probably reduced by 50 or 75 per cent in a few generations, and in
the West Indies it was exterminated. Since then it has been steadily
regaining ground on the mainland, though not in the islands, in many of
which the Negro has replaced it.
The number of Spaniards who came at any time to Mexico is placed at
300,000 at the outside. Many of these certainly did not remain in the
country and few of them brought their families. Under the conditions
that existed in Mexico and the other conquered territories, it was
universally recognized that the situation was not suitable for a white
woman. While the Spanish Government encouraged men to take their wives
out from Spain, few of them cared to do so, and probably most of the
men who came to the colonies were unmarried. Spain put insuperable
difficulties in the way of unmarried women who wanted to emigrate,
so that Spanish women throughout the history of Mexico were few. The
resulting population is therefore made up of the offspring of the
Indians and of a few Spanish men mated to Indian women. Most of the
Mexican population is still pure or nearly pure Indian. There is a
considerable hybrid element which does most of the talking, and a
negligible element that can be considered white in the strict sense of
the term.
Mexican statistics commonly designate about 10 per cent of the
population as white. But most of these have much Indian blood, and
recent students doubt whether 3 per cent are properly to be described
as white. Much of this genuine white element is in Mexico City, though
the various states have their local and reputable white aristocracies,
of which that in Yucatan is conspicuous for the maintenance of high
standards of racial integrity.
The Mexican revolution which began in 1810 dislodged the overseas
Spanish and substituted exploitation by the local hybrid group. Since
then the general trend has been toward the rise to control of the
Indians. The last period of revolution, which began in 1910 and may
be said to be still in progress, has been marked by attempts to take
away from the hybrid oligarchy the immense land properties which it had
obtained and to distribute them to the Indians. While this has met with
many difficulties, and has been realized only to a small extent, it has
been at least the avowed objective of most of the revolutionists in the
past two or three decades.
During recent years there has been a glorification of the Mexican
Indian and his culture by North American writers. No doubt the Mexican
Indian is well suited to his environment, and his traditional habits
are well suited to him. This does not mean, however, that either has
any important contribution to make to the United States which would be
realized by a northward mass migration of agricultural and industrial
serfs. On the contrary, the Mexican immigration to the United States,
which is made up overwhelmingly of the poorer Indian element, has
brought nothing but disadvantages. It has created, particularly in the
Southwestern States, an exploited peasant class unconformable with
the principles of American civilization. This population, neither
physically nor mentally up to the prevailing standards, is producing a
large contribution to the future American race, since every one of its
numerous children born in the States becomes an American citizen by
birth.
Tests made in the schools of southern California, in which the language
handicap was discounted as far as possible, indicate that the average
Mexican child was about as far below the average Negro child in
abstract intellect as the average Negro child was below the average
white child.
Physically, the race is conspicuous by its low resistance to
tuberculosis, which has exterminated so large a part of the native
population of the Western Hemisphere during the last four centuries.
The New World had not been subject to tuberculosis and therefore
offered a fertile field for the germs of this disease. The population
of the Old World had been ravaged by it for many centuries, and in each
generation the low resistants had been killed off so that a more immune
stock had been gradually produced by natural selection.
Such studies as have been made in the Southwestern States indicate
that the average Mexican family is at least half again as large as
the average white family. Thus there is every reason to expect that,
without a sharp limitation of such immigration, the Southwest will
become more and more Mexicanized.
By 1928 Los Angeles County had more than a quarter of a million
Mexicans, and the City of Los Angeles had the largest Mexican
population of any city in the world, with the exception of Mexico
City. Whole industries and whole agricultural areas had come to
think themselves largely dependent on Mexican labor, while millions
of American citizens were out of employment in every State of the
Union. The dependence of agriculture in the Southwestern States on
cheap Mexican labor, largely of a migratory nature, is particularly
disastrous from a racial point of view, since the maintenance of
American civilization depends largely on the maintenance of a healthy
and prosperous farm population.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF MEXICANS
_The figures represent distribution of Mexicans by states per 100000
of population in 1930_
Distribution of Mexicans by States. Except in the border States
Mexicans are chiefly concentrated in large urban centers.]
Nearly all of the Mexicans who came to the United States were seeking
to better themselves economically and to avoid the murder and plunder
that had been going on in their country for a score of years under
the guise of revolution. Most of them intended to return home as soon
as conditions became more satisfactory, but as conditions from year
to year failed to improve, the Mexican population tended to become a
permanent one. At the same time few of the Mexicans became American
citizens, and in every community where they settled in racial groups
there were unsatisfactory standards of education and sanitation.
