ARGENTINE INDEPENDENCE AND SPANISH-AMERICAN SOLIDARITY
On the 25th of May, 1910, the Argentine nation in general, and Buenos
Aires in particular, observed with appropriate ceremonies the one
hundredth anniversary of their independence. Great preparations were
made to insure a celebration that should suitably represent the
importance of the event.
In 1810 Buenos Aires had been a Spanish colony for two hundred and fifty
years following her foundation in the sixteenth century. But the Spanish
crown had never valued highly the great rolling prairies drained by the
Rio de la Plata. There were no mines of gold or silver here, and Spain
did not send her colonists into far-away America to raise corn and wine
that should compete with Spanish farmers at home. Buenos Aires was
regarded as the end of the world. All persons and all legitimate
commerce bound thither from Spain were obliged to go by way of Panama
and Peru, over the Andes, across the South American continent, before
they could legally enter the port of Buenos Aires. The natural result of
this was the building up of a prosperous colony of Portuguese smugglers
in southern Brazil. Another result was that no Spaniards cared to live
so far away from home if they could possibly help it, and society in
Buenos Aires was not nearly so brilliant as in the fashionable
Spanish-American capitals of Lima, Santiago, or Bogotá.
During the closing years of the eighteenth century the Spaniards became
convinced of their short-sighted policy and made Buenos Aires an open
port. The English were not slow to realize that this was one of the best
commercial situations in South America, and that far from being the end
of the world, as the Spaniards thought, it was a natural centre through
which the wealth of a large part of South America was bound to pass. The
great Mr. Pitt, who was most interested in developing British commerce
with South America, felt that it would probably be necessary to
introduce British manufactures in the wake of a military expedition, and
decided to seize Buenos Aires, which was so poorly defended that it
could easily be captured by a small resolute force.
Accordingly in June, 1806, an attack was made. The Viceroy,
notwithstanding repeated warnings, had made no preparations to defend
the city, and it was captured without difficulty. There was great
rejoicing in London at the report of the victory, but it was soon turned
to dismay by the news of a disgraceful and unconditional surrender. The
sudden overthrow of the English was due largely to the ability of a
local hero named Liniers who played successfully on the wounded pride of
the Porteños.
The significance of the episode is that it gave to the Porteños the idea
that the power of Spain could be easily overthrown, and that they
actually had the courage and strength to win and hold their own
independence.
Hardly had the city recovered from the effects of its bombardment by the
English before events, destined to produce a profound change throughout
South America, commenced to attract attention in Spain. Napoleon
inaugurated his peninsula campaigns, and the world beheld the spectacle
of a Spanish king become the puppet of a French emperor. In July, 1809,
a new Viceroy, appointed by the Spanish cortes then engaged in fighting
against Napoleon, took possession of the reins of government in Buenos
Aires. In the early months of 1810, Napoleon’s armies were so successful
throughout the Spanish peninsula that it seemed as if the complete
subjection of Spain was about to be accomplished.
On May 18, the unhappy Viceroy allowed this news from Spain to become
known in the city. At once a furor of popular discussion arose. Led by
Belgrano and other liberal young Creoles, the people decided to defy
Napoleon and his puppet king of Spain as they had defied the soldiers of
England. On the 25th of May, the Viceroy, frightened out of his wits,
surrendered his authority, and a great popular assembly that crowded the
plaza to its utmost capacity appointed a committee to rule in his stead.
So the 25th of May, 1810, became the actual birthday of Argentina’s
independence, although the acts of the popular government were for six
years done in the name of Ferdinand, the deposed king of Spain, and the
Act of Independence was not passed by the Argentine Congress until
1816.
