Panama to Patagonia

PALPITATING SOCIAL QUESTIONS

Existence of the Roto Discovered—Mob Rule in Valparaiso—Indian and Caucasian Race Mixture—Disquieting Social Phenomena—Grievances against the Church—Transition to the Proletariat—Lack of Army and Navy Opportunity—Not Unthrifty as a Class—Showings of Santiago Savings Bank—Excessive Mortality—Need of State Sanitation—Discussion of Economic Relation—Changes in National Tendencies—Industrial Policies to Placate the Roto.

IN the fabric of Chilean social organization the warp is the individual unit known as the roto. The roto constitutes the mass. Pelucon, aristocrat, is a term transmitted from the old régime. Violent objection is made to its use at the present day on the ground that there are no privileged classes and that it never had more than a restricted meaning. But it describes the antithesis of the roto since his evolution into the proletariat began, and it typifies a recognized social distinction, so that its use is permissible. Pelucon comes within the designation of the governing classes and the one hundred families, and does not require further explanation.

One morning in May, 1903, the Chilean government and the foreign residents awakened to the existence of the roto as an organized element in society, with destructive capabilities and the courage of destructive tendencies. Disputes with the steamship companies had resulted in a strike. That morning the mob seized Valparaiso and took to burning property, pillaging, and killing. It was a wild mob, but it had perception and direction. It burned the offices of the Chilean corporation known as the South American Steamship Company, and undertook to sack one of the newspapers, but it left unharmed the property of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, which was a British corporation. Its grievances against both companies were the same, but this Chilean mob would give no ground for foreign intervention.

The authorities were blamed for the demoralization which the strike developed. It was charged that the forces were at hand to quell the disorder, and that a firm show of strength would have saved the hundred lives which were sacrificed before the rioting and sacking were ended. The inquiry was made why five hundred marines who were available were not utilized. The sinister reply was that they had refused to be used, that they had been on the point of mutiny when it was attempted to use them. They were of the roto class, recruited from the same ranks as the strikers. The exact truth never got to the public. The Chilean government vindicated its ability to maintain order and by the presence of warships and of troops silenced the clamor of the timid English and French residents who were calling for cruisers to be sent by their own governments.

Ultimately the strike was adjusted. But the conditions along the coast as far as Pisagua also were bad. They were especially threatening at the nitrate shipping-ports. The national authorities kept a cruiser at Iquique, and moved down from farther north additional troops. An outbreak of bubonic plague and the practical cessation of all industry helped to prevent the repetition of the scenes that had been witnessed at Valparaiso. Yet months afterward the embers of unrest at Iquique were smouldering, and official commissions were reporting “remedies for the grievances of the working-classes.” A chain of trades unions under various names, coöperative labor societies, mutual aid associations, brotherhoods of workingmen, seamen’s unions, was in existence. The social question was the palpitating one. The restlessness of the masses of the population, including the roto classes, found another exemplification in October, 1905, when Santiago for a time was under the control of rioters. The immediate cause was the agitation against the tax on the importation of cattle from Argentine. Back of it was the old-time discontent and the feeling that the government was being managed for the classes at the expense of the masses. The high cost of meat was something that came home to the bulk of the population, and it took to rioting, killing, and wounding as well as to destroying property as the means of showing its dissatisfaction. The rioting was not stopped until the police had been reënforced by the troops.

A generation ago J. V. Lastarria, the Chilean diplomat and historian, asserted: “The Chileans are the most homogeneous, most enlightened, most patriotic, and most united people of Spanish America, and they know how to use in the most practical and most prudent manner their political rights.” He also declared that the physical and social elements of his country explained her salvation from the disastrous anarchy which the other Republics had suffered and her progress in all spheres of human activity.

This complacent judgment was not unjust, but in describing his countrymen Señor Lastarria meant chiefly the higher stratum, the governing classes. When he wrote, the robust race mixture was yet going on, the amalgam of peasant northern Spain and of the Basque, after two centuries of transplantation, with the fierce Araucanian Indian blood. Not all of the aboriginal amalgam has been Araucanian. There are ten distinct aboriginal tribes known in Chile, and in the northern part the mixture has been more that of the Indians of the historic Upper Peru or Bolivia. All of these tribes have been habituated to hardship, and the grosser qualities of civilization have been developed aggressively.

