_PROBLEMS_
Serious problems arise from a consideration of the Latin democracies,
which are in the full tide of development. They are divided, in
spite of common traditions, and they comprise races whose marriage
has not been precisely happy. In spite of the resources of the soil,
and its fabulous wealth, these States live by loans. Their political
life is not organised; the parties obey leaders who bring to the
struggle for power neither an ideal nor a programme of concrete
reforms. The population of these States is so small that America may
be called a desert.
We will consider all these problems minutely: problems of unity, of
race, of population, of financial conditions, and of politics.
{335}
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF UNITY
The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of
development--Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral
unity in the same degree as Latin America--The future groupings of
the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles,
Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the
Confederation of La Plata--Political and economical aspects of these
unions--The last attempts at federation in Central America--The
Bolivian Congress--The A.B.C.--the union of the Argentine, Brazil,
and Chili.
A professor of the American university of Harvard, Mr. Coolidge,
writes that if there is one thing that proves the backwardness of the
political spirit of the Latin Americans, it is precisely the
existence of so many hostile democracies on a continent which is in
so many respects uniform. With so many points in common, with the
same language, the same civilisation, the same essential interests,
they persist in maintaining the political subdivisions due to the
mere accidents of their history.[1] And he advises in all sincerity
that these inimical nations should associate themselves in powerful
groups, a means of defence which no nation could oppose, neither the
United States nor Europe. If, for example, Bolivia, Uruguay, and
Paraguay were to unite with the Argentine Republic; if the old United
States of Colombia were re-established, and if, as formerly,
Venezuela and Ecuador, with perhaps Peru, were to form a
confederation; if the republics of Central America were {336} at last
to succeed in forming a durable confederation, and were perhaps to
join Mexico--then Latin America would consist only of a few great
States, each of which would be sufficiently important to assume by
right an enviable position in the modern world, and to fear no
aggression on the part of any foreign power.
The Latin Republics pay no attention to this wise counsel; we observe
among them a tendency toward further disagreement, toward an atomic
disintegration. Originally a different and a wider movement, in the
sense of the close union of similar nationalities, did manifest
itself. The contrary principle prevails to-day, and it results in
the separation of complementary provinces and the conflict of sister
nations.
During a century of isolated political development, and under the
influence of territory and climate, divergent characteristics have
manifested themselves in the nations of America. Mexico is without
the tropical eloquence we find in Colombia; the Chilian inflexibility
contrasts with the rich imagination of the Brazilians; the Argentines
have become a commercial people; Chili is a bellicose republic;
Bolivia has an astute policy, the work of a slow and practical
people, which has given it a new strength; Peru persists in its
dreams of generous idealism; Central America remains rent by an
anarchy which seems incurable; Venezuela is still inspired by an
empty "lyricism." Some of these republics are practical peoples
governed by active plutocracies; others are given to dreaming and are
led by presidents suffering from neurosis. In the Tropics we find
civil war and idleness; on the cold table-lands, in the temperate
plains, and in the maritime cities, wealth and peace.
But such divergences do not form an essential separation; they cannot
destroy the age-long work of laws, religion, institutions, tradition,
and language. {337} Unity possesses indestructible foundations, as
old and as deep-rooted as the race itself.
From Mexico to Chili the religion is the same; the intolerance of
alien cults is the same; so are the clericalism, the
anti-clericalism, the fanaticism, and the superficial free thought;
the influence of the clergy in the State, upon women, and the
schools; the lack of true religious feeling under the appearance of
general belief.
To this first very important factor of unity we must add the powerful
and permanent influence of the Spanish language, whose future is
bound up with the future of the Latin Transatlantic peoples.
Sonorous and arrogant, this language expresses, better than any
other, the vices and the grandeur of the American mind; its rhetoric
and its heroism, its continuity of spirit from the feats of the Cid
to the Republican revolutions. The Spanish tongue is an intimate
bond of union between the destinies of the metropolis and those of
its ancient colonies, and it separates the two Americas, one being
the expression of the Latin and the other of the Anglo-Saxon genius.
The language is always to a certain extent transformed in these
democracies; provincialisms and Americanisms abound; the popular
tongue differs from the autocratic Castilian. Don Rufino Cuervo
predicts that Spanish will undergo essential alterations in America,
as was the case with Latin at the time of the Roman decadence. An
Argentine writer, Señor Ernesto Quesada, believes that a national
language is in process of formation on the banks of the Plata, and
that the barbarisms of the popular speech are forecasts of a new
tongue. In Chili an exalted patriot has upheld the originality of
the Chilian race and language in an anonymous book, claiming that
they derive from the Gothic. Thus is the effect of the national
spirit exaggerated. Among the Ibero-American republics there is a
profound and general {338} resemblance in the pronunciation and the
syntax of the language; the same linguistic defects even are to be
found in all. The Spanish of the Peninsula loses its majesty
overseas; it is no longer the language, lordly in its beauty, solemn
in its ornaments, of Granada, of Mariana, of Perez de Guzman.
Familiar, declamatory, pronounced with a caressing accent, the
Castilian of America is uniform from North to South.
More effectual than religion and language the identity of race
explains the similarity of the American peoples, and constitutes a
promise of lasting unity. The native race, the Spanish race, and the
negro race are everywhere mingled, in similar proportions, from the
frontier of the United States to the southern limits of the
continent. On the Atlantic seaboard European immigration, an influx
of Russians, Italians, and Germans, has given the supremacy to the
white race, but this influence is limited to small belts of land,
when we consider the vast area of the continent.
A single half-caste race, with here the negro and there the Indian
predominant over the conquering Spaniard, obtains from the Atlantic
to the Pacific. There is a greater resemblance between Peruvians and
Argentines, Colombians and Chilians, than between the inhabitants of
two distant provinces of France, such as Provence and Flanders,
Brittany and Burgundy, or between the Italian of the north, positive
and virile, and the lazy and sensual Neapolitan, or between the North
American of the Far West and the native of New England. The slight
provincial differences enable us the better to understand the unity
of the continent.
This identity explains the monotonous history of America. A
succession of military periods and industrial periods, of revolts and
dictatorships; perpetual promises of political restoration; the
tyranny of {339} ignorant adventurers, and complicated and delusive
legislation.
It is in the great crises of its history that the essential unity of
the race is revealed. The Wars of Independence were a unanimous
movement, an expression of profound solidarity. In 1865, after half
a century of isolation, the democracies of the Pacific once more
united to oppose Spain's attempt at reconquest. Soldiers of
different nations, who had already fought in bygone battles, but
against each other, now fought side by side for the common liberty.
The same unity of inspiration has brought the nations together in
opposition to many projects of conquest: the expedition of Flores
against Ecuador, of France against Mexico, and the Anglo-French
alliance against Rosas. At the second Hague Congress in 1907 Latin
America revealed to the Western world the importance of her wealth
and the valour of her men, and supported her ideal of arbitration; to
the Monroe doctrine she opposed the doctrine of Drago, and, without
preliminary understanding, asserted her unity.
No other continent offers so many reasons for union, and herein lies
the chief originality of Latin America.
In Europe states and races are in conflict, and the unstable
equilibrium is maintained only by means of alliances. Religions,
political systems, traditions, and languages differ. History is
merely a succession of turbulent hegemonies: of Spain, England,
France, and Germany. We find artificial nations, like Austria;
unions of democratic and theocratic peoples, like the Franco-Russian
Alliance; rival empires of the same race, like England and Germany;
political alliances of alien races, like Germany and Italy; and the
dispersion of peoples painfully seeking to recover their lost unity,
like the Poles, the Irish, and the Slavs. The federation of Europe
is a Utopian dream.
{340}
Africa is not yet autonomous; it is a vast group of enslaved peoples
of primitive races, colonised by the great European powers. There
the Anglo-Saxon genius is seeking to establish a political union
between English and Dutch, and one day, perhaps, the empire dreamed
of by Cecil Rhodes will stretch from Cairo to the Cape. But the
unity of Africa is impossible; for the colonists come to the Dark
Continent as conquerors, as the representatives of hostile interests;
they can but quarrel over Morocco, Tripoli, and the Congo. Oceania
possesses only a partial unity in the Australian commonwealth, the
work of England. In Asia it is still more impossible to guess whence
a future unity might arise. Mussulmans and Buddhists share India;
Japan has won only an ephemeral superiority; China retains all her
irreducible independence; in Manchuria and Korea Russian and Asiatic
interests are opposed; in Turkestan, Persia, and Tibet the conflicts
of race and religion are enough to destroy any hope of union.
