LATIN AMERICA:
ITS RISE AND PROGRESS
BY
F. GARCIA CALDERON
WITH A PREFACE BY
RAYMOND POINCARÉ
Of the French Academy, President of the French Republic
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL
WITH A MAP AND 34 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
597-599 FIFTH AVENUE
1915
[All rights reserved]
TO
MONSIEUR ÉMILE BOUTROUX
(of the Institute of France)
Permit me to offer you this book as a mark of admiration and gratitude. Often of an evening, in the sober hour of twilight, hearing you comment upon a page of Plato or a line of Goethe, or explain to me with unfailing geniality and marvellous lucidity the troubles of the present day, I have gained a fuller understanding of the magnificent radiance of the French genius; and always, on leaving you, I have found pleasure in repeating the thought of Emerson, of the Emerson whom you love, concerning the utility of great men: "They make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious."
F. G. C.
PARIS, November, 1911.
PREFACE
Here is a book that should be read and digested by every one interested in the future of the Latin genius. It is written by a young Peruvian diplomatist. It is full of life and of thought. History, politics, economic and social science, literature, philosophy—M. Calderon is familiar with all and touches upon all with competence and without pedantry. The entire evolution of the South American republics is comprised in the volume which he now submits to the European public.
M. Calderon, a pupil in the school of the best modern historians, seeks in the past the laws of the future development of the Latin republics. By means of a scholarly and painstaking analysis, he shows us, in the South American Creole, a Spaniard of the heroic age, slowly transformed by miscegenation and the influence of climate; he sees in him, modified by time and enfeebled by cross-breeding, the most ancient characteristics of the Iberian race; and he expounds, in a few pages, the heroic epoch in which the individualism of Spain broke out into the audacious adventure of the conquistadores and the savage mysticism of the Inquisitors.
Then comes the colonial phase, with its disappointments, its illusions, its abuses and errors; the domination of an oppressive theocracy, of crushing monopolies; the insolence of privileged castes, and the indignities of the Peninsular agents. A thirst for independence gradually possesses the Spanish and Portuguese colonies; they rebel not merely against the economic and fiscal tyranny which is crushing them, but also against the rigours of a political and moral tutelage that leaves them no political liberty. It is a great and terrible crisis. The movement of liberation fulfils itself in three phases: firstly, the colonies seek to obtain reforms of the metropolis, still anxious to remain loyal; then they consider the question of submitting themselves to European monarchs; and, finally, the republican idea appears, develops, and is victorious.
A cycle of pioneers and a cycle of liberators: M. Calderon expounds this tragic history with a sense of gratitude. He examines with remarkable insight the fundamental causes of the Revolution—the excesses of Spanish absolutism; the influence of the Encyclopædia and the doctrines of 1789; the example of North America; the gold of England, and the intervention of Canning; the various converging forces whose fulminating combination created a new world, ill prepared for social life, fragmentary, and in travail.
M. Calderon transports us into certain of the portions of this newborn America. He makes this the occasion of setting before us a whole gallery of vigorously painted pictures. The field of vision is occupied successively by Paraguay, with the long dictatorship of its first caudillo, the gloomy, taciturn Francia, with his authoritative traditions and warlike instincts; Uruguay, with its intensely national life; Ecuador, bearing the heavy imprint of Garcia Moreno; Peru, with its tormented history, the powerful but fortunate dictatorship of Don Ramon Castilla and Manuel Pardo and the epidemic of speculation, the insanity of the saltpetre and guano booms, the abuse of loans, warfare and anarchy, and the present effort towards economic recovery and national stability; Bolivia, with the cold and crafty ambition of Santa-Cruz; Venezuela, with the gross and material audacity of Paez, and the empirical despotism of Guzman-Blanco, that politician without doctrines, avid of power, but a patriot and a paternal ruler. As M. Calderon says, the history of these Republics is difficult to distinguish from that of their caudillos, those representative men who personify, at any given moment, the virtues and vices of their peoples.
After the magnificent epic of Simon Bolivar, which M. Calderon recalls with the enthusiasm of gratitude, there commenced a troublous era of military anarchy. The ambition of the caudillos rent South America and multiplied her states. But the soul of germinating nationalities was steeped in the blood of battles, and in the heart of each people a national conscience was awakened. This was the troublous epoch of wars and revolutions.
The South American lived a life of danger, like the Florentine of the Renaissance or the Frenchman of the Terror; but presently, in the shadow of military power, wealth was evolved and order established; property became more secure, and existence more tame and normal; it was the advent of industry, commercialism, and peace. It seems to me that M. Calderon rather regrets having been born too late into a world already too old. What he terms the twilight of the caudillos fills him with a melancholy nostalgia for the bygone days. The tyrants, who were as a rule supported by the negroes and half-castes, helped to destroy racial differences and oligarchies. They have thus founded democracies which the liberal mind of M. Calderon cannot regard without goodwill, but which, to his mind, are too far lacking in the sense of solidarity; they are clumsy, inorganic, incapable of associating human effort; the rivalry of families and the hatred of factions absorbs and disturbs them, as it did the mediæval republics, and under the brilliant polish of French ideals they mask a confused medley of Europeans and Indians, Asiatics and Africans.
In these turbulent republics, however, M. Calderon is able clearly to perceive the reassuring symptoms of a powerful vitality, and he does not despair of seeing them profit in the near future by the influence of Latin discipline. From the scholastic erudition of the colonial epoch, he attentively follows the intellectual evolution of the South American populations, through the troublous mists of political ideology, to the hitherto pallid imitations of European philosophies. Despite the diversity of races intermingling in the southern continent, he is convinced that the constant and secular action of the Roman law, a common religion, and French ideals, has given these young republics a Latin conscience, intangible and sacred. And he expresses the hope, very wisely and reasonably, that the peoples of South America will continue in the path of self-improvement without breaking with the traditions that are natural to them, and without subjecting themselves to alien influences.
He goes on to review the German peril, the North American peril, and the Japanese peril. He does not fail to realise the extent of the first named, and he complains of the progress of the commercial immigration of Germans, especially in the southern provinces of Brazil; but he considers that the German element, in the very process of fecundation, will disappear amidst the mass of the nation. He is, on the other hand, very keenly concerned with the North American peril. Not that he fails to do justice to the marvellous qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race; not that he is indifferent to the prestige of the great northern Republic, or that he is forgetful of its services to the cause of American autonomy; but he feels the increasing weight of a tutelage originally beneficent, and anxiously demands, Quis custodiet custodem? He is not oblivious of the fact that the Monroe doctrine is changing, that it has insensibly passed from the defensive to intervention, and from intervention to conquest, and this metamorphosis gives him food for reflection. Whatever the qualities of Yankee civilisation, it is not Latin civilisation, and M. Calderon would not have the latter sacrificed to the former. He implores South America to defend itself against the danger of a Saxon hegemony, to enrich itself by means of European influences, to encourage French and Italian immigration, and to purify its races by an influx of new blood.
In the Japanese, as in the German, M. Calderon sees an indefatigable emissary of the Imperialist idea. According to him, no antagonism is more irreducible than that of America and Japan. Japanese artisans are invading the shipyards and foundries of Chili, Peru, and Brazil. They form a refractory element which will never be assimilated. He foresees that the supremacy of Japan may shortly extend over the entire Pacific, and that the whole of America will find it no trivial task to oppose this formidable power. From beginning to end of this book we hear the rallying-cry of the Latin republics. I believe that at heart M. Calderon regrets the excessive division of the states of South America. But the problem of unity, often brought to the fore in congresses and conferences, appears to him insoluble, and in default of this he would be content with intellectual alliances, with economic or fiscal unions, which would still permit the various republics to draw nearer to one another, to know one another better, and in time and on occasion to associate their defensive efforts.
I do not feel competent to criticise the advice which M. Calderon offers his compatriots.
In particular I cannot speak of his opinions concerning the presidential system in the republics of South America, and their constitutional methods, which differ so sensibly from our French parliamentary methods.
I would only remark that M. Calderon is right in warning the American states against a plague of which we in France know something, but which in young societies, deficient in established traditions, and without ancient and well-tried organisations, may well be exceptionally dangerous—the invasion of a parasitical bureaucracy, which would increasingly develop itself at the expense of the healthy portions of the nation, and which would gradually infect the soundest and most vital tissues.
Finally, without indiscretion, I may perhaps express my approval of M. Calderon's stern requisition against the policy of excessive loans. It is by running into debt over unlicensed extravagances that certain of the South American republics have gained in Europe the reputation of being financially unsound or dishonest, and have thereby, by mere force of proximity, injured the repute of wiser and more economical states.
Since the republics of South America have need of European money, they would be greatly at fault did they alienate it by excessive or reckless budgets.
