Guano, Nitrate, and Railways being recognised as the prime sources
of Peruvian greatness, and these having been noticed with no scant
justice, another matter remains for examination, which may be said
to surpass all the others in importance, albeit it is not so easy to
estimate or understand.
Granted that Peru has all the physical elements of a great
nation,--such as gold and silver, copper and iron, and coal, oil and
wine, a vast line of sea-coast with numerous safe bays and ports,
rivers for internal navigation, as well as railroads,--has she the
moral qualities to develop these riches and make the best use of them?
In plain words, has Peru ceased to be a hotbed of revolution? is there
any hope that the ruling classes of the Peruvian people will become
sober, industrious, thrifty, honest, just and right in all their
dealings, and cease to be a source of anxiety and disgust to their
present and future creditors?
These may be said to be momentous questions, and not to be lightly
answered. Any answer not founded on well-ascertained facts and
indisputable knowledge should be set aside as vexatious and frivolous.
A hasty answer, or one founded on aught else, could only be conceived
in malice or prompted by motives of self-interest. It has, for example,
during the past few months been comparatively easy to a portion of
the London press to defame the character of Peru; to find reasons why
its bonds should be held only as waste paper, and even to prove to the
satisfaction of its fond and eager readers that she is in an utterly
bankrupt state. The same accomplished writers, if it suited their
purpose, could as easily prove, with their eloquent persuasiveness,
that Peru after all is, in commercial phraseology, sound; she had
never yet failed in keeping faith with her English friends, and is too
enlightened to think of doing so now. True, she is in debt; but she
can pay handsomely, and, in the powerful rhetoric of Bassanio, would
encourage money-lenders and her private friends thus:--
'In my school days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
The self-same way with more advised watch,
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both
I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof,
Because what follows is pure innocence.
I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth,
That which I owe is lost; but if you please
To shoot another arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt
As I will watch the aim, or to find both
Or bring your latter hazard back again
And thankfully rest debtor for the first.'
But not thus will our serious questions meet with satisfactory answers.
The first thing to be noted in the enquiry, perhaps, is that it is
altogether a misnomer to call Peru a Republic. Whatever else it be,
a Republic it certainly is not, and never has been a Republic. Its
political constitution and its laws have nothing whatever to do with
the people, nor have the people aught to do with them; and they care
for them as they care for the theory of gravitation, or any other
portion of demonstrable knowledge, from which they may indeed derive
some animal comfort in its application, but the application of which
will probably never enlighten their souls. The people of Peru know as
much of liberty as they know of the Virgin Mary. The priests once or
twice a year dress the image of the Jewish maiden in tawdry attire,
put a tinsel crown on her head, and call her the Mother of God and the
Queen of Heaven, and the people fall down and worship; which they are
perfectly at liberty to do, as the impostors who lead them to do so may
get their living in that way, as all other impostors obtain theirs who
possess the people's grace. In like fashion, all that the people know
of liberty they know thus. They know as much of it as an aristocrat
cares to teach them--as a quack can tell his patient of medicine,
or the showy proprietress of a showy school can teach an intelligent
girl the use of the globes. All native-born Peruvians of full age have
votes, at least all such as can read and write, or possess a certain
amount of real property. But reading and writing are not by any means
universal accomplishments in the Peruvian Republic, and there are fewer
holders of real estate among the working classes than maybe found in
Barbados among the coloured labourers of that beautiful but misgoverned
island.
Don Juan Espinosa, an old Peruvian soldier, and one of the few South
American writers whose literary works have been translated into
French, if not also into English, wrote some twenty years ago a
republican, democratic, moral, political, and philosophical dictionary
for the people. Strange to say, he has given us no definition of a
Republic in his highly-entertaining and instructive book. Two of his
longest articles, however, are devoted, the first to the subject of
'Independence,' and the second to 'Revolution.' The manner in which the
author concludes the first is suggestive: 'On one day,' he says, 'we
were all brothers and countrymen; brothers by blood, and countrymen of
a land which we had just irrigated with our blood. O day immortal for
humanity! On this day the Saviour of the world beheld the consummation
of his work; he saw the spectacle which years before had led the way
for 1824. He without doubt designed the camp of AYACUCHO as the first
embrace of all the races, and the signal also for the suppression of
all human rivalries. Afterwards'
______________________________________________________
A long, broad black line stretches across the page as if to put it in
mourning.