In America and in America only the political problem is relatively
simple. Unity is there at once a tradition and a present necessity,
yet in spite of this fact the disunion of the Latin democracies
persists.
Forty years ago Alberdi thought it necessary, and believed it
possible, to redraw the map of America.
To-day the Latin nations overseas are less plastic; the frontiers
seem too definitely established, and prejudices too deeply rooted to
allow of such a recombination; but the formation of groups of nations
is no less urgent. If the unity of the continent by means of a vast
federation in the Anglo-Saxon manner seems impossible, it is none the
less necessary to group the Latin-American nations in a durable
fashion, according to their affinities. While respecting the
inevitable geographical inequalities which give certain peoples an
evident superiority over others, and the no less inevitable economic
inequalities which {341} create natural unions, it would still be
possible to found a stable assemblage of nations, a Continent.
There is a spontaneous hierarchy in the Latin New World; there are
superior and inferior democracies, maritime nations and inland
states. Paraguay will always be inferior to the Argentine Republic;
Uruguay to Brazil; Bolivia to Chili; Ecuador to Peru; Guatemala to
Mexico; as much from the point of wealth as in population and
influence. The preservation of the autonomy of republics which
differ so greatly in the extent and situation of their territories
can only be removed by federative grouping. To oppress and colonise
these countries is the desire of all imperialists, no matter whence
they come; but the peace of America demands another solution; which
is, not the synthesis which some one powerful State might enforce,
but the co-operation of free organisms. By grouping themselves about
more advanced peoples the secondary nations might succeed in
preserving their threatened autonomy.
Central America, exhausted by anarchy, may aspire to unity; these
five small nations maintain a precarious independence in the face of
the United States. Until 1842 Central America was only one State,
and subsequent attempts at unification proved that this was not
merely the artificial creation of its politicians. When the Panama
Canal has divided the two Americas, and increased the power of the
United States, these nations, together with Mexico, might form a true
Spanish advance-guard in the North.
Moreover, the free islands of the Caribbean Sea might be united in a
Confederation of the Antilles, according to the noble dream of
Hostos. Greater Colombia might be reconstituted, with Ecuador, New
Granada, and Venezuela. Their greatest leaders have desired their
union, as a preventive of indefinite and fractional division and
internal discord. On the basis {342} of common traditions, and for
important geographical reasons, these three nations might form an
imposing Confederacy. Once the Canal is open, this group of peoples,
stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on the northern
extremity of the continent, would form a massive Latin rampart, a
country capable of absorbing European emigration and of opposing to
Anglo-Saxon invasion the resistance of a vast populated and united
territory.
Bolivia, the inland republic, deprived of her coast-line by Chili,
has already been twice united to Peru; in 1837, under the authority
of Santa-Cruz, and in 1879, to oppose the supremacy of Chili on the
Pacific. What should henceforth separate it from a people to which
it is united by so many historical and economic ties, and a
similitude of territory and race from Cuzco to Oruro? Chili and Peru
will be either two perpetual enemies, or two peoples drawn together
by a useful understanding. Their geographical proximity, their
mutually complementary products--the tropical fruits of Peru and the
products of the temperate zones of Chili--might contribute to bring
them together. Have we not here an actual economic harmony? In the
moral domain the very causes which have engendered hatred between
Chili and Peru, from the time of Portales to that of Pinto, might
equally prove to be the elements of future friendship. Peru,
impoverished by the Chilian conquest, and deprived of her deposits of
nitre, would no longer be the victim of the Chilian greed of gold,
nor the hatred of a poor colony for the elegant vice-kingdom. Chili
is wealthier than Peru, and her people have more energy and more
will-power, although they may have less imagination, less nobility of
character, and less eloquence. The Peruvian vivacity and grace may
be contrasted with the prosaic deliberation of Chili; the anarchy of
the one country with the political stability of the other; the
idealism {343} of Peru with the common-sense of Chili. Physically
and morally these two countries complete one another. The economic
necessities of each might form the permanent basis of a possible
alliance. The Confederation of the Pacific, formed by Peru, Bolivia,
and Chili, would be a safeguard against future wars in America.
Unhappily Chili professes and seeks to enforce a superiority founded
upon victory, just as, when the German Empire was confederated,
victorious and warlike Prussia enforced her superiority over artistic
Bavaria.
The Confederation of La Plata, the heir to the traditions of the
colonial era, might be formed of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
Rosas did seek to create this great federal organisation. During the
course of the century Uruguay has extended her sympathies alternately
to the Argentine and to Brazil, and Paraguay, during a period of epic
grandeur, defended her isolation. The union of these republics was
prevented by national rivalities and the ambitions of their
_caudillos_, but it will surely be effected in the future under the
pressure of the power of Argentina. It is true that Uruguay has only
too definite an originality in the matter of intellect, from the
point of view of liberalism and education, but the federation of the
future would not be the imposition of a harsh hegemony of one nation
over others, but rather the co-operation of republics with equal
rights which had at last understood the poverty of their isolated
condition. Paraguay, remote and concealed, ruled sometimes by a
Jesuitical and now by a civil dictatorship, has need of a place in
such a vast confederation of cultivated peoples.
These groups of nations will thus form a new America, organic and
powerful. Brazil, with her immense territory and dense population;
the Confederation of La Plata; the Confederation of the Pacific;
Greater Colombia: these will finally {344} establish the continental
equilibrium so anxiously desired. In the North, Mexico and Central
America and the Confederation of the Antilles would form three Latin
States to balance the enveloping movement of the Anglo-Saxons.
Instead of twenty divided republics we should thus have seven
powerful nations. We should have not the vague Union of which all
the Utopian professors since Bolivar have spoken, but a definite
grouping and confederation of peoples united by real economic,
geographical, and political ties.
To realise these fusions there are both economic and political
methods. Hasty conventions would be powerless to uproot the hatreds
and the narrow conceptions of patriotism peculiar to the American
peoples. The organisation of the continent should be the work of
thinkers, statesmen, and captains of industry, a work fortified by
time and history. To the tradition of discord we must oppose
another, the tradition of union.
A series of partial commercial treaties, navigation treaties, railway
systems, customs unions, and international congresses (like those
recently held at Montevideo and Santiago) may all be indicated as
means of realising unity. The railways above all will create a new
continent; for isolation and lack of population are the enemies of
American federation.
To-day these peoples do not know one another. Paris is their
intellectual capital, where their poets, thinkers, and statesmen
meet. In America everything makes for separation: forests, plains,
and mountains. What does Venezuela know of Chili, Peru of Mexico,
Colombia of the Argentine? Even in the case of neighbouring nations
the political leaders do not know one another. The psychology of
neighbouring peoples is a mystery; whence traditional errors and
disastrous wars. American journalism is ignorant of nothing in
European life--the sessions of the Duma, the ministerial crises of
{345} Roumania, the nobility of the Gotha Almanac, the scandals of
Berlin; but of the public life of the American nations it publishes
only the vaguest and most erroneous news. By stimulating the love of
travel and building railroads these peoples would escape from an
isolation so perilous. "Every line of railroad which crosses a
frontier," said Gladstone, "prepares the way for universal
confederation." The Yankees have understood this, which is why they
are preparing to build a great Pan-American railway to unite the two
Americas under their financial sceptre.
