South America Observations and Impressions

Admitting this to be true, it raises the question whether those who were summoned to govern the new republics that emerged from the War of Independence did possess, and could have been expected to possess, the requisite gifts and the training. Such gifts are not natural. They are the result of a people's previous career and of experience gained therein. What, then, had been the history of the colonial dominion of Spain and what sort of practice in government had the Crown allowed to its Spanish-American subjects?

This brings us to a fourth branch of the enquiry, – viz.: —

IV. Historical Conditions during the Colonial Period.– The Spanish Conquerors of the New World were men of extraordinary audacity and energy. No such forcible individualities had been seen in the world since the Norsemen of the tenth century and their children, the Normans, of the eleventh. They were, however, loyally submissive to the Spanish Crown and never thought of asking for, or of setting up for themselves, any self-governing institutions. Neither did the Spanish Crown ever think of granting such institutions. Those which existed in Castile had just disappeared; but even had they continued, it is improbable that any idea of reproducing them in the colonies would have been entertained. The English Crown granted charters to the companies which undertook colonization in North America, and the settlers themselves were soon organized by counties in Virginia, by townships and counties in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Forms of local self-government more effective than those which then existed in England were in full working order in those colonies, all through the eighteenth century, until they separated from the mother country. But everywhere in Spanish America the authority of the viceroy, or captain-general, or Audiencia and their subordinate officers, was paramount, and covered the whole field. There were no elected assemblies or elected officials. All power came from above; the people had nothing to do with administration, and were not enough permitted to subject it to public criticism. The only exception was furnished by the sort of municipal council in the towns which was called a Cabildo or Ayuntamiento, and the members of which, while in a few towns freely elected by the householders, or perhaps by the more substantial householders, were in others nominated, and often nominated because they had bought the nomination. The despotic power of a viceroy or other governor was, of course, restrained by the instructions he received and by the laws which the Crown enacted for the colonies, and to some extent also both by the ecclesiastical magnates and by local sentiment. But there were no responsibilities devolved on the people, and no machinery in and by which they could acquire any training in public affairs. In the English North American colonies the management of church affairs belonged to the laity as well as to the clergy; and the New England Congregational churches in particular, founded on the principles of liberty, became direct exponents of popular feeling. In the Spanish colonies the Roman Church represented the principle of authority, and impressed it on the minds of the laity by all the sanctions she possessed. All books and publications of every kind were subjected to a searching ecclesiastical censorship; and the right of freely expressing opinion either by speech or in writing was steadily denied.

V. Historical Conditions at the Close of the War of Independence.– Thus, when the revolt from Spain threw all power into the hands of the people, the people were unfit to exercise it. It was easy to frame constitutions modelled on that of the United States. But who were the people and what did they know about the working of free governments? What was the capacity of the citizens whose votes were to choose legislatures, and of what sort of persons were the legislatures to be composed?

Ten or twelve years of fighting against Spanish troops, years in which there had been many severities and cruelties perpetrated on each side, had accustomed everybody to violence and had made soldiers the only leaders. Everyone's mind was full of dreams of liberty, but no one knew how to secure it by coupling liberty with law. Even in the United States the first years after the acknowledgment of the independence of the thirteen colonies had been marked by so many errors and so much legislative weakness that the constitutional convention of 1787 was regarded by the wisest men of the time as a last chance for saving the nation. Yet the North American states were carrying on governments which had existed for several generations and following principles which their forefathers had established in England five centuries before. Small wonder that among the Spanish Americans, who had no experience at all in the most complicated of all human undertakings, – the conducting of government by the will of the majority, but according to settled law and with due respect to the rights of the minority, – small wonder that legislatures were not honestly elected, that, when elected, they wasted time in vain debates and neglected business, that each party in turn drove out its opponents or cowed them by violence, that debts were recklessly contracted and left unpaid, that the government remained one not of laws, but of men, and those men mostly military adventurers at the head of armed bands.

The inhabitants, accustomed to be ruled by others in State and in Church, had never been given a chance of learning to think of government as their own business nor of themselves as responsible for public order. When a long and sanguinary war had destroyed the habit of obedience to constituted authority, they were remitted – constitution or no constitution – to that primitive state of things in which force prevails. There being often either no authority de iure, or one too feeble to protect those who appealed to it, authority de facto had to be recognized, and the notion of legal right and legal duty vanished. It must be remembered that these were small and scattered communities, in each of which there were but few men who were at once law-abiding and intelligent, able to impose some check on the partisans of one or the other of the adventurers who were fighting for power. The parties were usually factions following the banner of a particular chief. Only one set of controversies raising questions of principle emerged from time to time in one republic or another, those that turned on the property and claims of the Church. Other issues were usually either local or personal, seldom economic, hardly ever racial.

