Communications being thus improved, the sugar industry, on which the prosperity of the island depends, developed rapidly. The visitors did not forget to attract immigrants and to reconstruct the ports.
The government of General Wood installed modern schools in the old Spanish school-houses, while it built special schools, kindergartens, and technical colleges in the large towns.
Under the Spaniards education was obligatory, no doubt, but it was the Americans who brought a lapsed law into force. Fines punished parental neglect. A thousand teachers went to Harvard, in the year 1900 alone, sent thither by General Wood to improve their methods of teaching; new pedagogic methods and a wider culture strongly modified social and political life. The Americans left ten times as many schools as they found, and an education adequate to the race and the Cuban child, who is "impressionable, nervous, and furiously imaginative."
Governor Wood requested his country to reduce by one-half the customs rates upon the coffee, fruits, and sugar which the island produced, as the basis of a Zollverein profitable to both countries. He complained, in his memoir, of the indifference of the wealthy towards the communal and political life, which he wished to render more active. A law passed by him regulated the elections in the new Republic.
The Cubans willingly recognise that the Americans have performed an excellent work in education and finance, but accuse them of having provoked in political life a corruption analogous to that of the leaders or bosses of Tammany Hall, which replaces violence by fraud. It is difficult to speak of such a matter, but perhaps the reaction against these dangerous methods was insufficient. In 1906, after four years of independent life, President Estrada Palma demanded intervention. It must be recognised that the Americans did not respond without some uneasiness. Mr. Roosevelt, in a letter to the Cuban diplomatist Gonzalo de Quesada, gave some admirable advice: "I solemnly exhort the Cuban patriots," he said, "to form a close union, to forget their personal differences and ambitions, and to remember that they have one means of safeguarding the independence of the Republic: to evade, at all costs, the necessity of foreign intervention, intended to deliver them from civil war and anarchy."
Heedless of the voice of the shepherd of the American people, they asked him to put an end to the long quarrel between the liberals and the moderates. The Americans occupied the island for a year; Mr. Taft, the new President, was one of the pacificators. It is difficult to judge whether the anarchical inhabitants of the island have gained ground since the departure of the Americans. One of their most remarkable politicians, Señor Mendez Capote, believes that in Cuba—and more generally in any very young country where the government has need of an unfailing authority in order to check discord—representatives of one or both parties ought to belong to the Cabinet in order to render political life less changeable and to decrease its contrasts.[4] This organisation is impossible in a democracy which passes alternately from revolt to dictatorship.
Some Cubans, satisfied with the material progress effected, would prefer annexation. Others, and among them one of the most remarkable writers of the country, Señor Jesus Castellanos, are never tired, remembering their happy intervention, of calling the United States, "the great sister Republic." Certainly the States have given Cuba autonomy, but was it not a treacherous gift? Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. The historic interest of Cuba for the Americans is to-day increased by imperialistic ambitions. A Harvard professor, Mr. Coolidge, writes in a book already cited: "A glance at the map is enough to show us how important the island is to the United States. Of great value by virtue of its natural resources and its temperate climate, it is strategically the key to the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi Valley terminates facing the Caribbean Sea and the future Panama Canal. Its situation is comparable to that of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean."
The danger is therefore serious; the island is already in the lion's mouth. Only a skilful policy can keep the hope of deliverance alive. The servitude offered by the modern Cyclops is only a gilded pill; and to swallow it the merchants of the island would willingly forget their national pride. Analysing Rodo's book, Señor Castellanos has denounced the excessive utilitarianism of these men, without idealism, and full of a cupidity and gross materialism, which makes any collective effort towards national unity impossible. Poets and dreamers, the Cubans would need to undergo some prodigious change before one could interest them in action, before they could understand in the medley of political conflict what is really in the interests of the country; before they could establish political solidarity in the place of anarchy, and temper their easy confidence in the Yankee by a necessary and self-preserving scepticism. Could they ever transform their intellectual gifts into a less showy but more efficacious capacity for conflict and discipline? Will they acquire a sense of reality? Cuba should serve the rest of Latin America as a kind of experimental object-lesson. She suffers from the characteristic malady of the race, the divorce between intelligence and will.
She opposes the Anglo-Saxon invasion, being still thoroughly Spanish, her deliverance being a matter of yesterday, but American also by the mixture of the two races, the conquerors and the vanquished, by the usual Latin virtues and defects. The loss of her independence would be a painful lesson to the republics of Central America, and to Mexico even, where anarchy is paving the way for servitude. The United States offer peace at the cost of liberty. The alternatives are independence or wealth, material progress or tradition. The choice between dignity and a future is a painful one. Only an abundant immigration under benevolent tyrants strong enough to enforce a lasting peace, only a new orientation of the national life, setting business and industry and rural life before politics, could save the country from the painful fate which seems to be hers.
A fresh intervention, followed doubtless by annexation, would demonstrate the racial incapacity for self-government—a mournful experience. The successive rule of Anglo-Saxons and Creoles would render obvious the superiority of the former in the matter of administration, economics, and politics.
[1] See Como acabó la dominación, de España en America, E. Piñeyro, Paris.
[2] Enrique Collazo, Cuba intervenida, Havana, 1910, p. 93.
[3] Informe del Gobernador Charles E. Magoon, Havana, 1909, pp. 26, 39.
[4] Cited in Cuban Pacification, Washington, 1907, p. 506.
The ambitions of the Mikado—The Shin Nippon in Western America—Pacific invasion—Japanese and Americans.
Facing the United States in the mysterious Orient is an extensive empire which is sending its legions of pacific invaders into the New World. Anticipating the Japanese victories, the German Emperor warned a somnolent Europe of the terrible Yellow Peril; the peril of hordes like those of Genghis Khan, which would destroy the treasures of Western civilisation. This danger, after the defeat of Russia and the formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, has been felt in America from Vancouver and California down to Chili.
To dominate the Pacific is the ambition both of the North American Republic and the Asiatic Monarchy.
Before ruling America the Japanese, exposed to the hostility of the Californians, will fight in the North the great battle which will decide their fate. The Monroe doctrine, which liberated Latin America from the tutelage of the Holy Alliance, is perhaps destined to protect it also against the menace of the East. The Anglo-Saxons will not tolerate the foundation of Japanese colonies on the southern coasts of America, and to prevent them they are overcoming the obstacle of the Isthmus: are digging a canal, fortifying it, and increasing their navy. The United States understand that their future will baffle Japan, and by the acquisition of the Philippines they have become an Asiatic power. They defend the integrity of China, negotiate peace between Russia and Japan, demand the neutrality of the Manchurian railway, and claim a financial share in the Chinese loans and undertakings of material civilisation. The policy of Mr. Taft tends to ensure the American control of the Chinese finances.
