Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

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 friend of Bolivar resigned from power, disillusioned; he was the Patroclus of the American Iliad.

From that time onward the young republic was for twenty years ruled by a great caudillo, Andres Santa-Cruz. A lieutenant of the Liberator, he inherited, like Paez and Flores, a portion of his legacy of nations: he was President of Bolivia and wished to be President of Peru.

OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA.
(From "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity,"
by the Hon. John Barrett.)

In 1826 he presided over the Council of State at Lima and governed in the absence of Bolivar. In 1827 he was the head of the Bolivian Republic, prosecuting a difficult struggle against national anarchy. His ambition included the vast theatre of the old vice-kingdom; he wished to unite Bolivia and Peru, and to that end organised freemasonry as a political force, from La Paz to Lima. President of the Bolivian Republic for the second time in 1828, he formed a government sufficiently strong to discourage revolution. Like Garcia-Moreno and Guzman-Blanco, he was a civilizer. The son of an Indian woman of noble origin, the Cacica of Guarina, he perhaps inherited imperial ambitions. He loved power and display, received the order of the Legion of Honour from Louis-Philippe, and instituted an analogous order for the Bolivian Confederation. He accumulated sonorous titles: Captain-General and President of Bolivia, Grand Marshal, Pacificator of Peru, Supreme Protector of the South and North Peruvians, &c. In domestic politics he was an organiser who was capable of cruelty in defence of order; a strict administrator. He promulgated codes, following the Napoleonic example, disciplined the army, and restored the national finances. The revenue increased, credit became more secure, and imperialism saw the light. Santa-Cruz attracted Europeans and protected his countrymen, for the question of population preoccupied him; it is, indeed, the great problem of Bolivia and South America. In 1833 he proposed the exclusion of celibates from the magistracy, a measure of protection in favour of numerous families. Like all the caudillos, he made great efforts to develop the public treasury.

Local triumphs did not satisfy him. Distrustful, crafty, frigid, without the declamatory eloquence of other presidents, ambitious of wealth and power, he longed to extend his despotic sceptre over new States. Imitating Napoleon, like Iturbide in Mexico, and remembering the successes of the First Consul, he prepared expeditions of conquest, and fostered anarchy in Peru, which he intended to govern once more as in 1826. Orbegoso, President of the neighbouring republic, called for his assistance in 1835 in order to overcome Salaverry, a brilliant officer who had proclaimed himself dictator. Santa-Cruz thereupon constituted himself the arbiter of Peruvian disputes, and invaded the country. He defeated Salaverry at Socabaya and Gamarra, his ally, at Yanacocha. The dictator was shot in 1836, and the Bolivian president founded a vast confederation as a bulwark against Peruvian anarchy: he reconstituted the old vice-kingdom. His ambition then led him so far as to attack Rosas, the tyrant of Argentina. He had inherited the Unitarian ideals of Bolivar, and prepared to realise them. Three States, Bolivia, and North and South Peru, each with its own capital, its president, and its congress, formed the Confederation, under the imperial authority of the new Inca. Santa-Cruz organised the three States with amazing rapidity, imposed codes and constitutions, and expected to rule from Lima, the fashionable metropolis; it was said that he was the avenger of the oppressed race of half-breeds, oppressed by the colonial oligarchy. The Confederation existed from 1837, but Chili, in the south, envious of the Peruvian-Bolivian hegemony, threatened its existence. Portales, that omnipotent minister, sought pretexts to attack this solid political structure. He accused Santa-Cruz of fostering expeditions against the Chilian conservatives—for instance, that of Freire—and called him "the unjust violator of the sovereignty of Peru"; he feared that his power would strike a blow at the independence of the South American republics. Portales and Santa-Cruz represented two irreconcilable ambitions; they had the same love of authority and organic construction, and each professed a narrow nationalism and a violent patriotism. The Chilian oligarchy, led by Portales, proceeded to organise the "liberation campaign" against and on behalf of Peru. The historian Walker Martinez justifies this policy of interference and intervention in American affairs, although since the Pacific war the Chilian diplomatists have always pronounced against it.

Two successive expeditions were directed against the coast of Peru. Santa-Cruz defeated the first, which was led by the Chilian general Blanco Encalada, in 1837. General Bulnes was the leader of another "army of liberation." Peruvian generals supported him: Gamarra, La Fuente, Castilla, and Orbegoso himself. The battle of Yungai, in 1838, put an end to the Confederation, and Santa-Cruz lost all power over the peoples of Bolivia and Peru.

His political work, the Confederation, tended to unite two peoples which Bolivar had separated in spite of colonial traditions; it organised, on the shores of the Pacific, a stable power to oppose the increasing imperialism of Chili. Eminent Peruvians seconded the unifying efforts of the Bolivian leader: Riva-Aguero, Orbegoso, Garcia del Rio, and Necochea.

His work shattered, Santa-Cruz retired to Europe in 1845, but attempted, when urged by excited supporters, to return to his own country. Chili and Peru both opposed the suggestion. He was a friend of Napoleon III. in Paris, where he several times represented Bolivia, and where he died in 1865. The Confederation which he vainly desired to found would have changed the destiny of the peoples of the Pacific, by giving the political supremacy to Bolivia and Peru united. The successors of Santa-Cruz in the Bolivian presidency, Ballivian and Velasco, were friends of his, and continued his ambitious policy, although they had revolted against his autocracy. Since the days of the great mestizo leader no ruler has attained an equal reputation, nor attempted so great a political mission. Of later presidents, Baptista and Arce, civilians, and Pando and Montes, soldiers, exercised a real influence on Bolivian history, but had not the importance of the first presidents. The last was a remarkable organiser and a builder of railways which saved his country from a dangerous isolation. They belonged to a prosaic age of steady economic development. Bolivia has also had its tyrants, figures of tragi-comedy, vulgar and gloomy: Belzu, Velasco, Daza, and finally Melgarejo, the bloody incarnation of Creole barbarity. He was the Nero of Bolivia; a man capable of every cruelty and every licence; daring, energetic, he inaugurated a reign of terror, surrounded himself with a prætorian guard, and represented the instincts of the mob, exacerbated by alcohol and envy. In vain did well-meaning dictators like Ballivian in 1841 or Linares in 1857 strive to continue, in the interval between two episodes of barbarism, the civilising task of Santa-Cruz. They dreamed of founding a Republique Almara, like Renan in the domains of Caliban, a tyranny of the intellectual elements. Their effort was fruitless. Down to 1899, the year in which President Pando inaugurated civil government, the history of Bolivia was a dreary succession of revolutions and tyrants. A remarkable writer who has studied his "sick people"[1] writes that "from 1825 to 1898 more than sixty revolutions broke out, and a series of international wars, and six Presidents were assassinated: Blanco, Belzu, Cordova, Morales, Melgarejo, and Daza, without counting those that died in exile."

COLONEL ISMAEL MONTES.
President of Bolivia (1905-1909).

[1] Pueblo enfermo, by A. Arguedas, Barcelona, 1906.