Never, I believe, shall we see the dismal hour which M. Calderon's imagination hears already striking; when, expelled by Slavs and Teutons, the Latins of the old world will be forced to take refuge on the shores of the blue sea that bore their floating cradle; and a Frenchman may be forgiven for refusing to believe that the capital of classic culture will ever pass from Paris to Buenos-Ayres, as it has passed from Rome to Paris. But without lingering over such alarming anticipations as these we may delight our eyes with brighter and more immediate prospects. May South America, while remaining herself, while cultivating, as M. Calderon advises her to cultivate, the American ideal, grow ever more and more hospitable to the literature, the arts, the commerce, and the capital of France. Thereby the great Latin family can only gain in material prosperity and moral authority.
RAYMOND POINCARÉ
(of the French Academy).
(M. Poincaré wrote this Preface in December, 1911, before he became President of Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs.)
FOREWORD
There are two Americas. In the north, the "Outre-Mer" of Bourget, is a powerful industrial republic, a vast country of rude energies, of the "strenuous life." In the south are twenty leisurely states of unequal civilisation, troubled by anarchy and the colour problem. The prestige of the United States, their imperialism, and their wealth, have cast a shade over the less orderly Latin republics of the south. The title of America seems to be applied solely to the great imperial democracy of the north.
Yet among these American nations are wealthy peoples whose domestic organisation has been greatly improved, such as the Argentine, Brazil, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay. They must not be confounded with the republics of Central America, with Hayti or Paraguay. French writers and politicians, such as M. Anatole France, M. Clemenceau, and M. Jaurès, who have visited the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay, have remarked there not only an established Latin culture, but noble efforts in the direction of augmenting the internal peace of the nations, and extraordinary riches. They are agreed in declaring that these young countries possess economic forces and an optimism which will yield them a brilliant future.
Several of these states have lately celebrated their first centenary. Their independence was won during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The year 1810 was the beginning of a new epoch, during which autonomous republics were formed, not without tragedy, upon the remnants of the Spanish power.
The time has come, it would seem, to study these peoples, together with their evolution and progress, unless we are willing to take it as proved that the United States of North America are the sole focus of Transatlantic civilisation and energy.
We propose to draw up the balance-sheet of these South American republics. This is the object of this book. We must seek in the history of these states the reason of their inferiority and the data which relate to their future.
First of all we must study the conquering race which discovered and colonised America. We must analyse the Spanish and Portuguese genius, the Iberian genius, half European, half African. After the conquest new societies sprang up under the stern domination of Spain and Portugal. They were over-seas theocracies, jealously guarded from all alien trade. Unlike Saxon America, where the Dutch and English immigrants held themselves sternly apart from the Indians, pursuing them and forcing them westward, in South America conquerors and conquered intermingled. The half-castes became the masters by force of numbers, conceiving a thirst for power and a hatred of the proud and overbearing Spaniards and Portuguese. War broke out between the Iberians and the Americans; it was a civil war. Then new states were rapidly formed, without traditions of government or established social classification.
These states were dominated by military chieftains, by caudillos. From barbarism and periodic anarchy proceeded the Dictators. We shall be able to study some of the representative personalities of this period, and to disentangle from the monotonous development of events the history of certain nations, such as Brazil, in which the social medley has been dominated by the principle of authority. In the Argentine, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chili we shall perceive a new industrial order, by means of which political life grows less disturbed and the caudillos lose their authority (Books I. and II.).
The study of intellectual evolution shows us how great is the power of ideology in these rising democracies. They imitate the French Revolution; they submit themselves to the influence of the ideas of Rousseau and the Romantics, and of the doctrines of the individualists. America, Spanish and Portuguese by origin, is becoming French by culture (Book III.).
Here we proceed to the study of the part played by the Latin spirit in the formation of these peoples, and the perils which threaten them, whether these proceed from the United States, from Germany, or from Japan, and to consider the faults and the qualities of this spirit (Book IV.). Then follows an analysis of the problems and the future of Latin America (Book V.).
The conclusion to be drawn from this examination is that the political life of the Ibero-American peoples is as yet chaotic, but that some of them have already cast off the fetters of an unfortunate heredity. Across the ocean liberty and democracy are steadily becoming realities. In the battles of the future the support of America will be valued by the great peoples of the Mediterranean who are struggling for the supremacy of the Latin race.
CONTENTS
THE CONQUERING RACE
Its psychological characteristics—Individualism and its aspects—The sentiment of equality—African fanaticism.
THE COLONIES OVERSEA
The conquerors—The conquered races—The influence of religion in the new societies—Colonial life.
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles—Monarchy and the Republic—The leaders: Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar—Bolivar the Liberator: his ideas and his deeds.
II. Revolutionary ideology—Influence of Rousseau—The rights of man—The example of the United States—English ideas in the constitutional projects of Miranda and Bolivar—European action: Canning—Nationalism versus Americanism.
MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD
Anarchy and dictatorship—The civil wars: their significance—Characteristics of the industrial period.
VENEZUELA: PAEZ—GUZMAN-BLANCO
The moral authority of Paez—The Monagas—The tyranny of Guzman-Blanco—Material progress.
PERU: GENERAL CASTILLA—MANUEL PARDO—PIEROLA
The political work of General Castilla—Domestic peace—The deposits of guano and saltpetre—Manuel Pardo, founder of the anti-military party—The last caudillo—Pierola: his reforms.
BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia—The tyrants Belzu, Molgarejo—The last caudillos: Pando, Montes.
URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA—RIVERA—THE NEW CAUDILLOS
The factions: Reds and Whites—The leaders: Artigas, Lavalleja, Rivera—The modern period.
THE ARGENTINE: RIVADAVIA—QUIROGA—ROSAS
Anarchy in 1820—The caudillos: their part in the formation of nationality—A Girondist, Rivadavia—The despotism of Rosas—Its duration and its essential aspects.
MEXICO: THE TWO EMPIRES—THE DICTATORS
The Emperor Iturbide—The conflicts between Federals and Unitarians—The Reformation—The foreign Emperor—The dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz—Material progress and servitude—The Yankee influence.
CHILI: A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE
Portales and the oligarchy—The ten-years' Presidency—Montt and his influence—Balmaceda the reformer.
BRAZIL: THE EMPIRE—THE REPUBLIC
The influence of the Imperial régime—A transatlantic Marcus Aurelius—Dom Pedro II.—The Federal Republic.
PARAGUAY: PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP
Dr. Francia—The opinion of Carlyle—The two Lopez—Tyranny and the military spirit in Paraguay.
COLOMBIA
Conservatives and Radicals—General Mosquera: his influence—A statesman: Raphael Nuñez, his doctrines political.
ECUADOR
Religious conflicts—General Flores and his political labours—Garcia Moreno—The Republic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS—CENTRAL AMERICA—HAYTI—SAN-DOMINGO
Tyrannies and revolutions—The action of climate and miscegenation—A republic of negroes: Hayti.
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
Conservatives and Liberals — Lastarria — Bilbao — Echeverria — Montalvo — Vigil — The Revolution of 1848 and its influence in America—English ideas: Bello, Alberdi—The educationists.
THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES
Spanish classicism and French romanticism—Their influence in America—Modernism—The work of Ruben Dario—The novel—The conte or short story.
THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Bello—Hostos—The influence of England—Positivism—The influence of Spencer and Fouillée—-The sociologists
ARE THE IBERO-AMERICANS OF LATIN RACE?
Spanish and Portuguese heredity—Latin culture—The influence of the Roman laws, of Catholicism, and of French thought—The Latin spirit in America: its qualities and defects.
THE GERMAN PERIL
German Imperialism and the Monroe doctrine—Das Deutschtum and Southern Brazil—What the Brazilians think about it.
THE NORTH AMERICAN PERIL
The policy of the United States—The Monroe doctrine: its various aspects—Greatness and decadence of the United States—The two Americas, Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT: CUBA
The work of Spain—The North-American reforms—The future.
THE JAPANESE PERIL
The ambitions of the Mikado—The Shin Nippon in Western America—Pacific invasion—Japanese and Americans.
THE PROBLEM OF UNITY
The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of development—Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral unity in the same degree as Latin America—The future groupings of the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles, Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the Confederation of La Plata—Political and economical aspects of these unions—The last attempts at federation in Central America—The Bolivian Congress—The A.B.C.—the union of the Argentine, Brazil, and Chili.
THE PROBLEM OF RACE
The gravity of the problem—The three races, European, Indian, and negro—Their characteristics—The mestizos and mulattos—The conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le Bon—Regression to the primitive type.
THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
The caudillos: their action—Revolutions—Divorce between written Constitutions and political life—The future parties—The bureaucracy.
THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
Loans—Budgets—Paper money—The formation of national capital.
AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES
The Panama Canal and the two Americas—The future conflicts between Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins—The role of Latin America.
