Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

To French doctrines and the example of the United States we must add the influence of English ideas. Miranda and Bolivar admired the political constitution of Great Britain, and were inspired by it. Bolivar, in 1818, recommended the study of this constitution: "You will find therein," he said, "the division of powers, the only means of creating free and independent spirits, and the liberty of the press—that incomparable antidote to political abuses." His enthusiasm for Voltaire and Rousseau was tempered by a study of English methods. In his Angostura draft he recommended a permanent Senate, a reproduction of the House of Lords. The British Executive—the sovereign surrounded by responsible ministers—seemed to him "the most perfect model, whether for a kingdom, or an aristocracy, or a democracy." The Colombian Constitution of Cucuta (1821), in which the political ideas of the Liberator were predominant, merited the eulogy of the Marquis of Lansdowne. "It has for its basis," said the English minister, "the two most just and solid principles"—property and education. Miranda laid before Pitt a constitutional essay inspired by British ideas, with a House of Commons, an Upper Chamber composed of hereditary Inca caciques and censors; in which curious project we find American traditions mingled with political forms borrowed from the English.

Spain also contributed to the development of the revolutionary ideas. She united the populations of America under her crushing authority; she combined in a single body all the disinherited castes which were later to struggle for independence.

"The despotic rigour of authority," wrote Bauza, "unites all these heterogeneous elements with a rigid tie, and forms a race of them."[3] The Napoleonic invasion provoked a reaction in the peninsula: the juntas—provisional representations of nationality—took the place of the captured king. The central junta proclaimed in 1808 that "the American provinces are not colonies, but integral portions of the monarchy, equal in their rights to the rest of the Spanish provinces." In 1810 the Regency informed the American colonies: "Your fate depends upon neither ministers nor viceroys nor governors: it is in your own hands." The constitution of the Cortes of Cadiz (1812), at which the deputies of the colonies were present, declared "that the Spanish Union cannot be the patrimony of a person nor a family—that sovereignty resides essentially in the nation—and that the right of making law belongs to the Cortes and the king." In these documents, independence, national sovereignty, the idea of the native country, and the functions of the assemblies came overseas from the metropolis. The struggles against privateers, against the English invasions of Buenos-Ayres and the Dutch invasions of Brazil, and the influence of the territory itself, created the sentiment of nationality in America. French, English, and Spanish ideas fertilised this vague aspiration. Before imposing themselves upon the universities and assemblies these ideas became current in the journals and the meetings of the cabildo and revealed to the Creole oligarchy its desire for independence.

From 1808 to 1825 all things conspired to help the cause of American liberty; revolutions in Europe, ministers in England, the independence of the United States, the excesses of Spanish absolutism, the constitutional doctrines of Cadiz, the romantic faith of the Liberators, the political ambition of the oligarchies, the ideas of Rousseau and the Encyclopædists, the decadence of Spain, and the hatred which all the classes and castes in America entertained for the Inquisitors and the viceroys. So many forces united engendered a sorry and divided world. The genesis of the southern republics is rude and heroic as a chanson de geste. Then history degenerates until it becomes a comedy of mean and petty interests—a revolutionary orgy. Such was the evolution of South America during the nineteenth century.

[1] Gil Fortoul, Historia Constitucional de Venezuela, Berlin, 1907, vol. i, p. 465.

[2] Historia de San Martin, Buenos-Ayres, 1903, vol. i. p. 3.

[3] Historia de la Dominacion española en el Uruguay, vol. ii. p. 647.

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. Thus, in three different formulæ, we may express the same principle of evolution. In the beginning a warlike and theocratic authority determines ritual, customs, dogma, and laws. The common conscience is potent; individuality accepts without discussion or scepticism the essential rules of social life. History is thereafter a struggle between authority and liberty, a progressive affirmation of autonomous wills, an assertion of destructive and censorious individualism.

In America political development presents the same successive phases. Invariably we find the sequence of the two periods, one military and one industrial or civil. The Independence realised, the rule of militarism sets in throughout the republics. After a period of uncertain duration the military caste is hurled from power, or abdicates without violence, and economic interests become supreme. Politics are then ruled by "civilism." The military régime is not theocratic, as in some European monarchies; the President does not combine the functions of religion and empire. None the less, the civil period involves a fatal reaction against the Church—a period of anti-clericalism or radicalism. The revolution is confined to a change of oligarchies: the military group gives way to plutocracy.

GENERAL JUAN JOSÉ FLORES.
President of Ecuador (1831-1835 and 1839-1843).

This first period is troublous, but full of colour, energy, and violence. The individual acquires an extraordinary prestige, as in the time of the Tuscan Renaissance, the French Terror, or the English Revolution. The rude and bloodstained hand of the caudillo forces the amorphous masses into durable moulds. South America is ruled by ignorant soldiers: the evolution of her republics must therefore be uncertain. There is, therefore, no history properly so called, for it has no continuity; there is a perpetual ricorso brought about by successive revolutions; the same men appear with the same promises and the same methods. The political comedy is repeated periodically: a revolution, a dictator, a programme of national restoration. Anarchy and militarism are the universal forms of political development.

As in European revolutions, anarchy leads to dictatorship; and this provokes immediate counter-revolution. From spontaneous disorder we pass to a formidable tutelage. The example of France is repeated on a new stage; the anarchy of the Convention announces the autocracy of Bonaparte. The dictators, like the kings of feudalism, defeat the local caciques, the provincial generals; thus did Porfirio Diaz, Garcia Moreno, Guzman-Blanco, &c. And revolution follows revolution until the advent of the destined tyrant, who dominates the life of the nation for twenty or thirty years.

Material progress is the work of the autocracy; as witness the rule of Rosas, Guzman-Blanco, Portales, and Diaz. The great caudillos will have nothing to do with abstractions; their realistic minds urge them to encourage commerce and industry, immigration and agriculture. By imposing long periods of peace they favour the development of economic forces.

