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* * * * *
SPANISH AMERICA
THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES
_Demy 8vo, cloth._
1. =CHILE.= By G. F. SCOTT ELLIOTT, F.R.G.S. With an
Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 39 Illustrations. (4th
Impression.)
2. =PERU.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an
Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 72 Illustrations. (3rd
Impression.)
3. =MEXICO.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an
Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (3rd
Impression.)
4. =ARGENTINA.= By W. A. HIRST. With an Introduction by
Martin Hume, a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (4th Impression.)
5. =BRAZIL.= By PIERRE DENIS. With a Historical Chapter by
Bernard Miall, a Map, and 36 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
6. =URUGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL. With a Map and 55
Illustrations.
7. =GUIANA: British, French, and Dutch.= By JAMES RODWAY.
With a Map and 36 Illustrations.
8. =VENEZUELA.= By LEONARD V. DALTON, B.Sc. (Lond.),
F.G.S., F.R.G.S. With a Map and 36 Illustrations. (2nd
Impression.)
9. =LATIN AMERICA: Its Rise and Progress.= By F. GARCIA
CALDERON. With a Preface by Raymond Poincaré, President of
France, a Map, and 34 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
10. =COLOMBIA.= By PHANOR JAMES EDER, A.B., LL.B. With 2
Maps and 40 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)
11. =ECUADOR.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.
12. =BOLIVIA.= By PAUL WALLE. With 62 Illustrations and 4
Maps.
13. =PARAGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL.
14. =CENTRAL AMERICA.= By W. H. KOEBEL.
"The output of the books upon Latin America has in recent years been
very large, a proof doubtless of the increasing interest that is
felt in the subject. Of these the South American Series edited by
Mr. Martin Hume is the most noteworthy."--TIMES.
"Mr. Unwin is doing good service to commercial men and investors by
the production of his 'South American Series.'"--SATURDAY REVIEW.
"Those who wish to gain some idea of the march of progress in these
countries cannot do better than study the admirable 'South American
Series.'"--CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL.
[Illustration: COLON: STATUE REPRESENTING COLUMBUS PROTECTING THE
INDIANS.
Vol. I. Frontispiece.]
SPANISH AMERICA
ITS ROMANCE, REALITY
AND FUTURE
BY
C. R. ENOCK, C.E., F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON," "PERU,"
"MEXICO," "ECUADOR," ETC.
WITH 25 ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
_First published in 1920_
(_All rights reserved_)
PREFACE
The purpose of this work is twofold--to afford a broad survey of
the Latin American countries, with the colour and interest which
so strongly characterizes this half of the New World; and to offer
in some degree a detailed study of the region as concerns what
(elsewhere) I have ventured to term a "science of humanity" or
science of corporate life, whose main factors are topographical,
occupational or industrial, and ethical or ethical-economic. New
responsibilities are arising in our dealings and contact with
foreign lands, especially those whose social affairs are still
backward. We must beware how we regard the folk of such lands mainly
as hewers of wood and drawers of water, or absorbents of exported
goods or producers of dividends, or their lands as mainly reservoirs
of raw material. Elemental forces are at work in the world to-day,
which only justice and constructive intelligence can control.
The English-speaking peoples have wide interests and consequent
responsibilities in these lands: matters which are discussed in the
final chapter.
As will be seen, I have embodied many descriptive passages in this
book from the various authors of the _South American Series_, to
which the present work is in a measure auxiliary.
C. R. E.
FROXFIELD, HANTS, ENGLAND.
_May 1920._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 5
CHAPTER
I. A RECONNAISSANCE, AND SOME INFORMAL GEOGRAPHY 11
II. A HISTORICAL OUTLINE 40
III. CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA, HONDURAS,
BRITISH HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, SALVADOR,
COSTA RICA, PANAMA 63
IV. ANCIENT AND MODERN MEXICO 99
V. ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST: IN COLOMBIA,
ECUADOR AND PERU 151
VI. ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST: IN PERU, BOLIVIA
AND CHILE 176
VII. THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES: IN ECUADOR,
PERU AND BOLIVIA 209
VIII. THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES: IN BOLIVIA,
CHILE AND ARGENTINA 266
INDEX 291
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLON: STATUE REPRESENTING COLUMBUS PROTECTING
THE INDIANS _Frontispiece_
TO FACE PAGE
AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO 20
THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: STONE STELÆ AT QUIRIGUA,
CENTRAL AMERICA 32
THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: RUINS OF MITLA, MEXICO 60
THE CATHEDRAL, GUATEMALA 70
THE CITY OF GUATEMALA 80
A COFFEE ESTABLISHMENT IN CENTRAL AMERICA 86
CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 96
SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO 104
THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO 114
CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA, STATE OF VERA
CRUZ 132
VILLAGE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE, MEXICO 140
VIEW ON THE GRIJALVA AND USUMACINTA RIVERS, MEXICO 150
THE WHARF AT GUAYAQUIL 158
CULTIVATED LANDS ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF PERU 176
THE LANDING STAGE AT VALPARAISO 198
THE MALLECO RIVER AND BRIDGE, CHILE 206
THE APPROACH TO QUITO 222
PIZARRO, THE CONQUISTADOR 240
IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES 250
PERU, LLAMAS AND ALPACAS 260
PERU: NATIVE BLANKET WEAVER IN THE ANDES 260
THE RUINED INCA FORTRESS OF OLLANTAYTAMBO, PERU 264
INDIAN RAFTS ON LAKE TITICACA 274
ACONCAGUA, THE HIGHEST ANDINE PEAK, CHILE 288
SPANISH AMERICA
CHAPTER I
A RECONNAISSANCE
AND SOME INFORMAL GEOGRAPHY
Who has not felt at some time the lure of Spanish America, the
attraction of those half-mysterious lands--Peru or Panama, Mexico
or Brazil, and all that galaxy of far-off States, with the remains
of their ancient civilization and their picturesque modern
setting--beneath the equatorial sun, beyond the Western sea? They
drew us in our youth, were it but in the pages of Prescott, when
with Cortes and Pizarro the Aztec and Inca Empires lay before us;
they draw us even in maturer years.
