The South American Republics Volume II Part 1

The South American Republics.

Part II.

by Thomas C. Dawson.

PREFACE

This history begins when Pizarro and Almagro, Valdivia and Benalcazar, led their desperadoes across the Isthmus to the conquest, ma.s.sacre, and enslavement of the prosperous and civilised millions who inhabited the Pacific coast of South America. It ends with the United States opening a way through that same Isthmus for the s.h.i.+ps, the trade, the capital of all the world; with American engineers laying railroad iron on the imperial highway of the Incas; with British bondholders forgiving stricken Peru's national debt; with their debtor bravely facing the fact of bankruptcy, and turning over to them all its railways.

The American people, alert, practical, keen, possessing in their press and congress admirable organisations for the collection and dissemination of exact knowledge, already fully appreciate the advantages that will accrue to the United States itself from the building of the Panama ca.n.a.l. Hardly less thoroughly do they understand the probable effect upon eastern Asia and the great commercial nations of western Europe. Few, however, have yet reflected upon the ca.n.a.l's vital importance to the peoples of the Pacific coast of South America--to four at least of the six countries whose stories I have tried to tell in this volume.

Cut off from all practicable communication with the rest of the continent by those yawning ravines which lead down the inner declivities of the Andes, gullied by gigantic torrents, and choked by impenetrable forests, the narrow strip of territory stretching along the mountain tops and sh.o.r.e plain from Quito to Central Chile, connects with the outside world solely through ports on the Pacific Ocean. Throughout colonial times the stream of greedy Spanish office-holders flowed down the coast from the Isthmus, and a scanty trickle of trade followed the same channel. For three centuries Panama was the _entrepot_ and Lima the metropolis of all Spanish South America except Venezuela and eastern New Granada. Magellan's famous discovery did not divert these currents because the stormy straits that bear his name are practically useless for sailing s.h.i.+ps, and even Schouten's rounding of the Horn only blazed a path which proved too perilous for the vessels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But with the nineteenth century improvements in navigation and especially with the use of steam and the freighter built of iron, all was changed. Valparaiso became nearer to London or New York than Guayaquil, and during the last seventy-five years the ports of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Pacific Colombia have been little more than remote and unimportant stations on a trade route that stretches its interminable length from the commercial emporiums in the North Atlantic through Pernambuco, Rio, Buenos Aires, and around the southern end of the continent. For centuries Spanish tyranny denied the world access to those countries, and hardly had they shaken off the political system that strangled their development, when geographical considerations and the invention of iron steams.h.i.+ps placed them at a disadvantage compared with their compet.i.tors. Their commercial, and therefore their industrial and political progress, has been ten-fold slower than it should have been.

The moment the first vessel floats through from the Caribbean to the Pacific the course of commerce will reverse its direction. Buenaventura, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Callao, Mollendo, Iquique, and even Valparaiso and Talcahuano will send their s.h.i.+ps by the short route of Panama instead of around the continent and through the Straits of Magellan.

Western Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile herself will be tied by rapidly strengthening bonds of mutual interest and intercourse to each other and to the great commercial nations; and a transformation will begin whose extent no man can foresee. Every patriotic American must hope that his own countrymen will devote the money, energy, and attention essential to secure that share of influence and trade justly due the United States' geographical proximity and political sympathy; that French literature, language, and ideas, British capital, and German commerce now so dominant in all South America, will be supplemented by American schools, money, and commercial enterprise; and that such influences will spread from Panama through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia down the coast to prosperous Chile and across into the fertile plains of Argentina and southern Brazil.

The author wishes to acknowledge his especial indebtedness to Sir Clement Markham's scholarly _History of Peru_, one of the very few complete and intelligent histories of a South American country available in the English language. The reader who commands Spanish will be interested in Torrente's _Revolucion Sud Americana_, Mackenna's _Historiade la Independencia_, Paz Soldan's _Narracion Historica_, Mitre's _San Martin_, and Bulnes's _Expedicion Libertadora_.

For Chile excellent books in both Spanish and English abound, among which are worth special mention, Barros Arana's _Historia General_, Mitre's _San Martin_, Banados's _Balmaceda_, Hanc.o.c.k's _History of Chile_, and Hervey's _Dark Days in Chile_.