The industry of North America needs outlets in Asia, because South America is still a commercial fief of Europe. On the other hand, the Japanese population is increasing at such an excessive rate that emigration is a necessary phenomenon for that country; a people of mariners hemmed in by the ocean naturally looks for fruitful adventures by sea. Moreover, the State stimulates emigration; socialism is causing it anxiety, and the dense population of proletariats is producing implacable caste antagonisms. Anarchists, brilliant propagandists of European doctrines, are spreading their convictions among the multitude which vegetates upon a poverty-stricken soil. Industrialism, and the general transformation of the nation, renders the protest of the disinherited still more bitter.
This current of emigration is neither chaotic nor fruitless. Even more than the German the Japanese is an emissary of imperialistic design. He does not become absorbed into the nation in which he lives; he does not become naturalised under the protection of hospitable laws; he preserves his worship of the Mikado, his national traditions, and his noble devotion to the dead.
Japan aspires to political domination and economic hegemony in Korea and Northern China. The Japanese have annexed Korea, and flying the Imperial standard upon this peninsula they have become a continental power. They have received from ancient China lessons in wisdom, artists and philosophers, and to-day the initiate seeks to rule the initiator. Japan is transforming China and teaching her the methods of the West; the philosophy of Heidelberg, the arts of Paris. In Manchuria, despite the ambitions of the United States, she pretends to supremacy for her industries and her banks.
"Asia for the Asiatics" is the Japanese cry, as "America for the Americans" is that of the people of the States.
Neither of these peoples respects the autonomy of foreign nations. The United States are conquering Asia economically, and the Japanese, the defenders of Oriental integrity, are slowly invading the Far West of America. The Philippines for the United States and Hawaii for Japan are the advance posts of commercial expansion on the one hand and imperialism on the other.
We are then face to face with a struggle of races, a clash of irreconcilable interests. In the proud northern democracy we note an uneasiness which reveals itself by the jealous exclusion of the Japanese from the life of the West, and by immovable racial prejudices. The American General Homer Lee, in a pessimistic book, The Valor of Ignorance, states that a heterogeneous nation in which foreigners constitute half the population can never conquer Japan. He foresees that the island empire, having eliminated its two rivals, Russia and China, by successive wars, will vanquish the United States and occupy vast territories in the American North-West. Only alliance with England, "to-day allied with the destinies of Japan," could save the Republic from subjection to her Oriental rivals.
Such prophecies, however, do not assume a general character. While waiting for the future war the struggle for the Pacific between the two powers concerned remains acute. The Japanese emigrants halt at Hawaii, assimilate American methods, and resume their exodus toward the Californian Eldorado. In the islands they are electors; they prevail by force of numbers; they change their professions or industries with remarkable adaptability, and then return to Japan, or remain, and retain their national feeling inviolate. In California they follow humble callings; they are secretly preparing themselves for conquest. Numberless legions thus arrive from the Orient; they are proud, adventurous, speculative; they aspire to economic supremacy.
In California, that country of gold and adventure, the problem of Japanese immigration is becoming more complex. M. Louis Aubert explains that in this State the Japanese constitute a necessary defence against the tyranny of the trades unions.[1] They accept an absurd wage and furnish the financial oligarchy with useful arms and sober stomachs. When the associations of working men demand increased salaries and threaten the greedy plutocrats with strikes or socialistic demands, the Japanese passively submit to the iron law of capitalism. If the interests of the race demand their expulsion from California, the interests of the capitalist class demand their retention. The instinct of the democracy which supports the civilising mission of the white man, "the white man's burden," is stronger than its utilitarian egoism. The immigrant is accused of immodesty or servility. The energy, frugality, self-respect, triumphant patience, and hostile isolation of the Japanese in Hawaii and California cause the Americans much uneasiness.
Repulsed in the north, the conquering Japanese take refuge on the long coast-line of South America. They do not renounce California and its admirable soil, but they prefer to forget the disdain of the North, to compromise with that haughty democracy, and prepare in silence for the future conflict.
They are, as a race, transformed; they have forsaken their own history in the midst of the millennial and ecstatic Orient, and this renovation has resulted in an intense ambition of expansion. The Japan which apes Europe does not overlook the teachings of Anglo-Saxon imperialism. Its statesmen, disciples of Disraeli and Chamberlain, wish to found an immense empire under the tutelage of the Asiatic England, insular and proud as the United Kingdom itself. Count Okuma stated that South America was comprised in the sphere of influence to which the Japanese Empire may legitimately pretend. Is not this the very language of the conquerors of Europe, for whom such "spheres of influence" pave the way for protectorates, tutelage, or annexation? "Western America," write the Japanese journals, "is a favourable ground for Japanese emigration. Persevering emigrants might there build up a new Japan, Shin Nippon." It is the identical object of the Germans in Southern Brazil; the creation of a Transatlantic Deutschtum.
The Japanese emigrate to Canada, there to establish a base for the invasion of the United States; they do the same in Mexico, and settle even in Chili; but Peru is the favourite soil of these imperialistic adventurers. To a statesman here is a Shin Nippon whose future is assured, a new Hawaii. Its climate resembles that of Japan. "In Peru, as in the greater part of South America, the government is weak, and if energy be displayed it cannot refuse to accept Japanese immigrants," writes a journal of Tokio. "In this hospitable country the Japanese could receive education in the public schools, acquire lands, and exploit mines." It is necessary, says an Osaka news-sheet, that these immigrants should not return to Japan after amassing a fortune; they must remain in Peru and there create a Shin Nippon.[2] The Japanese immigrants are reminded that already there are 60,000 Chinese in the sugar plantations of Peru, and that this republic is one of the richest on the Pacific coast. A minute explanation is given of the agricultural products which can be raised in Mexico, Chili, and Peru, and what are the privileges granted to immigrants in these countries; but these comprehensive statements do not trouble American statesmen. The very date of the first Japanese exodus toward the Eldorado of the conquistadors has become the classic anniversary of the commencement of a new era; "the thirty-second of the Meijie," of the regeneration of the Empire. According to recent statistics 6,000 Japanese are at work in Peru, in the plantations of sugar-cane, the rubber-forests, or the cotton-fields; following the tracks of the Chinese, they fill the lesser callings and defeat the mulattos and half-breeds in the economic struggle. New fleets of steamers carry these persistent legions under the Imperial flag. The State protects the navigation companies which run between Japan and South America, and although the commerce thus favoured is more profitable to Peru and Chili than to Japan, the far-sighted Mikado encourages relations which are not particularly favourable to-day, but which permit of the development of Japanese influence all along the Pacific coast, and the creation of centres of Japanese population and influence in Mexico, Peru, and Chili.[3] The Japanese vessels discharge their human freight at Callao and Valparaiso. The soil, which lacks Chinese serfs, is thus fertilised by Japanese immigrants, and the agricultural oligarchy of Chili and Peru is satisfied. Brazil itself attracts these emigrants, replacing the fertile Italian invasion by these sober workers of a hostile race, and is preparing the way for the establishment on Brazilian soil of two groups of identical tendencies, but inimical: one Japanese, the other German.
