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LATIN AMERICA:
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
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PREFACE
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
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FOREWORD
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 no
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CHAPTER I THE CONQUERING RACE
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 transat
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CHAPTER II THE COLONIES OVERSEA
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
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CHAPTER III THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
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 functionar
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CHAPTER IV MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD
CHAPTER IV MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD
Anarchy and dictatorship—The civil wars: their significance—Characteristics of the industrial period. Spencer observed the invariable succession of two periods in the development of human affairs—the military and the industrial period. Bagehot contrasted a primitive epoch of authority and a posterior epoch of discussion. Sumner-Maine discovered a historic law—the progress from status to contract; from the régime imposed by despotic governors to a flexible organisation accepted by free wills. Thu
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CHAPTER I VENEZUELA: PAEZ, GUZMAN-BLANCO
CHAPTER I VENEZUELA: PAEZ, GUZMAN-BLANCO
The moral authority of Paez—The Monagas—The tyranny of Guzman-Blanco—Material progress. Two central figures, Paez and Guzman-Blanco, dominate the history of Venezuela. The first founded a republic in spite of the Unitarian aims of Bolivar; the second established a long autocracy over the factions and the quarrels of half a century. Paez was an individualist, a nomadic leader, an impassioned champion of the district, of the native country, as against any vast political concentration. As the Argen
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CHAPTER II PERU: GENERAL CASTILLA—MANUEL PARDO—PIEROLA
CHAPTER II 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. The gestation of the Republic of Peru was a lengthy process. The vice-kingdom defended itself against Colombian, Peruvian, and Argentine troops: against the armies of Bolivar and San Martin. Here the penates of Spain were preserved: the treasure, the vigilant aristocracy, the warlike armies. It was not until 1824, whe
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CHAPTER III BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
CHAPTER III BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ
Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia—The tyrants, Belzu, Molgarejo—The last caudillos : Pando, Montes. Bolivia sprang, armed and full-grown, as in the classic myth, from the brain of Bolivar. The Liberator gave her a name, a Constitution, and a President. In 1825 he created by decree an autonomous republic in the colonial territory of the district of Charcas, and became its Protector. Sucre, the hero of Ayacucho, succeeded him in 1826. During the wars of Independence this noble f
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CHAPTER IV, URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA—RIVERA—THE NEW CAUDILLOS
CHAPTER IV, URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA—RIVERA—THE NEW CAUDILLOS
The factions: Reds and Whites—The leaders: Artigas, Lavalleja, Rivera—The modern period. A small southern republic, situated between an Imperialist state, Brazil, and a nation ambitious of hegemony, the Argentine, Uruguay, "the Eastern Province" (Banda Oriental) has struggled for its liberty since the commencement of the nineteenth century. Artigas represented the principle of nationality in the long wars against Buenos-Ayres and the Spanish armies: he was the first caudillo , the forerunner of
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CHAPTER V THE ARGENTINE: RIVADAVIA—QUIROGA—ROSAS
CHAPTER V 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. The Argentine passed through a crisis, a time of anarchy, like the other American nations. But the struggle between autocracy and revolution assumed epic proportions in the vast arena of the pampa. It was the clash of organic forces. Tradition, geography, and race gave it a rare intensity. The provinces fought against the capital, the co
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CHAPTER I MEXICO: THE TWO EMPIRES—THE DICTATORS
CHAPTER I 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. In Mexico we find an alternation of revolutions and dictators. The principle of authority is supreme; it even gives rise to two empires and a permanent presidency; there has always been a well-organised monarchical party. Modern Mexico demonstrates the excellence of strong governments in a divided continent.