The line which has recently united the two capitals of the
South--Santiago and Buenos-Ayres--has contributed to the formation of
a solid understanding between Chili and the Argentine. That which
will unite Lima and Buenos-Ayres in the near future will bring the
culture of the Argentine to the Bolivian table-lands, as far as
Cuzco, the centre of Inca tradition; it will draw together the
seaboard populations of the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific,
and will prove a powerful agent of civilisation and unity. The great
rivers of the Amazonian basin from the Putumayo to the Beni, the
affluents of the Rio de la Plata, the Magdalena and the Orinoco,
united by new railroads, will also contribute to the continental
unity by multiplying international relations. One may well repeat
the celebrated phrase, that to govern is to lay rails. Railways
vanquish barbarism; they attract the stranger, people the desert,
civilise the native. Political organisation and internal peace
correspond with the development of the means of communication. With
the appearance of the rails the _caudillos_ lose their influence, and
a double transformation is effected; in the interior by the
civilising action of commingled interests, and at the exterior by the
new relations which the multiplication of railways involves.
Customs unions in Germany created the Imperial {346} unity; Mr.
Chamberlain thinks that a _Zollverein_ would increase the power of
the British Empire. The economic grouping of nations prepares the
way for future confederations. The frequent congresses which unify
law and jurisprudence, and bring together politicians, men of letters
and scientists, all tend to the same result. To increase the number
of these assemblies, to hold them in different capitals of the
continent, and to replace the Pan-American Congresses, whose plans
are somewhat indefinite, by racial Latin-American Congresses, would
be equally to the profit of the economic and intellectual unity of
the continent, and the harmony of its politics and its laws. An
undivided, uniform American law,[2] a single monetary system, a
similar policy in respect of protectionism and free trade, the
unification of methods of teaching, and the equivalence of academic
diplomas and university degrees, are questions that might be
discussed at these general assemblies. Each nation would have
ministers in the other republics, who would be at once intellectual
emissaries and propagandists, while to-day American peoples who send
ministers to Austria or to Switzerland have no accredited
representatives in the capitals of adjacent states. The national
ambitions which satisfy our politicians to-day would be replaced by a
more ample and original design, embracing the future of an entire
continent, as was the case a century ago.
In short, we should neglect no form of co-operation--conventions,
travel, diplomatic labours, periodical congresses, commercial
treaties, and partial groups of nations. Nothing but a disastrous
weakness can perpetuate the present division of the Latin {347}
peoples in the face of the unity of the United States.
The nations of the South are not unaware of this necessity, and after
a century of independence they are seeking to reconstitute the
ancient unions. Central America, disturbed by periodic wars, is
endeavouring to create a Confederation. In 1895 a treaty between
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador formed the Republic of Central
America; only Costa Rica and Guatemala held aloof from this union.
In 1902 all these nations, with the exception of Guatemala, accepted
a convention of arbitration. In 1905 the presidents of the five
republics met at Corinth in order to honour the work of Morazan and
Rufino Barrios; spontaneously, or at the instance of the United
States and Mexico, they signed various treaties intended to realise
the unity of the sister nations. A Central American Pedagogic
Institute was created, and a "Bureau of the Five Republics," with the
same object of unification. In 1907, after nine different conflicts
in the interval, a conference of these same nations was assembled at
Washington. On this occasion a tribunal of arbitration for Central
America was installed, and the neutrality of Honduras was recognised.
This tribunal, which sits at Cartago, in Costa-Rica, is to judge the
conflicts between states and the diplomatic claims of the governments
and of individuals. Moreover, the Republics of Central America have
agreed to a declaration which provides that they will recognise no
government which has been enforced by a revolution or a _coup
d'État_, and that they will not intervene in the political movements
of neighbouring countries.
The Court of Arbitration thus established had already, in 1909,
settled differences between Salvador and Honduras, and between
Guatemala and Nicaragua, by rejecting the pretentions of Honduras in
the one case and of Nicaragua in the other.[3] In {348} short, the
United States and Mexico are leading these peoples, who used to be in
a condition of perpetual discord, towards the unity necessary to
their progress.
A Congress met recently (1911) at Caracas, which was attended by the
representatives of the states liberated by Bolivar--Venezuela, New
Granada, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. This was a truly Bolivian
assembly in honour of the national hero. The object of this Congress
was to reconstitute Greater Colombia with the three Republics which
formerly made part of it--Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador; this
would be a return, after the lapse of a century, to the harmonious
union of the sister peoples, which would truly give them a common
future.
The formation of a great Bolivian State, after a period of isolation
lasting more than a century, is certainly the dream of generous
statesmen. It is not easy to conceive of the political union of
peoples as far removed as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, but this
assembly might well result in a natural union of the peoples of the
North; a new Greater Colombia, whose provinces would stretch from the
Atlantic to the Pacific.
In the south the A.B.C., the alliance of the Argentine, Brazil, and
Chili, is the question incessantly discussed in the sensational
press, and in the chancelleries, which love to surround themselves
with an atmosphere of mystery. These three nations, wealthy,
military powers, situated in distinct zones, are seeking
confederation; their ambition is to exercise in America a tutelage
which they consider indispensable. Already the understanding of May,
1902, had limited the armaments of Chili and the Argentine, and had
put an end to a long conflict. The rivality between the Argentine
and Brazil; the old friendship between that country and Chili, which
afterwards changed to a jealous alienation; the rivalry between the
Argentine {349} and Chili in the matter of wealth and power; discord,
threats of war, uneasy friendships; all this is insufficient to
restrain the military ambition of the three great nations. The
statesmen of Buenos-Ayres, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago are labouring
to effect the realisation of an alliance between the three most
highly civilised and organised and most advanced nations of the
continent. Once this union is accomplished, to the indisputable
influence of the United States will be added the moderative influence
of the three great States of the South, and the equilibrium between
Latins and Anglo-Saxons would be its immediate result.
There are writers in America who defend the chauvinistic autonomy of
small countries as against the natural supremacy of such combinations
of States. It is, however, certain that these alliances do not in
any way threaten the countries which take part in them; they respect
their internal constitution, and their historic organisation; they
confine themselves to a fusion of general and external interests, to
matters of commerce, and of peace and war. These utilitarian
partisans of the independence of each separate nation cannot conceive
of the grouping of nations as in the Greater Colombia, the
Confederation of the Pacific, or the Southern Alliance, without the
existence of obvious commercial interests. It is certainly true that
the _Zollverein_, or permanent customs agreement, was the basis of
German unity. But there are moral interests as powerful and as
obvious as the interests of commerce. Should not a common danger,
such as the Yankee peril in Panama and Central America, impel nations
toward federation and unity?
Moreover, federation is not always the result of purely commercial
ties. Our century tends to synthetical action. As modern nations
were formed by overcoming the old feudal anarchy, so metropolis and
colonies are uniting in our days to form {350} formidable empires
which merely commercial interests could not explain. What economic
tie served as the basis of the South African Federation, a group of
hostile races retaining a memory of autonomy? Did not North and
South in the United States enter upon a terrible war of interests,
and, in spite of this utilitarian antagonism, is not Lincoln, the
founder of the Union, as great to-day as Washington, the founder of
nationality? The enormous power of the North American nation is the
result of this unity. If the patricians of the South had been
victorious in the War of Secession, if they had succeeded in
annihilating the Federal bond, then instead of the Republic which
overawes Europe and aspires to Americanise the world there would be
two powerless and inimical States; in the South an oligarchic nation
served by slaves, and in the North a feeble assemblage of Puritan
provinces, while the Far West would be incapable of resisting the
Yellow Peril.
But there are economic ties between the Latin nations, which may
assist the preparation of respectable unions. Between Brazil and
Chili, Peru and Chili, Bolivia, Chili, and Peru, or the Argentine,
Paraguay, and Bolivia, there are actual currents of commercial
exchange, of agricultural products from complementary zones, and
therein a basis of union may be found.
Latin America cannot continue to live divided, while her enemies are
building up vast federations and enormous empires. Whether in the
name of race or commercial interests, of common utility or true
independence, the American democracies must form themselves into
three or four powerful States. The Latin New World is alone in
resisting the universal impulse toward the establishment of
syndicates and federations, trusts and trades unions, associations
and alliances--in short, of increasingly vast and increasingly
powerful organisations.
[1] _The United States as a World-Power_.
[2] See A. Alvarez, _Le Droit international americain_ (Paris, 1910),
in which the reader will find an interesting list of problems
respecting frontiers, immigration, and means of communication,
affecting Latin America in particular, which have on several
occasions met with solutions which form the basis of a new law (pp.