Japanese spies have been captured in Ecuador and Mexico. At the centennial fêtes of Mexico and the Argentine in 1910 a Japanese cruiser and an ambassador of the Mikado brought fraternal messages from the Orient. Uneasy on account of the North American peril, certain writers of the Latin American democracies entertain a certain amount of confidence in the sympathies of Japan; perhaps they even count upon an alliance with the Empire of the Rising Sun. But we cannot see, with the brilliant Argentine writer Manuel Ugarte, that Latin diplomacy must henceforth count upon Japan, because the hostility between that nation and the United States might be successfully exploited at the proper moment. In the commercial battles for the domination of the Pacific Japan does not support the autonomy of Latin America; her statesmen and publicists consider that Peru, Chili, and Mexico are spheres of Japanese expansion. We have cited conclusive opinions on this subject, and they contradict the optimism of the Argentine sociologist. Apart from the emigrants and the companies which encourage them the projects and designs of Count Okuma, leader of the Japanese imperialists, are manifested in the nationalist Press, which sometimes betrays more than it intends. To-day, in the face of the unanimous opinion of these journals, we cannot deny that Japan has ambitious designs upon America. The future war will be born of the clash of two doctrines, of two imperialisms, of the ideal of Okuma and the Monroe doctrine. Victorious, the Japanese would invade Western America and convert the Pacific into a vast closed sea, closed to foreign ambitions, mare nostrum, peopled by Japanese colonies.[4]
The Japanese hegemony would not be a mere change of tutelage for the nations of America. In spite of essential differences the Latins oversea have certain common ties with the people of the States: a long-established religion, Christianity, and a coherent, European, occidental civilisation. Perhaps there is some obscure fraternity between the Japanese and the American Indians, between the yellow men of Nippon and the copper-coloured Quechuas, a disciplined and sober people. But the ruling race, the dominant type of Spanish origin, which imposes the civilisation of the white man upon America, is hostile to the entire invading East.
The geography of the Oriental Empire in no sense recalls that of America; there are neither wide plains, nor mighty rivers, nor fertile and luxurious forests. Narrow horizons, gentle hills, minute islands, closed seas, and the strange flora of the harmonious insular landscape: lotuses, cryptomera, bamboos, chrysanthemums, dwarf trees. Beliefs, manners, and customs all differ radically from the American. "The Europeans," writes Lafcadio Hearn, "build with a view to duration, the Japanese with a view to instability." A keen sentiment of all that is fugitive in life, of the anguish caused by the incessant flux and mobility of things, causes men to love ephemeral apparitions. Buddhism speaks of the fluidity of life. Japanese art strives to fix passing impressions; the dew, the pale light of the moon, the fleeting tints of twilight, the provisional temples, the small houses of wood, the rice-paper shoji, on which the very shadows of those within are vague and momentary. There is nothing persevering in Japanese life; the inhabitant is a nomad and nature is variable. Impassive Buddhas, seated on their blue lotus flowers, contemplate the irresistible current of appearances. Mobility, and a religious sense of becoming: these would be elements of dissolution in a divided America.
Powerful and traditional, the Japanese civilisation would weigh too heavily upon the Latin democracies, mixed as they are. Bushido, the cult of honour and fidelity to one's ancestors, is the basis of an intense nationalism; the contempt for death, the pride of an insular people, the subjection of the individual to the family and the native land, and the asceticism of the samurai, constitute so formidable a superiority that in the conflict between half-breed America and stoic Japan the former would lose both its autonomy and its traditions.
[1] Louis Aubert, Americains et Japonais, Paris, 1908, pp. 151 et seq.
[2] M. Aubert cites these and other extracts.
[3] The Peruvian imports into Japan were £101,000 in 1909; the Japanese imports into Peru only £4,400. There is a commercial treaty between Chili and Japan.
[4] Perhaps the emigration of Orientals towards the two Americas will be arrested, for there is a Chinese Far West which is slowly becoming peopled. Japan aspires to assure herself of the domination of Manchuria, and is sending colonists to Korea, the annexed peninsula. The excess of the population of China and Japan tends naturally to occupy territories in which everything is favourable—climate, religion, and race.
PROBLEMS
Serious problems arise from a consideration of the Latin democracies, which are in the full tide of development. They are divided, in spite of common traditions, and they comprise races whose marriage has not been precisely happy. In spite of the resources of the soil, and its fabulous wealth, these States live by loans. Their political life is not organised; the parties obey leaders who bring to the struggle for power neither an ideal nor a programme of concrete reforms. The population of these States is so small that America may be called a desert.
We will consider all these problems minutely: problems of unity, of race, of population, of financial conditions, and of politics.
The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of development—Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral unity in the same degree as Latin America—The future groupings of the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles, Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the Confederation of La Plata—Political and economical aspects of these unions—The last attempts at federation in Central America—The Bolivian Congress—The A.B.C.—the union of the Argentine, Brazil, and Chili.
A professor of the American university of Harvard, Mr. Coolidge, writes that if there is one thing that proves the backwardness of the political spirit of the Latin Americans, it is precisely the existence of so many hostile democracies on a continent which is in so many respects uniform. With so many points in common, with the same language, the same civilisation, the same essential interests, they persist in maintaining the political subdivisions due to the mere accidents of their history.[1] And he advises in all sincerity that these inimical nations should associate themselves in powerful groups, a means of defence which no nation could oppose, neither the United States nor Europe. If, for example, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay were to unite with the Argentine Republic; if the old United States of Colombia were re-established, and if, as formerly, Venezuela and Ecuador, with perhaps Peru, were to form a confederation; if the republics of Central America were at last to succeed in forming a durable confederation, and were perhaps to join Mexico—then Latin America would consist only of a few great States, each of which would be sufficiently important to assume by right an enviable position in the modern world, and to fear no aggression on the part of any foreign power.
The Latin Republics pay no attention to this wise counsel; we observe among them a tendency toward further disagreement, toward an atomic disintegration. Originally a different and a wider movement, in the sense of the close union of similar nationalities, did manifest itself. The contrary principle prevails to-day, and it results in the separation of complementary provinces and the conflict of sister nations.
