THE RELATIONS OF RACES IN SOUTH AMERICA
Although races, unlike in character and differing in the scale of
upward progress, must have come into contact from the earliest
times, it is only in recent years that the phenomena attending that
contact have been carefully observed and studied. From the end of the
fifteenth century European nations have been conquering the backward
races. In some countries they enslaved, in others they extirpated,
these races. They have now portioned out the whole world of savagery,
barbarism, and semicivilization among themselves, so that, as the
result of discoveries, wars, and treaties, six great and three smaller
powers[107] have now appropriated all the extra-European world, except
three or four ancient Asiatic states. In our own day the questions
connected with race contact have obtained both a new moral interest,
because the old methods of killing off the so-called lower branches
of mankind by the sword or by slavery have fallen into discredit, and
also a new scientific interest, because we have become curious to
know what are the effects of a mixture of markedly dissimilar racial
stocks. Such mixture raises some of the most obscure problems in the
doctrine of heredity. Does the blending of one race with another tend
to weaken or to improve the breed, and how far are any marked qualities
of one parent stock transmissible by blood to a mixed progeny which is
placed in and powerfully affected by a different environment? Spanish
America offers a large and varied field for the study of these and
other similar questions, and a field which has been, so far, little
examined. My own knowledge does not go far enough to enable me to do
more than state a few broad facts and suggest to those who have better
opportunities for enquiry some of the problems which the subject
presents.
When the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors began to occupy the New
World they found it peopled everywhere by native tribes whose physical
characteristics and, to some extent, their languages also, indicated
that although they had inhabited America during countless ages, they
probably all had the same, and that an east Asiatic, origin. No part of
the two continents from Behring's Straits to Cape Horn (except a few
hopelessly barren deserts) was quite untenanted, but some regions were
far more populous than others. These regions were the high plateaus
of Anahuac (Mexico) with the adjoining lower regions of Yucatan and
Guatemala, the plateau of Bogotá, and the plateau of Peru. It was in
these that the greatest progress had been made toward civilization and
a settled agricultural life; while the lower woodlands and the more
or less arid prairies, such as those of the Missouri and of southern
Argentina, were more thinly inhabited. There may well have been in
Anahuac and Yucatan as many people as in all the rest of North
America, and in the Peruvian realm of the Incas as many people as in
all the rest of South America.
Now the existence of this aboriginal population has been and still is
a factor of the first magnitude in all parts of the continent (except
Argentina and Uruguay, where it hardly exists), and in this fact lies
one of the most striking contrasts between the northern and southern
halves of the Western Hemisphere. The importance of the native Indian
element in South America--and the same thing holds true of Mexico and
Central America--resides partly in the fact that it furnishes the
bulk of the labouring people and a large part of the army, partly in
the influence which it has exerted, and still exerts, on the whites,
commingling its blood with theirs and affecting their habits and life
in many ways.
When the Spaniards came to the New World, they came mainly for the sake
of gold. Neither the extension of trade, the hope of which prompted
the Dutch, nor the acquisition of lands to be settled and cultivated,
thereby extending the dominion of their crowns, which moved most of
the English and French, nor yet the desire of freedom to worship God
in their own way, which sent out the Pilgrims and Puritans of New
England,--none of these things were uppermost in the minds of the
companions of Columbus and Ponce de Leon, of Vasco Nuñez and Cortes
and Pizarro. No doubt they also desired to propagate the faith, but
their spiritual aims were never suffered to interfere with their
secular enterprises. Few settlers came from Spain to till the land.
The first object was to seize all that could be found of the precious
metals, much to the astonishment of the natives, who thought that gold
must be to them a sort of fetich. The next was to discover mines of
those metals and make the Indians work them. The third was to divide
up the more fertile districts into large estates, allotting to each
adventurer his share of labourer-natives along with his share of the
lands. No settlers came out to clear the ground from wood and build
homes upon it, as did the colonists of New England, and those also who
sought to create a New France on the St. Lawrence. No Spaniard thought
of tilling the soil himself. Why should he, when he could make others
till it for him? Where it was already under cultivation by the native
peasants, they were turned into serfs attached to the _encomienda_.
Where there was forest, the conquerors seldom troubled themselves to
fell it, and that which they found as wilderness remained wilderness
in the hands of the savage tribes. Where it was open prairie, there
was as little reason for disturbing the nomads who wandered over it.
Accordingly, the invaders became a ruling caste, living on the labour
of their Indian serfs, and for a long time they confined themselves
to the lands on which the latter were already established. So it
befell that the aborigines, who in the northern parts of North America
were either destroyed or driven out to the west, continued to be in
Spanish America one-half or more of the population, those who were
already semicivilized being kept as labourers, those who were savages
being left to themselves in their forests or half-desert prairies. No
agricultural European population grew up in the settled districts.
