CHAPTER XXII
THE INDEPENDENCE OF SPANISH AMERICA
Having followed the course of the Brazilian fortunes from the elevation of the province to a kingdom, from its promotion to an Empire, and from its Imperial status to its modern Republican condition, it is necessary to revert again to the Spanish-speaking territories of the Continent.
It must be admitted that the epoch that immediately followed the war of liberation was one of strife and bitter disillusion. A certain number of the leaders had foreseen the chaotic phase which had necessarily to be undergone before the benefits of independence and enlightenment could be enjoyed. These, however, were restricted to the very small intellectual minority. The great bulk of the population of the late provinces, now nations, had anticipated nothing of the kind. In their eyes the period of transition had been pictured as fleeting and as of no account. It had, indeed, been popularly considered as but a step from a condition of oppression and dependence to that of complete freedom and self-government.
It was not long before the fallacy of all such theories was shattered. Indeed, the very earliest periods of independence were ominously prophetic of what Spanish South America was destined to suffer before it emerged from the chaos of blood and strife, and before its various nations were enabled to stand firmly on their own feet.
In some respects, but only in some, South America, freed from the Spaniard, resembled the ancient Britain deprived of its Roman rulers and garrison. It is true that the Spanish army had been forced, struggling, from the Continent by means of battle and blood, and that the Roman legions had left the coasts of Britain amid the lamentations of the natives. One thing, however, is quite certain, that neither race was prepared to govern itself. Washington was duplicated in the south by Bolivar and San Martin, but the influence of Bolivar and San Martin died very shortly after the dramatic events in which they took part.
It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that this influence was overlooked for the time being and forgotten, since, those periods of all-absorbing anarchy notwithstanding, the influence of Bolivar and San Martin has manifested itself strongly from time to time during every generation which has succeeded.
That the age of petty and local tyrants should have followed so closely on the skirts of the great national and Continental revolution was inevitable in the circumstances. Spanish South America was Royalist by custom and tradition. Whatever the nations might in the first instance term themselves, their inhabitants were bound by these very traditions and instincts to find some leader whom they could put in the place of the once revered, but never seen, monarch.
Thus the rather curious circumstance arose that South America flung off the Spanish dominion (which during its last decade had grown by comparison with the past considerate and beneficent), in order to replace it by the far more tyrannical Governors of their own creation. It was doubtless the fact that these despots who ruled so unmercifully over the South Americans were men of their own race and country that tended to reconcile the private citizens to the very real perils and oppressions which they now had to endure. The social upheaval had been such that, although many of these caudillos or despotic chieftains were descended from aristocratic Spanish colonial families, others were mere children of opportunity, whose ancestry and origin could bear no comparison with their feats, dark though these latter may have been.