Few authorities exist for Bolivia. Valdes's _Estudio Historico_ is admirable for the period which it attempts to cover. Sanjines's _Historia_, Mitre's _San Martin_ and _Belgrano_, Torrente's _Revolucion_, and D'Ursel's _Sejours et Voyages_, as well as Fernandez's recent _Campana del Acre_ have been found valuable.

Wolf's _Geografia del Ecuador_ is more than a geography, and no one interested in that country can afford not to study this work carefully.

Suarez's _Historia General_, and Cevallos's _Compendio_ give a good account of military and political affairs but do not bring them down to recent years.

For Venezuela Tejera's _Manual de Historia_ has been of much use, as also Scruggs's _Colombian and Venezuelan Republics_, Jenny Tallenay's _Souvenirs_, and in the war of independence Mitre's great work on the life of _San Martin_.

Perez's wonderfully condensed book, _Geografia Politica_, has been the main reliance for Colombia, but Mitre's _San Martin_, Torrente's _Revolucion_, Holton's _New Granada_, and Scruggs's _Republics_, have supplied much information on points not covered by Senor Perez's work.

Intelligible details about comparatively recent times are proverbially the hardest to obtain, and the author feels that whatever of accuracy these pages may boast is due princ.i.p.ally to his friends among present South American diplomats--men who understand South American history because they have been a part of it. Salvador de Mendonca, Joaquin G.o.doy, Oliviera Lima, Claudio Pinilla, Estanislao Zeballos, Manoel Gorostiaga, and Carlos Tobar have kindly tried to help him thread his way through the tangled mazes of Latin-American politics, and his princ.i.p.al reluctance at giving these pages to the public now is that he has not had the good fortune as yet to know and converse with men of like ability from Colombia and Venezuela.

T. C. D.

PETROPOLIS, BRAZIL, March 29, 1904.

PERU

CHAPTER I

THE INCA EMPIRE

For many centuries before the Spanish conquest and before the rise of the Incas a succession of great empires existed in Peru. Ruined edifices of unknown date prove that at some remote period advanced civilisations and powerful nations were developed in the coast valleys and on the Andean plateau. In tombs which vastly antedate even these megalithic palaces and fortresses, cotton twine, woven cloth, and cobs of maize have been found. The domestication and breeding to perfection of the llama as a beast of burden, and the alpaca as a fleece-bearer, the development of potatoes, maize, and the quinoa grain, must have consumed untold cycles of time. There is no doubt of the remote antiquity of the civilisation of the Indians who inhabit the Andean plateau south of the equator, nor that their culture was wholly self-developed, owing nothing to outside influences.

About the year 1000 the Incas were merely one of several tribes living on the high, beautiful, and fertile plateau of Cuzco, which lies on the eastern edge of the gigantic uplift of the Andes. Down the precipitous gorges into the steaming and impenetrable forests of the Amazon plain the civilised Indians never cared to go. The maize, quinoa, and potatoes upon which they depended for food could not flourish in the intense heat and heavy rainfall of those regions. Neither themselves nor their llamas and alpacas could thrive in the montana or forested plain. Their natural habitat was the rough plateau, broken by numerous valleys, which lies between the Eastern and the Central Cordilleras, and extends from the Vilcanota "nudo," shutting it off from the t.i.ticaca basin, to the transverse range of the "Cerro de Pasco," in the North. The ocean lies two hundred and fifty miles south-west, beyond the Central and Maritime Cordilleras and the bleak plateau which lies between them.

This great central section, on whose eastern edge near its southern border we first find the Incas, is the heart of Peru. Although the climate of a few of its gorges is almost tropical, the valleys have the temperature of Italy or Spain; higher up the crops of northern Europe flourish; then are pasture lands, and above all bleak wilds and peaks covered with perpetual snow. At the dawn of authentic Peruvian history this favored region was thickly inhabited by many independent tribes; probably all speaking dialects of the same language, and certainly very similar in their industrial life and social customs.

