THE FAMILY TREE
When came this Latin-American? Is he a mystery, a complex, or a racial
conundrum defying analysis and baffling understanding? So many people have
said. Others have reported a something impossible to name or describe
about this man from the southlands--all of which is nonsense. There are
few human mysteries when once we have the key. Any people may be
understood if we know their racial origin, social history, and
reaction-power. Such knowledge usually explains these so-called race
peculiarities.
As North Americans we are ourselves the present product of social forces
that have driven us for centuries past. With a northern European race
origin we have been mixed in many molds and infused with many tinctures
till we emerge a new blend of blood. This new and vigorous stock shows a
reaction-power that has made much of educational, scientific, and material
opportunities, but, after all, these traits themselves are largely the
result of the social stimuli of the past five hundred years. Had our
ancestors in the sixteenth century removed to Spain, we should all now be
Spanish dons.
If we could know the social, religious, intellectual, domestic,
industrial, and political environment of a people, we could account for
ninety per cent of race characteristics. And this social history measures,
not only potent forces and compelling sanctions, but itself in turn
registers reactive power and character values.
[Illustration: SAN BLAS INDIAN CHIEF]
The Latin-American has no cause to apologize nor explain when we inquire
into his racial antecedents. Out of the remote ages of antiquity a branch
of the human family moved westward, and on the Italian peninsula developed
a civilization and founded a city that in time dominated the world. The
lust of conquest and the intoxication of power debauched the rulers of
Rome, but the rising Christian Church took over the scepter, and for
fifteen hundred years Rome dominated the civilization of the world.
Fundamentally, there was no difference between the blood of southern and
western Europe, and but for the corrupt and demoralizing influence of the
papacy and its trailing blight upon the human spirit Rome might still have
been the dominant power of European civilization. The abuses that
compelled the Reformation also vitiated the Latin spirit. The wakening
life of the sixteenth century shifted the center westward but the blight
of papal despotism kept the Latin races from their full share in the
developments and democracy of the modern age. And now that the Teutonic
peoples of the north have become the victims of the most deadly despotism
that the world has yet produced, it is possible that the center and motive
of progressive thought in continental Europe may again swing to the
southern peoples.
[Illustration: NO RACE SUICIDE HERE]
No one can trace the splendid march of the Latin races through the
conquests and explorations and discoveries of the later fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries and then read the record of achievements down to the
present time and still maintain that there is anything decadent about the
Latin races. Had the Roman yoke been broken from the Latin neck as it was
from the Teuton, we should have had a very different tale to tell, and the
dominant civilization of the twentieth century might have been Latin
instead of Saxon.
A closer examination of the social factors that have dominated the
Latin-American world and produced the present composite result on the
western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors that have in combination
produced our neighbors.
All Latin-America reflects a European background. Nearly all relations of
life are defined in European terms. Out of the more or less subconscious
inheritance and ideals of European origin arise the sanctions of social
relations. Ideals of politics, business, education, home life, social
customs, and religion all come from this fountain of associations. The
church in South America is the church in southern Europe. The collegio is
not the North American college, but the European school which grants a
Bachelor of Arts degree at what corresponds to the end of the freshman
year in an American college. South American "republics" have their "prime
ministers," and the electorate is on the European basis. The presidents of
some of these republics exercise more arbitrary power than the king of
England or the entire executive of the United States. They are European
"presidents." Revolution is not the incurable habit of the "people" but
the profession of a few adventurers who oppress and afflict the
long-suffering and usually silent populace. This is not saying that
revolution is a characteristic of European political procedure, but that
the forms of representative government imposed upon the ideals of
dictatorship and monarchy produced the curious mixture of revolutionary
political progress known as a South or Central American "republic." South
American democracy is a hybrid product of European ideals and American
forms of government. Naturally enough, it is neither one thing nor the
other, and will not be anything very different until new forces are
brought to bear upon the political life of the Latin people.
[Illustration: JUNGLE GUIDE]
A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for
three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political
life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social
sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. The
great basic impulse that sent men and women westward in search of
religious liberty has persisted and widened and developed a homogeneous
system of political ideal that has become the unquestioned background of
our whole political system. From free consciences have come free
institutions, free schools, free votes, and as long as it lasted, free
land, unrestricted economic opportunity, and a welcome to the world. Upon
this foundation have been reared American independence, modern democracy,
higher education, the feminist movement, scientific advance, and American
Protestantism.
[Illustration: ONE USE FOR A HEAD]
Certain influences from this stream have affected Latin-American life. The
nomenclature of South American politics is that of the United States, and
many constitutions contain provision for every modern practice. But these
model constitutions are like a beautiful and costly piano imported into a
home where no one knows how to use it. It takes a democratic spirit to get
democracy out of a democratic constitution. The best piano yields only
discord, and the most advanced constitution does not prevent revolution if
there be no musicians or statesmen to play and administer. People living
beside the stream of democratic progress have caught the names and forms
drifting on the current, but only those people have advanced with the
current who have not been tied to the shore by moral and intellectual
despotism.