Yonder lies the Spanish Main, glittering in the sun as when we
sailed it first--in that long-foundered pirate craft of boyhood;
there stretch the tropic shores of wild Guiana; there the great
Andes rears its towering crests, and over golden sands the Orinoco
and the Amazon pour down their mighty floods; whilst, in slumberous
and mysterious majesty beyond, wide as the sea of Time, the vast
Pacific echoes on its boundless shores. And for those, who would
seek the true El Dorado of the West the great Sixteenth Century has
not closed yet, nor ever will; the days of ocean-chivalry are not
dead, the Elizabethan mariners come and go, for their voyages have
no end within those spacious days of history.
Spanish America, in fact, is enshrouded in an atmosphere of romance
and interest which time does not easily dispel, and remains a land
of adventure and enterprise. Its sunny shores, its picturesque
folk with their still semi-mediaeval life, despite their advancing
civilization--the great untravelled spaces, the forests, the
mountains, the rivers, the plains, and all they contain, the lure
and profit of commerce and of trafficking--all these are matters we
cannot separate from the New World as peopled by Spain and Portugal.
It is, moreover, peculiarly a world of its own, born in an
impressionable period, indelibly stamped with the strong
individualism of the Iberian people who overcame it, and it
remains apart, refusing the hegemony of the commercialistic age--a
circumstance for which we may be grateful, in a sense. Its future is
on the lap of the unknown, offering always the unexpected: geography
has everywhere separated it from the Old World; temperament keeps
the seclusion.
Whatever be our errand in this new world--erroneously termed "new,"
for it is old, and had its folk, its Toltecs and pre-Incas, in the
apogee of their ancient culture developed a shipbuilding as they
did a temple-building art, they might have come sailing around
the world and found us here in Britain still "painted savages";
whatever, I say, be our errand there, we shall not understand
Spanish America and its people, just as they will never understand
us, the people of Anglo-Saxon race. The gulf between us is as deep
as the Atlantic, as wide as the Pacific. The incomprehensible
Spaniard has added himself to the unfathomable Indian, the red-brown
man who sprang from the rugged soil of America (perhaps from some
remote Mongolian ancestry), who, inscrutable as a dweller of the
moon, is still sullen and secretive as he was and well might
be--after the rapine which followed on the white man's keel and sail
upon his shores four centuries ago; the white conqueror, who in his
adventurous greed destroyed the Egypt and the Chaldea of America and
trampled their autochthonous civilization in the dust.
And as to the Spaniards, it is their strong individualism which
presents a marked attraction here, though one which may not
generally have been put into words: the individualism of nations
founded upon historical and geographical bases, as has already
been said. We approach here, not a mere United States of Spanish
America, not a confederation of vast municipalities or provinces
whose borders are imaginary parallels or meridians, but a series of
independent nations, each stamped with its own character, bearing
its own indelible and romantic name, whose frontiers are rivers and
mountain ranges.
Is there any virtue in these things? In the day when prosaic
commercialism, when megalomania and money so sway us, there is a
refreshing atmosphere about the refusal to conglomerate of these
picturesque communities, whose names fall pleasingly on our ears.
Yet there are penalties too. Rugged and difficult of approach--the
vulgar gaze may not easily rest upon them by the mere passport of a
tourist's ticket--as are these vast territories of forest, desert
and Cordillera, Nature, though grand and spacious, is ill at ease,
and the mood might seem to be impressed upon the people of the land
that neither is there peace for them. For they have soaked their
land with the blood of their own sons, and we might at times despair
of self-government here.
But we need not despair. The malady is but part of one that afflicts
the whole world, whose cure awaits the turning of the next page
of human evolution--a page which can be turned whenever slothful
humanity desires to do it.