'A revolution in substance,' he says, 'is nothing more than the
organisation of a people's discontent.'
If that be so, there has never been a revolution in Peru; a statement
which will be doubted by nearly all who hear it for the first time. We
may perhaps make an exception in the revolution which made Col. Prado
dictator of Peru in November, 1865. No doubt the enthusiasm of the
Peruvian people for going to war with Spain was genuine, and Prado,
not at all a man of revolutionary tastes, easily overthrew Canseco,
because of his Spanish tendencies. Prado was subsequently elected
President in 1867, but was overthrown by Balta and Canseco the year
following, and Colonel (now General) Prado fled to Chile for his life.
Still, let us be thankful that we can find one authentic instance of
Peruvian patriotism in the course of fifty years, and that out of the
hundreds of revolutions which have occurred, one was for the good of
the country--and most certainly to its honour.
The anniversary of the 2nd of May, 1866, is kept with pride by every
loyal Peruvian in all parts of the world, wherever one may find
himself. Had there been among the Peruvian soldiers on that day as much
knowledge of gunnery as there was of personal valour, not more than one
or two ships of the Spanish fleet which bombarded Callao had escaped
destruction.
It has been contended by a few anxious Peruvians that the revolution
made by General Castilla, in 1854, against General Echenique was also
a popular revolution. Perhaps it was. Echenique was notoriously very
fond of money, and it is said that so freely did he help himself to
the proceeds of the public guano that the people rose against him,
flocked to the standard of Castilla, whom they kept in power for twelve
years, and sent Echenique into ignoble exile. If that could be proved
in favour of the Peruvian people, it should be done at once. But no one
from sheer laughter can discuss the question. Castilla was as fond of
money as Echenique; Castilla, however, did one or two liberal things;
he liberated the slaves, and abolished the poll-tax, and in that sense
the revolution of 1854 may be said to have been a popular one.
No Peruvian who supported those two famous acts of General Castilla's
Government looks back upon them with anything but bitter regret. The
negro slaves were well off--they were, moreover, a people with much
affection for their masters, and slavery existed only in name. When
the blacks, however, were 'liberated,' they became like a mob of mules
without burdens, without guide or master, and they wandered about the
earth and died miserably. Those who survived were certainly very little
credit to their friends, for many of them became the terror of the
highways which converge on the capital of the Republic.
The Indians who paid the poll-tax did then do some work, and they were
made to feel some of the responsibilities of being republicans--they
were kept under rule--they could be induced to labour in 'some of the
richest silver mines in the world.' Now they will do nothing of the
kind, and the Government has not only lost an income of 2,000,000
dols. a year, they have lost the services of the entire indigenous
population, which may be called, in classical language, a pretty kettle
of fish, especially for a country whose riches depend upon the industry
of a free and happy people.
One immediate consequence of Castilla's emancipation policy was that it
speedily became a profitable business for a few adventurous persons in
Lima to proceed to China, where they kidnapped some of the superfluous
Chinese population. This traffic prospered for a while, but as it is
the property of murder to make itself known--somehow or anyhow--the
profits fell off, owing to the interference of one or two civilised
Governments. When the Celestial Empire no longer offered a safe field
for the Peruvian men-snatchers, attempts were made on the inoffensive
people of the diocese of modern evangelisation, and in the course of
time the rich people of Lima had the opportunity of buying a few men,
women, and girls, who had been stolen from some of the islands of the
Pacific. But these for some mysterious reasons died off, after having
cost the Peruvian Government a serious sum of money, and some people
their reputation. It was, however, imperatively necessary, owing to
the demands of the British farmer for guano, and the exigences of the
Government of Peru to obtain men from China somehow for the important
work of shovelling Peruvian dung into European ships; and there may
be reckoned to-day among the motley population of the Republic not
less than 60,000 men who cultivate sugar and pig-tails, and indulge in
opium. This, therefore, might be called a popular revolution, and the
friends of General Castilla can claim for him the honour and glory of
having brought it about.