During a century of isolated political development, and under the influence of territory and climate, divergent characteristics have manifested themselves in the nations of America. Mexico is without the tropical eloquence we find in Colombia; the Chilian inflexibility contrasts with the rich imagination of the Brazilians; the Argentines have become a commercial people; Chili is a bellicose republic; Bolivia has an astute policy, the work of a slow and practical people, which has given it a new strength; Peru persists in its dreams of generous idealism; Central America remains rent by an anarchy which seems incurable; Venezuela is still inspired by an empty "lyricism." Some of these republics are practical peoples governed by active plutocracies; others are given to dreaming and are led by presidents suffering from neurosis. In the Tropics we find civil war and idleness; on the cold table-lands, in the temperate plains, and in the maritime cities, wealth and peace.
But such divergences do not form an essential separation; they cannot destroy the age-long work of laws, religion, institutions, tradition, and language. Unity possesses indestructible foundations, as old and as deep-rooted as the race itself.
From Mexico to Chili the religion is the same; the intolerance of alien cults is the same; so are the clericalism, the anti-clericalism, the fanaticism, and the superficial free thought; the influence of the clergy in the State, upon women, and the schools; the lack of true religious feeling under the appearance of general belief.
To this first very important factor of unity we must add the powerful and permanent influence of the Spanish language, whose future is bound up with the future of the Latin Transatlantic peoples. Sonorous and arrogant, this language expresses, better than any other, the vices and the grandeur of the American mind; its rhetoric and its heroism, its continuity of spirit from the feats of the Cid to the Republican revolutions. The Spanish tongue is an intimate bond of union between the destinies of the metropolis and those of its ancient colonies, and it separates the two Americas, one being the expression of the Latin and the other of the Anglo-Saxon genius.
The language is always to a certain extent transformed in these democracies; provincialisms and Americanisms abound; the popular tongue differs from the autocratic Castilian. Don Rufino Cuervo predicts that Spanish will undergo essential alterations in America, as was the case with Latin at the time of the Roman decadence. An Argentine writer, Señor Ernesto Quesada, believes that a national language is in process of formation on the banks of the Plata, and that the barbarisms of the popular speech are forecasts of a new tongue. In Chili an exalted patriot has upheld the originality of the Chilian race and language in an anonymous book, claiming that they derive from the Gothic. Thus is the effect of the national spirit exaggerated. Among the Ibero-American republics there is a profound and general resemblance in the pronunciation and the syntax of the language; the same linguistic defects even are to be found in all. The Spanish of the Peninsula loses its majesty overseas; it is no longer the language, lordly in its beauty, solemn in its ornaments, of Granada, of Mariana, of Perez de Guzman. Familiar, declamatory, pronounced with a caressing accent, the Castilian of America is uniform from North to South.
More effectual than religion and language the identity of race explains the similarity of the American peoples, and constitutes a promise of lasting unity. The native race, the Spanish race, and the negro race are everywhere mingled, in similar proportions, from the frontier of the United States to the southern limits of the continent. On the Atlantic seaboard European immigration, an influx of Russians, Italians, and Germans, has given the supremacy to the white race, but this influence is limited to small belts of land, when we consider the vast area of the continent.
A single half-caste race, with here the negro and there the Indian predominant over the conquering Spaniard, obtains from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There is a greater resemblance between Peruvians and Argentines, Colombians and Chilians, than between the inhabitants of two distant provinces of France, such as Provence and Flanders, Brittany and Burgundy, or between the Italian of the north, positive and virile, and the lazy and sensual Neapolitan, or between the North American of the Far West and the native of New England. The slight provincial differences enable us the better to understand the unity of the continent.
This identity explains the monotonous history of America. A succession of military periods and industrial periods, of revolts and dictatorships; perpetual promises of political restoration; the tyranny of ignorant adventurers, and complicated and delusive legislation.
It is in the great crises of its history that the essential unity of the race is revealed. The Wars of Independence were a unanimous movement, an expression of profound solidarity. In 1865, after half a century of isolation, the democracies of the Pacific once more united to oppose Spain's attempt at reconquest. Soldiers of different nations, who had already fought in bygone battles, but against each other, now fought side by side for the common liberty. The same unity of inspiration has brought the nations together in opposition to many projects of conquest: the expedition of Flores against Ecuador, of France against Mexico, and the Anglo-French alliance against Rosas. At the second Hague Congress in 1907 Latin America revealed to the Western world the importance of her wealth and the valour of her men, and supported her ideal of arbitration; to the Monroe doctrine she opposed the doctrine of Drago, and, without preliminary understanding, asserted her unity.
No other continent offers so many reasons for union, and herein lies the chief originality of Latin America.
In Europe states and races are in conflict, and the unstable equilibrium is maintained only by means of alliances. Religions, political systems, traditions, and languages differ. History is merely a succession of turbulent hegemonies: of Spain, England, France, and Germany. We find artificial nations, like Austria; unions of democratic and theocratic peoples, like the Franco-Russian Alliance; rival empires of the same race, like England and Germany; political alliances of alien races, like Germany and Italy; and the dispersion of peoples painfully seeking to recover their lost unity, like the Poles, the Irish, and the Slavs. The federation of Europe is a Utopian dream.
Africa is not yet autonomous; it is a vast group of enslaved peoples of primitive races, colonised by the great European powers. There the Anglo-Saxon genius is seeking to establish a political union between English and Dutch, and one day, perhaps, the empire dreamed of by Cecil Rhodes will stretch from Cairo to the Cape. But the unity of Africa is impossible; for the colonists come to the Dark Continent as conquerors, as the representatives of hostile interests; they can but quarrel over Morocco, Tripoli, and the Congo. Oceania possesses only a partial unity in the Australian commonwealth, the work of England. In Asia it is still more impossible to guess whence a future unity might arise. Mussulmans and Buddhists share India; Japan has won only an ephemeral superiority; China retains all her irreducible independence; in Manchuria and Korea Russian and Asiatic interests are opposed; in Turkestan, Persia, and Tibet the conflicts of race and religion are enough to destroy any hope of union.
In America and in America only the political problem is relatively simple. Unity is there at once a tradition and a present necessity, yet in spite of this fact the disunion of the Latin democracies persists.
Forty years ago Alberdi thought it necessary, and believed it possible, to redraw the map of America.
To-day the Latin nations overseas are less plastic; the frontiers seem too definitely established, and prejudices too deeply rooted to allow of such a recombination; but the formation of groups of nations is no less urgent. If the unity of the continent by means of a vast federation in the Anglo-Saxon manner seems impossible, it is none the less necessary to group the Latin-American nations in a durable fashion, according to their affinities. While respecting the inevitable geographical inequalities which give certain peoples an evident superiority over others, and the no less inevitable economic inequalities which create natural unions, it would still be possible to found a stable assemblage of nations, a Continent.