Spanish America is really one of the most interesting fields of
travel in the world, even if it does not make great pretension of
its attractions. From the point of view of the holiday-maker it
has remained undeveloped. The traveller who requires luxuriance of
travel, of hotel and pleasure-resort, such as the playgrounds of
Europe afford, will not find such here, except perhaps in a few of
the more advanced cities. It is a continent which, despite its four
centuries of discovery, has so far done little more than present its
edge to the forces--and pleasures--of modern life. Nature is in her
wildest moods: it is an unfinished world; mankind is still plastic.
The mountain trail and the horse are more in evidence than the
railway and the motor-car; the _fonda_ rather than the hotel. Here,
moreover, Don Quixote de la Mancha has taken up his abode, and we
may find him often, to our pleasure if we like his company, as some
of us do.
But let us dismount. Here are beautiful cities too. A sensitive
and developing people, the Spanish American folk would resent any
aspersion of their civilization. They have all the machinery of
culture to their hand. Here the Parisian toilette rubs shoulders
in their streets and _plazas_ with the blanketed and sandalled
Indian; the man of fashion and the man of the Stone Age walk the
same pavement. Here in these pleasing towns--some of them marvels
of beauty, some of them in an atmosphere of perpetual spring, some
miles above the sea--are palaces of justice, art and science. Here
are republican kings and plutocrats, rich with the product of the
field and mine, here are palms and music, homes of highly cultured
folk, speaking their soft Castilian: shops stored with all the
luxury of Europe or the United States. Here are streets of quaint
colonial architecture, and courteous hosts and hostesses, and
damsels of startling beauty in all the elegance of the mode.
Here, too, are smooth-tongued lawyer statesmen, dominating (as they
always do) the Senatorial Councils. It is true that from time to
time there are disturbing elements when rude soldier-politicians
break in upon the doctor-politicians with the clatter of a
mule-battery, on the pavement, and the sword takes the place of the
bauble; it is true that the walls of the streets are pitted here
and there with bullet marks, from some whiff of grapeshot, and that
there are stains of blood upon the pavements; and it is true that
against the white walls of justice, science, art and oratory stands
silhouetted the figure of the poor Indian, or _peon_, who slinks
_humilde_ amid the palms and music--doffing his hat as he passes
the Cathedral precincts--and that the veneer of civilization, torn
aside, reveals at times both the cultured and the uncultured savage.
Here, too, congregate the merchants and traffickers of all the
world, Old and New, from all the four corners of the earth to buy
and sell. Here is the Frenchman with his emporium of finery, the
Spaniard with his groceries, or the Italian with his wares, the
Arab with his little shop, the Chinaman with his laundry (and his
peculiar affinity with the Indian, perhaps of the same mother-race),
the German with his hardware, drugs and cheap jewellery and much
besides; the English or American with every commodity, and in
addition his mining schemes and railways and steamers, or his
municipal stocks and bonds. For Spanish America is now a peculiarly
attractive Mecca of the international merchant and pedlar, who does
it services both good and ill.
Here, in this financial and business field, the Englishman has been
predominant (though that predominance may not always be, for he is
closely pressed now and must not muddle on).
England, indeed, soon conquered a world commercially which she
bungled in overcoming in conquest. She early scorned Columbus,
or would not help him; at Cartagena, Callao, Rio de Janeiro,
Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and elsewhere, her admirals and generals
seem to have failed, and she secured but a couple of small footholds
on the continent and some rich islands off its coast. Perhaps it
was destiny; perhaps we would not now have it otherwise, and the
Spanish American civilization develops more interestingly alone. But
interesting too would have been a British Indian Empire in America,
perhaps with possibilities and results of value to the world.
But, despite all this, the British name here stands high, and heaven
grant it always may.
Not for all her past misdeeds, nor the present defects arising from
them, shall we forget the gifts that Spain has made to the New
World. To-day it might indeed be said that some of the main problems
of colonial empires are but beginning (as witness Egypt and India
under British rule). Spain made nations, even it they afterwards
fell from her by misgovernment or from natural causes. She implanted
her religion, literature, culture, language, architecture over
hundreds of thousands of miles of forbidding desert and Cordillera,
as we shall see in these pages. Over a zone of the earth's territory
seven thousand miles long, from the Mexican border with the United
States, throughout the twenty Republics of Central and South
America, to the tapering end of Chile, the Spanish language is the
medium of communication, a language-area vaster than any in the
world.
And Portugal, the patron of great voyagers and explorers, has left
her mark and language upon her half of the New World, the old empire
of Brazil, with a population greater than that of all her neighbours
combined. Less dominating than the Spaniard in the long run--for
Portugal has always said of herself that she could conquer but not
colonize--Portugal has left her own Iberian culture in Latin America.
Here, indeed, are the elements of life in the making, of a
civilization whose life is before it rather than behind it; often
picturesque, often sombre, always, as we have said, a world of its
own, and possessed of its own peculiar attractiveness.
* * * * *
Some rather serious doubts have assailed my mind in regard to the
succeeding portion of this chapter, as to how far the weighty
matters of geography and travel-description may be treated
informally. Dare we "speak disrespectfully of the Equator," or too
lightly tread over Cancer or Capricorn?
