Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

The Imperialist minister had conquered; he aspired to the presidency of his country. Santa-Maria put him forward, and public opinion accepted him, proud of his diplomatic triumphs. An age of plenty commenced; the ancient Chilian austerity was at an end. Balmaceda governed with his energies increased a hundred-fold by the gold of Peru, the moral power of victory, his ambitions as a statesman, and the vocation for empire which a victorious war develops in the heart of an energetic people.

Materially, he transformed Chili; morally, he presided over her dissolution, or, at least, her decadence. Neither this degeneration nor this progress was the exclusive work of the autocratic President. Wealth enervates a sober people; it permits the erection of monuments, but it weakens men's characters. Honest and far-sighted, Balmaceda employed the millions he had drawn from the war in material enterprises; he built schools throughout the country, special institutes, mining and agricultural colleges, professional colleges; he began the construction of new railways, of a breakwater at Talcahuano, of palaces for the administrative services; he fortified several ports, bought new ironclads, encouraged immigration, founded military schools, and re-equipped the army. He suppressed contributions, assured the service of the foreign debt, amortised paper money, and demanded guarantees of the banks. When in Chili you inquire as to the origin of a public works, a school, or a prison, you will hear of Balmaceda. In finance, in education, and in colonisation he effected a fundamental renaissance; he was the master-builder among Presidents.

Balmaceda was raised to the presidency by three parties: the liberals, the radicals, and the nationals; that is to say, by three aspects of one central idea, varying from an attenuated liberalism which verged on conservatism in its ideas (nationalism) to a violent liberalism, verging on demagogy (radicalism). The Balmacedist victory stifled all attempts at clerical reaction; Balmaceda was a reformer. His ambition could not be satisfied by material progress and practical advance. As ideologist, he applied abstract ideas to politics. He wished to unite all the liberals in one preponderant party, to ensure a still greater independence to the public powers, judicial and municipal, and to despoil the executive of its traditional attributes; to found an educated, liberal, military, and virile democracy as a check against the oligarchy, in which democracy dreamers of every school could find their Utopia.

Between his character and his doctrines there was a grave discrepancy. An autocrat by vocation and by temperament, because a patrician, he nevertheless weakened the executive by the Municipal Law, which established autonomous municipalities, and by the law of incompatibilities, which conceded to Congress a complete independence of the other powers. "The mandate of the deputy" declares this law "is incompatible with the exercise of any paid public function." At this hour of party confusion Balmaceda despoiled the executive of efficacious agents in Parliament. He was thus, by a reform which, ideally speaking, was perfect, preparing the way for serious future conflicts.

The liberal President condemned the Constitution of 1833, the basis of Chilian order; he believed that the new period demanded a new statute. "Neither the desires of the country nor those of the parties or groups now active," he wrote, "can adapt themselves to the system of centralisation and authority consecrated by the Constitution of 1833."[[1]] He criticised "the attributions which devolve upon the chief of the Executive Power, the weakening of initiative and of the local charters by excess of vigour in the central power; the part played by the Executive in the formation of the judicial power, its influence upon the elections, the functioning of the legislative power, the centralisation of the administration, and the works which foster material progress."

But by abandoning, by a sort of heroic suicide, the forces conferred upon him by a traditional statute, Balmaceda paved the way for an omnipotent Congress. Pelucon by heredity, a cultured despot, he soon disregarded the power which he himself had raised above the decadent presidency. The contradiction between his life and his doctrines, his heredity and his ideals, gives his noble and patrician figure the majesty of a character of Æschylus, ennobled at once and annihilated by destiny. Balmaceda weakened the executive and put forward official candidates; established the preponderance of Congress and wished to have independent ministers; destroyed the Constitution of 1833 and ruled as an autocrat. Renan compared himself to the scholastic hircocerf, which bears within itself two hostile natures; this was also the fate of Balmaceda.

His political ideal was that of Benjamin Constant; of Lamartine, of Laboulaye. He accepted neither the despotism of the President nor the tyranny of Congress.

Could the perfect equilibrium of the public powers be realised in Chili, or was it merely the noble dream of an ideologist? Very soon the omnipotence of a centralised government was replaced by the dictatorship of anarchical Parliaments. The parties imposed ministers upon Balmaceda, and presented him with lists of candidates, among whom the President, powerless to refuse, was to choose his counsellors.

It was a radical transformation, for from the time of Portales the government had intervened in elections, had insisted upon presidents and deputies. Balmaceda disregarded his own work, rebelled against Congress, governed without a budget, defended the rights of the power which he had destroyed by short-sighted legislation, and tried to enforce his wishes as to the Presidency, in the traditional manner, and Congress refused to accept his candidate. It has been truly said that the government of Balmaceda was the crisis of electoral intervention.[[2]] Parliament refused to pass the President's law of contributions, overturned his ministries, and protested against the designation of an official candidate; as in the time of the French Revolution, a revolutionary committee was formed in the heart of the Chamber. The two dictatorships clashed. The revolution broke forth in 1891; the fleet revolted; civil war divided families; Congress fought for the Constitution, the Government for the autocracy. From La Moneda Balmaceda directed a terrible war against the combined forces of the fleet, the banks, and the Parliament. The factions fought with lamentable ardour; it was a war of hatreds and reprisals, bitter as a racial conflict. Two battles, Concon and La Placilla, destroyed the power of the President.