There is a spontaneous hierarchy in the Latin New World; there are superior and inferior democracies, maritime nations and inland states. Paraguay will always be inferior to the Argentine Republic; Uruguay to Brazil; Bolivia to Chili; Ecuador to Peru; Guatemala to Mexico; as much from the point of wealth as in population and influence. The preservation of the autonomy of republics which differ so greatly in the extent and situation of their territories can only be removed by federative grouping. To oppress and colonise these countries is the desire of all imperialists, no matter whence they come; but the peace of America demands another solution; which is, not the synthesis which some one powerful State might enforce, but the co-operation of free organisms. By grouping themselves about more advanced peoples the secondary nations might succeed in preserving their threatened autonomy.
Central America, exhausted by anarchy, may aspire to unity; these five small nations maintain a precarious independence in the face of the United States. Until 1842 Central America was only one State, and subsequent attempts at unification proved that this was not merely the artificial creation of its politicians. When the Panama Canal has divided the two Americas, and increased the power of the United States, these nations, together with Mexico, might form a true Spanish advance-guard in the North.
Moreover, the free islands of the Caribbean Sea might be united in a Confederation of the Antilles, according to the noble dream of Hostos. Greater Colombia might be reconstituted, with Ecuador, New Granada, and Venezuela. Their greatest leaders have desired their union, as a preventive of indefinite and fractional division and internal discord. On the basis of common traditions, and for important geographical reasons, these three nations might form an imposing Confederacy. Once the Canal is open, this group of peoples, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on the northern extremity of the continent, would form a massive Latin rampart, a country capable of absorbing European emigration and of opposing to Anglo-Saxon invasion the resistance of a vast populated and united territory.
Bolivia, the inland republic, deprived of her coast-line by Chili, has already been twice united to Peru; in 1837, under the authority of Santa-Cruz, and in 1879, to oppose the supremacy of Chili on the Pacific. What should henceforth separate it from a people to which it is united by so many historical and economic ties, and a similitude of territory and race from Cuzco to Oruro? Chili and Peru will be either two perpetual enemies, or two peoples drawn together by a useful understanding. Their geographical proximity, their mutually complementary products—the tropical fruits of Peru and the products of the temperate zones of Chili—might contribute to bring them together. Have we not here an actual economic harmony? In the moral domain the very causes which have engendered hatred between Chili and Peru, from the time of Portales to that of Pinto, might equally prove to be the elements of future friendship. Peru, impoverished by the Chilian conquest, and deprived of her deposits of nitre, would no longer be the victim of the Chilian greed of gold, nor the hatred of a poor colony for the elegant vice-kingdom. Chili is wealthier than Peru, and her people have more energy and more will-power, although they may have less imagination, less nobility of character, and less eloquence. The Peruvian vivacity and grace may be contrasted with the prosaic deliberation of Chili; the anarchy of the one country with the political stability of the other; the idealism of Peru with the common-sense of Chili. Physically and morally these two countries complete one another. The economic necessities of each might form the permanent basis of a possible alliance. The Confederation of the Pacific, formed by Peru, Bolivia, and Chili, would be a safeguard against future wars in America. Unhappily Chili professes and seeks to enforce a superiority founded upon victory, just as, when the German Empire was confederated, victorious and warlike Prussia enforced her superiority over artistic Bavaria.
The Confederation of La Plata, the heir to the traditions of the colonial era, might be formed of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Rosas did seek to create this great federal organisation. During the course of the century Uruguay has extended her sympathies alternately to the Argentine and to Brazil, and Paraguay, during a period of epic grandeur, defended her isolation. The union of these republics was prevented by national rivalities and the ambitions of their caudillos, but it will surely be effected in the future under the pressure of the power of Argentina. It is true that Uruguay has only too definite an originality in the matter of intellect, from the point of view of liberalism and education, but the federation of the future would not be the imposition of a harsh hegemony of one nation over others, but rather the co-operation of republics with equal rights which had at last understood the poverty of their isolated condition. Paraguay, remote and concealed, ruled sometimes by a Jesuitical and now by a civil dictatorship, has need of a place in such a vast confederation of cultivated peoples.
These groups of nations will thus form a new America, organic and powerful. Brazil, with her immense territory and dense population; the Confederation of La Plata; the Confederation of the Pacific; Greater Colombia: these will finally establish the continental equilibrium so anxiously desired. In the North, Mexico and Central America and the Confederation of the Antilles would form three Latin States to balance the enveloping movement of the Anglo-Saxons. Instead of twenty divided republics we should thus have seven powerful nations. We should have not the vague Union of which all the Utopian professors since Bolivar have spoken, but a definite grouping and confederation of peoples united by real economic, geographical, and political ties.
To realise these fusions there are both economic and political methods. Hasty conventions would be powerless to uproot the hatreds and the narrow conceptions of patriotism peculiar to the American peoples. The organisation of the continent should be the work of thinkers, statesmen, and captains of industry, a work fortified by time and history. To the tradition of discord we must oppose another, the tradition of union.
A series of partial commercial treaties, navigation treaties, railway systems, customs unions, and international congresses (like those recently held at Montevideo and Santiago) may all be indicated as means of realising unity. The railways above all will create a new continent; for isolation and lack of population are the enemies of American federation.
To-day these peoples do not know one another. Paris is their intellectual capital, where their poets, thinkers, and statesmen meet. In America everything makes for separation: forests, plains, and mountains. What does Venezuela know of Chili, Peru of Mexico, Colombia of the Argentine? Even in the case of neighbouring nations the political leaders do not know one another. The psychology of neighbouring peoples is a mystery; whence traditional errors and disastrous wars. American journalism is ignorant of nothing in European life—the sessions of the Duma, the ministerial crises of Roumania, the nobility of the Gotha Almanac, the scandals of Berlin; but of the public life of the American nations it publishes only the vaguest and most erroneous news. By stimulating the love of travel and building railroads these peoples would escape from an isolation so perilous. "Every line of railroad which crosses a frontier," said Gladstone, "prepares the way for universal confederation." The Yankees have understood this, which is why they are preparing to build a great Pan-American railway to unite the two Americas under their financial sceptre.
The line which has recently united the two capitals of the South—Santiago and Buenos-Ayres—has contributed to the formation of a solid understanding between Chili and the Argentine. That which will unite Lima and Buenos-Ayres in the near future will bring the culture of the Argentine to the Bolivian table-lands, as far as Cuzco, the centre of Inca tradition; it will draw together the seaboard populations of the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, and will prove a powerful agent of civilisation and unity. The great rivers of the Amazonian basin from the Putumayo to the Beni, the affluents of the Rio de la Plata, the Magdalena and the Orinoco, united by new railroads, will also contribute to the continental unity by multiplying international relations. One may well repeat the celebrated phrase, that to govern is to lay rails. Railways vanquish barbarism; they attract the stranger, people the desert, civilise the native. Political organisation and internal peace correspond with the development of the means of communication. With the appearance of the rails the caudillos lose their influence, and a double transformation is effected; in the interior by the civilising action of commingled interests, and at the exterior by the new relations which the multiplication of railways involves.
