Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

There are two Americas. In the north, the "Outre-Mer" of Bourget, is a powerful industrial republic, a vast country of rude energies, of the "strenuous life." In the south are twenty leisurely states of unequal civilisation, troubled by anarchy and the colour problem. The prestige of the United States, their imperialism, and their wealth, have cast a shade over the less orderly Latin republics of the south. The title of America seems to be applied solely to the great imperial democracy of the north.

Yet among these American nations are wealthy peoples whose domestic organisation has been greatly improved, such as the Argentine, Brazil, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay. They must not be confounded with the republics of Central America, with Hayti or Paraguay. French writers and politicians, such as M. Anatole France, M. Clemenceau, and M. Jaurès, who have visited the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay, have remarked there not only an established Latin culture, but noble efforts in the direction of augmenting the internal peace of the nations, and extraordinary riches. They are agreed in declaring that these young countries possess economic forces and an optimism which will yield them a brilliant future.

Several of these states have lately celebrated their first centenary. Their independence was won during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The year 1810 was the beginning of a new epoch, during which autonomous republics were formed, not without tragedy, upon the remnants of the Spanish power.

The time has come, it would seem, to study these peoples, together with their evolution and progress, unless we are willing to take it as proved that the United States of North America are the sole focus of Transatlantic civilisation and energy.

We propose to draw up the balance-sheet of these South American republics. This is the object of this book. We must seek in the history of these states the reason of their inferiority and the data which relate to their future.

First of all we must study the conquering race which discovered and colonised America. We must analyse the Spanish and Portuguese genius, the Iberian genius, half European, half African. After the conquest new societies sprang up under the stern domination of Spain and Portugal. They were over-seas theocracies, jealously guarded from all alien trade. Unlike Saxon America, where the Dutch and English immigrants held themselves sternly apart from the Indians, pursuing them and forcing them westward, in South America conquerors and conquered intermingled. The half-castes became the masters by force of numbers, conceiving a thirst for power and a hatred of the proud and overbearing Spaniards and Portuguese. War broke out between the Iberians and the Americans; it was a civil war. Then new states were rapidly formed, without traditions of government or established social classification.

These states were dominated by military chieftains, by caudillos. From barbarism and periodic anarchy proceeded the Dictators. We shall be able to study some of the representative personalities of this period, and to disentangle from the monotonous development of events the history of certain nations, such as Brazil, in which the social medley has been dominated by the principle of authority. In the Argentine, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chili we shall perceive a new industrial order, by means of which political life grows less disturbed and the caudillos lose their authority (Books I. and II.).

The study of intellectual evolution shows us how great is the power of ideology in these rising democracies. They imitate the French Revolution; they submit themselves to the influence of the ideas of Rousseau and the Romantics, and of the doctrines of the individualists. America, Spanish and Portuguese by origin, is becoming French by culture (Book III.).

Here we proceed to the study of the part played by the Latin spirit in the formation of these peoples, and the perils which threaten them, whether these proceed from the United States, from Germany, or from Japan, and to consider the faults and the qualities of this spirit (Book IV.). Then follows an analysis of the problems and the future of Latin America (Book V.).

The conclusion to be drawn from this examination is that the political life of the Ibero-American peoples is as yet chaotic, but that some of them have already cast off the fetters of an unfortunate heredity. Across the ocean liberty and democracy are steadily becoming realities. In the battles of the future the support of America will be valued by the great peoples of the Mediterranean who are struggling for the supremacy of the Latin race.