Tradition recounts that the Incas had migrated to Cuzco from unknown ancestral seats--by some conjectured to have been the sh.o.r.es of the prehistoric fresh-water sea of the Amazon plain--under the leaders.h.i.+p of Manco Capac, the first of an unbroken line of sovereigns who claimed descent from the Sun-G.o.d and ruled the Incas until the Spanish conquest.

The Incas developed a religion whose elaborate and rigid ritual, which regulated every act of their lives, finds its best parallel among the Hebrews. Each family had its household G.o.d; each sept wors.h.i.+pped an imaginary ancestor; the whole nation adored the sun as the progenitor of the reigning family, and the monarch's person was revered as divine. So profound was the religious feeling of this people that they finally rose to the conception of a supreme deity--a creator of the universe. His temple filled one side of the great square at Cuzco.

Even more remarkable than their religious system was the social and industrial organisation of the Incas. Private property in land did not exist. It belonged to the septs and was from time to time allotted to the heads of families. Every person was obliged to work, all males being divided into cla.s.ses according to age and strength, and suitable labour a.s.signed to each. The produce, whether crops or livestock, was divided between the government, the priesthood, and the communes. Scarcity in one section was made up from the plenty in others; public officers annually revised the allotments, and turns at the irrigation works were taken in accordance with fixed rules. Not a spot of cultivable land was left unused. Habitations were built on rocky hills; deserts or the sides of barren cliffs were used for cemeteries; whole mountain sides were terraced up thousands of feet, and land was literally created by years of patient labour employed in bringing earth in baskets and laying it on the bare rocks. By no people has irrigation been more extensively and successfully applied, and in spite of their ignorance of iron and steam, of labour-saving appliances and instruments of precision, the Incas constructed a system which in real effectiveness has never been surpa.s.sed. Many of their ca.n.a.ls, reservoirs, and terraces were allowed to crumble by the Spanish conquerors, but modern Peru still lives upon the half-ruined fragments of the mighty works of the Incas.

Secured from want by this intelligent socialism, their lives and rights safe under laws administered with inflexible severity, bound closely by family and governmental ties, trained from childhood in industry and obedience, the Incas seemed destined to dominate and absorb the more loosely organised tribes with whom they came in contact, provided that they did not become inert, stationary, and unwarlike, and cease to produce individuals possessing initiative. The dynamic elements indispensable to expansion were furnished by the ruling clan and by fanaticism. The offspring of Manco Capac partook of his divinity and each emperor left numerous sons, whose descendants const.i.tuted a privileged cla.s.s. In the process of time there gathered around the emperor thousands of men of his own kindred, devoted from their birth to warfare and statecraft.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT PERUVIAN MONUMENT.]

Under the fourth emperor the Incas were successful in a life and death struggle against a tribe with whom they had hitherto shared the valley that surrounds Cuzco. Under the two succeeding emperors they extended their dominions south to the transverse range of mountains which separates the Peruvian from the t.i.ticacan plateau. Yahuar Huaccac, the seventh sovereign, conquered the tribes on the eastern slopes, and by the beginning of the fourteenth century the Inca domain included the southern third of the great valley of Peru--an area of fifteen thousand square miles, containing probably two millions of people. Uira Cocha, the eighth emperor, began that wonderful series of conquests which within a century and a half extended over half of South America. On the other side of the Vilcanota "nudo" lay the vast basin which takes its name from Lake t.i.ticaca. Too high and too cold for cereals, the plateau was inhabited by tribes of shepherds, who made no prolonged resistance when attacked by the armies of the Inca. Their rapid and complete incorporation into the Inca system followed. Colonies swarmed from the over-populated provinces of old Peru into the newly acquired territories. The t.i.ticacan copper mines furnished the material for weapons and tools, and a great commerce in exchanging the wool, potatoes, and livestock of the higher regions for the maize and cotton of the lower added to the prosperity of the whole empire. This conquest doubled the extent of the Inca domain and opened up a vast field for colonising expansion within their own territory. Once achieved, the nation turned its attention to the conquest of the North. Beyond the gorge of the Apurimac--the Inca boundary in that direction--lay the rival nation of the Chancas, a vigorous and expanding people who were at the head of a great confederation of tribes which covered the northern two-thirds of the central plateau of Peru, and probably also included the Quichua-speaking tribes of the coast.