Customs unions in Germany created the Imperial unity; Mr. Chamberlain thinks that a Zollverein would increase the power of the British Empire. The economic grouping of nations prepares the way for future confederations. The frequent congresses which unify law and jurisprudence, and bring together politicians, men of letters and scientists, all tend to the same result. To increase the number of these assemblies, to hold them in different capitals of the continent, and to replace the Pan-American Congresses, whose plans are somewhat indefinite, by racial Latin-American Congresses, would be equally to the profit of the economic and intellectual unity of the continent, and the harmony of its politics and its laws. An undivided, uniform American law,[2] a single monetary system, a similar policy in respect of protectionism and free trade, the unification of methods of teaching, and the equivalence of academic diplomas and university degrees, are questions that might be discussed at these general assemblies. Each nation would have ministers in the other republics, who would be at once intellectual emissaries and propagandists, while to-day American peoples who send ministers to Austria or to Switzerland have no accredited representatives in the capitals of adjacent states. The national ambitions which satisfy our politicians to-day would be replaced by a more ample and original design, embracing the future of an entire continent, as was the case a century ago.
In short, we should neglect no form of co-operation—conventions, travel, diplomatic labours, periodical congresses, commercial treaties, and partial groups of nations. Nothing but a disastrous weakness can perpetuate the present division of the Latin peoples in the face of the unity of the United States.
The nations of the South are not unaware of this necessity, and after a century of independence they are seeking to reconstitute the ancient unions. Central America, disturbed by periodic wars, is endeavouring to create a Confederation. In 1895 a treaty between Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador formed the Republic of Central America; only Costa Rica and Guatemala held aloof from this union. In 1902 all these nations, with the exception of Guatemala, accepted a convention of arbitration. In 1905 the presidents of the five republics met at Corinth in order to honour the work of Morazan and Rufino Barrios; spontaneously, or at the instance of the United States and Mexico, they signed various treaties intended to realise the unity of the sister nations. A Central American Pedagogic Institute was created, and a "Bureau of the Five Republics," with the same object of unification. In 1907, after nine different conflicts in the interval, a conference of these same nations was assembled at Washington. On this occasion a tribunal of arbitration for Central America was installed, and the neutrality of Honduras was recognised. This tribunal, which sits at Cartago, in Costa-Rica, is to judge the conflicts between states and the diplomatic claims of the governments and of individuals. Moreover, the Republics of Central America have agreed to a declaration which provides that they will recognise no government which has been enforced by a revolution or a coup d'État, and that they will not intervene in the political movements of neighbouring countries.
The Court of Arbitration thus established had already, in 1909, settled differences between Salvador and Honduras, and between Guatemala and Nicaragua, by rejecting the pretentions of Honduras in the one case and of Nicaragua in the other.[3] In short, the United States and Mexico are leading these peoples, who used to be in a condition of perpetual discord, towards the unity necessary to their progress.
A Congress met recently (1911) at Caracas, which was attended by the representatives of the states liberated by Bolivar—Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. This was a truly Bolivian assembly in honour of the national hero. The object of this Congress was to reconstitute Greater Colombia with the three Republics which formerly made part of it—Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador; this would be a return, after the lapse of a century, to the harmonious union of the sister peoples, which would truly give them a common future.
The formation of a great Bolivian State, after a period of isolation lasting more than a century, is certainly the dream of generous statesmen. It is not easy to conceive of the political union of peoples as far removed as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, but this assembly might well result in a natural union of the peoples of the North; a new Greater Colombia, whose provinces would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
In the south the A.B.C., the alliance of the Argentine, Brazil, and Chili, is the question incessantly discussed in the sensational press, and in the chancelleries, which love to surround themselves with an atmosphere of mystery. These three nations, wealthy, military powers, situated in distinct zones, are seeking confederation; their ambition is to exercise in America a tutelage which they consider indispensable. Already the understanding of May, 1902, had limited the armaments of Chili and the Argentine, and had put an end to a long conflict. The rivality between the Argentine and Brazil; the old friendship between that country and Chili, which afterwards changed to a jealous alienation; the rivalry between the Argentine and Chili in the matter of wealth and power; discord, threats of war, uneasy friendships; all this is insufficient to restrain the military ambition of the three great nations. The statesmen of Buenos-Ayres, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago are labouring to effect the realisation of an alliance between the three most highly civilised and organised and most advanced nations of the continent. Once this union is accomplished, to the indisputable influence of the United States will be added the moderative influence of the three great States of the South, and the equilibrium between Latins and Anglo-Saxons would be its immediate result.
There are writers in America who defend the chauvinistic autonomy of small countries as against the natural supremacy of such combinations of States. It is, however, certain that these alliances do not in any way threaten the countries which take part in them; they respect their internal constitution, and their historic organisation; they confine themselves to a fusion of general and external interests, to matters of commerce, and of peace and war. These utilitarian partisans of the independence of each separate nation cannot conceive of the grouping of nations as in the Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, or the Southern Alliance, without the existence of obvious commercial interests. It is certainly true that the Zollverein, or permanent customs agreement, was the basis of German unity. But there are moral interests as powerful and as obvious as the interests of commerce. Should not a common danger, such as the Yankee peril in Panama and Central America, impel nations toward federation and unity?
Moreover, federation is not always the result of purely commercial ties. Our century tends to synthetical action. As modern nations were formed by overcoming the old feudal anarchy, so metropolis and colonies are uniting in our days to form formidable empires which merely commercial interests could not explain. What economic tie served as the basis of the South African Federation, a group of hostile races retaining a memory of autonomy? Did not North and South in the United States enter upon a terrible war of interests, and, in spite of this utilitarian antagonism, is not Lincoln, the founder of the Union, as great to-day as Washington, the founder of nationality? The enormous power of the North American nation is the result of this unity. If the patricians of the South had been victorious in the War of Secession, if they had succeeded in annihilating the Federal bond, then instead of the Republic which overawes Europe and aspires to Americanise the world there would be two powerless and inimical States; in the South an oligarchic nation served by slaves, and in the North a feeble assemblage of Puritan provinces, while the Far West would be incapable of resisting the Yellow Peril.
