A NOTE UPON VITAL STATISTICS 333
Provinces and Population of Chile—Chilean Terms.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Frontispiece_ Lake Llanquihue, South Chile
_Maps_ (at end of volume) Political Map of Chile
„ Railway Map of Chile
_Facing
page_
Lake Todos los Santos 4
Balmaceda Glacier 6
Volcano San Pablo. Desert in Atacama Province. In Northern
Antofagasta Province. The River Loa in the Dry Season 8
In the Strait of Magellan 10
Santa Lucia Hill, Santiago. Parque Forestal, Santiago.
Municipal Offices, Santiago 12
Viña del Mar, Valparaiso’s Residential Suburb. Valparaiso
Street, Viña del Mar. Race Course, Viña del Mar. Mira-Mar
Beach, Viña del Mar 18
_Reproductions from Gay’s “History of Chile”_: Más a Tierra
(Juan Fernández Group) Island in the 18th Century.
Capturing Condors in the Chilean Andes. O’Higgins’
Parliament with the Araucanian Indians, March, 1793.
Guanacos on the Edge of Laja Lake 42
In the Chilean Andes. A Chilean Glacier, Central Region. Rio
Blanco Valley, above Los Andes 52
San Juan Bautista, Village of Cumberland Bay, Más a Tierra
Island (Juan Fernández Group), 400 Miles West of
Valparaiso. The Plain of Calavera, Chilean Andes 66
Last Hope Inlet (Ultima Esperanza). Channel in the Territory of
Magellanes 94
Balmaceda Glacier, South Chile. In Smyth Channel, heading North
from Magellan Strait 124
The Nitrate Pampa: Opening up Trench after Blasting. General
View of Nitrate and Iodine Plant 152
Antofagasta. The Nitrate Wharves 174
Sewell Camp at Night. Sewell (El Teniente Copper Mines) near
Rancagua 178
Sewell in the Snows of June. Railway between Rancagua and El
Teniente 182
Curanilahue Coal Mine, Arauco Province. Dulcinea Copper Mine,
Copiapó Province. Chuquicamata Copper Mines, Antofagasta
Province 196
At Constitución, South of Santiago. San Cristobal Hill and
Parque Forestal, Santiago. Malleco Bridge, near Collipulli 228
The Post Office, Santiago. Santiago, with the Snow-capped Andes
in the Eastern Distance. Subercaseaux Palace, Santiago 242
On the Chilean Transandine Railway. Laguna del Portillo: near
the Transandine line. Santa Rosa de los Andes, Chilean
Terminus of the Transandine Railway 256
Coquimbo, the “Capital of North Chile.” Ancud, the Port of
Chiloé Island. Zapallar, a beautiful Chilean Watering Place 260
Taltal, a Nitrate Port of North Chile. Puerto Corral, the Port
of Valdivia, South Chile 264
Valdivia, a Flourishing New Southern City. Punta Arenas, the
Southernmost City in the World. Puerto Varas, facing Calbuco
Volcano, Lake Llanquihue 292
Araucanian Indian, spinning. Note the solid wooden wheel of the
country cart. Araucanian Mother and Child. The
hide-and-wood cradle is slung upon the woman’s back when
she goes outside the hut 318
CHILE
TODAY AND TOMORROW
CHAPTER I
_Physical Characteristics.—North, South, and Central Chile.—Brilliant
Hues.—Climate.—Wet and Dry Seasons.—Social Problems.—Far-flung
Cities.—Formation of Character.—Animals and Plants._
Chile is a ribbon of a country, an emerald and gold strip stretched
between the snow-crowned wall of the Andes and the blue waters of the
Pacific.
This ribbon is up-tilted all along its western edge to form the coastal
range defending the long central valley. It is lightly creased
transversely where, from east to west, streams fed with snow-water drain
down from the Andean peaks. Below the fortieth degree of south latitude
the ribbon is twisted and ragged, with the tilted edge half sunk in
stormy waters. Thirty times as long as it is wide, Chilean territory
runs from the seventeenth to the fifty-sixth degree of south latitude,
for, with a Pacific coast measuring nearly three thousand miles the
average breadth is no more than ninety. It is a land of extreme
contrasts; of great violence, of great serenity: but whether harsh or
smiling, Chile is a stimulating, a promising land holding the mind and
the heart. It is a breeder of men and women of forcible character.
To the north lie the tawny and burning deserts where not so much as a
blade of grass grows without artificial help, where no rain falls, year
after year, where every form of life is an alien thing. In the south are
broken, rocky islands and inlets, matted forests of evergreen trees with
their feet in eternal swamps, of furious gales and cruel seas, where
turquoise glaciers creep into the dark fiords. Eastward stands the great
barrier of the Andes, snow-covered for half the year, with proud peaks
rising at least eight thousand feet higher than the head of Mont Blanc.
To the west, Chile looks out upon a waste of waters, with New Zealand as
the nearest great country.
Shut in or defended by these barriers from each point of the compass, it
is plain that Chile has had no sisters closely pressing upon her
threshold. One might reasonably expect to find here a race possessing
characteristics in common with island folk, a homogeneous people with a
distinct nationality. Today, when all natural barriers have been
overthrown by mechanical transport, no nation escapes exterior
influence, but the Chilean does certainly retain the islander’s
self-contained habit, physical hardihood, and power of assimilating
rather than yielding to aliens. I do not think that the modern Chilean
owes his traits so much to inheritance from the Araucanian as to the
fact that he has been nurtured in the same cradle, for, without doubt,
here is a personality and attitude of mind that distinguishes the man of
Chile from his continental brothers.
Between the forbidding lands of the extreme north and far south and the
frontiers of mountain and sea, lies fertile Chile—fruitful, gentle,
brisk, well-watered. Nitrate and copper have their great populated
camps, but they are artificial towns; the Magellanic city of Punta
Arenas has a firmer root, but both north and south are new, and have
received rather than produced. The Central Valley of Chile is the great
garden of South America, one of the most enchantingly lovely, the most
frankly friendly, regions in all the world.
It seems as though nature had deliberately tried to compensate here for
the arid and the stormy end of the belt by showering beauty upon the
intervening strip. There is none of that strange illusory quality, the
sense of living in a mirage, that attends upon tropical regions. Central
Chile is fresh, dewy-bright, with the familiar sweetness of the
temperate zones of western Europe. Here are fine cattle, sheep and
horses, pleasant orchards of pears and plums and apples; olive groves
and grapevines; the long green lines of wheat fields, the spires of the
poplars, the blackberry hedges edged with gorse and bracken and
purple-headed thistles, are all familiar. The stock of the farms, every
kind of crop—except those invaluable American contributions to the
world’s list of foods, maize and potatoes—were introduced from overseas,
but they have long been absorbed into the economic life of Chile. If the
visitor is lulled into forgetfulness of his real milieu by the sight of
neat wooden fences, by the bramble-bordered and fern-edged lane, he is
recalled by the sudden glimpse of a shining white cone suspended in the
transparent air, the snowy head of a far volcano. Or he may see in the
thicket beside the road a trail of copihue with its bright rosy bell, or
note that the farmer, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed, riding a fine horse
along a deep muddy road, wears a gay poncho and a pair of enormous
silver spurs.
It is the Chilean south that has brought to the Pacific Coast its fame
as a land of beautiful pictures. Before Puerto Montt is reached, the
edge of Lake Llanquihue is skirted by the railway, and the sight of this
splendid sheet of water is an introduction to the wild and lovely
scenery that was still unknown fifty years ago. The mountain and lake
regions of Chile have even yet not been thoroughly explored, and that so
much of this magnificent territory has been charted is partly due to the
ancient uncertainty of exact boundary limits with Argentina, and, after
long negotiations, the surveying work of Holdich at the head of the
commission of 1898, reporting to King Edward VII as arbitrator. Between
Chile and Argentina lies a series of exquisite lakes, many lying in old
volcano cups. There is no more lovely body of fresh water in the world
than Todos los Santos, with emerald heights rising clear from the mirror
of the water; Rupanco, Riñihue, Ranco, and Viedma are beads upon a
splendid chain of fine waters.
Chile is a land of brilliant hues. The dark waters, shouldered by
tree-clothed mountains, of the Strait of Magellan, reflect yellow and
russet leaf-changes as bright as in the maple woods of Canada. Blue
glaciers, pure snow heads and the delicate green of fern brakes are
contrasted with the crimson of wild fuchsias and the mass of glorious
bloom of apple and cherry orchards. Farther north, where poplars stand
like tall flames against the background of the hills in the Chilean
autumn, and the willows line the rivers with gold, all is soft and
glowing; but beyond the northern limits of vegetation where nothing
meets the eye but masses of orange mountains that seem like glowing
draperies hung against the unchanging blue sky, there is an
extraordinary clarity of line and tint.
When the sun descends, quick flushes of pink and yellow, sheets of pale
green and violet, flood the burning desert and the deeply scored
heights; there is no movement, no sound, and yet the wide scene appears
instinct with life, to move beneath the waves of pure light.
[Illustration: Lake Todos los Santos.]
Every smallest thread of water is here edged with a lush growth of
bright emerald plants, every bush is a mass of orange or purple flowers.
And in the settled spots there is grace in every tree, a picturesque
quality in each little thatched hut by the wayside, an insouciance that
lends charm to ’dobe walls and maize patches. The beauty and the
kindliness of Chile are, in fact, apt to destroy one’s critical
faculties.
The weather in Chile may be called extremely obvious. It is impossible
to ignore it, as in some other countries, despite the situation of the
greater part of Chilean territory within the temperate zone. The
remarkable topographical conditions of this strip force each
barometrical change upon the attention.
In the rainless north, modifications are chiefly confined to the effects
of the curious sea-mist, the _camanchaca_, spreading over some parts of
the pampas to fifty miles inland; appearing about six in the evening,
these fogs screen the coast and promptly lower the temperature, so,
that, scorching at midday, one shivers under blankets at night. In the
extreme south, among the islands and channels of the Magellanic region,
boisterous seas and violent winds, cold and rain, made it the terror of
sailors for three hundred years. The prevailing weather displays traits
almost as unvarying as in the sharply contrasted north. Fine and calm
days are rarities, although the climate is certainly not unhealthy, as
Punta Arenas demonstrates.
But it is in the central region lying between Coquimbo and Valdivia that
changes of weather have the most spectacular effect. In the valleys of
the Aconcagua, the Mapocho, the Maule and the Bio-Bio we have perhaps
the most striking results when the rainy season begins, usually towards
the end of April. In the lowlands a blinding deluge descends that
promptly clears town streets of pedestrians and frequently reduces cabs
and street cars to temporary inactivity, while every country path and
highway is transformed by a few hours’ rain into a deep morass. But
whenever it rains in the central Chilean valleys snow is falling upon
the Andean heights, and presently the eyes that for months have glanced
with the indifference of custom at the far-distant, blue-shrouded, tawny
mountains are astonished with a vision of giant peaks and shoulders that
seem to have made an immense stride forward to the edge of the next
field, their serene magnificence covered with shining white.