The Chancas defeated Urco, Uira Cocha's oldest son and successor, and their army advanced toward Cuzco, subjugating the northern allies of the Incas. The victors came within sight of the capital, where meanwhile the energetic Yupanqui, Urco's younger brother, had gathered the whole force of the empire. The battle which decided the fate of Peru was fought on the heights above Cuzco; the Chancas were defeated, and fell back only to be pursued and overwhelmed by Yupanqui. He returned in triumph and was installed as emperor in place of his incompetent brother, a.s.suming the t.i.tle of Pachacutec, or "Reformer of the World." The Incas pressed their advantage relentlessly; all the tribes of the Chanca confederacy were subjugated; and Pachacutec's generals even extended their conquests north of Cerro de Pasco. The Incas had now conquered a practicable route to the Pacific, and the coast tribes about Lima soon also fell under their control. Pachacutec built a great military road from Cuzco north along the fertile plateau, through the smiling valley of Jauja, and down the short descent to the neighbourhood of Lima. Colonies were established at strategic points, and the new territory became so rapidly welded to the Inca system that, when the Spaniards arrived a hundred and fifty years later, they found the whole of central and southern Peru occupied by a h.o.m.ogeneous people, perfectly loyal to the Inca dynasty.

Pachacutec's successor, Tupac Yupanqui, proved even more successful than his father. The five hundred miles of rainless coast from Lima to the Ecuador border was inhabited by a mysterious race, in civilisation and origin entirely distinct from the Quichua-speaking mountain tribes to which the Incas belonged. Short rivers, rus.h.i.+ng down from the Andes, each irrigated a portion of the desert, which only requires water to become extremely fertile. The irrigation works of this people were on a gigantic scale, one of their reservoirs having its lower end guarded by a dam eighty feet thick at the base. The valleys were cultivated to the highest degree of perfection, and filled with a swarming and industrious population housed in cities whose ruins still survive to attest the skill of their builders. Enervated by centuries of peace, the inhabitants had long confined their warlike operations to building defensive fortresses. Nevertheless, when Tupac advanced up the coast he met a desperate and prolonged resistance, until one after another the fortresses fell. The capital of the confederacy was laid in ruins and great numbers of the people were transported to distant provinces.

Garrisons and Inca colonies were established and a military road was constructed along the coast. However, the country was really held only by force, and even in Spanish times Quichua had not displaced the Mochica tongue in half the northern coast valleys.

Tupac next turned his attention to enlarging the southern limits of his empire. From t.i.ticaca his armies advanced over hundreds of miles of bleak plateaux and barren deserts and down the steep Andean slopes into the fertile valleys of central Chile. His conquests extended as far south as the river Maule,--three hundred miles beyond Santiago,--but the tribes retained their autonomy and became rather allies than subjects.

On the eastern side of the Andes he obtained the allegiance of the peoples living in the mountain valleys of north-western Argentine, and he completed the incorporation of the vast and fertile plateau which extends from the t.i.ticacan basin to the present Argentine border.

Returning to the northern frontier, he reduced the peoples who lived in the confused tangle of mountains and gorges which lies between the two Cordilleras north of Cerro de Pasco, thus extending his boundaries nearly to the present Ecuador line. The rest of northern Peru and all of southern Ecuador belonged to tribes who were loosely attached members of the confederacy headed by the Caras of Quito. They opposed only a short resistance to the arms and diplomacy of Tupac, and he made their territory the base for the great war which he proposed to undertake against the ancient kingdom of Quito. About the year 1455 he advanced with a great army, largely recruited from the tribes recently wrested from the Quito monarch, and defeated the Caras in a great battle. The whole plateau as far north as Riobamba submitted, reducing the s.h.i.+ri's domain to the neighbourhood of Quito itself and a small region north of that city. However, all of Tupac's efforts to force the last barrier which interposed between him and the Cara capital failed, and he was compelled to content himself with extending his conquests on the coast as far as the Gulf of Guayaquil. In 1460 he returned to Cuzco, where three years later he was enraged to hear that the s.h.i.+ri was making a desperate and partly successful effort to recover the lost provinces.