In matters political and economic the dictators profess Americanism. They represent the new mixed race, tradition, and the soil. They are hostile to the rule of the Roman Church, of European capital, and of foreign diplomacy. Their essential function, like that of the modern kings after feudalism, is to level mankind and unite the various castes. Tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they dominate the colonial nobility, favour the crossing of races, and free the slaves.

ARTIGAS.
Liberator of Uraguay.

The general ideas of this period are simple. There is a faith in the efficacy of political constitutions, and these are multiplied; men aspire to ideological perfection. They believe in the omnipotence of congresses, and distrust the Government. Constitutions separate the powers and enfeeble the executive, rendering it ephemeral; they divide authority by creating triumvirates, consulates, and governmental juntas. The liberalism of the charters is notable. They usually establish three powers, according to the traditional rule of Montesquieu, in order to ensure political equilibrium; they recognise all the theoretical liberties—liberty of the press, of assembly, the rights of property, and industrial and commercial liberty. They accept trial by jury, popular petition, universal suffrage—in short, the whole republican ideal. They consecrate a State religion, Catholicism, thus paving the way for religious revolutions, and all the "Red and Black" revolts and conspiracies of South American history. Election is in some republics direct; in others by the second degree, by means of electoral colleges which appoint the president and the members of the legislative chambers. From North to South institutions are democratic; they bestow political rights with a generous profusion. The judicial power is independent, sometimes elected by the people, generally by congress. The judges are often dependent on the executive. Justice and the law are ineffectual. The president cannot be re-elected.

These constitutions imitate those of France and the United States in the democratic tendencies of the one and the federalism of the other; they are charters of a generous and hybrid species. The presidential régime exists in reality as in the United States; the parliaments are important in virtue of the constitution, but in actual political life are powerless in face of the pressure exercised by the military chiefs. The theory of the social pact and the ideology of the revolutionary are predominant in public speech.

The motives of the civil wars vary. In Ecuador men fight for the caudillos; in Colombia, for ideas; in Chili, for or against the oligarchy. All the national forces are involved in these wars. Revolution is the common heritage of these nations. The races which peopled America were warrior races, both Indians and Spaniards, and their warlike spirit explains the disorder of the republics. Castes and traditions are inimical: the psychological instability characteristic of primitive peoples wars upon discipline and authority.

Two social classes—the military class and the intellectual or university class—had been in opposition since the origin of the Republic. They disputed the supreme power, or sometimes the intellectuals sided with the generals. The "doctors," by aid of reasonings of Byzantine subtlety, justified the dictatorships as well as the Revolution. A Venezuelan deputy, Coto-Paul, in 1811, pronounced a lyrical eulogy of anarchy.

The generals distrusted the lawyers, who represented the intellectual tradition of the colony: Paez hated the juriconsults as Napoleon hated ideologists. And the "doctors," vanquished by the military power, became the docile secretaries of generals and caudillos; they drafted laws and constitutions, and expressed in polished formulæ the rude intentions of the chiefs. To the violence of these latter they opposed subtlety; to the ignorance of despots, the scholastic ease and knowledge acquired in the universities of Spain.

To the struggles of classes was added the war of races; the half-breeds fought against the national oligarchy; the new American class was hostile to the aristocracy of the capitals. The Indians lived in the towns of the interior, in which the colonial isolation was unchanged; the metropolis—Buenos-Ayres, Lima, or Caracas—was still Spanish and increasingly alien. On the coast, where feeling was more mobile and will more variable, the ideas of reform took root; exotic ideas and customs were introduced; while the Sierra,[1] more American than the coast, remained slow and gloomy, and ignorant of the brilliant unrest of the capitals. Thus a triple movement came into being; inferior castes rose against the colonial aristocracy, the provinces against the all-absorbing metropolis, and the half-caste Sierra against the cosmopolitan seaboard.

The provinces desired autonomy; the capitals, monopoly and unity; the metropolis was liberal, the Sierra conservative. The political conflict might know a change of names, but this antagonism was universal. The leaders disguised their deep-seated ambitions under a cloak of general ideas; they supported unity or federation, the military or the civil régime, Catholicism or radicalism. In Argentina the provinces fought against the capital; in Venezuela the coloured middle class against the oligarchies; in Chili the liberals against the pelucones, the proprietors of the soil; in Mexico the federals fought the monarchists; in Ecuador the radicals opposed the conservatives; in Peru the conflict was between the "civilists" and military caudillos. In the diversity of these quarrels we see one essential principle: two classes were in conflict—the proprietors of the latifundia and the poverty-stricken people, the Spaniards and the half-breeds, or the oligarchs and generals of a barbarous democracy.

In each republic the soil and the traditions of the country gave a different colour to the universal warfare. In the Argentine the provinces, under viceroys and intendants, enjoyed a partial autonomy; there federalism had remote antecedents. Unity seemed an imposition on the part of Buenos-Ayres, which possessed the treasury and the custom-houses of the nation, and monopolised the national credit and revenue. In Chili, the long, narrow country, with the Cordillera at the back, like a granite wall, naturally evoked a Unitarian republic. The disputes between centralisation and federalism were soon over. Unity was possible in Peru, a brilliant sub-kingdom, the centre of a long-established and powerful authority. But some aspects of these violent struggles remain obscure. In Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico there was enmity between the coast and the Sierra. Lima and Caracas were capitals near the seaboard; Mexico and Quito were far removed from it. Yet in Peru the struggle was civil and military; in Ecuador, conservative and liberal; and in Mexico, federal and central. Why do we not find the religious struggles, which lasted so long in Colombia, in Bolivia and the Argentine? To explain this diversity we must study the psychology of the different conquistadors—Castilian, Biscayan, Andalusian, Portuguese—and of the different subjected races: the Quechuas, Araucanians, Chibchas, Aztecs, and the proportion in which they were mingled; for the action of the territory itself upon the various admixtures of blood would vary as it was tropical or temperate, coast or Sierra.