Several thoughtful South Americans in the days of the Revolution perceived that their countries were not fit for democracy. The illustrious San Martin favoured a republican government based on a limited suffrage; and Bolivar himself desired to be life president of a confederation of states. Apart, however, from the difficulty of proposing constitutions which would have excluded a large part of those whose arms had secured independence, the enthusiasm for liberty that prevailed and the rapturous belief that liberty was enough to secure peace and prosperity, prescribed democratic arrangements, and it was only in later struggles between rival parties that some leader would enact qualifications calculated to exclude his opponents. Everywhere the system of vesting executive power in a president holding office for a term of years was adopted. It seemed the simplest plan, and was recommended by the example of the United States, but it set up a tempting prize for ambition and generally led straight to dictatorship. Bad men abused it to enrich themselves or their friends, good men found that the quickest and possibly the only way to carry out the reforms which the country needed was to stretch their constitutional authority. High-minded and public-spirited rulers were not wanting, but they could not, with the best will in the world, create the materials for a true democracy.

Whoever travels through these countries, – I include Mexico and Central America, but not Chile or Argentina, of which more anon, – and whoever, having thus obtained some knowledge of their physical and racial character, studies their history, finds himself driven to three conclusions. The first is that these states never have been democracies in any real sense of the word. The second is that they could not have been real democracies. To expect peoples so racially composed, very small peoples, spread over a vast area, peoples with no practice in self-government, to be able to create and work democratic institutions was absurd, though the experience which their history has furnished to the world was needed to demonstrate the absurdity. The third conclusion is that injustice is done to the Spanish Americans by censures and criticisms which ignore these fundamental facts. There is no more Original Sin among them than there is in other peoples. Many of their statesmen and generals were honest patriots, who loved liberty and sought to give their country as much liberty as it was capable of then receiving. It was neither their fault nor the fault of the people that the conditions then existing made real representative and responsible government impracticable. The constitutions did not suit the facts, and the facts had to prevail against the constitutions, sometimes against their letter, usually against their spirit. When voters were obviously unfit to elect, and when fair elections could not be secured, it was not wonderful that power should be seized without legal title, or that an election should be so controlled by force or arranged and put through by fraud, that while the form of it was respected, it did not express any popular will. When one party had done these things, the other party repeated the process as soon as it had a chance, and thereafter things moved round in the same vicious circle.

Why does the machinery of constitutional government work smoothly in Switzerland and the United States and England? Because its forms, being consecrated by tradition and supported by public opinion, are respected by the officials who have to work them. In these South American republics, there were no traditions, and very little public opinion; and this was due not to any inborn defects of the people, but to historical causes which had deprived them of such advantages as the Swiss possess and had given them constitutions quite unfitted to their case.

If the democratic frames of government they adopted were unsuitable, what other frames would have been suitable? Bolivar desired a sort of elective life monarchy, to be sure with himself as monarch. San Martin (as already observed) preferred an oligarchic republic. Either might have been better than what was actually taken. An "honest" oligarchy, i. e. one professing to be what it really is; may be – doubtless is – better than a sham democracy. In a country where only a minority – perhaps a small minority – of the citizens are capable of taking part in the government, it may be safer legally to recognize them as the governing class, and thus bring theory into accord with facts, rather than that the divergence of facts from theory should prove an irresistible temptation to force or fraud. This, however, remains matter for speculation, since no country has permanently established elective monarchy, and few have embodied oligarchical provisions in their constitutions. Let it be added that the better or worse political condition of these states has seldom turned upon the extent to which the suffrage has been granted, for in those where violent methods prevail, the result would be the same whether the number of voting citizens were great or small.

Although for the sake of conciseness I have spoken of these republics as a whole, the remarks made being more or less applicable to them all, still there are marked differences between those which have advanced and are advancing and others whose political health seems little better now than it was fifty years ago. We may distinguish three classes of states. The first consists of those in which republican institutions, purporting to exist legally, are a mere farce, the government being, in fact, a military despotism, more or less oppressive and corrupt, according to the character of the ruler, but carried on for the benefit of the Executive and his friends. The second includes countries where there is a legislature which imposes some restraint upon the executive and in which there is enough public opinion to influence the conduct of both legislature and executive. In these states the rulers, though not scrupulous in their methods of grasping power, recognize some responsibility to the citizens and avoid open violence or gross injustice. The third class are real republics, in which authority has been obtained under constitutional forms, not by armed force, and where the machinery of government works with regularity and reasonable fairness, laws are passed by elected bodies under no executive coercion, and both administrative and judicial work goes on in a duly legal way.

