The Emancipation of South America

by Bartolomé Mitre

Five races, which for historic purposes may be looked upon as three only, peopled the Southern Continent at the outbreak of the War of Independence: the European Spaniards, the Spanish-American Creoles, and the half-breeds; also the indigenous Indians, and the negroes from Africa. The Spaniards formed a privileged class, and by reason of their origin enjoyed both political and social pre-eminence. The Indians and the negroes formed the servile class. The half-breeds, derived from a mixture of three races, formed an intermediate class, and in some places were in a large majority. The Creoles, direct descendants of Spaniards, of pure blood, but modified in character by contact with the half-breeds, were the true sons of the soil, and constituted the basis of society. Generally the most numerous, they were always the civilising force of the colony. They were the most energetic, the most intelligent and imaginative; and with all their inherited vices and their want of preparation for freedom, were the only ones animated by an innate sentiment of patriotism.

Those born in South America thus formed a race apart, an oppressed race, who saw in their ancestors and in their contemporaries not fathers and brothers, but masters. The colonial system placed, to a certain extent, all natives of the soil upon the same level, and drew a broad line of distinction between the Spanish-American colonists and their mother country. Spain, by reason of distance, yielded to her colonists greater freedom and more municipal rights than she gave to her own sons in their own land, but her absolute government could not bind her colonies to her by the tie of nationality. Men of Spanish birth looked upon the colonies as feudal territory, over which they, as beings of a superior race, were the natural lords, and thought that if only a shoemaker remained in Castile, this shoemaker had the right to govern all America.

The natural aspiration of slaves is for freedom, and that of oppressed races who know their own strength is to assume their place in the human family. In this double aspiration lay the germ of revolution in America. In 1780 the indigenous race under Tupac-Amarú, a descendant of the Incas, rose en masse in Peru against their oppressors, but were naturally defeated. They possessed no great social force, and did not represent the cause of civilized America. The day of the Creoles had not yet come, but they saw nothing to admire, to love, or to respect in Spain. An absolute King, generally an imbecile, was the sole point of contact between them. Their mother country was to them neither a country nor a mother. The instinct of independence became a passion, even more vehement in those who resided in Spain than in those who had never left their own hearths. Thus it was that the leaders who did most for the revolution came from Spain.

In the struggle each race took its own special part. The Creoles formed the vanguard and directed the movements. The indigenous races formed the first line in Mexico, but elsewhere they were only useful as auxiliaries. In South America the half-breeds formed the rank and file of the armies of the revolution. The Argentine gaucho, with the fatalism of the Arab and the strength of the Cossack, gave the type to the cavalry, renowned for the impetuosity of their charge from La Plata to Chimborazo. The llaneros[5] of Venezuela, half-breeds for the most part, formed the famous squadrons of Columbia, whose feats were celebrated from the Orinoco to Potosi. The rotos[6] of Chile, mostly of Indian blood, formed with Argentines in solid battalions, who measured their strength with Spanish regiments, victors over the soldiers of Napoleon in the Peninsula. The manumitted negroes gave their contingent to the American infantry, showing the warlike qualities of their race. In Upper Peru the indigenous races kept alive for ten years the flames of insurrection when the patriot armies were defeated. The cholos of the Highlands of Peru espoused the cause of the king, and were highly esteemed as infantry by the Spanish generals, more especially on account of the extraordinary rapidity of their marches.

The Creole of South America is a sturdy off-shoot of that civilizing Indo-European race to which is reserved the government of the world. It is his mission to complete the democratization of the American continent and to found a new order of things destined to live and progress. He has impressed the peculiarities of his character upon the new nationalities.

When the revolution broke out in 1810, it was said that South America would become English or French; when it triumphed, that the continent would sink back into barbarism. By the will and the work of the Creole, it became American, republican, and civilized.

The First Throes of Revolution.

The initial outbreaks of the year 1809, were in some parts of a more radical character than were those of the following year, when the first political formula of the rebellion was merely a demand for relative and provisional independence, for a compromise between democracy and monarchy upon the basis of autonomy.

The doctrine that on the disappearance of the monarch his sovereignty reverted to his people, was for the first time boldly proclaimed in Mexico. From this it was deduced that they had the right to appoint governing Juntas for their own security, and owed no allegiance to those established in Spain at the time of the French invasion. Hence arose disputes between the Creoles and the Spaniards, and between the Audiencia and the Viceroy, which at the end of 1809 changed the movement into a conspiracy for independence.

In Quito the commotion assumed more definite forms. The colonial authorities were overturned and a governing Junta was set up, which took to itself the attributes of sovereignty and raised troops for its own defence. They exhorted the peoples of America by a proclamation to follow the example, announcing that “law has resumed its authority under the equator,” and that “the rights of man were, by the disappearance of despotism, no longer at the mercy of arbitrary power.” The authors of this premature revolution were overcome and put to death in prison.