As there were aborigines on the spot to cultivate the land already
improved, comparatively few negroes were transported from Africa, and
these chiefly to the shores of the Caribbean and to Peru. It was only
in the tropical regions of the Antilles and (somewhat later) of Brazil
that negro slavery grew up on a large scale; and even there mining,
rather than agriculture, was the first cause of their being brought
from Africa. The need for negroes was not great in Mexico or Peru,
because the native Indians were of a hardier stock than the feeble
Arawaks of the Antilles, and lived on under their European masters,
though ground down and reduced in numbers by ill treatment. Thus when
at last the Spanish colonies asserted their independence, they started
without that incubus of a mass of negro slaves which brought so much
trouble upon the southern states of the North American Union.
Between the numerous aboriginal tribes there were the greatest
differences not only in their degree of advancement toward
civilization, but in intelligence, in virility, in fighting quality,
and in that kind of resisting power which enables a people to survive
under oppression. The best fighters seem to have been--I am not now
including the tribes of eastern North America--the Aztecs of Mexico
and the Mapoche or Araucanians of Chile. The Caribs in some of the
Lesser Antilles and in Venezuela were fierce and tenacious, while
their neighbours, the Arawaks of the other Antilles, seem to have
become extinct under Spanish severities in half a century. We have no
materials for even the vaguest guess at the numbers of these tribes,
but it is evident that some disappeared altogether, and that others
were greatly reduced. The Chibchas of Bogotá, who were estimated at a
million when first reached by the Conquerors, are said by a Spanish
annalist to have been almost exterminated in twenty years. Of the
Mochicas or Yuncas on the Peruvian coast, still numerous at the coming
of Pizarro, though many had perished during their conquest by the
Incas, few were left after half a century, and their cities have long
been heaps of ruins, perhaps partly because the irrigation works which
brought water to them were allowed to perish. A census taken in Peru by
the Viceroy Toledo in A.D. 1575 is said to have shewn eight millions
of Indians in what is now Peru and Bolivia. Two centuries later there
were less than half that number. So it is stated that the Indians
round Panama rapidly declined in number when the Spaniards established
themselves there. The natives of northeastern Brazil were killed off
in the end of the sixteenth century, though the tale that two millions
were destroyed in about twenty years is scarcely credible; and the
less numerous tribes of central Argentina and Uruguay have entirely
vanished. The process still goes on, though to-day the means are
usually less violent. It is intoxicating liquors and European diseases,
not any ill treatment by the Chileans, that have been reducing the
stalwart Araucanians to a fourth or fifth part of what they were eighty
years ago, and the Tehuelches and other Patagonian tribes, including
the wretched Fuegians, are dying out largely from natural causes. But
in the Amazonian forests along the Putumayo river--and that within the
last few years--the cruelties and oppressions practised by the rubber
gatherers upon the helpless Indians have destroyed many thousands of
lives and apparently altogether blotted out some tribes.
How many aborigines now remain in Latin America, it is impossible
to ascertain. Even in such advanced countries as Mexico and Peru,
there are no trustworthy figures, not only because it is impossible
to find means of counting the wild nomads of northwestern Mexico and
the still wilder savages of eastern Peru, but also because, even in
the civilized districts, it is hard to determine who is to be deemed
an Indian and who a mestizo, or half-breed. However, any estimate,
if clearly understood to be merely conjectural, is better than none
at all, so I may say that in Mexico[108] there are probably, out of
fifteen millions of people, about eight millions of Indians, with at
least six millions of mixed blood, and the rest Spaniards; while in
Peru and Bolivia, out of a total of about six millions, three and a
half millions are Indians, one and a half millions mestizos, and the
rest more or less pure Spaniards.[109] The one state which is almost
wholly Indian, so that the Guarani language is the prevailing tongue,
is the inland country of Paraguay, and the one which has no Indians at
all is Uruguay, lying on the coast, not far from Paraguay. Of the total
population of South America, estimated at forty-five millions, probably
eight to nine millions may be pure Indians. Besides these there are,
possibly, thirteen millions of mestizos or half-breeds, and fifteen
of persons who deem themselves white, even if a good many have some
infusion of aboriginal blood.[110] But if we omit Argentina, almost
entirely, and Uruguay entirely, white, as well as Brazil, and confine
our view to the other eight republics in which the Indian element is
larger, a probable estimate would put the number of pure Indians at
more than double that of the whites, and a little less than that of the
mestizos. Upon such a computation the total quantity of native blood
would much exceed the European. Such an estimate, however, can make no
claim to accuracy. I give it only because it seems, from all I could
gather, to represent, in a rough sort of way, the proportions of the
races. Anyone who chooses to consider all the more educated mestizos
as whites, and all Indians with any touch of white blood as mestizos,
would, of course, bring out different figures. The tendency of official
statistics is in that direction, for everybody wishes to be reckoned
as a white man, but such a method does not truly represent the racial
facts.