271 _et seq_.).
[3] Alvarez, _ibid._, p. 189 et seq.
{351}
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM OF RACE
The gravity of the problem--The three races, European, Indian, and
Negro--Their characteristics--The mestizos and mulattos--The
conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le
Bon--Regression to the primitive type.
The racial question is a very serious problem in American history.
It explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of
others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides
America. Upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the
public wealth, the industrial system, the stability of governments,
the solidity of patriotism. It is therefore essential that the
continent should have a constant policy, based upon the study of the
problems which are raised by the facts of race, just as there is an
agrarian policy in Russia, a protectionist policy in Germany, and a
free-trade policy in England.
In the United States all the varieties of the European type are
intermingled: Scandinavians and Italians, Irish and Germans; but in
the Latin republics there are peoples of strange lineage: American
Indians, negroes, Orientals, and Europeans of different origin are
creating the race of the future in homes in which mixed blood is the
rule.
In the Argentine, where Spanish, Russian, and Italian immigrants
intermingle, the social formation is extremely complicated. The
aboriginal Indians {352} have been united with African negroes, and
with Spanish and Portuguese Jews; then came Italians and Basques,
French and Anglo-Saxons; a multiple invasion, with the Latin element
prevailing. In Brazil Germans and Africans marry Indians and
Portuguese. Among the Pacific peoples, above all in Peru, a
considerable Asiatic influx, Chinese and Japanese, still further
complicates the human mixture. In Mexico and Bolivia the native
element, the Indian, prevails. The negroes form a very important
portion of the population of Cuba and San Domingo. Costa-Rica is a
democracy of whites; and in the Argentine, as in Chili, all vestiges
of the African type have disappeared. In short, there are no pure
races in America. The aboriginal Indian himself was the product of
the admixture of ancient tribes and castes.
In the course of time historic races may form themselves; in the
meantime an indefinable admixture prevails.
This complication of castes, this admixture of divers bloods, has
created many problems. For example, is the formation of a national
consciousness possible with such disparate elements? Would such
heterogeneous democracies be able to resist the invasion of superior
races? Finally, is the South American half-caste absolutely
incapable of organisation and culture?
Facile generalisations will not suffice to solve these questions.
Here the experience of travellers and of American history even is of
greater value than the verdicts of the anthropologists. In the first
place the half-breeds are not all hybrids, and it is not true that
the union of the Spaniard and the American has always been sterile.
Hence the absolute necessity of understanding the proper character of
each of the races which have formed modern America.
The Spaniards who arrived in the New World came from different
provinces; here alone is a prime cause {353} of variety.
Simultaneously with the languid Andalusian and the austere Basque,
the grave Catalonian and the impetuous Estremaduran left Spain.
Where the descendants of the Basque prevail, as in Chili, the
political organism is more stable, if less brilliant, than elsewhere,
and a strong will-power shows itself in work and success. The
Castilians brought to America their arrogance, and the fruitless
gestures of the hidalgo; where the Andalusians are in the majority
their agile fantasy, their gentle _non curanza_, militates against
all serious or continuous effort. The descendants of the Portuguese
are far more practical than those of the Spaniards; they are also
more disciplined and more laborious. The psychological
characteristics of the Indian are just as various; the descendant of
the Quechuas does not resemble the descendant of the Charruas, any
more than the temperament of the Araucanian resembles that of the
Aztec. In Chili, Uruguay, and the Argentine, there were warlike
populations whose union with the conquerors has formed virile
half-castes, an energetic and laborious _plebs_. In Chili
Araucanians and Basques have intermingled; and is it not in this
fusion that we must seek the explanation of the persistent character
of the Chilian nation, and its military spirit? The Aymara of
Bolivia and the south-east of Peru is hard and sanguinary; the
Quechua of the table-lands of the Andes is gentle and servile. It is
by no means a matter of indifference whether the modern citizen of
the Latin democracies is descended from a Guarani, an Aztec, an
Araucan, or a Chibcha; he will, as the case may be, prove aggressive
or passive, a nomadic shepherd or a quiet tiller of the common soil.
The Indian of the present time, undermined by alcohol and poverty, is
free according to the law, but a serf by virtue of the permanance of
authoritative manners. Petty tyrannies make him a slave; he {354}
works for the _cacique_, the baron of American feudalism. The curé,
the sub-prefect, and the judge, all-powerful in these young
democracies, exploit him and despoil him of his possessions.[1] The
communities, very like the Russian _mir_, are disappearing, and the
Indian is losing his traditional rights to the lands of the
collectivity. Without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted
and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of
his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous
progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy. He lives in the
mountains or table-lands, where a glacial cold prevails and the
solitude is eternal. Nothing disturbs the monotony of these desolate
stretches; nothing breaks the inflexible line of the limitless
horizons; there the Indian grows as melancholy and as desiccated as
the desert that surrounds him. The great occasions of his civil
life--birth, marriage, and death--are the subjects of a religious
exploitation. Servile and superstitious, he finally loves the
tyrannies that oppress him. He adores the familiar gods of the
Cerros, of the mountain. He is at once a Christian and a
fetish-worshipper; he sees in mysterious nature demons and goblins,
occult powers which are favourable and hostile by turn.
There are, nevertheless, regions where despotism has developed in the
Indian a sort of passive resistance. There he is sober and vigorous,
and by his complete adaptation to the maternal soil he has grown
apathetic and a creature of routine. He hates all that might destroy
his age-long traditions: schools, military training, and the
authority that despoils him. Conservative and melancholy, he lives
on the border of the Republic and its laws; his heart grows hot
against the tyranny from which he forever suffers. Dissimulation,
servility, and melancholy are {355} his leading traits; rancour,
hardness, and hypocrisy are the forms of his defensive energy. He
supports his slavery upon this cold earth, but he sometimes revolts
against his exploiters; and at Huanta and Ayoayo he fought against
his oppressors with true courage, sustained by hatred, as in the
heroic times of _Tupac-Amaru_.[2] After this bloody epic he resumed
his monotonous existence under the heedless sky. In his songs he
curses his birth and his destiny. In the evening he leaves the
narrow valley where in his slavery he is employed in agricultural
labours, to journey into the _cerros_ and mourn the abandonment of
his household gods. A weird lamentation passes over the darkening
earth, and from summit to summit the Cordillera re-echoes the
sorrowful and melodious plaint of the Indian as he curses conquest
and warfare.
The negroes of Angola or the Congo have mingled equally with the
Spaniard and the Indian. The African woman satisfied the ardour of
the conquerors; she has darkened the skin of the race.
The negroes arrived as slaves; sold _a usanza de feria_ (as beasts of
burden), they were primitive creatures, impulsive and sensual. Idle
and servile, they have not contributed to the progress of the race.
In the dwelling-houses of the colonial period they were domestics,
acting as _pions_ to their masters' children; in the fields and the
plantations of sugar-cane they were slaves, branded by the lash of
the overseer. They form an illiterate population which exercises a
depressing influence on the American imagination and character. They
increase still further the voluptuous intensity of the tropical
temper, weaken it, and infuse into the blood of the Creole elements
of {356} idleness, recklessness, and servility which are becoming
permanent.
The three races--Iberian, Indian, and African--united by blood, form
the population of South America. In the United States union with the
aborigines is regarded by the colonist with repugnance; in the South
miscegenation is a great national fact; it is universal. The Chilian
oligarchy has kept aloof from the Araucanians, but even in that
country unions between whites and Indians abound. Mestizos are the
descendants of whites and Indians; mulattos the children of Spaniards
and negroes; _zambos_ the sons of negroes and Indians. Besides these
there are a multitude of social sub-divisions. On the Pacific coast
Chinese and negroes have interbred. From the Caucasian white,
bronzed by the tropics, to the pure negro, we find an infinite
variety in the cephalic index, in the colour of the skin, and in the
stature.
