The South American Republics Volume I Part 1

The South American Republics.

Part I.

by Thomas C. Dawson.

PREFACE

The question most frequently asked me since I began my stay in South America has been: "Why do they have so many revolutions there?" Possibly the events recounted in the following pages may help the reader to answer this for himself. I hope that he will share my conviction that militarism has already definitely disappeared from more than half the continent and is slowly becoming less powerful in the remainder.

Const.i.tutional traditions, inherited from Spain and Portugal, implanted a tendency toward disintegration; Spanish and Portuguese tyranny bred in the people a distrust of all rulers and governments; the war of independence brought to the front military adventurers; civil disorders were inevitable, and the search for forms of government that should be final and stable has been very painful. On the other hand, the generous impulse that prompted the movement toward independence has grown into an earnest desire for ordered liberty, which is steadily spreading among all cla.s.ses. Civic capacity is increasing among the body of South Americans and immigration is raising the industrial level. They are slowly evolving among themselves the best form of government for their special needs and conditions, and a citizen of the United States must rejoice to see that that form is and will surely remain republican.

It is hard to secure from the tangle of events called South American history a clearly defined picture. At the risk of repet.i.tion I have tried to tell separately the story of each country, because each has its special history and its peculiar characteristics. All of these states have, however, had much in common and it is only in the case of the larger nations that social and political conditions have been described in detail. A study of either Argentina, Brazil, Chile, or Venezuela is likely to throw most light on the political development of the continent, while Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia are more interesting to the seeker for local colour and the lover of the dramatic.

The South American histories so far written treat of special periods, and few authorities exist for post-revolution times. Personal observations through a residence of six years in South America; conversations with public men, scholars, merchants, and proprietors; newspapers and reviews, political pamphlets, books of travel, and official publications, have furnished me with most of my material for the period since 1825. The following books have been of use in the preparation of the first volume, and are recommended to those who care to follow up the subject:

ARGENTINA: Mitre's _Historia de Belgrano and Historia de San Martin_, in Spanish; Torrente's _Revolucion Hispano-Americano_, in Spanish; Lozano's _Conquista del Paraguay, La Plata y Tuc.u.man_, in Spanish; Funes's _Historia de Buenos Aires y Tuc.u.man_, in Spanish; Lopez's _Manuel de Historia Argentina_, in Spanish; Page's _La Plata_, in English; Graham's _A Vanished Arcadia_, in English.

PARAGUAY: All of the above and Thompson's _Paraguayan War_, in English; Washburn's _History of Paraguay_, in English; Fix's _Guerra de Paraguay_, in Portuguese.

URUGUAY: Bauza's _Dominacion Espanola_, in Spanish; Berra's _Bosquejo Historico_, in Spanish; Saint-Foix's _L'Uruguay_, in French.

BRAZIL: Southey's _History of the Brazil_, in English; Varnhagem's _Historia do Brasil_, in Portuguese; Pereira da Silva's _Fundacao do Imperio, Segundo Periodo, Historia do Brasil, e Historia do Meu Tempo_, in Portuguese; Nabuco's _Estadista do Imperio_, in Portuguese; Rio Branco's sketch in _Le Bresil en 1889_, in French; Oliveira Lima's _Pernambuco_, in Portuguese.

All of the above books may be found in the Columbian Memorial Library of the Bureau of American Republics at Was.h.i.+ngton, which, taken as a whole, is one of the best collections on South America in existence.