Of the total of about nine millions of Indians, two or three millions
may be wild, _Indios bravos_, as the South Americans call them, and in
little contact with civilized whites or mestizos. To this class belong
many of the aborigines in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, as
well as most of the far smaller number still left in Argentina. Of the
more or less civilized and settled Indians, more than one-half, about
three and a half millions, are in Peru and Bolivia; and it is of these
that I shall now proceed to speak, as I had opportunities in these
countries of ascertaining their position, and as they are themselves
more interesting, because they are the descendants of what was, before
the Spanish Conquest, a comparatively advanced people. What is true of
them is, moreover, true, in a general sense, as regards the settled
aborigines of the northern republics. In those states, however, there
is no such solid mass of sedentary agricultural Indians as dwell on the
plateaux and inter-Andean valleys of Peru and Bolivia.
Though at the time of the Conquest there were probably in the Inca
empire many different tribes speaking different languages, all have now
been fused into two, the Quichuas to the north of Lake Titicaca, and
the Aymarás, both around its shores and to the south of it in Bolivia.
Having given some account of both races in earlier chapters,[111] I
need only add that the two languages are generally spoken all over the
central Andes from the frontiers of Ecuador on the north to those of
Chile and Argentina on the south. Comparatively few of these Indians,
probably less than a fifth, are able to talk Spanish. Some few live in
the towns and practise handicrafts. Three-fourths of the population
of La Paz is Aymará, while in Cuzco at least one-third is Quichua.
The vast majority, however, are country folk cultivating the soil as
tenants or labourers or tending sheep and cattle as herdsmen for the
landowners, who are, of course, either of Spanish or of mixed blood.
Comparatively few Indians own small plots of their own. The landlords,
who in the colonial times oppressed the peasants so atrociously as
from time to time to provoke even this naturally submissive people to
rebellion, no longer venture to practise the exactions and cruelties of
those days. Authority is not feared as it was then, and could not be
used to support such flagrant injustice. Neither do the clergy wring
money from their flocks, as in those old bad days, though even now
the fees charged for marriages are so high that the rite is commonly
neglected. The ancient tribal system has melted away and the _cacique_,
as the Spaniards called him, who was the head of a local community
down till the end of the eighteenth century, is now gone, but the
old organization of the dwellers in a village by brotherhoods, and
resting, or supposed to rest, upon blood relationship, still exists,
and local affairs are managed by the local officials mentioned in an
earlier chapter.[112] Thus, the Indian is left very much to himself,
except that he pays rent to the landlord and is often bound to render
him personal service at his residence during part of the year. This is
called the _Mita_. His food is not very nutritious, consisting largely
of _chuño_, _i.e._ frozen potatoes, usually ground into flour. His
clothing is scanty, his mode of life hard and wretched, especially
on the bleak plateaux. Yet he is not in that abject poverty which
fears starvation; perhaps, indeed, not so near the minimum level of
subsistence as are millions of the people in China and India. He does
not contrast his own evil case with the luxury of the rich, as do the
slum dwellers of European cities, nor does he feel his case to be evil,
for it is no worse than his forefathers have borne for ten generations,
and he knows no other.
Not only the Quichuas and Aymarás, but the Indians of the northern
republics and of southern Chile are quite illiterate, and, as respects
education, just where they were under the Incas, perhaps rather farther
back, because there was then a sort of national life which has been
long since quenched. There seems to be among them little or no desire
for instruction. Even should any seek to rise in life, he would find
no means of doing so, unless perchance some kindly priest should give
the rudiments of knowledge to a boy brighter than the rest. Religion
does nothing to stir their minds. They are nominally Christians, but
of many of them that may be said to-day which was said in 1746 by the
humane and orthodox Spaniards, Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan, whose
secret report upon things in South America, and among others upon the
condition of the Indians in Peru and Ecuador, made to the king of
Spain, was published in England eighty years later. They say:--
"The religion of the Indians is no more like the Christian religion
than it is to that which they had while they were pagans, for if the
matter be well examined it will be found that notwithstanding the
nominal conversion of these tribes, so small is the progress they have
made in knowledge that it will be hard to discover any difference
between the state in which they now find themselves, and that in which
they were at the time of the Conquest."[113]
That the influence of the priesthood did not commend religion to the
people nor relieve their misery may be gathered from this further
extract from the same secret report:--
"The miserable state of the Indians is to be ascribed to the vices of
the parish priests (_curas_), the extortions of the corregidores, and
the bad treatment which they generally receive from all Spaniards.
