The consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. Latin America’s level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days. Spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and social stability. Now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and colors grappled to the death. Ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished.
These deplorable conditions prevailed in Latin America until well past the middle of the nineteenth century. Of course, here as elsewhere, anarchy engendered tyranny, and strong caudillos sometimes perpetuated their dictatorship for decades, as in Paraguay under Doctor Francia and in Mexico under Porfirio Diaz. However, these were mere interludes, of no constructive import. Always the aging lion lost his grip, the lurking hyenas of anarchy downed him at last, and the land sank once more into revolutionary chaos. Some parts of Latin America did, indeed, definitely emerge into the light of stable progress. But those favored regions owed their deliverance, not to dictatorship, but to race. One of two factors always operated: either (1) an efficient white oligarchy; or (2) Aryanization through wholesale European immigration.
Stabilization through oligarchy is best illustrated by Chile. Chilean history differs widely from that of the rest of Latin America. A land of cool climate, no gold, and warlike Araucanian Indians, Chile attracted the pioneering settler rather than the swashbuckling seeker of treasure-trove. Now the pioneering types in Spain come mainly from those northern provinces which have retained considerable Nordic blood. The Chilean colonists were thus largely blond Asturians or austere, reasonable Basques, seeking homes and bringing their women. Of course there was crossing with the natives, but the fierce Araucanian aborigines clung to their wild freedom and kept up an interminable frontier warfare in which the occasions for race-mixture were relatively few. The country was thus settled by a resident squirearchy of an almost English type. This ruling gentry jealously guarded its racial integrity. In fact, it possessed not merely a white but a Nordic race-consciousness. The Chilean gentry called themselves sons of the Visigoths, scions of Euric and Pelayo, who had found in remote Araucania a chance to slake their racial thirst for fighting and freedom.
In Chile, as elsewhere, the revolution provoked a cycle of disorder. But the cycle was short, and was more a political struggle between white factions than a social welter of caste and race. Furthermore, Chile was receiving fresh accessions of Nordic blood. Many English, Scotch, and Irish gentleman-adventurers, taking part in the War of Independence, settled down in a land so reminiscent of their own. Germans also came in considerable numbers, settling especially in the colder south. Thus the Chilean upper classes, always pure white, became steadily more Nordic in ethnic character. The political and social results were unmistakable. Chile rapidly evolved a stable society, essentially oligarchic and consciously patterned on aristocratic England. Efficient, practical, and extremely patriotic, the Chilean oligarchs made their country at once the most stable and the most dynamic factor in Latin America.
The distinctly “Northern” character of Chile and the Chileans strike foreign observers. Here, for example, are the impressions of a recent visitor, the North American sociologist, Professor E. A. Ross. Landing at the port of Valparaiso, he is “struck by signs of English influence. On the commercial streets every third man suggests the Briton, while a large proportion of the business people look as if they have their daily tub. The cleanliness of the streets, the freshness of the parks and squares, the dressing of the shop-windows, and the style of the mounted police remind one of England.”[60] As to the Nordic affinities of the upper classes: “One sees it in stature, eye color, and ruddy complexion.... Among the pupils of Santiago College there are as many blonds as brunets.”[61] Even among the peon or “roto” class, despite considerable Indian crossing, Professor Ross noted the strong Nordic strain, for he met Chilean peasants “whose stature, broad shoulders, big faces, and tawny mustaches proclaimed them as genuine Norsemen as the Icelanders in our Red River Valley.”[62]
Chile is thus the prime example of social stability and progress attained through white oligarchic rule. Other, though less successful, instances are to be noted in Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Peru and Colombia, though geographically within the tropics, have extensive temperate plateaux. Here numerous whites settled during the colonial period, forming an upper caste over a large Indian population. Unlike Chile, few Nordics came to leaven society with those qualities of constructive genius and racial self-respect which are the special birthright of Nordic man. Unlike Chile again, not only were there dense Indian masses, but there was also an appreciable negro element. Lastly, the number of mixed-bloods was very large. It is thus not surprising that for both Peru and Colombia the revolution ushered in a period of turmoil from which neither have even yet emerged. The whites have consistently fought among themselves, invoking the half-castes as auxiliaries and using Indians and negroes as their pawns. The whites are still the dominant element, but only the first families retain their pure blood, and miscegenation creeps upward with every successive generation. As for Costa Rica, it is a tiny bit of cool hill-country, settled by whites in colonial times, and to-day rises an oasis of civilization, above the tropic jungle of degenerate, mongrel Central America.
The second method of social stabilization in Latin America—Aryanization through wholesale European immigration—is exemplified by Argentina and Uruguay. Neither of these lands had very promising beginnings. Their populations, at the revolution, contained strong Indian infusions and traces of negro blood, while after the revolution both fell under the sway of tyrannical dictators who persecuted the white aristocrats and favored miscegenation. However, Argentina and Uruguay possessed two notable advantages: they were climatically white man’s country, and they at first contained a very small population. Since they produced neither gold nor tropical luxuries, Spain had neglected them, so that at the revolution they consisted of little more than the port-towns of Buenos Aires and Montevideo with a few dependent river-settlements. Their vast hinterlands of fertile prairie then harbored only wandering tribes of nomad savages.
During the last half of the nineteenth century, however, the development of ocean transport gave these antipodean prairies value as stock-raising and grain-growing sources for congested Europe, and Europe promptly sent immigrants to supply her needs. This immigrant stream gradually swelled to a veritable deluge. The human tide was, on the whole, of sound stock, mostly Spaniards and north Italians, with some Nordic elements from northern Europe in the upper strata. Thus Europe locked antipodean America securely to the white world. As for the colonial stock, it merged easily into the newer, kindred flood. Here and there signs of former miscegenation still show, the Argentino being sometimes, as Madison Grant well puts it, “suspiciously swarthy.”[63] Nevertheless, these are but vestigial traces which the ceaseless European inflow will ultimately eradicate. The large impending German immigration to Argentina and Uruguay should bring valuable Nordic elements.
This same tide of European immigration has likewise pretty well Aryanized the southern provinces of Brazil, adjacent to the Uruguayan border. Those provinces were neglected by Portugal as Argentina and Uruguay were by Spain, and half a century ago they had a very sparse population. To-day they support millions of European immigrants, mostly Italians and European Portuguese, but with the further addition of nearly half a million Germans. Brazil is, in fact, evolving into two racially distinct communities. The southern provinces are white man’s country, with little Indian or negro blood, and with a distinct “color line.” The tropical north is saturated with Indian and negro strains, and the whites are rapidly disappearing in a universal mongrelization. Ultimately this must produce momentous political consequences.
Bearing in mind the exceptions above noted, let us now observe the vast tropical and semi-tropical bulk of Latin America. Here we find notable changes since colonial days. White predominance is substantially a thing of the past. Persons of unmixed Spanish or Portuguese descent are relatively few, most of the so-called “whites” being really near-whites, more or less deeply tinged with colored bloods. It is a striking token of white race-prestige that these near-whites, despite their degeneracy and inefficiency, are yet the dominant element; occupying, in fact, much the same status as the aristocratic Creoles immediately after the War of Independence. Nevertheless, the near-whites’ supremacy is now threatened. Every decade of chronic anarchy favors the darker half-breeds, while below these, in turn, the Indian and negro full-bloods are beginning to stir, as in Mexico to-day.