General Castilla deserves to be better known; but this is not the
place to speak of him at any length. He introduced a new era into
Peruvian politics--he was the first native Peruvian with no Spanish
blood in his veins who assumed supreme power. If there had been no
guano to demoralise everybody, himself included, Castilla might have
become a great man, and the Peruvian people been lifted up by him in
the scale of humanity. As it is, Castilla and everybody else fulfilled
the prediction of the Hebrew prophet in a manner that might be stated
in Spanish, but which no gentleman can write in English. It should
be stated that although Castilla had nothing of Spanish blood in his
veins, yet his father was an Italian, and his mother one of the pure
Indian women of Moquegua.
All this, however, does not help us to answer the momentous questions
with which this chapter opens.--If Peru is not a Republic, and there
have not been more than two revolutions in the whole of its wild and
chequered history, what is it?
Peru is a Republic in name, 'governed' or rather farmed by groups or
families of despots, who frequently quarrel among themselves, cut each
other's throats, and alternately embrace and kiss each other, in a
manner that is sickening to any one who is not a moral eunuch[14]. Only
those who are rich enough to escape to Chile are saved from the above
gentle process. General Prado is one of these favoured Peruvians. Had
not Don Manuel Pardo, the late President, fled from Lima during the
revolting days of the Gutierrez terror, he too would have gone the way
of all flesh and Peruvian political farmers.
The people of Peru, those who are to be distinguished from the
families who farm them, are hard-working, industrious, sober, ignorant,
excitable and superstitious. They are fond of serving their masters,
they like to be called 'children' by the great Colonels, the great
sugar-boilers, and all who ride on horses and live, even though it be
at other people's expense, in great houses.
The Peruvian dictionary already quoted from, though it does not contain
the word Republic, does contain the history of Peru. Let us turn to the
article 'Liberty.'
'LA LIBERTAD,' says our brave soldier author, 'does not consist,
civilly or socially speaking, in each one doing what he likes. By thus
understanding liberty some governments have fallen, and some people
have lost what they had gained.
'Liberty consists in each one having the power to do, at all events,
that which the law has not forbidden, in not damaging another in his
rights, or property, or in his moral and material well-being.
'That society is not free while any of its members are unable to
express their thoughts without hinderance.
'That society is not free when one or more of its industries are
prohibited under the pretext of monopoly or privilege.
'It is not free when it cares not, or is unable to arraign a lying
magistrate.
'That society is not free which does not possess political morality.
This consists in--
'I. Keeping the treaties and covenants made with other nations.
'II. In submitting to the law without its ever supposing itself
entitled to falsify it by cunning arts, or paltry subterfuge.
'III. In holding up to scorn whatever crime affects the national
honour.
'IV. In not corrupting its institutions for personal considerations.
A people will find it very difficult to maintain its freedom, which is
without sufficient spirit to provide itself with good institutions, and
afterwards ready to put so much faith in them, that it will become a
religious duty rigorously to support them.
'By what right does Spanish-America call itself republican, if it has
not renounced the custom of a despotic monarchical absolutism?
'These unhappy people have given themselves very liberal laws, and
have afterwards abandoned them at the caprice of men without having the
least faith in their own institutions.
'How can they thus hope to be free?
'It costs nothing, nor is it of any value to shout LIBERTY, LIBERTY.
But that which is of great price, and can never be too costly, is to
acquire liberty by means of good manners, by the custom of respecting
the law and making it respected, by respecting the rights of others,
and making them respected by all; to be just with all the world, and
ashamed of every evil act. Behold, how liberty is to be acquired. In
fine, liberty is the health of the soul, and he cannot be free who has
not a healthy conscience.'