T. C. D.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, January 22, 1903.

INTRODUCTORY

THE DISCOVERIES AND THE CONQUEST

_Spain's Discovery of America._--Town or communal government has been characteristic of Spain since before the Roman conquest. The Visigoths, who destroyed the advanced civilisation they found in the Peninsula, never really amalgamated with the subject population, and, happily, they did not succeed in destroying the munic.i.p.alities. The liberal, civilised, and tolerant Saracens who drove out the Goths, left their Christian subjects free to enjoy their own laws and customs. The munic.i.p.alities gave efficient local self-government while a system of small proprietors.h.i.+ps made the Peninsula prosper, as in the best days of the Roman dominion. The population of Spain reached twenty millions under the Moors, but finally dynastic civil wars enabled the remnant of Visigoths who had taken refuge in the northern mountains to begin the gradual expulsion of the Mahometans. In the midst of these currents of war and conquest setting to and fro, the old munic.i.p.alities survived unchangeable, and always supplying local self-government.

A tendency toward decentralisation was ingrained in the Spanish people from the earliest times. It was increased by the method in which the Christian conquest of Mahometan Spain was achieved. The Visigothic n.o.bility, starting from separate points in Asturias and Navarre, advanced into Saracen territory and established counties and earldoms which were virtually independent of their mother-kingdoms. The Asturians expanded into Leon and thence over Galicia, northern Portugal, Old and New Castile. The power of the Leonese monarch over Galicia was nominal; Castile and Portugal separated from Leon almost as soon as they were wrested from the Mahometans. The Basques were always independent, and Navarre, though it became the mother of Aragon, had little connection with the latter region. On the Mediterranean sh.o.r.e Charlemagne drove the Moors from Catalonia and made it a province of his empire, but no sooner was he dead than it became independent. Toward the end of the thirteenth century. The Christian conquest was virtually completed, and the Peninsula had been divided into four kingdoms. Each of these was, however, in reality only a federation of semi-independent feudal divisions and munic.i.p.alities united by personal allegiance to a single sovereign. In the course of the continual quarrelling of the monarchs their kingdoms frequently divided, coalesced, and separated again. The death of a king or the marriage of his daughter was often the signal for war and a readjustment of boundaries, but these overturnings did not much affect the component and really vital political units.

More significant than the political kingdoms were the linguistic divisions. Spain then spoke, and still speaks, three languages, each of which has many dialects. From Asturias and Navarre the language, now known as Castilian, had spread over the central part of the Peninsula south to Cadiz and Murcia. From Galicia the Gallego had spread directly south along the Atlantic, where one of its dialects grew into the Portuguese. On the east coast the Catalonian, imported from Languedoc by the French conqueror, is a mere derivative of the Provencal. Its dialects are spoken all along the Mediterranean coasts of Spain as far south as Alicante, as well as in the Balearic islands.

By 1300 A.D. two great political divisions, Castile and Aragon, covered three-fourths of the Peninsula, and their boundaries were well established; each, however, was a mere loose aggregation of provinces, and every province had its own laws and customs, its jealously guarded privileges, its legislative a.s.sembly, and its free munic.i.p.alities.

Galicia had never become incorporated with Leon; the Basques ruled themselves; Catalonia was really independent of Aragon; Castile had, from the beginning, been virtually independent, although under the same monarch as Leon, and, indeed, had taken the latter's place as the metropolitan province of the kingdom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND, KING OF SPAIN.

[Redrawn from an old print.]]

The one great unifying force was religious sentiment, stimulated into fanaticism by centuries of wars against the infidels. Nevertheless, during the two centuries before the discovery of America the Spaniards absorbed much culture from their Moorish subjects. In 1479, the whole Peninsula, except Portugal and Granada, was politically united by the accession of Ferdinand to the throne of Aragon, and of Isabella to that of Castile and Leon. With local liberties intact, and peace prevailing throughout its whole extent, the Peninsula enjoyed a prosperity unknown since the golden era of the Moors. The population rose to twelve millions; Andalusia, Galicia, Catalonia, and Valencia were among the most flouris.h.i.+ng and thickly settled parts of Europe, while the military qualities of the aristocracy of Castile and Leon and Aragon gave the new power the best armies of the time.