No sooner had Buenos Aires thrown off the yoke of Spain than she began
an active armed propaganda much as the first French republic did before
her. Other cities of Argentina were forcibly convinced of the advantages
of independence, and the armies of Buenos Aires pressed northward into
what is now southern Bolivia. It was their intention to drive the
Spanish armies entirely out of the continent, and what seemed more
natural than that they should follow the old trade route which they had
used for centuries, and go from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of the
highlands of Bolivia and Peru. But they reckoned without counting the
cost. In the first place the Indians of those lofty arid regions do not
take great interest in politics. It matters little to them who their
masters are. Furthermore, their country is not one that is suited to
military campaigns. Hundreds of square miles of arid desert plateaux ten
or twelve thousand feet above the sea, a region suited only to support a
small population and that by dint of a most careful system of
irrigation, separated by frightful mountain trails from any adequate
basis of supplies, were obstacles that proved too great for them to
overcome. Their little armies were easily driven back. On the other
hand, when the royalist armies attempted to descend from the plateaux
and attack the patriots, they were equally unsuccessful. The truth is
that southern Bolivia and northern Argentina are regions where it is far
easier to stay at home and defend one’s self than to make successful
attacks on one’s neighbors. An army cannot live off the country as it
goes along, and the difficulties of supplying it with provisions and
supplies are almost insurmountable. The first man to appreciate this was
José San Martin.
It is not too much to say that San Martin is the greatest name that
South America has produced. Bolivar is better known among us, and he is
sometimes spoken of as the “Washington of South America.” But his
character does not stand investigation; and no one can claim that his
motives were as unselfish or his aims as lofty as those of the great
general to whose integrity and ability the foremost republics of Spanish
South America, Argentina, Chile, and Peru, owe their independence.
San Martin was born of Spanish parents not far from the present boundary
between Argentina and Paraguay. His father was a trusted Spanish
official. His mother was a woman of remarkable courage and foresight.
His parents sent him to Spain at an early age to be educated. Military
instincts soon drew him into the army and he served in various
capacities, both in Africa and later against the French in the
peninsula. He was able to learn thoroughly the lessons of war and the
value of well-trained soldiers. He received the news of the popular
uprising in Argentina while still in Spain, and soon became interested
in the struggles of his fellow-countrymen to establish their
independence. In 1812 he returned to Buenos Aires where his unselfish
zeal and intelligence promptly marked him out as an unusual leader. The
troops under him
[Illustration: THE USPALLATA PASS]
became the best-drilled body of patriots in South America.
After witnessing the futile attempts of the patriots to drive the
Spanish armies out of the mountains of Peru by way of the highlands of
Bolivia, he conceived the brilliant idea of cutting off their
communication with Spain by commanding the sea power of the West Coast.
He established his headquarters at Mendoza in western Argentina, a point
from which it would be easy to strike at Chile through various passes
across the Andes. Here he stayed for two years governing the province
admirably, building up an efficient army, organizing the refugees that
fled from Chile to Mendoza, making friends with the Indians, and keeping
out of the factional quarrels that threatened to destroy all proper
government in Buenos Aires. In January, 1817, his army was ready. He led
the Spaniards to think that he might cross the Andes almost anywhere,
and succeeded in scattering their forces so as to enable him to bring
the main body of his army over the most practical route, the Uspallata
Pass.
The expedition was successful, and in 1818 San Martin had the
satisfaction of administering such a decisive defeat to the Spaniards at
Maipo as to insure Chilean independence. With the aid of a remarkable
soldier of fortune, Thomas Cochran, Earl of Dundonald, and an
interesting group of Anglo-Saxon seamen, San Martin drove the Spaniards
from the West Coast and captured the city of Lima. The aid which was
given him by Buenos Aires and Chile was not sufficient to enable him to
penetrate the great Andes of the interior and totally destroy the last
Spanish army. He sought Bolivar’s aid, but that proud Liberator would
only come as Commander-in-chief. So, rather than sacrifice the cause of
independence, San Martin, with unexampled self-effacement, gave up his
well-trained veterans to Bolivar and Sucre and quietly withdrew to his
modest home in Argentina. His unwillingness to enter into political
squabbles, his large-minded statesmanship, and his dignified bearing did
not endear him to his fellow countrymen, and he was forced to pass the
declining years of his life in Europe, an exile from his native land.
The history of the period is full of petty personal rivalries and absurd
political squabbles. Against these as a background the magnificent
figure of San Martin, efficient soldier, wise statesman, and unselfish
patriot, stands out plainly distinct. His achievements are worthy to be
remembered with those of the greatest heroes of history. His character,
the finest that South America has ever produced, has few equals in the
annals of any country.