ILLUSTRATIONS
[GENERAL FRANCISCO DE MIRANDA (VENEZUELA)]
[DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON]
[OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA]
[PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDEPENDENCE DAY]
[THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO, CHILE]
[RUFINO BLANCO FOMBONA (VENEZUELA)]
MAP
[Transcriber's note: The above map (of South America) was omitted from this ebook, being too large (approximately 18"x24") and fragile to scan.]
BOOK I
THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLES
When the Iberians arrived in America they found either tribes or peoples of semi-civilised inhabitants. These natives differed from the Spanish and Portuguese invaders to such a degree that their conquest was a true creation of new societies on the ruins of ancient barbarian states. Before analysing the various aspects of American history we must therefore know something of the genius of the conquering race.
Conquerors and vanquished intermingled; territorial possession modified the spirit of the conquerors; and the colonies began to dream of conquering their independence. After twenty years of warfare the republic became the political type of these societies, which were exhausted by Spanish tyranny. Two periods, one of military anarchy, the other of domestic order, wealth, and industrialism, succeeded in the new States.
HIDALGO.
A priest who prepared for the independence of Mexico from the Spanish power.
LATIN AMERICA
CHAPTER I
THE CONQUERING RACE
Its psychological characteristics—Individualism and its aspects—The sentiment of equality.—African fanaticism.
Travellers and psychologists find in modern Greece the craft of Ulysses, the rhetorical ability of the Athenian sophists, and the anarchy of the brilliant democracies once grouped about the blue Mediterranean. Though its purity has been tainted by the onset of Africa and the Turks, the old Hellenic spirit survives in the race. A similar vitality is to be observed in America. The transatlantic Creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the spirit of race survives: the Republic reproduces the essential traits of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous, flowing past the ancient landmarks. The same little anxieties trouble mankind, which no longer has the haughty moral rigidity of the old hidalgos. Belief, conversation, intolerance—all retain the imprint of the narrow mould imposed upon them by three centuries of the proudly exclusive spirit of Spain. To study the political and religious history of the last century in the American democracies is to add a chapter to the history of Iberian evolution. Beyond the ocean and the fabled columns which were overthrown by the pikes of the conquistadors is another Spain, tropical, and divided against itself, in which the grace of Andalusia has vanquished the austerity of Castile.[[1]]
If the troublous existence of the metropolitan state could be reduced to the simplicity of a formula, that formula would also explain the troublous history of a score of American republics, just as the deep root will reveal the germ of the vicious development of a tropical tree. But nothing would be more impossible than to reduce to an abstract and enforced unity the disturbed evolution of Spain, full as it is of anarchy and bloodshed. The Peninsula, divided into hostile regions, the refuge of inimical races, presents in its past such contradictions as defy synthesis. Amid this theocratic people the development of municipal liberties was premature. While feudality still imposed its authority upon the rest of Europe, Spain saw the rise of the free cities. Beside the eternal Quixotism which renounces the vulgar kingdom of the useful in order to give itself only to the ideal the wise refrains of the people express a dense, prosaic, positive realism. The Catholic nation par excellence furnished the Duke of Alba with the troops that were to conquer Rome. After long years of absolute monarchy the old democratic spirit was reborn in the Peninsular juntas which opposed the French invasion. From Cantabria to Cadiz we discover, beneath the unity of Castile, a splendid variety of provincial types. The Asturian hardness contrasts with the rhythm of Andalusia, the impetuosity of Estremadura with the dryness of Catalonia, the tenacity of the Basques with the proud idleness of the Castilian.
From this territorial complexity arises a turbulent life: the secular struggle in favour of national unity, the generous epic of the Catholic crusade against Islam, and the gloomy pursuit of religious unity by means of inquisitorial holocausts. European history is transformed south of the Pyrenees. Feudality is arrested; the crusade against the infidel lasts eight centuries; religion and empire are established in magnificence like that of the Oriental theocracies. In the wealth of this national development persist the racial characteristics which we wish to determine: individualism, democracy, the local spirit so inimical to great unities, and the African fanaticism which is satisfied only with excessive sensations and extreme solutions—in short, the heritage of a grave and heroic race, in a state of perpetual moral tension, proud in the face of God and king and fate.
Individualism is the fundamental note of the Spanish psychology. An Iberian characteristic, it has all the force of an imperious atavism. It exalts any form of action, of self-affirmation; it inspires an unreasonable confidence in self and the powers of self; it tends to develop human energy, to preserve the national independence from external pressure, to defend it against the rigour of the law, the moral imperative, and the rigidity of duty; and it creates in exalted spirits an ardent desire of domination.
Strabo observed among the primitive Iberians, who were divided into hostile tribes, an immense pride, inimical to union and discipline. In his life and attitude the Spaniard reveals all the outward and inward aspects of individualism. The austerity and arrogance revealed by the very folds of the hidalgo's mantle, by his majestic port, his sonorous speech, and his lordly gesture, the personal valour which turns history into an epic, the audacity, the love of adventure, and the isolation, are forms of personal exaltation. "The Spaniards, in their simplicity," says the squire Marcos de Obregon, "persuade themselves that they are the absolute masters of all."
Individualism explains the analogies between Iberian and English history: the civilisation of the Peninsula recalls, in some of its characteristics, that of the Anglo-Saxons. In both we find the premature affirmation of liberty, an excessive pride, and a long struggle against invasions. From this arises an aggressive imperialism: commercial in the north, religious in the south. In England the climate and the territory gave individualism a utilitarian bent; in Spain the conflict with Islam gave it a warlike tendency. Idealism, the inward life, and imaginative exaltation created the Puritans in England; in Spain the mystics and the inquisitors. But in the conquest of hostile circumstances the Saxon acquires a sense of realism; while the Iberian, under a fiery sun, becomes in Spain as in America a hunter of chimeras. A symbol will express the resemblance between the two histories: Ariel and Caliban, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent the same eternal dualism of idealism and realism. Caliban has given England a vast empire; the knight-errant has returned to his native La Mancha, exhausted by his barren adventure.
Spanish evolution, and the moral and religious aspects of Peninsular life, are to be explained by this perpetual exaltation of the individual. Stoicism is the moral aspect of individualism. It preaches virility (esto vir. says Seneca): it develops the human will as opposed to Destiny; it is a gospel of austerity in the face of suffering, of silent heroism in the face of death. Seneca is for Roman Spain the teacher of energy; from his teaching proceeds that tenacious faith in character which touches Peninsular history with a grave virility. Christianity, which proclaims human dignity, becomes the national religion south of the Pyrenees. According to the Stoics, all men are equal before Destiny; according to Christ, they are equal before God; and of these two doctrines a formidable pride is born. Finally, in mysticism, the original expression of the religious genius of Spain, there is nothing to recall the pantheism of the Orient, nor the annihilation of man before the Absolute. The Peninsular mystics exalt their individuality, draw strength from the visit of their Friend, become divine through ecstasy, and aspire with the ardour of conquerors to the possession of God. To the German Reformation, which preached predestination, the theologians of Spain opposed free human choice, the efficacy of action, and the dignity and merit of effort. The Spanish religion was by no means satisfied with speculation; it made for action and preached energy. The struggles of Spain have a religious significance; the heroes are mystics and the mystics "knights of the Divine order." Ignatius Loyola and Saint Teresa dream of heroic undertakings and read the romances of chivalry. Mysticism inspires the warriors; faith purifies the covetousness of the conquerors.
Wilful and mystical, the Spanish temperament is active, and expresses itself externally in conflict; it manifests itself in comedy and tragedy. The Peninsular genius is dramatic. Adventure, movement, and the shock of passions are developed in an ample theatre which expresses all the aspects of aggravated individualism. The struggle is not only for independence, but for fame, to preserve the integrity of honour in the general eye. Jealous and revengeful, this preoccupation in respect of honour, which is profoundly Spanish, inspires innumerable tragedies. Antagonisms, ruptures, theses, and antitheses abound in Iberian history; the positivism of Sancho Panza, the idealism of Don Quixote; obstinacy and idleness; sloth and violence; parasitism and adventure; gloom and solemnity such as we find in the paintings of Zurbaran and Ribera, together with the frivolity of harmonious dance and festival and light-headed madness in the hot sunlight; faith in the will and acceptation of destiny; the ardour of mystics and conquerors and the cynicism of rogues and beggars; heroic disinterestedness and passionate covetousness: these are the irreducible contradictions of the Spanish mind, which explain the long conflict, the intensity of the internal drama. On the stage we find the reflection of these conflicts, these indurated wills; subtle passions, grandiose pride, lofty character; tragedies with a touch of farce and comedies with a mystic background. The literature of Chivalry—the immense crop of romances, the rude primitive poetry, the Cid, the Children of Lara—is a commentary upon individualism and action. The great literary types—the hero, the adventurer, the mystic, the noble chieftain, the knight, the lover—are exalted individualities. The picaro himself belongs to this hardy family; he is proud as any knight, and a goodly number of knights are picaresque. Subtle and sceptical, the picaro employs both cunning and heroism in the daily struggle for life. Of "Gongorism," a school of Spanish literature, Martinez-Ruiz has written that it is the expression of movement in language, a dynamic poetry for men of action. Dramas and romances of energy, violent epics, with nothing of the antique serenity: these form the true literature of Spain.