But there are economic ties between the Latin nations, which may assist the preparation of respectable unions. Between Brazil and Chili, Peru and Chili, Bolivia, Chili, and Peru, or the Argentine, Paraguay, and Bolivia, there are actual currents of commercial exchange, of agricultural products from complementary zones, and therein a basis of union may be found.
Latin America cannot continue to live divided, while her enemies are building up vast federations and enormous empires. Whether in the name of race or commercial interests, of common utility or true independence, the American democracies must form themselves into three or four powerful States. The Latin New World is alone in resisting the universal impulse toward the establishment of syndicates and federations, trusts and trades unions, associations and alliances—in short, of increasingly vast and increasingly powerful organisations.
[1] The United States as a World-Power.
[2] See A. Alvarez, Le Droit international americain (Paris, 1910), in which the reader will find an interesting list of problems respecting frontiers, immigration, and means of communication, affecting Latin America in particular, which have on several occasions met with solutions which form the basis of a new law (pp. 271 et seq.).
[3] Alvarez, ibid., p. 189 et seq.
The gravity of the problem—The three races, European, Indian, and Negro—Their characteristics—The mestizos and mulattos—The conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le Bon—Regression to the primitive type.
The racial question is a very serious problem in American history. It explains the progress of certain peoples and the decadence of others, and it is the key to the incurable disorder which divides America. Upon it depend a great number of secondary phenomena; the public wealth, the industrial system, the stability of governments, the solidity of patriotism. It is therefore essential that the continent should have a constant policy, based upon the study of the problems which are raised by the facts of race, just as there is an agrarian policy in Russia, a protectionist policy in Germany, and a free-trade policy in England.
In the United States all the varieties of the European type are intermingled: Scandinavians and Italians, Irish and Germans; but in the Latin republics there are peoples of strange lineage: American Indians, negroes, Orientals, and Europeans of different origin are creating the race of the future in homes in which mixed blood is the rule.
In the Argentine, where Spanish, Russian, and Italian immigrants intermingle, the social formation is extremely complicated. The aboriginal Indians have been united with African negroes, and with Spanish and Portuguese Jews; then came Italians and Basques, French and Anglo-Saxons; a multiple invasion, with the Latin element prevailing. In Brazil Germans and Africans marry Indians and Portuguese. Among the Pacific peoples, above all in Peru, a considerable Asiatic influx, Chinese and Japanese, still further complicates the human mixture. In Mexico and Bolivia the native element, the Indian, prevails. The negroes form a very important portion of the population of Cuba and San Domingo. Costa-Rica is a democracy of whites; and in the Argentine, as in Chili, all vestiges of the African type have disappeared. In short, there are no pure races in America. The aboriginal Indian himself was the product of the admixture of ancient tribes and castes.
In the course of time historic races may form themselves; in the meantime an indefinable admixture prevails.
This complication of castes, this admixture of divers bloods, has created many problems. For example, is the formation of a national consciousness possible with such disparate elements? Would such heterogeneous democracies be able to resist the invasion of superior races? Finally, is the South American half-caste absolutely incapable of organisation and culture?
Facile generalisations will not suffice to solve these questions. Here the experience of travellers and of American history even is of greater value than the verdicts of the anthropologists. In the first place the half-breeds are not all hybrids, and it is not true that the union of the Spaniard and the American has always been sterile. Hence the absolute necessity of understanding the proper character of each of the races which have formed modern America.
The Spaniards who arrived in the New World came from different provinces; here alone is a prime cause of variety. Simultaneously with the languid Andalusian and the austere Basque, the grave Catalonian and the impetuous Estremaduran left Spain. Where the descendants of the Basque prevail, as in Chili, the political organism is more stable, if less brilliant, than elsewhere, and a strong will-power shows itself in work and success. The Castilians brought to America their arrogance, and the fruitless gestures of the hidalgo; where the Andalusians are in the majority their agile fantasy, their gentle non curanza, militates against all serious or continuous effort. The descendants of the Portuguese are far more practical than those of the Spaniards; they are also more disciplined and more laborious. The psychological characteristics of the Indian are just as various; the descendant of the Quechuas does not resemble the descendant of the Charruas, any more than the temperament of the Araucanian resembles that of the Aztec. In Chili, Uruguay, and the Argentine, there were warlike populations whose union with the conquerors has formed virile half-castes, an energetic and laborious plebs. In Chili Araucanians and Basques have intermingled; and is it not in this fusion that we must seek the explanation of the persistent character of the Chilian nation, and its military spirit? The Aymara of Bolivia and the south-east of Peru is hard and sanguinary; the Quechua of the table-lands of the Andes is gentle and servile. It is by no means a matter of indifference whether the modern citizen of the Latin democracies is descended from a Guarani, an Aztec, an Araucan, or a Chibcha; he will, as the case may be, prove aggressive or passive, a nomadic shepherd or a quiet tiller of the common soil.
The Indian of the present time, undermined by alcohol and poverty, is free according to the law, but a serf by virtue of the permanance of authoritative manners. Petty tyrannies make him a slave; he works for the cacique, the baron of American feudalism. The curé, the sub-prefect, and the judge, all-powerful in these young democracies, exploit him and despoil him of his possessions.[1] The communities, very like the Russian mir, are disappearing, and the Indian is losing his traditional rights to the lands of the collectivity. Without sufficient food, without hygiene, a distracted and laborious beast, he decays and perishes; to forget the misery of his daily lot he drinks, becomes an alcoholic, and his numerous progeny present the characteristics of degeneracy. He lives in the mountains or table-lands, where a glacial cold prevails and the solitude is eternal. Nothing disturbs the monotony of these desolate stretches; nothing breaks the inflexible line of the limitless horizons; there the Indian grows as melancholy and as desiccated as the desert that surrounds him. The great occasions of his civil life—birth, marriage, and death—are the subjects of a religious exploitation. Servile and superstitious, he finally loves the tyrannies that oppress him. He adores the familiar gods of the Cerros, of the mountain. He is at once a Christian and a fetish-worshipper; he sees in mysterious nature demons and goblins, occult powers which are favourable and hostile by turn.
There are, nevertheless, regions where despotism has developed in the Indian a sort of passive resistance. There he is sober and vigorous, and by his complete adaptation to the maternal soil he has grown apathetic and a creature of routine. He hates all that might destroy his age-long traditions: schools, military training, and the authority that despoils him. Conservative and melancholy, he lives on the border of the Republic and its laws; his heart grows hot against the tyranny from which he forever suffers. Dissimulation, servility, and melancholy are his leading traits; rancour, hardness, and hypocrisy are the forms of his defensive energy. He supports his slavery upon this cold earth, but he sometimes revolts against his exploiters; and at Huanta and Ayoayo he fought against his oppressors with true courage, sustained by hatred, as in the heroic times of Tupac-Amaru.[2] After this bloody epic he resumed his monotonous existence under the heedless sky. In his songs he curses his birth and his destiny. In the evening he leaves the narrow valley where in his slavery he is employed in agricultural labours, to journey into the cerros and mourn the abandonment of his household gods. A weird lamentation passes over the darkening earth, and from summit to summit the Cordillera re-echoes the sorrowful and melodious plaint of the Indian as he curses conquest and warfare.
