Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

The native is deeply attached to his surroundings and does not take readily to labor elsewhere. The climate has something to do with this unwillingness to move. It has been found by experience that the inhabitants on the punas, or table-lands 5,000 feet above the sea-level, do not work well when taken up another 5,000 feet. They are not only homesick; they suffer from real physical illness. It is the same with those who are brought down to the lower plains. Alcohol is the worst drawback to their physical well-being and moral advancement. The coca leaf, the essential principle of cocaine, which they use as a food, is far less responsible for their lack of physical stamina than cane rum.

In many of the villages of Peru which I visited I formed an impression that the natives were further advanced than in similar villages in Bolivia and Chile. There was more cleanliness, more evidence of good order and of wise local administration. They are a brooding, solitude-loving race, though not altogether spiritless. How far they still preserve the traditions and sorrow over the Incas I do not profess to know, but their gentle resistance makes it more difficult to impose civilization on them than would be sullen opposition.

While the army is distasteful to the Indian population, and while they evade the conscription wherever possible, it is one of the strongest civilizing forces. The discipline is good, and the change of environment also is advantageous. Obedience has been so fixed a habit of the natives since the Spanish conquest that they never think of questioning authority. As to the degree of superstition which is mingled with the nominal adhesion given by the Indian populations to the Church, I do not profess to judge.

The Peruvian government seeks to enforce a good school system, and in the larger towns and villages with some success. But on the part of the mass of the Quichuas there is still inextinguishable hostility to learning Spanish, not the less effective because it is passive. The suggestion has been made that the authorities provide a system of primary schools where Quichua shall be the language and shall be taught systematically. It is the lingua general, or common speech, of a large majority of the inhabitants.

At Huanuco, where a German agricultural colony was established forty or fifty years ago, the sons of the early colonists still speak German, and many of the Quichuas in the neighborhood have acquired a smattering of that language. Apparently they distinguished between the tongue of the conqueror and another strange tongue.

Under good industrial and administrative conditions a natural increase on the basis of the present Quichua and cholo population may be expected. More comforts of life, a little rudimentary knowledge and practice of hygienic conveniences, will help to alter the disproportion between the birth rate and the death rate. Somewhere in their nature a spark of ambition may be kindled.

The negro element in the population in Peru is sometimes remarked by strangers. They are told that it has become thoroughly intermixed with the native race. In the early days of the viceroys, when African slavery was exploited by the two great Christian powers, England and Spain, many Africans were brought to Peru. It is thence that the name Zambo or Sambo came. They are yet called Sambos. Though the Spanish and Indian intermixture is said to be thorough, there seems to be much of the African racial identity still preserved. One day in Lima I watched the religious procession in honor of Our Señor of America. Nearly all the processionists were negroes, unmistakably so.

The Chinese coolies were brought to Peru in the fifties. They still work in the sugar plantations and the rice fields and a few of them also in the cotton fields. The coolie in the second generation, however, becomes a storekeeper and a property-owner. On some of the sugar estates the Chinese steward in the course of a few years leases the plantation and later becomes the owner. There are many wealthy Chinamen in Peru, and not all of them made their money as merchants at Lima. The policy of the government is not to encourage coolie immigration.

For the industrial and political future of which Peru dreams there must be immigration as well as the natural increase of the present native population. The potter’s clay is not all at hand. Some of it must be brought in. This immigration will be along three lines, which may be called topographical or geographical,—first, on the coast; second, in the Sierra; third, in the trans-Andine country and the vast basin of the rivers that feed the Amazon. A phenomenal growth in the population of the latter region during the present generation is not probable, though it has enormous colonization possibilities which gradually will be utilized, especially with the opening up of the means of communication. Some of them, too, are European or Caucasian possibilities, for the explorations of numerous scientists and their studies have shown that the European can live and thrive in these regions. These climatic and similar observations may be had from a score of books giving the experiences of individuals.

In the development of its mines Peru necessarily must add to the population of the Sierra. Mining labor now is hardly sufficient, and the preference of the natives for agriculture and for service as freighters makes the problem one of increasing difficulty. The wages in the mines are good, varying according to locality. In the Sierra day labor can be had for about half a sol, which is equivalent to 25 cents gold. The American syndicate, in building the Cerro de Pasco Railway, paid the natives a sol, or 50 cents, and got satisfactory returns. But for the mining development of the future miners from Spain and Italy should supply the deficiency that will exist so long as sole reliance is placed on the natives. They may come in considerable numbers.