The Chilean lower stratum of to-day is far from the refinements of civilization. Its vices and its virtues are equally strong. Among the virtues is native independence. The vices are of crude, half-conscious brute power, with little restraint of the passions.

Out of the race mixing—the mingling of European blood not always of the best and the Indian stock, with the Araucanian predominating—has come the roto. I studied him in various places and under varied conditions. He is not an individual for parlor-car company, or an agreeable companion as to the physical senses in a journey in a second-class train, nor yet so unpromising as usually he is painted. In the ports he is found as a coast product. He is a longshoreman, stevedore, boatman. The English word roustabout in a measure helps to describe the Chilean roto, but insufficiently. It gives too transitory an idea of the personality. The roto is no wharf rat. He is a permanent quantity, a fixture in the social fabric of the State, and he is a trade unionist.

In the agricultural regions the roto class is peon and is not so marked, but it is the basis of the population. The day laborer in the towns of the North who has more of the Aymará Indian blood than of the Araucanian, and who possesses less instinct of class organization than the longshoreman, also shows discontent. This wanderlust is one of the characteristics of the Chilean laborer. He is born a nomad. Even the most highly paid laborers in the nitrate fields refuse to be content and to stay. They are forever moving on.

The outcome of the events of 1903 was that Chile discovered she had a palpitating social question, and began to seek the horizon which might bound the zone of unrest. Among the social phenomena observed were the disproportion between the deaths and births, the excessive child mortality, the emigration of Chilean peons to Argentina, the constant movement of the migratory mass apparently without aim, and the popular fever for striking. In these phenomena were discovered conditions which showed the actual state of the lower stratum, but the horizon was not complete. The Chilean observers did not note the phenomenon of the roto’s slow perception of his own power, and his dawning conviction that there were classes in the State, and that in some way his class was down in the abyss. He was becoming a proletariat.

The roto has many qualities in common with the higher classes. His patriotism is fully as deep. Heretofore he has been willing to fight at the dictation of the military commander, but the threatened mutiny of the marines was a warning. At that very time the conscription was going on, and an uncommon sullenness was shown by the conscripts in the interior, and a vague resentment against being enlisted to fight their brothers. This was when the necessity of employing the army to break the strike was most openly discussed.

In relation to the nitrate fields the roto fails to see that the high wages at one time prevailing there helped him, and now that the pay is dictated by the trust his resentment grows. He has a vivid grievance in the payment of his wages in scrip. In the early days fortunes were made out of the saltpetre beds by officials and private individuals who already were comparatively rich. English parvenus little better than day laborers also gained riches. But the Chilean laborer developed no successful nitrate operator, no earner of day wages who became a millionaire. He seems to have been treasuring this up until the culmination has come and he is asking the question, How have the nitrates helped me? Though he furnishes the chief revenues of the State and though he is not heavily taxed, the proportion he bears is not in ratio to his wealthy employer. This belief, undoubtedly, is one basis of the discontent. It may be summed up that the roto feels that he is no better off than if Chile did not draw an enormous income from the export tax on saltpetre.

He also cherishes a grievance against the Church. Heretofore his devoutness or his superstition has been one of the bulwarks of the hierarchy. It interfered little with his crude morality, his notions of private vengeance, or his general conduct in the affairs of life. In a certain manner he venerated the priest and the symbols of ecclesiastical authority, and could be depended on to do whatever was put upon him. But this submissiveness has gone. The Church is a very large property-owner, and does not pay taxes in proportion to the burdens of the nation. The proletariat has become imbued with the belief that its aggressions are directed specially against him.

This feeling in part may be due to the spread of socialistic doctrines, though the socialistic propaganda in itself in Chile is weak. So far as it has a standing, this is because the roto in his protest finds the movement the only available vehicle of utterance for his dissatisfaction. He is not socialistic by nature, because what he takes by brute force from his weaker neighbor he expects to keep for himself and not to turn over to the vague entity known as society. The falling away of the roto from the Church is because of its goods and property which escape taxation, because of the feeling that his back is bent to the pack in order that a greedy ecclesiastical power which claims spiritual dominion over him may exist and pamper its ministers in luxurious idleness.