It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are
mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the
usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the
national mass is Quechua, Aymara, or Aztec. In Peru, in Bolivia, and
in Ecuador the Indian of pure race, not having as yet mingled his
blood with that of the Spanish conquerors, constitutes the ethnic
base. In the Sierra the people speak Quechua and Aymara; there also
the vanquished races preserve their traditional communism. Of the
total population of Peru and Ecuador the white element only attains
to the feeble proportion of 6 per cent., while the Indian element
represents 70 per cent. of the population of these countries, and 50
per cent. in Bolivia. In Mexico the Indian is equally in the
majority, and we may say that there are four Indian nations on the
continent: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
In countries where the pure native has not survived {357} the
mestizos abound; they form the population of Colombia, Chili,
Uruguay, and Paraguay; in this latter country Guarani is spoken much
more frequently than Spanish. The true American of the South is the
mestizo, the descendant of Spaniards and Indians; but this new race,
which is almost the rule from Mexico to Buenos-Ayres, is not always a
hybrid product. The warlike peoples, like those of Paraguay and
Chili, are descended from Spaniards, Araucanians, and Guaranis.
Energetic leaders have been found among the mestizos: Paez in
Venezuela, Castilla in Peru, Diaz in Mexico, and Santa-Cruz in
Bolivia. An Argentine anthropologist, Señor Ayarragaray, says that
"the primary mestizo is inferior to his European progenitors, but at
the same time he is often superior to his native ancestors." He is
haughty, virile, and ambitious if his ancestors were Charruas,
Guaranis, or Araucanians; even the descendant of the peaceable
Quechuas is superior to the Indian. He learns Spanish, assimilates
the manners of a new and superior civilisation, and forms the ruling
caste at the bar and in politics. The mestizo, the product of a
first crossing, is not otherwise a useful element of the political
and economic unity of America; he retains too much the defects of the
native; he is false and servile, and often incapable of effort. It
is only after fresh unions with Europeans that he manifests the full
force of the characteristics obtained from the white. The heir of
the colonising race and of the autocthonous race, both adapted to the
same soil, he is extremely patriotic; Americanism, a doctrine hostile
to foreigners, is his work. He wishes to obtain power in order to
usurp the privileges of the Creole oligarchies.
One may say that the admixture of the prevailing strains with black
blood has been disastrous for these democracies. In applying John
Stuart Mill's law {358} of concomitant variations to the development
of Spanish America one may determine a necessary relation between the
numerical proportion of negroes and the intensity of civilisation.
Wealth increases and internal order is greater in the Argentine,
Uruguay, and Chili, and it is precisely in these countries that the
proportion of negroes has always been low; they have disappeared in
the admixture of European races. In Cuba, San Domingo, and some of
the republics of Central America, and certain of the States of the
Brazilial Confederation, where the children of slaves constitute the
greater portion of the population, internal disorders are continual.
A black republic, Hayti, demonstrates by its revolutionary history
the political incapacity of the negro race.
The mulatto and the _zambo_ are the true American hybrids. D'Orbigny
believed the mestizo to be superior to the descendants of the
Africans imported as slaves; Burmeister is of opinion that in the
mulatto the characteristics of the negro are predominant.
Ayarragaray states that the children born of the union of negroes
with _zambos_ or natives are in general inferior to their parents, as
much in intelligence as in physical energy. The inferior elements of
the races which unite are evidently combined in their offspring. It
is observed also that both in the mulattos and the _zambos_ certain
internal contradictions may be noted; their will is weak and
uncertain, and is dominated by instinct and gross and violent
passions. Weakness of character corresponds with a turgid
intelligence, incapable of profound analysis, or method, or general
ideas, and a certain oratorical extravagance, a pompous rhetoric.
The mulatto loves luxury and extravagance; he is servile, and lacks
moral feeling. The invasion of negroes affected all the Iberian
colonies, where, to replace the outrageously exploited Indian,
African slaves were imported by the ingenuous evangelists {359} of
the time. In Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and Peru this caste
forms a high proportion of the total population. In Brazil 15 per
cent. of the population is composed of negroes, without counting the
immense number of mulattos and _zambos_. Bahia is half an African
city. In Rio de Janeiro the negroes of pure blood abound. In Panama
the full-blooded Africans form 10 per cent. of the population.
Between 1759 and 1803 642,000 negroes entered Brazil; between 1792
and 1810 Cuba received 89,000. These figures prove the formidable
influence of the former slaves in modern America. But they are
revenged for their enslavement in that their blood is mingled with
that of their masters. Incapable of order and self-government, they
are a factor of anarchy; every species of vain outer show attracts
them--sonorous phraseology and ostentation. They make a show of an
official function, a university title, or an academic diploma. As
the Indian could not work in the tropics black immigration was
directed principally upon those regions, and the enervating climate,
the indiscipline of the mulatto, and the weakness of the white
element have contributed to the decadence of the Equatorial nations.
The mulatto is more despised than the mestizo because he often shows
the abjectness of the slave and the indecision of the hybrid; he is
at once servile and arrogant, envious and ambitious. His violent
desire to mount to a higher social rank, to acquire wealth, power,
and display, is, as Señor Bunge very justly remarks, a "hyperæsthesia
of arrivism."
The _zambos_ have created nothing in America. On the other hand, the
robust mestizo populations, the Mamelucos of Brazil, the Cholos of
Peru and Bolivia, the Rotos of Chili, descendants of Spaniards and
the Guarani Indians, are distinguished by their pride {360} and
virility. Instability, apathy, degeneration--all the signs of
exhausted race--are encountered far more frequently in the mulatto
than in the mestizo.
The European established in America becomes a Creole; his is a new
race, the final product of secular unions. He is neither Indian, nor
black, nor Spaniard. The castes are confounded and have formed an
American stock, in which we may distinguish the psychological traits
of the Indian and the negro, while the shades of skin and forms of
skull reveal a remote intermixture. If all the races of the New
World were finally to unite, the Creole would be the real American.
He is idle and brilliant. There is nothing excessive either in his
ideals or his passions; all is mediocre, measured, harmonious. His
fine and caustic irony chills his more exuberant enthusiasms; he
triumphs by means of laughter. He loves grace, verbal elegance,
quibbles even, and artistic form; great passions or desires do not
move him. In religion he is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics
he disputes in the Byzantine manner. No one could discover in him a
trace of his Spanish forefather, stoical and adventurous.
But is unity possible with such numerous castes? Must we not wait
for the work of many centuries before a clearly American population
be formed? The admixture of Indian, European, mestizo, and mulatto
blood continues. How form a homogeneous race of these varieties?
There will be a period of painful unrest: American revolutions reveal
the disequilibrium of men and races. Miscegenation often produces
types devoid of all proportion, either physical or moral.
The resistance of neo-Americans to fatigue and disease is
considerably diminished. In the seething retort of the future the
elements of a novel synthesis combine and grow yet more complex. If
the {361} castes remain divided there will be no unity possible to
oppose a probable invasion. "Three conditions are necessary," says
M. Gustave Le Bon, "before races can achieve fusion and form a new
race, more or less homogeneous. The first of these conditions is
that the races subjected to the process of crossing must not be too
inequal in number; the second, that they must not differ too greatly
in character; the third, that they must be for a long time subjected
to an identical environment."
Examining the mixed peoples of America in conformity with these
principles we see that the Indian and the negro are greatly superior
to the whites in numbers; the pure European element does not amount
to 10 per cent. of the total population. In Brazil and the Argentine
there are numbers of German and Italian immigrants, but in other
countries the necessary stream of invasion of superior races does not
exist.
We have indicated the profound differences which divide the bold
Spaniard from the negro slave; we have said that the servility of the
Indian race contrasts with the pride of the conquerors; that is to
say, that the mixture of rival castes, Iberians, Indians, and
negroes, has generally had disastrous consequences. Perhaps we may
except the fortunate combinations of mestizo blood in Chili, Southern
Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Finally, the territory
has not yet exercised a decisive influence upon the races in contact.
The modern Frenchman and Anglo-Saxon are born of the admixture of
ancient races subjected for centuries to the influences of the soil.
The great invasions which modified the traditional stock took place a
thousand years ago; they explain the terrible struggles of the Middle
Ages. The new American type has not so long a history.