The influence of geographical nearness is slight beside that of historical
background and social relations. Mexico is much closer to Spain than to
the United States. After twenty years of successful administration of the
Philippines on the most colossal scale of national benevolence that the
world has ever seen, nearly all the Filipinos who had reached maturity in
1898 are still Spanish at heart and out of sympathy with American ideals
and administration. If the United States can hold the islands until every
person who was ten years old or over in 1898 is thoroughly dead and safely
buried, there will be a chance for some form of democracy, but the
old-time leaders will retain so long as they live the ideals derived from
three hundred years of Spanish administration.
If there are in the mountains of the South isolated neighborhoods that
have been passed by in the current of modern American progress, and are
to-day practically ignorant of all that makes up American life, even
though surrounded on all sides by the march of a virile and restless race,
what must be the results of the isolation from this stream of North
American development, of the whole Latin-American race, while maintaining
close and vital connections with European standards and ideals?
But Latin Americanism can never be explained merely by its European
background and its isolation from the progress of North America. The
keynote to the present product in Latin lands is to be found in that
system of religious despotism that has checked the free growth of every
people whose life it has dominated.
[Illustration: BEGGARS AND CATHEDRALS]
Jesuitism is what is the matter with the civilization southward. We have
had Romanism and Jesuitism in the United States, but people who have never
seen any form of these forces except that which has developed in the free
air of North America have much to learn. Romanism checked and balanced by
a virile Protestantism and a democratic political life is an altogether
different institution from Romanism dominant, degenerate, and intolerant.
The latter becomes the religion of the bound Bible, the chained spirit,
and the crippled conscience. It is the center of spiritual infection and
the microbe of moral weakness. No land has ever advanced under its
leadership. Like a blight on the human spirit, it has cast its spell of
ignorance and superstition over the millions of men and women who have had
no other ethical code or spiritual leadership.
It has been claimed that the rigors of New England winters had something
to do with the sturdy New England conscience. But the Pilgrims brought
their consciences with them, and the climate came near exterminating the
colony. If the Pilgrims had landed in Cuba and the Spanish in Boston,
civilization might be very different to-day. If rigorous climates produce
vigorous men, how is it that some of the most terrible of men sailed the
Caribbean sea and devastated the whole mid-American world, while the
northern coasts of the Atlantic never saw a pirate's sail? The tropical
zephyrs of the Bay of Panama never softened the tempers or dispositions of
the bloodthirsty men who came near exterminating whole populations and
left a trail of blood and terror behind them. And these same
unconscionable scoundrels used to attend mass and plant wooden crosses
wherever they went.
The effort to account for South American civilization by climate falls to
pieces before the splendid and bracing altitudes of the Andes, the ideal
conditions of Argentine, Uruguay, and Chile, and the delightful regions of
the higher elevations of Central America. There is nothing inherently
demoralizing in the climate of lands inhabited by the Latin peoples in
America, but there is something distinctly vitiating in the moral miasma
breathed by these peoples for three hundred years. If cold climates
produced inflexible consciences, the Eskimos ought to be the most
conscientious people on earth. But the moral climate of Jesuitism has
produced a uniform effect everywhere that it has supplied the soil for
soul-growth.
[Illustration: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD]
It is impossible to grow liberty of life, apart from its natural soil and
necessary nourishment. If we are to have free institutions, we must first
have free men. We cannot have a stream of water without a flowing
fountain, nor ripe fruit without a living tree. Political liberty is
impossible without moral freedom, and it is idle to expect independence of
political action without the established right to think for oneself. When
consciences are forced into fixed and prescribed molds it is useless to
ask that men turn about and practice the principles of a free democracy.
Majority rule is meaningless where the confessional dominates the
consciences of men. If we apply these factors in the social history and
life of the Latin-American to the traits of his development most subject
to criticism, we find much illumination. Out of all the discussion three
items emerge, each significant and each closely related to the factors
just mentioned.
The Latin mind is given to an idealism that reaches out for large things
but often stops short of large actual realization. Out of this tendency
grow weak initiative and superficial standards. As evidence of this
characteristic may be cited the tendency in education to stress the
superficial and showy features of the curriculum, leaving in the
background the foundations and essentials of the intellectual life.
Anything that makes a good appearance is given place over the less
spectacular realities. In architecture, a florid ornamentation is
achieved, even at the expense of good plaster and proper surface stone,
later with the resultant unsightliness.
[Illustration: SEAWALL CHURCH AND SCHOOL, PANAMA]
Deductive processes of thought are much in evidence. In outlining a plan
of provincial government, or a system of national education, the paper
plans will include every needed feature of a complete and theoretical
system, without much regard for the local needs and actual conditions
under which the full scheme is to be realized, which in all probability it
will never be. To have projected and announced a grand undertaking in any
department of human life is as important as to have accomplished
something. It is the grand-piano constitution and the one-finger
administration. It is not hard to find automobile undertakings and
wheelbarrow accomplishments.