In art and philosophy and literature there are really no schools, but writers, philosophers, and painters; such as El Greco, who left no imitators; solitary individuals such as Gratian and Quevedo. But in Spain we see the triumph of those military and political organisations in which the individual finds the greatest freedom: the people, the tribe, the guerilla band, the battalion. The cult of rebellious and exuberant energy is general. In the relations of king and subject the same Peninsular individualism appears.
"For besar mano de rey
No me tengo por honrado,
Porque la besó mi padre
Me tengo por afrentado."
says a Spanish rhyme. Obedience to the king is conditional; it is based upon the monarch's respect for the supreme order of justice, and his submission to a tacit or explicit contract between king and people. Charters, traditions, and usages limit the absolutism of the monarch. In the Cortes of Orcana in 1469 it is declared that the king is the "mercenary" of the people, who pay him a "salary."[[2]] All Spanish obedience is steeped in this kind of pride; the nobles of Aragon feel themselves individually the equals of the king, and collectively his superior. The cities, federated into hermandades or unions, treat with the monarch; they form a State within the State; they oppose the Government and force it to recognise their privileges. In 1226 the cities of Aragon and Catalonia demand of Jaime II. the grant of a charter of popular rights. Insurrections are frequent, and are incarnated in a hero of the rude national epic: the Cid. Mariana, a historian, authorises any violence directed against royal tyranny.
This individualism upholds a strict justice against the narrowness of the laws and the Byzantine debates of lawyers; against sentences, penalties, and tribunals. Poems and proverbs express this continual clash between the juridic ideal and the law; the Peninsular conscience condemns the partial and precarious justice of the codes. Joaquin Costa writes: "Of all the epics known to me—whether national or racial—the Spanish has done most to elevate the principle of justice, and has rendered the cult of justice most fervent." Austere and inviolable, the law represents a category of eternal relations, beside which all individualities are insignificant, even that of the king, and all institutions fragile, even the Church.
Stoical because it believed in pure justice; nourished by rude heroisms, inward visions, romances, and legends; exalted by mystic dialogues, and hardened by centuries of religious wars; the Spanish spirit, full of enthusiasm, entered upon the Renaissance, that sixteenth century which was to reveal the new continents across the ocean, the laws of Nature behind her mystery, and to create imperious personalities which opposed themselves to Fate. Then Spanish individualism broke out into mysticism, audacity, and adventure: it was the epoch of conquistadors, of politicians, of inquisitors, of Jimenez and Pizarro, Torquemada, Loyola, and Cortez. Spain broke through the circle of the Old World, fought in defence of Christian civilisation at Lepanto, and of Catholicism in Germany and Flanders; coveted the Mediterranean countries; colonised an immense and unknown continent; threatened Europe with the religious imperialism of Charles V. and Philip II., and, thanks to the legions of the Duke of Alba, imposed her will on the Pope. Her policy had the old Roman majesty and force; literature had found its "golden age"; philosophy proposed the vast harmonious solutions of Fox Morcillo, and laid down the bases of natural and national law by the pens of Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto. It was a splendid prodigality of energy, creation, conquest, and heroism—the last stage of a history of violent stoicism, which announced a long and majestic decadence.
Distrustful of hierarchies, Spanish individualism created social and democratic forms. Traditions, doctrines, customs, and laws denoted an exact sense of human equality. "Monachal democracy," said Menendez-Pelayo, in speaking of Spain, because the levelling of all classes offered certain conventual characteristics, and because there was a Christian basis to the fervour of the equalitarians; a "picaresque" democracy, wrote Salillas, alluding to the equality of the knight and the picaro, to the double phenomenon of a proud people making pretensions to nobility and a careless aristocracy continually drifting into democracy by reason of the lack of middle classes and the traditional idleness of the hidalgo. An anarchical democracy, inimical to hierarchy, proud and undisciplined, according to the analysis of Unamuno, in his profound work, En torno al Casticismo; a democratic Cæsarism, thought Oliveira Martins, for the absolutism of the monarch was not feudal royalty, but rather a principality of the Roman type. The king presided over a democracy of knights, mystics, adventurers, and rogues. This spirit of equality may be observed even in the formation of the Spanish aristocracy; the Gothic and hereditary nobility is foreign to the evolution of the Peninsular. The national aristocracy is to be found in the bosom of the Church; it is elective, subject to the current popular vicissitudes, to such a degree that the ecclesiastical councils are more truly national than the military councils and assemblies. Servitude is less rude in mediæval Spain than in the rest of Europe; the cultivator progresses, but disappears from the other side of the Pyrenees before the invasion of feudalism, and the hired or leasehold cultivator is almost free. There are tributary nobles: between the democracy and the nobility there are no irreducible divisions.
This equalitarian development is especially notable in the political world. In Spain feudalism is not a national institution, and the spirit of Gothic kingship becomes transformed under Iberian influences. In Leon and Castile the nobility are less powerful than in France or other parts of Spain, Catalonia, Navarre, and Aragon.[[3]] The social classes are not superimposed in rigorous order; cities acquire franchises, and "popular seigneuries" are formed.
The monarchy, too, undergoes this process of levelling or democratisation. The Emperor aims at equilibrium in equality; he destroys the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the people; in the political conflict he leans to one side or the other alternately. The popular tongue consecrates the equality of the social classes: "In a hundred years a king becomes a thrall; in a hundred and six a thrall becomes a king." "All are equal to the king, except in wealth."
The Spanish commune lasts, because it is the centre of this great democracy. From the beginnings of Peninsular history we see the cities struggling for their independence. They reproduce the djemaa of the Atlas, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, amid the Berbers, the parents of the Iberians; the djemaa is the African progenitor of the Spanish commune; both make an equal distribution of goods, and endeavour to avoid poverty. The djemaa, or municipality, or commune, isolated and autonomous, constitutes the political unit: the State is a confederation of free cities. The Spanish towns defend their liberties against every form of artificial unity, whether Phoenician, Greek, or Roman. Rome reigns for seven hundred years; but because she partially recognises the autonomy of the municipalities, the Spanish democracy; she increases civil rights, founds small republics, which elect their own magistrates, administer the communal finances, and discuss the payment of imposts and the distribution of lands in their ward. Thus Spanish individualism is satisfied. Rome, absorbing and centralising under the Cæsars, destroys local liberty; but a deep-seated current re-establishes the autonomy of the peoples when the Roman power decays. Assemblies of free citizens govern the cities; the Visigoth monarchy, at the suggestion of the national Church, respects the municipal organisation. Thus a hybrid system springs up, feudal in the Germanic character of the predominant aristocracy, democratic by virtue of the Councils, the Church, and the tenacious power of the cities. In the struggle against the Moors the kings compound with the proud, free cities, conceding charters and municipal privileges in exchange for a tribute of gold or flesh and blood.
Liberty and democracy are of more ancient date in Spain than in England. The charter of Leon, dated 1020, anterior to the great English charter, grants the municipalities an administrative and judicial jurisdiction; it recognises the hereditary rights of the serf in the soil which he tills, and his full liberty to change his seigneur; herein we see a modified feudalism. The first charters of Castile recognised the rights of the cities. In the councils of Burgos in 1169 and of Leon in 1188 the delegates of the municipalities figured; even in the Cortes of Aragon, where the Germanic tradition was predominant, representatives of the cities were admitted as early as the twelfth century. The overlord, who extended his protectorate over a city, did not despoil it of its former sovereignty; the Behetrias were cities or groups of cities which chose as their guardian a baron or warrior chief, without losing anything of their autonomy. The cities, proud of their privileges, united with the royal power in struggling against the nobility; thirty-four of them, in 1295, constituted the Hermandad (brotherhood, guild) of Castile, which eventually numbered as many as a hundred cities. In ancient Spain we are always discovering something of the nature of a contract, a concert of free wills, a perpetual concordat between governors and governed. From the Iberian tribe to the Roman city, from the city with its franchises to the villages grouped in hermandades, and from these to the popular juntas which defend Spain against the power of France and organise an epic resistance, there is an obvious historical continuity. Local patriotism is inimical to ambitious constructive policies. Many peoples invade the Peninsula—Semites, Berbers, Arabs, Copts, Touaregs, Syrians, Kelts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Franks, Suabians, Vandals, Goths: they become superimposed like geological strata, draw apart from one another in the mountainous parts of Spain, and convert the quarrels of provinces and the rivalries of cities into regional conflicts and racial antagonisms.