Unable to endure their sufferings, and longing to escape from slavery,
many of them have risen up and moved off to unconquered districts,
there to continue in the barbarous practices of heathenism.... In the
community of Pimampiro in the province of Quito, which consisted of
more than 5000 Indians, and was prosperous, the conduct of the parish
priest drove the Indians to despair. Uniting in one body, they rose in
rebellion and in one night passed to the Cordillera, where they joined
themselves to the wild heathen Indians, with whom they have continued
until now."[114]
It ought to be remembered that the avarice and moral faults charged
upon the clergy in these reports, as well as in other accounts
belonging to the eighteenth century are brought against the parish
priests rather than the religious orders, although Ulloa describes the
level of conduct as having sadly declined among these also. To some
of the orders, most of all to the Jesuits, and in a less degree to
the early Dominicans, much credit is due for their efforts not only
to spread the gospel, often at the risk of their lives, but also to
secure justice for the unfortunate Indians. The great Las Casas was
only the most conspicuous among many admirable Spanish churchmen who
threw their hearts into this campaign of humanity, though they seldom
prevailed against the hard-hearted rapacity of the landowners and mine
owners who wished to keep the Indians in serfdom and did not care how
many perished under their hands. These worthy ecclesiastics sometimes
secured good ordinances from the Council of the Indies in Spain, but
the colonial governors found that the path of least resistance was
to proclaim the ordinance and wink at its neglect. On many a law was
the note made, "It is obeyed, but not executed" (_Se obedece pero no
se ejecuta_). In Paraguay, where the population was almost wholly
Indian, the reign of the Jesuits was generally beneficent. They could
not do much for the education of the mass of their subjects, but while
they trained some few of the promising youth, they impressed habits
of industry and good conduct upon the rest. Perhaps it is to the
excessive inculcation of obedience that the blind submissiveness of the
later Paraguayans to such despots as Francia and Lopez may be partly
attributed.[115]
The oppressions, both civil and ecclesiastical, referred to in the
extracts given above, have long since ceased, but their consequences
remain in the abject state of the aborigines and their ignorance of
the truths and precepts of Christianity. As a learned student of
Indian life observes, it is to them a kind of magic, more powerful for
some purposes than their own ancient magic which was based on nature
worship. "They believe in Dios (God)," says Mr. Bandelier,[116] "but
believe more in Nuestra Señora de la Luz (Our Lady of the Light)
at Copacavana." They worship evil spirits and make offerings to the
mountain _Achachilas_ and to the Earth. Even in Mexico, where the
Indians are, as a rule, much more subject to enlightening influences,
I was told in 1901 that an archbishop, visiting the parishes of his
diocese not long before, had found the ancient idols hidden away behind
the altars and occasionally brought out at night to receive marks of
reverence. The Peruvians had at the conquest hardly advanced to the
stage of a regular mythology with images of the deities, so idols were
less common and prominent, while the worship of the spirits immanent in
natural objects was universal.
Where the church fails to stir the currents of intellectual life among
the masses of such a people as this, what other influence is there to
make for progress?
These Peruvian races were specially unfortunate because their natural
leaders, the _caciques_ or local chieftains who had formed a sort
of aristocracy before the Conquest, were either slaughtered or, in
some few cases, incorporated into the colonial upper class, so that
they were lost, as protectors, to the subject class, who, having
little force of character, sank unresistingly into serfdom. Once, in
1781-1783, under the leadership of Tupac Amaru, of whom I have spoken
briefly in an earlier chapter, they rose in a revolt which lasted for
three years. Being unwarlike and untrained, ill-armed and ill-led,
they were defeated with great slaughter, after atrocious cruelties had
been perpetrated on both sides. But they accomplished one feat rare
in the annals of war in destroying, along with its Spanish garrison,
the city of Sorata, which they had long besieged in vain, by damming
up the course of a mountain torrent and turning its full stream on the
place. Since those days, even the few chiefs that then remained have
vanished, and the aboriginal race consists wholly of the poorest and
most neglected part of the population. That which to them makes life
tolerable is the incessant chewing of coca, a very old habit, but now
less costly than in Inca days, because the leaf can be more easily
imported from the hot country east of the Andes.