Most of the Mexicans come with their families, thereby differing
markedly from some of the other foreign groups, as the Bulgarians,
Greeks, Spanish, and Filipinos, which consist mainly of unmarried men.
These latter either return home after making money, or else intermarry
with the other immigrant groups. The Mexican community, on the other
hand, perpetuates itself and increases without much intermarriage with
the other population.
Since the depression beginning in 1929 there has been a repatriation of
a portion of the Mexican immigration of unknown size but undoubtedly
considerable. Lack of work has led many to go home where they can live
more economically and be among friends, and at the same time American
authorities began to offer free transportation back to Mexico for
those dependent on public charity, and willing to leave. Thus trainload
after trainload returned, and at the same time a tightening of the
immigration restrictions and procedures on the border cut down the flow
of immigrants to almost nothing.
While the census of 1930 counted nearly a million and a half Mexicans
in the United States, it is probable that the number has since then
diminished, and it is of highest importance that it should not be
allowed to increase. The Mexican Indian has no racial qualities to
contribute to the United States population that are now needed, and
if he has any cultural contribution to make it will not be made by
the immigration of hundreds of thousands of illiterate and destitute
laborers.
* * * * *
Guatemala. More than half of the population of Guatemala is still pure
Indian, and the half breed class which plays such an important part in
Mexico and other countries is relatively less conspicuous there. The
inconsiderable white population is made up in part of the descendants
of old Spanish families and in part from more recent immigrants,
especially Germans.
The proportion of Teutonic names among the rulers of Guatemala during
the last generation has been growing steadily. With two million
population Guatemala is the most powerful of the Central American
countries, but the Indians tend to be little more than a subject race
exploited by others, and the general progress of the country is
therefore in some ways slow.
* * * * *
Honduras suffers partly from its tropical situation but still more
from the mixture of races, and the large amount of Negro blood in
the population of the lowlands. By contrast with Guatemala the
Indian element is here unimportant, and the people are Negroes and
half-breeds, or a little of each. With its 600,000 population largely
of mongrel origin, the Republic has been a backward member of the
Central American group throughout most of its history. British Honduras
is an unimportant area with much the same characteristics. The
so-called Caribs along the coast are now scarcely distinguishable from
pure Negroes.
* * * * *
Salvador. Smaller than the State of New Jersey, Salvador has an
importance out of proportion to its size because of the dense
population and large amount of cultivable land together with a smaller
amount of Negro mixture than in the adjoining Republics. With a
population estimated at a million and a half (such a thing as a real
census is almost unknown in Latin American countries), its people are
largely of mixed blood with the Indian predominating, but the number of
pure-blooded Indians is not large compared with Guatemala.
* * * * *
Nicaragua, a synonym for turbulence in the minds of Americans, has also
a population of highly mixed character. The Indians did not remain a
distinct group as in Guatemala, nor were they largely exterminated as
in Costa Rica. They were absorbed into a half-breed population of more
than 600,000 which has also in the lowlands a large Negro admixture.
The upper classes of more or less remote European ancestry have
maintained a semi-feudal political dominance that has been disastrous
to the welfare of the country, and it is doubtful whether the Yankee
influence, which during the last generation has been stronger in
Nicaragua than in any of the other Latin American states except Panama,
has been particularly useful.
* * * * *
Costa Rica has always prided itself on being the whitest of the Central
American Republics, and its history of relative peace and prosperity
reflects this fact. Apart from a fringe of Indians and Negroes in
the lowlands, the population of nearly 500,000 is concentrated in a
beautiful and healthful inland region. The Indians of the country
having been driven out or destroyed at an early day, the settlers of
Costa Rica were unable to live as parasites exploiting serfs as did the
upper classes in some of the other Central American countries, but were
forced to settle on the land and work out their own salvation. While
they were therefore considered in colonial days to be in a pitiable
situation, the result was highly advantageous in the long run, for it
has given the country a more nearly genuine population of citizens
prepared to contribute to the progress and welfare of the country.
A large part of the Spanish blood in Costa Rica is supposed to be
Galician, and therefore to have a considerable Nordic infusion. The
Gallegos, as natives of this part of the Iberian Peninsula are called,
are one of the most law-abiding and hard-working of the numerous
peoples that comprise the Spanish Republic, and their descendants in
Costa Rica reflect credit on their origin. In most of the other Latin
American countries the Spanish element is supposed to be largely from
Andalusia and therefore quite different in make-up, with a noteworthy
Moorish element.