Instances of the first class are too familiar to need mention. By far the worst is Hayti. The most striking example of the second class was Mexico under the government of President Porfirio Diaz. The government of that statesman, one of the most remarkable men of our time, was autocratic. His power had been won by fighting, but was maintained under legal forms. The legislature obeyed him implicitly. Elections were managed by his government, and that with little difficulty because, until 1910, when his hold had begun to be shaken, no one ventured to vote against him. His personal superiority to all the vulgar temptations was recognized and admired. His ministers talked to the Chambers, but took their orders from him alone. His policies were directed to the material development of the country by the construction of railways, the encouragement of manufactures, the opening up of mines and extension of irrigation. Order was maintained by a rural police formed out of former bandits, who by having been enrolled, disciplined, and regularly paid became useful members of society. The lure to conquest which the weakness of the republics to the south held out was firmly resisted, and only a moderate army maintained. Under this régime the country was advancing rapidly in wealth and a class of persons interested in order and prosperity was being formed. Had the President, when old age arrived, been able to find someone like himself to whom he could have handed over the reins, prosperity and order would doubtless have continued. The sort of government he gave the country was probably what best suited it.147 The Indian population, constituting a majority, were (though naturally intelligent) obviously unfit for civic functions. The uneducated mass of the mestizos were almost equally so. An oligarchic government, formed out of the richer class, would have furnished a less efficient administration, and would probably, after some years of quarrelling, have given place to a military chief.

Of the third class good examples may be found in Chile and Argentina, both of which are bona fide republics. Chile is of all the Latin-American states the one which best answers to European or North American notions of a free constitutional commonwealth, one of the chief reasons being that her population is unusually homogeneous and unusually concentrated within a comparatively small area. Northern Chile is an arid desert, southern Chile a forest wilderness, but in the centre there is an area five hundred miles long by fifty wide within which the large majority of her 3,300,000 citizens dwell. The suffrage is limited, and governing power is practically in the hands of a comparatively small landed aristocracy, and a few lawyers. Government, including what we called the party game, is carried on with the same spirit and by the same methods as it was in England during the eighteenth century, allowing for the differences between a monarchy and a republic. There are constant changes in the ministers, but the machine works, and the general lines of national policy are preserved. There have been no revolutions within the living memory, but there was once a civil war. President Balmaceda, finding that he could not carry out his policies within the strict limits of his constitutional powers, exceeded them and defied the legislature. Each party, like the English Charles I and his Parliament, took up arms to fight out the question of right. Balmaceda, defeated in battle, put an end to his own life. He had the weaker legal case, but was a man with some ideas, quite above the common type of ambitious adventurer. After him, Chilean politics resumed their normal constitutional course. There were, in 1910, six parties, one Conservative and five Liberal sections, the latter sometimes acting together, sometimes divided. The level of capacity, as well as of eloquence, is high, and so is the national spirit of the people.

Argentina has had a more troubled and more sanguinary history than Chile, and has more recently emerged from among the breakers into smooth water. Sixty years ago she had in Rosas a tyrant as cruel as Barrios of Guatemala and as bloodthirsty as Lopez of Paraguay, and even later, civil wars raged between the people of Buenos Aires and those of the northern states. But as the country began to be settled and railroads were made and labour was provided by the influx of Italian and Spanish immigrants and large cities sprang up, the effect of general prosperity was felt in a growing sense of the value of order and peace. Though the foreign merchants whose interests were involved took no direct part in politics, their influence was felt not only in promoting sounder finance, but in making the native men of substance feel that frequent revolutions were retarding the development of their properties. Thus, since 1893, there has been no armed civil strife of the old kind and the public tranquillity is now disturbed only by alarms similar to those which the spread and the violent methods of anarchism have caused in some parts of Europe. That flavour of militarism which was so strong in former years has now virtually disappeared. The administration is conducted by civilians, and is pervaded by a legal spirit. In short, Argentina is now, like Chile, a constitutional republic, whose defects, whatever they may be, are the defects of a republic, not of a despotism disguised under republican forms.