The confusion of the struggles in some democracies was extreme. The oligarchs were not always conservatives, nor the half-breeds always liberal. There were reactionary autocracies, like that of Portales in Chili, and liberal autocracies like that of Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela. The federals were usually democrats and liberals, but they were occasionally conservative and autocratic. The democrats of Peru were reactionary in matters of religion; those of Chili were radical. The civil régime was conservative in Bolivia under Baptista and in Ecuador under Garcia-Moreno, but liberal in Mexico under Juarez and Chili under Santa-Maria and Balmaceda. Militarism was radical under Lopez in Colombia, but conservative under General Castilla in Peru. When political evolution followed its logical development, federalism, liberalism, and democracy formed a trilogy, and oligarchy was conservative and Unitarian.

Revolutions, in opposing castes and uplifting the half-breed, prepared the way for a new period. But a democratic society cannot easily establish itself in the face of the established aristocracies, and slavery still survived, although softened by liberal institutions. The military class, accessible to all, replaced the old nobility. Confusion of races commenced as early as 1850, when generous laws enfranchised the negroes, and new economic interests arose to complicate these democratic societies. Revolutions, dictatorships, and anarchy were the necessary aspects of the dissolution of the old society.

The age of generals gave way to an industrial period in which wealth increased, industries became more complex and numerous, and labour was subdivided, while association became more usual both in commerce and agriculture. Co-operation, organisation, and solidarity, unknown during the period of anarchy, were aspects of an intense economic development. The interests newly created sought for peace, and the internal order which favoured their expansion.

Politics commenced to eschew and disdain the squabbles of ideology, and constitutional liberties acquired precision and efficacy. Plutocracies came into being, and aspired to government in place of internal revolution and external warfare; immigration, transforming the social classification, facilitated their advent. National progress was effected despite the governments; it was an anonymous and collective task. The energetic individualities of the military epoch were followed by the laborious crowd. The caudillo receded to the background of politics; the captains of industry replaced him, the merchants and the bankers. Courage was once the supreme criterion of the man; now wealth is the touchstone by which individuals and peoples are judged. The table of human values changes; instruction, foresight, and practical common sense determine success in an industrial democracy. In the social ascension of the generations which industry and commerce have thrown forward to the attack upon the old patrician society, the prejudices of class and religion grow feebler, and after a century of conflict the nations of the present day emerge.

In the southern republics of America industrialism is supreme in the Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili; even in tropical Brazil. In Bolivia and Peru the last leaders are not yet dead, the parties are still personal, but their influence is not as decisive as it was thirty years ago. Among the northern peoples, from Mexico to Ecuador, anarchy and caudillism still survive; there political unrest has not yet been dominated by the principle of authority. The long dictatorship of General Castro and certain Central American presidents proves that the dictatorial régime is the only form of government that is able to maintain peace in these countries.

It is hardly possible to determine the "historical moment" at which these republics passed from the military to the industrial system. The twilight of the caudillos was a long one. Even in the Argentine, where the economic life is magnificent and complex, their influence persists. In Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil there exists a latent militarism which might quickly destroy the work of the civil presidents. For ten years in Peru and Uruguay and Bolivia government has followed government without revolutionary violence, but can we say that the anarchy of fifty years has disappeared for ever? The political order is slowly becoming assured, and the relation between wealth and the increase of immigration and of peace is obvious. Even in the industrial field evolution is the work of a few caudillos who have been pacificators: General Pando in Bolivia, General Roca in the Argentine, Pierola in Peru, and Battle y Ordonez in Uruguay, not to speak of the greatest of all, Porfirio Diaz.

Economically speaking this period of development material is superior to the first period of sterile revolution; it is superior also from the political point of view, for institutions have been perfected and their constitutional action has defined itself. The municipalities and the legislative power have acquired a relative autonomy; they have been victorious over the executive, which was omnipotent during the military period. In beauty and intensity, however, the prosaic age of industrialism has been inferior to the preceding period. Of old, vigorous personalities rose above the common level, and history had the vitality of a tragedy; men played with destiny and with death as in the time of the Italian renaissance. "Tyranny," writes Burckhardt, "in the ancient Latin republics, commenced by developing to the highest degree the individuality of the sovereign, of the condottiere." He then demonstrates the equally personal character of the statesmen and popular tribunes of Florentine history.[2] This analysis is applicable to the American leaders. Heroic audacity and perpetual and virile unrest characterise the struggles of the caciques. The military cycle closed, the republics lose this dramatic interest. Instead of describing the history of governments we must study the economic evolution of nations, and their statistics of industry and commerce. In tragedy the chorus, the crowd, becomes the essential person; it judges and executes, it is spectator and creator, while the heroes of old, the conquerors of destiny and founders of cities, disappear in the mists of the past.

To these political changes correspond changes in manners and customs; the cities, too, have changed and have lost their archaic character. The cosmopolitan invasion has resulted in a brilliant monotony, and interest has become the sole motive of action; permanent war is followed by peace à outrance; the republics have gained in wealth and mediocrity. It is a period of transition: we cannot yet distinguish the firm lineaments of the future State.

Will the Argentine and Brazil become great plutocratic States like the United States? Will Chili, which is copying the social organisation of England, be subjected, like the Anglo-Saxon Empire, to the attacks of demagogy? The spectacle of these enriched nations permits us to affirm only that in revolutionary America four nations, the Argentine, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chili, will, before the lapse of a century, be definitively organised as republics.

Yet these States still betray old racial characteristics.

"The dead found the race," writes M. Gustave Le Bon. "The dead generations impose on us not only their physical constitution but also their thoughts. Forms of government matter little."[3] In the democracies of Latin America the "fundamental revolution" of which politicians boast has been sterile; under the republican mask the Spanish heredity survives, deep-rooted and secular. The forms vary but the soul of the race remains the same. President-autocrats replace the vice-kings; the old struggles between the governors of the State and the bishops persist, for patronage in ecclesiastical affairs, the prestige of the "doctors," and academic titles.