Colonies founded by a monarchy so organised could never be firmly knit to each other nor to the mother country. The n.o.bility of the sword would try to establish feudal princ.i.p.alities; the new cities would endeavour to exercise the local functions of the old Peninsular munic.i.p.alities; and the spirit of local independence still animating Catalonians, Basques, Galicians, and Andalusians would be repeated on a new continent. The only bond of union would be personal allegiance to the monarch.

In the fourteenth century, Christian navigators reached the Canary Islands--sixty miles from the African coast and six hundred south-east of Gibraltar. The a.s.surance that land did really exist below the horizon of that western ocean, so mysterious and terrible to the early navigators, gave them confidence to push farther into the deep. In navigation, the Spaniards lagged behind their Portuguese neighbours. But among the Spanish kingdoms Castile took the lead because her Andalusian ports of Cadiz, San Lucar, Palos, and Huelva faced on the open Atlantic.

These towns swarmed with sailors who had followed in the track of the Portuguese and visited their new possessions. The Castilians and Andalusians were naturally jealous of the successful Portuguese.

Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verdes, and the gold mines of the Guinea coast had fallen to the latter, while the Spaniards had only the Canaries. They gave an eager ear to the rumours that were rife in the Portuguese islands of more marvellous discoveries still to be made--of islands beyonds the Azores. An adventurous Italian, Christopher Columbus, wandering among the Portuguese possessions, heard the stories.

Happily for Spain, he believed them and resolved to lead an expedition to the farther side of the Atlantic. He entered her service and proved to be an enthusiast of rare pertinacity. It is immaterial whether the idea of a route to the East Indies by the west occurred to him at the same time he became convinced that there were islands in the far Atlantic waiting to be discovered. That which is certain is that he devoted his life to persuading someone in authority to entrust him with s.h.i.+ps and men to make a voyage to the far West. The pilots at Palos backed him, and he finally secured the desired permission and means from Isabella of Castile. Her interest in exploration and colonisation had been shown fifteen years before, in her energetic measures in conquering the Canaries and forcing the Portuguese to renounce their claims to those islands, and she well deserves the t.i.tle of founder of the colonial empire of Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.]

The story of Columbus's first voyage needs no retelling. He journeyed so far to the west that he returned convinced he had reached the longitude of eastern Asia, and the noise of his great discovery resounded through Europe and began the transformation of the world. Since the last great century--the thirteenth--Christendom had retrograded. The Tartars dominated Russia and the Turks were pressing hard on Germany. Unless the Christian world could find an outlet--unless it could create other resources for itself and outside of itself; unless feudalism should find an employment for its military energies outside of the vicious circle of fruitless and purposeless dynastic wars, it seemed not improbable that Mahometan aggression would continue until all Europe lay under the deadening influence of the Turk. Only in the Peninsula was apparent that spirit of expansion which is the best indication of internal vitality in a nation. The military n.o.bility, whose determined fanaticism, magnificent courage, and spirit of individual initiative had driven the Moors out of Spain in the thirteenth century, welcomed this fresh opportunity to slay the infidel and carve out new fiefs for themselves.

_Conquest of the Andes._--Columbus showed strategic genius of the highest order in choosing Hayti as the site of the first settlement.

That island afforded an admirable base for the conquest of the New World. It was large enough to furnish provisions, and was conveniently situated with reference to the coasts and islands of the Caribbean. Gold was.h.i.+ngs were soon discovered in the interior and the unwarlike inhabitants were at once impressed into slavery to dig in the mines. The news of gold stimulated interest as nothing else could have done. The Castilian government took immediate steps to exclude all other nations.

