Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

The gravity of the problem—The three races, European, Indian, and Negro—Their characteristics—The mestizos and mulattos—The conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le Bon—Regression to the primitive type.

The racial question is a very serious problem in American history. It explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides America. Upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the industrial system, the stability of governments, the solidity of patriotism. It is therefore essential that the continent should have a constant policy, based upon the study of the problems which are raised by the facts of race, just as there is an agrarian policy in Russia, a protectionist policy in Germany, and a free-trade policy in England.

In the United States all the varieties of the European type are intermingled: Scandinavians and Italians, Irish and Germans; but in the Latin republics there are peoples of strange lineage: American Indians, negroes, Orientals, and Europeans of different origin are creating the race of the future in homes in which mixed blood is the rule.

In the Argentine, where Spanish, Russian, and Italian immigrants intermingle, the social formation is extremely complicated. The aboriginal Indians have been united with African negroes, and with Spanish and Portuguese Jews; then came Italians and Basques, French and Anglo-Saxons; a multiple invasion, with the Latin element prevailing. In Brazil Germans and Africans marry Indians and Portuguese. Among the Pacific peoples, above all in Peru, a considerable Asiatic influx, Chinese and Japanese, still further complicates the human mixture. In Mexico and Bolivia the native element, the Indian, prevails. The negroes form a very important portion of the population of Cuba and San Domingo. Costa-Rica is a democracy of whites; and in the Argentine, as in Chili, all vestiges of the African type have disappeared. In short, there are no pure races in America. The aboriginal Indian himself was the product of the admixture of ancient tribes and castes.

In the course of time historic races may form themselves; in the meantime an indefinable admixture prevails.

This complication of castes, this admixture of divers bloods, has created many problems. For example, is the formation of a national consciousness possible with such disparate elements? Would such heterogeneous democracies be able to resist the invasion of superior races? Finally, is the South American half-caste absolutely incapable of organisation and culture?

Facile generalisations will not suffice to solve these questions. Here the experience of travellers and of American history even is of greater value than the verdicts of the anthropologists. In the first place the half-breeds are not all hybrids, and it is not true that the union of the Spaniard and the American has always been sterile. Hence the absolute necessity of understanding the proper character of each of the races which have formed modern America.

The Spaniards who arrived in the New World came from different provinces; here alone is a prime cause of variety. Simultaneously with the languid Andalusian and the austere Basque, the grave Catalonian and the impetuous Estremaduran left Spain. Where the descendants of the Basque prevail, as in Chili, the political organism is more stable, if less brilliant, than elsewhere, and a strong will-power shows itself in work and success. The Castilians brought to America their arrogance, and the fruitless gestures of the hidalgo; where the Andalusians are in the majority their agile fantasy, their gentle non curanza, militates against all serious or continuous effort. The descendants of the Portuguese are far more practical than those of the Spaniards; they are also more disciplined and more laborious. The psychological characteristics of the Indian are just as various; the descendant of the Quechuas does not resemble the descendant of the Charruas, any more than the temperament of the Araucanian resembles that of the Aztec. In Chili, Uruguay, and the Argentine, there were warlike populations whose union with the conquerors has formed virile half-castes, an energetic and laborious plebs. In Chili Araucanians and Basques have intermingled; and is it not in this fusion that we must seek the explanation of the persistent character of the Chilian nation, and its military spirit? The Aymara of Bolivia and the south-east of Peru is hard and sanguinary; the Quechua of the table-lands of the Andes is gentle and servile. It is by no means a matter of indifference whether the modern citizen of the Latin democracies is descended from a Guarani, an Aztec, an Araucan, or a Chibcha; he will, as the case may be, prove aggressive or passive, a nomadic shepherd or a quiet tiller of the common soil.

The Indian of the present time, undermined by alcohol and poverty, is free according to the law, but a serf by virtue of the permanance of authoritative manners. Petty tyrannies make him a slave; he works for the cacique, the baron of American feudalism. The curé, the sub-prefect, and the judge, all-powerful in these young democracies, exploit him and despoil him of his possessions.[[1]] The communities, very like the Russian mir, are disappearing, and the Indian is losing his traditional rights to the lands of the collectivity. Without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy. He lives in the mountains or table-lands, where a glacial cold prevails and the solitude is eternal. Nothing disturbs the monotony of these desolate stretches; nothing breaks the inflexible line of the limitless horizons; there the Indian grows as melancholy and as desiccated as the desert that surrounds him. The great occasions of his civil life—birth, marriage, and death—are the subjects of a religious exploitation. Servile and superstitious, he finally loves the tyrannies that oppress him. He adores the familiar gods of the Cerros, of the mountain. He is at once a Christian and a fetish-worshipper; he sees in mysterious nature demons and goblins, occult powers which are favourable and hostile by turn.

There are, nevertheless, regions where despotism has developed in the Indian a sort of passive resistance. There he is sober and vigorous, and by his complete adaptation to the maternal soil he has grown apathetic and a creature of routine. He hates all that might destroy his age-long traditions: schools, military training, and the authority that despoils him. Conservative and melancholy, he lives on the border of the Republic and its laws; his heart grows hot against the tyranny from which he forever suffers. Dissimulation, servility, and melancholy are his leading traits; rancour, hardness, and hypocrisy are the forms of his defensive energy. He supports his slavery upon this cold earth, but he sometimes revolts against his exploiters; and at Huanta and Ayoayo he fought against his oppressors with true courage, sustained by hatred, as in the heroic times of Tupac-Amaru.[[2]] After this bloody epic he resumed his monotonous existence under the heedless sky. In his songs he curses his birth and his destiny. In the evening he leaves the narrow valley where in his slavery he is employed in agricultural labours, to journey into the cerros and mourn the abandonment of his household gods. A weird lamentation passes over the darkening earth, and from summit to summit the Cordillera re-echoes the sorrowful and melodious plaint of the Indian as he curses conquest and warfare.