The ruling caste, the heir to the prejudices of Spain, despises industry and commerce, and lives for politics and its futile agitations. The territorial seigneurs still have the upper hand as before the Revolution. The ancient latifundia still survive, the great domains which explain the power of the oligarchy. Assemblies exercise a secondary function, as the municipal cabildos of old. Catholicism is still the axis of social life. The picaros of Spanish romance, haughty and ingenious parasites, are still accepted at their own value. The bureaucracy swallows up the wealth of the exchequer; it was formed a century ago of voracious Castilians; to-day it consists of Americans devoid of will. Despite the equality proclaimed by the constitutions the Indian is subjected to the implacable tyranny of the local authorities, the curé, the justice of peace, and the cacique. Under other names the little despots of the Spanish period are still alive and active.

The democracies of South America, then, are Spanish, although the élite has always been inspired by French ideas. Democracies by proclamation and in their anarchy, equalitarian and of mixed blood, the individual often acquires a heroic significance like that of the supermen of Carlyle; mediæval republics divided into irreducible families and factions, governed by enriched merchants; Greek republics, hostile to their own leaders, jealous of the virtue of Aristides and the wisdom of Themistocles, but without the plebiscitary ardour of the Hellenic community.

[1] The cold region of lofty table-lands.

[2] La Civilisation en Italie au temps de la Renaissance, Paris, 1885, vol. i. pp. 165 et seq.

[3] Les lois psychologiques de l'Evolution des peuples, Paris, 1900, pp. 13 and 71.

BOOK II

THE CAUDILLOS AND THE DEMOCRACY

The history of the South American Republics may be reduced to the biographies of their representative men. The national spirit is concentred in the caudillos: absolute chieftains, beneficent tyrants. They rule by virtue of personal valour and repute, and an aggressive audacity. They resemble the democracies by which they are deified. Without studying the biographies of Paez, Castilla, Santa-Cruz, and Lavalleja, it is impossible to understand the evolution of Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

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 Argentine pampa gave birth to Quiroga, and the Arabian desert engendered the mystic adventure of the Khalifs, so the llanos of Venezuela created Paez.

Among the haughty llaneros of Apure he grew to be a horseman, a lover of the infinite plains, the leader of a nameless troop, the hero of a host of adventures, romantic or brutal. He was born in 1790. He was a half-breed, representing the indigenous forces in conflict with the Spanish oligarchy and the Creole aristocracy. A democrat of the school of Castilla and Rosas, robust and audacious, with the perspicacity of the Indian and the pride of a tribal chieftain, he cared only to lead armies. He detested "literary people," "judges," and ideologues. A lieutenant of the Liberator's, he was with him in a hundred battles, but he loathed all discipline, and his incipient insubordination in 18 18 diminished the success of Bolivar. His pride revolted against all tutelage, even when this was just. At times he wished Bolivar to be an absolute chieftain, an invulnerable monarch; at other times he rebelled against him. In 1819 he led the patriots of the llanos to victory; he obtained power and honours but was always notably insubordinate. In 1821 he opposed the order of enrolment issued by Santander, the Vice-President of Colombia. The municipality of Caracas shared his desire for autonomy, and Venezuela followed the leader who represented the national instincts. Bolivar intervened to enforce the unity of Colombia and gave way to Paez. In 1826 the latter counselled the Liberator to assume the crown.

The fusion of the peoples, unity as against discord, was the Bolivian ideal. At this time the spirit of nationality was working obscurely, and spontaneous republics were springing up. The race, exhausted by its long tutelage, uneasily sought subdivision, thinking thereby to gain autonomy; Paez, profoundly American, followed the stream and exiled Bolivar. He broke up the Colombian unity, as Santander in New Granada and Flores in Ecuador, and liberated his country in 1830. The nomad guerrillero had then to organise the country, to give it stability and continuity; his supple nature adapted itself to his new duties. By instinct (writes an eminent historian, Gil Fortoul) he inclined to play the part of certain constitutional kings, leaving the government to his ministers. Without denying his democratic past, he frequented the society of the literate and the oligarchs. His presidency (1831-1835) resulted in domestic peace, strict order in matters financial, political conciliation, and economic progress.

Dr. Vargas, an enemy of militarism, succeeded him, but the brothers José Tadeo and José Gregorio Monagas, who had risen against Paez in 1831, renewed their attempt in 1835. The weak, irresolute President appointed Paez commander-in-chief of the army, while the revolutionists of Caracas proclaimed him supreme ruler. His immense moral force loomed paternally above the squabbles of the parties; he became the arbiter of Venezuelan quarrels.

He upheld the constitution and the presidency of Vargas, but the latter could not retain supreme power and abandon the reins of government to the hands of the vice-president. The chieftain of the plains was elected for a second presidential period in 1838. Militarism declined under his rule, foreign credit increased, the payment of the debt was assured, and orderly progress was effected. In 1843 his loyal friend, General Carlos Soublette, a republican of the antique mould, austere and liberal, was his successor. Once more the omnipotence of Paez was triumphant.

The political tranquillity of these two periods masked a social transformation. Venezuela was not a democratic republic; it was, like Chili, ruled by an oligarchy. The Constitution of 1830 conferred the enjoyment of political rights only upon the land-owners, property-owners, and government employés; as in the southern nation the territorial overlords ruled, and slavery persisted. The "doctors" belonged to the dominant group. The oligarchs were conservatives; they defended property, order, and wealth against militarism and demagogy. They recognised no State religion, nor did they practise intolerance.

