The South American Republics, Part 1 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

In 1865 circumstances forced Mitre into the Paraguayan war. Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, hated the Buenos Aireans quite as much as he did the Brazilians with whom he was constantly quarrelling, and he was only awaiting a favourable opportunity to vent his dislike on either or both. He counted on the coolness that naturally existed between Urquiza and Mitre to insure him the former's aid. In 1864 Brazil intervened in the affairs of Uruguay by assisting one of the parties in the civil war then raging. Lopez regarded the action of Brazil as endangering the balance of power in the Plate regions. In retaliation he seized the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, which lay along the Paraguay north of his own territory. Mitre wished to remain neutral, although he had no sympathy with the brutal despot, and had an understanding about Brazil's action in Uruguay which safeguarded the interests of Argentina. Lopez, however, insolently demanded free passage across Argentine territory for the troops which he wished to send against Brazil and Uruguay. Mitre's refusal was followed by a Paraguayan invasion, and national honour required that this violation of territory be resented. Brazil and the Flores faction in Uruguay welcomed the alliance of Argentina. The Paraguayan invasion was repulsed by their combined forces, and the allies advanced up the Paraná against Lopez in his own dominions. It was natural that Mitre should be commander-in-chief of the allied armies, although Brazil furnished the bulk of the troops and bore the brunt of the expense. Urquiza disappointed Lopez in refusing to revolt against Buenos Aires, and although he took no great personal interest in the war he co-operated in many ways with Mitre.

The enormous expenditures of the Brazilian government furnished a splendid cash market for Argentine stock and produce, and the resulting profits compensated for the pecuniary sacrifices involved. In two years' fighting both the Argentine and the Brazilian armies suffered tremendous losses on the field and in the cholera hospitals. After the great repulse at Curupayty in 1867 the number of Argentine troops was largely reduced. When the Brazilian fleet finally forced the passage of the river, opening the way to Asuncion, Mitre resigned the command into the hands of the Brazilian general Caxias, and the last two years of the war were carried on principally by Brazilian troops. By the peace of 1870 Argentina's title to certain valuable territory was quieted, and she gained an important commercial advantage by the opening of Paraguay to her trade. Her commercial and industrial leadership in the Plate valley has never since been endangered. Politically also the indirect results were gratifying. The tremendous sacrifices in men and money had sickened the Brazilian government and people of foreign complications. Thereafter, the emperor pursued a policy of non-interference, which has left to his Spanish neighbours a free hand among themselves. With the withdrawal of the Brazilian troops from Paraguay, the balance of political power began slowly to pass from Rio to Buenos Aires.

Sarmiento, the "schoolmaster president," succeeded Mitre in 1868. His election is said to have been the freest and most peaceful ever held in the republic and to have represented as nearly as any the will of the electors. The development of population, wealth, and industry continued in increasing geometrical proportion. During forty-five years before 1857 the population had only a little more than doubled; during the forty-five years since that date, the increase has been four hundred and fifty per cent. The yearly increment holds fairly steady at four per cent., which is as large as that of any country in the world. In 1869 the city of Buenos Aires had one hundred and eighty thousand people, and in 1902 it contained eight hundred and fifty thousand. Immigration had begun to pour in at the rate of twenty thousand per annum, and had rapidly increased to over a hundred thousand, when the great crisis of 1890 temporarily interrupted the flow. The years from 1868 to 1872 were prosperous over much of the civilised world, but nowhere more so than in Argentina. Sarmiento's administration was, however, characterised by the beginning of that policy of governmental and commercial extravagance which has so deeply mortgaged the future of Argentina, and has repeatedly hampered the legitimate development of this marvellously fertile region. In the ten years prior to 1872 foreign commerce doubled, but the foreign debt increased fivefold.

The last of the caudillos, Lopez Jordan of Entre Rios, revolted in 1870 against Urquiza, who was still governor of that province. The redoubtable old patriot was captured by the rebels and assassinated. In 1901 a monument was erected to his memory in the city of Paraná, his old capital, and the day of the unveiling was a national festival in all the republic. The Federal government avenged his death and suppressed the insurrection after an obstinate, expensive, and bloody little war. Sarmiento's administration was, however, not popular, and the news that he had virtually determined to name his successor created much dissatisfaction. Mitre headed the opposition in the city, while in the provinces some of the discontented went so far as to take up arms. Julio Roca, then a young colonel, defeated them at Santa Rosa, and Sarmiento was able to hand over the reins of government to Dr. Avellaneda without any further serious opposition.