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 the Independence. Rivera and Lavalleja inherited his unconquerable patriotism, and proclaimed the independence of their country. In 1822, without the constant aid of armies of liberation, such as those of San Martin and Bolivar, but by the heroic efforts of its own soldiers, the ancient province of the vice-kingdom of La Plata constituted itself a new State, governed by a Unitarian constitution.

Artigas had fought for the liberty of the province of Uruguay, for its freedom from all tutelage. Rivera and Lavalleja were willing to compromise at the commencement of the new campaign of liberation. A Congress held at Montevideo proclaimed the incorporation of the Eastern Province with Portugal. The two caudillos desired the union of Uruguay with Brazil. Another leader, Manuel Oribe, was anxious for the protection of the legions of the Argentine to conquer the independence of his country. An ambassador from Buenos-Ayres, Don Valentin Gomez, proposed to Brazil in 1825 that the rebellious Uruguay should once more become a province of the Argentine, but the Empire refused to consent. Lavalleja, who had sought for Brazilian protection, changed his mind; he sought for Argentine assistance, whether that of the capital or that of the federal leaders, while Rivera remained faithful to his original programme of union with Southern Brazil. A piece of heroism worthy of the Spanish conquistadors set a term to this indecision. Lavalleja, at the head of the "Thirty-Three," a little band of heroes comparable to the legendary companions of Pizarro and Cortes, landed on the Uruguayan coast on the 19th of April, 1825. "Liberty or death" was their watchword. Rivera joined them, and the struggle for the independence of the eastern province at once gained an intenser significance. At Florida a provisional government was installed, which decreed separation from Brazil and Portugal, proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation, and decided upon union, under a federal organisation, with the Argentine provinces. "Eastern Argentines," Lavalleja called his compatriots. The rulers of the Argentine did not decide upon supporting the liberators of Uruguay. With Brazil hostile, and abandoned by Buenos-Ayres, the indomitable "Orientals" commenced a bitter warfare which ended in their winning their independence. Rivera defeated the Brazilian general Abreu at Rincon-de-Haeda, then at Sarandu, a decisive battle which Zorrilla de San Martin compares to Chacabuco. The Argentines maintained their neutrality, but the Congress of 1825, obedient to the suggestions of Rivadavia, declared to Brazil that it recognised the incorporation of the Eastern Province "which has by its own efforts restored the liberty of its territory." War broke out against Brazil; Buenos-Ayres and Rio de Janeiro both aspired to rule in Montevideo. The conflict lasted from 1826 to 1828; Argentines and Uruguayans took part in it, fighting side by side. The campaign was directed by Lavalleja and General Alvear, who in Buenos-Ayres had been a fashionable dictator. Rivera withdrew from the army. Brazil suffered a defeat at Itazango, where 3,000 "Orientals" and 4,000 Argentines fought against 9,000 Brazilian soldiers. All things pointed to the fact that Uruguay would soon be an independent nation. The "Orientals" no longer admitted the hegemony of Brazil, nor the tutelage of Argentina; they decided to pursue the struggle without the help of Buenos-Ayres. The war would be longer, but even more certain in its results. Lavalleja replaced Alvear in the government. Rivera, who had landed at Soriano, fought and won at Misiones (1828), and continued unaided the campaign against Artigas. He distrusted Buenos-Ayres and even Lavalleja himself, and, thanks to his continued efforts, peace with Brazil was finally signed on the 27th of August, 1838. The Empire recognised the independence of the "Province of Montevideo" and the constitution of a "sovereign State," a necessary factor in the political equilibrium of La Plata.

JUAN ANTONIO LAVALLEJA.
Caudillo of Uruguay in the struggle for independence.

Seven years later, under the tyranny of Rosas, Uruguay saw her autonomy menaced. The Argentine dictator aspired to conquer the little republic and to rule as the Spanish viceroys had ruled in all the provinces of La Plata, from Tarija to Montevideo. The "Oriental" President Oribe, elected in 1825, was the ally of Rosas against the Argentine refugees in Montevideo, who were supported by Rivera. Uruguayans and Argentines were confounded in the two parties, but Rivera represented a new source of conflict, as in his quarrels with Lavalleja, the unconquerable spirit of nationality. Defeated in 1837, he continued, upon Brazilian territory, an obstinate warfare against Oribe. He defeated him, and was proclaimed President of Uruguay. Oribe then figured in the Argentine army, as a general of Rosas.

At this stage the conflict between Unitarians and federals around Montevideo acquired a transcendental significance. Brazil intervened once more in the affairs of La Plata. Impregnable as Paraguay under Lopez, the Eastern Province continued the war against Oribe, its ex-president, and against the legions of the Argentine tyrant. A noble crusader in the cause of liberty, Garibaldi, at the head of the Uruguayan squadron which defended Montevideo, gave the struggle a romantic character. Oribe, a genius of destruction, ravaged the country, and besieged Montevideo by land in 1843. Foreigners: French, Italians, Turks, and natives, defended the threatened city. England, France, and Brazil at first offered their mediation, which was refused by Oribe; they then sent squadrons to defend the autonomy of Uruguay and to insure the free navigation of the River Parana in the interests of European commerce. After a long war of heroic conflicts Urquiza, the leader of the armies in alliance against the autocracy of Rosas, put Oribe to flight (1861) and saved Montevideo from the Argentine peril.

Lavalleja and Rivera, the great caudillos in the struggle for liberty, were rival claimants for power and moral influence. Rivera, like Artigas, represented an aggressive patriotism, hostile to all outside influence; his ideal was national integrity. Generous, anarchical, of the native type, he was more liberal and more of a democrat than Lavalleja; he defended all liberties—liberty of conscience, of industry, of the press. A nomadic gaucho, he organised and led guerilla forces through a campaign of incessant skirmishes. Lavalleja, imperfectly educated, rude, authoritative, half a Spaniard in his pride and his colonial methods, was the leader of the aristocratic and cultivated classes. More conservative and more politic than Rivera, he opposed the rural democracy, and desired an orderly independence, a disciplined liberty; in government he was a tyrant. He alienated the supporters of Rivera, dissolved the Chamber of Representatives, reformed the administration of justice, and estranged the authorities of the departments. Rivera, President from 1830 to 1834 and from 1838 to 1843, was—like the majority of the American caudillos—a zealous protector of commerce and industry. The national revenues mounted by 27 per cent.; imports and exports increased; the population was doubled, and schools and libraries were founded. Rivera exterminated the Charrua Indians, who pillaged in town and country, fostered the stock-raising industry, and, in his democratic enthusiasm, prohibited the slave trade in 1839 and freed the slaves in 1842.