In 1840 a liberal reaction set in against the dictatorship of Paez and the conservative clan; democratic institutions and "new men" were called for. It was a struggle of classes and races. The obscure mass—pardos (mulattos), mestizos, proletariats—subjected to slavery or servitude, oppressed by the privileged, hybrid and anarchical—attacked the established ruling caste. Thus political unrest was complicated by social conflict. Antonio Leocadio Guzman, a brilliant demagogue, comprehending the liberal ambitions of the crowd, founded a popular party upon the hatred of hierarchies and traditions. A tribune and journalist, he violently attacked Paez, Soublette, and their ministers; he offered the people the abolition of slavery and the repartition of the soil, with the violence of all the creators of democracies, from Tiberius Gracchus to Lloyd George. He was presidential candidate in 1846; Paez supported General Tadeo Monagas, a gloomy personage who represented the oligarchy. The supporters of Guzman rebelled against the influence of Soublette and the tutelage of the great llanero, and a social revolution commenced under the mask of a political quarrel. The Liberals wished to overthrow the "Gothic oligarchy." Guzman was made prisoner. He was judged as were the tribunes of antiquity who terrified the patrician class by the tumult of a hungry democracy. Condemned to death as a conspirator and anarchist, he saw his punishment commuted to banishment.

GENERAL JOSÉ TADEO MONAGAS.
President of Venezuela (1846-1850 and 1855-1859).

The conservatives had won; the evolution of democracy was checked, thanks to the advent of certain crude demagogues. As in Chili, a moderate liberalism was germinating in the heart of the conservative group itself. Until 1861 the oligarchical constitution of 1830 was maintained, as in Chili the analogous constitution of 1833 persisted, in all its rigidity, until 1891. The liberals could hardly be distinguished from the conservatives; the democratic Guzman himself accepted slavery. There was not, therefore, any violent war of castes, but rather a slow infiltration of liberal principles in the substance of the aristocratic class. The man of this period of transition was President Monagas. He governed with liberals and conservatives, and founded a personal system. The Congress wished to impeach him, but the people defended him against the Congress. The independent Assembly was dissolved, amidst bloodshed and the bodies of the slain, on the tragic 24th of January, 1848, and the Executive was triumphant. The rule of oligarchies was followed by personalism or autocracy. Monagas struggled against Paez; these two predominant influences could not co-exist. The old caudillo took the head of a revolution; he was defeated, and, like Guzman, exiled. Curious analogy between the fate of the chieftain of the oligarchy and that of the leader of the democrats!

José Tadeo Monagas was replaced by his brother José Gregorio. The pair formed a strange species of dynasty in which inheritance was collateral. Guzman having again lost the presidency, his supporters and those of Paez rebelled against the government in 1853 and 1854; but the government was victorious, and in 1854 liberated the slaves. Better than the apostrophes of the popular tribune this radical measure prepared the way for the advent of the democrats. After José Gregorio Monagas his brother José Tadeo became President in 1855. A new Constitution of 1857, centralistic in tendency, permitted the re-election of presidents, and Monagas remained in power. General Castro defeated him at the head of a coalition of all parties. The old political groups were reorganised; the struggles between federalists and centralists recommenced; and the decline of the oligarchies saw the advance of democracy. The Convention of Valencia (1858) promulgated a liberal constitution, which established the autonomy of the provinces under governors and congresses of their own; the electoral capacity, restricted by the old statute, was enlarged; the jury system was established; and the Executive was weakened, with an eye to the personalism of Monagas. A civil war in which federals, liberals, centralists, conservatives, constitutionalists, and ideologists were mingled in motley assemblies disturbed the country. The battles lacked the simplicity of the old directorates, the rigidity of the old hierarchies. The democracy lamentably increased; the liberal factions were seized with an equalitarian frenzy. Their leaders—Falcon, Zamora—were demagogues on horseback. At the spectacle of this barbarism Paez, returning in 1861 from the United States, restored reaction and autocracy. On September 10th he proclaimed himself supreme chief in the face of the federal power; an octogenarian, he gathered all the powers of the State into his trembling hand; a melancholy symbol of the oligarchy, exhausted in its struggle against the invading democracy. In vain did he issue tyrannical decrees; he could not prevent the triumph of federation. At Coche, Guzman-Blanco, general of the federal forces, negotiated with Rojas, the omnipotent secretary of Paez, an agreement which put an end to the tottering dictatorship. The action of the founder of Venezuela, "the man of the plains," representing the conservative aristocracy, was over. He died in 1873, when his work of a half-century was about to be continued, under another form, by the great caudillo Antonio Guzman-Blanco.

He was the son of Antonio Leocadio Guzman, leader of the liberal party. He had travelled in the United States, was a diplomatist, and had followed a course of study in the law, and on his return to Venezuela had directed military operations during the revolt against Paez. He had the gifts of the military leader; he skilfully organised attack and retreat in that difficult warfare of many factions amidst the plains; he revealed himself as a heroic leader of men, dashing and persevering. In 1862 he attained the rank of General-in-Chief of the Army. The General Assembly elected him vice-president of the Republic, under the presidency of Falcon, after the agreement of Coche. Guzman-Blanco then contracted a loan of one and a half million pounds in London, where Venezuelan credit was ruined. It was necessary to restore the public finances after the long crisis of the revolution. The operation was onerous, and the liberal leader was criticised. However, the Venezuelan Congress awarded him a prize in the form of an award of money.

In 1865 and 1866, during the absences of President Falcon, he exercised command with admirable political tact, introducing severe financial economies, regularising the debt, and suppressing sinecures and pensions. In the political world, despite the triumph of the federals, he demanded the reinforcement of the central power, as against the anarchy of the autonomous provinces. In fact, a new constitution, extremely liberal, which was promulgated by the Assembly in 1864, had conceded an excessive degree of independence upon the provinces.

A revolution overthrew the federal President, and the conservative malcontents restored José Tadeo Monagas. Anarchy continued, and Guzman-Blanco intervened to repress partial revolts, to counsel political tolerance, and to negotiate abroad the unification of the public debt; he had inherited the moral power from Paez. Monagas wished to draw him into his party, and offered him the succession of the presidency. The struggle increased in intensity; the "Blues" of Monagas, as in Byzantium, defied the "Yellows" of Guzman-Blanco. The civil war lasted five years. The country seeking stability, even if it involved autocracy, José Ruperto Monagas succeeded to his father and the monarchical policy was again attempted. The chief of the federals was the enemy of the President, who exiled him, after a nocturnal attack upon his house, on the 14th of August, 1869.