In the clash of Spanish individualities, in the rude assertion of municipal prerogatives, in the democratic developments which are so hostile to any hierarchy, an African or Semitic patriotism is revealed, which converts history into a bloody tragedy. In the arid Castilian plain, confined by its glaring horizons, under its burning sun, we see the spectacle of a proud people defending absolute principles with aggressive faith. Religion is dry and fiery as the desert. Señor de Unamuno, writing of Spain,[[4]] calls her "a nation fanatical rather than superstitious, to whom the Semitic monotheism is better adapted than the Aryan polytheism." Jews and Moors are expelled from the Peninsula in the name of simple and rigid ideals, by an intolerance at once religious and political. Thus the spiritual integrity of Spain is achieved; but industry decays, poverty increases, decadence appears, and in a Spain drained of its blood by autodafés and emigrations a solitary cross is raised, the symbol of an African Christianity, to which the love of mankind is a stranger.
Spain is African, even from the prehistoric ages. The Iberian is like the men of the Atlas; like them, he is brown and dolicocephalous. The Kabyle douar and the Spanish village present remarkable analogies. An early geological change separates, by a narrow strait, two similar countries; two successive invasions spread an infusion of African blood throughout the Peninsula. Phoenicians and Carthaginians found colonies in maritime Spain; in 711 seven thousand Berbers establish themselves in the south; and the invasion of the Almohades in 1145 still further unites Iberians and Africans. During the long centuries of conflict between Christians and Arabs the two races intermingle under the cultivated tolerance of the Khalifs. The Gothic kings seek the aid of Arab chieftains in their quarrels; the Cid is a condottiere who fights alternately in the Mussulman and Christian armies, serving, with his troop of heroes, under the highest bidder. The Spanish monarchs in turn intervene in the quarrels of the Khalifs, and Alfonso VI., in 1185, allies himself with the Moorish king of Seville in order to conquer Toledo. The Arabs study under the masters of the Spanish capitals, while the Spaniards study Arabic, and are initiated into Oriental science. The language still preserves traces of the commerce between the two races. The Arabs, sceptical and refined, overlords already enervated by the grace and luxury of Andalusia, rule without fanaticism; they leave the vanquished their religion and their usages, their laws, authorities, and judges; they free such Christian slaves as are converted to Islam. The Mozarabs, Christians who live in the Mussulman States, without renouncing their faith and customs, pave the way for the fusion of the hostile races. In spite of a continual warfare, under the indifferent and alien rule of the Arab both victors and vanquished become subject, as did the first Gothic kings, to the national influence. It seems as though the gradual action of a common life were about to reconstitute the primitive type of man who once peopled Iberia from the Pyrenees to the Atlas.
The originality of Spain, contrasting, in her development, with the Indo-European nations, comes from Africa, from the atavism of the Iberians, from the long domination of the Moors, and from the Semitic Orient.
The anarchy of the tribe persists; the clergy are all-powerful, as are the African marabouts. To the feudal nobility and the European parliament the Peninsula opposes the Councils; to the struggles between Pope and Emperor, the Oriental fusion of religion and the monarchy, the Inquisition, and the omnipotence of the clergy; to the Reformation, the coalition of Catholics with Protestants, and the league of the princes of Christendom with the Sultan, a fanatical Christianity which realises the ideal of national unity by expelling Jews and Moors, and burning sorcerers and heretics in the crackling flames of autodafés. When Spain enters upon her decadence her ancient characteristics—individualism, the municipal spirit, and the democratic fervour—disappear, and the African and Semitic influences predominate. Under the theocracy the nation of conquerors degenerates; at Villalar the monarchy conquers the free cities and the arrogant nobility. The clergy reign in school and palace; as in the East, they form a superior caste. Rogues and ruffians—the picaros—succeed to the heroes and adventurers of the days of old; an Oriental parasitism invades the Peninsula, and legions of arrogant beggars people the highways of Castile. It is the final crisis of heroic Quixotism. The Moors are revenged for their defeat, imposing their African fanaticism on an impoverished Peninsula. New Spains across the ocean rise against the decadent mother-country. Exhausted with creating new nations, the conquering race sinks into repose, and a score of democracies prepare to enjoy its moral heritage.
[[1]] Of the Portuguese conquerors we may say that in their individualism and their love of adventure they resembled the Spaniards. Their fanaticism was certainly less bitter, perhaps because they had not been forced to struggle against the enemies of their faith.
[[2]] See Joaquín Costa, Concepto del Derecho en la Poesia española (Estudios jurídicos y politicos, Madrid 1884)
[[3]] Altamira, Historia de España y de la Civilizatión española, vol. i. p. 229 et seq.
[[4]] En torno al Casticismo, Madrid, 1902, p. 115.
CHAPTER II
THE COLONIES OVERSEA
The conquerors—The conquered races—The influence of religion in the new societies—Colonial life.
In the sixteenth century the Spanish race conquered the various kingdoms of America. It founded new societies, destroyed ancient empires, and created cities in the wilderness; and in the following century it made innumerable laws and sent forth innumerable warlike expeditions. Between one period and the next—the rude epic of conquest and the tame existence of the civilised colonies—a strange contrast is to be observed.
In the first period cupidity may be said to be the deus ex machina of the great epic acted by the conquerors: there is a bloody and barbarous conflict with the unknown territory, the hostile Indians, the mysterious forests, the enormous rivers, and the desert that swallows whole legions. This marvellous age is followed, in the silent cities, by a monotonous, pious, puerile existence. Exhausted by heroism, the race declines, mingles itself with the Indians, imports black slaves from Africa, and obeys its Inquisitors and viceroys. The obscure events of its lamentable existence take place in a veritable wilderness. Grey and unrelieved is this period, the period known as "the Colony," for the unstable societies of America reflect the life of Spain; while the first, that of the Conquest, is an age of greed and bloodshed, in which the impetuous adventurers of the Peninsula roam from Mexico to Patagonia, realising, in the words of de Heredia's sonnet, their "brutal and heroic dream."
The Spaniard and the Portuguese of the sixteenth century were men of the Renaissance; of that age which was perturbed by the restored spectacle of the life of the world. Voyages, discoveries, Greek myths and classic poems, which filled the past with legends and heroic deeds, gave the Latins of the Mediterranean the longing to explore lands and seas unknown. Individuality developed with an energy that often merged in crime. Tyrants or conquerors longing for power and adventure lived in regions far removed from ideals of good and evil. Mystics—for the mediæval gloom still hung over Europe—they joined cupidity to faith, and renounced a life of contemplation in order to push back the limits of the world. Heirs of the Phoenician ambition, the Portuguese encircled Africa before discovering America; and many a Spanish captain, before invading the regions oversea, had fought in Flanders, pillaged Rome, and repeated the journey of Don Quixote across La Mancha.
The soul of the conquistador combined audacity with covetousness, superstition with cruelty, the pride of the hidalgo with the rigour of the ascetics, a rigid individualism and a thirst for glory with an infallible faith in the greatness of its own destiny. The adventurers of the Peninsula were professors of energy: like the Italian condottieri, like the captains of the Napoleonic epic. A group of adventurers enslaved the empire of Mexico, destroyed the power of the Incas, and defeated the indomitable Araucan. Cortez burned his ships when his companions spoke of renouncing the difficult enterprise of conquest. Pizarro, with twelve of his lieutenants, resolved, in a desert island, to invade Peru.
Cortez conquered Mexico; Pizarro and Almagro, Peru; Valdivia and Almagro, Araucania; Jimenez de Quesada and Benalcazar, the territories of Colombia; Pedro de Alvarado, Guatemala; Martinez de Irala, Paraguay; Juan de Garay, the province of La Plata; Martin Affonso, the Souzas and others, Brazil. Others brought from Italy the spirit of the Renaissance; such was Pedro de Mendoza, enriched by the sack of Rome, who, in 1554, organised an expedition to the Rio de la Plata. The sixteenth century, the age of discoveries, was also the age of conquest. From all the provinces of Spain and Portugal adventurers poured into America. The energetic Basques led the way; but there were fiery Estremadurans, austere Castilians, meditative Portuguese, and witty Andalusians. Triumph lay before them; they advanced to conquest over the ruins of cities and the bodies of Indians. Their incredible prowess often ended in their death upon the soil they trod as intruders and invaders.
The America conquered by the Spaniards and Portuguese was peopled by various races and occupied by many different civilisations. The invaders unified all these regions, imposing uniform laws, customs, and religion. In Brazil they found scattered tribes: Tupis, Tupinambas, Caribs; in Paraguay, the Guaranis; in Uruguay, the Charruas. The organisation of these peoples of hunters and fishers was simple; in time of war as in peace they obeyed their chiefs. These vast territories presented many different tongues, and an infinite variety of tribes, clans, and societies; ranging from cannibalism and savagery, through the primitive forms of culture, to nomadism and the sedentary state. The Araucanians of Chili, a warlike people, held assemblies to decide upon war, joined in confederations, and obeyed a cacique, who was the strongest and bravest man of the tribe. They lived in isolation the better to preserve their independence.