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CHAPTER II CHILI: A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE
CHAPTER II CHILI: A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE
Portales and the oligarchy—The ten-years Presidency—Montt and his influence—Balmaceda the Reformer. In Chili the course of political evolution has been entirely original. Her first years of republican life were as troublous as those of the Argentine, Bolivia, and Peru; it was an age of anarchy. Carrera, the dictator, overthrew four governments; there were mutinies in the barracks, and quarrels among the generals; the Dictator O'Higgins fell in 1823; a junta followed him, and after the junta four
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CHAPTER III BRAZIL: THE EMPIRE—THE REPUBLIC
CHAPTER III BRAZIL: THE EMPIRE—THE REPUBLIC
The influence of the Imperial régime —A transatlantic Marcus-Aurelius, Dom Pedro II.—The Federal Republic. While the republics of America have passed, without prudent transition, from colonial dependence to self-government, Brazil, by means of paternal autocracies, was prepared for the ultimate realisation of its republican dreams. There liberty was not the immediate gift of unrealisable constitutions, but the logical end of a painful conquest. Brazil was successively a tributary colony, an inde
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CHAPTER IV PARAGUAY: PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP
CHAPTER IV PARAGUAY: PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP
Dr. Francia—The opinion of Carlyle—The two Lopez—Tyranny and the military spirit in Paraguay. Paraguay, a child of the old régime , has preserved seclusion and absolutism. In other republics independence was a violent condemnation of the colonial methods. Freed from Spanish tutelage, the Paraguayan democracy none the less maintained its retired life under paternal monarchs. Its evolution is original; showing neither continual anarchy, as in the tropics, nor the perpetual quarrels of caudillos ,
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CHAPTER I COLOMBIA
CHAPTER I COLOMBIA
Conservatives and radicals—General Mosquera: his influence—A statesman: Rafael Nuñez, his doctrines political. A certain writer of New Granada, Rafael Nuñez, a President and a party-leader, writes that "there is not in South America a country more iconoclastic, politically speaking, than Colombia." Republican evolution there has been peculiar: it has witnessed perpetual anarchy, like other American democracies, and civil wars as long and as sanguinary as those of the Argentine, but no long succe
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CHAPTER II ECUADOR
CHAPTER II ECUADOR
Religious conflicts—General Flores and his political labours—Garcia-Moreno—The Republic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ecuador constituted itself a free democracy after a long period of indecision. Guayaquil aspired to be an independent state; it listened to the melodious aspirations of its poet, Olmedo, and at other times sought to unite itself to Peru. Bolivar and La Mar both sought to claim this city, which a proud provincialism called "the pearl of the Guayas." The vast ambitions of Bolivar w
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CHAPTER III THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS—CENTRAL AMERICA—HAYTI—SAN DOMINGO
CHAPTER III THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS—CENTRAL AMERICA—HAYTI—SAN DOMINGO
Tyrannies and revolutions—The action of climate and miscegenation—A republic of negroes: Hayti. In Central America and the islands of the Antilles civil wars are the result not merely of racial conflict, but also of the enervating action of the Tropics. Precocious, sensual, impressionable, the Americans of these vast territories devote their energies to local politics. Industry, commerce, and agriculture are in a state of decay, and the unruly imagination of the Creole expends itself in constitu
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CHAPTER I POLITICAL IDEOLOGY
CHAPTER I 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 revolutionists of America hastily sought for an ideology which should ratify their victory. By virtue of French ideas they had demolished an ancient organisation, had thrown off the Spanish tyranny, and had exalted anarchy in speech and in verse. To raise future cities in the wilderness they had need of a political gospel.