Guzman arrived in Curaçoa, and in September openly commenced to work for revolution. Monagas was anxious to compromise, and willing to agree to one of those conventions so frequent in Venezuelan history; but the caudillo imposed hard conditions. His father, the demagogue and tribune, accompanied him as journalist. After indecisive battles the Revolution triumphed in Caracas (April, 1870), and Guzman-Blanco assumed the dictatorship. The autocratic régime accepted neither conciliation with the vanquished nor legal artifices; the figure of the Imperator looms above the passive crowd, a defence against federal disorganisation, economic waste, and incessant anarchy. The liberal leader attacked his adversaries energetically, directed battles, performing prodigies of strategy at Valencia and Apure. The "blues" recoiled, successively losing Valencia, Trujillo, and Maracaibo. General Matias Salazar, the seditious liberal chief, a friend of the dictator, was shot. Like Porfirio Diaz, the Venezuelan autocrat checkmated anarchy by decapitating its generals. Exile, battles, and confiscation of goods prepared the way for lasting peace. Two years the civil war lasted, and in 1872 Guzman-Blanco, a beneficent despot, commenced the material transformation of the country. He knew men, he had the gift of command; his decision was irresistible, his character of steel. He reduced import duties, and abolished export duties, founded a banking company which issued bonds guaranteed by the Government, and amortised the public debt. While introducing strict economies he attacked his political enemies with forced loans and special contributions. In the political arena he unhesitatingly repressed the revolts of the Blues and would grant them no amnesty; he exiled the archbishop because he refused to celebrate the triumph of the liberal Revolution by a Te Deum. The dictator was nationalist as against foreign pressure and threats; he aspired to the reconstitution of Venezuela, in matters domestic and foreign, despite the anarchy of the factions and the manoeuvres of European stockjobbers. Diplomatic conflicts arose with the United States, Holland, England, and the Papacy.

Guzman-Blanco favoured education; he wished to see "a school in every street." He reformed the civil and penal codes, and established marriage and civil registers. In 1873 he renounced the dictatorship before Congress, but the latter elected him President, and accorded him supreme honours. Statues and streets and medals bore his name; he was given the pompous titles of "Illustrious American" and "Regenerator of Venezuela"; nothing could be refused him by the servile and extravagant deputies. His statue, erected in Caracas in 1875, near that of Bolivar, glorified the Regenerator equally with the Liberator. The popular dictator satisfied the ambitions of all; he brought the peace desired by the oligarchs, he was the idol of the crowds, and he attacked the Church like the liberals and free-masons.

From 1870 to 1877 the Government fostered material development by means of the construction of railways and highways, public buildings in the large towns, and the transformation and embellishment of Caracas. It was said that the Dictator wished to imitate Napoleon III. by opening up promenades and avenues. Credit prospered, the service of the debt was assured, the public revenues increased, orderly and economical budgets were established, and statistics organised. The President reinforced and disciplined the army, and intervened in the politics of the states, in defiance of federalism. He endeavoured to found a Venezuelan Church, with a liberal archbishop and clergy elected by the faithful; he suppressed religious congregations and converted their goods into national property. His autocracy did not respect the powers of the outer world; he stimulated industries by a strict protectionism. An admirer of French art, he established museums in Venezuela.

In 1877 General Alcantara succeeded him. Guzman-Blanco stated in his message, reviewing his seven years' work, that he left behind him peace, administrative and political organisation, external credit, liberty of the vote, and "the triumph of the dignity and the rights of the Nation." He was acclaimed to the verge of apotheosis. He left for Europe, and in his absence the statues of the dictator were overthrown and his decrees annulled by those who had conferred such honours upon him. Democracy, unstable and feminine, burned what she had adored. Guzman-Blanco returned to Venezuela in 1878, devoured with dictatorial ambitions. He had sought in Paris to found a company which, like the East Indian and African companies of England, should transform his country. He longed for the power he had abandoned to an ungrateful mob. Upon his arrival a favouring revolution welcomed him, the state of Carabobo proclaimed him Dictator, and ten other states followed suit. The revolutionaries triumphed, and those who had overthrown his statues and reversed his statutes now praised him to the skies. Guzman-Blanco proposed to reform the Constitution; the Swiss federation was his political model. He reduced the number of states in Venezuela, and despoiled the Executive of many attributes, which he confided to a Federal Council. The Province approved the "Swiss" Constitution of 1882.

The "Illustrious American" then returned to France to realise a financial plan which was to transform his country, and to conclude a contract with the great Jew bankers. He formed a privileged company which was to exploit the country, obtain concessions of land, and organise what financiers call the mise en valeur of new territories. The Constitution promulgated, Guzman-Blanco was elected President of the General Council. In 1882 he expounded to Congress the benefits of his autocracy: material development, budgetary surpluses, extended cultivation, and political stability.

Until 1886 Guzman-Blanco was President of the Venezuelan democracy, or its minister in European capitals. His power was absolute; he imposed new leaders, left the country, returned; he was the Protector of the Republic. From the enchanted banks of the Seine he directed the febrile development of Venezuela. Like Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and Rosas in the Argentine he conquered all other leaders, imposed peace, organised and unified, and ruled by terror or by sentiment. A caudillo without definite political ideas, he loved power and his native country. State, Church, parties, and national riches, all were his; they were the domains of this feudal baron. His enemies accused him of enriching himself at the expense of the national property, but his work in the material world was fruitful; he built roads, erected buildings, and stimulated the development of the national fortune. In matters of policy he affirmed the inviolability of the country against foreign aggression; he was a democrat as against the conservatives. He loved pomp and triumph, sumptuous external shows, sonorous phrases, and the servile adoration of the crowd.