* * * * *
Panama with its hybrid population of half a million, largely Negro in
composition, is unimportant in the picture of Latin America. North
American influence has transformed it economically, but cannot change
mongrels into a sound and vigorous stock.
* * * * *
Colombia has large numbers of Negroes in the hot lowlands, but the
bulk of the six million population is Indian with a slight infusion
of European blood. The upper class of Colombia represents the results
of geographical isolation, the region until recently having been
inaccessible; and by virtue of a sort of intellectual inbreeding it has
long been the most conservative and least touched by foreign influence
of all the Latin American "aristocracies." The upper-class Colombian
prides himself with reason on the purity of his Spanish blood, and
still lives to a large degree in the memories of the ancient colonial
period. In Bogotá there is an intense anti-Negro social sentiment. The
isolation of the half-breeds in Colombia has come nearer to producing a
new racial group than is to be found elsewhere in Latin America.
* * * * *
Venezuela, in spite of its nearly three million inhabitants, is an
unimportant country, largely hybrid with extensive Negro infiltrations.
As in many other Latin American countries, the number of Whites is
officially put down as about 10 per cent, but as in most such instances
it is doubtful whether one resident in fifty can properly be called a
white man, except by courtesy.
* * * * *
Guiana. The three Guianas, British, French, and Dutch, represent one of
the least attractive parts of South America in almost every way.
British Guiana has 300,000 inhabitants of whom one-third are Negroes,
another third Orientals, mostly Hindu, and the remainder is largely
made up of crosses between these two elements, of a few thousand native
Indians, and of a handful of Whites.
Dutch Guiana has a population well under a hundred thousand, largely
Orientals imported to furnish coolie labor and including Hindus,
Javanese, and Chinese. There are many Negroes and a couple of thousand
Whites.
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
French Guiana differs from the Dutch settlement mainly in being
smaller, its population being not much more than 30,000, including
many convicts or ex-convicts, for this has long been a French penal
settlement.
* * * * *
Brazil with a territory larger than the continental United States
differs from its neighbors in many striking ways, apart from the fact
that it was settled by Portuguese, not Spanish, and that its language
and culture are therefore Portuguese rather than Spanish.
The Indian population was killed off or driven westward by the early
settlers just as in the United States, so that it is now confined
largely to the untracked and almost unpopulated forests of the
Amazonian Basin, where perhaps a couple of a million aborigines may
still exist.
To provide labor the Portuguese imported slaves from Africa, and
then fused with them to produce the present-day pre-dominantly Negro
population. The Portuguese here thus repeated the experience of the
mother country. During the great years of Portuguese exploration and
colonization in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries,
it has been estimated that a million Portuguese, mainly young men,
went to the tropics, and for the most part never came back. Negroes
were imported to take their places and to do the work of the country.
Intermarriage of these Negroes with the old population left Portugal
with a larger amount of Negro blood than any other European country,
and greatly impaired its ability to contribute to the progress of
civilization. Thus Portugal, which, when dominated by the Nordics, had
set an extraordinary example of progress in many ways, now contributes
relatively little to such progress and only the rebirth of a reasonable
pride of race, and the application of a sound eugenics program will
enable it to regain a position of leadership.
History has repeated itself in Brazil. The salvation of Brazil has been
the arrival during the past century of European immigrants. Thousands
of Germans poured into the Highlands of the Southern States where large
regions have an almost Teutonic civilization at the present time. If a
false interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine had not helped to interfere
with this process, the results for South America might have been most
beneficial.
But the main currents of immigration have been from Latin countries of
the Old World. During the past century Brazil has received more than
four million foreigners, of whom a million and a half were Italians,
a million and a quarter Portuguese, and half a million Spanish. Thus
more than three-fourths of the immigration has been from the Latin
countries, and only about a quarter of a million from Germany and
Austria. Since the World War this overwhelming migration from the Latin
countries has slowed down. The German migration has, on the contrary,
increased.
Brazil thus consists of two distinct areas: a relatively small,
fertile, and healthful highland region in the south, where the main
activities of the country are carried on largely under the influence
of Mediterranean and Alpine immigrants; and a huge tropical area given
over mainly to the Negro and Mulatto element and the Indians.
With a population of somewhere around 30,000,000 Brazil is not only the
largest of the South American republics, but nearly as large as all the
rest of them put together.