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CHAPTER II THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES
CHAPTER II 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 ancient Spanish colonies, freed from the political authority of Spain, still followed her in the matter of literature; republican autonomy and intellectual subjection were not incompatible. Towards 1825 writers in prose and verse were by no means imitating France, although she gave them her declamatory politics and her revolutionary code. Educated in Spain
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CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER III THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Bello—Hostos—The influence of England—Positivism—The influence of Spencer and Fouillée—The sociologists. The democracies of America have not created new systems of philosophy; they have rather contributed, with Emerson and William James in the United States, to propound the old problems in a new light. Politics and history have been the occupation of intelligent men. To pure speculation they have preferred the patient study of the past, and the impassioned analysis of the conflicts of the day. Y
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CHAPTER I ARE THE IBERO-AMERICANS OF LATIN RACE
CHAPTER I 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. Contrasting the Imperial Republic of North America with the twenty democracies of South America, we seek the reason of the antagonism which exists between them in the essential element of race. The contrast between Anglo-Saxons and Latins is the contrast between two cultures. The South American peoples consider themselves Lat
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CHAPTER II THE GERMAN PERIL
CHAPTER II THE GERMAN PERIL
German Imperialism and the Monroe doctrine— Das Deutschtum and Southern Brazil—What the Brazilians think about it. The Teutonic invasion is troubling our Ibero-American writers. The tutelary protection of the United States does not suffice to make them forget the European peril; memories of the Holy Alliance, of that crusade of religious absolutism and reconquest, are still lively in Latin America. Three great nations—England, France, Germany—aspired to establish their supremacy oversea in a las
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CHAPTER III THE NORTH AMERICAN PERIL
CHAPTER III 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. To save themselves from Yankee imperialism the American democracies would almost accept a German alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms; everywhere the Americans of the North are feared. In the Antilles and in Central America hostility against the Anglo-Saxon invaders assumes the character of a Latin crusade. Do the United States deserve th
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CHAPTER IV A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT: CUBA
CHAPTER IV A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT: CUBA
The work of Spain—The North American reforms—The future. By turns Spanish and North American, and frequently disturbed by the conflict of these two Americanisms, the history of the "pearl of the Antilles" has been a long political experiment. Its result, the success of one method or the other, will prove the aptitude or the incapacity of the Latins of America in the art of organising a State or instituting a Republic. The last colony, the final vestige of the vast Spanish Empire overseas, Cuba s
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CHAPTER V THE JAPANESE PERIL
CHAPTER V THE JAPANESE PERIL
The ambitions of the Mikado—The Shin Nippon in Western America—Pacific invasion—Japanese and Americans. Facing the United States in the mysterious Orient is an extensive empire which is sending its legions of pacific invaders into the New World. Anticipating the Japanese victories, the German Emperor warned a somnolent Europe of the terrible Yellow Peril; the peril of hordes like those of Genghis Khan, which would destroy the treasures of Western civilisation. This danger, after the defeat of Ru
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CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF UNITY
CHAPTER I 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
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CHAPTER II THE PROBLEM OF RACE
CHAPTER II 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 racial question is a very serious problem in American history. It explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides America. Upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the
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CHAPTER III THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
CHAPTER III THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
The caudillos : their action—Revolutions—Divorce between written Constitutions and political life—The future parties—The bureaucracy. The development of the Ibero-American democracies differs considerably from the admirable spirit of their political charters. The latter include all the principles of government applied by the great European nations: the equilibrium of powers, natural rights, a liberal suffrage, and representative assemblies, but the reality contradicts the idealism of the statute
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CHAPTER IV THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
CHAPTER IV THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM
Loans—Budgets—Paper money—The formation of national capital. Unexploited wealth abounds in America. Forests of rubber, as in the African Congo; mines of gold and diamonds, which recall the treasures of the Transvaal and the Klondyke; rivers which flow over beds of auriferous sand, like the Pactolus of ancient legend; coffee, cocoa, and wheat, whose abundance is such that these products are enough to glut the markets of the world. But there is no national capital. This contrast between the wealth
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CONCLUSION AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES
CONCLUSION 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. A new route offered to human commerce transforms the politics of the world. The Suez Canal opened the legendary East to Europe, directed the stream of European emigration towards Australia, and favoured the formation, in South Africa, of an Anglo-Saxon Confederation. The Panama Canal is destined to produce profound perturbations in the equilibrium of the nations
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