The effect upon the foothills is no less striking. During the last
months of the dry season—enduring in the vineyard regions for some eight
months—every inch of ground that is not artificially irrigated has taken
on a uniform sandy hue. The whole earth is parched and the roads are a
foot deep in dust. But within a week of the first rain a shimmering veil
of light green tinges the land; in ten days every knoll and hillside has
its carpet of young grass, and in a month the whole face of the country
is changed, awakened, brilliant, bursting out with sturdy fertility.
Such rivers as the Aconcagua and the Mapocho, dwindled to rippling
threads among the wide stone-strewn beds, are changed in a night to
raging torrents, fed from the sides of the mountains. More than once
these silver streams have swept from their shallow banks, torn down
protecting barriers, and done serious material damage, besides changing
their courses—a matter of great import in regions where water-rights are
the chief causes of quarrel among farmers.
[Illustration: Balmaceda Glacier.]
With the setting in of the definite dry season at the beginning of
September, the upper part of Central Chile thenceforth forgets the sound
of rain for over half a year. Bright blue skies and unrelenting midday
heat are almost unchanged; the watered country is a series of orchards,
and the famous big black grapes, the peaches and plums and apples of
Central Chile, succeed the strawberry crops. Chile in the early part of
the dry season is a garden of flowers, and the fruitripening at the end
of the year fills the valleys with busy scenes. There are thousands of
workers in the orchards, grain fields and vineyards, and the
heavywheeled ox-carts send up swirling masses of dust in every lane.
Before the New Year the snow has melted under the summer sun from almost
every part of the Cordilleras, although I have seen it linger in deep
folds of Aconcagua and Tupungato until late February. Down south in
Magellanic territory the permanent snow line comes down to a couple of
thousand feet above sea level, and cold weather is the rule. The squalls
of the Strait are generally rain-laden.
Aconcagua, highest peak of South America, is not actually a Chilean
mountain, lying just across the Argentine frontier; but it is so
familiar a feature of Central Chile that it is constantly annexed in
thought. Mercedario, another magnificent height, also just escapes the
boundary line. Beautiful Tupungato, 21,300 ft., is outclassed among
Chilean peaks, as regards altitude, by Tocorpuri and Llullaico farther
north, and is closely rivalled by a number of less famous
mountains—Socompa, Baya, San Pedro and San Pablo, Peña Blanco, San
Francisco, Muerto, Solo, Salado, Tres Cruces and Toro; below Central
Chile the average height of the crests of the great volcanic wall drops
from fifteen to nine thousand feet, but even such comparatively modest
peaks as Osorno, Llaima, Calbuco, Lonquimay, Villa Rica, and the most
southerly Paine, Burney, Balmaceda and Sarmiento, are striking and
dignified with their snow crowns.
The long dry season of Mid Chile, and the violence of rains in the wet
months, render the construction of permanent roads a task necessitating
immense outlay. Chile has 35,000 kilometres of highroads, but reckons
only a few thousand kilometres in first-class condition: a recent Road
Law aims at a reform of vital importance to the Chilean farmer. But if
roads are scarce, Chile has an excellent system of railways, serving the
main length of her territory, connecting with all exporting points along
the coast, and linking Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. The adequate
equipment of ports—of which there are sixty, important or embryo—has
always presented difficulties, owing to the shallow character of almost
every indentation, with the notable exception of Talcahuano, and the
prevalence of heavy ground swells and strong gales from the north and
the southwest.
The social problems of Chile are no more and no less than the problems
of any other country of the temperate zone inhabited by a progressive
white population. The difficulties of adequate transport to serve her
growing industrial and farming regions; questions regarding a large
working population crowded into great mining camps; political and
educational problems, are all hers: but she is aided towards solution by
the homogeneity of her hardy race.
Chile has no “black” or “yellow” population. There are in the country
only four African Negroes, and the foreigners resident are mainly
Western Europeans and the nationals of sister states. Peruvians, prior
to the friction of 1920, formed 20 per cent of the foreign population;
Bolivians number 22,000 or 16 per cent; there are 20,000 Spaniards,
about 13 per cent; Germans, 11,000, or 8 per cent; French, 10,000;
British, 10,000; Italians, 13,000; Swiss, 2000; North Americans, 1000;
Chinese, 2000; Argentines, 7000.
[Illustration: Volcano San Pablo, on the Bolivian Border of Chile.]
[Illustration: In Northern Antofagasta Province.]
[Illustration: Desert in Atacama Province.]
[Illustration: The River Loa in the Dry Season.]
The various foreign elements are lost among Chile’s four million
native-born, and the majority of all newcomers remain in the country and
are presently added to the Chilean stock. There has never been,
fortunately for the country, any influx of unassimilable races; and
while there is plenty of room for a large population, increase is more
certain when it is from the inside rather than superimposed.
Chile has, in fact, enjoyed all the advantages of being known as a poor
country for many generations; there have been no periods of delirious
boom or extravagance, she has been comparatively little exploited, owes
comparatively little to the outside world, and has developed her soul
with a certain leisure.
Politically, she has been equally lucky. Most of her rulers have been
wise and cultivated men of high probity. The unhappy Balmaceda, against
whom was fomented the solitary revolt in Chile since she settled down to
work after Independence, bears a name that is today revered throughout
the country, with no accusation affecting his integrity. No Governor or
President of Chile has been assassinated during the whole history of the
country, before or since the close of the Spanish colonial régime.
The genuine exercise of the vote, and the temperamental cheerfulness and
sanity of the Chilean, have saved the country from many miseries
suffered by less unified lands.
Two special causes of the general level-headedness and sobriety of the
Chilean are, first, the strong position of women in family life, and
next the high standard of education. Education provides a channel
through which youth can flow, and here, where state elementary schools
are spread throughout the country to the number of 3000, with 1000
private and secondary schools, every boy and girl has a chance. The
Chilean Government has long followed a policy of sending a number of the
brightest students of the high schools and universities abroad for final
courses in languages and science, and for this reason is less dependent
than the majority of young countries upon the exterior world for
engineers, chemists and teachers.
The fine prosperous cities of Chile possess, of course, all the
equipment, all the luxury and grace, of modern cities all over the
world. If one were to shut out the background of snow-crowned mountains,
and happened to be out of sight of such streets as retain Spanish
balconies and tiled roofs, one might imagine many a district of Santiago
to be a part of a first-class French or English city. The tramways, the
common use of motor cars and electricity, the good paving and good
shops, the beauty and fashion of the Chilean women, the beautifully
built and equipped houses, the good restaurants, the plentiful supply of
newspapers, the appearance and avocations of the people, render
Valparaiso and the Chilean capital among the front-rank cities of the
world.
But Chilean cities vary greatly. In the central region is the great
group of centres of Spanish foundation, those of the extreme north
showing faces, for the most part, as youthful as those of Western
Patagonia or Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan. Temuco, built after
the final breaking-down of the Araucanian frontier, dates as a modern
town only from 1881. Old Tarata, in the still disputed Province of
Tacna, dreaming with its back to the hills and face to the desert, is a
link with the past, for although it is away from the traffic stream
today it was once a stopping-place on the direct Inca route between
Potosí and Arica on the Pacific; Tacna owes its modern existence to its
little railway; but Arica is newly alive, a busy port in a bower of gay
flowers, a garden on the edge of a waste.
[Illustration: In the Strait of Magellan.]
South of Arica lies a fringe of new nitrate towns along the sea-border
of the _pampas salitreras_; Pisagua, Junin, Iquique (not long ago the
greatest exporter of nitrate, but yielding pride of place to
Antofagasta), Caleta Buena, Tocopilla, Mejillones, also overshadowed
today by her younger sister, big, well-served, thriving Antofagasta;
Coloso, Paposo, Taltal—all lie baking in the bright aridity of the
rainless belt, precariously supplied with food and water from afar.
Inland there are no populations more permanent than those of the nitrate
_oficinas_, save here and there along the beds of snow-fed streams. Next
in order from north to south comes the string of copper ports, with
interior towns beginning to appear as the edge of the permanently
fertile lands is reached. Chañaral, Caldera, Carrizal, points where the
famous “Chile bars” of copper were smelted and shipped overseas; inland
Copiapó, dependent for wealth upon copper and silver mines, but clothed
with all the charm of a cloveredged oasis in the desert; the houses are
built low for fear of earthquakes, roofed with red tiles and washed pink
and blue; the gardens are full of scented flowers. Another oasis is
Vallenar, set in the Atacama desert beside its violet-shadowed ravine
and surrounded with a little ring of jade fields.
Still farther south, Coquimbo, a newer, busy little city, sweetly placed
upon its beautiful curving bay a mile or two from its Spanish-built,
slumbering elder sister La Serena. From this point southward the towns
lie closer together, and eastward along each fertile valley are clusters
of fine fruit farms with dependent villages, filling the railway cars
with figs and peaches, grapes and apricots; but where water fails, scrub
and cactus deny a living. Here is old Combarbalá, there Illapel with its
town-long avenue of orange trees hung with golden globes; Santa Rosa de
los Andes, highroad to the chief mountain crossing; and a number of
centres of the lovely grape country, younger sisters of San Felipe.
Santiago, spread beneath her two famous hills, Santa Lucia and San
Cristobal; Valparaiso, risen from the earthquake of 1906, solidly built
on its narrow stretch of sand beneath the thousand-foot cliffs, crowned
with new dwellings and reached by electric lifts, an energetic and
wealthy port with its brilliant suburb, Viña del Mar. Beyond these great
twin centres of movement lies all the fast-developing agricultural and
manufacturing south—Talca, a rapid and promising growth; dusty Rancagua,
looking towards the big interior copper camp; Chillán, head of a great
fruit region; Concepción, most agreeable of cities, nestled beside the
bright Bio-Bio in a bower of woods, with its fine port, Talcahuano; the
coal-mining sea-border towns, Coronel, Lota, Arauco, Lebu; Temuco, one
of the most prosperous of all the vigorous young southern towns, placed
in wonderfully productive country; handsome Valdivia, facing a
factory-covered island on the fine river flowing to Corral port, justly
proud of its equipment and buildings; Osorno, a rising centre of
industry; Puerto Montt, still in its youth but with good reasons for
sturdy growth. And last of all, Punta Arenas, the visibly growing city,
fine buildings shouldering little shacks, looking away from the
beech-covered hills of Brunswick Peninsula towards the pearly distance
of the Polar seas; Punta Arenas is not only a new city of Yugo-Slav and
Scots millionaires, of the tributary sheep-raising country: it is the
commercial key of Chile’s Far South.
[Illustration: Santa Lucia Hill, Santiago.]
[Illustration: Parque Forestal, Santiago.]