Their enjoyments are two. One is intoxication, mostly with chicha, the
old native beverage, but now also with fiery alcohol, made from the
sugar-cane. The other is dancing at their festivals. The priests, when
they were converting the natives, thought it better not to disturb the
ancient heathen dances, but to transfer them to the days which the
church sets apart for its feasts, expunging, so far as they could,
the more offensive features of the dance, though what remains is
sufficiently repulsive. Such ceremonial performances are common among
the Indians of North America, also, and used often to be kept up for
days together before a declaration of war. The dances of the Hopi and
other Indians which the visitor sees to-day in Arizona are dull and
decorous affairs. A striking description of the dances which he saw at
Tiahuanaco on Corpus Christi Day is given by Mr. Squier,[117] and the
much more recent account given by Mr. Bandelier of those he witnessed
on another festival at Copacavana shew that things are much the same
to-day.[118] The music, of a drum-and-fife type, is loud, harsh, and
discordant, but this does not imply that a taste for sweet sound is
wanting, for the Indian often carries his simple flute or pipe with him
on his journeys and enjoys the monotonous ditties which he makes it
discourse.
Three other facts may be adduced to illustrate the condition of the
aborigines. There is no recent literature in their languages, not
even a newspaper or magazine. They seem to be very rarely ordained as
priests, though I was told in Mexico that there are a good many Indian
priests there; and it seldom happens that any Indian rises into the
learned or even into the educated class. I heard of one such at Lima,
who had a remarkable knowledge of natural history; there may have been
others.
Whether owing to the character of the Indians, or to their fear of the
white man, robberies and assaults are rare not only among the more
gentle Quichuas, but also in Bolivia, where the Aymarás, a more dour
and sullen race, frequently break the peace among themselves, village
attacking village with sticks and slings, while the women carry bags of
stones to supply ammunition for the men's slings. In fact, the safety
of the solitary European traveller in most parts of South America is
almost as remarkable as the like circumstance in India.
In respect of civil rights, there is no legal distinction between the
Indian and the white. Both enjoy the same citizenship for all private
and public purposes, to both is granted the equal protection of the
laws, equal suffrage, equal eligibility to office. This is to some
extent a guarantee to the Indian against ill treatment, but it does not
raise him in the social scale. He seldom casts a vote; not, indeed,
that it makes much difference in these countries whether the citizen
votes or not, for a paternal government takes charge of the elections.
He is never--so far as I could learn--a candidate for any national
office. The laws of the two republics interfere very little with his
life, which is regulated by ancestral custom. Even in revolutions he
does not seem to come to the front. He is, however, willing to fight,
and a good fighter both in foreign and in civil wars, however little
interest he may take in the cause. But for this fact there would have
been fewer and shorter revolutions. Thus the Indian is a member of
the nation for military, if not for political, purposes. The former
are at least nearer to his comprehension than the latter, for he
cares, and thinks of caring, about politics no more than did the needy
knife-grinder in Canning's verses. No one has yet preached to him the
gospel of democracy; no one has told him that he has anything to gain
from action as a citizen. The whole thing is as completely out of his
sphere as if he were still living under the Spanish viceroys, or,
indeed, under the rule of the Inca Huayna Capac. There is, therefore,
not yet any "Indian question" in South America.[119] There ought to
be an Indian question: that is to say, there ought to be an effort to
raise the Indians economically and educationally. But they have not yet
begun to ask to be raised.
So much for the Indian as he is in Peru and Bolivia; and, apparently,
also in those settled parts of northwestern Argentina where Indians
still remain. In Paraguay the position is so far different that the
Indians form not the lowest class, but the bulk of the nation. In the
forest-covered regions of the Amazon and its tributaries, the _Indios
bravos_ are outside civilization altogether.
To understand the social relations of the white and Indian races one
must begin by remembering that there is in Spanish and Portuguese
countries no such sharp colour line as exists where men of Teutonic
stock are settled in countries outside Europe. As this is true of
the negro, it is even more true of the Indian. He may be despised
as a weakling, he may be ignored as a citizen, he may be, as he was
at one time, abominably oppressed and ill treated, but he excites
no personal repulsion. It is not his race that is against him, but
his debased condition. Whatever he suffers, is suffered because he
is ignorant or timid or helpless, not because he is of a different
blood and colour. Accordingly the Spanish Americans do not strive to
keep off and keep down the Indian in such wise as the North Americans
and the Dutch and the English--I do not mean the governments, but
the individuals--treat their black subjects. There is not even such
aversion to him as is shewn in California and in Australia to the
Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus. The distinction between the races is in
Spanish America a distinction of rank or class rather than of colour.
Against intermarriage there is, therefore, no more feeling than that
which exists against any union palpably below a man's or woman's own
rank in life. If it is rare for a pure white to espouse a pure Indian,
that is because they are of different ranks, just as it is rare for
a well-born Englishman to marry a peasant girl. There is nothing in
the law to oppose such a union, and though whites seldom marry pure
Indians, because the classes come little into contact, the presence of
an unmistakable Indian strain in a suitor makes no difference to his
acceptability to a white woman of the same rank. Whether this contrast
between the Spanish attitude towards the Indian and the Anglo-American
attitude to the negro is due to differences between Roman Catholicism
and Protestantism,[120] or to the fact that the Indian was never
legally a slave, or to the fact that the aboriginal American races
shew a less marked divergence in colour and features from the white
than does the negro, is a question which need not be here discussed.