In the rivalry of these leaders we may already perceive the elements of future civil struggles. Two political parties, the Whites and the Reds, struggled for power, as in other American republics; their disputes, which were long and violent, revealed an antagonism more profound than any simple conflict of political opinions. Uruguay, like Venezuela and Peru, is a country of caudillos, but all her leaders, from Rivera to Battle Ordonez, have effected not merely works of material progress, but also religious and moral reforms, which explains the violent mutual hatred of the Reds and Whites. In matters of local import, or of national convictions and traditions, there is a clash of formidable instincts, and the political problem becomes simplified. Two great groups, one conservative and the other liberal, both represented by tenacious leaders, disputed the supreme power in the government and in parliament. The Whites were partisans of absolutism, nationalists and catholics, and intolerant towards foreign cults; and the old Spanish aristocracy, the clergy, the "doctors"—all those, in short, who would constitute an intellectual oligarchy—sympathised with this authoritative and traditionalist party. The Reds called their adversaries cut-throats (for in the name of reasons of State and of order they had no respect for human life), reproached them with opposing due liberties (they did condemn what they considered excessive liberties) and were liberals and enemies of the Church. The country districts and the cabins supported them; they were the popular party. The Whites called them "the Savages." Although very old families figured in both clans, the new social classes, the mestizos and children of foreigners inclined rather to the Reds, while the Whites included the proprietors of the latifundia.

Lavalleja died in 1853, Rivera in 1854. After the death of the two leaders a barbarous warfare continued between the two parties, which represented tradition and democracy. In vain did certain of the Presidents—Garro, Flores, and Berro—attempt to realise the unity of Uruguay and to form a national party. The conflict still continued, for the groups were swayed by an inevitable antagonism: the conservative oligarchy and the half-breed democracy are opposed in Uruguay as in Mexico and Venezuela. The old families, beati possidentes, defended "la grande proprieté" against the foreigners and mestizos.

With the triumph of Flores (1865) the Whites lost their political supremacy, and the liberal party regained its old position. Flores protected commerce, rebuilt the cities destroyed by so many wars, and built railways; his dictatorship terminated in 1868. The leader of the Reds returned to the Presidency from 1875 to 1876, and his party established itself more firmly. Despite fresh revolutions, it did not yield up the government, and effected great social reforms. Another caudillo, the present President, Don José Battle y Ordoñez, is, by virtue of his liberal creed, his influence, and the daring of his political programme, an eminent personage amidst the sordid quarrels which divide the populations of America; he has inherited the authority of Rivera, Flores, and Lorenzo Battle.

The modern Uruguay is born of the struggle between the two traditional parties: a small nation with an intense commercial vitality, like Belgium and Switzerland. A harmonious republic, it has not overlooked, in its material conquests, the suggestion of Ariel. An admirable master, José Enrique Rodo, has established a chair of idealism at Montevideo. Immigration, a surplus[1] in the budgets, a strict service of the internal debt, an increasing population—in short, all the aspects of economic progress—go hand in hand with the spread of education, the abundance of schools, the importance of journalism, and the moral vigour of a younger generation, which is ambitious for its country, and anxious that Uruguay shall play a noble part upon the American stage. The most advanced laws—divorce, suppression of the death penalty, a code protecting workers, separation of Church and State—give the development of Uruguayan civilisation a markedly liberal aspect. Miscegenation decreased after the destruction of the Charruas, and the race is more homogeneous and keenly patriotic. The enthusiasm of the Uruguayans has baptized Montevideo in the name of New Troy, for the possession of this impregnable city was, in the Iliad of America, the ambition of every conqueror: it was the refuge of the pilgrims of liberty, of ambitious foreigners, of Argentine Unitarians, and of a romantic soldier, Garibaldi. When the peoples of America, weary of civil discord, wish to unify their laws and glorify the heroism of their past conflicts, they proceed to Montevideo, as to The Hague or Washington, in periodical Peace Congresses. In a continent divided by fatal ambitions, the capital of Uruguay preserves the tradition of Americanism.

[1] This surplus amounted to eight millions of piastres between 1906 and 1910.

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 coast against the sierra, the gauchos against the men of the seaboard, and the various parties represented national instincts.

The anarchy and ambition of the provinces commenced during the first few years of Argentine life. Governments followed one another at rapid intervals; constitutions and regulations were legion; political forms were essayed as experiments, on Roman or French models; there was the Junta of 1810, the Triumvirate of 1813, and the Directory of 1819. Every two years, with inflexible regularity, from 1811 to 1819, this uneasy republic imposed a new Constitution. The Argentine troops, like the armies of the French Revolution, gave the gift of liberty to Chili and Peru; but at home the effort of Buenos-Ayres to dominate the provinces was less fortunate.

It has been written that in 1820 the confusion and discord in the Argentine were so intense that the effort of the revolutionaries of May appeared to have spent itself. In Buenos-Ayres there was a divorce between the factions, and a struggle between Unitarian and federal caudillos: Alvear, Sarratea, Dorrego and Soler; between the municipalities and the rebellious troops; in the country as a whole it was the struggle of the provincial leaders against Buenos-Ayres and the Directory.

In the midst of this period of disturbance the federal democracy was born; the provinces concluded treaties, the capital compromised with the caciques, the governors of the provinces; the cabildo retained its representative character, the military and civil elements entered upon a mutual conflict.

Finally, in 1821, the Directorial party, aristocratic and Unitarian, was victorious. Bernardino Rivadavia was the representative figure of the period. Secretary in the government of Rodriguez from 1821 to 1824, President from 1826 to 1827, a civil dictator like Portales in Chili, a remarkable statesman, a reformer like Moreno and Belgrano, he presided over a premature realisation of the democratic ideal, and symbolised the Unitarian principles in all their force: the supremacy of Buenos-Ayres, constitutionalism, European civilisation, and the ideal Republic. He was the pupil of Lamartine and Benjamin Constant in a barbarous democracy. He had every gift—physical arrogance, oratorical power, honesty, enthusiasm, patriotism. He divined the elements of Argentine greatness: immigration, the navigability of the rivers, the stability of the banks, and external trade. But Buenos-Ayres was then a plebiscitary republic, in which the cabildo and the people resolved all problems of politics, and Rivadavia suffered ostracism, as he had enjoyed the unstable popularity with which democracies endow their leaders.

He was, according to the expression of M. Groussac, a vigorous forger of Utopias. He granted all political rights; he wished to see a republic with a free suffrage; he 'doubled the number of the representatives of the people, and suppressed the municipalities which had prepared the way for the revolution. The executive power renounced its extraordinary attributes and submitted to the legislative power. Was this wise, in a revolutionary country, face to face with the disunited provinces? Rivadavia organised the judiciary as a supreme and autonomous entity. He declared, in messages dealing with the doctrine of high politics, that property and the person were inviolable; he proclaimed the liberty of the press, and recognised the liberty of the conscience.

He commenced the campaign against the Church, suppressing convents, seizing their possessions by mortmain, ignoring the ecclesiastic charter, and secularising the cemeteries. He aspired, like Guzman-Blanco, to found a national and democratic religion upon the traditional elements. A great educator, he had faith in the benefits of popular instruction, erected buildings for the use of schools and colleges, attracted foreign teachers, and promulgated a plan of study in which the physical sciences and mathematics, forgotten under the old system, occupied the first rank. He founded numerous pedagogic institutions: the Faculty of Medicine, the Museum, the Library, special technical and agricultural schools, and colleges for young girls.