In short, none of the conditions established by the {362} French
psychologists are realised by the Latin-American democracies, and
their populations are therefore degenerate.
The lower castes struggle successfully against the traditional rules:
the order which formerly existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid
conviction by a superficial scepticism, and the Castilian tenacity by
indecision. The black race is doing its work and the continent is
returning to its primitive barbarism.
This retrogression constitutes a very serious menace. In South
America civilisation is dependent upon the numerical predominance of
the victorious Spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the
mulatto, the negro, and the Indian. Only a plentiful European
immigration can re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the
American races. In the Argentine the cosmopolitan alluvium has
destroyed the negro and mitigated the Indian. A century ago there
were 20 per cent. of Africans in Buenos-Ayres; the ancient slave has
now disappeared, and mulattos are rare. In Mexico, on the other
hand, in 1810 the Europeans formed a sixth part of the population;
to-day they do not form more than a twentieth part.
Dr. Karl Pearson, in his celebrated book _National Life and
Character_, writes: "In the long run the inferior civilisations give
proof of a vigour greater than that of the superior civilisations;
the disinherited gain upon the privileged castes, and the conquered
people absorbs the conquering people." He declared further that
Brazil would quickly fall into the power of the negroes, and that
while the Indians would multiply and develop in the inaccessible
regions of the north and the centre, the white peoples, crowded out
by the progress of these races, would be numerous only in the cities
and the more salubrious districts. This painful prophecy will be
accomplished to the letter if, in the conflict of castes, {363} the
white population is not promptly reinforced by the arrival of new
colonists.
But crossing alone will not communicate the superior characteristics
of the race to the mestizo in a lasting manner. "It is necessary
that he should be the fruit of a union of the third, fourth, or fifth
degree; that is, that there should have been as many successive
crossings, with a father or a mother of the white race, before the
mestizo can be in a condition to assimilate European culture," writes
an Argentine sociologist. For this vast process of selection to be
realised to the profit of the white man not only must the races
subjected to admixture exist in certain proportions, but the mass of
Europeans must prevail and impose their temper upon the future
castes. In short, the problem of race depends upon the solution
given to the demographic problem. Without the help of a new
population there will be in America not merely a lamentable
exhaustion but also a prompt recoil of the race. The phrase of
Alberdi is still true: "In America to govern means to populate."
The colonists brought with them the traditions and manners of the
disciplined races, a moral organisation which was the work of
centuries of common life. People of rural extraction, when they
reached America, upheld the established interests, the government,
the law, and the peace; they worked, fought, and laid up treasure.
Moreover, only the most enterprising of men emigrated, and they
transmitted to the new democracies an element of vitality they had
not before known. As early as the second generation the descendants
of the foreign colonists were already Argentines, Brazilians, or
Peruvians; their patriotism was as ardent and devoted and exclusive
as that of their fathers. They completely adopted the local manners.
They had been transformed by the action of the American environment.
{364}
Basques or Italians have already transformed the Argentine. They
arrive as artisans, or labourers, or clerks and traders; they form
agricultural colonies and become landowners. They soon break their
fetters; their sons become merchants, financial agents, or wealthy
plutocrats. Of 1,000 inhabitants there are 128 Italians and only 99
Argentines who own land. These Latins are prolific; in 1904 1,000
Argentine women gave life to 80 infants; 1,000 Spanish women to 123,
and 1,000 Italian women to 175.[3] These immigrants thus increase
the national wealth and people the desert.[4] Moreover, their
descendants figure in politics and letters. Let us mention only a
few Argentine names remarkable on one count or another: Groussac,
Magnasco, Becher, Bunge, Ingegnieros, Chiappori, Banchs, and
Gerchunoff.
[1] The _Indianista_ Society in Mexico and the _Pro Indigena_ in Peru
were founded for the protection and rehabilitation of the Indians.
[2] The Bolivian sociologist, A. Argüedas, writes of the Aymara
Indians: "They are hard, rancorous, egotistic, and cruel. The Indian
herdsmen have no ambition other than to increase the number of the
heads of cattle which they pasture."
[3] V. Gonnard, _L'Emigration européenne au XIXe siècle_, Paris,
1906, p. 220 _et seq_.
[4] To understand the significance of immigration, it is enough to
remark that there are in Mexico 7 inhabitants per square kilometre,
in Brazil 1.7, in the Argentine 1.6, while there are 72 in France,
105 in Germany, no in Italy, 120 in England, and 248 in Belgium.
{365}
CHAPTER III
THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
The _caudillos_: their action--Revolutions--Divorce between written
Constitutions and political life--The future parties--The bureaucracy.
The development of the Ibero-American democracies differs
considerably from the admirable spirit of their political charters.
The latter include all the principles of government applied by the
great European nations: the equilibrium of powers, natural rights, a
liberal suffrage, and representative assemblies, but the reality
contradicts the idealism of the statutes imported from Europe. The
traditions of the prevailing race, in fact, have created simple and
barbarous systems of government. The _caudillo_ is the pivot of this
political system: leader of a party, of a social group, or a family
whose important relations make it powerful, he enforces his
tyrannical will upon the multitude. In him resides the power of
government and the law. On his permanent action depends the internal
order of the State, its economic development, and the national
organisation. His authority is inviolable, superior to the
Constitution and its laws.
All the history of America, and the inheritance of the Spaniard and
the Indian, has ended in the exaltation of the _caudillo_.
Government by _caciques_, absolute masters, like the _caudillos_
themselves, is very ancient in Spain, as was shown by Joaquin {366}
Costa in his analysis of the foundations of Spanish politics. In
each province, in each city, was a central personage in whom justice
and might were incarnated; admired by the crowd, obeyed by opinion,
enforcing his manners and his ideas. The American Indians obeyed
_caciques_, and the first conquerors quickly saw that by winning over
the local chiefs they would at the same time subject the native
populations. The existence of the _caudillos_ may also be explained
by territorial influences. It has been written that the desert is
monotheistic; over its arid uniformity one imposing God reigns
supreme. It is the same with the steppes, the _pampas_, and the
table-lands of America; vast and monotonous tracts; Paez and Quiroga
were divinities of such regions. No other force could limit their
authority. Contrasted with the uniform level of mankind which is the
work of the plains, their firm chieftainship assumed divine
attributes. American revolutions are like the Moorish wars directed
by mystic Kaids.
Señor Raphael Salillas writes that in Spain the _cacique_ is a
hypertrophy of the political personage; he symbolises the excess of
power and of the ambition of Spanish individualism. In America the
first _conquistadors_ quarrelled for the supreme authority. The
civil wars of the Conquest arose from conflicts between chiefs; none
of them could conceive of power as real unless it was unlimited and
despotic. After them the all-powerful viceroy, a demi-god in his
powers, exercised a similar domination. The South American
President, the heir to the traditions of the governors of the
colonial epoch, also possesses the maximum of authority; the
Constitution confers upon him powers like those of the Czars of
Russia.
Power for its own sake is the ideal of such men. The less important
chieftains are satisfied by the government of a province; the great
leader aspires {367} to rule a republic. Questions of personality
are the prevailing characteristics of politics; and despotic rulers
abound. When a "Regenerator" usurps the supreme power a "Restorer"
appears to dispute it with him; then a "Liberator," and finally a
"Defender of the Constitution." The lesser gods fight to their
hearts' content, and the democracy accepts the victor, in whom it
admires the representative leader, the robust creation of the race.
Such a man is not like the character of Ibsen's, who is strong in his
isolation; in the _caudillo_ the average characteristics of the
nation, its vices and its qualities, are better defined and more
strongly accentuated; he obeys his instincts and certain fixed ideas;
he conceives of no ideals; he is impressionable and fanatical.
Señor Ayarragarray distinguishes two varieties of _caudillo_; the
cunning and the violent. The latter was above all peculiar to the
military period of Ibero-American history. The leader of a band that
ravaged like the Huns, he ruled by terror and audacity, enforcing the
discipline of the barracks in civil life. The _caudillo_ of the
cunning type exercised a more prolonged moral dictatorship; he
belongs to a period of transition between the military period and the
industrial period. This new master retained the supreme power by
lies and subterfuges. A half-civilised tyrant, he used wealth as
others used force, and instead of brutally thrusting himself on the
people he employed a system of tortuous corruption.