[Illustration: Municipal Offices, Santiago.]
The majority of these towns are more than convenient centres for
crowding populations; they owe their existence to special and widely
divergent causes that have also formed the character of the people. To
certain circumstances in Chilean history can be ascribed a powerful part
in making the Chilean—the disappearance of the Indian as a worker, and
consequent self-dependence; the great rise of the nitrate industry, and
the creation of national wealth and great private fortunes; and the
enlargement of the national horizon by war. But the effect of different
regions and their calls upon resources have been and are still equally
important. Much of the spirit of the Chilean is due to the independent
life of the mineral-hunter of the north, solitary, even-tempered,
enduring, deeply attached to the soil. The day of this class of miner
has departed almost as definitely as that of the cunning craftsmen who,
in colonial days, fashioned in copper or silver all domestic utensils of
Chilean homes: but his influence lives. Marked also is the influence of
the skilled horseman, the woodsman, the man of the camp who knows how to
kill and cook his food, how to cross mountain passes or trackless forest
or unbridged stream; the far-flung Chilean cities bear the stamp of the
Chilean character created by these special circumstances, and
generalisations must be made and received with this fact in mind.
The Santiaguino, occupied in finance, law, politics or trade, is
addicted to cheery club life, is a country and garden lover, and has a
keen understanding and affection for horses; his characteristics bring
him readily into sympathetic touch with the British, allied by many
blood-ties. He is famed as a charming host, a genial welcomer of the
stranger, and there is no city in the world where the visitor will be
more agreeably interviewed by an acute press, more quickly and
spontaneously greeted and made at home than by the frank and kindly
Chilean family.
The dweller in Santiago and Valparaiso possesses a marked characteristic
rare in any part of Latin America: he is a born speculator and
financier, and is an active attendant and operator upon the local Bolsa
(Stock Exchange). In some of the smaller and less developed states of
Spanish America the Stock Exchange is non-existent or negligible: but in
Chile the Bolsa is thronged daily, and the operations are active, eager,
and dictated by a highly intelligent appreciation of the market
conditions of the world. The cables are incessantly used in this
connection, and many a Chilean fortune has been made and lost by the
follower of exchange fluctuations. The Chilean understands and is
accustomed to investment, and is not alarmed as are many American
nations at the prospect of investing his money abroad. He has gone
afield for a century, and, operating in Antofagasta and Tarapacá long
before they were Chilean _de facto_, has since their acquisition ranged
farther into the mining districts of central Bolivia. Chilean capital
and technical skill are responsible for half the mines operated in that
sister state. Operations in Bolivian mining shares—such as the famous
and spectacular Llallaguas—form a considerable item in the work of the
Chilean Bolsa.
Behind the bright social life of the Chilean cities lie the great
farming and mining areas, with their dependence upon that hardy Chilean
worker nicknamed the _roto_—originally, the “out at elbows” class. Today
the term has lost its depreciatory meaning, and the workman in general
is a _roto_. He has fine qualities of hardihood, loyalty and endurance;
and although he has sometimes had a repute for free use of the _corvo_,
the deadly curved knife in whose use he has an extraordinary facility,
it is only upon too-festive occasions or during jealous quarrels that he
is apt to give way to passion. The measures taken by the Government and
by large employers of workmen in industries or mines to stop the traffic
in the worst forms of liquor, and to substitute the light and innocuous
Chilean wines, has lessened these troubles during recent years, and it
is true of Chile as of most parts of South America that there is no
organised crime. Cases of theft are common, but are ascribed mainly to
the lower class of South European who comes to Chile for work and forms
a part of the shifting population moving from camp to camp. Chile’s _Ley
de Residencia_, by which criminals are deported from the scene of
discovered ill-deeds to another part of the coast, means very often that
the north and south exchange ne’er-do-wells.
It is partly due to this perhaps too kindly system that Chile has
suffered considerably from strikes during the past few years. The entry
of malcontents bringing the flag and doctrines of the I. W. W. created
trouble in the coal mines of the south, the copper camps and the nitrate
fields of the north, and the ingenuous character of the native-born
lends itself to the ready acceptance of specious theories. I have seen
the flag of the Californian-bred Industrial Workers of the World paraded
in Santiago, while such “red” periodicals as _El Socialista_ of
Antofagasta spread a hash-up of violent and hysterical propaganda, a
medley of Marxian and Bolshevik ideas, amongst railway and port workmen.
The women, always an element to be reckoned with in Chile, were brought
into the Antofagasta railway strike in 1919, and when the first
strike-breaking train was run out of the port, the wives of the strikers
laid themselves down on the tracks in a theatrical attempt obviously
instigated by the practised foreign agitator.
The radical administration of Señor Arturo Alessandri, with its avowed
sympathy with the workers, was able to counteract the pernicious
influence of the exterior trouble-maker as, perhaps, a more conservative
government could not; and the firmness with which, in late 1921, the
President dealt with an attempted tie-up of Valparaiso port, declaring
his intention of redressing any genuine grievances but at the same time
making clear his determination that the work of the port should not be
interfered with, has been salutary. The powerful Workman’s Federation
(Federación de Obreros) of Chile has done much good work, and is likely
to do more if it is purged of foreign interference and retains the
sympathies of the middle class Chilean.
The best cure for red socialism in South America is the pleasant tonic
sport. No better sign of the real healthfulness of the Chilean race is
to be found than the enthusiasm with which football, cricket and the
recent introduction of American baseball have been taken up. All Chilean
newspapers have their page of _Deportes_, with much space devoted to
_futbolismo_, and the horse races at Viña del Mar and Santiago are
eagerly attended by the peasant as well as by the Chilean millionaire.
Such sports as river fishing and boating are denied to the dweller in
north, and most of central Chile, by the scarcity of streams, but there
are plenty of coarse, if few sporting, fish in all rivers of constant
flow. To the south, trout and salmon have been introduced with marked
success and the angler’s art has developed. Bull-fighting was never a
Chilean pastime; a fine breed of game-cocks was introduced about the
middle of last century (through the gifts of the celebrated Lord Derby,
who responded to the petition of a sporting Chilean priest) and has had
a marked effect upon country strains, but in its most popular day
cock-fighting was never to Chile what it is to Cuba. The whole national
tendency is towards out-of-door games and sport: the Chilean is a
wonderful rider, has bred an extremely fine type of small horses, is a
good polo player, and owes much of his sturdy health to the national
habit of horsemanship.
Chile has no noxious insects, with the exception of one venomous spider;
and she has no poisonous snakes or reptiles. But she is rich in strange
and beautiful birds, many singing with exquisite sweetness.
Large animals indigenous to the country are rare, although all European
domesticated animals, as horses, cattle, hogs and sheep, thrive
splendidly; a few forest deer are still found; the guanaco lives in the
more remote uplands and cold south, and there are jaguars in the
woodland.
Among plants, Chile’s special gift to the world has been the potato,
invaluable to millions of households today. Different varieties of
_Solanum tuberosum_ are found wild on the West Coast of South America
all the way from South Chile to Colombia, growing in Chile from
Magallanes to Arica, both near the seashore and in the foothills of the
Andes. The potato has a wide native habitat, and it was and is as useful
to the indigenous folk of Chile, Bolivia and Peru as to Western Europe
today. Of other foods, the mealy, chestnut-like kernel of the _Araucaria
Chiliensis_ is eaten only in the country, as in the case of its cousin,
the kernel of _Araucaria Brasilensis_. The strawberry, _Fragaria
Chiloensis_, appears to be wild in south Chile, with a number of small
sweet berries of the myrtle and berberis tribes.
Quantities of beautiful flowers and plants, herbs and shrubs, are native
to Chile and found wild only in this belt. Of them, none is more
striking and lovely than the _Copihue_, the rosy bell of a slim vine
clinging to trees in the southern woodland; the flaming _Tropœolum
speciosa_ is a bright mantle of the hedgerows, the brilliant blue crocus
(_Tecophilea_) lies in sheets on Andean foothills, the turquoise and
golden _Puyas_ are striking features of many a Chilean landscape, and
the lovely _Eucryphias_ are shrubs as beautiful as the Fire Bush
(_Embothrium coccineum_).
But of all Chilean offerings, none has been of more importance to the
world, apart from the potato, than that strange naturally produced
chemical of the northern rainless regions, nitrate of soda. Nitrate has
brought millions of exhausted or semi-productive acres into rich
fertility, employs a hundred thousand people in its production and
transport, and is today a necessity of the farmer. Artificial production
is unlikely to rival the natural deposits in the markets of the world,
owing to the cost of manufacture, and the Chilean fields, immense and
practically inexhaustible, form a natural treasure of prime industrial
importance. Other nations besides Chile are fortunate in possessing
copper, coal, iron and silver: in the possession of nitrate the West
Coast is without a competitor.
The only cloud upon the Chilean political horizon, remaining since the
War of the Pacific, is the problem of the two provinces now combined as
Tacna, with the city of Tacna as capital. That the future of this little
region troubles the West Coast is a striking illustration of the result
of leaving territorial questions unsettled, for no equal shadow is cast
by the provinces definitely added to Chilean soil, the valuable Tarapacá
and Antofagasta.
[Illustration: Viña del Mar, Valparaiso’s Residential Suburb.]
[Illustration: Race Course, Viña del Mar.]
[Illustration: Valparaiso Street, Viña del Mar.]
[Illustration: Mira-Mar Beach, Viña del Mar.]
Not only Chile and Peru are involved in the Tacna dispute: the question
of renewed access to the sea by Bolivia lends that country a lively
interest in settlement, and, in addition, every South American country
is concerned in the amicable resolution of a domestic problem affecting
the present credit and future peace of the continent. Nor can the
nationals of overseas countries investing in or trading with the West
Coast remain indifferent; when, in 1922, discussions were opened in
Washington between the representatives of Chile and Peru, all friends of
South America hoped for a happy result from these new and direct
conversations, in a region far removed from the acute feeling of the
Pacific Coast.
The whole story of the Tacna question is discussed in detail in other
pages.[1]
Footnote 1:
Chapter VI.
CHAPTER II
CHILEAN HISTORY
_Inca Rule and Native Chiefs.—Spanish Colonial Period.—The Fight for
Independence.—Republican Chile._
Neither in her deep woodlands nor upon her open plains does Chile
possess monuments of ancient civilisation. The foundations of her
flourishing cities date back no farther than 400 years at the most; the
arts and crafts of daily life are based upon imported concepts, owning
no native origin. As a settled, built, cultivated country, Chile is for
the main part genuinely new.