He had an enormous faith in his own work. In 1883 he stated that Venezuela, under his authority, "had undertaken an infinite voyage towards an infinite future." His dictatorship appeared to him as necessary, providential: "the people insist upon it so that we may be saved from anarchy." He aimed at "the regeneration of the country"; and his was the responsibility for this work; but the greatness also was his. "I have never followed the thought of any but myself," he said. Indeed, we may apply to him the classic phrase descriptive of absolutism: "L'Etat c'est moi."[1]

[1] En defensa del Septenio, Paris, 1878, p. 29.

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, when America was already independent, that the victory of Ayacucho liberated Peru from the Spanish rule.

Bolivar wished to give Peru the same constitution as Bolivia; to force the institution of the irremovable President on the anarchy of these republics; but the municipality of Lima refused the project. The Peruvians exalted the Liberator; "hero" and "demi-god" the poets called him; his praise was sung in the churches; the Congress granted him riches and honours. His generals were struggling for the supreme command. The Colombian hero returned to his own country, and at once President followed President and revolution revolution. The history of the first twenty years of the Republic, as in Mexico and the Argentine, records only the clash of the forces of society organised and disciplined by the colonial régime. Generals and "doctors," autocracy and anarchy, the oligarchy of the vice-kingdom and the advancing democracy, all were at war among themselves. Byzantine factions struggled to attain the supreme power in the assemblies and the barracks. Aristocratic Presidents—Riva Aguero, Orbegoso, Vivanco, and military Presidents—La Mar, La Fuente, Gamarra, followed one another with bewildering rapidity. In the south Arequipa, the home of a tenacious race, engendered terrible revolts. External wars, such as that with Colombia in 1827 and Bolivia in 1828 and 1835 (to repulse the protectorate of Santa-Cruz), were really due to the quarrels of ambitious generals who were disputing the succession of Bolivar. New nations, whose frontiers as yet were vague, had not yet acquired a national consciousness. Santa-Cruz, President of Bolivia, unified Peru, founding a confederation, from Tumez to Tarija, necessary to the equilibrium of American politics; but he was a foreign President. Amid the host of provincial chiefs a general presently arose who for twenty years was the energetic director of the nation's life—Don Ramon Castilla.

GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ.
President of Bolivia (1829-1839).

He recalls Paez rather than Rosas. He was no invulnerable tyrant, but a caudillo of great influence. Born in Tarapaca in 1796, he was a mestizo, having in his veins the blood of an Indian grandmother. This origin perhaps explains his endurance and astuteness. His father was Asturian, a member of a warlike race. Castilla passed his youth at Tarapaca, in a region of vast plains and narrow valleys, and the desert made him a nomad, a chief of legionaries. A Spanish soldier in Chili, he was made prisoner at Chacabuco; set at liberty, he travelled through the Argentine and Brazil, and on his return to Peru he offered his services to San Martin; in 1821 he fought beside Sucre at Ayacucho, followed General Gamarra against Bolivia, and retaken prisoner at Ingavi, he finally became general, then marshal. Short, with virile features and a penetrating glance, he was a great leader, strong and tenacious in the field. His bearing was martial; men felt that opposition irritated him, that he was an autocrat by vocation. Without much culture, he was astute enough to seem learned. He intuitively knew the value of men and the manner in which to govern them. His strong point was the gift of command. Experience made him sceptical and ironical; his speech was stern and incisive. His ideas were simple; a conservative in politics, he respected the principle of authority. Like San Martin, to whom he wrote some suggestive letters, he hated anarchy. In the midst of the tumult of revolution he understood the necessity of a strong government. He defeated the dictator Vivanco, in skirmishes and pitched battles, at Carmen-Alto, and became President of Peru in 1845. He granted an amnesty to the vanquished and re-established order. His government marked the commencement, after twenty years of revolutions, of a new period of administrative stability, during which commerce developed and the public revenues increased; new sources of wealth, namely, guano and saltpetre, transformed the economic life of the country. The telegraph united Lima to Callao in 1847; the first Peruvian railroad was inaugurated in 1851. The service of the external debt due to foreign loans commenced, and the internal debt was consolidated. The first presidency of General Castilla resulted in peace and economic progress.

General Echenique succeeded him, and financial scandals, guano concessions, speculations, and a corrupt thirst for wealth engendered discontent. The prophecy of Bolivar was accomplished: gold had corrupted Peru. Castilla hesitated before revolting against a constitutional government. A lover of order, he respected authority in others and in himself. But finally a fresh revolution broke out, and triumphed at La Palma in 1855. In the same year Congress elected Castilla as President.

In the preceding year the general-President had already proclaimed the emancipation of the negro slaves, in order to ensure that the revolution which he now headed should be welcome. Congress declared the personal tribute demanded of the Indians abolished. A new constitution, the basis of that of 1860, which is still in force in Peru, changed the political organism in several essential aspects. It suppressed the Council of State and replaced it by two vice-presidents; it organised the municipalities, and set a term of four years on the duration of the presidency. Vivanco rose against Castilla in 1857, but was defeated. The government of General Castilla terminated peacefully: from 1844 to 1860 he directed the national policies with a hand of iron. None before him had been able to give the life of the nation such continuity. All the moral and economic forces of the country were developed; the exports attained to three millions sterling, which sum was in excess of the imports; railways and telegraph lines crossed the wilderness, and the credit of the country permitted of new and important loans. Peru, conscious of her progressive energy, aspired to extend her domains. Castilla declared war upon Ecuador in 1859, the pretext being a question of frontiers; as victor he granted generous terms of peace. He built ships to oppose the future maritime supremacy of Chili; then, divining the importance of Eastern Peru, he sent out expeditions to explore the great unknown watercourses. Like Garcia-Moreno in Ecuador and Portales in Chili, he established peace, stimulated wealth, promoted education, created a navy, and imposed a new constitution on the country. His action was not only political but social; by freeing the slaves and Indians he prepared the future of democracy. The journals of the period condemned his absolutism. "The formula of the General is 'L'Etat c'est moi,'" wrote Don José Casimiro-Ulloa in 1862. For fifteen years he was the dictator necessary to an unstable republic.