But the home-returned traveller knows that treatment of geography
and travel is generally informal--not to say casual--especially
among our good English folk, and at dinner, where white
shirt-fronts do gleam, and feminine elegance is displayed, he may
have to answer somewhat elemental questions upon the whereabouts of
this or that land, region, or locality he has visited, or upon the
nature and customs of its particular inhabitants.
Nor is this confined to Society chatter alone at such pleasant
moments. In the London Board Room perhaps some stout and comfortable
director of possibly half a dozen companies whose operations are of
no meanly distributed geographical range may ask where such and such
a country is, with most complacent ignorance of maps and globes;
perhaps, also, in a few words doing what it was long since said we
could not do, "drawing up an indictment against a whole nation," for
doubtless weighty (financial) reasons of his own. As to the general
public, it goes on its way careless of where places are--except
that, by reason of the Great War, it has grown accustomed to looking
at the maps so beneficially inserted in the columns of our daily
Press, and strives to hold the balance between kilometres and miles.
The foregoing lack of familiarity with the round world and they that
dwell therein is especially true of the lands of Spanish America
(or Latin America, to use that more cumbrous but more accurate
term). "Where in the world is Ecuador, or Costa Rica, or Paraguay?"
some one may impatiently exclaim if we mention that we were held
up by quarantine in Guayaquil on account of yellow fever, or
other incident of other spot. "Where is Bolivia?" is another not
infrequent query, but generally made in ignorance of its first and
classical utterance, it is reputed, in the anecdote relating to Lord
Palmerston and the President--many years ago--of that Republic.
Some think Mexico is in South America, and, no doubt drawing
their ideas from their or their parents' study of Prescott in the
Victorian age, ask if the Mexicans really wear feathers and carry
knives. The position of Peru puzzles many good folk, although it is
generally believed to be somewhere in South America, which of course
is right. Chile, again; where does it lie? Did not some one once
describe Chile--if you look at the map--as a country two thousand
miles long and two inches wide? Again, striving to give an idea of
the vast length of Chile, one writer of the country has graphically
remarked that you may conceive it as a "long, narrow trough of
which one end could be placed at Queenstown and the other near New
York, but along which luggage could not be rolled." No offence is
here meant to the enterprising people of that land, who resisted
so stoutly the pretensions of their neighbours of Argentina in
order that this narrow width might not be pared down still closer,
a contention finally ended by the arbitration of King Edward of
Britain.
For both Argentina and Brazil seem to have been bent, at one time
or another, on carrying out the principle that to him who hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath, for both of them
sprawl--geographically that is--across the South American Continent
and crowd their smaller neighbours into its margins or corners,
if crowding be possible here. As for Brazil, it must have more
political frontiers, one imagines, than any other nation in the
world.
[Illustration: AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.
Vol. I. To face p. 20.]
The traveller sometimes finds it necessary to explain that Colombia
has nothing to do with British Columbia. It is a republic quite
unassociated with our Imperial outpost of British Columbia. As for
Venezuela, only those who have been there can ever be expected to
know where it is, notwithstanding that it is the part of South
America nearest to Europe and was that first sighted by Columbus.
The Guianas are rightly associated by many with Demerara sugar,
but Demerara, it has to be mentioned, is not the whole of British
Guiana, and there are in addition French and Dutch Guiana. British
Guiana and British Honduras--which latter, let us remark, is not in
South but in Central America (location to be explained later)--are
the only foothold of the British Empire on the mainland of Spanish
America. Guiana, moreover, has nothing to do with Guinea, in Africa,
or New Guinea, in Asia. Few people at home know where these places
are or who lives there or what they do. As to the first-named, it
is interesting to see that a deputation has recently arrived from
the colony in the Mother Country, to remind that parent of her
offspring's existence.
Both these small places--they are as large as England--are perhaps
among the most backward portions of the Empire. It is not their
fault, or not alone. It is largely due to the stupidity or lack of
interest of the Home Government. It is also due, in general terms,
to the stupidity and ignorance of British folk in general, who take
little interest in their possessions overseas, and who from one
point of view do not deserve to have them. The tropical colonies of
Britain, and among them are these of South and Central America--not
to mention the magnificent heritage of the West Indies, which
of course are geographically part of America--are most valuable
charges, most essential elements of the national food supply. They
are at least geographical larders, and it is time they were much
more fully developed and cared for.
It is well to recollect, moreover, politically, that Britain has
scarcely given an efficient object-lesson of development, social and
economic, to the backward States of Spanish America in her control
of these two Crown Colonies.
But we digress. If the geography of the South American States
is nebulous to the ordinary person at home, how much more so is
that of Central America? In the first place, it may be asked,
where or what is Central America? Many well-informed people do
not know. North America and South America are easily realizable
as geographical entities, but where can a third America exist?
Central America is not the centre of the South American Continent,
as some well-meaning people think, but is that part of America
lying between the two continents, and includes no less than six
independent Republics, together with British Honduras. The Panama
Canal cuts through it; the Tehuantepec and other railways cross it.
Thus when we are asked where is Costa Rica or Nicaragua or Salvador,
Honduras or Panama, where perhaps the latest revolution has just
broken out, or the Government have just repudiated a loan, or
managed to pay an instalment of the interest due upon a loan, we may
reply in Central America.