Now, all this is not cause for railing accusation but for thoughtful
analysis. And the dominant cause is not far to seek. Where effort to
translate ideals into realities is met by a barrier of official
indifference, it is not strange if men give their time to dreaming rather
than actualizing their visions. Where belief and conduct are prescribed
and commercialism dominates the moral lives of men, it is easy to see that
initiative is crippled at its source. Where a people is divested of
responsibility for the final outcome and taught to pay the price and
"believe or be damned," it is a rash spirit that will try to do more than
dream dreams and write books and project utopias. Without the incentive of
encouragement to produce practical results, no real efficiency has ever
appeared among any people. There are accusations of moral duplicity among
Latin-American peoples. More serious and fundamental than impotent
idealism, this defect registers itself in perversion of public trust, in
the degradation of public office to the uses of private gain, in
deception, graft, and greed. Promises are easy, but performances are
delayed until the would-be enterprising citizen gives up in despair.
In regard to this two things are to be said. In the first place, our own
records as a people will not bear any too close inspection. Aside from
race riots and labor disturbances, our Civil War furnishes our only
revolution, except the one that produced the original United States. But
when it comes to political prostitution of public office and the invention
of grafting schemes, large and small, our own history does not give us
much ground for boasting. And many a "revolution" has caused less
bloodshed than a North American labor row.
[Illustration: MANDY DID HER SHARE]
Further, so far as there is a difference between the conduct of the North
and South, the explanation is not far to seek. Once admit the validity of
the principle that it is right to do wrong for a good end, and a whole
stream of moral duplicity is turned loose in public and private life.
Jesuitism will account for almost any moral lapse in a land where all
thinking has come under the spell of a creed in which the end justifies
the means.
[Illustration: THE CANAL DIGGER]
Let this principle be ever so carefully guarded and proscribed, so long as
human nature remains what it is, where personal interests are at stake the
individual is going to be his own final judge of the value of the end for
which the means are devised. And on the basis of every man adapting means
to his own ends we have moral chaos.
Much has been said of the personal immorality of many people of these
southern lands. That the Latin-American is in any whit behind his northern
neighbor in the integrity of his personal and domestic life remains to be
proven. That his deflections from the straight and narrow path are much
less concealed and by him are regarded as of small account is to be
conceded. Here, again, the cause is not far to seek. With a sacerdotal
example loose and irresponsible, it would be strange indeed if the men of
South America showed a higher personal chastity than their spiritual
leaders and moral guides.
The third accusation brought against our neighbors is that of political
undemocracy. Government by revolution is said to be the rule, and an
election in which the "outs" win a victory over the "ins" is practically
unknown. Victorious majorities are governed in size only by the discretion
of the dominant power, and the Latin mind seems a stranger to the
fundamental principle of accepting a majority decision as binding until
the next election.
To accept gracefully a majority decision against himself or his party is
an art slowly acquired by any politician. On the playgrounds we see this
trait; in amateur clubs and literary societies we find it; in the arena of
political strife it does its worst and results in a state of affairs in
which revolution becomes the general substitute for elections.
I stood one day on the campus of a Christian college in a Latin republic.
The young men were playing baseball, and they were playing it well. I
discovered that baseball was a regular part of their curriculum, that they
were required to play so many games per week, and that they received
credit for the games, provided they were played according to rules. When I
inquired as to the reason for this I was informed by the efficient
director of the school that baseball was in his opinion one of the most
important subjects in the course. "There are two things that we can teach
through baseball better than any other way. One is team work--a fellow
can't play the game alone; and the other is the art of accepting defeat
gracefully. Half of the boys must be defeated every day, which is an
invaluable drill for them."
[Illustration: THE TOWN PUMP, INTERIOR VILLAGE]
Even as we discussed the matter, a tall fellow got into a dispute with the
umpire, and after a dramatic flourish swung his arms in the air and
shouted, "No juego mas" ("I will play no more").
"There--do you hear that?" remarked the director. "That is what we are
trying to cure."
As far as my observation has gone, nobody except the educational
missionary is trying very hard to cure this most unfortunate trait in an
otherwise very fine character.
[Illustration: WAYSIDE CEMETERY IN THE JUNGLE]
Here, again, it is not difficult to trace this stream to its sources. We
understand much better since 1914 whence came this political peculiarity.
The ideals of European politics have been transferred across the Atlantic
and their fruits on foreign soil have not been tempered by the vigor of
free institutions grown strong in the processes of centuries. If
Central-American republics are only constitutional monarchies in which the
monarch governs the constitution, there is very good reason for the
anomaly. If it is true that there is not a single republic on American
soil south of "the line," then it is to be said that there never can be
such a republic until Latin-America ceases to think in terms of European
history and Jesuitism is broken from its hold on the moral consciousness
of the men who make and unmake republics in the Latin world. Successful
republics have been developed in that turbulent but onmoving stream of
Western and modern ideals that has found its most complete expression in
the United States, but which has also tinctured the thinking and
influenced the political processes of practically every country on earth
except Prussia. We ourselves are not perfect yet, and it behooves us to
withhold the stones from our neighbors until we can show a clean record.
We will have some distance to go before democracy is a finished product,
and it will be a good plan to take the neighbors along with us.