For many years he was disliked by his fellow patriots because he openly
expressed the belief that they were not fit for pure democratic
government. Since his day many South Americans agree with him.
The most serious criticism, however, which we can lay at the door of the
South American is his lack of political cohesion. The border provinces
are everlastingly rebelling against the decrees of the central
government. Furthermore, when the Spanish colonies secured their
independence, they either did not combine or else combining soon fell
apart. The reason for this lack of solidarity may be found in the
history of the Hispanic race and in the geographical conditions that
exist in the southern continent.
In criticising South American habits of mind and political tendencies,
one must remember that the moral and intellectual characteristics that
form the soul of a people have been developed by its entire past and
represent the inheritance of its ancestors. For the motives of its
conduct, one must look to its history.
Historically, the Hispanic race was led to develop individualistic
rather than coöperative action. The forces at work in the peninsula were
centrifugal rather than centripetal. A small handful of brave
mountaineers were almost the only inhabitants of the peninsula that were
able to defy the Moorish conquerors. The process of the Christian
re-conquest of Spain was so slow that it took nearly eight centuries for
her to grow from the lonely, rocky fastness of Covadonga to the group of
Christian kingdoms that embraced the entire peninsula. During these
eight hundred years, preceding the Conquest of America, the Spaniards
fought almost continuously against an ever-present enemy. This developed
a strong municipal spirit, for the towns on the frontier were in
constant danger of attacks from the Moors, and it was necessary to grant
them very considerable powers. As the boundaries of Christian Spain
extended southward, new cities came to be frontier posts, but the old
ones retained the powers and the semi-independence they had previously
gained.
The result was a race of men devoted primarily to their cities; only
secondarily to the province or kingdom to which their city belonged, and
quite incidentally to Spain as a geographical and linguistic unit. Such
a racial tendency could not help developing that disregard of large
national interests in preference to petty local concerns which has been
a most unfortunate trait in the history of the South American republics.
For while it may be true that the conception of the city as the soul of
the native country has always been effective from the point of view of
the development of civilization, it has been disastrous in its effect on
national progress. It was just that loyalty to the municipality that
prevented the growth of the Greek Empire.
Another result of the eight hundred years of Christian warfare against
the infidel Moor, was the development of moral and physical qualities
that made possible the marvellously rapid conquest of America by small
companies of _conquistadores_. Brave, bigoted, courageous, accustomed to
continuous hostilities, ardently devoted to a cause for which they were
willing to lay down their lives, fighting to the last ditch, it is not
surprising that the ancestors of the South Americans were able to
achieve such wonderful results in the early sixteenth century.
Only a vigorous and rising nation could have accomplished the great work
of exploring, conquering, and colonizing America which was done at that
time.
As a matter of fact, a wonderful transformation was then taking place in
Spain. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella had united by personal
bonds what had formerly been a handful of detached kingdoms. These
countries each had their own laws, their own peculiar customs and
separate administrative systems. Some of the provinces were inhabited by
people of different stock. The process of unification was almost
contemporaneous with the conquest and colonization of America.
For a career destined to be as great as that of any of the larger
empires of history, Spain had at the beginning of the colonizing period
an inadequate political organization. Spanish racial unity and religious
uniformity were of recent growth. The European progenitors of the
conquerors did not fight for Spain as a whole, but rather as citizens of
a municipality or as vassals of a petty king. The spirit of a
centralized, unified government whose citizens are willing to sacrifice
everything for the sake of their nation, did not run in their blood.
They belonged to a fragmentary and embryonic group of nations. Spain did
not adopt a policy of centralization long enough before the acquisition
of her American colonies to allow the results of such a change in
methods of government to affect popular habits of thought. In the
meantime, South America was being colonized by men who had no sense of
racial unity and few tendencies towards concerted political action.
Hence it is not at all surprising that their descendants, the heroes of
the Wars of Emancipation, did not find it easy or natural to unite under
one government. It was in accordance with the history of their race that
they should form separate political establishments. It was also in
accordance with that Spanish colonial policy which forbade
communication between the different colonies and in no way encouraged a
community of interests.