And Paraguay--ah, Paraguay! Where is it? And Hayti, too?
Many people in England have relatives in Spanish American countries,
and it is interesting to be able to inform them where the particular
localities are situated, and how to get there, also the distances
approximately places are apart. "I have a cousin who is Chargé
d'Affaires in Revolutia," says a lady at a reception. "I do trust
he has not been injured by that terrible South American earthquake
we saw in the paper this morning." We are able to assure the lady
that the earthquake was in San Volcania, at least two thousand
miles from the enterprising Republic where her relative carried on
his doubtless invaluable diplomatic duties. "Have you ever been in
---- (we will call it Santa Andina)?" says a stout, bald-headed
gentleman, who looks like a company promoter (and we afterwards
found that he was such), referring to a well-known Spanish American
capital, adding that he thought of going there, and had heard
that no great difficulties attended the journey. He thought oil
concessions were to be obtained there. When he learned that you take
a river steamer, then a train, then a canoe, then a steamer again,
and lastly a mule, his _wanderlust_ seemed somewhat to abate. The
story of the lady who had a relative in New York, and hoped he would
call one morning on the brother of another person present who lived
in Buenos Ayres has often been told, but I am inclined to regard it
as far-fetched. The point is that the lady, knowing that both places
were in America, imagined they must be in easy daily radius of each
other.
The traveller who knows Spanish America and speaks the Spanish
language--which language is a veritable delight when you know
it--will often wish that English people would set out to acquire
at least a slight knowledge of the pronunciation of Spanish words
and place-names. He does not like to hear, for example, Buenos
Ayres spoken of as "Boners' Airs," or Callao as "Cally-oh"! And the
pronunciation of señor as "seenyor" is most offensive. Again, why
will the English Press persist in depriving "señor" and the Spanish
letter "ñ" generally of its ~, or in using Don where Señor should
be used (as is done even in _The Times_), or in the rendering of
the Spanish (or its Italian or French equivalent) _Viva!_ as "long
live." It does not mean "long live," but "live" or "may he live,"
and is generally followed by _que viva!_ "Let him live." It would
be better translated as "Hurrah for So-and-So." However, the Press
does not generally treat Spanish America very seriously. There is an
_opéra bouffe_ element.
The Spanish language is perhaps the most beautiful and pleasing in
the world, when we take into account its virility and brevity. It
says what it means at once, and every letter, except the aspirate,
in every word is pronounced. It is a simple language, easily
learned. It is spoken over an enormous part of the earth's surface,
and there is little variation between the Spanish of Castile and
that of Spanish America.
When we converse--in their own language--with the educated Spanish
American folk, we find them full of wise saws and modern instances.
They are shrewd and philosophical, and the Spanish language abounds
with proverbs and aphorisms applicable to the things of everyday
life. They are born statesmen and lawyers and orators. They go
back to the remote classics for their similes. All this is very
delightful in its way, and the Englishman, after a course of years
of it will come home and think his own countrymen rather stupid and
unimaginative; that is if his own common sense does not balance
their own more solid qualities against the more surface attainments.
What he wishes is that the one race might partake more of the
qualities of the other, and vice versa. Oratory and theory cannot
replace practical politics and justice, but we miss the amenities.
Mucha tinta y poca justicia!
so says the Spanish American (or the Spaniard), referring to the
national power of document-compiling and red tape; that is to say:
"Much ink and little justice."
Nor yet can the most delightful spirit of hospitality make amends
for the insufferable defects of the _fonda_ and the inn, and
De tu casa a la ajena
Sal con la barriga llena!
is the soundest advice in Latin America to the traveller in the
interior, or, as one would say, "From your own to a stranger's home,
go forth with a well-filled belly."
The Spanish American people, as we have remarked, are of a poetical
and sentimental temperament, given to oratory, and they produce
many poets, many of which, however, would, if criticism is harsh,
be termed versifiers. They are fond of what might be termed
descriptive embroidery; what, indeed, one of their own race has
termed _desarollos lyricos_ ("lyric developments"). Love verses are
an absorbing theme, and their small magazines overflow therewith,
and even the daily Press does not disdain such. It might be said
that versifying in Spanish in matters amorous may be facile,
because _amores_ (love), _flores_ (flowers), _olores_ (perfume),
and _dolores_ (grief) all rhyme! One cynical Spanish American poet,
however, has propounded the following, descriptive of the social and
natural ambient:
Flores sin olor
Hombres sin honor
Mujeres sin pudor!
That is to say: "Flowers without perfume, men without honour, women
without modesty." It is true that the flowers in the New World here
sometimes lacks perfume, where we might have expected to find such,
and that at times men and women lack the cardinal virtues, but the
same could be said anywhere, and is merely an epigram.
The verse-making of the young poets is often erotic and neurotic,
addressed to the object of undying affection, or to the shades
of night, or the cruelty of destiny--which tears lovers apart
or carries them off to early graves. In this connexion Byron is
well regarded (but let us say nothing derogatory of Byron) and
Shakespeare appreciated.