He did not overlook material progress. His financial reforms were radical; the national budget was instituted; a tax upon rent was imposed, and the customs duties were regularised. The minister Garcia contributed to this financial reformation. Rivadavia understood that the whole future of Buenos-Ayres depended upon that great civiliser, the ocean, and he ordered the construction of four harbours on the coast. He favoured immigration, protected agriculture, improved the ways and means of transport, reformed the police, and contracted the first loan.

It was under the government of Rivadavia that the Constitution of 1826 was promulgated. This was inspired by the doctrines of J. J. Rousseau, and his Contrat social; but it aimed energetically at centralisation and authority. Senators were to exercise their functions for twelve years; they were the conservative power. The mandate of the deputies and the Director was to last only four years. It was a Unitarian constitution which made Buenos-Ayres, in spite of the protest of the federals, the capital of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, the centre which "rules all the peoples, and upon which all depend."

Rivadavia imposed unity, propagated his ideas, multiplied reforms, and checkmated the Church; he was the civiliser par excellence. He wished to transform a Spanish province into a European nation, a barbarous people into a democracy, a sluggish and fanatical society into a liberal republic. He governed in the interests of Buenos-Ayres and the seaboard, for the future Latin democracy, and neglected the desert, the anarchy of the provinces, the indomitable sierra, the caciques, and the Indian tribes. He was vanquished by feudal barbarism, by a confused democracy, hostile to organisation and unity; but his work remains, in the shape of a constitutional programme. Alberdi writes that he gave America the plan of his progressive improvements and innovations: it is an immense political structure, a gospel of democracy. Were popular myths to rise in spontaneous birth in Buenos-Ayres, before the evocative ocean, as in the Greek cities lovingly bathed by the Mediterranean, then Rivadavia would be the genius of Argentine culture, the patron of the city, the creator of its arts and its laws.

While the magistral President was showering down reforms, the demagogues triumphed over his efforts toward unity. His constitutional labours miscarried in the provinces; the governors would not submit to the haughty supremacy of Buenos-Ayres. They fought for power in rude civil wars, in the North and on the seaboard. Some provincial congresses were precariously installed, and Montevideo renounced its union with the Argentine. A caudillo, who at times rose to the moral greatness of the Liberators, Artigas, longed to see Uruguay, his country, independent. The Empire of Brazil and the Argentine democracy were wrangling for its possession. Rivadavia stoically resigned the Presidency in 1827, having shown himself a prodigal and sumptuous creator and an eminent prophet; he left the country, having wearied the populace with his inventive genius.[1] In his place General Dorrego was elected Governor of Buenos-Ayres, the federal chief of the city, as Rosas was of the country. The war with Brazil continued; but in 1828 a treaty was signed which recognised the autonomy of Uruguay.

RIVADAVIA.
President of Argentina (1826-1827).

The daring revolt of the provinces had coincided with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1826. Since 1820 the Argentine provinces had been in a state of revolt against the imposed or suggested rule of Buenos-Ayres; it was the period of caudillos. To the aristocratic presidency of Rivadavia they opposed the Terror. They represented the barbarian might of the provinces. They made federation a reality, cemented it by long quarrels, sanguinary hatreds, conventions, alliances, and friendships. The provinces fought within the nation; the cities within the province; within the city, the families. An inflexible individualism—the fundamental Spanish tradition—dissolved the provisional crystallisations of society and politics. It was not a simple federal disaggregation—a clash of ambitious overlords eager to surround their manors by new domains; it was a mystic barbarism, the leaders of which recalled the nomadic and fanatical Tamerlane. They were impelled by a strange, rude force, disordered and prodigious—the genius of the pampa, the instinct of a vagabond race.

General Quiroga, the "Facundo" of Sarmiento, was the prototype of these turbulent gauchos. By conquest or alliance he extended his government over several provinces. The paltry Bustos, the Reinafé family, the crafty Lopez, and Ferré were also among the Argentine caudillos; Lopez extended his rule over Entre-Rios, Santa-Fé, and Cordoba. Facundo dominated them all by the range of his deeds and his influence. He came from the Andes to the conquest of the seaboard and the great rivers; he reigned in Rio, Jujuy, Salta, Tucuman, Catamarca, San Juan, San Luis, and Mendoza; he grouped vast provinces together, and paved the way for unity in the future; he was the forerunner of Rosas. Cruel and loyal, noble and bloodthirsty, honest, frugal, and aggressive, a product of the pampa, he felt himself actuated by primitive forces, by simple passions and instincts, by heroism and the love of peril. Powerfully built, with an abundant shock of hair, bushy eyebrows, and the eyes of a ruler, he resembled one of those gloomy Khalifs who brought the mystic terror of the Orient to the West. On the standard which he raised against the liberalism of Rivadavia was the proclamation: "Liberty or death!" He was the "bad gaucho" the enemy of social discipline, who lives far from the city and its laws, conscious and proud of his barbarism. Sarmiento stated that he entertained "a great aversion for decent persons," and that he hated the lordly city of Buenos-Ayres. He fought with success against the Unitarian generals, Paz and La Madrid, and against such secondary leaders as Lopez and Reinafé. His life was a continual running hunt across the rugged mountains; his goal the city of Rivadavia and the Directory; his campaigns were bloody, and worthy of a chaotic period, during which barbarism changed only in kind from Buenos-Ayres to Rioja. He pillaged, executed, and triumphed in his rude insurrections at Tala, at Campana de Cuyo. He wrote to General Paz in 1830, in his downright manner: "In the advanced state of the provinces it is impossible to satisfy local pretensions except by the system of federation. The provinces will be cut to bits, perhaps, but conquered—never!" Assassinated at Barranco-Yaco by the treacherous hand of Reinafé, probably with the complicity of Rosas, he left his heritage to this last of the caudillos.

Rosas was one of those hyperborean beings upon whom Gobineau conferred a perdurable authority over the human herd. He possessed a coat of arms, blue eyes, and the spirit of a ruler. Sober, astute, proud, energetic, he combined all the characteristics of a great and imperious personality. He obeyed neither general conceptions nor vast political plans. He was a will served by ambitions. His authoritative character of a Spanish patrician made him the paterfamilias of the Argentine democracy. The pursuit of power was an instinct, a physiological need; he governed in the interests of federation, the concrete, practical idea, which he absorbed by contact with many regions, of the nomadic gaucho, the self-willed provincial; and he expounded it in 1824 in a famous letter to Quiroga. He was not content to work for the mere realisation of the North American ideal; his aim was national federation. He was persuaded of "the necessity of a general government, the only means of giving life and respectability" to a republic; but only the properly constituted states would accept this central authority. Of a federative republic he writes that nothing more chimerical and disastrous could be imagined when it is not composed of properly organised states. The anarchy of the Argentine was not a condition propitious to the foundation of federation or unity; Rosas affirmed, recalling the United States, that "the general government in a federative republic does not unite the federated peoples: it represents them when united." So he wished to unite the provinces: "the elements of discord among the peoples must be given time to destroy themselves, and each government must foster the spirit of peace and tranquillity."

