South America to-day

by Georges Clemenceau

I had very good ground for stating that a salient characteristic of the Argentinos was a desire, not only to learn from Europe but to carry to the farthest possible pitch of perfection every institution begun, whether public or private, and to surpass their model. The obvious danger in all rapidly-developed colonial settlements is the acceptance of the "half-done," an almost obligatory condition in the early stages of development, and one whose facility of attainment is apt to militate against the persistency of effort after that precision of completion which alone can give good results. This defect, in fact, constitutes the principal reproach brought by the systematic Northerners against the impulsive Latin races, whose temperamental traits lead them to content themselves with a brilliant start, leaving thereafter to imagination the task of filling in the blanks left in the reality by this unsatisfactory method of operation.

I confess that in setting out for South America I was prepared to find that I should need the greatest indulgence if I would escape the danger of offending by discourteous but candid criticism. This was due to the fact that I was insensibly influenced partly by a few sociologists who discuss these matters carelessly, and partly by the folly that leads us to overlook the claims of consanguinity and urges us ever along those paths that England and Germany have opened. But not at all. If the prodigious expansion of the great North American republic may have inclined me to fear for the South American republics anything approaching to comparison, it is my belief that any impartial observer will rejoice to recognise the robust and generous development of some of the most promising forces of the future, in young communities that are clearly destined to attain to the highest grades of human superiority.

In 1865 Buckle, who was a man of no ordinary mental calibre, did not fear to write in his History of Civilisation that the compelling action of land and climate in Brazil was such that a highly civilised community must shortly find a home there. The event has amply justified the bold prophecy. In the South American republics, as in the United States and elsewhere, there are different degrees of fulfilment, of course. At the outset, while waiting for land to acquire value, all peoples have had to be satisfied with an approximate achievement. But in the Argentine, Uruguay, and Brazil, to speak only of countries I have visited, it is plain that nothing will be left half done, and the capacity to carry all work methodically forward to its end, in no matter what field of labour, promises well for the future of a race.

You do not require to stay long at Buenos Ayres to find that this quality exists in a very high degree in the Argentino.

I have mentioned the European aspect of Buenos Ayres—the least colonial-looking, probably, of any place in South America. But I noticed at the same time that the Argentino refuses to be simply a Spaniard transplanted, although society, in Buenos Ayres, traces its descent, with more or less authenticity, from the conquistadores, and did originally issue from the Iberian Peninsula. If we go farther and inquire what other influence, beside that of soil and climate, has been exercised over the European stock in the basin of the Rio de la Plata, we are bound to be struck with the thought that the admixture of Indian blood must count for something. The negro element, never numerically strong, appears to have been completely absorbed. There is very little trace of African blood. On the other hand, without leaving Buenos Ayres, you cannot fail to be struck by some handsome half-castes to be seen in the police force and fire brigade, for example, and the regularity of their delicate features is very noticeable to even the observer who is least prepared for it. The Indian of South America, though closely akin to the redskin of the North, is infinitely his superior. He had, indeed, created a form of civilisation, to which the conquistadores put brutally an end. There still subsist in the northern provinces of the Argentine some fairly large native settlements which receive but scant consideration from the Government. I heard too much on the subject to doubt the truth of this. Not but what many savage deeds can be laid to the charge of the Indians, as, for example, the abominable trap they laid for the peaceful Crevaux Mission in Bolivia which led to the massacre of all its members. Still, in equity we must remember that those who have recourse to the final argument of brute force are helping to confirm the savages in the habit of using it. In the interest of the higher sentimentality we must all deplore this. But our implacable civilisation has passed sentence on all races that are unable to adapt themselves to our form of social evolution, and from that verdict there is no appeal.

Not that the native of the South is incapable, like his brother of the North, of performing a daily task. I saw many natives amongst the hands employed by M. Hilleret in his factories in Tucuman. Neither can it be said that there is any lack of intelligence in the Indian. But the fact remains that he finds a difficulty in bending the faculties which have grown rigid in the circle of a primitive state of existence to the better forms of our own daily work, and this renders it impossible for him to carve out a place for himself in the sunlight under the new social organism imported from Europe by the white men. With greater power of resistance than the redskins of the other continent, he, like them, is doomed to disappear. Yet in one respect he has been more fortunate than his kinsmen of the North, and will never entirely die out, for he has already inoculated with his blood the flesh of the victors.

I am not going to pretend to settle in a word the problem of the fusion of races. I will only observe that the inrush of Indian blood in the masses—and also to a very considerable extent in the upper classes [15]—cannot fail to leave a permanent trace in the Argentine type, notwithstanding the steady current of immigration. And if I were asked to say what were the elemental qualities contributed to the coming race by the native strain, I should be inclined to think that the Indian's simplicity, dignity, nobility, and decision of character might modify in the happiest way the turbulent European blood of future generations.

After all, the Argentino who declines to be Spanish has, perhaps, very good reasons for his action. Here, he has succeeded, better than in the Iberian Peninsula, in ridding himself of the Moorish strain, which, though it gave him his lofty chivalry, has yet enchained him to the Oriental conception of a rigid theocracy. Why should not native blood have taken effect already upon the European mixture, and, with the aid of those unknown forces which we may class under the collective term of "climate," have prepared and formed a new people to be known henceforth by the obviously suitable name of "Argentinos"? All I can say is that there are Argentine characteristics now plainly visible in this conglomeration of the Latin races. The objection may be made that the "Yankee" shows equally strongly marked characteristics, which distinguish him from the Anglo-Saxon stock, while we know that he is unaffected by other than European strains. This is undeniable, and in his case soil, climate, and the unceasing admixture of European types suffice to explain modifications which are apparently converging towards the creation of a new type or sub-type.

It is remarkable that the character of the Americanised Englishman, having passed through a phase of Puritan rigidity in the North and aristocratic haughtiness in the South, has, for some inexplicable reason, burst out into a temperament of highly vitalised energy that may be summed up in the characteristic formula of a universal "go-aheadedness." The South American, on the contrary, having started with every kind of extravagance in both public and private life calculated to destroy the confidence of Europe, is obviously now undergoing a settling-down process with a marked tendency to adopt those principles of action of which the North is so proud, while at the same time retaining his affection for Latin culture.