Three barbaric monarchies—the Chibchas or Muiscas in Colombia, the Incas in Peru, and the Aztecs in Mexico—which boasted of laws, majestic cities, social classes, colleges of priests, reigning dynasties, organised armies, academic myths, and even hieroglyphs and astrologers (not unlike those of Assyria)—differed profoundly in their complex political organisation from the tribes of America. Although the Incas were not the liberal princes of Marmontel's dream, and although the history of their rule was not an idyll, their meticulous and beneficent tyranny did after long wars of conquest erect in the ancient Tahuantisuyu a great empire of silent obedience, an anticipation of the ideals of State Socialism. Property was collective, and existence subject to strict regulations. The Incas made labour obligatory, supervised all agricultural operations, and respected, when they extended their domains, the rites and customs of vanquished races.
If the Inca monarchy recalls the great empires of Asia, China, and Assyria, Mexico, on the other hand, appears to have been a feudal kingdom in which caciques, governors of vast provinces, ruled beside the absolute monarch. "There is no general overlord," observed Cortez. There was a central authority, as in Peru, but the Mexican despotism was more rude and barbarous than that of the Incas; the blood of human victims dripped from its smoking altars. The social organism had not reached the degree of perfection attained by the Inca monarchy.
The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, with their mediæval ideas, their African fanaticism, their marvellous ships, and their powerful weapons, terrified these peoples who were still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished stone. Historians report the surprise of these hungry adventurers before the treasures of Mexico and Peru. Atahualpa offered to fill with gold the chamber in which Pizarro held him prisoner. The court of Montezuma displayed an Asiatic luxury: surrounded with women, buffoons, idols, and strange birds, under a resplendent canopy loaded with gold and jewels, the Aztec monarch advances like a king in an Oriental tale. His escort is of haughty princes. The imperial city abounds in temples, lakes, and causeways; it is melancholy and sumptuous, the capital of Mexico. The chroniclers of the time tell us how the cupidity of the conquistadors was awakened: men who had left a ruined Spain to find these immense treasures in America; they are writing for impoverished hidalgos, and fear that they will not be believed when they speak of this fabulous abundance of gold. Since the days of Ophir and the Queen of Sheba, says one of these historians, "no ancient writing had ever stated that gold, silver, and jewels" had ever been discovered in such vast quantities as those which Castile was about to receive from her new colonies.
The soldiers of the conquest pillaged these treasures, sacked temples and palaces, and quarrelled over their wealth in a series of tragic struggles. Around the mines cities sprang up and parties were formed; at Potosi Vicuñas and Biscayans, excited by the sight of the metal which delighted their cupidity, prolonged the savagery of the first conflict. Where minerals existed the colonial life was unstable, harsh, and brutal; in poor countries, such as Chili and the Argentine, societies were slowly formed which cultivated the soil: tenacious oligarchies bound to the new country by solid interests.
The vanquished races and the victors differed greatly from one another; hence amidst the political and moral unity of the new societies arose different characteristics and incipient antagonisms. Spaniards and Portuguese took Indian wives or women; the leaders married princesses of Mexico and Peru; the soldiers founded provisional homes in the colonies. The Andalusians settled in the tropics; the Basques in the temperate regions; and the Castilians swarmed in the towns. A curious affinity of race, as between the Basques and the Araucanians, and analogies of climate and landscape, and, apart from these factors, the erratic wanderings of the conquerors, explain this original diversity of the American provinces. Why should they be similar: the offspring of the gentle Indian Quechuas and the fiery Andalusians; the children of the virile Araucanians and the calm, reasonable Basques? Wherever the native population was more abundant, and the political organisation more complicated, as in Mexico and Peru, its influence on miscegenation was more potent than in colonies from which the Indian was disappearing (as the Charruas of Uruguay or the nomadic tribes of Brazil) before the onset of civilisation. The climate, severe on the plateaux, and favourable to an energetic existence, warm and enervating on the coast, contributed to the variety of human types. The first families sprung of the sensuality of the conquerors already revealed the elements of future developments.
It was an age of creation: races and cities, new rites and customs; all were sprung of the crossing of Iberian and Indian. The diversity of the elements whose fusion was paving the way for a new caste gave mankind an interesting variety. The negro, imported by the Spaniard for the cultivation of the tropical soil, added yet another complication to the first admixture of castes. Grotesque generations with every shade of complexion and every conformation of skull were born in America from the unions stimulated by the kings of Spain. In the Anglo-Saxon provinces of North America the climate only changed the invaders; in the Iberian colonies the conquered race, the land itself, the air they breathed, all modified the conquerors. Creation, the synthesis of human elements, action and reaction between the country and the men who ruled it, a crucible continually agitated by unheard-of fusions of races; all this gave the process of evolution the intensity and the aspect of a continual conflict. From the negro bozal recently imported from Africa to the quinteron, the offspring of slaves purified by successive unions with the whites; from the Indian who mourned his monotonous servitude in the solitude of the mountains, to the coloured student of the universities, we find, in the seventeenth century as in the twentieth, in the colonies as in the republics, every variety of this admixture of Iberians, Indians, and Africans. From a social point of view the rank of the individual corresponded generally with the shade of his epidermis. "In America," wrote Humboldt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, "the more or less white skin determines the position which a man holds in society."
The Spaniard degenerated in the colonies. The passage from a period of violence to one of conventual quietude betrayed this slow decadence of the invader, under the pressure of the climate and in contact with the conquered races. The Creole, the Spaniard born in America, has lost the prickly characteristics of the hidalgo: the proud individualism, the love of bloody adventure, the stoicism, the tenacity in resistance and conflict, and the rigidity of faith.
In flexibility, brilliance, and grace he has surpassed the rude Iberian; but his effort is transitory, his will weak; his hatred is as ephemeral as his love. The new race produces neither mystics nor men of action, but poets, orators, admirable intriguers, superficial scholars, brilliant commentators of exotic ideas; from the seventeenth century onwards they succeed to the first generation of audacious colonists, heroic monks, and warlike captains.
To extend the domains of the monarch, to "cause the Indians to live in the knowledge of our Catholic faith," they conquered America, and they brought to the New World a religion, a political régime, universities, an economic system—all the elements, in short, of a traditional civilisation. Absolutism in government, monopoly in matters of commerce and finance, intolerance in questions of dogma and morality, tutelage and rigorous isolation; these were the foundations of Spanish colonisation. The methods practised by the Dutch and the English in their colonies were not essentially different. Toqueville and Boutmy have studied the effects, in the United States, of Calvinistic intolerance and commercial monopoly. They have remarked upon the slavery of negroes in the agricultural districts of Virginia, and the cupidity of the emigrants who pursued the Indians with a truly Puritan ardour.
The viceroy, the representative of the monarch, exercised full powers of government in the colonies. He presided over the Real Audiencia, the king's tribunal, was superintendent of finances, protector of the Church, and chief of the army. To him all power was subordinate, whether ecclesiastical, military, or civil. A luxurious court surrounded him, the flattery of courtiers intoxicated him, and subornation had its way with him. Sometimes the viceroys represented the real aspirations of the colonists, and were serious legislators, such as Francisco de Toledo, in Peru; or they defended the colonists from the expeditions of filibusters with such energy that their fiercely contested battles evoked the sentiment of nationality. At other times they enriched themselves by the sale of posts, and drained the treasury, or passed in progress through the cities of their state, haughty overlords surrounded with luxury and gold.
To her political despotism corresponds the commercial monopoly which Spain established in her dominions. Humboldt defined the ancient ideal of the colonising races in his "Essay on the Government of New Spain": "For centuries a colony was regarded as useful to the metropolis only inasmuch as it furnished a great number of raw materials and consumed plenty of goods and merchandise, which were borne by the vessels of the mother-country."[[1]] England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal acted upon the same exclusivist principles; the ordinances of Cromwell were as inflexible on this point as the schedules of Philip II. Commercial liberty and industrial competition were condemned on the same grounds as rebellion and heresy.
Politics and economics were subordinated to religion; the third combined the absolutism of the first and the monopoly of the second. The conquest of America was apostolic. The Spanish captains fought to convert the overseas infidels. The imperialism of Charles V. and Philip II. had a religious character. To preserve the colonies from heresy it closed the ports, prohibited all traffic with foreigners, and imposed a conventual seclusion upon a whole world. The Church was the centre of colonial life. She governed in the spiritual order; imposed punishments, flagellations, exile, and excommunication, and delivered unbelievers and sorcerers to the purifying care of the Inquisition. In the department of morals she kept a watchful eye upon the people; she defended the Indians, and often opposed the governors. Viceroy and cacique feared her equally. A formidable moral power, she helped to discipline the unruly Creoles, to unite classes and races, and to form nations. The cities were adorned by her chapels and convents, and to these convents, in pious mood, the hidalgos often left all their possessions.
