Applying these tests to the Latin-American republics, it will appear that by both tests several of the greatest are indisputably nations. Chile and Argentina have each of them a distinctive national quality which so marks them off from their neighbours that even the passing traveller can discern it. They have national character as well as national sentiment. So, too, have Mexico and Peru.[104] The same thing is true of Uruguay, the people of which, originally the same as that of Argentina, have developed, in the course of a tempestuous history, a somewhat different type. Brazil, being Portuguese, has always had a character of its own. These six republics may all be deemed to be nations in the European sense of the word. I have not visited Paraguay, but should suppose that in it the numerical preponderance of the native Guarani stock brings about a result similar to that which an infusion of coloured blood has had in Cuba, but more marked.
In most of the other republics there seems to be much less that can be called distinctive of each. Colombians, Venezuelans, and Ecuadorians inhabit regions generally similar, have had a similar history, and have all received about an equal infusion of native blood, though in each—and especially in Colombia—there are some few old Spanish families who have remained unaffected. The average citizen of any of these countries is said to be but slightly distinguishable from the average citizen of either of the other two.[105] The same is the case as regards Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. But in each and all of these states there is a profusion of militant nationalist spirit, which, in Central America, has been fostered by frequent wars. Ecuador has been repeatedly on the point of taking up arms against Colombia on one side and Peru on the other, over disputes about territory. So far as national sentiment can make a nation, these republics have it to overflowing. Their common Hispano-American nationality no more checks aggressive displays of enmity than a common Tuscan origin mitigated the strife of Florence and Siena, or a common Bœotian origin the hatred of Thebes and Platæa.
The republic whose individuality has been most fully developed is Chile. Its citizens are seen at first sight to be Chileans, just as in Europe we recognize at once a member of any of the leading peoples. Most Spanish Americans are good fighters, but the Chileans perhaps the best; for they are the children of the most dogged of the native races as well as of the most stalwart of the Spanish settlers. The same combination of patriotism and pugnacity is seen in the Uruguayans. In character as well as in speech, the Argentines are also beginning to shew a character different from that of the other peoples; but the mental and moral type, as is natural in a country rapidly growing and deluged with immigrants, is not yet fully formed.
It may be asked whether the best evidence of the emergence of a genuine and distinctively national life ought not to be found in the growth of a national literature expressing, in whatever form, the ardour and the aspirations of the people. Those who quote the age of Queen Elizabeth and the age of Lewis the Fourteenth as instances to support the doctrine that eras of successful war and growing power herald, or coincide with, an epoch of literary creation, may expect to find that the incessant strife which has kept hot the blood of the citizens in some republics, and the rapid material progress of others, promise an era of intellectual production in South America. Of this, however, there has been so far no sign. National spirit seems little disposed to flow in this channel. In the southern republics there is plenty of energy, but not much of it is directed towards art or science or letters. The long and fierce conflict of Chile and Peru was marked on both sides by much valour and some heroism, but no poem like the Araucana followed. In the more backward states, incessant strife has hindered instead of stimulating intellectual as well as economic progress. In the prosperous ones, men's minds are bent upon the development of natural resources, and in the very richest, where there should be most leisure for mental cultivation, upon material pleasures and luxuries.
III. We have still one more question to ask before closing this consideration of the process by which nations have been evolved out of the old administrative divisions of Spanish America, divisions originally due to the historical accidents, which had in colonial times placed different districts under the authority of different officials. How far does there exist among the peoples of these republics the sense of a common Hispano-American nationality? Do they feel their common Spanish origin, together with Spanish literature and the ideas and social customs which they share, to be a source of common pride and a bond of unity between them, linking them together despite political severances and antagonisms? Spaniards had a certain amount of common Spanish feeling before Castile and Aragon were united, and Italians, so far from ceasing to feel themselves Italians during the centuries before 1848, when they were cut up into many states, some of them ruled by foreign dynasties, were stirred by a more vehement nationalism in that year than ever before. Can one, then, for any and for what purposes, treat Spanish America as being one whole, either intellectually or sentimentally?
It has already been observed that to the traveller the differences between one republic and another seem comparatively slight, not greater than those which he would have noted in wandering leisurely through Germany before 1866 and 1870 when first the North German Confederation and then the new German Empire came into being. Not only is the language the same, with dialectic variations which are comparatively few when one considers the vast area and the large aboriginal element in the population, but manners and social usages are similar everywhere, though less polished in the wilder parts.
Similarity goes even deeper, for it is found in ideas and in mental habits. A Costa Rican and an Argentine differ less than a Texan does from a Vermonter, or a Caithness man from a Devonshire man. All remain in a sense Spanish; that is, they are much more like Spaniards and more like one another than they are like Frenchmen or Italians. They are nearer to one another than North Americans are to Englishmen. They have the broad features of Spanish character and temperament,—the love of sonorous phrases, the sensitiveness to friendliness or affront, the sense of personal dignity, steady courage in war, and the power of patient endurance. And among men of education and thought the basis of intellectual character and the sense of moral values seems to be substantially the same.
Nevertheless, the feeling of a common Hispano-American brotherhood is weak. In Old Spain there was before and during the sixteenth century a localism strong enough to make Catalonians and Castilians and Andalusians care more for their province than for Spain, unless, of course, a question of national union against the foreigner came in. The sentiment of racial fraternity expressed in the saying that "blood is thicker than water" is easily suspended or even overridden and for the time extinguished by political bitterness. The Thebans, according to the story, fined their great poet because he had consecrated two splendid lines to the praise of Athens. Not even the closest literary and commercial intercourse and the pride of an ancient and glorious stock prevented the people of New England from hating those of old England for more than a generation after the War of 1812. Among the Spanish Americans literature and historical traditions have not been forces making for cohesion, for there has been, in most of the republics, little literary production, and their traditions seldom go back further than the revolutionary war.
Were there then no memories of Spanish greatness? These may have had some power in colonial days while the struggle of Spain and Catholicism against England and Holland was at its height. But in later times the preference shewn by the viceroys to persons sent out from the mother country, and the habit of reserving for them all offices of profit, exasperated the criollos, as the native-born colonists were called. They were further alienated by the stupidly repressive character of colonial administration. These follies and abuses, and the cruelties which accompanied the long War of Independence, seem to have effaced the sense of any community based on the Spanish name. One might, indeed, have rather found a bond in the common aversion to Spain and in a sympathy with one another springing out of the struggle against her power. The war was, however, in the main, waged independently by each colony. The Argentine army of San Martin gave effective help to Chile, and with Chilean troops practically achieved the liberation of Peru, where the royal cause was strongest; and in that result the Venezuelan Bolivar had also a share. Colombia and Venezuela helped one another, and both helped Ecuador. But so far has this coöperation been from becoming a basis for friendship, that the bitterest of all South American antagonisms is that of Peru and Chile, and it is only recently that the danger of a conflict between Chile and Argentina has disappeared.
Neither has their common profession of the Roman Catholic faith served to strengthen affection among the republics. As there was no Protestantism in Spanish America, they were never called upon to rally together in defence of the Church, and in some republics men united to attack her privileges or her property. She has often brought not peace, but a sword. The only thing that to-day would draw the republics into line and knit them together would be any threat of aggression from outside. They have long ceased to fear invasion, still less subjugation, by any European power. But the enormous strength of the United States and recollections both of the war she waged against Mexico in 1846 and of some more recent events make them watch the actions of that country with a sensitive suspicion which even the correctness of her conduct in twice evacuating Cuba has not entirely dispelled.