The old races of the south, whether nomad hunters of the interior or
fisherfolk of the coast and Magellanic waterways, built no towns,
constructed and carved nothing that serves today as a memorial; bones
hidden in caves, chipped spear and arrow heads, harpoons and fish-hooks,
remain as the only evidence of the life of past generations, the only
witnesses by which the condition of their present descendants can be
measured. Farther north, where Inca culture penetrated, are such ruins
of dwellings as those of Calama, with their burial sites. Traces of the
Inca highways are yet to be found as far south as the Atacama desert and
Copiapó. But in contrast with the archæological wealth of Bolivia and
Peru, of Central America and Mexico, Chile has not a single pre-Spanish
temple nor the rudest monolith to show. The north and central valley of
Chile as far as the present Talca were under Inca control for about one
hundred years before the Spanish conquest, Peruvian records yielding the
only historical accounts of events in Chile prior to Almagro’s
expedition.
A friendly connection between the Peruvian empire and the settled tribes
of the Chilean north seems to have been of old standing, a tradition
confirmed by the evidence of burial grounds. Upon the authority of the
historian Montesinos, the Inca Yahuar Huaccac gave a daughter and a
niece in marriage to two chiefs of Chile; these two princesses came
later, with their children, to visit Peru, their uncle Viracocha being
then Inca. A revolt took place during their absence, and the family was
only reinstated by the might of the Inca, and under his tutelage. It
was, however, the Inca Pachacuti who began the definite explorations and
conquests that, continued by his son Tupac Yupanqui and his grandson
Huayna Ccapac, increased the Inca dominion to a great empire extending
from the Ancasmayu River, north of Quito, to the banks of the Maule in
Chile.
Tupac Yupanqui (1439–75) conquered the Antis,[2] people of the Collao,
and from Charcas decided to go farther south. He entered Chile, defeated
the powerful Sinchi (chieftain) Michimalongo and later Tangalongo, the
latter ruling country down to the Maule. Here the same fierce tribes who
afterwards resisted the finest Spanish troops opposed him, and after
setting up frontier columns, or walls, as a mark of conquest on the
river banks, the Inca returned to Cuzco via Coquimbo. From this time
Chile was officially organised. Quechua-speaking colonists (_mitimaes_)
were sent here as throughout all the rest of the thousand leagues of
Inca territory, registering the population and imposing tributes of
country produce. Curacas were instituted as tribal leaders in lieu of
the Sinchis, who were in old Chile obeyed only in wartime. Extension of
this definite organisation was energetically carried on by the great
Inca, Huayna Ccapac, and it was during this period that the Peruvians
constructed the great roads that so astonished, and aided, the
Spaniards. The effective transport system and the success of the Inca
rulers in pacifying districts by the simple method of transporting the
original population where disaffection was suspected, replacing them
with settlers from a distance, the whole meticulous paternalism of the
Inca system, regulating every part of the social frame from the cradle
to the grave so thoroughly that initiative was stifled, rendered easy
the task of the invading European. He did no more than step into Inca
shoes, and the Inca’s subjects received the change of masters almost
with apathy.
Footnote 2:
From which name the word Andes, in whose lower folds the Antis dwelt,
was probably derived.
That careful observer Cieza de Leon, in Peru from 1532–50, leaves a
precise account of the Inca roads that ran south from Cuzco both along
the sierras and also throughout the coastal border. The highways were
made, he says, fifteen feet wide in the valleys, with a strong wall on
either side, the whole space being paved with cement and shaded with
trees. “These trees, in many places, spread their branches, laden with
fruit, over the road and many birds fluttered among the leaves.”
Resthouses containing provisions for the Inca officials and troops were
built at regular intervals, and it was strictly forbidden that Peruvians
should interfere with the property of natives in nearby fields or
houses.
In deserts where the sand drifted high, and paving was useless, huge
posts were driven in to mark the way. Zarate, who gives the width of the
roads as 40 feet, says that “broad embankments were made on either
side,” and all early travellers in Inca territory agree that these lost
highways were extremely well made. He adds that the posts in the desert
were connected with stout cords, but that even in his day the Spaniards
had destroyed many of the posts, using them for making fires. The road
of the coast, like that of the sierra, was 1500 miles long; and of
Chilean traces any traveller through the Atacama copper regions may see
a survival at the station of “Camino del Inca,” where the modern railway
cuts across the ancient road.
Along the Sierra highway came, in 1535, the first Spaniard to set foot
in Chile, Diego de Almagro. He was not the first European to explore
Chilean territory, for the Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães had discovered
the Strait bearing his name in 1520; but he was the pioneer explorer by
land. The name Chile is a native word which was probably the appellation
of a (pre-Spanish) local chief; it was the name by which the Incas
designated that part of the country under their control, and it
persisted in spite of Valdivia’s later attempt to call it “Nueva
Estramadura,” just as “Mejico” and “Cuba” survived and “Nueva España”
and “Española” faded out. It has been frequently but mistakenly said
that the word Chile actually does mean “chilly” in the Quechua tongue;
as a matter of fact the Quechua word meaning “cold” is _chiri_. In early
Spanish times the name Chile applied only to part of the central valley
with “Copayapu” in the extreme north, “Coquimpu” just below it, and the
central region partly ascribed to “Canconicagua.” But the name Chile was
simple and was so quickly adopted that Almagro’s adherents were soon
politically grouped as “los de Chile”—the men of Chile, and when the
country was definitely colonised the name was extended to denote all the
settled country south of Peru, that is, between Copiapó and Chiloé
Island.
The original spur to conquest of Chile was rivalry between the Pizarro
brothers and their fellow conquistador, the old Adelantado Diego de
Almagro. The Pizarros wanted to retain rich Cuzco, and Almagro was an
inconvenient claimant; the magnificent city of the Incas, today a
grievous sight with its shabby modern buildings superimposed upon the
stately stone walls of the Incas, was already a smashed and looted ruin;
but it had yielded so much treasure that it was probably impossible for
the conquistadores to give up search for other golden cities. Mexico,
Guatemala, Peru, and the Chibcha Kingdom, had followed in rapid
succession, and it is not surprising that when Indians spoke of the
riches of the south, Almagro, over seventy years old, should be ready to
march into Chile. Almagro had a commission from Charles V to conquer and
rule over 200 leagues of land south of Francisco Pizarro’s territory
(New Castille); it was to be called Nueva Toledo. At about the same
time, 1534, a grant was given to the ill-fated Alcazaba of 300 leagues
of land, commencing at the southern boundary of Almagro’s territory,
under the name of Nueva Leon.
Almagro set out with over 500 Spaniards and 15,000 Peruvian Indians,
after spending 500,000 pesos on equipment. He marched south from Cuzco,
crossed the Andes and went by Titicaca Lake, following the Inca route;
perhaps as a guide and a means of securing the loyal service of the
Peruvians, who would never desert a member of their ruling clan, the
Spanish leader took with him an Inca priest and the young Paullu Tupac
Yupanqui, son of the Huayna Ccapac and brother of the Inca Manco. The
latter had been crowned in Cuzco in early 1534 by Pizarro, probably with
the double object of quieting Peru and to obviate charges made by his
personal enemies in Spain. Both Charles V and the Pope emphasised their
possession of tender consciences with regard to native American rulers.
This young scion of the Incas survived the expedition into Chile, and
was with Almagro’s son at the battle of Chupas.
Terrible sufferings were experienced by the expedition in the bitterly
cold Andes, where deep snow and cruel winds killed the Peruvians by
thousands. Many of the Spanish soldiers too were frozen to death, and
food supplies failed. When at last they turned west an advance party of
horsemen went ahead to bring food, cheerfully yielded by the settled
natives, to their starving and exhausted comrades. Arriving in the green
Copiapó valley, Almagro was well received at first, but pressing his
search for gold to extremes, quarrels arose, the natives were
“punished,” and Almagro moved on, after receiving reinforcements brought
by Orgoñez. A strong party was sent forward to report on southerly
conditions, and marched as far as the Rio Claro (tributary of the Maule)
where savage Indians confronted the outposts of the old Inca empire.
When Almagro heard this report, and realised that neither treasures of
gold nor rich cities existed, he decided to return to Cuzco, making his
way back by the coastal road and traversing the scorching, waterless
deserts of Atacama and Tarapacá. At his arrival in Arequipa at the end
of 1536 he had lost 10,000 Indians and 156 Spaniards. The rest of
Almagro’s story—the news of the Peruvian revolt, his seizure of Cuzco,
and his execution at the age of seventy-five by Hernando Pizarro, when
fortune finally deserted him—belongs to the history of Peru. The fact
that a man had made the Chilean journey with Almagro was considered,
later on, as a claim upon royal consideration. The petition of Diego de
Pantoja, in 1561, makes this point, while that of Encinas, 1558, is even
more emphatic in speaking of the sufferings of the soldiers; he went
south, he says, with Captain Gomez de Alvarado, fighting Indians of the
“Picones, Pomamaucaes, Maule and Itata” and traversing painfully “snow
and water, swamps, creeks, crossing rivers by swimming or on rafts” and
with no food but wild herbs. For the moment the efforts of the Europeans
were without result; during another two years Chile remained in the
hands of her native rulers.
_Spanish Colonial Period_
There was no actual conquest of Chile by the Spaniards. Those native
tribes which had submitted to the Inca régime accepted the Europeans:
they who had defied the Inca continued to defy the Spanish.
There were angry outbursts on the part of certain northern and central
tribes when the Spaniards returned in force in 1540, but when these had
been overcome and peace made, the Indians remained consistently loyal.
The “Changos” of the coastal border took up a permanent position as
friends just as the Mapuches (“Araucanians”) took up a permanent
position as enemies. The Spanish settled Chile, organised a social
system, built cities and defences, cultivated the ground, brought in
blood and culture, created a nation; but South Chile was never a
conquered country in the same sense that Mexico and Peru were conquered
countries.
The next attempt to plant the Spanish flag in Chile following the
abortive expedition of Almagro was well planned and successful. Captain
Pedro de Valdivia, thirty-five years old, a campmaster of Hernando
Pizarro, and a man of formed and resolute character, wanted to increase
his fortune, consisting of an estate near Cuzco. He obtained without
difficulty from Francisco Pizarro a commission to open up Chile, a land
of poor repute since the return of Almagro; his appointment was that of
Lieutenant Governor. His chief difficulty was in raising men, for as he
says in a letter written in 1545 to Charles V, those who turned most
from the project were the soldiers who had accompanied Almagro on the
first unfortunate journey, when 1,500,000 pesos were spent “with, as the
only fruit, the redoubled defiance of the Indians.”
He set out at the beginning of 1540, however, with nearly 200 Spaniards
and 1000 Peruvian Indians, and avoiding the Andes traversed the coastal
deserts, arriving in the valley of the Mapocho at the end of the same
year. On the eve of departure a blow to his hopes threatened in the
arrival of Sanchez de la Hoz, armed with a royal commission for the
settlement of Chile; but Valdivia, equal to the occasion, induced his
rival to provide a couple of ships, equip a force with fifty horses,
supplies, arms, etc., and agreed to meet him at a small port just north
of the Atacama desert. The appointment was kept, but as soon as the new
arrival went ashore Valdivia arrested him, made him sign a renunciation
of his claims to leadership and henceforth obliged him to serve as a
common soldier. Eventually Sanchez de la Hoz joined a conspiracy against
Valdivia, was discovered, and was beheaded in Santiago de Chile.