Possibly all three causes may contribute to the result; and probably
the circumstance that most of the early Spaniards, having brought no
wives with them, treated their numerous children by Indian women as
being legitimate and belonging to their own race, was also a factor.
Such a usage, established in the days of the Conquest, would naturally
continue to affect men's attitude. The result is anyhow one of great
significance, and makes the racial problem here quite different from
what it is in the southern states of North America.
The most salient point of difference lies in the position of the
half-breed or mestizo. In North America a mulatto, a quadroon, even an
octoroon who is only one-eighth black, counts as a negro. Here, except
perhaps in a few of the oldest cities, a mestizo counts as a white.
His half-Indian blood is no disparagement to his social standing, no
obstacle to his reaching any public position. One may remark of such
and such a person that he has evidently a strong infusion of Indian
blood, of such another that he looks a Spaniard through and through,
and the latter doubtless cherishes a secret satisfaction in his pure
Iberian stock. But for the practical purposes of business and politics,
the two, supposing them to belong to the same educated class, stand
upon the same level. The families which value their lineage so highly
that they would deem the marriage of a child to a person of mixed
blood, otherwise desirable, to be a _mésalliance_, must be now few,
and hardly exist outside five or six cities--such as Bogotá, Lima,
Arequipa, and Santiago.
Thus one may say that there is no "colour question" in South America.
Its republics have political and economic problems enough, but they
are spared a source of embarrassment and danger constantly present
to the minds of thoughtful North Americans, and present also (though
less painfully) to the minds of South Africans. Although, therefore,
both in Spanish America and in the United States there are social
distinctions which coincide with race distinctions, the character
of those distinctions is different. In both countries there are two
sections. But in the United States everyone who is not white is
classed as coloured, however slight the trace. In Spanish America
everyone who is not wholly Indian is classed as white, however marked
the Indian tinge.[121] Thus the mixed population, which in the United
States swells the negro element, is in Spanish America a part of the
white nation, and helps to give that element its preponderance. And
a further difference appears in the fact that whereas in the United
States the man of colour is discriminated against for social purposes,
irrespective of his wealth, education, or personal qualities, in
Spanish countries race counts for so little that when he emerges out
of the poverty and ignorance which mark the Indian, his equality with
the white man is admitted. So rarely, however, does he emerge that one
may broadly say that the Nation consists in these republics of white
men and mestizos only, the Indian constituting, if not another nation,
yet a separate nationality, marked off not merely by poverty, but by
its language and the adherence of its members to ancient superstitions.
They have nothing, except the worship of the saints and a fondness
for liquor, in common with the class above them, for they speak a
different language, think differently, feel differently, have their
own amusements, and cherish, in a dim way, faint memories of a time
when their forefathers were masters of the land. They are not actively
hostile to the white people, and, indeed, get on better with their
landlords than some European peasantries have done with theirs. But
they live apart, inside the nation, but not of it. The Aymarás are
silent, suspicious, sullen. The Quichuas are more kindly, but hardly
less reserved. This reserve and suspicion characterize the Mexican
Indian also, who is generally more intelligent than the Peruvian.[122]
Both Aymarás and Quichuas are tenacious of their customs, and do not
seek to assimilate any of that modern life and lore which has found
its slow way even into the recesses of the Andes. No one from without
tries to give it to them, no one rises from among themselves stirred by
a desire to acquire it and then impart it to his fellows.
This want of leading, and want not only of light but of a wish for
light, is the feature of the Indian population which most surprises
the traveller, because he knows of no parallel to it among the subject
races of Europe in the past or those of western Asia to-day. The
Greek and Armenian in Turkey have at times suffered as much from the
Turk as the Quichua has suffered from his conquerors in Peru, but in
intelligence and capacity for progress they have been the superiors of
the Turk; and had there been more of them, they would before now have
shaken off his control.
If it is asked how the presence of this solid Indian mass,
unassimilated by the white nation, has affected that nation and
the progress of the country as a whole, the answer is that in the
first place it prevented all chance of the growth of a free European
agricultural population, even in those high valleys where Europeans
could work and thrive. Had the hardy and laborious peasantry of
Galicia, Asturias, and Aragon settled in these regions, how much more
robust, mentally and physically, might the nation have been! How much
might agriculture have been improved had there been intelligent labour!
But besides this want, and besides the weakening of the state by the
lack of national spirit in half of its population, the presence of a
large mass of ignorance and superstition has operated to reduce the
general intellectual level. There have been countries where a small
rich and ruling class, living on the toil of inferiors, has cultivated
art and letters with brilliant success, but we find nothing of the sort
here. The ignorant mass has depressed the whole, as a glacier chills
the air of its valley.
