Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

Already in Cuba there are some who favour annexation by the United States, while others demand complete autonomy. Some politicians would agree to immigration without reserve or restriction, while others, the nationalists, would defend the integrity of their inheritance against foreign invasion. America, like modern France, will have its métèques; they will be the Europeans, the Yankees, and the yellow races.

Apart from the southern nations there has as yet been no formation of classes or social interests. None of the problems which agitate Europe—extension of the suffrage, proportional representation, municipal autonomy—have any immediate importance among them. The State is the necessary guardian, a kind of social providence whence derive riches, strength, and progress. To weaken this influence would be to encourage internal disorder; only those Constitutions have been of use in America which have reinforced the central power against the attacks of a perpetual anarchy.

The progress of these democracies is the work of foreign capital, and when political anarchy prevails credit collapses. Governments which ensure peace and paternal tyrants are therefore preferable to demagogues. A young Venezuelan critic, Señor Machado Hernandez, having studied the history of his country, rent as it has been by revolutions, considers that the best form of government for America is that which reinforces the attributions of the executive and establishes a dictatorship. In place of the Swiss referendum and the federal organisation of the United States autocracy is, it seems to us, the only practical practical means of government.

To increase the duration of the presidency in order to avoid the too frequent conflicts of parties; to simplify the political machine, which transforms the increasingly numerous parliaments into mere bureaucratic institutions; to prolong the mandate of senators and deputies, so that the life of the people shall not be disturbed by continual elections; in short, to surrender the ingenuous dogmas of the political statutes in favour of concrete reforms: such would appear to be the ideal which in Tropical America—in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia—would arrest the destructive action of revolutions.

It is obvious that a president furnished with a strong authority may quickly become a tyrant, but in these nations is not political power always a semi-dictatorship which is tolerated? The head of the State governs for four years according to the term of the Constitution, but his action is continued by his successor. The real duration of his political action is twenty years.

If a tutelary president is necessary it is none the less essential to oppose his autocracy by a moderative power which would recall, in its constitution, the life-Senate of Bolivar. One may even conceive of a Senate which would represent the real national interests: a stable body, the union of all the forces of social conservation; a serene assembly untroubled by democratic cravings, in which the clergy, the universities, commerce, the industries, the army, the marine, and the judiciary, might defend the Constitution and tradition against the assaults of demagogy, against too audacious reformers. Garcia-Moreno wished to see the mandate of the senators extended to a term of twelve years.

The quality of the legislative chambers is ineffective in America. In fact, both being elected by the popular vote, and having like electoral majorities, the Lower Chamber always gets its way with the Senate, which represents neither interests nor traditions. There is in reality one uniform assembly artificially divided into two independent bodies. The whole is dominated, there being no conservative institutions as a useful corrective, by the anonymous or Jacobin will of the multitude, which is moved by all sorts of divided interests: the craving for power, provincial pride, and a passion for cabal and intrigue.

A factor of American politics which is as serious as the periodical revolutions is the development of the bureaucracy.

In the still simple life of the nation the organs of the public administration are complicated in the most exaggerated manner. The budget supports a sterile class recruited principally among the Creoles, who prefer the security of officialism to the conquest of the soil. Energy and hope diminish with the almost infinite increase of the "budgetivores."