Tupac's preparations for a final campaign to wipe the Quito kingdom out of existence were interrupted by his own death.

Huaina Capac succeeded to the throne and continued his father's preparations. Bad news, however, from the far southern provinces compelled him first to undertake a campaign into Chile, in which he was victorious. He then proceeded north and devoted the rest of his life to conquering and incorporating the Cara empire. He first constructed a military road from the northern Peruvian coast to the plateau in southern Ecuador; then he exterminated or reduced to obedience the tribes on the Gulf of Guayaquil, and the coast beyond, nearly as far as the equator. Returning south, he defeated the wild savages of the regions where the Amazon leaves the mountains. Having thus secured himself against an interruption of his line of communications, he advanced against Quito in overwhelming force. The Caras and their allies among the brave tribes of northern Ecuador made a desperate resistance, but were overthrown in battle after battle, and Huaina Capac entered Quito in triumph. All the tribes of the confederacy submitted except the Caranquis, a warlike people who lived north of Quito. These achieved some minor successes, but were finally overwhelmed and exterminated.

The Inca empire, now at its greatest extent, included all the inhabitable portions of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, three-fourths of Chile, and a large part of the Argentine, stretching two thousand two hundred miles north and south, and from the Pacific to the eastern foot of the Andes. Except for the plateaux of Colombia practically the whole Andean region had been united under one government. The rest of South America was occupied by savage peoples, divided into small bands, who picked up a precarious existence along the streams; and the Inca empire was safe from any serious attack on its continental boundaries. But the later conquests of Tupac and Huaina Capac had incorporated peoples in civilisation and warlikeness hardly inferior to the Incas themselves.

Indeed, in the light of subsequent events, it is clear that the later campaigns weakened the real military power and h.o.m.ogeneity of the empire. While the older parts, southern Peru and Bolivia--the heart of the Inca domain--formed a h.o.m.ogeneous and thoroughly loyal centre whose inhabitants all spoke the same language and where socialism and the wors.h.i.+p of the sun according to the Inca rites prevailed, from the lat.i.tude of Lima north the country had been too recently subdued to be counted upon. The northern coast still required to be kept down by permanent garrisons; the mountain tribes of northern Peru retained a certain measure of autonomy; and the vast territories where the s.h.i.+ri of Quito had held sway for so many centuries were very loosely attached.

Tupac, the first conqueror, found it advisable to remain there almost continuously during the last half of his reign, and Huaina Capac, his heir, was born in Ecuador, and devoted his whole life to that region. He married the daughter and heiress of the defeated s.h.i.+ri, and was regarded rather as the legitimate successor of the ancient dynasty than as an alien conqueror.

In 1525 Huaina Capac died at Quito, leaving a will by which he bequeathed the northern kingdom to Atahuallpa, a son born to him by the s.h.i.+ri's daughter. Peru, with the southern provinces, fell to Huascar, his son by a princess of Inca blood. As the eldest and the legitimate heir according to the rules of succession which governed in the Inca dynasty, the latter was to be paramount, thus retaining a semblance of unity. Huascar and the Inca n.o.bles who surrounded him at the old Peruvian capital were unwilling to acquiesce in this virtual division of the empire. The chief of the Canaris, a tribe always hostile to Quito, sent a messenger to Cuzco offering to swear allegiance to Huascar. As soon as Atahuallpa heard of this derogation of his authority he ordered an army to march and unseat the recalcitrant prince, and despatched an amba.s.sador to his brother with a conciliatory message, at the same time unequivocally a.s.serting his claim to the lords.h.i.+p of all the ancient domain of the s.h.i.+ris. Huascar insisted that southern Ecuador, a region which had been wrested from the Caras by their grandfather, and whose tribes had only been allies of Quito, should not be included. His bitter feeling against his brother was increased by reports that Atahuallpa had a.s.sumed Incarial insignia which only a legitimate emperor was ent.i.tled to use. He returned a harsh answer, demanding immediate and unconditional obedience. Seeing nothing was to be hoped for from Huascar, Atahuallpa began gathering the forces of the Quito kingdom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF THE JESUITS IN CUZCO, ON THE SITE OF THE PALACE OF HUAYNA CAPAC.]