Another cause of dissatisfaction, which a foreign observer may note more quickly than a native one, is the feeling of resentment that there is no opportunity for him in the army and navy. He forever must be of the ranks. He must fight the battles, but always in inferior station. The enlisted man never can be anything else. Both army and navy draw the line as severely as in the most exclusive military organization of Europe. The common soldier or sailor is clay, a mud ball, something to be kicked, but never to be recognized as a human being with aspirations and ambitions. Yet it is the sailors of this class, as much as the daring commanding officers, who by their bravery and endurance have given glory to the Chilean navy. But neither naval commander nor army officer yet realizes that this clay is beginning to think, and to feel that something is wrong in the political organization of the State when he who sustains the State is nothing.

Among the qualities of the roto, whether in the army or the navy or in the mass of the population, is persistence in his prejudices. He is not easily changed from that which is taught him. I was in Santiago during the celebration of the peace pacts with Argentina. The governing classes and the merchants entered heartily into those festivities. They knew that the prevention of war by the treaties had saved the country from bankruptcy, even though war might have brought territorial extension. But it was noticed everywhere that the masses took no part in the demonstrations. They either were surly or indifferent. They had been taught to believe that Argentina was an enemy with whom they would have to make war and from whom they would have a chance to take spoils. They could not readily change about and join in the celebrations of peace.

If the roto in such a persistent manner retains the lesson that has been taught him, how much greater will be his doggedness in adhering to his self-taught lesson that something is wrong in the social order, and that he is the one who is wronged?

In the economic discussion of the social movement, citations will be made of the lack of thrift on the part of the roto classes, and their unwillingness to do anything for themselves. This is loose assumption, which is not warranted. On the seacoast he may be reckless with his wages, but in the interior this is not true, and I question myself whether it is true to the extent claimed even in the seaports. In Santiago the Caja de Ahorros, or Savings Bank, has between 49,000 and 59,000 accounts. The total deposits, as shown in a late annual report, amounted to $3,625,000. Out of nearly 50,000 depositors, only 355 had balances of $1,000 and more. Of the depositors under that sum, 1,409 were soldiers; 730 were private employees; 311, servants; 1,020, students; 342, seamstresses; 255, merchants; 102, farmers; 144, shoemakers; 67, laundresses; and 3,225 were set down as without profession. Presumably this meant unskilled laborers. Santiago and its suburbs have a population of 300,000. While the aggregate of the deposits is not great, the very fact that the Savings Bank carries 50,000 small accounts, and some of them very small indeed, indicates no lack of thrift on the part of the mass of the population.

In seeking the horizon of the social question one blot which may be remedied has been laid bare. This is the excessive mortality. A cause of the physical sturdiness of the roto who reaches manhood is undoubtedly to be found in the survival of the fittest. That brutal doctrine is exemplified in him. He endures harsh conditions of life, lack of comforts, want of everything that is decent and helpful, and when he does grow up it is as a robust animal only half tamed by nature.

