In the southern republics of America industrialism is supreme in the Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili; even in tropical Brazil. In Bolivia and Peru the last leaders are not yet dead, the parties are still personal, but their influence is not as decisive as it was thirty years ago. Among the northern peoples, from Mexico to Ecuador, anarchy and caudillism still survive; there political unrest has not yet been dominated by the principle of authority. The long dictatorship of General Castro and certain Central American presidents proves that the dictatorial régime is the only form of government that is able to maintain peace in these countries.
It is hardly possible to determine the "historical moment" at which these republics passed from the military to the industrial system. The twilight of the caudillos was a long one. Even in the Argentine, where the economic life is magnificent and complex, their influence persists. In Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil there exists a latent militarism which might quickly destroy the work of the civil presidents. For ten years in Peru and Uruguay and Bolivia government has followed government without revolutionary violence, but can we say that the anarchy of fifty years has disappeared for ever? The political order is slowly becoming assured, and the relation between wealth and the increase of immigration and of peace is obvious. Even in the industrial field evolution is the work of a few caudillos who have been pacificators: General Pando in Bolivia, General Roca in the Argentine, Pierola in Peru, and Battle y Ordonez in Uruguay, not to speak of the greatest of all, Porfirio Diaz.
Economically speaking this period of development material is superior to the first period of sterile revolution; it is superior also from the political point of view, for institutions have been perfected and their constitutional action has defined itself. The municipalities and the legislative power have acquired a relative autonomy; they have been victorious over the executive, which was omnipotent during the military period. In beauty and intensity, however, the prosaic age of industrialism has been inferior to the preceding period. Of old, vigorous personalities rose above the common level, and history had the vitality of a tragedy; men played with destiny and with death as in the time of the Italian renaissance. "Tyranny," writes Burckhardt, "in the ancient Latin republics, commenced by developing to the highest degree the individuality of the sovereign, of the condottiere." He then demonstrates the equally personal character of the statesmen and popular tribunes of Florentine history.[[2]] This analysis is applicable to the American leaders. Heroic audacity and perpetual and virile unrest characterise the struggles of the caciques. The military cycle closed, the republics lose this dramatic interest. Instead of describing the history of governments we must study the economic evolution of nations, and their statistics of industry and commerce. In tragedy the chorus, the crowd, becomes the essential person; it judges and executes, it is spectator and creator, while the heroes of old, the conquerors of destiny and founders of cities, disappear in the mists of the past.
To these political changes correspond changes in manners and customs; the cities, too, have changed and have lost their archaic character. The cosmopolitan invasion has resulted in a brilliant monotony, and interest has become the sole motive of action; permanent war is followed by peace à outrance; the republics have gained in wealth and mediocrity. It is a period of transition: we cannot yet distinguish the firm lineaments of the future State.
Will the Argentine and Brazil become great plutocratic States like the United States? Will Chili, which is copying the social organisation of England, be subjected, like the Anglo-Saxon Empire, to the attacks of demagogy? The spectacle of these enriched nations permits us to affirm only that in revolutionary America four nations, the Argentine, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chili, will, before the lapse of a century, be definitively organised as republics.
Yet these States still betray old racial characteristics.
"The dead found the race," writes M. Gustave Le Bon. "The dead generations impose on us not only their physical constitution but also their thoughts. Forms of government matter little."[[3]] In the democracies of Latin America the "fundamental revolution" of which politicians boast has been sterile; under the republican mask the Spanish heredity survives, deep-rooted and secular. The forms vary but the soul of the race remains the same. President-autocrats replace the vice-kings; the old struggles between the governors of the State and the bishops persist, for patronage in ecclesiastical affairs, the prestige of the "doctors," and academic titles.
The ruling caste, the heir to the prejudices of Spain, despises industry and commerce, and lives for politics and its futile agitations. The territorial seigneurs still have the upper hand as before the Revolution. The ancient latifundia still survive, the great domains which explain the power of the oligarchy. Assemblies exercise a secondary function, as the municipal cabildos of old. Catholicism is still the axis of social life. The picaros of Spanish romance, haughty and ingenious parasites, are still accepted at their own value. The bureaucracy swallows up the wealth of the exchequer; it was formed a century ago of voracious Castilians; to-day it consists of Americans devoid of will. Despite the equality proclaimed by the constitutions the Indian is subjected to the implacable tyranny of the local authorities, the curé, the justice of peace, and the cacique. Under other names the little despots of the Spanish period are still alive and active.
The democracies of South America, then, are Spanish, although the élite has always been inspired by French ideas. Democracies by proclamation and in their anarchy, equalitarian and of mixed blood, the individual often acquires a heroic significance like that of the supermen of Carlyle; mediæval republics divided into irreducible families and factions, governed by enriched merchants; Greek republics, hostile to their own leaders, jealous of the virtue of Aristides and the wisdom of Themistocles, but without the plebiscitary ardour of the Hellenic community.
[[1]] The cold region of lofty table-lands.