The rule of the _caudillos_ led to presidential government. The
Constitutions established assemblies; but tradition triumphed in
spite of these theoretical structures. Since the colonial period
centralisation and unity have been the American forms of government.
In the person of the President of these democracies resides all the
authority which usually devolves upon {368} the public functionaries.
He commands the army, multiplies the wheels of administration, and
surrounds himself with doctors of law and Prætorian soldiers. The
Assemblies obey him; he intervenes in the course of elections, and
obtains the Parliamentary majorities that he requires. The upper
magistracy is sometimes indocile to the desires of the Government,
but in the life of the provinces the judges depend absolutely upon
the political leaders. The supreme direction of the finances, the
army, the fleet, and the administration in general rests with the
President, as before the republican era it belonged to the viceroy.
The parties fight among themselves, not only for power, but to obtain
this omnipotent presidency. They realise that the chief of the
Executive is the effective agent of all political changes; that
ministers and parliaments are only secondary factors in political
life. An Argentine sociologist, Señor Joaquin Gonzalez, has said
very justly that "each governmental period is characterised by the
condition and the worth of the man who presides over it. This
presidential system, in default of a solid and elevated political
education, has in great measure favoured the return to the personal
_régime_."
To this system correspond the political groups without programmes;
men do not struggle for the triumph of ideas, but for that of certain
individuals. The consecrated terms lose their traditional meaning.
There are civilists who uphold militarism; liberals who strive to
increase the presidential authority; nationalists who favour
cosmopolitanism; constitutionalists who violate the political
charter. The personal system groups conservatives and liberals
together. Even in Chili, where the activity of the parties has been
unusually continuous, the older parties have split up into shapeless
factions. The President establishes his despotic authority over the
{369} confusion of these rival groups; he tries to dissolve the small
factions, to divide them, in order to rule them.
Without ideals or unity of action the parties are transformed into
greedy cliques, which are distinguished by the colour of their
favours. As in Byzantium, so in Venezuela, the Blues struggle
against the Yellows, while in Uruguay the Whites oppose the Reds, red
being the distinctive colour of the Argentine federalists. An
aggressive intolerance divides these groups; they gather round their
_gonfaloniere_ and their party symbol in irreducible factions. No
common interest can reconcile them, not even that of their native
country. Each party supports a leader, an interest, a dogma; on the
one side a man beholds his own party, the missionaries of truth and
culture; the other are his enemies, mercenary and corrupt. Each
group believes that it seeks to retain the supremacy in the name of
disinterested virtue and patriotism. Rosas used to call his
opponents "infamous savages." For the gang in possession of power,
the revolutionaries are malefactors; for the latter the ruling party
are merely a government of thieves and tyrants. There are gods of
good and evil, as in the Oriental theogonies. Educated in the Roman
Church, Americans bring into politics the absolutism of religious
dogmas; they have no conception of toleration. The dominant party
prefers to annihilate its adversaries, to realise the complete
unanimity of the nation; the hatred of one's opponents is the first
duty of the prominent politician. The opposition can hardly pretend
to fill a place of influence in the assemblies, or slowly to acquire
power. It is only by violence that the parties can emerge from the
condition of ostracism in which they are held by the faction in
power, and it is by violence that they return to that condition.
Apart from the rule of the _caudillos_ the political lie is {370}
triumphant; the freedom of the suffrage is only a platonic promise
inscribed in the Constitution; the elections are the work of the
Government; there is no public opinion. Journalism, almost always
opportunist, merely reflects the indecision of the parties.
Political statutes and social conditions contradict each other; the
former proclaim equality, and there are many races; there is
universal suffrage, and the races are illiterate; liberty and
despotic rulers enforce an arbitrary power. By means of the prefects
and governors the President directs the elections, supports this or
that candidate, and even chooses his successor. He is the supreme
elector.
The representative assemblies become veritable bureaucratic
institutions; deputies and senators accept the orders of the
President. According to Señor L. A. de Herrera, two castes are in
process of formation, "on the one hand the oligarchies, which possess
the supreme power in defiance of the public will, and on the other
the citizens, who are deprived of all participation in the
government." Frequent revolutions and _pronunciamentos_, according
to Spanish tradition, disturb the ruling class in the exercise of
power; these superficial movements cannot be compared to the great
crises of European history, which result in the disappearance of a
political system or bring about the advent of a new social class.
They are merely the result of the perpetual conflict between the
_caudillos_; the leaders and the oligarchies change, but the system,
with its secular vices, remains.
The South American revolutions may be regarded as a necessary form of
political activity: in Venezuela fifty-two important revolts have
broken out within a century. The victorious party tries to destroy
the other groups; revolution thus represents a political weapon to
those parties which are deprived of the suffrage. It corresponds to
the protests of European {371} minorities, to the anarchical strikes
of the proletariat, to the great public meetings of England, in which
the opposing parties attack the Government. It is to the excessive
simplicity of the political system, in which opinion has no other
means of expression than the tyranny of oligarchies on the one hand
and the rebellion of the vanquished on the other, that the
interminable and sanguinary conflicts of Spanish America are due.
These internal wars continually retard the economic development of
the State and decrease its stability; they ruin the foreign credit of
the republics, prepare the way for humiliating interventions, and
give rise to tyrannies; but it must not be forgotten that revolution,
in these democracies without law and without real suffrage, has often
been the only means of defending liberty. Against the tyrants even
conservative spirits have revolted, and rebellion has become reaction.
For the rest, the civil wars have lost their former character. They
used to symbolise the return to primeval chaos; vagabond multitudes,
armed bands, desolated the fields and burned the towns.
Assassination, theft, the devastation of property and estates, war
without mercy, fire, and all the powers of destruction were in revolt
against the feeble foundations of nationality.
As by the inverse selection of the Spanish Inquisition, the most
intelligent and the most cultivated perished. Brutal horsemen
occupied the cities in which Spanish civilisation had attained its
apogee. Sarmiento has described the assault on the nomad wagons
which bore the national _penates_ across the Argentine _pampas_ in a
sort of Tartar Odyssey amid the infinite desolation of the plains.
Even when the social classes were organised and the economic
interests defined the rivality of the leaders continued, and politics
remained personal. However, civil war is already no longer the
brutal onset of men with neither {372} law nor faith, no longer an
irruption of outlaws. The drama has replaced the epic; the conflict
of passions and interests succeeds to the battles of semi-divine
personages, proud of their tragic mission. Men buy votes; electoral
committees falsify the suffrage, as in the United States, by force of
money.
Thus the plutocracy conquers the benches of Congress.
If the continent spontaneously creates dictators then is all the
ambitious structure of American politics--parliaments, ministers, and
municipalities--merely a delusive invention?
In some States in which the economic life is intense, as in the
Argentine, Chili, Brazil, and Uruguay, benevolent despotism does not
mark the high-water limit of national development; there new parties
are forming themselves, and the _caudillos_ will soon disappear. Dr.
Ingegnieros foresees the creation in the Argentine of new political
groups, with financial tendencies. The rural class which rules in
the provinces and possesses the great mass of the national wealth,
which is derived from stock-raising and agriculture, and the
commercial and industrial middle-class of the cities, will form, like
the Tories and Whigs in England, the two parties of the future. Once
the secondary parties have disappeared, the two great political
organisations will prevail alone.
This transformation of the old groups is logical. In the colonial
period the conflict for the possession of power took place within the
narrow limits of public life; the Spaniards were in the majority in
the _audiencas_, the courts, and the Creoles in the _cabildos_, the
municipalities. The former upheld religious intolerance, economic
monopoly, and the exclusive and universal empire of the metropolis;
the latter endeavoured to obtain economic and political equality, the
abolition of privileges, and a national government. After the
revolution these divisions grew more {373} complex; federalism and
unity, religious quarrels, and sometimes the mutual hostility of the
different castes, divided men into shifting groups. Politics became
the warfare of irreducible clans. In the organised nations of the
south the dissensions gradually lost their importance, and a general
indifference succeeded to the old theological hatreds. Federals and
municipalists were still fighting, but the original bitterness of
their antagonism was dead. On the other hand, the castes were
progressively becoming confounded by intermarriage.
