Two social classes—the military class and the intellectual or university class—had been in opposition since the origin of the Republic. They disputed the supreme power, or sometimes the intellectuals sided with the generals. The "doctors," by aid of reasonings of Byzantine subtlety, justified the dictatorships as well as the Revolution. A Venezuelan deputy, Coto-Paul, in 1811, pronounced a lyrical eulogy of anarchy.
The generals distrusted the lawyers, who represented the intellectual tradition of the colony: Paez hated the juriconsults as Napoleon hated ideologists. And the "doctors," vanquished by the military power, became the docile secretaries of generals and caudillos; they drafted laws and constitutions, and expressed in polished formulæ the rude intentions of the chiefs. To the violence of these latter they opposed subtlety; to the ignorance of despots, the scholastic ease and knowledge acquired in the universities of Spain.
To the struggles of classes was added the war of races; the half-breeds fought against the national oligarchy; the new American class was hostile to the aristocracy of the capitals. The Indians lived in the towns of the interior, in which the colonial isolation was unchanged; the metropolis—Buenos-Ayres, Lima, or Caracas—was still Spanish and increasingly alien. On the coast, where feeling was more mobile and will more variable, the ideas of reform took root; exotic ideas and customs were introduced; while the Sierra,[[1]] more American than the coast, remained slow and gloomy, and ignorant of the brilliant unrest of the capitals. Thus a triple movement came into being; inferior castes rose against the colonial aristocracy, the provinces against the all-absorbing metropolis, and the half-caste Sierra against the cosmopolitan seaboard.
The provinces desired autonomy; the capitals, monopoly and unity; the metropolis was liberal, the Sierra conservative. The political conflict might know a change of names, but this antagonism was universal. The leaders disguised their deep-seated ambitions under a cloak of general ideas; they supported unity or federation, the military or the civil régime, Catholicism or radicalism. In Argentina the provinces fought against the capital; in Venezuela the coloured middle class against the oligarchies; in Chili the liberals against the pelucones, the proprietors of the soil; in Mexico the federals fought the monarchists; in Ecuador the radicals opposed the conservatives; in Peru the conflict was between the "civilists" and military caudillos. In the diversity of these quarrels we see one essential principle: two classes were in conflict—the proprietors of the latifundia and the poverty-stricken people, the Spaniards and the half-breeds, or the oligarchs and generals of a barbarous democracy.
In each republic the soil and the traditions of the country gave a different colour to the universal warfare. In the Argentine the provinces, under viceroys and intendants, enjoyed a partial autonomy; there federalism had remote antecedents. Unity seemed an imposition on the part of Buenos-Ayres, which possessed the treasury and the custom-houses of the nation, and monopolised the national credit and revenue. In Chili, the long, narrow country, with the Cordillera at the back, like a granite wall, naturally evoked a Unitarian republic. The disputes between centralisation and federalism were soon over. Unity was possible in Peru, a brilliant sub-kingdom, the centre of a long-established and powerful authority. But some aspects of these violent struggles remain obscure. In Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico there was enmity between the coast and the Sierra. Lima and Caracas were capitals near the seaboard; Mexico and Quito were far removed from it. Yet in Peru the struggle was civil and military; in Ecuador, conservative and liberal; and in Mexico, federal and central. Why do we not find the religious struggles, which lasted so long in Colombia, in Bolivia and the Argentine? To explain this diversity we must study the psychology of the different conquistadors—Castilian, Biscayan, Andalusian, Portuguese—and of the different subjected races: the Quechuas, Araucanians, Chibchas, Aztecs, and the proportion in which they were mingled; for the action of the territory itself upon the various admixtures of blood would vary as it was tropical or temperate, coast or Sierra.
The confusion of the struggles in some democracies was extreme. The oligarchs were not always conservatives, nor the half-breeds always liberal. There were reactionary autocracies, like that of Portales in Chili, and liberal autocracies like that of Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela. The federals were usually democrats and liberals, but they were occasionally conservative and autocratic. The democrats of Peru were reactionary in matters of religion; those of Chili were radical. The civil régime was conservative in Bolivia under Baptista and in Ecuador under Garcia-Moreno, but liberal in Mexico under Juarez and Chili under Santa-Maria and Balmaceda. Militarism was radical under Lopez in Colombia, but conservative under General Castilla in Peru. When political evolution followed its logical development, federalism, liberalism, and democracy formed a trilogy, and oligarchy was conservative and Unitarian.
Revolutions, in opposing castes and uplifting the half-breed, prepared the way for a new period. But a democratic society cannot easily establish itself in the face of the established aristocracies, and slavery still survived, although softened by liberal institutions. The military class, accessible to all, replaced the old nobility. Confusion of races commenced as early as 1850, when generous laws enfranchised the negroes, and new economic interests arose to complicate these democratic societies. Revolutions, dictatorships, and anarchy were the necessary aspects of the dissolution of the old society.
The age of generals gave way to an industrial period in which wealth increased, industries became more complex and numerous, and labour was subdivided, while association became more usual both in commerce and agriculture. Co-operation, organisation, and solidarity, unknown during the period of anarchy, were aspects of an intense economic development. The interests newly created sought for peace, and the internal order which favoured their expansion.
Politics commenced to eschew and disdain the squabbles of ideology, and constitutional liberties acquired precision and efficacy. Plutocracies came into being, and aspired to government in place of internal revolution and external warfare; immigration, transforming the social classification, facilitated their advent. National progress was effected despite the governments; it was an anonymous and collective task. The energetic individualities of the military epoch were followed by the laborious crowd. The caudillo receded to the background of politics; the captains of industry replaced him, the merchants and the bankers. Courage was once the supreme criterion of the man; now wealth is the touchstone by which individuals and peoples are judged. The table of human values changes; instruction, foresight, and practical common sense determine success in an industrial democracy. In the social ascension of the generations which industry and commerce have thrown forward to the attack upon the old patrician society, the prejudices of class and religion grow feebler, and after a century of conflict the nations of the present day emerge.