Historically then, there was little to cause the South American colonies
on achieving their independence, to unite, even had they not been
separated by tremendous natural obstacles.
Although the basins of the Amazon, the La Plata, and the Orinoco offered
many thousands of miles of navigable highways, the masses of water were
too copious and too irregular to be controlled until the era of steam
navigation. In the great valleys east of the Andes, the excessive
fertility of the soil has produced an enormous area of continuous
woodlands, a mass of vegetation that has defied the efforts of centuries
to effect clearings and roads. This densely timbered and sparsely
inhabited region keeps Venezuela from having any dealings with Bolivia
more effectually than if an absolute desert lay between them.
There is nothing that separates one of the United States from another
that is at all comparable to the lofty chain of the Andes and the
impenetrable jungle that lies for hundreds of miles on the eastern slope
of the Cordillera. The more one considers the matter, the more it seems
as though nature could not have placed more impassable obstacles in the
way of intercommunication if she had set out with that definite purpose
in view. In comparison with the difficulties of travelling from Lima,
the centre of the old Spanish domain, to Buenos Aires, a journey from
New York to Charleston in the days of the American revolution was a
mere pleasure jaunt, and yet it seemed difficult enough at that time!
Nowhere in the English colonies existed such impediments to
communication as the deserts of northern Chile and southern Peru, the
swamps of eastern Colombia and western Venezuela, the forests of
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, or the gigantic chain of the Andes whose
lowest point for thousands of miles is ten thousand feet above the sea.
The founders of the original thirteen English colonies not only
inherited racial unity but providentially built their homes on a short
strip of coast and occupied a homogeneous country, no larger than a
single Spanish colony. Their union followed as a matter of course.
It was quite otherwise in South America. For, as though it were not
enough that the tendency of the race was towards building up individual
communities rather than federations, as though the laws forbidding the
colonists from trading with one another and from travelling from one
colony to another were not a sufficient preventive of union, all the
forces of nature, mountains, rivers, deserts, swamps, and even winds,
combined to promote the isolation of the new republics. The top of the
highest mountain in the thirteen English colonies was not half as high
as the lowest point in the ranges of lofty mountains that separated the
Spanish colonies; nor one third as high as the Uspallata Pass by which
Chile is connected with Argentina.
It is not for us to criticise the South Americans for having failed to
unite and form a great nation. Our ancestors were favored by nature
with a region that is comparatively accessible in all parts. It is not
any more creditable to the English colonists that they united than it is
discreditable to the Latin-Americans that they did not. In both cases,
racial characteristics, aided by diverse policies of colonial
administration made a foundation for growth which by an extraordinary
coincidence, was in every possible way favored by local geographical
conditions.
The English colonists, on securing their independence, had been
acquainted with one another for generations; had fought side by side in
the French and Indian wars; had intermarried, built up social and
business friendships; united in sending agents to the mother country and
in sending representatives to Congresses where the leading men of each
colony came to know one another’s desires and aspirations. Placed by
fate on a narrow strip of coast less in length than the seaboard of
Chile alone, enabled by nature to communicate both by sea and land,
separated from one another by neither deserts nor lofty mountains, what
more likely than that they should have followed their natural traditions
and formed a single nation? The difficulties in the way of the South
American colonists following such an example were stupendous. Scattered
over an enormous area, separated by the greatest natural boundaries that
nature has produced, it was scarcely to be expected that they too should
not follow the traditions of their race and build up local governments
instead of forming a federation.
The historical and geographical reasons that prevented the formation of
confederations have also mitigated against the building up of strong
national governments. The citizen is still inclined to favor the affairs
of his city rather than the good of his country. He finds it easier to
be loyal to the local chieftain than to the central government. The cure
for this, however, is already in sight. The energy and enterprise of
English, French, and German capitalists are overcoming the obstacles
that nature has placed in the way of intercommunication.
In time, aided by steam and electric systems of transportation, some of
the Southern Republics may even unite with others. But before this comes
about it may confidently be expected in the near future that the
development of new transportation facilities will make possible the
growth of strong national feeling and will prevent the states from
falling apart. It will certainly make revolutions less frequent and
bring a condition of stability that will even attract American capital
and greatly augment European immigration.