Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

The negroes of Angola or the Congo have mingled equally with the Spaniard and the Indian. The African woman satisfied the ardour of the conquerors; she has darkened the skin of the race.

The negroes arrived as slaves; sold a usanza de feria (as beasts of burden), they were primitive creatures, impulsive and sensual. Idle and servile, they have not contributed to the progress of the race. In the dwelling-houses of the colonial period they were domestics, acting as pions to their masters' children; in the fields and the plantations of sugar-cane they were slaves, branded by the lash of the overseer. They form an illiterate population which exercises a depressing influence on the American imagination and character. They increase still further the voluptuous intensity of the tropical temper, weaken it, and infuse into the blood of the Creole elements of idleness, recklessness, and servility which are becoming permanent.

The three races—Iberian, Indian, and African—united by blood, form the population of South America. In the United States union with the aborigines is regarded by the colonist with repugnance; in the South miscegenation is a great national fact; it is universal. The Chilian oligarchy has kept aloof from the Araucanians, but even in that country unions between whites and Indians abound. Mestizos are the descendants of whites and Indians; mulattos the children of Spaniards and negroes; zambos the sons of negroes and Indians. Besides these there are a multitude of social sub-divisions. On the Pacific coast Chinese and negroes have interbred. From the Caucasian white, bronzed by the tropics, to the pure negro, we find an infinite variety in the cephalic index, in the colour of the skin, and in the stature.

It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the national mass is Quechua, Aymara, or Aztec. In Peru, in Bolivia, and in Ecuador the Indian of pure race, not having as yet mingled his blood with that of the Spanish conquerors, constitutes the ethnic base. In the Sierra the people speak Quechua and Aymara; there also the vanquished races preserve their traditional communism. Of the total population of Peru and Ecuador the white element only attains to the feeble proportion of 6 per cent., while the Indian element represents 70 per cent. of the population of these countries, and 50 per cent. in Bolivia. In Mexico the Indian is equally in the majority, and we may say that there are four Indian nations on the continent: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

In countries where the pure native has not survived the mestizos abound; they form the population of Colombia, Chili, Uruguay, and Paraguay; in this latter country Guarani is spoken much more frequently than Spanish. The true American of the South is the mestizo, the descendant of Spaniards and Indians; but this new race, which is almost the rule from Mexico to Buenos-Ayres, is not always a hybrid product. The warlike peoples, like those of Paraguay and Chili, are descended from Spaniards, Araucanians, and Guaranis. Energetic leaders have been found among the mestizos: Paez in Venezuela, Castilla in Peru, Diaz in Mexico, and Santa-Cruz in Bolivia. An Argentine anthropologist, Señor Ayarragaray, says that "the primary mestizo is inferior to his European progenitors, but at the same time he is often superior to his native ancestors." He is haughty, virile, and ambitious if his ancestors were Charruas, Guaranis, or Araucanians; even the descendant of the peaceable Quechuas is superior to the Indian. He learns Spanish, assimilates the manners of a new and superior civilisation, and forms the ruling caste at the bar and in politics. The mestizo, the product of a first crossing, is not otherwise a useful element of the political and economic unity of America; he retains too much the defects of the native; he is false and servile, and often incapable of effort. It is only after fresh unions with Europeans that he manifests the full force of the characteristics obtained from the white. The heir of the colonising race and of the autocthonous race, both adapted to the same soil, he is extremely patriotic; Americanism, a doctrine hostile to foreigners, is his work. He wishes to obtain power in order to usurp the privileges of the Creole oligarchies.

One may say that the admixture of the prevailing strains with black blood has been disastrous for these democracies. In applying John Stuart Mill's law of concomitant variations to the development of Spanish America one may determine a necessary relation between the numerical proportion of negroes and the intensity of civilisation. Wealth increases and internal order is greater in the Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili, and it is precisely in these countries that the proportion of negroes has always been low; they have disappeared in the admixture of European races. In Cuba, San Domingo, and some of the republics of Central America, and certain of the States of the Brazilial Confederation, where the children of slaves constitute the greater portion of the population, internal disorders are continual. A black republic, Hayti, demonstrates by its revolutionary history the political incapacity of the negro race.

The mulatto and the zambo are the true American hybrids. D'Orbigny believed the mestizo to be superior to the descendants of the Africans imported as slaves; Burmeister is of opinion that in the mulatto the characteristics of the negro are predominant. Ayarragaray states that the children born of the union of negroes with zambos or natives are in general inferior to their parents, as much in intelligence as in physical energy. The inferior elements of the races which unite are evidently combined in their offspring. It is observed also that both in the mulattos and the zambos certain internal contradictions may be noted; their will is weak and uncertain, and is dominated by instinct and gross and violent passions. Weakness of character corresponds with a turgid intelligence, incapable of profound analysis, or method, or general ideas, and a certain oratorical extravagance, a pompous rhetoric. The mulatto loves luxury and extravagance; he is servile, and lacks moral feeling. The invasion of negroes affected all the Iberian colonies, where, to replace the outrageously exploited Indian, African slaves were imported by the ingenuous evangelists of the time. In Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and Peru this caste forms a high proportion of the total population. In Brazil 15 per cent. of the population is composed of negroes, without counting the immense number of mulattos and zambos. Bahia is half an African city. In Rio de Janeiro the negroes of pure blood abound. In Panama the full-blooded Africans form 10 per cent. of the population. Between 1759 and 1803 642,000 negroes entered Brazil; between 1792 and 1810 Cuba received 89,000. These figures prove the formidable influence of the former slaves in modern America. But they are revenged for their enslavement in that their blood is mingled with that of their masters. Incapable of order and self-government, they are a factor of anarchy; every species of vain outer show attracts them—sonorous phraseology and ostentation. They make a show of an official function, a university title, or an academic diploma. As the Indian could not work in the tropics black immigration was directed principally upon those regions, and the enervating climate, the indiscipline of the mulatto, and the weakness of the white element have contributed to the decadence of the Equatorial nations.

The mulatto is more despised than the mestizo because he often shows the abjectness of the slave and the indecision of the hybrid; he is at once servile and arrogant, envious and ambitious. His violent desire to mount to a higher social rank, to acquire wealth, power, and display, is, as Señor Bunge very justly remarks, a "hyperæsthesia of arrivism."

The zambos have created nothing in America. On the other hand, the robust mestizo populations, the Mamelucos of Brazil, the Cholos of Peru and Bolivia, the Rotos of Chili, descendants of Spaniards and the Guarani Indians, are distinguished by their pride and virility. Instability, apathy, degeneration—all the signs of exhausted race—are encountered far more frequently in the mulatto than in the mestizo.

The European established in America becomes a Creole; his is a new race, the final product of secular unions. He is neither Indian, nor black, nor Spaniard. The castes are confounded and have formed an American stock, in which we may distinguish the psychological traits of the Indian and the negro, while the shades of skin and forms of skull reveal a remote intermixture. If all the races of the New World were finally to unite, the Creole would be the real American.