Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

He is idle and brilliant. There is nothing excessive either in his ideals or his passions; all is mediocre, measured, harmonious. His fine and caustic irony chills his more exuberant enthusiasms; he triumphs by means of laughter. He loves grace, verbal elegance, quibbles even, and artistic form; great passions or desires do not move him. In religion he is sceptical, indifferent, and in politics he disputes in the Byzantine manner. No one could discover in him a trace of his Spanish forefather, stoical and adventurous.

But is unity possible with such numerous castes? Must we not wait for the work of many centuries before a clearly American population be formed? The admixture of Indian, European, mestizo, and mulatto blood continues. How form a homogeneous race of these varieties? There will be a period of painful unrest: American revolutions reveal the disequilibrium of men and races. Miscegenation often produces types devoid of all proportion, either physical or moral.

The resistance of neo-Americans to fatigue and disease is considerably diminished. In the seething retort of the future the elements of a novel synthesis combine and grow yet more complex. If the castes remain divided there will be no unity possible to oppose a probable invasion. "Three conditions are necessary," says M. Gustave Le Bon, "before races can achieve fusion and form a new race, more or less homogeneous. The first of these conditions is that the races subjected to the process of crossing must not be too inequal in number; the second, that they must not differ too greatly in character; the third, that they must be for a long time subjected to an identical environment."

Examining the mixed peoples of America in conformity with these principles we see that the Indian and the negro are greatly superior to the whites in numbers; the pure European element does not amount to 10 per cent. of the total population. In Brazil and the Argentine there are numbers of German and Italian immigrants, but in other countries the necessary stream of invasion of superior races does not exist.

We have indicated the profound differences which divide the bold Spaniard from the negro slave; we have said that the servility of the Indian race contrasts with the pride of the conquerors; that is to say, that the mixture of rival castes, Iberians, Indians, and negroes, has generally had disastrous consequences. Perhaps we may except the fortunate combinations of mestizo blood in Chili, Southern Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Finally, the territory has not yet exercised a decisive influence upon the races in contact. The modern Frenchman and Anglo-Saxon are born of the admixture of ancient races subjected for centuries to the influences of the soil. The great invasions which modified the traditional stock took place a thousand years ago; they explain the terrible struggles of the Middle Ages. The new American type has not so long a history.

In short, none of the conditions established by the French psychologists are realised by the Latin-American democracies, and their populations are therefore degenerate.

The lower castes struggle successfully against the traditional rules: the order which formerly existed is followed by moral anarchy; solid conviction by a superficial scepticism, and the Castilian tenacity by indecision. The black race is doing its work and the continent is returning to its primitive barbarism.

This retrogression constitutes a very serious menace. In South America civilisation is dependent upon the numerical predominance of the victorious Spaniard, on the triumph of the white man over the mulatto, the negro, and the Indian. Only a plentiful European immigration can re-establish the shattered equilibrium of the American races. In the Argentine the cosmopolitan alluvium has destroyed the negro and mitigated the Indian. A century ago there were 20 per cent. of Africans in Buenos-Ayres; the ancient slave has now disappeared, and mulattos are rare. In Mexico, on the other hand, in 1810 the Europeans formed a sixth part of the population; to-day they do not form more than a twentieth part.

Dr. Karl Pearson, in his celebrated book National Life and Character, writes: "In the long run the inferior civilisations give proof of a vigour greater than that of the superior civilisations; the disinherited gain upon the privileged castes, and the conquered people absorbs the conquering people." He declared further that Brazil would quickly fall into the power of the negroes, and that while the Indians would multiply and develop in the inaccessible regions of the north and the centre, the white peoples, crowded out by the progress of these races, would be numerous only in the cities and the more salubrious districts. This painful prophecy will be accomplished to the letter if, in the conflict of castes, the white population is not promptly reinforced by the arrival of new colonists.

But crossing alone will not communicate the superior characteristics of the race to the mestizo in a lasting manner. "It is necessary that he should be the fruit of a union of the third, fourth, or fifth degree; that is, that there should have been as many successive crossings, with a father or a mother of the white race, before the mestizo can be in a condition to assimilate European culture," writes an Argentine sociologist. For this vast process of selection to be realised to the profit of the white man not only must the races subjected to admixture exist in certain proportions, but the mass of Europeans must prevail and impose their temper upon the future castes. In short, the problem of race depends upon the solution given to the demographic problem. Without the help of a new population there will be in America not merely a lamentable exhaustion but also a prompt recoil of the race. The phrase of Alberdi is still true: "In America to govern means to populate."