However, it is to be recollected that these are rather symptoms of
youth in a nation, and if the more blasé and practical Briton--and
the still more practical and less poetical North American--finds
their verse hackneyed (if he be able to read it, which is not
frequently the case), this sentiment has its valuable psychical
attribute. The English, indeed, are regarded by the Spanish American
as of a romantic temperament, or of having a reputation for romance,
and this is possibly due in part to Byron.
But let it not be forgotten that there are famous Latin American
poets, to which space here forbids even the barest justice to be
done.
The Spanish Americans are great panegyrists, moreover. The
most extraordinary adulations of public personages are made and
published, such as it might be supposed would cause the object
thereof to blush. The late President Diaz of Mexico was always to
his admirers--or those who hoped to gain something by his adulation,
and this it is not necessarily unkind to say is often the motive
of the panegyric--a "great star in a Pleiades or constellation of
the first magnitude," and similar matters are found in all the
republics. A stroke of ordinary policy becomes thus "_un acto de
importancia transcendental_," which sufficiently translates itself;
and so forth.
Of course, it is the case that the Spanish language lends itself
peculiarly to "lyric developments"; it is expressive and sonorous,
and even the uneducated person has in it a far wider range of
thought and expression than has the apparently unimaginative and
tongue-tied Briton, or American of Anglo-Saxon speech. Upon this
theme we might greatly enlarge, but we must refrain.
As I have already remarked, the general conception of the Spanish
American people by English folk is a vague one. To such questions or
remarks as: "Are they mostly Indians?" or "I suppose they are not
mainly niggers, or at least half black?" in brief terms, the reply
is that the Spanish American people are a blend of the aboriginal
Indian race--which possessed an early civilization of its own in
certain districts, as in Mexico and Peru, and has many valuable
qualities--and of the Spaniard, or in Brazil of the Portuguese.
They are not "half-breeds" now. We might as well, in a sense, call
the English half-breeds, because we are a mixture of Celt and Saxon
and Norman.
The "Indians" of Mexico and Peru--they are, of course, not Indian
at all in reality, that was an error of Columbus--had, before the
Spaniards destroyed it, a fine culture of their own and practised
the most beautiful arts. As to the modern culture, or that of the
upper strata, it surprises good cultured English folk to learn that
in matters of serious culture, knowledge and social etiquette, and
knowledge of the world, they themselves would have difficulty in
holding their own. The world, or outlook, of the educated man or
woman of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, or any
other of these States, is a wider one than that of the British
middle-class folk: that great respectable body of persons so closely
engaged upon their own affairs.
Some writers have deplored the separate autonomy or absence of
"unification" of the Latin American States. They would like to see a
"United States of South America" or a Federation of Central America.
But this largely arises, perhaps, from the peculiar ideas of
hegemony which the last and present century brought to being. We
were to have vast empires. Weaker nations were to be controlled
by stronger. There were to be great commercial units. Is this
advisable, or will it be possible? The condition of the world after
the Great War would seem to indicate the negative. It would seem to
show that small nations have their own destiny to work out.
As regards Spanish America, its different States are, in general,
better in being separated. Both geographical conditions and those
of temperament support this. These States, or their capitals and
centres of population, are generally divided by Nature from each
other, often by tremendous barriers of mountain chains, rivers or
impenetrable forests. How could a single or centralized government
be set up to control either their home or foreign policy? Where
would it be, and how would it operate?
It might be said that similar topographical conditions obtain in
the case of the United States, Canada, or Australia, which prefer
to live as federations. But the natural geographical barriers of
Spanish America are, in reality, much more formidable. Again,
the present multiplicity of states, each with its complement of
president and state officers, gives opportunity for more intensive
political training, more pleasing social life and a greater general
opportunity for partaking in government by the people than does a
centralized government.
Let us thus refrain from judging too hastily or too harshly the
Spanish American people. Their temperament, their environment is
different from ours. They have not chosen or been able to follow
the more prosaic, more useful life of England or North America in
the commercial age. They had not our inventive, our mechanical
gifts. Under their warmer skies idealism played a stronger part.
They could not agree to live together unless idealistic conditions
were to dominate them--conditions which were impossible of course,
and they never were able to oil the wheels of life with that spirit
of compromise which providence--if it be a providential gift--gave
to us. Moreover, they have a dreadful history of oppression behind
them, and the dead-weight of a great Indian bulk of folk who were
ruined by the arrogant Spaniards, who despised them without a cause.
Rather let us see that they are endowed with many gifts, and that a
different phase of world-development and civilization may give these
people an opportunity to display their best qualities, of overcoming
their serious errors.
