Existence of the Roto Discovered—Mob Rule in Valparaiso—Indian and Caucasian Race Mixture—Disquieting Social Phenomena—Grievances against the Church—Transition to the Proletariat—Lack of Army and Navy Opportunity—Not Unthrifty as a Class—Showings of Santiago Savings Bank—Excessive Mortality—Need of State Sanitation—Discussion of Economic Relation—Changes in National Tendencies—Industrial Policies to Placate the Roto.
IN the fabric of Chilean social organization the warp is the individual unit known as the roto. The roto constitutes the mass. Pelucon, aristocrat, is a term transmitted from the old régime. Violent objection is made to its use at the present day on the ground that there are no privileged classes and that it never had more than a restricted meaning. But it describes the antithesis of the roto since his evolution into the proletariat began, and it typifies a recognized social distinction, so that its use is permissible. Pelucon comes within the designation of the governing classes and the one hundred families, and does not require further explanation.
One morning in May, 1903, the Chilean government and the foreign residents awakened to the existence of the roto as an organized element in society, with destructive capabilities and the courage of destructive tendencies. Disputes with the steamship companies had resulted in a strike. That morning the mob seized Valparaiso and took to burning property, pillaging, and killing. It was a wild mob, but it had perception and direction. It burned the offices of the Chilean corporation known as the South American Steamship Company, and undertook to sack one of the newspapers, but it left unharmed the property of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, which was a British corporation. Its grievances against both companies were the same, but this Chilean mob would give no ground for foreign intervention.
The authorities were blamed for the demoralization which the strike developed. It was charged that the forces were at hand to quell the disorder, and that a firm show of strength would have saved the hundred lives which were sacrificed before the rioting and sacking were ended. The inquiry was made why five hundred marines who were available were not utilized. The sinister reply was that they had refused to be used, that they had been on the point of mutiny when it was attempted to use them. They were of the roto class, recruited from the same ranks as the strikers. The exact truth never got to the public. The Chilean government vindicated its ability to maintain order and by the presence of warships and of troops silenced the clamor of the timid English and French residents who were calling for cruisers to be sent by their own governments.
Ultimately the strike was adjusted. But the conditions along the coast as far as Pisagua also were bad. They were especially threatening at the nitrate shipping-ports. The national authorities kept a cruiser at Iquique, and moved down from farther north additional troops. An outbreak of bubonic plague and the practical cessation of all industry helped to prevent the repetition of the scenes that had been witnessed at Valparaiso. Yet months afterward the embers of unrest at Iquique were smouldering, and official commissions were reporting “remedies for the grievances of the working-classes.” A chain of trades unions under various names, coöperative labor societies, mutual aid associations, brotherhoods of workingmen, seamen’s unions, was in existence. The social question was the palpitating one. The restlessness of the masses of the population, including the roto classes, found another exemplification in October, 1905, when Santiago for a time was under the control of rioters. The immediate cause was the agitation against the tax on the importation of cattle from Argentine. Back of it was the old-time discontent and the feeling that the government was being managed for the classes at the expense of the masses. The high cost of meat was something that came home to the bulk of the population, and it took to rioting, killing, and wounding as well as to destroying property as the means of showing its dissatisfaction. The rioting was not stopped until the police had been reënforced by the troops.
A generation ago J. V. Lastarria, the Chilean diplomat and historian, asserted: “The Chileans are the most homogeneous, most enlightened, most patriotic, and most united people of Spanish America, and they know how to use in the most practical and most prudent manner their political rights.” He also declared that the physical and social elements of his country explained her salvation from the disastrous anarchy which the other Republics had suffered and her progress in all spheres of human activity.
This complacent judgment was not unjust, but in describing his countrymen Señor Lastarria meant chiefly the higher stratum, the governing classes. When he wrote, the robust race mixture was yet going on, the amalgam of peasant northern Spain and of the Basque, after two centuries of transplantation, with the fierce Araucanian Indian blood. Not all of the aboriginal amalgam has been Araucanian. There are ten distinct aboriginal tribes known in Chile, and in the northern part the mixture has been more that of the Indians of the historic Upper Peru or Bolivia. All of these tribes have been habituated to hardship, and the grosser qualities of civilization have been developed aggressively.
Group of Araucanian Indian Women
The Chilean lower stratum of to-day is far from the refinements of civilization. Its vices and its virtues are equally strong. Among the virtues is native independence. The vices are of crude, half-conscious brute power, with little restraint of the passions.