In February, 1541, Valdivia founded Santiago “de Nueva Estremadura,”
Valdivia naming his province after Estremadura in Spain, where he was
born in the town of La Serena. The colony had a hard struggle for
existence, the Indians attacking the fortifications of Santa Lucia hill,
where the settlers built the first houses of wood and thatched grass; in
the letter mentioned above Valdivia says that the third year of the
colony was not so difficult, but that during the first two years they
had passed through great necessities. They ate roots, having no meat,
and the man who obtained fifty grains of maize each day counted himself
fortunate. He says also that they got a little gold, and gives Chile the
first praises, so often repeated subsequently, for its enchanting
climate. For people who want to settle permanently, there is no better
land in the world than Chile, he declares; there is good level land,
very healthy and pleasing, and the winter lasts but four months. In
summer the climate is delicious, and men are able to walk without danger
in the sunshine. The fields give abundant returns, and cattle thrive.
Live stock, in fact, throve so well that within twenty-five years of the
settlement the Indians of the south possessed flocks and herds, and,
learning from the Europeans, went mounted on horseback into battle.
Needing men and supplies, early in 1543 Valdivia sent six Spaniards by
land to Peru. Captured by Copiapó Indians, the Captain Monroy and a
soldier named Miranda escaped by an act of treachery against a friendly
Indian woman, and arrived safely in Cuzco after a terrible journey
through the deserts. But, to cajole Peru into giving help, Valdivia had
sent them with stirrups and bits made of gold, a display so successful
that by the end of the year sixty new settlers and a ship with stores
reached Chile, followed by captains Villagra and Escobar with 300 more
men. Valdivia was determined to overcome the south, and set out with 200
men by land while a ship followed along the coast. The Indians rose
behind him, burnt his embryo shipbuilding yard at Concon (mouth of the
Aconcagua River), trapped and killed his gold-miners at Quillota, and
besieged the little settlement of Santiago. It was here that Inez
Suarez, who had followed Valdivia from Cuzco, rendered her name immortal
by her active defence of the fort; tradition says that she cut off with
her own hands the heads of six Indian chieftain prisoners and threw them
over the palisades to intimidate the attackers. Valdivia returned, from
the Maule, where he had received a check, and re-established his colony.
He had founded La Serena as a check on the northern Indians and a post
on the road to Cuzco, in 1544, but saw that stronger assistance was
needed to colonise and hold Chile, and returned to Peru for more help in
1547. The country was in civil war, with Gonzalo Pizarro ranged against
Gasca, President of the Audience of Peru. Valdivia adopted the royal
appointee’s side, was an invaluable aid with his experience of Indian
wars, and helped turn the scale, taking the old Pizarro supporter,
Carbajal, prisoner. He got his reward when he received formal
appointment as Governor of Chile, in 1548. With a large force of
well-equipped men he started out anew, was stopped on the Atacama border
with orders to return to stand a trial on certain technical charges, was
acquitted, set out again, and reached Santiago in April, 1549. He found
that the Serena settlement had been destroyed, rebuilt it, and made an
agreement of peace with the northern Indians that was never again
broken.
With the central and northern colonies secure, Valdivia turned his face
south again, prepared a strong expedition and set out in January, 1550.
He was checked at the Bio-Bio River, fought for a year in that region,
attempting a settlement at Talcahuano, and built a constantly attacked
fort at Concepción, where the present Penco stands on a beautiful curve
of coast. In February, 1551, he went on, leaving fifty men in Penco;
founded Imperial, leaving forty men in a fort, and in early 1552 reached
the banks of the Callacalla River and founded Valdivia City, 1552. His
next step was to create a chain of forts—Arauco, on the sea; Villarica,
on the edge of Lake Lauquen; Osorno, opposite Chiloé Island some eighty
miles inland; Tucapel, Puren, and Angol, “la Ciudad de los Infantes de
Chile,” between Tucapel and the sea.
The fierce Araucanian Indians determined to destroy every settlement of
the invader, and, themselves hardy nomads, were well fitted for the work
of continual attack. The leaders Caupolican and the young Lautaro—the
latter trained in Spanish ways and speech during some years of service
as a groom of Valdivia’s—rose up, organised their people, adopting
certain Spanish military methods, and began a series of relentless and
systematic raids of destruction. Upon both sides, savage cruelties were
practised, and from this time began to date the deliberate seizure of
white women and children by the Indians. The courage with which many
Spanish wives accompanied their husbands did not save them from the huts
of the wild natives, and the children borne in course of time of Indian
fathers by European mothers were so numerous that certain tribes became
noted for their fair skins, pink cheeks and blue eyes.
In 1553, in attempting to stem the tide of Araucanian attacks on the
frail forts, of which Tucapel and Arauco had already fallen, Pedro de
Valdivia’s forces were overwhelmed by Lautaro and the Governor was made
prisoner and barbarously executed. He was then fifty-six years of age.
His policy in trying to establish settlements in the heart of Araucanian
territory was not justified by the necessities of his colonists, who had
more land than they could use in the fine central region. But he was
impelled by false stories of gold to be found in the south, by hope of
extending the territory under his jurisdiction for the Spanish crown,
and no doubt also held the belief, based upon former experiences, that
definite submission of the South American natives could be commanded by
vigorous action. This idea had been proved correct with regard to all
settled districts, but it did not apply to the elusive Mapuches.
Nevertheless it was persisted in for a long time, costing a river of
Spanish blood and an immense treasure in Spanish gold.
Flushed with success after the death of Valdivia, the Indians attacked
all the forts simultaneously; Concepción was twice ruined and restored,
in 1554 and 1555, and again smashed when Francisco de Villagra,
successor of Valdivia temporarily, was trapped on the seashore after
crossing the Bio-Bio and badly defeated. He redeemed his lost prestige
when he broke the armies of Lautaro and killed this leader at Santiago
soon afterwards, the Araucanians, emboldened, having ranged outside
their own territory to attack the invading Europeans.
In 1557 there came to Chile as Governor the young Garcia Hurtado de
Mendoza, son of the Marquis de Cañete, Viceroy of Peru. He brought from
Spain a well-equipped force of 600 Spaniards, and, arriving at
Concepción from the sea, rebuilt the stronghold, mounted guns for the
first time, restored all the southerly forts, and in the course of
fierce battles in 1558 took prisoner and killed Caupolican.
When Garcia Hurtado left Chile in 1560 the Indians took heart and
renewed attacks, and the anxious rule of Quiroga, with another interval
of Villagra’s control, was concerned almost exclusively with Indian
troubles. Quiroga, a determined man, was the first Spaniard to take
possession of Chiloé, founding the town of Castro; he carried war into
Araucanian territory relentlessly, shipping every able-bodied Indian he
could catch to the mines of Peru. But his experience, and that of his
successors, was that the natives were never more than momentarily
beaten, that they rose behind him when his troops passed from one region
to another, and that almost any fort could be overwhelmed by the
extraordinary numbers that the savage chiefs brought into the field. The
tactics of the Araucanians upon the battlefield, of attacking in great
numbers, but keeping back enormous quantities of men who came forward
when the first army was rolled back by Spanish guns, were disheartening;
every settlement remained in a constant state of siege, perpetually
harassed.
In 1567 Philip II of Spain authorized the establishment of a Royal
Audience in Concepción; it endured until 1574, but was then suppressed
owing to the insecurity of the colony. A year later the struggling
settlements were further discouraged by a terrible earthquake and tidal
wave that devastated the coast from Santiago to Valdivia, and in 1579
all western Spanish America was thrown into a state of consternation by
the amazing news that Drake had rounded the toe of South America and had
begun raiding the Pacific coast.
The enforcement of the “New Laws”—signed by Charles V in 1542, but
suspended or ignored by the various Audiences as long as was
possible—forbidding Spaniards to make the Indians work against their
will, infuriated the colonists of Chile, who saw no other way of
cultivating land or operating mines but by driving the natives to these
tasks; a few Negroes were sent on from Panama or Buenos Aires, but
transportation was expensive and farmers could not afford to import many
slaves. Chile never yielded a large quantity of gold; it was
pre-eminently an agricultural and stock-raising country, and therefore a
poor one compared with such regions as Peru with its golden treasure or
Charcas (Alto Peru) with its tremendous production of silver from the
wonderful mines of Potosí. That in the face of all hardships and
difficulties the colonisation of Central Chile steadily extended is a
standing tribute to the courage of the settlers, as well as to the
attractions of an exhilarating climate.
In 1583 came Alonso de Sotomayor, Marques de Villa Hermosa, setting out
with Sarmiento and a splendid Spanish fleet of twenty-three ships; the
original intention to pass through the Strait of Magellan was abandoned,
and Sotomayor with a strong army marched overland from Buenos Aires. He
too wasted lives and treasure in attempting to subdue the south, but
inevitably the Indians rose behind his forces, burning forts and
destroying the guard ships he placed upon the Bio-Bio River. By the time
that Martin Garcia Oñez de Loyola succeeded to the Governorship in 1592
the endless wars with the Araucanians had become bitterly unpopular; the
Indians had gathered new audacity under the _toqui_ (leader in war)
Paillamacu, and with him Oñez tried to make a treaty. Hope was also
placed in the pacifying influence of Jesuits, who entered in 1593, but
these first missionaries were killed, and an armed force sent south in
1598 was wiped out, the Governor Oñez being amongst the slain.
Paillamacu, jubilant, besieged all the forts at once, and Spanish rule
was further threatened by the appearance in the Pacific of Dutch
corsairs. The Cordes expedition of 1600 landed on Chiloé, sacked and
held Castro. A Spanish force under Ocampo took back the town, but
Spanish prestige suffered by the Indians’ realisation of quarrels among
white men. Ocampo also raised the siege of Angol and Imperial, but
carried away settlers and abandoned these places. Forts upon the sea
border, although safer than inland points, were not impregnable, and the
Araucanians had grown so bold that more than once when Spanish vessels
visiting the seaports ran aground the Indians swam out, killed the crew
and looted the ships in plain view of the settlers.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, with Ramon as Governor, it
was practically decided to restrict Spanish occupation of the territory
south of the Bio-Bio River to seaports, and to maintain a line of forts
upon the frontier. For about 100 years 2000 Spanish troops were
maintained for defensive purposes, chiefly distributed throughout
fourteen frontier strongholds, of which the chief were Arauco, Santa
Juana, Puren, Los Angeles, Tucapel and Yumbel, and in Concepción and
Valdivia. Chilean revenues were insufficient for these army expenses,
and Lima contributed 100,000 pesos, for Valparaiso, Concepción and the
frontier, half in specie and half in clothes and stores; about 8000
pesos of this sum was used in repairing forts and in giving presents or
paying compensation to the Indians. Valdivia, with Osorno and Chiloé,
received an additional 70,000 pesos from the royal treasury of Lima, and
these points were governed and supplied direct from the viceregal
capital.