Thus property became a monopoly of the convents. Hence a plethora of monks and nuns, and the accumulation, in Mexico and at Lima, of enormous wealth. In Peru the annual income of the archbishop amounted to £8,000, and that of some bishops to £4,000. What with bishops and viceroys there was no lack of luxury. A pompous and sensual Catholicism satisfied the imagination of the Creoles, the superstitious fears of the Indians, and the cheerful materialism of the negroes. The Aztec, the quechua, accepted from the monks a strange, Byzantine dogma, mingled with aristocratic ideals and Oriental mysteries. The native soon confounded the two mythologies. In Mexico, so Humboldt reported, "the Holy Ghost is the sacred eagle of the Aztecs." Novel and sumptuous rites were added to the traditional religion. Processions and festivals, a kind of continual religious fair, united all races. The people loved the cult of religion, with its external manifestations, its virgins loaded with heavy ex-votos, its sorrowing Christs, its gorgeously-decked saints, and the glitter of gold and silk.
As confessor the priest influenced the family and directed the education of children; as preacher he condemned immorality and judged the governors. As in Byzantium, as in the Florence of Savonarola, the colonial monk, speaking in the name of the exploited populace, was an austere professor of virtue. The Creole admired his ecclesiastical learning, and his invincible attitude before the powers of this world; in him the Indian found a protector.
The American colonies differed in social composition. The negro abounded in Peru and Cuba, but soon disappeared in Chili and the Argentine. The poverty of Araucania contrasted with the opulence of Caracas, Lima, and Mexico. In the Aztec capital some territorial seigneurs drew forty thousand a year sterling in revenues. Frezier valued the jewels of a rich lady of Lima at 240,000 livres of silver. The melancholy Sierra, peopled by Indians, contrasted with the life of the coast, where luxurious cities attracted the traveller. In the cities of the interior, Cordoba or Charcas, we find settled traditions, tenacity, and sobriety, but in the capitals of the coast all is luxury, instability, and licence.
Spain tended to destroy this variety by uniform laws.[[2]] Originality was as odious to her as heresy. Customs and beliefs, hierarchies and privileges, all must be uniform. Under such a régime the life of the colonies was dull and monotonous. The cities slumbered, lulled by the murmur of prayers and fountains. Idleness was the natural condition of the Creole; lengthy meals and daily siestas limited his inconsiderable activities. The empty streets and squares knew hours of silence; rejoicings were ordered, and the orders pasted on the hoardings; gaiety itself was imposed. It seemed as though time itself must stand still in these cities of parallel streets; that the ideal of all men must be absolute quietude.
The hidalgo of noble origin, the owner of vast domains, governed his sons and his slaves with the severity of a Roman patrician. He could be neither merchant nor manufacturer; commerce and industry were "low callings." He was attracted rather by the bar, the subtleties of the "doctors," the scholarship and poetry of the courts. Whether at the university or the cabildo (municipality), his life would be the same. He would sing the glory of viceroys in Gongoric rhymes, or commentate upon Duns Scotus, or meticulously construct acrostics or syllogisms. In the café, at social gatherings, in the literary salons, he would whisper criticisms of the governors and the bishops, or discuss the titles to nobility of a marquis of recent creation, or the purity of blood of an enriched mulatto. A conventual chapter, or the quarrel of a bishop and a viceroy, or a bull-fight, would fill him with ecstasy. Attending mass in the morning, and in the evening driving through the stately streets in a luxurious calèche, the proud caballero would bear himself majestically. At night, in his gloomy house, he would find his wife telling her beads, surrounded by docile slaves.
Sensuality and mysticism were the pleasures of the colonists. The convents themselves, despite their high walls, were not able to shut out these violent delights. Licentious monks, nuns with lovers, sprightly abbés, figure in the chronicles of the period as in the Italian contes. The cloister, with its rich arabesques, the patio (courtyard) perfumed with orange-blossom, the murmuring jet of the fountain: these evoke the passion of Andalusia. A devout society pays the insatiable convents a tribute of gold and virgins; and love, fleeing the dead cities, takes refuge in cells quick with ambition and unruly desires.
The woman, guarded in the Oriental fashion, in houses strong as fortresses, attracts society to her salon by her Parisian grace; in a world of ponderous scholars she is famous for her amenity and subtlety. Her fidelity, for the hidalgo, is a question of his honour. The husband revenges himself for transgressions by terrible punishments, as in the Calderonian drama, while the heroic lover brings his exasperated desires to the Moorish balcony, where he awaits his lady in torment. Away from home, a host of illegitimate unions, of concubines, of clandestine amours.
Passion will be tragic and devotion voluptuous; in place of mystics we shall find illuminés. The devil is the essential personage of this religion of minutiæ; thanks to him the dreary colonial life is surrounded by mystery; his appearances and his manoeuvres thrill the Creole's blood. Hobgoblins, sorcerers, spells, thefts of the consecrated host, and exorcisms occupy the Inquisition; tales of incubi and succubi, of pacts with Satan, of ghosts that expiate their old offences in long-abandoned houses; absurd miracles of saints; processions mingling with the dances of slaves; gaily decked temples and parasitic rights which stifle the traditional faith, deprive the Catholicism of Spain of its Semitic rigidity.
All through life the pious colonist is surrounded by marvels. He loves nature with an ingenuous faith, and attributes to the saints and demons a continual intervention in his placid existence. An unexpected sound reveals the presence of a soul in torment; a tremor of the earth, the divine wrath; sickness is a proof of diabolic influence; health, of the efficacy of an amulet. In the pharmacies chimerical products may be purchased—condor's grease, unicorn's horns, and the claws of the "great beast."
The monotonous hours are passed in devotions and futilities, prayers and conventual disputes, long ceremonies and useless entertainments. Sometimes the even course of life is interrupted by a startling feat of prowess, or a festival, all gold and servility; the royal seals have arrived, a princess is born in Spain, a treasure has been discovered, a port has been sacked by audacious pirates, or sorcerers or Portuguese Jews are to be burned in an imposing autodafé. Then the provincial cities, slowly threaded by sumptuous processions, are all astir, but the dazzling vision is only ephemeral, and the grey monotony returns, with its petty quarrels, its indolence, its exaggerated rites.
The royal seals arrive under a pallium, and a luxuriously appointed horse advances, bearing the treasure. The spectators kneel before the symbol of monarchical majesty, and incense, as at the feet of a Byzantine ikon, expresses the adoration of believers. The viceroy also enters beneath a canopy, passing in solemn procession through the servile city, while the bells of a hundred churches celebrate his advent, and a solemn cohort of cabildantes in their robes, monks of all orders, and bedizened doctors, praise with courtier-like devotion the glory of the royal messenger. In the religious festivals the majestic altars which the devout, in token of penitence, carry upon their shoulders, bear virgins clad in velvets and glittering with jewels, or saints that bow to one another like courtly hidalgos, or Christs that weep before the wondering crowd. Around these gorgeous altars dance the slaves, and the monks chant a melancholy anthem. Seized by a sacred intoxication, men and women scourge their bodies till they bleed.
The cry of anguish mingles with the monotony of the prayers, amidst the tremulous excitement of the faithful.
The autodafés were the supreme feast of blood. The chronicles of the time praise the "marvellous" spectacle. The funeral procession advanced towards the pyre, surrounded by burlesque and fanatical groups. Groaning monks hemmed in the sorcerers, the blasphemers, the heretics; some bearing a yellow and others a green veil, and lugubrious draperies on which were miniature paintings descriptive of the infernal torments; others wore dunces' caps, which excited the cruelty of the people. As the victims proceeded to the pyre a crowd thirsting for the sight and sound of martyrdom, drunken with the heat of the sun, acclaimed the holocaust beneath the impassive tribune of the Inquisitors. Farce and grotesque invention mingled with tragedy, Oriental luxury with a mystic terror; and the great lady who at night would be dancing the pavane in her salon now devoutly sniffed the acrid stench of charred flesh and blood.
[[1]] Vol. iv. p. 285; Paris, 1811.
[[2]] The Portuguese colonisation of Brazil was less rigid, and the commercial isolation less rigorous; and religion was neither fanatical nor so powerful as in the Spanish colonies.
CHAPTER III
THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles—Monarchy and the Republic—The leaders: Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar—Bolivar the Liberator: his ideas and his deeds.
II. Revolutionary ideology—Influence of Rousseau—The Rights of Man—The example of the United States—English ideas in the constitutional projects of Miranda and Bolivar—European action: Canning.