After him the national life was personified by a civil President, Manuel Pardo, who represented the reaction of lawyers and business men against the militarism of Castilla and his predecessors. He did not govern for two terms, like the autocratic General, nor did his personal influence last ten years; yet his reputation increased after his death, so that his name, like that of Balmaceda in Chili, presides over the fortunes of a party.

Pardo was born in Lima in 1834. He was the son of a poet, Don Felipe Pardo; but he soon abandoned dreams for action; to him material interest seemed superior to all other questions.

He detested "pure politics"; he regarded the Constitution as a "dead letter in national life." His vocation impelled him to protect the financial affairs of the country; he was Minister of Finance from 1866 to 1868, fiscal agent in London, and founded a bank in Lima. His best address deals with the subject of taxation. As President he decreed a monopoly of saltpetre in 1875, an economic measure often criticised as having provoked the disastrous war with Chili.

An economist and champion of order, he continued the work of Castilla, was triumphant over revolution, and organised the country.

In 1862, when he had already been minister and mayor of Lima, a popular election carried him to power. In four years his extraordinary activity reformed all the public services: education, finance, and immigration. He ordered the census to be taken in 1876; he endeavoured to attract foreigners; founded the Faculty of Political Sciences and the University of Lima for the education of diplomatists and administrators, and the School of Arts and Crafts for the improvement of popular education; he opened new primary schools, sent for German and Polish professors, and entrusted the pedagogic direction of the country to them. He promulgated new regulations dealing with education on the classic European lines. He re-established the National Guard, as Portales had done in Chili, and organised departmental juntas with an eye to decentralisation. His action was restless and universal. He preferred a positive policy, devoid of doctrinaire quarrels, dreamed of a practical republic, like Rafael Nuñez in Colombia and Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela, and preferred the faculty of political sciences, which formed administrators, to that of letters, which created literary men and philosophers.

Nevertheless, the country became bankrupt. Loans, the great undertakings of President Balta, and speculations in guano and saltpetre had exhausted it. Pardo could not prevent this financial disaster. He assured the service of the foreign debt and informed the democracy, intoxicated by the economic orgy, that it was ruined. He vainly sought the alliance of the Argentine and Bolivia in order to erect a triple bastion of defence against the ambitions of Chili. His efforts were fruitless, both at home and abroad. He was succeeded by a military President. The alliance of Peru and Bolivia was powerless against the might of Chili, and Pardo himself was assassinated during a supreme reaction of the demagogy which he hoped to rule.

MANUEL PARDO.
President of Peru (1872-1876).

Death made his influence lasting, as was the case with Garcia-Moreno and Balmaceda. A strong ruler of men, he had gathered about him enthusiastic and even fanatical partisans. His work of reformation became the evangel of a party, the civil party which he had founded. As early as 1841 the dictator Vivanco had united, in a conservative group, the leading men of the time: Pando, Andres Martinez, Felipe Pardo. Ureta, Pardo's rival in the presidential campaign, united the first elements of a civil party. But it was his rival who concentrated all these forces, making them lasting and harmonious. A scion of ancient families, of the Aliagas and Lavalles, Pardo represented the colonial traditions in a disordered democracy.

Thanks to the discovery of new sources of wealth —saltpetre and guano—and to fiscal monopolies, a powerful plutocracy suddenly arose in Peru, which was soon, by the prestige of its wealth, to overpower the old Peruvian families. Pardo, not opposing the national transformation, joined this plutocracy; and his party, reinforced by the alliance, became the obstinate champion of property, of slow reform, and of order, against the anarchy of the Creoles. It was conservative without rigidity, liberal without violence, like the moderate parties of monarchical governments, or the Progressists of the third French Republic. Originally an aristocratic power, it abandoned its old severity, and became the party of the wealthy classes, taking mulattos and mestizos to its bosom. So, as in other South American democracies, the ancient oligarchy was replaced by a plutocracy which included the sons of immigrants, half-breeds, and bankers.

The influence of Pardo was greater and more lasting than that of Castilla. It responded to many of the needs of Peru; placed between militarism and demagogy, the civil element was the only agent of order and progress. The work of Pardo, interrupted during the war with Chili (1879-84) and the period of anarchy which followed, despite the efforts of a military leader who had fought like a hero in the war against Chili—Colonel Caceres—was by the irony of human affairs continued by the sworn enemy of Pardo: Pierola, the last of the great Peruvian caudillos; restless, romantic, and always ready to seize the reins of power by the violent aid of revolution.

In 1869, at the age of thirty, he was Minister of Finance, following Garcia Calderon, who had resigned his post rather than authorise the waste of fiscal resources. Ten years later Pierola proclaimed himself dictator, and prepared, with unusual energy, to defend Peru against the invasion of Chili. A reformer after the methods of the Jacobins, he thought to transform the nation by heaping decree upon decree and by changing the names of institutions. His noble enthusiasm makes it easy to overlook his errors.

The Peruvian troops defeated, Pierola did not resign power, and divided the country. Ten years later, in the full maturity of his intellectual powers, he was elected President (1895-99); from which period we may date the Peruvian renaissance. Without raising loans he transformed an exhausted country into a stable republic. Like all the great American caudillos, he was an excellent administrator of the fiscal wealth of the country; he established a gold standard as the basis of the new monetary system, promulgated a military code and an electoral law, and by means of a French mission endeavoured to change an army which was the docile servant of ambitious factions into a force capable of preserving domestic peace. His organising talent, his patriotism, and his extraordinary ability, surprised those who had known only the revolutionary leader.

DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA.
President of Peru (1895-1899).

He founded a democratic party, as did Pardo a party inimical to militarism. But in spite of the denomination of this party it has lent its aid to the military leaders, and no law in favour of the workers has emanated from the democrats. Pierola, who called himself "the protector of the native race," established a tax upon salt, which was a great hardship to that poverty-stricken race.

DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON.
President of Peru (1881-1884).