Determination upon none but defensive fighting was due largely to Jesuit
influence in Spain, under Philip II, III and IV; Father Luis de Valdivia
in 1612 brought a new band of missionaries, and the south was left to
them and their prospective converts. The Audience was restored, in
Santiago, in 1609, and the Governor of Chile, while subordinate to the
Lima Viceroyalty, was President of the Audience of Santiago as well as
Captain-General of the province, his jurisdiction including the
territory from the desert of Atacama, where Peru ended, to all the
southern country he could control (the Taitao peninsula was explored in
1618) and also the province of Cuyo, extending across the Andes and
embracing the city of Mendoza on the post-road to Buenos Aires.
Pirates harassed the authorities in 1616, when Le Maire found the small
strait bearing his name; in 1623, when L’Hermite, with thirteen ships
and 1600 men, troubled the coasts; and notably by the Dutchman Brouwer
in 1644, when Valdivia was seized and three strong forts built by the
invaders. The death of Brouwer, three months after his arrival,
disheartened the strong force of Dutch under his control; the region was
also discovered to be less promising of easy wealth than had been
imagined and the place was given up. The Spanish returned in 1645,
occupying and completing the excellent fortifications of the Dutch.
A terrible battle with Indians near Chillan ending with the defeat of a
new Araucanian leader, Putapichion, with great slaughter, the then
Governor of Chile, Francisco de Zuñiga, Marques de Baides, attempted to
make a definite peace, holding the celebrated first “Parliament of
Quillin” in 1641; the second Parliament of Quillin was held in 1647,
with reiterated understanding that the Araucanians were to be recognised
as owners of independent territory south of the Bio-Bio, but not to
invade territory to the north. A third peace meeting was held in 1650
and thenceforth it became customary for each new Governor of Chile to
call a meeting at the Bio-Bio border, where he repaired in state, met
thousands of Araucanians, feasted them for several days and gave
presents, with mutual compliments and speech-making. None of these
friendly conclaves, however, prevented the Spaniards from raiding in
Araucanian territory on occasion, or gave pause to Indian chiefs who saw
an opportunity. In the middle of the century a disastrous rising of all
the Indians, supposedly converted and friendly, took place between the
Maule and Bio-Bio Rivers; 400 farms were burnt, Concepción besieged, and
enormous quantities of cattle, women and children taken to Araucania.
Nevertheless, outside the troubled zone Chile prospered; the Spanish
colony grew from 1700 (with 8600 Indians and 300 Negroes) in 1613 to
30,000 in 1670. Vineyards and olive groves were planted, the wine of
Chile becoming so famous that it was shipped all the way to Panama,
Mexico and Central America, to Paraguay and Argentina. The Governor Juan
Henriquez, a native of Lima, was responsible for much of this
agricultural encouragement, and for construction of a bridge over the
Mapocho River and of a canal bringing spring water to Santiago. It was
this same governor who shipped hundreds of Araucanians as slaves to
Peru, and sent to Lima for execution the young Englishmen of
Narborough’s scientific expedition, treacherously captured at Corral in
December, 1670. By this time the coast forts had been rebuilt, partly on
account of anxiety regarding the activities of adventuring ships of
rival nations, which, forbidden lawful trade, ranged the Pacific as
corsairs and smugglers. The famous Captain Bartholomew Sharp, with one
ship and 146 men, terrorised the coast in 1680; he sacked Arica and
burnt Coquimbo among his exploits. After the day of the pirate Davis,
raiding about 1686, it was decided to render the fertile islands off the
coast less useful as rendezvous; Mocha was depopulated and an attempt
made to kill all the goats that thrived on Juan Fernandez.
Many times during the seventeenth century the Chilean colonies were
almost ruined by earthquakes; the live volcanos of the Andean backbone
broke out from time to time, and in many cases the overthrow of
dwellings by _temblores_ and _terremotos_ was accompanied at the
unfortunate coastal settlements by furious onslaughts of tidal waves,
when numbers of people were drowned. Santiago was badly damaged by the
earthquake of 1642, but suffered worse in 1647; ten years later a
terrible earthquake and tidal wave destroyed Concepción on its original
site where Penco village stands today, and the city was later moved to
its present situation on the north of the green-wooded, silver Bio-Bio,
with its banks of black volcanic sand.
In 1700 the Spanish were able to regard the danger of active aggression
on the part of the Dutch without alarm. Spain had preserved the
integrity of her enormous American colonies in the teeth of an array of
energetic rivals, sea-adventuring people with vigorous populations
lacking space for new settlements, sharing the most jealously guarded
regions of South America with but one country, Portugal. For sixty
years, indeed, after the tragic death of Sebastião at El Kebir in 1578,
Spain held Portugal and Portugal’s splendid colonies abroad, including
Brazil; until 1640 the Kings of Spain were absolute masters of South
America. The long-continued struggle with England and its constant
threat to the colonies was one reason why Spain reluctantly made
concessions from time to time in her dealings with Holland, a country
openly displaying a keen desire to share in American profits. The
formation of the Dutch West Indian Company, with comprehensive plans for
settlement as well as for trade, received strong government backing, and
the forcible occupation of the Brazilian coast region of Pernambuco
between 1624 and 1654 caused great anxiety to Spain. Nevertheless, a
commercial agreement for the supply of indispensable Negro slaves,
brought from the Portuguese colonies of West Africa, endured until
Holland’s sea power was definitely affected by reverses at the hands of
the English.
A sign of change of influence which had a significant and lasting effect
upon the South American Pacific Coast was displayed when early in the
eighteenth century Louis XIV of France induced Philip V of Spain to give
to French traders the right to supply slaves to the American colonies in
place of the Dutch. A certain amount of general commerce could not be
denied to vessels bringing slaves, and presently limited agreements were
made by which two French companies were allowed to do business with
South America. The monopolist companies of Seville and Cadiz, crying
ruin, protested vainly, for viceroys and governors as well as settlers
found the visits of the French ships convenient and profitable; the
corsairs of England too were being transformed by economic circumstances
into smugglers whose operations were welcome in many quarters. France
did not limit her interest in South America to commerce: we find from
about 1705 onwards an increasing number of French scientists and writers
visiting the West Coast—as Feuillée, the Jesuit Father and careful
botanist, who published the first account of Chilean plant life; and
Frezier, the distinguished engineer, who left a descriptive volume of
perennial interest. It was this most observant writer who first noted
the use of the Quechua word _maté_ as applied to the small gourd, often
beautifully carved and silver-mounted, from which it was and is usual to
drink an infusion of the “herb of Paraguay,” in Chile and Peru.
Sidelights of great value are also presented by the letters of French
Jesuit priests who came to the West Coast about this time, and many of
whom, like the devoted Father Nyel, thought that the supreme reward for
a laborious life spent among wild natives was to be killed—“meriting
reception of the crown of martyrdom as the worthy recompense of
apostolic work.” Father Nyel wrote, in 1705, when he was planning the
establishment of a mission among the Araucanians, that in spite of
having murdered the noble Father Nicolas Mascardi thirty years
previously the Indians begged for Jesuits to enter their land again to
instruct them. But in order to succeed with these people it was
necessary to have “a strong constitution, complete indifference to all
the comforts of life, a persuasive gentleness, strength, courage, and
determination in spite of insurmountable difficulties encountered amidst
a barbarous people.”
The most distinguished of the scientists who were, perhaps somewhat
grudgingly, given leave to enter the Spanish colonies were the French
Academicians, headed by La Condamine, who came to Ecuador in 1735 to
measure an arc of the meridian upon the Equator, and whose Spanish
associates, sent by Madrid, made a detailed, frank and brilliant report
of the condition of Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The _Noticias Secretas_
handed to the King upon their return are extremely illuminating,
especially in the light of the events of eighty years later, when the
irritation which they observed between “creoles” (native-born Americans
of European blood) and Spaniards from the Peninsula came to a head. The
voyage of Juan and Ulloa, the accounts of Frezier, Feuillée and the
Jesuits, were as eagerly read in Europe as the biographies of the
corsairs, for whatever official reports were made by Spanish officials
from Spanish America never saw daylight, strangers were forbidden to
enter, and in consequence South America had the magic of the unknown.
By the middle of the eighteenth century Chile was still a small country,
settled chiefly between Coquimbo and Concepción, yielding a little gold
and silver from surface veins, but with her greatest activity in
connection with agriculture; she was spared the feverish excitements and
reactions of wealthier countries. Most of her trade was conducted by
land, over the Andes into Argentina, with a brisk exchange of Chilean
woollen ponchos, honey, hams and lard for _yerba maté_ from Paraguay and
European goods imported at Buenos Aires; to Peru was shipped wheat and
wine and beef or pork fat (_grasa_), exchanged for cargoes of _aji_ (red
pepper) from Arica and silver from Potosí.
Commerce with the Araucanians, eager buyers of hardware, metal
implements and ornaments in exchange for guanaco skins and cattle, went
on in spite of the mistrust engendered by the events of 1723, when a
general rising of the Indians took place, the settled villages of
converts created by the Jesuit missionaries were deserted, and a new war
commenced. The Araucanians themselves sued for peace on this occasion, a
new Parliament was held with fresh agreements that the country below the
Bio-Bio should be intact to the Indians, and the Governor agreed to
withdraw the Spanish officials who had been posted in the villages of
Christian Indians.
Castro, on Chiloé Island, traded its famous bacon and lard and planks of
hardwoods (chiefly _alerce_) for manufactured goods, and maintained a
sturdy if isolated existence; Osorno was little but a fort; Valdivia,
with its port of Corral, was carefully guarded, since it was considered
as the key to the South Sea, and five or six forts covered the bay and
the waterway to the city. In 1720 there were a couple of thousand people
here, chiefly convicts of Peru and Chile sent south during their period
of punishment, and the garrisons were maintained by Spanish and Peruvian
Indian soldiers. Concepción was not only a Spanish stronghold, but a
genuine agricultural colony, its splendid soil and enchanting climate,
bright, balmy and temperate, bringing the settler who forms the backbone
of Chilean society. Valparaiso was nothing but a shabby port, lacking a
customhouse, all goods being shipped by mule-back to Santiago, ninety
miles inland, or rather, 120 miles by the Zapata pass and Pudahuel, the
only road then existing. It was fairly well defended by upper and lower
forts overlooking the curve on the bay’s south where the houses of
Valparaiso lay along a narrow strip of beach. Santiago was a well-built
city, the centre of a fortunate agricultural and pastoral region;
northwards lay but one settlement of note, La Serena (Coquimbo), with
Copiapó, a prosperous silver mining centre, farther north.
