Guatemala

by William Tufts Brigham

Three centuries of abasement had been a most inopportune school for the freedom of a republic, and one cannot be surprised that the change was no easy one, or that the results have not, even after two generations, been all that the patriots among these first rebels may have wished. Subjectively, “Be thou fed” is very easy; but objectively the result seldom meets the command. Slavery was abolished forty years before the great Republic of the North dared to do that right; but this eminently proper step was very embarrassing, for not only were there no means left for the forced repair of roads, bridges, and other means of intercourse, that in a tropical country need constant vigilance, but the commerce between town and town fell off, and the little traffic that had led a struggling existence for some years with Spain and other European countries now died out entirely, and the revenues of the State were affected with an atrophy that crippled every attempt of the Government to improve the internal communications of the country. The clergy, who had perhaps made the freest use of forced labor, in covering the land with elaborate churches and convents that all the revenues of the Government of the present day could hardly keep in repair, felt aggrieved and uneasy. All was in transition, and there were few wise men to guide the counsels. The stream was turbulent, and not easily kept within its proper channel. Is it wonderful that round blocks should be found in square holes under such circumstances; or that the political equilibrium, all unstable, should turn to this signal disturbance or that, without much reason?

There were two parties, around which rallied opposing elements,—the Conservative, Central, or Servile, as it was variously called, and the Federal, Liberal, or Democratic. To the former belonged the leading families, who possessed certain monopolies and feared to lose them; the clergy, who with these few families held themselves for an aristocracy; and a few of the lower classes, who from personal or religious feelings were satisfied with the existing order of things: and all these bitterly resisted any innovation, especially any attack upon the privileges of the Church. To the Liberals flocked all those who did not enjoy monopolies, and who could not be worse off under any change; but there came to this standard also men of intellect, who saw the dangers which threatened their country, and who rejected the superstition into which the local Church had fallen, but who in their eagerness to hold up the example of the United States of the North to their newly emancipated countrymen, forgot the radical difference between the Anglo-Saxon and Spanish stock and training. Then came in the feeling of race-prejudice; and when one remembers that three quarters of the population was Indian, and that of the other quarter was composed the entire ruling class, it will perhaps be a matter of surprise that more evil did not come from this threatening condition of affairs. If the Indios of Guatemala had not been the most peaceable and law-abiding of their kind known to history, they might have improved the opportunity to repay all the miseries inflicted upon their ancestors. As it happened, they could at least be conscious of their power.

With no fixed policy, the ancient States of the kingdom of Guatemala cut adrift from Spain. At one time all, except San Salvador, entertained the idea of union with the new Empire of Mexico under Iturbide, but they escaped that complication by the early collapse of the Mexican throne; and at last, on the 1st of April, 1823, representatives of the States met in the City of Guatemala, and the Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, after long debates and many propositions, in which, as might be supposed, the Church party had no unimportant influence, a Federal Constitution was proclaimed on Nov. 24, 1824.

Three years later the Vice-President, Flores, was murdered in Quezaltenango by a mob of female furies instigated, it is claimed, by the Church party, and his body was stripped and mutilated by the fiend-like women. This was done in the church as the wretched man clung to the altar, and it was done in the name of religion. The consequence immediately following was an absolute reign of religious fanaticism. San Salvador, however, sent an army to restore order, and on March 16, 1827, attacked the capital; but these troops of the Liberal party were driven back, and for two years a barren warfare was kept up. In 1829 General Francisco Morazan led the Salvadoreñan army to Guatemala; and now success attended the Liberals. After a battle lasting three days they entered Guatemala City in triumph, banished the leaders of the Central party, and suppressed the convents. In 1831 Morazan was elected President of the Republic or Confederacy, and for ten years his party held the government. It is not easy for a foreigner to get trustworthy information of the true value of Morazan’s administration; but while the man seems to have been patriotic and of excellent private character, he was not strong enough to control the warring elements around him. The Church was his bitter enemy; and while it long endured the low estate to which the party in power had reduced it, there was no lack of grumbling, nor of even more active endeavors to find a champion.

In the mean time an Indio of low birth[44] and wholly uneducated, but of great courage, had come into prominence as a leader of bands of marauding Indios. Rafael Carrera, young as he was, saw his advantage in the disturbed condition of his country, and after various defeats at the hands of the President, at last drove Morazan from Guatemala, and the Confederation came to an end (1839).

Carrera favored the Church party, but had not the slightest intention of letting the Church rule him. He knew how to use it, and the clergy generally submitted gracefully. In all previous revolutions the defeated party had been banished, and so the State was kept unanimous—a condition that could not obtain now, because neither party had much real power left after the constant struggles of the past few years. It was while our countryman John L. Stephens, whose fascinating account of his travels will always be a classic, was on a diplomatic mission to Central America that young Carrera was gathering his power, and it is to this distinguished traveller that most of the information about Carrera is due. Carrera, Fundador de la República de Guatemala (Founder of the Republic), is the title he claimed on the coinage of Guatemala during his administration; and after a long reign—the word is used intentionally—he was able to designate his successor and die in his bed, while his chief antagonist, Morazan, after a most persevering struggle for the union of Central America, was shot by his ungrateful countrymen. The tomb of Carrera is in the metropolitan church in Guatemala City.

Rafael Carrera.

On the death of Carrera, in 1865, Don Vincente Cerna succeeded to the Presidency; but he did not possess the power over the Indios that Carrera held, and before his term of office had half passed, disturbances broke out on the northern frontier, where a man named Barrios had collected a gang of outlaws. This insurrection was suppressed, and Barrios executed; he however left a successor in the person of Serapio Cruz, a very corpulent man, but for all that a typical brigand, who for some time waged a guerilla war from his mountain retreats, capturing the distilleries of aguardiente (then a Government monopoly), and destroying what he could not carry away. Joined to this enemy on the outskirts of the republic was a no-less disturbing element in the legislature in the person of Don Miguel Garcia Granados, who was most active in attacking the Government. As the Presidential term of Cerna ended, a rival in the political field, General Victor Zavala, seemed likely to be elected; but by a close vote Cerna was re-elected. In 1869 a loan was negotiated in London which enabled the Government to pay its most pressing debts, and quiet was apparently secured. All this time, however, the insurgent Cruz was strengthening his band in the mountains, where he was joined by a man destined to hold the chief place in Guatemala, General J. Rufino Barrios; and in December, 1869, the rebel army approached the capital. The city was in a most excited state, expecting pillage if not destruction, when the unexpected news came that the head of Cruz would soon be in the city. It was true; a party of Indios had attacked and defeated the chief, and now brought his bleeding head to the President. This disagreeable trophy was photographed, and prints were sold in the shops for fifty cents. The rebellion was over for the time, and Barrios fled to Mexico. President Cerna was very lenient to his enemies, and Granados was merely banished, and put under ten thousand dollars’ bond not to return to Guatemala.