The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

VILLAGE OF CHICLAY ON THE OROYA RAILWAY, 12,200 FEET ABOVE THE SEA.

Encouraged by this success, La Mar determined to wrest Guayaquil and Cuenca from Colombia. Bolivar, already furious over the defection of Peru and Bolivia, made a formal declaration of war, although he was too much occupied with his own troubles in New Granada and Venezuela to go in person to the frontier. General Flores, whom he had put in charge of Ecuador, made preparations to resist La Mar, Sucré came to direct the operations, a Peruvian naval expedition captured Guayaquil, and La Mar's main army of four thousand men occupied the province of Loja and penetrated within forty miles of Cuenca, only to be defeated. The Peruvian president signed a treaty giving up his conquests, but he was no sooner safe in his own country than he repudiated it and refused to surrender Guayaquil. His defeat had, however, cost him his prestige at home, and one of his generals, Gamarra, revolted and declared himself dictator.

Gamarra had been chief of staff at Ayacucho; he was a good soldier, but, like most of his companions, had no conception of constitutional government, and thought the men whose bravery had redeemed Peru from the Spaniards' ipso facto entitled to govern. Force was the only method he knew to secure obedience, and under his administration taxes were arbitrarily increased, citizens exiled without trial, and the country virtually governed by martial law. Until the last year of his administration Gamarra held the country fairly quiet, but as the end of his legal term in 1833 approached, the question of the succession plunged Peru into an indescribable anarchy. Gamarra's enemies got control of the assembly called to frame a permanent Constitution and illegally named a president, while Gamarra proclaimed one of his own partisans. Every military chief who could command the support of a few soldiers acted on his own responsibility. Dictators and soi-disant presidents were put up and pulled down one after another in a bewildering succession. Orbegoso, La Fuente, Vista Florida, Nieto, San Roman, Vidal, Gamarra, and Salaverry were each proclaimed supreme within the next year. Combinations of the different chiefs formed, dissolved, and re-formed with perplexing rapidity. Two bands would fight a bloody battle one day and the next would fall into each other's arms and swear eternal friendship.

Salaverry, a chief only thirty years old and remarkable for his dash and energy, succeeded in establishing himself pretty firmly at Lima, while Gamarra held Cuzco. Orbegoso, who had received a majority of votes in congress, entered into negotiations with Santa Cruz, the strong dictator of Bolivia, agreeing to everything to get help against Salaverry and Gamarra. The wily Bolivian had planned to divide Peru and unite the fragments with Bolivia into a confederation. At the head of five thousand men he advanced on Cuzco and wiped out Gamarra. The fiery Salaverry did not wait to be trapped at Lima, but left the capital with his whole force and hastened south. Not daring to attack Santa Cruz's vastly superior army, he slipped around to Arequipa, laying that unhappy town under contribution and impressing its citizens into his army. The Bolivians followed; he evacuated Arequipa, and evaded them for a time, but they finally caught him as he was making a daring attempt to cut their line of communication. His army was dispersed and destroyed and he and his principal officers were taken prisoners and mercilessly shot.

It seemed as if Peru might now, under the strong rule of Santa Cruz, enjoy the peace and order with which he had blessed Bolivia. The country was partitioned, Orbegoso becoming sub-president of North Peru, which included Lima, and General Herrera of South Peru. Santa Cruz was proclaimed protector of the Peru-Bolivian confederation and the new government formally inaugurated in the fall of 1836. He was an able and laborious administrator, zealous for economy and purity in public affairs, a friend of orderly government, a ruler who knew how to organise an efficient army while maintaining it in due subordination. But from the beginning it was evident that he held supremacy by a very uncertain tenure. The Peruvian military classes, so long and so absolutely dominant, were unanimously against him and his methods. The mercantile, professional, and moneyed classes were bound by a hundred ties to the officers, and the agricultural peasantry, composed of Indians and negroes, took no part in public affairs. Sooner or later he must have come again into conflict with men of the Gamarra-Salaverry type, but the immediate peril was from Chile, whose power and energy—great even then, but so far unknown and underestimated—were thrown into the balance against him. The civil war of 1831 had resulted in the defeat of the Chilean liberals, and Freire, their leader, had fled to Peru and there received aid and comfort. The Chilean remonstrances remained unnoticed, and Santa Cruz's commercial policy was adverse. The defeated Peruvian generals swarmed into Chile and promised to aid an invasion.

The Chilean aristocracy could not resist this temptation to make their country the dominant power on the Pacific coast, and without any warning their ships sailed up from Valparaiso and captured the Peruvian fleet at Callao. This left the way clear to land troops on the Bolivian or Peruvian coasts. The first expedition went against the province of Arequipa. It landed without resistance and climbed to the city, while Santa Cruz's army maintained a defensive attitude. Lack of provisions soon compelled the Chilean general to promise that the war should not be renewed if he were allowed to depart. His government refused to ratify this agreement, and sent another expedition to the neighbourhood of Lima, which was accompanied by Gamarra and a large number of Peruvian exiles. Orbegoso declared his independence of Santa Cruz and gave battle to the Chileans on his own responsibility, but was defeated and fled to Guayaquil.

A year elapsed before Santa Cruz could march an adequate army to the neighbourhood of Lima. As he approached, Gamarra and the Chileans evacuated the capital, retiring up the coast, whither the Bolivians followed. Repulsed in an attack on the rearguard of the fleeing allies, and feeling that he could not rely upon the Peruvians in his army, he took the defensive and posted his forces near the town of Yungay, occupying a hill called the Sugar Loaf. The allies stormed this hill by a brilliant assault in which they suffered greatly, but their unexpected success completely demoralised Santa Cruz's army. His men scattered in all directions, and though he escaped with his life, his prestige was destroyed. Gamarra became president of Peru, Bolivia revolted, and Santa Cruz made his way to a European exile.

During two years Gamarra kept his turbulent rivals in check, but he then rashly undertook a campaign against Bolivia, giving as a pretext the refusal of its government to expel the old adherents of Santa Cruz. The Peruvian army advanced into Bolivian territory, only to be overthrown in the bloody battle of Yngavi. Gamarra was killed and his best officers taken prisoners. The Bolivians made a counter-invasion, but a treaty of peace was soon signed. The removal of the common danger was the starting signal for a race to power among the Peruvian generals. Each of them had raised troops on his own account and now proposed to use them for his own benefit. They ignored the claims of Gamarra's constitutional successor. La Fuente, Vivanco, and Vidal formed an alliance and proclaimed the latter dictator; Torico seized Lima and declared himself supreme chief; Vidal hastened down from Guamanga and defeated him; then Vivanco rebelled against Vidal and in his turn descended on the capital.

Twenty years of independence had brought Peru no nearer a stable government. Anarchy and civil war had been her lot, and the situation seemed to grow more desperate year by year. The country's only hope was a man in whom military talent would be combined with such strength of will and pertinacity of purpose that he would crush out lesser despots and restore and maintain order by the strong hand.