The figures on this subject are startling. The annual death rate has been placed as high as 70 per 1,000 and frequently it is given as 50 per 1,000. This is correct for the majority of the towns and cities, but does not apply to the country as a whole. The official statistics for a period of ten years, which I examined, did not exceed an average of 35 per 1,000. But even that is nearly double the normal death rate in temperate countries; and Chile, not being in the torrid zone, is not subject to yellow fever and similar tropical epidemics. The figures showed that the birth rate and the death rate were almost balanced, since the birth rate ranged from 35 to 37 per 1,000. In 1895 the total births reported were 110,000, and the deaths 92,000, leaving an excess of 18,000 births over deaths. In 1898 the birth excess was a little larger. But in 1901 the births were 116,000 and the deaths 111,000, giving an excess of only 5,000. In previous years the births were not larger and even have fallen below the deaths. In a subsequent year a more normal condition was shown, the births numbering 115,813 and the deaths 88,607. In the two big cities no natural increase was contributed to the population. In Valparaiso Province with 243,000 inhabitants, during a twelvemonth period there were 9,475 births and 9,674 deaths. One year an epidemic of measles caused frightful ravages. In the year 1900, in the city of Valparaiso, the births were 5,610 and the deaths 7,170, and of the latter 2,245 were infants under one year of age. During this annual period the death rate per 1,000 in Valparaiso was 54.4. In Santiago Province, with a total population of 434,000, the births numbered 16,074, and the deaths 17,798. This excess was due to the city of Santiago, where there were 11,000 births and 12,500 deaths in a total urban population of 262,000. The mean average death rate is a little higher than in Valparaiso, though the latter is subject to the vicissitudes of seaports. In a given year only one city of more than 10,000 inhabitants showed a death rate of less than 50 for each 1,000. This was Antofagasta, in which the proportion was 44 out of every 1,000.

Indifference to personal comfort and the inevitable results of unsanitary living have helped to brutalize the roto, but it is wide of the mark to say that he prefers this existence. Cleanly and sanitary living are not so repugnant to him. What he needs is guidance and example.

On the part of the State there is a remedy for this condition. University settlements and similar movements for bettering the condition of the poor through individual initiative are not yet practicable. In a government where Spanish paternalism is inherited, hygiene and sanitation are emphatically the province of the State and of the municipalities which depend on it, since they do not enjoy a large measure of home rule. A perception of this truth has been shown in the disposition to treat the roto’s grievances as a social question rather than as a political issue. When this perception is translated into definite measures, his discontent with the existing order will become less menacing. For the government the lowering of the death rate and the increase of the birth rate per thousand has both economic and political significance.[13]

But is the economic and industrial relation of the roto to the State understood? Yes. How often I heard it discussed, how often I listened to the assertion made by Chileans, that Chile as a nation has a rotten core, that the anomaly of a government riotously rich through a single source of revenue and of a people superlatively poor, cannot long continue!

I sat through one night with Señor A, and listened to his eloquent and passionate indictment of his country and of the class of which he was the exponent, for he was of the ruling families. Another night it was with Señor B until the sun was breaking, and a third time it was with Señor C until the lingering habitués of the club were calling for their morning coffee. The talk ran in the same vein. The condition of the poor must be bettered. There must be a change in economic policies; dreams of conquest must be given over; the national revenues must be devoted to internal improvements; foreign capital must be encouraged to go into other industries than the nitrate gamble; the military party must be curbed.

“Then, Señor, there is a military party in Chile?”

“Ah, my friend, there is. Who can deny it?”

The military party was not a partisan organization, for it was only reflected in the different political groups which were at variance among themselves as to the details of their programme, though not as to the main purpose. This was territorial accretion, and the indefinite application of the nitrate resources for military ends as the means for continuing the supremacy of the army and navy elements. The reliance was the aggressive and sacrificing patriotism which is part of the being of every Chilean, whether high or low; hence the difficulty of combating it. But it took no thought of the roto; therefore its weakness.

A series of swift events—some domestic, some international—checked the militant military tendency. Through the peace pacts with the Argentine Republic, Chile found the opportunity of freeing herself from naval expenditures that were weighing her down. In the construction and control of the Panama Canal by the United States, her conservative statesmen were enabled to establish the definite lines of both commercial and political relations with the other countries of South America. By reason of the acuteness of the financial and industrial crisis which prevailed in 1903, the depth of the popular discontent was revealed, and the imperative need of finding a remedy was disclosed. The roto had to be conciliated, propitiated, humored, perhaps bamboozled a little, but always with a view to bettering his material condition. A comprehensive system of public works, railways, harbors, rivers, roads, and also municipal improvements, was recognized to be the channel into which the national income should flow.

It is the slow process of years during which the palpitating problems sometimes may throb with pregnant intensity, but their solution progresses in the degree that Chile adheres to industrial and commercial policies, and recognizes the true function of the masses in the political and social fabric of the State.