I. Oppressed by theocracy and monopoly, by privileged castes and Peninsular functionaries, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies aspired towards independence. The English provinces of the North separated themselves from England for practical reasons; in the struggles of the South we see a double economic and political motive. In some vice-royalties, such as that of La Plata, the struggle was due chiefly to an opposition of interests; in other provinces, as in Venezuela, ideas of political reform were predominant.
Writers have attempted to explain the unanimity of the liberative movement by a "historical materialism" analogous to that of Karl Marx and Labriola; but the reality, richer and more complex, does not submit itself to this logical simplicity. The revolution was not merely an economic protest; it nourished concrete social ambitions. An equalising movement, it aimed at the destruction of privileges, of the arbitrary Spanish hierarchy, and finally, when its levelling instinct was aroused and irritated, the destruction of authority to the profit of anarchy. The Creoles, deprived of all political function, revolted; in matters of economics they condemned excessive taxation and monopoly; in matters of politics they attacked slavery, the Inquisition, and moral tutelage. Charles III. had recognised, in 1783, in spite of the counsels of his minister Aranda, the independence of the United States, which were to serve his own colonies as precedent, and he expelled the Jesuits from America, the defence of the Indians against the oppression of Spanish governors. The corruption of the courts, the sale of offices, and the tyranny of the viceroys, all added to the causes of discontent, disturbance, and poverty.
The Creoles opposed nationality to patriotism, the half-castes opposed democracy to the oligarchies. These were two phases of a great revolution. The first battle was over in 1830, and the conflict between the privileged class and the democracy commenced. It reached its culminating point about 1860, with the enfranchisement of the slaves, but it continued during the rest of the century and engendered an interminable civil discord.
The Spanish provinces, subjected to a political absolutism, transformed themselves into republics, a change of system that was not effected without a moral crisis. Even while fighting their battles the Creoles sought uneasily for a new mould into which to pour their liberalism. In the face of increasing disorder they had thoughts of a monarchy, of an oligarchic republic, of a permanent presidency: of various forms which might possess the necessary stability. Three phases may be distinguished in the movement of liberation: the colonial, the monarchical, and the republican.
During the first phase the colonists manifested their loyalty to the Peninsular monarchy.
The first colonial juntas, in 1809 and 1810, desired the Spanish suzerainty to be preserved. They invoked the feudal tie which bound them to the monarch, the imprisoned Ferdinand VII. The French were triumphant in the Peninsula, but they swore fidelity to the absent king. Vassalage having been destroyed by the foreign invasion, the colonies, in accordance with the law of las partidas, acquired the right of self-government; they were reserved for the king. The juntas disguised their radical ambitions under legal forms. Their effort towards traditionalism was perhaps sincere on some occasions, but the current of revolution, which was gathering itself together in the womb of history, destroyed these provisional vistas. Thus the cabildo of Buenos-Ayres declared that "no obligations would be recognised other than those due to his person" (the King's). Spaniards and Americans joined in taking an oath of fidelity to Ferdinand VII. The captain-general of Venezuela, deprived of his functions in 1810, was replaced by a "Supreme Junta," preserving the rights of the sovereign, and the oath of fidelity to the monarch was observed. In 1809 the Junta of La Paz, which emancipated the Creoles, and the revolt of Quito, recognised the same royal tutelage. The Chilian regulations of 1811 enacted that the executive power should govern in the name of the king. In 1821 Iturbide proclaimed his submission to the king upon founding the empire of Mexico.
It was an ephemeral loyalty, given to a king who had abdicated, who had suffered exile, and who, after the liberal Cortes of Cadiz, re-established a despotic government. These immense colonies did not revolt merely in order to restore an incapable prince to his throne. While newly-created generals were winning battles political autonomy was becoming a fact. The Creoles, who had directed the revolutionary movement, concealed their bold ambitions from a populace that was passive, a slave to routine, and largely royalist.
GABINO BARREDA.
Great Mexican Educationalist
GENERAL JOSÉ ANTONIO PAEZ.
President of Venezuela (1831-1935 and 1838-1842)
The American élite were monarchists. In liberating a continent their generals and statesmen professed to endow the new nations with the stability of a monarchy. Iturbide was Emperor of Mexico. The lieutenants of Bolivar offered the latter a crown; Paez persistently held the imperial ambition before him. Belgrano, in 1816, at the Congress of Tucuman, stated that the best form of government for the Argentine was "a tempered monarchy"; and many deputies in that Assembly demanded the restoration of the throne of the Incas and of its traditional seat at Cuzco: in short, the creation of an American dynasty.
Bolivar wished to see Colombia and Spanish America constitutional monarchies with foreign princes. Ministers were to exercise a policy "of vigilance or defence, of mediation or influence, of protection or tutelage" on the part of the great European states in respect of the Colombian nation. Other partisans of the monarchy were Flores, Sucre, Monteagudo, Garcia del Rio, Riva-Agüero, and the Argentine director Posadas, who wished to establish that form of government "on solid and permanent foundations" in the provinces of La Plata; Dean Funes, the Colombians Nariño, Mosquera, Briceno Mendez, and others. The founders of South American independence understood that only a strong government could save the new nations from demagogy, anarchy, warfare between military chiefs, and untimely provincial ambitions. They wanted autonomy without licence, monarchy without despotism, and political solidity without Spanish suzerainty.
Despite this conviction on the part of the revolutionaries, South America saw the birth of the Republic. Alberdi wrote that its origin was involuntary, and that it was the result of European indifference and Yankee egoism; more than involuntary, it was spontaneous. The demagogues and the crowd accepted it as the negation of monarchy. The latter symbolised the Gothic despotism, the old humiliating domination, the persistence of castes and municipal privilege. In the popular mind, naturally of a simplifying tendency, monarchy was slavery; anarchy and the republic were liberty; there was no distinction between the King of Spain and other princes, between the absolutism of Ferdinand VII. and the constitutional monarchy of England. A universal hatred condemned all kings. The republic was not so much an organisation or a political system as a negation, and indissolubly bound up with it were the cardinal ideas of country, equality, and liberty.
Monarchy offered America stability and independence; it would have prevented civil war and avoided half a century of anarchy. It was the sole American tradition. The battles of the Revolution gave the hegemony to ambitious generals; against these a central government, above the quarrels of parties, would have defended liberal institutions. A constitutional prince would have given these divided nations unity and continuity, under the pressure of which ambitions, parties, and classes would finally have found their places. The social elevation of half-castes and mulattos would have been less violent under such a system.
Finally, the American monarchy would have entered into the group of Occidental nations, and the Monroe doctrine would not have isolated her politically from the Europe that sent her men, money, and ideas.
But would it have been possible to found respectable and lasting dynasties in America? The fall of two empires, Mexico and Brazil, tells us that republicanism is obscurely implicated with the destinies of the country. The new States had no nobles to surround a prince, nor could they have supported the luxury of a court.
The equalitarian instinct condemned all hierarchies in America, and there were no princes to become creators of nationality as in modern Europe. The viceroys and semi-feudal barons exercised an ephemeral empire and were not Americans; the colonies were used to frequent changes of authority. To these reasons in favour of a republic we must add the danger that foreign monarchies might have involved the continent in the diplomatic complications of Europe. Perhaps even the Holy Alliance would have led the colonies back to Spain, as a prodigal child is led back to its parents.
Bolivar expounded the defects of a foreign monarchy. To the imported king he would have preferred the irremovable president and the English senate, and if in the face of advancing anarchy he glanced at the question of European princes he soon understood that it could never prove a radical solution of the problems of the New World. "There is no power more difficult to maintain than that of a new prince" he told the Bolivians. There were in America "neither great nobles nor great prelates, and without these two props no monarchy is permanent." To the Liberator kings symbolised tyranny; he connected independence with republicanism, and believed that nature itself would oppose the monarchical system in America. In 1829, in a letter to Vergera, the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, he expressed his arguments against the monarchy with great precision: "No foreign prince," he wrote, "would accept as his patrimony a principality which was anarchical and without guarantees; the national debts and the poverty of the country leave no means to entertain a prince and a court, even miserably; the lower classes would take alarm, fearing the effects of aristocracy and inequality; the generals and the ambitious of every stamp could never support the idea of seeing themselves deprived of the supreme command; the new nobility indispensable to a monarchy would issue from the mass of the people, with every species of jealousy on the one hand and of pride on the other. No one would patiently endure such a miserable aristocracy, steeped in ignorance and poverty and full of ridiculous pretensions." The creator of five nations, Bolivar was profoundly conscious of the new social body, a disturbed and disorganised mass. He understood that the ambition of his lieutenants and the equalitarian tendency of the mob would oppose an American monarchy or a foreign principality. Iturbide and Maximilian, two emperors dethroned and shot, have justified his objections.