Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

During the first twenty years of liberty the anarchical instinct which sought to separate the republics and the calm reason which sought to unite them under the pressure of powerful traditions were in mutual conflict. It was the conflict of nationalism and unity. As in Chili the Carreras opposed the authority of San Martin, as in Venezuela Paez rebelled against the unification of Bolivar, so Carrera the Guatemalan general warred against Morazan, the caudillo of the Unitarian party, during twelve years of a struggle of province with province.

However, the States separated one from another, and united anew under the domination of a theoretical federation; men still legislated in Congresses, and built the future nation with the ardour of Jacobins: eleven Assemblies of the Confederation prepared codes and statutes. One essential trait of the new laws was their secular spirit, and their tendency to aggressive action against the clergy. Even sooner than Mexico these assemblies promulgated the laws of the Reformation; even before the era of religious quarrels opened in Colombia the radical fervour which was contemporary with the liberalism of Rivadavia was at work in Central America. For that matter, it appeared to be a remnant of the old "regalism." In 1829 the Assembly suppressed all convents of monks; in 1830 Honduras declared that secular priests might marry; in Guatemala it was enacted that the sons of members of the clergy ordained in sacris were necessarily their heirs. In 1832 toleration was proclaimed, but, on the other hand, the States were continually fighting over the question of patronage, and the antagonism between the State, which wished to impose its tutelage, and the rebellious Church was perpetual.

Two influences dominated the minds of the new law-makers: English utilitarianism and Yankee federalism. Here French ideas were not predominant. But the tropical republics could not assimilate the severe English doctrine. In vain, in 1832, did Congress go into mourning on the occasion of the death of Bentham; in vain was absolute liberty of testimony proclaimed in Guatemala. The double and inevitable influence of tradition and race cannot be destroyed by means of improvised laws.

Central America borrowed from the United States their mode of suffrage, the federal system, the organisation of the jury, and the codes of Louisiana. But popular agitation condemned the institution of the jury; the codes borrowed from the United States did not annihilate barbarism, and the federal system was powerless to enforce unity.

In 1842 this troublous Confederation of sister nations was dissolved. Once these nations were definitely separated, what we may call the period of provincial history commenced; it was confused, yet identical in the case of the various States. Above the anarchical multitude rose energetic caudillos; necessary tyrants, who endeavoured to enforce order in the interior, and to organise the national finances.

The history of Costa Rica forms the only exception among these republics oscillating between tyranny and demagogy. In this country were no clearly divided social castes, no great capitalists, and no crowds of proletariats. A small homogeneous State, in which men were always known as hermanicos ("brotherlies") because their interests and their ideas were identical, Costa Rica seemed to justify the classic idea which associated the success of the republican system with limited territories and small human groups. Work, unity, and lasting peace have been the characteristics of social evolution in Costa Rica. While neighbouring States were at war this tiny republic was progressing peacefully.

Salvador also developed normally without the discords of Nicaragua or Guatemala. Race explains the differences to be observed in these great theatres of political experience; in Salvador and Costa Rica the Spanish element was predominant, the castes were confounded, the population was dense, and the birth-rate high. In Honduras mulattos abounded, and in Nicaragua and Guatemala the races were mixed, and the Indians were superior in point of numbers. Among these five tropical republics those which progressed were those in which the race was homogeneous, or in which the Iberian conquerors outnumbered the Indians, negroes, and mulattos.

The very tropical anarchy which has turned Central America into a perpetual theatre of civil wars has also continually divided the two zones of the ancient Hispaniola: San Domingo and Hayti. In the one the Spaniards ruled, in the other the French, and the antagonism of these two Powers was of long duration. Hayti is a negro State, and San Domingo refused to submit to the tyranny of ex-slaves. Conflicts of a political origin were supplemented by the warfare of castes. Caudillos and tyrants have succeeded one another in the government; revolutions and domestic wars have continually troubled these two small States, over which the United States have gradually extended their tutelage.

As early as the seventeenth century the French were established in Hispaniola, on the northern coast; bold Normans, herdsmen and shepherds, the celebrated buccaneers, had founded a kind of forest republic ruled by special laws. In 1691 this territory was a French colony, and in 1726 it contained 30,000 free inhabitants and 100,000 slaves, black or mulatto. The Creoles, according to the chroniclers of the time, were proud and inconstant, idle and sceptical as to religion. The negroes, chiefly occupied in servile labour, superstitious and imprudent, formed the bulk of the slaves. A Jesuit, Father Charlevoix, who had observed them, wrote in 1725: "Properly speaking we may say that the negroes between Cap Blanc and Cap Noir have been born only for slavery."[[1]] It was said that the negroes were wont to celebrate the rites of a secret worship in the forest, and were preparing to fight for their liberty. They hated the other castes, the whites, the free negroes, and the mulattos; and the Hayti of the future was born of this racial hatred. Ex-slaves governed the isle, and found in bloody hecatombs revenge for their long servitude. These formed the oligarchy, an intolerable and intolerant aristocracy, inimical to whites and mulattos. Like the revolts of slaves in the ancient world, these rebellions of American serfs were the occasion of wars of extermination. The French Revolution provoked them by its Utopian liberalism: Mirabeau and Lafayette were friends of the negro, and the Convention decreed the abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1794. The slaves had risen already, in 1791, at the first rumours of the risings in France, burning property and killing their rulers.