The changes affecting Spanish America were not limited to the entry of
the French. Philip V, to induce Queen Anne of England to sign the Peace
of Utrecht, agreed to give the right of supplying slaves (_asiento_) to
the South Sea Company, for thirty years, from 1713 to 1743; by this
agreement 4800 Negroes were to be annually taken to the Plate, and as a
further and extraordinary concession the company was allowed to send one
ship each year to the Porto Bello fair (below Panama, on the Atlantic
coast). At the same time a peremptory stop was put to the overseas
commerce of the French, who had been allowed by Louis XIV during the War
of the Spanish Succession to trade from St. Malo to the American
colonies of Spain, herself too much involved to aid them with supplies.
The war of 1739 between England and Spain put an end to the English
traffic for nine years, but the terms of peace included an indemnity to
be paid to the South Sea Company for their trading rights, a British
merchant in Buenos Aires carrying on for a few years (until 1752) the
transportation of African slaves; after this time a group of Spanish
merchants took up this traffic. It was in 1748 that Spain, finding her
commerce with the colonies greatly reduced by home troubles, and the
more or less legitimate efforts of other nations, from the 15,000 or
even 25,000 tons of shipping formerly sent each year under convoy across
the Atlantic, stopped the yearly visits of the famous galleons and the
protecting warships. This fleet had sailed annually for 200 years. A
system of unguarded merchant boats was licensed, ships sailing for the
Plate six times a year.
In 1774 the rules forbidding the Spanish American colonies to trade with
each other were relaxed by Charles III, and the effect of this is
illustrated by the figures of Spanish merchant shipping sailing for the
Americas in 1778, the year of the erection of a Viceroyalty in Buenos
Aires, the fourth of Spanish America; no less than 170 vessels sailed,
as against twelve to fifteen in the days of the yearly fleet of
jealously licensed vessels.
In 1785 there was further relaxation, all the ports of Spain and all the
ports of Spanish America being allowed to trade mutually, and as other
proof of liberal ideas there came, in 1788, the appointment of Ambrose
O’Higgins as Governor of Chile. This excellent organiser was born in
Ireland, in County Sligo, and spent part of his barefoot youth in
running errands for the great folk of his native village; he went as a
youth to Spain, enlisting in the Spanish army, as many adventurous Irish
did about this time, and later made his way to the Spanish American
colonies. He distinguished himself in the Araucanian wars, was made a
colonel, and in 1788 was nominated to the Chilean captain-generalship by
Teodoro de Croix, the Viceroy of Peru, a native of Lille. The name of
Ambrose O’Higgins is as much respected in Chile today as that of his
son, Bernardo, born in Chillan, who became Supreme Director during the
early days of Chilean independence.
_Reproductions from Gay’s “History of Chile” (1854)_
[Illustration: Más a Tierra (Juan Fernández Group) in the 18th Century.]
[Illustration: O’Higgins’ Parliament with the Araucanian Indians, March,
1793.]
[Illustration: Capturing Condors in the Chilean Andes.]
[Illustration: Guanacos on the Edge of Laja Lake.]
Governor O’Higgins called the Parliament of Negrete with the
Araucanians, and set about the improvement of Chile; found and rebuilt
the ruins of Osorno fort, and made a road from Osorno to Valdivia;
another highway from Valparaiso to Santiago; and a third from Santiago
to Mendoza. He constructed bridges, notably over the turbulent Mapocho
River, and his good Chilean work only ceased when he was created Viceroy
of Peru, with the title of Marquis of Osorno. He remained in that post
until his death in 1801. A spurt in town foundation during the
eighteenth century also bears witness to the growing prosperity of
Chile. Between 1736 and 1746 the courtly and wideawake governor Don José
Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda, founded San Felipe, Melipilla,
Rancagua and Cauquenes; the same official encouraged the operation of
mines, making cannon for the defence of one of the Concepción forts from
local copper, and reopening gold mines at Tiltil (between Santiago and
Valparaiso) and developing the copper works of Coquimbo and of Copiapó.
His successor, Don Domingo Ortiz, founded Huasco and Curicó, built the
University of Santiago and began the Mint, completed during the régime
of Don Luis Muñoz between 1802 and 1807. The plans, tradition says, were
mixed with those for Lima, and by mistake Chile received authority for a
much more splendid building than was intended for her, La Moneda still
serving as Government offices in Santiago.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Europe had undergone violent
spiritual as well as material changes that could not fail to affect the
world and inevitably produced reactions in the Americas. The
independence of the United States had less effect upon South American
thought than the French Revolution, for with North America the South was
not in touch. There was little commerce, and the language difficulty was
a bar, while French literature and French movements were extremely
influential. The ideas of the Encyclopedists fell upon fertile soil.
When Napoleon conquered Spain, putting his brother Joseph Buonaparte
upon the royal throne of the Bourbons and driving Ferdinand VII into
exile, there was little thought upon the West Coast of this misfortune
as an opportune time for seizing freedom. Even when the action of Mexico
and Buenos Aires pointed the road of independence, Peru and Chile
demurred from disloyalty and declared their intention of returning to
the king when he should be again upon the Spanish throne. The grievances
against Spain of which so much was afterwards heard were not realised by
the majority of the populace, and in fact the creoles were well aware
that from narrow trading policies, the dictation of officials, sumptuary
laws, and the still-existent although waning burden of the Inquisition,
Spain suffered even more acutely than her overseas dominions. The rights
of _mayorazgo_, that is the preservation, intact for generation after
generation, of enormous estates which could not be broken up among a
number of heirs, or divided for sale, were a source of definite
complaint; but it was an inheritance from the land tenure laws of Spain,
also inelastic, to which they were inured by custom. The most fertile
ground for the growth of animosity between the colonies and the mother
country seems to have been the tangible annoyance of the stream from the
Peninsula, both of officials and merchants or adventurers. Don Antonio
Ulloa, writing the “Noticias Secretas” for the King’s eye in 1735, noted
that the big towns were “theatres of discord between Spanish and
creoles.... It is enough for a man to be a European or _chapeton_ to be
at once opposed to the creoles, and sufficient to have been born in the
Indies to hate Europeans. This ill-will is raised to so high a grade
that in some respects it exceeds the open hatred with which two nations
at war abuse and insult each other.” He thought the feeling tended to
increase rather than to diminish, and notes that it was more bitter in
the interior and mountainous regions, because the coast people were bent
to a more liberal spirit by their dependence upon commerce with
strangers, had more work to do and something else to think about. He
gave as reasons for the mutual dislike, first, the “vanity and
presumption” of the creoles; and next, the wretched condition in which
many poor Europeans usually arrived in the Indies. The native-born were
lazy, thought the Spanish officer, and envied the industrious and
intelligent Spaniard the fortune which he presently made. The succession
of Peninsular officials to many posts in the colonies was not without
its influence in providing grievances also, but as a matter of fact a
number of minor berths were frequently filled by the native-born, who
also became Inquisitors and clerics, the list of viceroys and governors
also providing a few colonial names, and a large number of American-born
receiving good positions in Spain. But on the whole the colonies were
necessarily still dependent upon Spain for blood, ideas, intercourse
with the world, and, but for Napoleon, independence would have been long
delayed.
_The Fight for Independence_
In many parts of Spanish America people had to be almost cudgelled into
rebellion, and would never have stirred had they lacked a leader
inoculated with a grandiose vision.
But here again the quite accidental figure of Napoleon intervened. It
happened that both San Martín and Bolívar, the two most powerful
instruments of the South American Revolution, were actual witnesses of
triumphal ceremonies of the Napoleonic armies. The day when Simón
Bolívar saw the Corsican enter Paris at the head of magnificent
conquering troops, greeted with all the hysteric adulation due to a
second Alexander, the immediate fate of Spain’s South American colonies
was sealed. It is easy to understand that such young men as San Martín
and Bolívar, intelligent, trained to arms, well aware of the golden
opportunity awaiting in their own countries overseas, and of the force
behind the slogan of freedom, beheld themselves with rosy imagination in
the same kingly rôle. Statues of these leaders stand all over Latin
America, and it is but just that tributes should be paid. But the day of
blind homage is past. Critics have dared to arise, and the skies have
not fallen upon their blasphemy.
The formation of the “Gran Reunion Americana,” with definite aims
towards self-government of the Spanish American colonies, was one
result. Inaugurated in Buenos Aires, it spread “lodges” all over South
America, following freemasonry in its terminology. One of the most
influential of these branches was “Lautaro Lodge,” at Concepción, with
Bernardo O’Higgins as a member. The illegitimate son of the brilliant
Ambrose O’Higgins by a native woman, Bernardo, born in Chillan in 1778,
was sent to England for education and returned to Chile upon the death
of his father. Imbued with liberal ideas, candid and open-hearted, the
young O’Higgins stood inevitably upon the side of emancipation, and
served as one of the revolutionaries’ most valuable assets. The stars
worked together for the success of the extremists, for a motive far
removed from any idea of revolutionary merits brought them the powerful
aid of the Roman Catholic Church. Napoleon the “antichrist” was
anathema: the colonists were therefore encouraged to refuse obedience to
his puppet kings, and we find the clerics of the Americas hand in glove
with the members of the Reunion Americana.
The colonists were by no means inclined in every region throughout South
America to commit themselves unreservedly to the apostles of liberty;
here and there the feeling of revolt was genuinely national, a
spontaneous movement from the inside; in other regions the native-born
only after some years, and when separation was practically forced upon
them from the exterior, disavowed Spain. Confusion was introduced, that
made it difficult for the most loyal to discover where allegiance lay,
by the several claimants overseas. To Joseph Buonaparte no one wished to
submit, and the French emissaries were coldly received; Seville setting
up a Junta (Council) loyal to the deposed Ferdinand, asked and received
the adhesion of the Viceroys in the Americas, but when this body was
overthrown a new Junta established in Galicia sent out a new set of
Viceroys. Next came the Central Junta, also obeyed until the French
occupation of Andalusia dissolved it, and later a new authority of
Spanish royalists, a Regency of three members, was announced in an edict
sent out by the Archbishop of Laodicea.
Confronted with these various claims, and taking breath after the
English occupation of the Plate, Buenos Aires decided to form her own
provincial Junta, in the name of Ferdinand, action supported if not
suggested by the Viceroy Baltazar Cisneros.
In the middle of 1810, with Abascal, Marques de la Concordia, as Viceroy
of Peru and General Carrasco Governor of Chile, there arrived to the
West Coast the request of exiled Ferdinand that his American colonies
should obey Napoleon. This bombshell was received with disgust by
Carrasco, who wished to work with the Junta of Buenos Aires, but he did
his official duty and read the document aloud to the populace of
Santiago. This was in June. A tremendous public uproar followed,
Carrasco and the rest of the Audience were turned out, and by popular
acclaim an Assembly of Notables was formed, headed by Mateo de Toro
Zambrano y Urueta, Conde de la Conquista, a highly respected old
aristocrat who had been Governor of Chile in 1772. This body ruled on
the understanding that Chile would refuse French control and would
remain wholeheartedly Ferdinand’s.