JULIO ROCA.

A commercial crisis was beginning when the new President took office in 1874. He initiated a policy of retrenchment, under which the government managed to pay its obligations and weather the storm. General Roca was made Minister of War and came into further prominence as the conqueror of the Indians, who had hitherto prevented white men from settling on the vast and valuable southern pampas. In 1854, after the fall of Rosas, the Indians recovered most of the territory from which he had driven them twenty years before. Later, the frontier was advanced very slowly, but in 1877 Alsina, one of the most successful governors Buenos Aires ever had, undertook a vigorous campaign. In the following year General Roca threw the power of the Federal government into this vastly important enterprise. He carried the frontier south to the Rio Negro and west to the Andes, attacking the Indians in their fortresses—a policy which insured permanent white domination. The ultimate consequences of opening up to civilised settlement the immense territories comprised in Roca's conquests cannot yet properly be estimated. The vast region of Patagonia, that was marked on the maps in our boyhood as an unclaimed and uninhabitable arctic waste, has since been added to Argentina as an indirect result of Roca's campaign of 1878. Buenos Aires put in a claim for the whole of the territory conquered from the Indians, but the Federal statesmen refused to allow one province to become well-nigh as large as all the rest together. By a compromise her area was increased to sixty-three thousand square miles, while most of the new acquisition was divided into territories under the direct administration of the Federal government.

As the time for the presidential election of 1880 approached, political matters began to look ugly. It was evident that Avellaneda intended to choose his successor. Through the provincial governors, the police, the army, the employees on the public works, and the officials of all kinds he had easy control of the election machinery. Even the most scrupulous President often cannot prevent the exercise of coercion in his name and without his knowledge. The opposition in South America usually refrain from voting: indeed, it is considered almost indelicate for outsiders to interfere in a matter so strictly official as an election. The privilege of voting is not so highly prized and so jealously guarded as in the United States and the northern countries of Europe.

Avellaneda and his adherents had fixed upon General Roca as the next President. The principal opposing candidate was Dr. Tejedor, governor of Buenos Aires, who was supported by Mitre's party and also by many of the other Buenos Aires party, the "autonomists." The contest was really between Buenos Aires and the provinces. General Roca was strong with the army and with the country, but so tremendously had Buenos Aires grown that the result appeared doubtful. Her population, city and province, had in 1880 reached six hundred and fifty thousand,—more than a quarter of the total in the whole Confederation. The next three provinces put together did not equal her numbers and lagged still farther behind in wealth and ability to concentrate their forces.

Radical counsels prevailed in Buenos Aires. Roca's opponents, seeing that they were at a hopeless disadvantage with the election machinery in Avellaneda's hands, determined to use violence. In June, 1880, the partisans of Tejedor rose against the Federal government. The police and militia of the city joined them and paraded the streets, while the alarm flew to the country, and the troops of the line began to concentrate outside the city. Presently the President and his Cabinet fled for safety to the Federal camp. For a few weeks there was some skirmishing and much negotiating, and in one encounter near the south end of the city a thousand Buenos Aireans were killed. Finally, the two sides came to an agreement by which the Roca party retained substantially all that they had been contending for. The General succeeded to the Presidency without further opposition, and the city of Buenos Aires was detached from the province. The federalisation of the great city was the last step in the process of adaptation that had been going on ever since the expulsion of the Spaniards. Political equilibrium between the provinces and Buenos Aires had been reached. Thenceforth the latter's direct predominance was to be purely intellectual, commercial, and social. For the privilege of being capital of the republic, the city exchanged her provincial autonomy. Buenos Aires province, as formerly constituted, was the greatest menace to a peaceful federal union. In an assembly where the rights and influence of all the provinces were supposed to be equal, the magnitude of Buenos Aires was a constant occasion for the jealousy of her smaller sisters and for aggressions on her own part. Deprived of the city, the remainder of the province was not powerful enough to be dangerous. Now that it is federalised, the city itself proves to be the strongest tie binding together the different parts of the Confederation.