The examples of these two countries prove that there is nothing in South American air or Spanish blood to prevent republican institutions from working. If the working is not perfect, neither is it perfect anywhere else in the world. What these countries have shewn is that with favouring conditions the true constitutional spirit can be more and more infused into constitutional forms and the old habits of violence eradicated. The case of Argentina in particular suggests the process by which we may expect that other Latin-American states will, by degrees, advance towards a more settled and genuinely legal government. What is the first thing that is needed to enable any community to prosper? Is it not the desire for order and the respect for order, the sense that there must be a curb on the impulses and passions of individuals, some law duly enforced, some means of checking violence and of protecting life and property against physical force? This sense grows with the growth of property and with the development of industrial habits. The larger the number, and the greater the influence in a community, of those who feel that revolutions injure not only the country, but also themselves personally, the better is the prospect of breaking the revolutionary habit, for a public opinion grows up which condemns violence and actively opposes those who resort to it. Moreover, the more property there is and the more industry there is in a country, the smaller is the proportion of those who join in a revolution either from a love of fighting or in the hope of bettering their fortunes. In a prosperous country, more can be done and more is likely to be done for public instruction, one of the most urgent needs of these nations. Argentina's recent efforts in that direction are an instance, and education, if it does not make men good citizens, makes it at least easier for them to become so.

To speak of increasing wealth as a factor making for the political progress of a country may sound strange to those who in Europe and the United States see how the working of free institutions may be endangered and perverted by the corrupting influences of money and the money power. Nevertheless, according to the proverb, "One man's meat is another man's poison," there are stages in a nation's growth when it is so essential to establish security and give everybody a sense of the need for it, that whatever makes for security makes for progress. The heart is better than the pocket, but it is easier to fill the pocket than to purify the heart. The love of liberty is a nobler thing than the love of security, but sometimes the latter needs to be diffused before the former can have its perfect work.

It is true that the desire for order and security may lead men to submit willingly to arbitrary power. This has often happened since the days of Julius Cæsar and his nephew. But it has usually happened not because men have ceased to value liberty, but because, finding that they are failing to secure either security or liberty, they think it better to have one than to have neither.

There are, in Spanish America, some communities still so far from being capable of genuine popular self-government that the best thing for them is the strong rule of an able ruler which will give them prosperity through peace, shew them how to develop their resources, make them, by education and by better communications, a more homogeneous people. Those things done, such communities will, like Argentina, find themselves fitter to work free institutions. At present, under the rule of selfish adventurers and corrupt legislatures who are the tools of the adventurer, the conditions of progress are absent. Two or three of the South American republics – they are not among those which I saw – are still in this condition. The rule of a man like Porfirio Diaz would seem to give them the best chance of emerging from it. At present they advance neither morally nor materially.

Nevertheless, taking the eleven South American states as a whole, their condition is better than it was sixty years ago. In most of them the civil element has tended to grow and the military element to decline. The lawyer-politician is not always a law-abiding politician, yet on the whole preferable to the soldier-politician. His methods are less brutal. May not even a perversion of the law be a trifle better than a disregard of all law? Revolutions and civil wars have become less sanguinary; the execution of political opponents less frequent. Political assassinations, which in Europe have unhappily been growing more frequent,148 are now more rare here. The sort of savagery that existed in the days when Artigas, fighting for the independence of his country, used (according to the story) to sew up prisoners in oxhides by batches and roll them downhill into the river has long since passed away. Nor is it to be forgotten that there is extremely little brigandage or insecurity in most of these states, far less than there was a few years ago in Sicily. The ordinary citizen is little affected even by the revolutions which, where they occur, are carried on by a small part of the population. Perhaps if the ordinary citizen suffered more, revolutions would be fewer.

Ecclesiastical questions have been almost wholly eliminated from politics in all the larger and some of the smaller states, and religious liberty has been established on a basis not likely to be shaken. A long-standing and bitter cause of strife has thus been removed.

All the Spanish-American countries, even Paraguay, are now more open to the world than they used to be; and the currents of its opinion reach them in ever increasing volume. As few of them have peaceful political traditions of their own to guide or inspire them – when they invoke the past, it is the exploits of revolutionary heroes that are recalled – they must needs look to the thought and practice of the older nations for principles and precedents in the art of government; so whatever brings them into intellectual touch with Europe and North America is helpful. Already one discovers an increasing number of men who perceive that for their nations the only path upward and forward is through the creation of a spirit of self-control and a higher sense of civic duty.