The Conde de la Conquista died in November, 1810, was replaced by Dr.
Juan Martinez de Rosas, and elections for a popular congress were held
in April, 1811, giving the signal for open strife between the different
parties evolved by the confused political atmosphere. The first blood
shed in Chile on account of independence was not a struggle with the
mother country, but the result of dissensions among adherents of the
Spanish or Argentine Juntas, “old Spaniards,” groups desiring complete
independence, the church party, and foreign interests. It was during
this fight that the young José Miguel Carrera came first into military
prominence; he was the son of a Chilean landowner, Ignacio Carrera,
secretary of the Junta.
Congress held its first meeting in Santiago, in July, 1811, the deputy
from Chillan being Bernardo O’Higgins, educated in England and endowed
with the prestige of his father’s name. It was not long before
O’Higgins, then but thirty-five years old, was regarded as the leader of
the “Penquistos” (southerners of Penco or Concepción, who wanted to see
that pleasant city restored to her ancient pride as capital of Chile),
in opposition to the rich central group, with Santiago as their
stronghold and the Carreras as one of the most ambitious families. In
common with many another new clique, the Carreras were growing rich upon
the property which was now eagerly confiscated from the “old Spaniards”
and from the wealthy religious orders, whose accumulated lands and long
ascendancy had engendered such bitter enmity that, during the long war
of Spain with England, Juan and Ulloa reported, many people said openly
that it would be a good thing if England took possession of the Pacific
Coast, so that they would be free from the oppression of the clerics.
The Carreras, however, wanted more than money: their determination to
seize political power was demonstrated when, in December, 1811, a
military coup put the three sons of Ignacio into complete control of all
the newly recruited Chilean land forces, with José Miguel as the
commander-in-chief.
This young man dispersed the national congress by force, proclaimed
himself President of a new Junta, and banished Dr. Martinez to Mendoza:
all this still in the name of Ferdinand. But the confiscation of
property, removal of Spanish officers from the army, declaration of free
trade (a tacit invitation promptly accepted by many foreigners),
abolition of slavery and collection of church income, spelt practical
independence from Spain, and strong exception was taken in more than one
quarter. Valdivia and Concepción set up juntas independent of Santiago,
and over a year of disruption followed, until the viceroy of Peru sent
reinforcements to the Spanish commander in Chiloé Island, General
Antonio Pareja, and the latter sailed north, landing at the mouth of the
Maule with 2000 royalist troops for the disciplining of Chile.
José Miguel Carrera marched a Chilean army southwards, falling in with
the Spaniards at Yerbas Buenas, fifteen miles from Talca; the ability of
O’Higgins, commanding the forces in the field, brought about the defeat
of Pareja, who was driven to Chillan—the extreme south remaining
pro-Spanish and, in one spot or another, subject to Spanish influence
until late in the year 1824.
A strange accident now turned the political tide against the Carreras.
The central provinces, determined to endure no longer a rule of loot and
tyranny worse than that imposed by Spain, deposed José Miguel in his
absence by a vote of the Junta, and gave complete control of the army to
Bernardo O’Higgins; the Carreras hurried north to watch their interests,
were caught by a Spanish patrol and sent to Chillan. The Spaniards were
presently reinforced by troops under Gainza, took Talca, and became
strong enough by May, 1814, to arrange the Convenio de Lircay with the
new political leader of Chile, Henriquez Lastra, Governor of Valparaiso.
By this agreement the Spanish troops were to retire to Lima, on the
assurance that Chile remained faithful to Ferdinand VII; its execution
was guaranteed by Captain Hillier of the British man-of-war _Phoebe_.
But before the Convenio could be ratified, two events happened to
prevent this solution of complications. The Carreras escaped and
collected an army opposed to the agreement; the Viceroy Abascal received
strong reinforcements from Spain, changed his mind about signing, and
sent, instead of his signature, 5000 troops under General Mariano
Osorio.
The parties of Carrera and O’Higgins composed their differences in the
face of this aggression, marched to the encounter at Rancagua, and were
there signally defeated, in October, 1814. The overthrow was so complete
that the Chileans who had opposed Spain felt certain that no mercy was
to be expected, and, with their wives and families, began an
extraordinary exodus from the country over the Andes to Mendoza. The
weather was cold, with deep snow and bitter winds; without proper
baggage or sufficient food thousands of unhappy refugees crowded the
mountain paths and passes for days.
Meanwhile, General Osorio marched north and entered the capital in
triumph, welcomed enthusiastically not only by those citizens who
remained royalist but by thousands who were tired of the partisan
intrigues and condition of civil war to which the Carreras had reduced
the country for over two years. A new Spanish Governor, Francisco
Casimiro Marco del Pont, was inaugurated, about one hundred citizens
prominent in the growing independence of Chile were deported to Juan
Fernandez island, and for another twenty-eight months Spain resumed the
rule of Chile, as she still retained control of Lower and Upper Peru and
Ecuador. A fierce struggle between the Spanish and the northern patriots
under Simón Bolívar had begun in 1811 and continued with tremendous
reversals of fortune; Venezuela and Colombia (New Granada) were drenched
in blood. Over the Andes, Buenos Aires had been actually independent
since the middle of 1810, although the Spanish authorities held out with
peninsular troops in part of the northwest of Argentina, holding the
roads into N. W. South America. Pueyrredon, the Supreme Director of
Buenos Aires, seeing that Chile with comparatively facile mountain
passes was the key to the West, decided to bring her to the fold of
independence, raised an army, and put José de San Martín at its head.
While the eldest of the Carrera brothers, with whom San Martín was upon
hostile terms, went to the United States to try to get help in the
Chilean struggle, a strong force of 4000 men was collected in Mendoza,
the celebrated “Army of the Andes.” By this time events had put Spain
and the South American colonies into the position of furious opponents;
the Peruvian Viceroy’s actions forced Chileans to see patriotism as
hostility to Spain. For the plain citizen, lover of his country with a
desire to live in peace and to give and take fairly, it must have been
difficult to choose sides as regards the authorities to whom he gave
recognition and paid taxes; but for such revolutionaries as San Martín
the vision was simpler. He hung his own portrait on the wall beside that
of the Corsican; the memory of that superhuman conqueror infected his
blood and filled his landscape.
The Spaniards in Chile, aware of the situation of the Army of the Andes,
were tricked into believing that the main body intended to descend into
the central valley by the southerly Planchon Pass. But early in February
when the army was ready to set out, most of the troops were marched by
the Putaendo and the Cumbre, emerging near the plain of Chacabuco on the
12th. The Spanish troops sent hurriedly to the encounter were scattered
like chaff by the hardy South Americans, inured to wild country and able
to march for days with sun-dried meat and a handful of toasted maize as
their only food. The battle of Chacabuco was a rout so decisive that the
Spanish leaders did not even attempt to enter and hold Santiago: they
fled hastily to Valparaiso, and, accompanied by scores of their
panic-stricken sympathisers, filled nine ships and sailed away to Peru.
[Illustration: In the Chilean Andes.]
[Illustration: A Chilean Glacier, Central Region.]
[Illustration: Rio Blanco Valley, above Los Andes.]
Bernardo O’Higgins, to whose energy this success was chiefly due, was
made Supreme Director of Chile, openly independent now, with no more
talk of Ferdinand, although the actual proclamation was delayed until
February 12, 1818, upon the anniversary of Chacabuco. In the same year
Osorio came back, with 5000 Spanish troops, and in March San Martín was
surprised and his army badly defeated at Cancha Rayada; it was followed
by a repetition of the exodus over the Andes as after the Rancagua
defeat, but in better weather. Nor did the exile of the patriots last so
long, for on April 5, before the Spaniards could take possession of
Santiago, the Chileans attacked again and won the final victory of
Maipu. Only about 200 Spaniards escaped to take ship for Peru, all the
rest falling upon the Maipu plain or being taken prisoner.
Three days later, in Mendoza, the two younger sons of Ignacio Carrera
were shot upon a frivolous charge, an event generally regarded with
regret in Chile and always ascribed to the revengeful spirit of San
Martín. These young men had been refused permission to join the Army of
the Andes, were on parole in Buenos Aires and were still in that city
when José Miguel returned from the United States. Here he had obtained
means to fit out an expedition, promising to pay the debt with funds
obtained from Chilean import duties later on; he chartered five ships,
took on arms and ammunition sufficient for several thousand men, and
received as volunteers a number of technical workmen, and over a hundred
military officers, including seventy French and British.
But when Carrera in his first ship entered Buenos Aires on the way to
the Horn, the vessel was seized and he was placed under arrest on board
a brig, from which he escaped into the Argentine interior. The remaining
vessels of his fleet put back to North America. His two brothers also
fled in disguise, but were captured, sent in chains to Mendoza, and
there executed by the order of San Martín’s secretary.
The place of the Carreras in history is not great, but they were
Chileans of energy and courage deserving a better fate: the story of
their youth and good looks, and the tale of Juan José’s beautiful wife
who shared his miserable prison until his execution, are still
remembered. The fate of the elder brother was no more fortunate: during
three years he allied himself with various guerilla revolutionaries in
the heart of South America, but was eventually caught and identified,
sent to Mendoza, and shot, in 1821.
Chile, now upon her own feet, was still not given up by the Viceroy of
Peru, now General Pezuela, and since a land attack could not be again
contemplated for a time, the Frigate _Esmeralda_ was sent with the brig
_Pezuela_ to blockade Valparaiso. These vessels were driven off by the
brilliant action of the _Lautaro_, a vessel recently bought and armed by
the Chilean government and commanded by a young British naval officer,
Lieutenant O’Brien, killed at the moment of boarding the Spanish ship.
This was Chile’s first naval victory, herald of almost unbroken success
upon the sea; she was heartened to the immediate strengthening of this
service, and set about the acquisition of vessels while also sending
abroad for naval leaders. Chileans had up to that time, of course, no
experience in this arm of a nation’s defence: the first Chilean-born
admiral, Blanco Encalada, had had no experience but that of a midshipman
in the Spanish navy for a few years in his youth. Chile was wise in
looking overseas for technical skill. It happened that many British
soldiers and sailors, fresh from the Napoleonic wars, were in England
when the Chilean envoys came to seek help: hundreds of men took service,
partly no doubt for the sake of adventure but also from a genuine
sympathy with the gallant fight put up by a little country ranged
against the ancient enemy Spain. Among the naval officers who came was
Lord Cochrane, with a most distinguished naval career to his credit, the
hero of a score of daring deeds at sea and an extremely competent
organiser; no personality of Independence is more revered in Chile today
than that of Cochrane, and he who said that republics are notoriously
ungrateful could never make such a charge against Chile.