The Pope divided the globe between Spain and Portugal, and a treaty to this effect was negotiated between the two countries. Spaniards swarmed over to Hayti, and thence expeditions were sent out in every direction, headed by private adventurers bearing their sovereign's commission. The other Antilles were soon explored and, by the end of the century, the Spaniards had reached the South American mainland and rapidly explored its coast from the Amazon up to the Isthmus. Gold was picked up in the streams flowing from the Columbian Andes into the Caribbean. A few years later the north-western coast of South America was granted out to n.o.ble adventurers who undertook its conquest and exploitation with their own means. The Isthmian region became the new centre of Spanish power and commerce in America. In 1513, Balboa crossed the Isthmus to the Pacific Ocean--an event second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus's first voyage. During the following years the Gulf of Mexico was explored, and in 1518 the greatest statesman and general whom Spain ever sent to the new world--Hernando Cortes--began the conquest of the empire of the Aztecs.

The mining done in Hayti and along the Caribbean coast seemed pitiably insignificant compared with the treasures found in Mexico. There followed a new influx of gentleman adventurers who scoured the coast in every direction seeking another defenceless empire and mines as good as those of Mexico. The expeditions down the Pacific coast of South America started from the Isthmus. Peru was soon found, and in 1532, Pizarro and his band of blood-thirsty desperadoes, with inconceivable audacity, struck a vital blow at the heart of the great empire of the Incas by capturing its emperor. Within half a dozen years nearly the whole of the vast region over which the Inca power had extended was overrun and the outlying provinces were ready to submit at demand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANCISCO PIZARRO.

[From Montain's _America_.]]

The rapidity with which a little band of Spaniards conquered the vast and warlike empire of the Incas is well-nigh incredible. The terror inspired by horses and firearms did much, but the capture of their emperor demoralised the imperial Inca tribes still more. Once in the possession of the sacred person of the monarch, the Spaniards were regarded by the Indians as his mouthpiece and the successor to his power. From Cuzco, the capital, a splendid system of roads and communications radiated to every part of the empire. The military and political dominance of the imperial tribes had weakened the power of resistance in the provinces. The elaborate structure which had been built up by the Incas rather facilitated than hindered the Spanish conquest, once the decisive blow had been given at the centre. The provinces submitted to the new rulers as fast as the Spanish columns could march over the magnificent mountain roads.

South from Cuzco the Inca empire extended 2000 miles. It covered the whole Andean region as far as the 37th degree of south lat.i.tude and extended from the Pacific to the eastern slopes of the Andean foothills.

In the present Argentine it included the tribes living in the lesser chains which occupy the north-western part of the republic. Some of these Argentine tribes seem to have been only tributary to the Incas, others were completely dependent, and extensive colonies had been founded in the cotton regions. The general language was Inca, and that admirable system of irrigation and intensive culture which made Peru proper a garden had been introduced on the eastern slopes of the southern Andes.

The southern part of the great Bolivian plateau seems to have submitted quietly to the Spanish conquerors, and the stream of adventurers pa.s.sed on to the south. In 1542, Diego de Rojas led the first expedition, of which a record has survived, down through the Humahuaca valley into the actual territory of the Argentine. He himself perished in a fight with a wild tribe near the main chain of the Andes, but his followers continued their march. Near Tuc.u.man, they pa.s.sed out from the mountain defiles unto the pampa, and, leaving the desert to their right penetrated through Santiago and Cordoba, to the Parana.

No permanent settlement was then made, but the reports of thousands of peaceable and wealthy Indians inhabiting irrigated valleys, and the accounts of the magnificent pastures which stretched away to the east, soon tempted the Spaniards to take permanent possession. Seven years after the first exploration a town was founded in lat.i.tude 27, midway between the Andes and the Parana. About the same time other adventurers came pouring over the Andes from northern Chile, and this current soon joined that from the north. The Spaniards established themselves as feudal lords, and the unhappy Indians were divided among them. In one district, forty-seven thousand Indians were divided among fifty-six grantees. In 1553, Santiago de Estero, for many years the capital of the province of Tuc.u.man was founded.

In 1561, the governor of Chile sent from Santiago de Chile over the Andes an expedition which founded the city of Mendoza in a most beautiful region, where the vine flourishes in perfection, and where a wonderful system of irrigation, inherited from the Indians, still exists to attest the latters' engineering skill. Next year San Juan was founded, and these two towns were the centres for the settlement of the province of Cuyo, which remained a part of Chile for two hundred years.