The thoughtful traveller will find matter of interest in Spanish
America wherever he journeys, in the delightful place-names he
encounters, which a little trouble will enable him to pronounce,
and often whose pleasing origin some study will permit him to
understand. Here are no duplications of "Paris," "Berlin," "London";
no monstrosities of "Copperville," "Petroleumville," "Irontown,"
and so forth, such as in Anglo America, the United States and
Canada, the developers of that part of America in some cases
hastily assigned to their places of settlement or industry, either
through lack of or laziness of search for original topographical
nomenclature. Here in Spanish America its old and rightful folk had
given poetical baptism to their localities. Such were often the
abiding places of deities or spirits. Yonder mountain, for example,
was "the home of the wind god" of the Quechuas; yonder point the
"place of the meeting of the waters" of the Aztecs, or the "field
of the fruitful," or the "forest of the dark spirits"; and thus is
imprinted upon them for all time the poetic fancy of their founders.
There rises the "snow-forehead" of the Andes, there is the "cañyon
of a thousand ripples," there is the "_pompa_ of the Holy Saints."
The names flow liquidly from the lips of the Indian, perhaps our
harsher tongues can ill articulate them in comparison.
Moreover, let us remark the wealth of topographical nomenclature,
both in the native languages of Mexico and Peru, and all the
sisterhood of states, and in the later Spanish tongue. Every hill,
hill-slope, stream, wood, plain, valley, desert, every kind of hill,
feature and topographical change of form is designated.
The present chapter, it is seen, is, in some small degree, designed
to prime the intending traveller to Spanish America--or, if not
the traveller, the person athirst for information concerning the
region--with such geographical detail as he or she may assimilate
without mental indigestion. In accordance with this purpose we may
consider a few figures, which are indispensable if we are to gather
any intelligent idea of extent and distance.
There are twenty independent republics of Spanish, or rather Latin
America, ranging from the enormous Brazil, with an area of three
and a quarter million square miles, down to little Salvador,
with only seven thousand two hundred and twenty-five square miles.
Among these twenty States we include Hayti and Santo Domingo, places
which, although often mentioned with a smile when independent
republics are spoken of, are nevertheless worthy of geographical
respect.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: STONE STELÆ AT QUIRIGUA,
CENTRAL AMERICA.
Vol. I. To face p. 32.]
Between these great extremes of area mentioned above we have such
countries as Argentina, with over a million square miles, and
Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, with from nearly to over seven hundred
thousand square miles, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile, with from over
four to under three hundred thousand, Ecuador and Uruguay with half
and a third those areas, and the remaining nine States of from about
seventy thousand square miles down to about a tenth thereof.
The total area thus covered of this very diversified part of the
earth's surface is about eight and a quarter million square miles,
with a total population in the neighbourhood of eighty million souls.
It is of interest further to recollect that Brazil is larger than
the United States or Canada, or larger than Europe without Russia.
Even the little but progressive country of Uruguay, crowded by
Brazil and Argentina into a corner of the Atlantic coast, is much
larger than England.[1]
[1] The good Church of England, in caring for her sons in Spanish
America, is perforce obliged to have regard to the vast distances
she must cover here. Thus the Bishop of the Falkland Islands'
flock--his diocese--extends over the not inconsiderable territory
covering the west coast of South America, including Chile, Peru,
Bolivia, Ecuador and so forth--a strip some five or six thousand
miles long. As I formed one of a committee with the good bishop to
endeavour to raise funds among English business men to carry on his
work (and incidentally to lecture on the subject), I had the matter
brought specially to my notice. Again, the Bishop of Honduras, in
a recent letter to _The Times_, appealed for funds for a vessel,
by means of which he might visit his flock over the vast diocese
that included Honduras and British Honduras, Costa Rica, Salvador,
Nicaragua and Panama.
And again, in giving evidence before the Select Committee of the
House of Commons to inquire into the Putumayo rubber scandals, which
I was called upon as a witness to do, concerning the Indians of
Peru, it was necessary to inform the gentlemen of the Commission
that the easiest way of reaching Eastern from Western Peru was to
take steamer up the Pacific coast, cross the Isthmus of Panama, go
home across the Atlantic to Liverpool, and come back again to the
Amazon and go up that river!
It is to be recollected that the areas given to these countries
themselves in some cases include territory claimed by their
immediate neighbours, for there are unsettled boundaries and
frontiers, especially in the Amazon Valley. They must be regarded as
only approximate.
The same remark holds good with regard to the population of these
States. Exact enumeration is impossible, for the reasons both that
the inhabitants are often enormously scattered over vast territories
and that they often refuse to be numbered, or escape the census,
fearing that they are to be taxed, or pressed into military service
against their will, which latter condition has been a curse of
Spanish America all through its history.
Much of our earlier knowledge of Northern South America and Mexico
was due to Humboldt, the famous German savant and traveller. He
was born in Berlin in 1769, but it would appear that Berlin was
certainly not his "spiritual home." Paris was the only centre
congenial to him, and he settled there in 1808, after his travels,
in order to be able to secure the needful scientific co-operation
for the publication of the results of his work. "The French capital
he had long regarded as his true home. There he found not only
scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and
healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the
lion of the _salons_ and as the savant of the institute and the
observatory. The provincialism of his native city was odious to
him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion,
aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense,
which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. He sought relief
from this 'nebulous atmosphere' in Paris."[2]
[2] _Vide_ Humboldt, _Encyc. Brit._, Eleventh Edition, 1910.