Whether the Spanish stock has deteriorated through the mixture of
Indian blood is a more difficult matter to determine. The Peruvians
and Bolivians of to-day, both whites and mestizos--and the same thing
is true of Venezuelans and Ecuadoreans--differ much from the Spaniards
of the sixteenth century and from the European Spaniards of to-day.
They are probably more excitable; they are naturally less industrious
because they live in hot countries and have Indians to work for them.
But in Spain itself there are great differences between the peoples
of the north and the south and the east. The Catalans are more
energetic than the Andalusians, the Gallegos more industrious than the
Valencians. The conditions of colonial life in the presence of a large
aboriginal population, coupled with long misgovernment and intellectual
stagnation, account for a good deal of the variation from the Spanish
type. It is a sound maxim never to lay weight upon uncertain causes
when certain causes are available as explanations. Moreover our
knowledge of heredity in its influence on race development is still
imperfect. The Argentines, who are of an almost pure white stock, also
differ much from the modern Spaniard.
It might seem natural to assume _a priori_ that men of pure European
race would continue to hold the foremost place in these countries, and
would shew both greater talents and a more humane temper than those
in whose veins Indian blood flows. But I doubt if the facts support
such a view. Some of the most forceful leaders who have figured in
the politics of these republics have been mestizos. I remember one,
as capable and energetic and upright a man as I met anywhere in the
continent, who looked at least half an Indian, and very little of a
Spaniard. Nor have there been any more sinister figures in the history
of South America since the days of Pedro de Arias the infamous governor
of Darien who put to death Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, than some who were
pure Spaniards. No half-breeds have shewn more ruthlessness than the
Spanish Carbajal in the days of Pizarro, or than Rosas, the Argentine
dictator of seventy years ago. And in this connection it deserves to be
noticed that the ancient Peruvian Indians, though they thought nothing
of indiscriminate slaughter and occasionally tortured captive enemies,
did not generally shew the same taste for blood as the Aztecs shewed in
their sacrifices nor the same propensity to methods of elaborate and
long-drawn-out cruelty as did the Red men of North America.
As I have so far been speaking chiefly of Peru and Bolivia, where the
Indian population is larger and more civilized than elsewhere, a few
observations ought to be added regarding the other republics in which
a considerable aboriginal population remains. I omit Uruguay, because
it has none at all. In Argentina there are some civilized Indians in
the northwestern districts round the cities of Jujuy and Tucuman, and
to these the remarks made regarding their neighbours, the Bolivian
Indians, apply. There are also wild Indians, perhaps one hundred
thousand, perhaps more, on the Gran Chaco of the far north,[123] and
the scattered remnants of nomad Patagonians in the far south and in
Tierra del Fuego. These seem to be disappearing. The Onas in that
island have been freely killed off by the ranchmen on whose flocks
they preyed, and tubercular disease is destroying the rest. In Chile,
besides the Araucanians, described in Chapter VI, there are a few
small tribes, in a low state of barbarism, left in the archipelago of
wet and woody isles along the Pacific coast. The rural population of
the republic--indeed, nearly all of the poorer and less educated part
of it--is mestizo, a bold and vigorous race, good workers and fine
fighters. Paraguay is an almost purely Indian country.
Of the four northern republics, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and
Ecuador, I have seen only the first. In each of these the number of
purely Spanish families is small. It is probably largest in Colombia.
In Venezuela the Indians have been more largely absorbed into the
general population than has happened in Colombia and Ecuador. In all
four states such of the Indians as remain wild forest dwellers are
passive, and practically outside the nation, which is, as a social and
political entity, predominantly mestizo. What has been said of Peru
and Bolivia is true of these states also: there is no colour line; the
mestizos are treated as white and are not, as a class, intellectually
inferior to the white. The Indian forms the lowest stratum, and seldom
rises out of it.
There remains Brazil, distinguished from the other republics by the
fact that in addition to her small mestizo population and her pure
Indian population, most of it wild, she has a great mass of negroes
and a still larger mass of mulattoes and quadroons. It is hardly too
much to say that along the coast from Rio to Bahia and Pernambuco, as
well as in parts of the interior behind these two cities, the black
population predominates. In character and habits it somewhat resembles
the negroes of the British West Indies and Santo Domingo, being
superior to the Haytians, but inferior in education and enterprise
to the coloured people of the southern states of North America. High
as is its fecundity, its death-rate is also so high, owing to the
general neglect of sanitary precautions, that it does not appear
to be increasing relatively to the general population. It is well
treated--slavery was seldom harsh among the kindly natured, easy-going
Portuguese--and bears no ill-will to its former masters. Neither do
they feel towards it that repulsion which marks the attitude of the
whites to the negroes in North America and South Africa. The Brazilian
lower class intermarries freely with the black people; the Brazilian
middle class intermarries with mulattoes and quadroons. Brazil is
the one country in the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on the
east and west coasts of Africa, in which a fusion of the European and
African races is proceeding unchecked by law or custom. The doctrines
of human equality and human solidarity have here their perfect work.
