chileno and English and
German colonists there."--_Westminster Gazette_.
VOL. II.--PERU.
By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S., Author of "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON."
With an Introduction by MARTIN HUME, a Map, and 72 Illustrations.
"An important work.... The writer possesses a quick eye and a keen
intelligence, is many-sided in his interests, and on certain subjects
speaks as an expert. The volume deals fully with the development of
the country.... Illustrated by a large number of excellent
photographs."--_Times_.
VOL. III.--MEXICO.
By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an Introduction by MARTIN HUME, a
Map, and 64 full-page Illustrations.
"Mr. Enock unites to a terse and vivid literary style the commercial
instinct and trained observation of a shrewd man of
affairs."--_Aberdeen Free Press_.
"Mr. Enock transmutes the hard material of ancient chronicles into
gleaming romance; he describes scenery with a poet's skill. Full of
charm he makes his pages, alluring as a fairy tale, an epic stirring
and virile."--_Manchester City News_.
VOL. IV.--ARGENTINA.
By W. A. HIRST. With an Introduction by MARTIN HUME, a Map, and 64
Illustrations.
"The best and most comprehensive of recent works on the greatest and
most progressive of the Republics of South America."--_Manchester
Guardian_.
"In the treatment of both the main divisions of a complex theme, the
historical and descriptive, Mr. Hirst shows judgment and skill that
are decidedly rare.... Mr. Hirst's exceedingly able and interesting
book."--_Westminster Gazette_.
"A very interesting and trustworthy survey of the present conditions
and prospects of the country."--_Times_.
VOL. V.--BRAZIL.
By PIERRE DENIS. With Historical Chapter by BERNARD MIALL, a Map, and
36 Illustrations.
"It is a mine of information, arranged with all the lucidity of a
Frenchman; and in one case, in the long chapter devoted to the
valorization of coffee, the treatment deserves to be called
masterly."--_Globe_.
VOL. VI.--URUGUAY.
By W. H. KOEBEL. With a Map and 55 Illustrations.
VOL. VII.--GUIANA: BRITISH, FRENCH, AND DUTCH.
By JAMES RODWAY. With a Map and 36 Illustrations.
VOL. VIII.--VENEZUELA.
By LEONARD DALTON, F.G.S., F.R.G.S. With a Map and 34 Illustrations.
VOL. IX.--LATIN AMERICA: ITS RISE AND PROGRESS.
By F. GARCIA CALDERON. With a Preface by RAYMOND POINCARÉ, Prime
Minister of France, a Map, and 34 Illustrations.
VOL. X.--COLOMBIA.
By P. J. EDER. With 2 Maps and 40 Illustrations.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, by
F. Garcia Calderon
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN AMERICA: ITS RISE AND PROGRESS ***
***** This file should be named 62541-8.txt or 62541-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/5/4/62541/
Produced by Al Haines
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country outside the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
are located before using this ebook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
provided that
* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation."
* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
works.
* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