The immigrants from northern Chile and Bolivia established Tuc.u.man in the tropical garden spot of the republic in 1565. From Santiago del Estero, in 1573, an expedition was sent two hundred and fifty miles to the south to a region of fertile valleys and plains at the foot of a beautiful mountain range. This was Cordoba, which at once became, and has since remained, the most populous of the interior provinces.

By the end of the sixteenth century the Spanish power was firmly established in settlements that have since become the Argentine provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Tuc.u.man, Catamarca, Santiago, Rioja, and Cordoba. All these really formed a southern extension of Upper Peru.

Their geographical, political, and commercial relations were with Charcas, Potosi, and Lima. The discovery, in 1545, of the great silver mines at Potosi at once made the high Bolivian plateau, then known as the Audiencia of Charcas, the most valuable and important province of all the Spanish monarch's South American empire. In 1571, the discovery of quicksilver mines in Peru vastly increased the output of precious metals; in 1575, the wonderful Oruro mines were opened, and before the end of the century the copper-pan amalgamation process was invented in Bolivia, revolutionising the production of silver.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINING SCENE.

[Redrawn from Gottfriedt's _Neuw Welt_.]]

The resulting prosperity of the mining regions of Bolivia stimulated the settlement of the north-western provinces of the Argentine. The miners needed provisions which could not well be raised in the neighbourhood of Potosi. There was a demand for cattle for beef, and for horses and mules for transportation. A solid economic foundation was thus provided for the plains settlements, and the enslavement of the Indians and the breeding of cattle went on apace. By the end of the sixteenth century north-western Argentine--the province of Tuc.u.man, as it was then called--was the seat of many thriving settlements whose Spanish inhabitants were mostly pastoral. The Indians in the neighbourhood of each settlement had been reduced to slavery, and cultivated the fields that had been their fathers' for the benefit of their white masters. The Spanish proprietors lived like feudal lords, while the Spanish authorities left these remote regions largely to their own devices.

Conditions in Cuyo, the western province just across the Andes from Santiago de Chile, were substantially the same. A political dependency of Chile, the few external relations it had were with that captaincy-general. The Spanish grantees ruled their Indian slaves in patriarchal fas.h.i.+on; agriculture was the princ.i.p.al occupation; pastoral industry was not so profitable as in Tuc.u.man, and the region was more isolated. In both Tuc.u.man and Cuyo Spanish rule was superimposed upon a previously existing commercial and social structure. There was no attempt to expel or destroy the aborigines. On the contrary, they were the sole labourers and their exertions the chief source of the wealth of their conquerors. There began a process of approximation and mutual a.s.similation between the Spaniards and their semi-civilised subjects.

While the former continued to be a privileged and ruling caste, the latter absorbed much European knowledge from them. The Indian language long held its own alongside of the Spanish and is still spoken in many parts of the region.

On the Atlantic side, among degraded peoples who had not progressed beyond the wandering and tribal stages of existence. Spanish settlement proceeded on entirely different lines. There existed no well-organised body politic, into whose control the conquerors could step with hardly an interruption to industry. Campaigns could not be made with the confident expectation of finding abundant acc.u.mulations of food _en route_. Expeditions among the squalid tribes were slow and dangerous and settlement stuck close to the rivers instead of following fearlessly across the plateau to the spots where the finest lands and the most flouris.h.i.+ng Indian communities lay ready for the spoiler.

The beginnings of the coast provinces were painful and disastrous; the settlements were feeble; centuries elapsed before the natural advantages of the region were utilised, and before its accessibility and fertility drew a great immigration. The a.s.similation of Indian blood did not take place on a large scale, and the immigrants and their descendants became perforce hors.e.m.e.n and fighters.