It was by an accident that Humboldt directed his steps to Spanish
America, for he had hoped, with Bonpland, to join Bonaparte in
Egypt, but in Madrid he determined to make Spanish America the
scene of his explorations. He explored the Orinoco, crossed the
frozen Cordillera to Quito, investigated the mighty avenue of the
Ecuadorian volcanoes--the farm he occupied still exists at their
foot--and did much else in South America and in Mexico, geological,
archæological, and botanical.
The foregoing glimpse of Berlin which Humboldt's view of his native
city affords is not without interest to-day, when the savagery of
the German character--a curious development of that earlier obscure
philosophy--has been brought so prominently before the world and has
brought Germany to moral ruin, and what is in part financial ruin
and the loss of her colonies.
As has been said, methods of travel here are less inviting to the
ordinary tourist than the well-prepared fields of the Old World. Its
hotels--apart, perhaps, from a few here and there--are primitive,
its railways are conducted for commercial purposes, there are
no planned centres of delight and ease. No roads traverse the
countryside whereon the motor-tourist may spend his hours. Between
the primitive mule-trail or the bypath which the simple Indian has
found sufficient for his purposes since the world began, and the
railway, there is no _via media_. The coaching days of England
never had their counterpart in Spanish America. The _caballero_,
the horseman-gentleman, transplanted from old Spain, and all he
represented embodied, and still embodies, the philosophy of the
road. Here no one may walk the countryside, except the necessitous
Indian. The dust would smother him, the naked rocks would cut his
feet, he would lose caste for being on foot. No "local" botanist,
antiquarian, nature-lover sallies forth from Spanish-American
villages. The country squire is unknown, the landed estate is a
_hacienda_, a hive of _peones_, dependent body and soul on the will
of their masters. There are no week-end cottages; the "picnic,"
though its English name is not unknown, is a rare event. Sport,
where it exists, is an institution engrafted from abroad.
Woman here is much enclosed in the seclusion of her home, save
when she ventures to the temple and the priestly Mass, or to
well-chaperoned and formal events--she dare not traverse the road
alone, and, it may be said, with sufficient reason! The Spanish
American youth, with his patent leather shoes and breadth of cuff
and collar, loves not to leave the easy pavements of his towns, or
their bars and cafés, for the unknown world beyond, whose beginning
is the squalid Indian quarter which fringes the place around--unless
indeed he may have turned revolutionist, a phase which does not
usually take place much before middle age, when the Latin American
generally takes on his serious political habit. Then indeed he must
take to the road, unless a fortunate _golpe de estado_[3] shall
complete the uprising within the city plaza.
[3] _Coup d'état._
The inland method of travel is the horse or mule: the saddle.
Unfortunately the horse is not very happy here. In the Day of
Judgment, if the beasts of the field ever bear witness against man,
the horse will have a severe indictment to bring against the Spanish
American people. He and his relative the mule have nowhere perhaps
been so dreadfully ill-treated as in these lands of mountains
and deserts. In Mexico we see him ridden to death by the callous
vaquero; his thin and starving body passing like a swift shadow
across the wilderness under the stimulus of enormous spurs. Or he is
gored to death in the bull-ring. In South America he climbs, with
enormous loads, the dizzy ridges of the Andes, under the blows and
curses of the arriero, and, stumbling over the precipice, finds rest
at times a thousand feet below, where his mummified carcass remains
a warning to his kind. Or he passes his life on high uplands where
pasture is unknown: his fodder a little dry straw.
The fact is that the Spanish American lands, in great part, did
not seem fitted by nature for the equine race, and there was no
horse in America before the Europeans introduced the animal there.
There was nothing but the llama, the friend of the Indian, which is
not ridden, but bears a small burden. The Indian himself at first
displayed great terror of the horse (especially with an armoured
Iberian on its back). He himself was accustomed to carrying his
burdens. When he was told to take a horse he said: "No, horses get
tired; we do not." When a Spaniard rode across the Isthmus of Panama
upon a jackass he met some Indians, and the animal brayed, and the
Indians fell down in terror and offered up their gold ornaments!
Yet the Latin Americans are perhaps the most expert of horsemen, and
train and manage their steeds as no one else can.
Spanish America is not a land for the huntsman, not a land of big
game. Its zoology is stinted. The lion and the tiger are represented
only by some almost insignificant felines, and the other huge
quadrupeds of the sportsman's rifle came not to being in the New
World, or deserted it by now fallen land bridges before their
skilled tormentor appeared upon the earth. There is, relatively, but
little game, and the traveller who might think to subsist upon it in
his passage through the wilds will do well to ponder the experience
of the early Conquistadores, some of which have been set down
briefly in these pages.
Thus far the picture of travel here. There are phases on the other
side to be considered. It is the explorer, the pioneer, who will
find material for his desires in these lands. The geographer, the
antiquarian, the naturalist, the ethnologist has before him a field
which is the equal of any region, and the engineer, that most
practical and valuable of travellers, has work before him in this
score of independent states whose magnitude has, so far, no limit.