The negroes of Angola or the Congo have mingled equally with the Spaniard and the Indian. The African woman satisfied the ardour of the conquerors; she has darkened the skin of the race.
The negroes arrived as slaves; sold a usanza de feria (as beasts of burden), they were primitive creatures, impulsive and sensual. Idle and servile, they have not contributed to the progress of the race. In the dwelling-houses of the colonial period they were domestics, acting as pions to their masters' children; in the fields and the plantations of sugar-cane they were slaves, branded by the lash of the overseer. They form an illiterate population which exercises a depressing influence on the American imagination and character. They increase still further the voluptuous intensity of the tropical temper, weaken it, and infuse into the blood of the Creole elements of idleness, recklessness, and servility which are becoming permanent.
The three races—Iberian, Indian, and African—united by blood, form the population of South America. In the United States union with the aborigines is regarded by the colonist with repugnance; in the South miscegenation is a great national fact; it is universal. The Chilian oligarchy has kept aloof from the Araucanians, but even in that country unions between whites and Indians abound. Mestizos are the descendants of whites and Indians; mulattos the children of Spaniards and negroes; zambos the sons of negroes and Indians. Besides these there are a multitude of social sub-divisions. On the Pacific coast Chinese and negroes have interbred. From the Caucasian white, bronzed by the tropics, to the pure negro, we find an infinite variety in the cephalic index, in the colour of the skin, and in the stature.
It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the national mass is Quechua, Aymara, or Aztec. In Peru, in Bolivia, and in Ecuador the Indian of pure race, not having as yet mingled his blood with that of the Spanish conquerors, constitutes the ethnic base. In the Sierra the people speak Quechua and Aymara; there also the vanquished races preserve their traditional communism. Of the total population of Peru and Ecuador the white element only attains to the feeble proportion of 6 per cent., while the Indian element represents 70 per cent. of the population of these countries, and 50 per cent. in Bolivia. In Mexico the Indian is equally in the majority, and we may say that there are four Indian nations on the continent: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
In countries where the pure native has not survived the mestizos abound; they form the population of Colombia, Chili, Uruguay, and Paraguay; in this latter country Guarani is spoken much more frequently than Spanish. The true American of the South is the mestizo, the descendant of Spaniards and Indians; but this new race, which is almost the rule from Mexico to Buenos-Ayres, is not always a hybrid product. The warlike peoples, like those of Paraguay and Chili, are descended from Spaniards, Araucanians, and Guaranis. Energetic leaders have been found among the mestizos: Paez in Venezuela, Castilla in Peru, Diaz in Mexico, and Santa-Cruz in Bolivia. An Argentine anthropologist, Señor Ayarragaray, says that "the primary mestizo is inferior to his European progenitors, but at the same time he is often superior to his native ancestors." He is haughty, virile, and ambitious if his ancestors were Charruas, Guaranis, or Araucanians; even the descendant of the peaceable Quechuas is superior to the Indian. He learns Spanish, assimilates the manners of a new and superior civilisation, and forms the ruling caste at the bar and in politics. The mestizo, the product of a first crossing, is not otherwise a useful element of the political and economic unity of America; he retains too much the defects of the native; he is false and servile, and often incapable of effort. It is only after fresh unions with Europeans that he manifests the full force of the characteristics obtained from the white. The heir of the colonising race and of the autocthonous race, both adapted to the same soil, he is extremely patriotic; Americanism, a doctrine hostile to foreigners, is his work. He wishes to obtain power in order to usurp the privileges of the Creole oligarchies.
One may say that the admixture of the prevailing strains with black blood has been disastrous for these democracies. In applying John Stuart Mill's law of concomitant variations to the development of Spanish America one may determine a necessary relation between the numerical proportion of negroes and the intensity of civilisation. Wealth increases and internal order is greater in the Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili, and it is precisely in these countries that the proportion of negroes has always been low; they have disappeared in the admixture of European races. In Cuba, San Domingo, and some of the republics of Central America, and certain of the States of the Brazilial Confederation, where the children of slaves constitute the greater portion of the population, internal disorders are continual. A black republic, Hayti, demonstrates by its revolutionary history the political incapacity of the negro race.
The mulatto and the zambo are the true American hybrids. D'Orbigny believed the mestizo to be superior to the descendants of the Africans imported as slaves; Burmeister is of opinion that in the mulatto the characteristics of the negro are predominant. Ayarragaray states that the children born of the union of negroes with zambos or natives are in general inferior to their parents, as much in intelligence as in physical energy. The inferior elements of the races which unite are evidently combined in their offspring. It is observed also that both in the mulattos and the zambos certain internal contradictions may be noted; their will is weak and uncertain, and is dominated by instinct and gross and violent passions. Weakness of character corresponds with a turgid intelligence, incapable of profound analysis, or method, or general ideas, and a certain oratorical extravagance, a pompous rhetoric. The mulatto loves luxury and extravagance; he is servile, and lacks moral feeling. The invasion of negroes affected all the Iberian colonies, where, to replace the outrageously exploited Indian, African slaves were imported by the ingenuous evangelists of the time. In Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and Peru this caste forms a high proportion of the total population. In Brazil 15 per cent. of the population is composed of negroes, without counting the immense number of mulattos and zambos. Bahia is half an African city. In Rio de Janeiro the negroes of pure blood abound. In Panama the full-blooded Africans form 10 per cent. of the population. Between 1759 and 1803 642,000 negroes entered Brazil; between 1792 and 1810 Cuba received 89,000. These figures prove the formidable influence of the former slaves in modern America. But they are revenged for their enslavement in that their blood is mingled with that of their masters. Incapable of order and self-government, they are a factor of anarchy; every species of vain outer show attracts them—sonorous phraseology and ostentation. They make a show of an official function, a university title, or an academic diploma. As the Indian could not work in the tropics black immigration was directed principally upon those regions, and the enervating climate, the indiscipline of the mulatto, and the weakness of the white element have contributed to the decadence of the Equatorial nations.
The mulatto is more despised than the mestizo because he often shows the abjectness of the slave and the indecision of the hybrid; he is at once servile and arrogant, envious and ambitious. His violent desire to mount to a higher social rank, to acquire wealth, power, and display, is, as Señor Bunge very justly remarks, a "hyperæsthesia of arrivism."