The result is so far satisfactory that there is little or no class
friction. The white man does not lynch or maltreat the negro: indeed,
I have never heard of a lynching anywhere in South America except
occasionally as part of a political convulsion. The negro is not
accused of insolence and does not seem to develop any more criminality
than naturally belongs to any ignorant population with loose notions of
morality and property.
What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the
European element in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may
judge from a few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the
intellectual standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I
have known had some colour; and other such cases have been mentioned to
me. Assumptions and preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible
they may seem.
The chief conclusions which the history of the relations of races in
the South American continent suggests are the three following. The
first may be thought doubtful. It is negative rather than positive,
and though it seems worth stating, I state it with diffidence.
The fusion of two parent stocks, one more advanced, the other more
backward, does not necessarily result in producing a race inferior to
the stronger parent or superior to the weaker. The mestizo in Peru is
not palpably inferior in intellect to the Spanish colonial of unmixed
blood, but seems to be substantially his equal. The mestizo in Mexico
is not palpably superior--some doubt if he is at all superior either
physically, morally, or intellectually--to the pure Tarascan or Zapotec
Indian, who is, no doubt, a stronger human being than the South
American Quichua or Aymará.
The second conclusion is this: Conquest and control by a race of
greater strength have upon some races a depressing and almost ruinous
effect. The Peruvian subjects of the Incas had reached a state of
advancement which, though much below that of the ancient Egyptians and
Babylonians, was remarkable when one considers that their isolation
deprived them of the enormous benefit of contact with other progressive
peoples, and when one considers also the disadvantage of living at a
great altitude, the absence of milk-yielding animals, and the paucity
both of animals capable of domestication and of cereal plants. The
impact of Spanish invasion not only shattered their own rudimentary
civilization to pieces, but so took all the heart and spirit out of
them that they have made practically no advances during four centuries,
and have profited hardly at all by the western civilization of their
masters. The aborigines of Mexico, having more stamina of intellect and
will, have suffered less by the shock, but have done almost as little
to assimilate the arts and ideas of Europe.
Thirdly, the ease with which the Spaniards have intermingled by
marriage with the Indian tribes--and the Portuguese have done the like,
not only with the Indians, but with the more physically dissimilar
negroes--shews that race repugnance is no such constant and permanent
factor in human affairs as members of the Teutonic peoples are apt
to assume. Instead of being, as we Teutons suppose, the rule in this
matter, we are rather the exception, for in the ancient world there
seems to have been little race repulsion; there is very little to-day
among Mohammedans; there is none among Chinese. This seems to suggest
that since the phenomenon is not of the essence of human nature, it may
not be always as strong among the Teutonic peoples as it is to-day.
Religion has been in the past almost as powerful a dissevering force
as has racial antagonism. In the case of Spaniards and Portuguese,
religion, so soon as the Indians had been baptized, made race
differences seem insignificant. Islam has always done this in the East
and in Africa.
As touching the future, it seems as certain as anything in human
affairs can be that the races now inhabiting South America, aboriginal,
European, and African, will be all ultimately fused. The Spanish
republics (except the purely white Argentina and Uruguay) will be
Ibero-American, Brazil will be Ibero-American-African. All present
facts point that way, and that any hitherto unfelt repulsion will arise
seems most improbable. When, however, will the process be complete?
In the Spanish republics, hardly before two centuries, probably not
even then. It seems not much nearer now than it was in 1810, when the
revolutionary struggles began, though anything which stirred up the
Andean population, such as the discovery of a large number of new and
rich mines, bringing in foreign labour and increasing the demand for
domestic labour, or anything that roused a spirit of economic and
political change, might accelerate the consummation.
Still less predictable is the quality of the mixed race that will
emerge. One cannot but fear that the Portuguese of tropical Brazil may
suffer from the further infusion of an element the moral fibre of which
is conspicuously weak, though there are those who argue that the blood
of the superior race must ultimately transmute the whole. But we need
not assume that the peoples of the Spanish republics will necessarily
decline, for the present degradation of the Indians may be due as much
to their melancholy history as to inherent defects. It is still too
soon to be despondent. There may be in the Indian stock a reserve of
strength, dormant, but not extinct, ready to respond to a new stimulus
and to shoot upwards under more inspiriting conditions.