Amid dogmatic governors and impenitent revolutionaries, this president who desired a real federation and accepted, as a factor of human conflicts, time, the creator of stable nations, seems a figure strangely out of place. Rosas left "the elements of discord time to destroy themselves"; an invulnerable dictator, he watched over the obscure process of national gestation, isolating his people, detesting the foreigner, as though he wished to prepare the way, free from all perturbing influences, for the fusion of antagonistic races, the purging of local hatreds, and the harmonious life of men, traditions, and provinces within a plastic and fruitful organism. From chaos a spontaneous federation was to spring, of the North American type; as in the formation of the United States, the provinces, in possession of their autonomy, concluded pacts of union. Such was the federal pact of 1831, between the provinces of the seaboard—Corrientes, Entre-Rios, Buenos-Ayres, and Santa-Fé; such, twenty years later, was the Constitution of 1853.

Pacts and charters recognised "the sovereignty, liberty, and independence of each of the provinces."

The work of Rosas was profoundly Argentine. It presents a triple civilising significance; it overcame the partial caudillos, conquered the wilderness, and founded an organic confederation. Traditional, for it respected ancient liberties; opportunist, adapted at the critical moment of national evolution, for it prevented the disaggregation of the provinces by the labours of unconscious leaders. Like Porfirio Diaz, Rosas destroyed the provincial caudillos; he was a Machiavelli of the pampas. He dissembled his unificatory aims; he caused division among the governors, stimulated their mutual hatred, presided over their quarrels; he grouped or isolated his disciples, who cut a lively figure on the hustings. When the power of Quiroga increased, he protected Lopez, and exposed the former to the hatred of the Reinafé; Quiroga once murdered, he had the latter accused. He expected the governors to submit to his exequatur; the demi-gods fell before the stroke of his imperial axe. "Rosas is the Louis XI. of Argentine history," said Ernesto Quesada, with justice; for over the heads of the feudal barons he raised a magnificent Unitarian structure; he was the creator of Argentine nationality.

ROSAS, THE ARGENTINE TYRANT.
(1829-1852.)

Rosas surrounded himself with chosen men: the Lopez, Anchorenas, Mansillas, Sarrateas, Riglos. The cultivated classes demanded a strong government, renounced their liberty with a Dionysiac delight, and conferred "unlimited power" upon Rosas. The tyrant governed, in short, above the law and above custom. He enacted laws to prohibit the carnival, that popular souvenir of the pagan Bacchanalia, and to establish the rules of mourning; he himself was the law, was reason, was the logos; intoxicated with docility, a whole nation bowed before his Cæsarian will, without hierarchic distinctions. His rule was a supreme levelling, a universal servitude; the Terror. Rosas, impelled and favoured by the supreme traditions of a race, became the Cæsar of a democracy.

Gauchos and negroes supported him; with the aid of the people he subjected the ruling classes. He unified; he destroyed social privileges; he inverted the order of the hierarchies in the Unitarian, aristocratic city. His political methods were of the simplest. Instinctively he applied infallible psychological truths. He knew the power of repetition, of habit, of formulæ; he understood the enervating effect of panic; the effect of vivid colours and sounding words upon the half-breed mob. "Federation or death!" he reiterated, in his proclamations. "Savages, infamous Unitarians—impious Unitarians," one read day by day in the journals, and in official documents; that vivid colour, red, was the symbol of federalism. Rosas wrote to Lopez: "Repeat the word, savage! repeat it to satiety, to boredom, to exhaustion."

What such influences did not obtain was produced by that effectual levelling agent, terror. Rosas crushed rebellious wills; he overpowered his enemies, the impious, infamous, savage Unitarians; he was the Jacobin of the Federation. A prætorian legion, the Mazorca, chopped off such heads as raised themselves. He was a fanatical democrat, a lay Inquisitor; if he discovered a political heresy he condemned it without pity. As national caudillo he protected religion, attracted the clergy, and attacked the Unitarians, not only because they were savage, but also because they were impious. Like Portales, he made a tool of religion. He defended the "patrons," and condemned the Jesuits as conspirators, not from religious motives. The clergy saw in him the man chosen by God "to preside over the destinies of the country which saw his birth." Rosas governed according to tradition and history by making use of the hatred of the masses and classes, the fanaticism of the mob, the servility of the natives; he was therefore a Catholic and a democrat.

Like all great American dictators, Rosas proved to be an eminent administrator of the public finances. In a time of national disturbance and military expenditure he displayed an extraordinary zeal in organising and publishing the national accounts. His method was simple rather than scrupulous; he appointed honest men to high representative posts. The official journals published the fiscal balance-sheet monthly; receipts and expenditure, the fluctuations of paper-money, and the state of the national debt. Rosas was vigorous in assuring the service of the external debt; he accumulated neither loans nor fresh taxes. His economic policy was orderly and far-seeing. To him we owe the construction of many of the public works of Buenos-Ayres, including a magnificent promenade, Palermo, where he built his autocratic residence. His invulnerable dictatorship was based upon material progress and fiscal order.

He was also the defender of the continent against European invasion. Like Juarez and Guzman-Blanco, he professed a jealous individualism; his work was bound up with race and territory. Continuing the revolutionary movement of 1810, he desired not merely freedom from Spain but autonomy against the whole world.

In the twenty-four years, 1829 to 1852, Rosas made federal unity a reality. He was first of all governor and leader of the gauchos; in 1835 he won the absolute power for five years, which term was extended by several re-elections. Before him was the anarchy of 1820 and the Unitarian bankruptcy of 1826; after him, the powerful unity of 1853 and 1860, and the triumphal progress of the Argentine democracy. Between this discord and this unity came his fruitful despotism, a necessary Terror. His dictatorship was more efficacious than the autocracy of Guzman-Blanco or the ecclesiastic tyranny of Garcia-Moreno. Porfirio Diaz and Portales, two founders of political unity, were his disciples. He was the builder of a practicable federation, because he was a gaucho and could interpret the inner voices of his race; he governed as an American, without borrowing anything from European methods. Without him anarchy would have been perpetuated, and the vice-kingdom of La Plata would have been irremediably disintegrated. Like the Roman deity Janus, Rosas had two faces; he closed one epoch and opened another; a past of warfare and terror and a future of unity, peace, democratic development, and industrial progress.

He defended the country against the territorial aggression of foreign coalitions, and his own power against conspiracy and revolt; against the avenging stanzas of Marmol, the aggressive journalism of Rivera Indarte, and Varela, the rude pamphlets of Sarmiento, and the meticulous dialectic of Alberdi. To Unitarian insult he opposed the bloody campaign of the Mazorqueros; to European tutelage, the individualism of the gauchos.