'The greater number of our liberals,' he adds in another place, with
one of his happiest flashes of poetic truth, of which the book is full,
'the greater number of our liberals are like musical instruments which
do not retain the sound they give when played upon,' i. e. they are
cracked.
Let it be added, that this soldier of the sword and of the pen who
fought and bled on the field of battle for Peruvian civil liberty,
and sighed, and cried in peaceful days for a freedom still greater
and better, died poor and neglected. The present Peruvian Government
sought all over Lima for complete copies of his works to send to
Philadelphia, but it allows those whom he has left behind him, and who
bear his name, to languish in obscurity and in want; and Don Manuel
Pardo and his ministers, good in many things though they may be, are in
others nothing better than cracked musical instruments. Peru is only
a Republic in name, liberty does not exist, its people are not free,
and the country remains at the mercy of men who at any moment, and in
the most unexpected manner, can turn it into a hotbed of what is called
revolution.
A revolution is expected now. The man whose administration designed and
carried through one of the 'railways of the age,' the personal friend
of Meiggs, who had taken anarchy captive in an iron net, was shortly
afterwards in the most cowardly, brutal, and unexpected way first made
prisoner, while he was yet President, and then murdered in his jail.
Great as is the love of the common people for their superiors, they are
not to be relied upon in days of great excitement, and when there is
abundance of loose change flying about. How could it be otherwise?
How often do ministers and public men meet the people in common? Never,
except in a religious procession carrying an enormous wax candle a yard
long, and as thick as a rolling-pin, or at the Theatre on el dos de
Mayo, and not then unless there has been some pleasant news announced
the day before.
How often are the people enlightened by a clear and straightforward
statement of the public accounts? Never. Does not the free press of
Lima support the Government, or now and then criticise its acts in the
interest of the people? The answer is that there is no free press in
Lima.
No plan of the Government is ever made known until it has been
accomplished. Everything is done in secret and underground. Rumour
is the great agent of the Government and mystery its chief force.
So mysterious are the ways of the Executive that itself is not
unfrequently a mystery to itself. No Peruvian Government has ever had
the courage to take the people into its confidence, and the people
are too busy with their own personal affairs to think of, much less to
resent, the slight.
In other matters the press is busy enough. Some of the most biting
criticisms on priests, on auricular confession, on the infallibility
of the Pope and the Immaculate Conception have appeared in the Lima
press. Their teachers, in brief, have ridiculed the gods of the people
and given them none to adore. No intellectual society in Lima associate
with priests. No priest is ever seen in the houses of the rich, or the
respectable poor.
Freemasonry is the fashionable religion of men, and men who never go
to mass will frequent a lodge twice a week. Only the other day one of
these lodges published an advertisement in the leading journal to the
effect that a gold medal would be conferred on any brother mason who
would adopt the orphan child of any who had died fighting against any
form of tyranny, and the medal is to be worn as a badge of honour on
the person of the owner. Freemasonry in Peru is an open menace of the
Church, which with all deference to the craft, may be called a gross
mistake. But Peruvian Freemasonry is like Peruvian Republicanism,
chiefly a thing of show, and something to talk about by men who can
talk of nothing else.
After all this it should not be difficult to answer the questions with
which this chapter opens.
But lest it should be thought that the greater part of these statements
is pure rhetoric, or mere private opinion, and not stubborn facts, let
us now ask two questions more.
What use has Peru made of the great income it has derived during the
past generation, from the national guano? What is there to show for the
many million pounds sterling it has derived from this source, and from
money lent by English bondholders?
Let us hasten at once to acknowledge that it has spent 150,000,000
dols. in railways. But let us also add that the greatest authority in
Peru has stigmatised these railways as _locuras_, or follies. This is
not an encouraging beginning. But alas it is not only the beginning, it
is also the end of the account.