However, the economic factors persisted, and their importance has
increased as towns and industries have developed. Financial
questions will in future divide the citizens of those democracies
which have become plainly industrial; the agrarians will oppose the
manufacturers and the free-traders the protectionists. Like the
republicans and democrats of the United States, certain groups will
favour imperialism and others neutrality. The group which would
stimulate Yankee or German influence will be opposed by another, the
partisan of Italian or French activity.
Already in Cuba there are some who favour annexation by the United
States, while others demand complete autonomy. Some politicians
would agree to immigration without reserve or restriction, while
others, the nationalists, would defend the integrity of their
inheritance against foreign invasion. America, like modern France,
will have its _métèques_; they will be the Europeans, the Yankees,
and the yellow races.
Apart from the southern nations there has as yet been no formation of
classes or social interests. None of the problems which agitate
Europe--extension of the suffrage, proportional representation,
municipal autonomy--have any immediate importance among them. The
State is the necessary guardian, a kind of social providence whence
derive riches, strength, {374} and progress. To weaken this
influence would be to encourage internal disorder; only those
Constitutions have been of use in America which have reinforced the
central power against the attacks of a perpetual anarchy.
The progress of these democracies is the work of foreign capital, and
when political anarchy prevails credit collapses. Governments which
ensure peace and paternal tyrants are therefore preferable to
demagogues. A young Venezuelan critic, Señor Machado Hernandez,
having studied the history of his country, rent as it has been by
revolutions, considers that the best form of government for America
is that which reinforces the attributions of the executive and
establishes a dictatorship. In place of the Swiss referendum and the
federal organisation of the United States autocracy is, it seems to
us, the only practical practical means of government.
To increase the duration of the presidency in order to avoid the too
frequent conflicts of parties; to simplify the political machine,
which transforms the increasingly numerous parliaments into mere
bureaucratic institutions; to prolong the mandate of senators and
deputies, so that the life of the people shall not be disturbed by
continual elections; in short, to surrender the ingenuous dogmas of
the political statutes in favour of concrete reforms: such would
appear to be the ideal which in Tropical America--in Mexico, Peru,
and Bolivia--would arrest the destructive action of revolutions.
It is obvious that a president furnished with a strong authority may
quickly become a tyrant, but in these nations is not political power
always a semi-dictatorship which is tolerated? The head of the State
governs for four years according to the term of the Constitution, but
his action is continued by his successor. The real duration of his
political action is twenty years.
{375}
If a tutelary president is necessary it is none the less essential to
oppose his autocracy by a moderative power which would recall, in its
constitution, the life-Senate of Bolivar. One may even conceive of a
Senate which would represent the real national interests: a stable
body, the union of all the forces of social conservation; a serene
assembly untroubled by democratic cravings, in which the clergy, the
universities, commerce, the industries, the army, the marine, and the
judiciary, might defend the Constitution and tradition against the
assaults of demagogy, against too audacious reformers. Garcia-Moreno
wished to see the mandate of the senators extended to a term of
twelve years.
The quality of the legislative chambers is ineffective in America.
In fact, both being elected by the popular vote, and having like
electoral majorities, the Lower Chamber always gets its way with the
Senate, which represents neither interests nor traditions. There is
in reality one uniform assembly artificially divided into two
independent bodies. The whole is dominated, there being no
conservative institutions as a useful corrective, by the anonymous or
Jacobin will of the multitude, which is moved by all sorts of divided
interests: the craving for power, provincial pride, and a passion for
cabal and intrigue.
A factor of American politics which is as serious as the periodical
revolutions is the development of the bureaucracy.
In the still simple life of the nation the organs of the public
administration are complicated in the most exaggerated manner. The
budget supports a sterile class recruited principally among the
Creoles, who prefer the security of officialism to the conquest of
the soil. Energy and hope diminish with the almost infinite increase
of the "budgetivores."
Foreigners monopolise trade and industry, and {376} thus acquire
property in the soil which has been inherited by a race of Americans
without energy.
A North American observer[1] writes that the great fortunes of the
Argentines of American extraction have been made by the
ever-increasing value of real estate, and are due to the natural
development of the country rather than to their own initiative or
enterprise. But the South Americans are on the way to waste these
fortunes, and the fortunate colonists from Spain and Italy are
gradually replacing them in the social hierarchy.
According to a Mexican statesman, Señor Justo Sierra, the government
in South America is an administration of employés, protected by other
employés, the army. These nations, which are being invaded by active
immigrants, are thus directed by a group of mandarins, and if the
young men of these countries are not encouraged in commercial and
industrial vocations by a practical education the enriched colonists
will expel the Creole from his ancient position. A few writers
defend the bureaucracy as the refuge, in the face of the cosmopolitan
invasion, of the choice spirits of the nation: writers, artists, and
politicians. "If foreigners dispose of the material fortune of the
country," says a distinguished young observer, Señor Manuel Galvez,
"it is just that we others, Argentines, should dispose of its
intellectual fortune." A noble idealism, satisfied by an unreal
wealth! But from the point of view of the national life this lack of
equilibrium is disturbing. In face of the progress of the victorious
foreigners who are making themselves masters of the soil, to shut
oneself up in a tower of ivory would be the most complete of
renunciations.
In the organisation of the America of the future we must not forget
the suggestions of Caliban. {377} Among the innumerable bureaucrats
who devour the budgets there will not always be writers worthy of
official protection; they will rather be recruited among an indolent
youth, restive under any sustained effort.
The encouragement of "choice spirits" must not be confounded with the
unjustifiable maintenance of a legion of parasites. The _caudillo_
multiplies functions in order to reward his friends; nepotism
prevails in the world of politics.
The great political transformations of the future will be due to the
development of the common wealth; new parties will appear and the
bureaucracy will have to be considerably diminished.
[1] Cited by J. V. Gonzalez in _La Nación_, Buenos-Ayres, May 25,
1910.
{378}
CHAPTER IV
THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
Loans--Budgets--Paper money--The formation of national capital.
Unexploited wealth abounds in America. Forests of rubber, as in the
African Congo; mines of gold and diamonds, which recall the treasures
of the Transvaal and the Klondyke; rivers which flow over beds of
auriferous sand, like the Pactolus of ancient legend; coffee, cocoa,
and wheat, whose abundance is such that these products are enough to
glut the markets of the world. But there is no national capital.
This contrast between the wealth of the soil and the poverty of the
State gives rise to serious economic problems.
By means of long-sustained efforts, an active race would have won
financial independence. The Latin-Americans, idle, and accustomed to
leave everything to the initiative of the State, have been unable to
effect the conquest of the soil, and it is foreign capital that
exploits the treasure of America.
Since the very beginnings of independence the Latin democracies,
lacking financial reserves, have had need of European gold. The
government of Spain used to seize upon the wealth of her colonies to
satisfy the needs of a prodigal court, and to prevent its own
bankruptcy. The independence of America was won with the aid of
English money, hence the first of the necessary loans. Canning
encouraged the South American revolutionaries, and the English {379}
bankers gave their support to their plans, in the shape of loans to
the new governments. Colombian, Argentine, and Peruvian agents
solicited heavy loans in the City of London, without which assistance
the Spanish power could never have been defeated.
The republican _régime_ thus commenced its career by assuming
imperious financial responsibilities. Before commencing to practise
a policy of fiscal economy, it was necessary to accept the conclusion
of the most urgent loans, but once the European markets were open the
financial orgy commenced. In 1820 Señor Zea concluded the first
Colombian loan; in 1821 the government of that country declared that
it could not ensure the service of the debt. The necessities of the
war with Spain and the always difficult task of building up a new
society demanded the assistance of foreign gold; loans accumulated,
and very soon various States were obliged to solicit the simultaneous
reduction of the capital borrowed and the rate of interest paid. The
lamentable history of these bankrupt democracies dates from this
period.