Rivadavia was thesis, Facundo antithesis, Rosas synthesis. The first represented absolute unity; the second, anarchical multiplicity; the third, unity in multiplicity, plurality co-ordinated, union without violent simplification. Rivadavia comprehended the necessity of the supremacy of Buenos-Ayres, built as it was upon the ocean that brought men and wealth; he stood for the fundamental unity of La Plata. Facundo, in the place of this premature unification, erected the autonomous province, pure and simple, but diverse. Rosas brought about the final harmony of the forces of Argentine politics. He united, like Rivadavia; he separated, like Facundo; he dominated the capital city, and moderated provincialism; he painfully founded the Confederation. His renown reached Europe; Lord Palmerston was his friend; great foreign journals, such as the Times, the Journal des Débats, the Revue des Deux-Mondes, discussed his policy and his influence. Alberdi recognised that he contributed to the repute of the Argentine abroad by his heroic defence of his territory. His cruelty was effectual, his barbarism patriotic.

"Como hombre te perdono mi carcel y cadenas;
Pero como Argentine, las de mi patria, no!"[2]

cried Marmol. They were necessary chains, for they bound the country together after the feudal dispersion, vanquished the resolvent forces of provincialism, and gave unity and strength to democracy.

After Rosas, his political work, the confederation, survives in spite of the ambitions of Buenos-Ayres. A logical development confirms the ties that unite the provinces, grouping and organising all the national forces about the capital city. In eighty-six years, from the anarchy of 1820 to the glory of the Centenary, the Argentine has seen a transformation of race, of policy, of wealth, of culture, of history; Argentina is now a great Latin nation, which will soon possess the moral and intellectual hegemony of South America.

[1] Carlos Octavio Bunge, in his remarkable book, Nuestra America, gives the struggle between the capital and the provinces a racial and economic character. He distinguishes three periods of evolution: from 1810 to 1816 the Creole half-breeds contend with the "Goths"; from 1816 to 1825 the rural masses rise against the rich middle classes of the provinces; from 1825 to 1830 Buenos-Ayres—the capital city, rich, and Creole—enters upon a conflict with the provincial cities—Indian or mestizo.

[2] "As man I forgive you my prison and my chains, but as Argentine, those of my country—no!"

BOOK III

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY IN MEXICO,
CHILI, BRAZIL, AND PARAGUAY

These republics have stood aside from the normal evolution of Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia; they have known neither perpetual revolutions nor lasting anarchy. Social progress has been accomplished under the pressure of long-continued tutelage; the principle of authority has been a safeguard against disorder and licence. These are the more stable and less liberal peoples. In them liberty is not a spontaneous gift by charter, but something won from selfish oligarchies or tenacious despots. Such is the case in Mexico, Chili, Brazil, and Paraguay.

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.

The Aztec nation was born into freedom in 1821, after the capitulations of Cordoba. The Viceroy O'Donoju recognised the triumph of Iturbide, and the rights of Mexico; the Spanish leader and the patriot caudillo decided upon the creation of an empire which should conserve the rights of Ferdinand VII., like the juntas of South America; the creation of a constituent congress, and the nomination of a provisional government, which should preside over the destinies of the nation during the indecision of the twilight of the old régime.

Iturbide very shortly came forward as an incarnation of the national characteristics; he was actuated by an imperious ambition, and haunted by the triumphs of Napoleon. He had studied the classics, and was a brilliant and persuasive orator. His courage and activity and his dominating character won him a sudden popularity. Bolivar, in a letter to Riva-Agüero, said: "Bonaparte in Europe, Iturbide in America: these are the two most extraordinary men that modern history has to offer." The clergy, the Mexican nobility, the troops, and the lower classes, who regarded him as the liberator of their country, flocked around him. Congress was in part hostile; Generals Bustamente and Santa-Ana supported him in the Assembly; Generals Victoria and Guerrero attacked him. The deputies understood that he aspired to absolutism, and that he aimed at becoming the heir to the overlords of Anahouac. A prætorian revolution proclaimed him "Constitutional Emperor of Mexico" on May 21, 1822. The political opinion of the country was divided. The monarchists wanted a Spanish prince; the republicans a federation, a democracy with full liberties. Of these latter Iturbide said: "They were my enemies because I was opposed to the establishment of a government which would not have suited Mexico. Nature has produced nothing suddenly; she acts by successive stages."[1] The Emperor responded to the aspirations of the populace, and flattered the imagination of the crowd by the pomp and pageantry of his coronation, and the splendour of his Court; he was the national monarch, the creator of his country, as were the feudal kings in Europe. Convinced of his prestige and impelled by ambition, he dissolved Congress. Thenceforward his government was menaced by caudillos, who defended the violated constitution. Iturbide abdicated in May, 1823, and when he returned to his country the sentence of death pronounced upon him by contumacy was enforced. He was executed by shooting in 1824.

PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDEPENDENCE DAY.
(From "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity,"
by the Hon. John Barrett.)

Santa-Ana, who had directed the revolution against the Emperor, was the Mexican caudillo, as Facundo was the caudillo of the Argentine pampas, or Paez of the Venezuelan plains. He professed no definite political doctrines; he was, first of all, a radical reformer, but afterwards, with prudent opportunism, he accepted the ideas of the conservatives. Crafty, ambitious, ignorant, a democrat by instinct, he finally became the fetish of the mob, the hero of the civil wars; as president, as general, as supreme authority, he governed his divided country. Between Iturbide and Juarez, between emperor and reformer, he was for twenty years a sombre and overpowering figure. His triumph in 1824 ratified the policy of federalism; the Constitution recognised two chambers; the presidential term was four years; the judicial power was irremovable, and the provincial assemblies elected the national Senate. Under this system General Victoria became president. It was then that a fear of Spain and the monarchy resulted in a policy of rapprochement with the great Northern republic. The yorkina lodges, radical in spirit, acquired considerable influence, and worked in favour of a North American hegemony; the prestige of the ancient Scotch lodges, on the other hand, decreased.

Santa-Ana led a new revolution which gave the Presidency to General Guerrero; General Bustamente was Vice-President. The economic crisis was accentuated by these successive revolts; the Government was carried on by means of onerous loans; the increasing debt drained the Treasury, and discontent evoked another revolution. A supporter of Iturbide, General Bustamente, autocratic and conservative, was proclaimed President; he had the previous ruler, Guerrero, shot, stifled the provincial rebellions, and re-established internal order. A civil war forced him, in 1832, to compromise with the director of all these political conflicts, Santa-Ana.

With him the liberals triumphed, and a social transformation commenced. The liberals were the "new men," as in Venezuela, under Guzman. The colonial oligarchy, the republican bureaucracy, the high clergy, and the wealthy classes composed the conservative group which had founded the Empire with Iturbide, and desired royalty with Lucas-Alaman. Against them rose the reforming democracy, liberal or radical; it was a conflict of principles and classes. The lawyers, the lesser clergy, and the coloured middle classes gained the upper hand in 1833, and the great economic, social, and religious reformation commenced; Juarez was presently to give it the dignity of constitutionalism. In the struggle against the conservative and monarchical Church the liberals disregarded ecclesiastical jurisdiction, confiscated by mortmain the goods of the religious communities, promoted lay education, and secularised the reactionary University, as Garcia Moreno in Ecuador condemned the liberal University, and, impelled by a pernicious radicalism, they suppressed the army of a nation a prey to anarchy.