There is nothing else to be seen. There is not a single lighthouse or
light on any dangerous rock, or at any port difficult to make along the
whole of its coast. All the fructifying rivers of the hills still steal
into the sea. Had half the money which has been spent on the Oroya
railway been expended on works of irrigation, the Government of Peru
would now be in the possession of a respectable revenue.
A morning visit to the market-place in Lima on any day of the week, is
enough to convince even a Peruvian President who knows something else
besides how to play rocambor, of the truth of this statement.
Internal roads, excepting these 'railways of the age,' there are none;
but there are several ironclads and men-of-war in the Bay of Callao,
for what use or of what service the First Lord of the Admiralty himself
could not tell explicitly.
It might be thought by some ordinary people, of business habits and a
little reflection, that a country like Peru, which can boast of as many
seaports as it can of first-class towns and cities, would provide those
ports with convenient landing-places, moles, or piers.
There is one good pier on the whole coast, which in its useless
grandeur stretches out nearly a mile into the sea; as the Oroya
railway, like a mighty python, creeps up the precipitous slopes of the
Andes 'sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.'
As every one knows, the Pacific is a peaceful sea, as quiet as a saucer
of milk. But like almost all the things that every one knows, this
piece of knowledge will hardly bear the test of experience. Twenty
miles or less from its shore, the Pacific on the Peruvian coast, may
be said to be as calm and placid as a man's unresisted vices. Put a
restraint upon, or raise a barrier against the most modest of the man's
wishes, and these suddenly show their strength, even the strength, as
some have found to their cost, of resistless passion. It is thus with
this Pacific sea. When it comes against a rocky shore, or the miserable
wooden barriers which the Peruvian Government have put up for the
convenience and comfort of passengers, and the despatch of business,
it becomes more like a wild beast, or a watery volcano, or any other
fierce and angry force which cannot by ordinary means be restrained. It
is not unlikely that a Government fond of providing cheap distraction
for the people has purposely neglected this useful work of building
piers, with the benevolent design of providing a cheap amusement to
those inhabitants of the ports who do not travel by sea.
It is such fun to see a lady dressed in pink satin and blue silk
boots get a sudden ducking in salt water, or to watch in safety from
the shore a boat full of anxious and highly dressed colonels and
sugar-boilers, editors and lawyers, get drenched to the skin, and
almost robbed of their breath, in trying to effect a landing at Islay,
or Mollendo, Iquique, or Chala, or even Callao.
If any of the readers of this brief but eventful history would desire
to see the Peruvian Republic as in a microcosm, let them arrive at
the latter chief port of the nation in a steamer, or a cattle ship,
as a passenger steamer may now be called. They will see an exhibition
of confusion, extortion, bullying, insolence, cruelty, and official
imbecility, which cannot be equalled in any other part of the civilised
or uncivilised world, including New Guinea or Eragomanga. And as it
is now, so it was twenty years ago. A steamer, the European mail for
example, drops its anchor about two miles from the shore. It is then
surrounded by a hundred small boats, each containing two, sometimes
more, coloured men. The screaming, gesticulating, and brutal language
of these creatures defy description. The authorities have no control
over them, the captain of the steamer is powerless against the invasion
of his ship, and all passengers who have no friends, who know nothing
of the country and cannot speak Spanish, are placed at the mercy of
this swarm of harpies.
Here you have an epitome of Peru. Gentlemen and rogues jostling one
another in painful contiguity. Gentlewomen and their opposite, men who
work and scoundrels who prey upon other people's labour, priests and
colonels, knowledge and ignorance, in some form or other brought in
violent collision: the utmost freedom of opinion and nobody to keep the
peace!
FOOTNOTE:
[14] _Estratocracia_ I find is the technical term by
which Espinosa would designate the Government of Peru or
a government by the military. This would seem to be true,
seeing that since Peru became a Republic all its Presidents
with only one exception have been Colonels, Generals, and
End of Project Gutenberg's Peru in the Guano Age, by Alexander James Duffield