The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay

by J. A. Hammerton

The amusement of the Uruguayan editor over these paragraphs and many others equally distant from the truth was entirely justified, and I have quoted them here (roughly retranslating them) out of no desire to belittle the work of one of our ablest writers, for whom I have the greatest admiration, but merely to show how erroneous one’s impressions may be as the result of a too brief visit, and lack of opportunity to study at leisure the condition of a country, as well as its historical past, as these have been expressed in the language of the country. Such misconceptions are familiar to us, and to be expected in the writings of irresponsible lady globe-trotters, but not in the sober and authoritative pages of one who has given us such a classic as “The American Commonwealth.”

It is no easy matter to furnish a satisfactory explanation of the two political parties of Uruguay, and when I find so competent an authority as Mr. C. E. Akers, in his “History of South America,” affirming that there are really no distinctions between them, that each professes the same ideals of government and seeks merely to wrest political power from the other, I attempt an explanation only with trepidation. Not that I purpose a detailed account of their origins and evolution, for that would involve an extremely long disquisition, and would scarcely hold the attention of an American reader, but that any attempt to distinguish between them in a few words is attended with difficulty and apt to be misleading.

The root difference of the two parties can best be described as Nationalist versus Progressist. Broadly, the White Party is the Nationalist Party, and the Colorado the Progressist. The colours distinguish the Spanish Colonial origin of the one party from the democratic origin of the other. That is to say, the Blancos have always tended towards exclusiveness and the assertion of the superiority of the white race, whereas the Colorados, originally sneered at by the Blancos as savages (salvages), on account of their more liberal ideas, which embraced the aborigine and the emigrant alike, have always stood for the wider conception of democracy. At certain times in their history, the Colorados have even accepted the title of “savages” as a compliment to their liberalism; to their maintenance of the primal rights of man. Thus, and not otherwise, have the colours of the two parties a real significance, and the red of the Colorados is also a cry back to the French Revolution, the influence of which on South American democracy has been profound. I have already mentioned in my passing reference to the home of Garibaldi in Montevideo, that that great champion of liberty commanded a Brazilian regiment in support of General Rivera when General Oribe was laying siege to Montevideo, and that the city was defended principally by French, Italians, and Brazilians against the onsets of the Blancos, until Oribe was eventually defeated completely by the Argentine general, Urquiza. This historical fact is entirely in support of what I have written, and will help to elucidate the party origins. In these later years, although the politics of the country are still split up between Reds and Whites, it has become more common to refer to the latter as Nationalists, they themselves having adopted that title. Hence appears a distinct and appreciable difference between the two political camps.

As might be supposed from what I have very roughly indicated as to the respective origins of the two parties, the Blancos are strongest in the provinces, and draw most of their support from the agricultural and stock-raising classes, while the Colorados preponderate in the capital and the larger towns, where modern ideas of democracy find a more fertile soil. The policy of the Blancos is exclusiveness—“Uruguay for the Uruguayans” might be its battle-cry, but, paradoxically, not for the original Uruguayans—while the Colorados are for encouraging immigration in every way, for the building up of a large and active population, without the slightest regard to racial origins, believing that once radicated in the country, the whole would weld itself into a complex nationality, just as we see in the making in Argentina.

A Typical Country Road in Uruguay.

Hides drying at Curing Factory near Montevideo.

It may be fortunate for Uruguay that the Colorados have been in power for many years, and are likely to dominate its politics for many years more. Yet not altogether fortunate, as the supremacy of one party over another is good for neither, and leads to all sorts of governmental abuses, although it seems to me that Red supremacy is better for Uruguay than White. The population is much too small for so fruitful a country, and to discourage the foreigner from becoming a citizen of the Republic, as the policy of the Blancos would tend in their devotion to narrow Nationalist ideals, might retard the clock of progress for generations. The crying need of Uruguay is population, and not even the Colorados as a party display sufficient energy in encouraging immigration, though individual leaders grow eloquent on the subject and talk at great length about what might be done, without being able to move the mass swiftly enough along the path of progress.

I would not have you think that the Red Party has a monopoly of the truer patriots. There are too many of its leaders whose sole ambition is to get their hands into the public treasury, and in this they succeed all too well. Politics from the profession of most men with ability beyond the common, and place-seeking is the order of the day. The Socialist movement, which has recently gathered great strength in the Argentine, is still in its infancy in Uruguay and was represented at the time of my stay there, if I remember aright, by only one member of the House of Deputies, Señor Frugoni, who fought incessantly against everything in the shape of public expenditure which was not calculated directly to benefit the workers, and who was one of the four deputies that opposed in July, 1913, the increase of the payment of the national representatives by $12 per day. Jobbery and bribery are rampant in the administration; the Government is regarded by the ruck of politicians as their milch cow, and though all public offices are remunerated modestly enough, there are numerous ways and means of greatly augmenting official salaries. The smallness of the population and the intimacy which exists between all the members of the better classes naturally lay the officials open to every form of personal temptation, and I never heard that “Deliver us from temptation” was a popular prayer among them.