We celebrate an event new to South America--the presence in the heart of
our republics of a member of the Government of the United States of the
North. That grand nation has wished thus to manifest the interest her
sisters of the South inspire in her and her purpose of strongly drawing
together the links that bind her to them.
Born on the same continent and in the same epoch, ruled by the same
institutions, animated by the same spirit of liberty and progress, and
destined alike to cause republican ideas to prevail on earth, it is
natural that the nations of all America should approach nearer and
nearer to each other, and unite more and more amongst themselves; and it
is natural, also, that the most powerful and the most advanced amongst
them should be the one to take the initiative in this union.
Your grand republic, Mr. Secretary of State, is consistent in confiding
to you this mission of fraternity and solidarity with the ideas and
intentions manifested by her at the dawn of the liberty of our
continent. The same sentiment that inspired the Monroe Doctrine brings
you to our shores as the herald of the concord and community of America.
We welcome you most cordially. You find us earnestly laboring to make
justice prevail, enamored of progress, confident in the future. Far
removed from the European continent, whence emerges the wave of humanity
that peoples the American territories and becomes the origin of nations
so glorious as yours, the growth and organization of the peoples in
these regions have been slow; and public and social order has been
frequently upset in our distant and scarcely populated prairies. But in
the midst of these disturbances that have likewise afflicted, in their
epochs of formation, almost all the present best constituted nations,
sound tendencies and true principles of order and liberty prevail,
nationalities are constituted in a definite manner, and republican
institutions are consecrated.
Your great nation, Mr. Secretary of State, is not new to this work. She
has had important participation in it. I do not refer to the Monroe
Doctrine that made the elder sister the zealous defender of the younger
ones. I speak of the radiant example of your republican virtue, your
industrial initiative, your economic development, your scientific
advances, your ardent and virile activity that has reenforced our faith
in right, in liberty, in justice, in the republic, and has animated
us--as a noble and victorious example does animate--in our dark days of
disturbance and disaster.
Yes, the epoch of internal convulsions is drawing to its close in this
part of America, and the peoples, finding themselves organized and at
peace, are dedicating themselves to all those tasks that exalt the human
mind and originate, in modern times, the greatness of nations. You tread
upon a land that has recently been watered abundantly with blood--upon
one in which, nevertheless, the love of liberty, within the limits of
order, the love of well-being, and the love of progress under legal
governments is intense; upon one in which we live earnestly dedicated,
in all branches of activity, to the labor that dignifies and fortifies,
certain that for us has commenced an honorable era of internal peace.
You have said it, Mr. Secretary of State: Out of the tumult of wars
strong and stable governments have arisen; law prevails over the will of
man; right and liberty are respected.
But this progress of public reason must be complemented. It is not
sufficient that internal peace should be assured; it is necessary to
secure external peace also. It is necessary that the American nations
should draw near to each other; should know, should love each other; it
is requisite to drive away, to suppress the danger of distrust, of
rivalry, and of international conflicts; that the same sentiment that
repudiated internal struggles should rise within as against the
struggles of people against people, and that these should also be
considered as the unfruitful shedding of the blood of brethren; that the
calamitous armed peace may never appear in our land, and that the
enormous sums used to sustain it on the European and Asiatic continents
shall be employed amongst us in the development of industries, commerce,
arts, and sciences.
The work may be realized by determination and constancy. The republican
institutions that everywhere prevail on our continent are not propitious
to the Caesars who make their glory consist in the sinister brilliancy
of battles and in the increase of their territorial domains. These same
institutions give voice and vote in the direction of public affairs to
the multitudes, whose primordial interest is ever peace, the sparing of
their own blood, so unfruitfully shed in the great catastrophes of war.
America will be, then, the continent of peace, of a just peace, founded
on respect for the rights of all nations, a respect which--as you, Mr.
Secretary of State, have said in tones that have resounded all over the
surface of the earth, deeply moving all true hearts--must be as great
for the weakest nations as for the most powerful empires. This Pan
American public opinion will be created and will be made effective, a
public opinion charged to systematize the international conduct of the
nations, to suppress injustice, and to establish among them relations
ever more and more profoundly cordial.
Your country and your Government fulfill the part, not of the false
friend that incites to anarchy and weakens her friends that she may
prevail over them and dominate them, but that of the faithful and true
friend who exerts herself to unite them; and, that they may become good
and strong, concurs with all her moral power in the realization of this
work of the Pan American Congresses, destined to become a modern
amphictyon to whose decisions all the great American questions will be
submitted, already giving prestige thereto by such words as you have
spoken to the Congress of Rio de Janeiro, which present to the American
world new and grand perspectives of peace and progress.
Mr. Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen, in the presence of deeds
of this magnitude, inspired and filled with enthusiasm by them, let us
pour out a libation to the United States of the North, to its vigorous
President, to you and to your distinguished family, the herald of
continental friendship, and to the American fatherland, from the Bering
Straits to Cape Horn.