Huascar was delayed by insurrections which broke out among the tribes of northern Peru, and at first could only send a few troops to the a.s.sistance of the Canaris. The latter managed to hold Atahuallpa's generals in check until Huascar's main army advanced. Atahuallpa retired slowly up the plateau to within fifty miles of his capital, pursued by the Inca army. It seemed certain that he would quickly be defeated, and either slain or brought to his brother's feet to receive a rebel's sentence. But against this invasion, inspired by the ruling oligarchy of Cuzco, the warlike people of northern Ecuador stood n.o.bly by the grandson of the last of their ancient line of monarchs. Though the southerners were victorious in the first encounter, Atahuallpa in person rallied his army and drew it up in an advantageous position at Naxichi.

The Incas attacked confidently, but this time they were hopelessly routed and the chief generals slain with thousands of the common soldiery. The remnant fled in disorder to the territory of the Canaris.

Atahuallpa could not immediately follow up his advantage, and by the time he had organised his forces for an offensive campaign, Huascar had sent another great army to the rescue under the command of his younger brother, Huanca Auqui. When Atahuallpa crossed the transverse barrier of Azuay and descended into the fertile plateau north of Cuenca, a terrific battle ensued which lasted two days. Both sides suffered severely, but the final advantage lay with the Northerners, and Huanca Auqui sullenly retreated, abandoning Ecuador to Atahuallpa. A fearful vengeance was taken on the Canaris, while the other tribes joined the victor.

Next year Atahuallpa sent a great force under the command of Quizquiz, the ablest Indian general of the time, into northern Peru. Huanca Auqui was again defeated, and abandoned the disputed territory, while Atahuallpa's troops poured into the northern coast provinces. Having met with no serious resistance there, they ascended the Cordillera to the neighbourhood of Cajamarca, where they met the reinforced Inca army.

Again they were victorious and Huascar's forces retreated south of the Cerro de Pasco, followed by Quizquiz, whose army grew like a rolling s...o...b..ll by enlistments among the warlike and half-independent tribes of northern Peru.

Huascar's resources were, however, by no means exhausted by the crus.h.i.+ng defeats he had suffered during the last four years. The great plateaux of Peru and Bolivia, the most populous and richest portion of the empire, remained faithful; the ruling cla.s.ses regarded Atahuallpa's revolt not only as an impious rebellion against the legitimate emperor, but as a menace to their own continued supremacy in the state. Tens of thousands poured up from the southern provinces to reinforce the army which lay in the valleys south of the Cerro de Pasco in daily expectation of attack. But Tupac's and Huaina Capac's conquests had created a Frankenstein monster. When the ruder nations of the North were first attacked by the Inca armies they did not know how to organise and were easily reduced in detail. Three-quarters of a century of Inca rule had taught them what they lacked without destroying the spirit of individual initiative nourished by local autonomy. The older parts of the empire had been frozen by rigid socialism and ritual, and the people's energies sapped by long centuries of tutelage. The northern tribes who followed Atahuallpa's banner were superior in military prowess to the Incas who fought for Huascar, uniformly beating the latter with numbers constantly inferior. The balance of power had pa.s.sed from Cuzco and the centre to Quito and the north.

Quizquiz's forces finally crossed the Cerro de Pasco and poured down into the beautiful and populous valley of Jauja. Again they were victorious, and the Incas fled along the road leading toward Cuzco.

Huascar and his partisans determined to make their last stand at the capital itself. Reinforcements were hurried up not only from Bolivia, but from Chile, and the Argentine, and an army which is said to have numbered seventy thousand, the largest ever seen in South America, a.s.sembled at Cuzco. Meanwhile Quizquiz was relentlessly advancing along the plateau, and his main body reached the neighbourhood of the city intact. After some manoeuvres for position in which the able and experienced northern generals obtained a decisive advantage, Huascar's camp was surprised at early dawn. His soldiers could not form and a frightful carnage ensued, in the midst of which he himself was made prisoner. As soon as the capture became known his followers fled in all directions. Quizquiz advanced his camp to the heights overlooking the capital; all idea of further resistance was abandoned; the city submitted, and the princ.i.p.al partisans of Huascar perished in a cruel ma.s.sacre.