CHAPTER III
BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia—The tyrants, Belzu, Molgarejo—The last caudillos: Pando, Montes.
Bolivia sprang, armed and full-grown, as in the classic myth, from the brain of Bolivar. The Liberator gave her a name, a Constitution, and a President. In 1825 he created by decree an autonomous republic in the colonial territory of the district of Charcas, and became its Protector. Sucre, the hero of Ayacucho, succeeded him in 1826. During the wars of Independence this noble friend of Bolivar resigned from power, disillusioned; he was the Patroclus of the American Iliad.
From that time onward the young republic was for twenty years ruled by a great caudillo, Andres Santa-Cruz. A lieutenant of the Liberator, he inherited, like Paez and Flores, a portion of his legacy of nations: he was President of Bolivia and wished to be President of Peru.
OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA.
(From "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity,"
by the Hon. John Barrett.)
In 1826 he presided over the Council of State at Lima and governed in the absence of Bolivar. In 1827 he was the head of the Bolivian Republic, prosecuting a difficult struggle against national anarchy. His ambition included the vast theatre of the old vice-kingdom; he wished to unite Bolivia and Peru, and to that end organised freemasonry as a political force, from La Paz to Lima. President of the Bolivian Republic for the second time in 1828, he formed a government sufficiently strong to discourage revolution. Like Garcia-Moreno and Guzman-Blanco, he was a civilizer. The son of an Indian woman of noble origin, the Cacica of Guarina, he perhaps inherited imperial ambitions. He loved power and display, received the order of the Legion of Honour from Louis-Philippe, and instituted an analogous order for the Bolivian Confederation. He accumulated sonorous titles: Captain-General and President of Bolivia, Grand Marshal, Pacificator of Peru, Supreme Protector of the South and North Peruvians, &c. In domestic politics he was an organiser who was capable of cruelty in defence of order; a strict administrator. He promulgated codes, following the Napoleonic example, disciplined the army, and restored the national finances. The revenue increased, credit became more secure, and imperialism saw the light. Santa-Cruz attracted Europeans and protected his countrymen, for the question of population preoccupied him; it is, indeed, the great problem of Bolivia and South America. In 1833 he proposed the exclusion of celibates from the magistracy, a measure of protection in favour of numerous families. Like all the caudillos, he made great efforts to develop the public treasury.
Local triumphs did not satisfy him. Distrustful, crafty, frigid, without the declamatory eloquence of other presidents, ambitious of wealth and power, he longed to extend his despotic sceptre over new States. Imitating Napoleon, like Iturbide in Mexico, and remembering the successes of the First Consul, he prepared expeditions of conquest, and fostered anarchy in Peru, which he intended to govern once more as in 1826. Orbegoso, President of the neighbouring republic, called for his assistance in 1835 in order to overcome Salaverry, a brilliant officer who had proclaimed himself dictator. Santa-Cruz thereupon constituted himself the arbiter of Peruvian disputes, and invaded the country. He defeated Salaverry at Socabaya and Gamarra, his ally, at Yanacocha. The dictator was shot in 1836, and the Bolivian president founded a vast confederation as a bulwark against Peruvian anarchy: he reconstituted the old vice-kingdom. His ambition then led him so far as to attack Rosas, the tyrant of Argentina. He had inherited the Unitarian ideals of Bolivar, and prepared to realise them. Three States, Bolivia, and North and South Peru, each with its own capital, its president, and its congress, formed the Confederation, under the imperial authority of the new Inca. Santa-Cruz organised the three States with amazing rapidity, imposed codes and constitutions, and expected to rule from Lima, the fashionable metropolis; it was said that he was the avenger of the oppressed race of half-breeds, oppressed by the colonial oligarchy. The Confederation existed from 1837, but Chili, in the south, envious of the Peruvian-Bolivian hegemony, threatened its existence. Portales, that omnipotent minister, sought pretexts to attack this solid political structure. He accused Santa-Cruz of fostering expeditions against the Chilian conservatives—for instance, that of Freire—and called him "the unjust violator of the sovereignty of Peru"; he feared that his power would strike a blow at the independence of the South American republics. Portales and Santa-Cruz represented two irreconcilable ambitions; they had the same love of authority and organic construction, and each professed a narrow nationalism and a violent patriotism. The Chilian oligarchy, led by Portales, proceeded to organise the "liberation campaign" against and on behalf of Peru. The historian Walker Martinez justifies this policy of interference and intervention in American affairs, although since the Pacific war the Chilian diplomatists have always pronounced against it.