After Santa-Ana a coloured caudillo, Benito Juarez, was the leader of the reformers (1839), and with him the liberal movement took on a profoundly racial character. Juarez represented the natives, the democracy, as against the colonial oligarchy; like Tupuc-Amaru, he was the redeemer of the Indians; like Las Casas, the protector of the vanquished. Better than Guzman-Blanco and Rosas he realised the ideal of those American republics which were oppressed by memories of colonial days; hatred of all privilege, a dream of absolute liberty, war upon the tutelary Church, and a strict despotism designed to create classes and ideals.

He proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Lerdo de Tejada was the economist and ideologist of the Reformation; Juarez was its muscle, its iron will; he realised without compromise the old liberal programme. Congress, divided into Juarists and anti-Juarists, elected him President. All the laws against the Church were applied, but that did not enrich the country. Stock-jobbing, scandals, waste, and bankruptcy accumulated and formed a terrible argument against the "pure" liberals; the latter defended themselves by means of proscriptions and new and violent laws of reform. Once more the shadow of the Empire hovered over the turbulent democracy.

It was no longer a question of the national Empire of Montezuma or Iturbide, but of the foreign eagles. Napoleon III., a conqueror by family tradition, intervened in Mexican affairs; like Louis-Philippe, he desired colonies oversea; he defended the Latin civilisation against the Yankee peril, protected the Church against the Reformation, and extended over barbarous countries the amiable empire of the French spirit, the spirit of lucidity, method, and harmony.[2] In 1861 the Mexican Congress suspended the service of the debt, as a remedy against financial bankruptcy, and this measure provoked French intervention; there was a crusade of ambitious creditors against Mexico. England and Spain signed an agreement in London; both were enemies of the insolvent democracy. The hatred of Mexico was then excited against Spain; the Spanish Minister was expelled; the federal Government refused to treat with the Spanish chargé d'affaires. The Reformation general, Zaragoza, organised the country for defence against the Spanish invasion; he was victorious at Puebla. The Mexican resistance was concentrated upon the central plateau, where dwelt the penates of ancient Mexico. Zaragoza died; Puebla, attacked by the French, defended itself heroically; the national war became also a civil war. The monarchists desired a prince, the restoration of the Catholic Church, and the consolidation of the conservative oligarchy; the clergy shared their ambitions. The Archduke Maximilian arrived, to whom the conservatives had offered the throne of Iturbide, and from 1863 to 1864, after some hardly contested battles, the invaders ruled the country. Maximilian, surrounded by the aristocrats, triumphantly entered the Aztec capital, and the people, overpowered by the splendour of the new court, accepted the foreign monarch.

This monarch, pompous and ambitious, wished, like Napoleon III., to found a "liberal empire," a democratic kingdom; he did not condemn the Reformation, but professed to be anxious to assist it and to purge it of its Jacobin origin. Heir to the viceroys and dictators, Maximilian re-established the right of "patronage" and favoured religious tolerance. A few reformers applauded his liberalism, but neither liberals nor conservatives were satisfied; the former because they had dreamed of a secular republic, the latter because they wished for a clerical monarchy. The revolution continued. The Emperor, effaced like any Mikado, did not govern; his tycoon, General Bazaine, at the head of a French army, was the real source of authority.

BENITO JUAREZ.
President of Mexico in the struggle against the French invasion.

His presidential term ending in 1865, Juarez proclaimed himself Dictator in order to continue his resistance against the Empire, which, between a monarch and a general, between the discontented clericals and the aggressive reformers, was tottering to its fall. The North American Republic condemned the monarchy in the name of the Monroe doctrine: this was intervention against intervention. The War of Secession in the United States was over, and the States feared their Imperial neighbour. From that time fortune abandoned the Mexican monarch. Napoleon III. had occasion to withdraw his troops; Prussia, ambitious of hegemony in Europe, and victorious at Sadowa, was causing him uneasiness. He advised Maximilian to abdicate; but the Emperor was by no means willing to give way; he had become a reactionary, and vigorously defended his Imperial dignity. The tragic hour of desertion and disaster struck, and the Mexican revolution was prolonged (1866). Porfirio Diaz, escaping from Puebla, which was besieged by the French, organised the reconquest of Mexico at Guerrero. Sombre and virile, he took refuge on the high plateau, as did the Gothic king in the mountains of Asturia. He captured Puebla after a day's glorious fighting. Surrounded by Republican troops, Maximilian took refuge at Queretaro; he was taken prisoner with his army and the best of his generals. He was condemned to death, and Juarez, inflexible as the Aztec gods, refused to show mercy. The Emperor was executed at Queretaro on the 19th of June, 1867. On the following day Mexico yielded to the legions of Diaz. The Reformation had vanquished two emperors and erected two scaffolds. In these struggles Juarez, the half-breed caudillo, and Porfirio Diaz, the invincible general, had acquired a lasting influence, and Juarez, as President and Dictator, proceeded to organise the country. He strengthened the executive power against anarchy, endeavoured to found a conservative Senate, maintained order by means of a disciplined army, and improved the condition of finances by severe economies. His ministers, better educated and more intelligent than their leader, realised sweeping reforms while he gathered the victorious generals about him. The new Government entrusted the Preparatory School to a great educator, Gabino Barreda; like Rivadavia in the Argentine, it applied itself to the moral and material transformation of the country. It protected foreign capital, established liberty of trade, favoured colonisation, fostered irrigation, and commenced to build a railway from Vera-Cruz to Mexico. The ideal of Juarez was the education of the native race, the nucleus of nationality; like Alberdi, he believed that Protestantism would be a fruitful moral doctrine for the Indians. "They need," he told Don Justo Sierra, "a religion which will force them to read, not to spend their money on candles for the saints." He established an industrial democracy, a secular State.

But between his political ideas and his dictatorial acts there was a discrepancy which explains the ultimate sterility of his efforts. "The only book he had read thoroughly was the Politics of Benjamin Constant, the apology of the parliamentary system."[3] Juarez relied upon the democracy, on the governing Chambers; he aspired to a position like that of a constitutional monarch; that of a glorified spectator of the quarrels of parties. His ideas urged him toward parliamentarism; his ambitions, to dictatorship. He professed to conciliate all the national interests, to be the personification of the Mexican democracy, but his dislikes were mean and paltry. Severe, impassive, a great personality in his strength and his silent tenacity, he had no great ideals; he was no orator, no leader of the subject crowd. He was merely the supreme cacique of a half-breed nation.

JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR.
Minister of Finance during the Administration of General Diaz
in Mexico.

Despite his government, anarchy continued in the States. The soldiers who had conquered in the national war disturbed the domestic peace of the nation by their ambitions; in Yucutan, Sonora, and Puebla revolutions broke out, which Juarez energetically suppressed. His presidential term at an end, he aspired to re-election, and defeated Lerdo de Tejada, the financier, and the warrior Diaz; but his victory was not lasting. The great revolution in which Diaz figured commenced, and Juarez died in the midst of the struggle for power. Lerdo de Tejada, who continued the reforms already commenced, was the next President; with him liberal principles figured definitely in the Mexican constitution. Lerdo strengthened the central power, and started a campaign against the cacicazgos, the tyrants of the Sierra, and founded a tutelary Senate. He, like Juarez, aspired to re-election, and a fresh rising at Tuxtepec prepared the way for his fall. The Supreme Court considered itself authorised to examine the titles of the presidential candidates, and invalidated his re-election. By 1877 the Revolution had conquered the country.