The future of Brazil depends largely on the nature of its immigration
policy during the next generation or two and on the acceptance of a
workable program of eugenics. Fortunately, no South American country
has taken up such a policy with more interest than has this great
republic. It still possesses an aristocracy which has maintained its
racial purity, but this is probably too small a nucleus alone to
regenerate the whole body politic.
* * * * *
Uruguay. Crossing the boundary from Brazil to Uruguay, one sees a new
picture. Uruguay is almost entirely white. Indeed, this whole region
of La Plata is one of the future dominant areas of the New World. It
contains less Negro blood than does, relatively, the United States. Not
only have Negroes been largely kept out, but the remnants of Indian
tribes have become inconspicuous, as on the plains of the Mississippi
Valley, where the Indians, mere nomads with a negligible culture, were
driven back by the march of civilization. The striking parallel between
the settlement of this region and that of the Western States of North
America is often pointed out. Each was a sheep and cattle country, and
then farmers took up land and developed it into a region of prosperity
and great potentialities.
Uruguay has a cosmopolitan population almost wholly of European
origin. Since the World War it has attracted not only a large part of
the Spanish emigration but also large numbers of Italians, French,
Germans, and others. The earlier immigration was largely of North
Italians, mainly of Alpine blood with slight Nordic infusion. The total
population of the country is now well over a million and a half.
A wise selection of immigration from now on will still further increase
the influence of this small republic, and set a good example for all of
South America.
* * * * *
Argentina represents one of the striking examples of a nation built up
rapidly by foreign immigration. Nearly 85 per cent of its people are
foreign-born or the descendants of recent immigration, with Italians
forming by far the largest group. Moreover, the Argentine Republic
has attracted the vigorous population of North Italy, which racially
is mainly Alpine but still has a Nordic element, and forms a striking
contrast to the population of South Italian and Sicilian immigrants
that have filled up the slums of North American cities. The North
Italians are more akin to the Swiss and the South Germans than they are
to the South Italians.
Non-whites do not amount to 5 per cent of the population. The total
population of something like 10,000,000 makes the Argentine Republic
second only to Brazil in size in South America, and in every respect,
except size, it easily takes first rank.
The racial composition of this extraordinary nation with its
ultra-modern civilization, and its get-rich-quick atmosphere, deserves
more extended treatment than can be given here. The English, though not
the most numerous, have taken the first place in its financial world.
French immigrants, though fewer in number, have become a very important
factor in the progress of its civilization. A hundred thousand Germans
have settled in the country and form the backbone of many regions.
Since the war Argentina has been one of the principal destinations of
citizens of the former Central Empires who were going overseas. The
spirit of the civilization has attracted many Jews. More than 160,000
immigrants during the last two generations are credited to Russia,
and almost an equal number to Turkey. These last, however, were Turks
only by force and were actually Christian Syrians from the Lebanon who
became so completely identified with the retail trade of the country
that the colloquial name for a small grocery store is "Turco."
All of these elements together do not begin to measure in importance
with the Spanish and Italian elements. But in recent years new currents
have set in which, if continued, will profoundly modify the character
of the country by introducing a large number of Slavs, particularly
Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, and Lithuanians, together with the
Slavic element among the Germans. Before the World War the immigration
to Argentina was about seven-eighths from the Latin countries, but
since then these have furnished only about two-thirds.
Argentina therefore represents a white population largely Alpine and
Mediterranean with a considerable Nordic element. It is doubtful
whether it stands to gain by allowing Alpines to increase, particularly
if this brings in different types of culture and traditions. Argentina
might well profit by the mistakes of the United States and immediately
orient its immigration policy along sound logical and constructive
lines.
* * * * *
Chile, unlike the Indo-Spanish countries just south of the United
States, is also a white man's country. The pure Indians are a vanishing
minority. The Spanish and dominant element is largely made up of
Basques, but there has been a substantial addition of British, whose
influence is important in commerce and industry, and of Germans, who
have dominated the army and education, and have been an important
factor in agriculture. Chile, with four million population, is
therefore the least Latin of any of the countries south of the United
States. The progressiveness and prosperity of the region have long
attracted the attention of every traveller.
* * * * *
Bolivia is another of the pre-dominantly Indian countries which have
made little contribution to the world. The number of Whites here is
negligible. Immigration has never been important and the Bolivian has
developed a provincial arrogance and hostility to foreigners which is
as prejudicial to his own interests as it is unwarranted. Scarcely
one-fifth of the people even speak Spanish in their daily life, and
two-thirds are primitive Indians, the others being hybrids of varying
degrees.
* * * * *