It imposed upon Mexico the hero of the re-conquest, Porfirio Diaz, who became the new national caudillo, inheriting the Imperial ambitions of Iturbide, the craft of Santa-Ana, and the moral dictatorship of Juarez.

The country was disorganised, its credit in the European markets was destroyed; its national finances were in disorder. The blood-stained soil was divided among petty caciques; radicalism led to demagogy and liberty to anarchy. Jacobinism had triumphed with the Revolution, and condemned the re-election of presidents and the conservative Senate; the omnipotence of the popular Chamber was proclaimed. The result was a feeble and ephemeral government; in the absence of a moderating power the radical Assembly was supreme. A man was needed to organise chaos; Porfirio Diaz was the necessary autocrat, the "representative man" of Emerson.

Stern and gloomy, he was preparing for the priesthood. Born in 1830, he was brought up in poverty. A half-breed, he combined the courage of the Iberian with the dissimulation of the native. He knew the efficacy of work, perseverance, and method; he was extremely ignorant, but was shrewd and perspicacious. He was six times elected President, for the last time in 1900, and peace was coterminous with his rule. A great hunter and a master of manly exercises, his intensity of will-power was supported by solid physical foundations. Above all he was a man of action; his character was served by a robust organisation; a powerful frame and a vast power of resistance enabled him to rule and to intimidate. His intelligence applied itself to concrete things; it was unable to examine facts in the transforming light of an ideal; he had no general ideas, no spacious plans; he was slow in deliberation and rapid in action. His politics were an organised Machiavellism; like Louis XL, he divided that he might reign and dissembled that he might conquer. His ideas of government were simple: "Not much politics and plenty of administration," said his deeds and his programmes.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, taught the means of ruling in states which have had autonomous governments; he suggested the implacable extermination of the reigning families. General Diaz followed this counsel in part. To overcome anarchy he attacked the obscure tyrants of the provinces, and had them shot or exiled, or else he attached them to himself by means of honours and rewards. He imposed peace by means of terror. He knew that order was the practical basis of progress, as in the formula of Comte, which the Mexicans are fond of quoting, and this order he firmly established.

The destruction of the revolutionary instinct constituted the negative side of his work; Diaz built upon this foundation an industrial republic, practical and laborious. Weary of barren ideologies, he put the Reformation and its Jacobin doctrines out of his mind, accepted and encouraged the Yankee influence which had made Lerdo de Tejada so uneasy, conquered barbarism and the desert by means of the railway, and raised a number of loans. He was the president of an industrial epoch.

His economic labours were imposing; in twenty-five years Mexico was transformed from a divided republic into a modern State, from a bankrupt nation into a prosperous and highly solvent people. Diaz recalls the gods who built cities and filled the earth with the gold of fruitful grain, and taught the virtues of the metals and of fire. "Modern Mexico," writes the Times in 1909, "is the creation of the genius of General Diaz; he is the greatest statesman the transatlantic Latin communities have produced since their foundation." This organiser of peace astonished the old-established nations, who listened attentively to the fruitful words of light which fell from the lips of the Aztec demigod.

In 1884 Diaz commenced to reorganise the finances of his country. He was seconded in his task by eminent secretaries like Limantour and clever financiers like Romero and Macedo. The gold of the United States invaded the market; it was employed in the construction of railways and in industrial undertakings. In 1905 Limantour established the gold standard as basis of the monetary system. The service of the debt was regularised by agreement with foreign creditors; the budgets ceased to present deficits; in ten years the surplus reached a sum of seven million pesos. By 1894 the exports were in excess of the imports. Thanks to this favourable commercial balance, credit increased, and industries were multiplied; the exuberant national prosperity attracted foreign capital and settled it in the country. Here are some figures touching this progress. In 1876, at the beginning of Diaz's rule, the Mexican imports amounted to 28 millions of pesos (silver) and the exports to 32 millions; in 1901 the amount of the former was 143 millions and of the latter 148 millions. The imports, a proof of the wealth of the country, had increased fivefold; the exports, a sign of agricultural and mineral production, had increased almost in proportion. In twenty years (1880-1900) the yield of the mining industry increased from 24 to 60 millions, and in the same period 20 banks were founded. A loan of 40 million dollars was contracted in 1904, being issued at 94, bearing 4 per cent interest, on the sole security of the national credit; that is, the security usual in such transactions in the case of the great European nations. In ten years the budget has doubled, increasing from 50 to 100 millions. The surplus of the fiscal revenue is devoted to decreasing the burden of taxation, and in providing the country with fine and spacious public edifices. The service of the foreign debt has been secured with a continuity rare in America, more than 30 per cent. of certain budgets having been used for that purpose. The result of the industrial evolution of the country is proving to the detriment of agriculture, as in the Germany of Bismarck and the Russia of Count Witte; looms, paper-mills, hat-factories, &c., have been established. The national requirements being satisfied, the products of agriculture are exported—tobacco, rubber, and sugar. The network of railways is being greatly extended, and irrigation works are being installed. Colonies of Boers have settled in Mexico. The invasion of capital goes on unchecked, as does the development of the economic life of the country, and its political progress, revealed by its external credit.

Thus, the President, by means of sound money, steady finance, and foreign gold, has founded a practical republic. He has overcome the traditional revolts—the ardour of the Jacobins and racial passions—by a utilitarian campaign; he has created a quiet and peaceful State, in which nothing is to be heard but the sound of its factories. A great leveller, he has been, according to the Spanish tradition, a Cæsar at the head of a democracy, the arbiter of national conflicts, the supreme caudillo, obedient to the voices of tradition.

Sierra, the Athenian minister, and Bulnes, the tempestuous historian, exalt him in admirable dithyrambics. Sierra states that Diaz created "the political religion of peace." But in the Aztec nation this cult demands its sacrifices. Bulnes considers that the Dictator procured peace by "the system of Augustus as expounded by Machiavelli"; he gave the caciques "riches and honours," but not the government. And, in fact, Porfirio Diaz has built up the new Mexico by freeing it from the sectarian struggles and the foreign invasion which threatened to destroy it; but his work has been marred by uncertainty, and a heavy shadow has weighed on uneasy spirits.[4] The President at last abdicated his powers after a bloody revolution, and it is not easy to say whether or no his removal will not result in anarchy or new Dictators. His minister, Sierra, has written that the political system of the Dictator "is terribly dangerous for the future, for it imposes customs which are contrary to self-government, without which there may be great men, but not a great people"; and Bulnes says: "The personal régime is magnificent as an exception," for "under its empire a people grows accustomed to expect everything as a favour and a grace; to be the slave of the first who strikes it, or the shameless prostitute of the first to caress it."