THE CAUDILLOS AND THE DEMOCRACY

The history of the South American Republics may be reduced to the biographies of their representative men. The national spirit is concentred in the caudillos: absolute chieftains, beneficent tyrants. They rule by virtue of personal valour and repute, and an aggressive audacity. They resemble the democracies by which they are deified. Without studying the biographies of Paez, Castilla, Santa-Cruz, and Lavalleja, it is impossible to understand the evolution of Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

CHAPTER I
VENEZUELA: PAEZ, GUZMAN-BLANCO

The moral authority of Paez—The Monagas—The tyranny of Guzman-Blanco—Material progress.

Two central figures, Paez and Guzman-Blanco, dominate the history of Venezuela. The first founded a republic in spite of the Unitarian aims of Bolivar; the second established a long autocracy over the factions and the quarrels of half a century.

Paez was an individualist, a nomadic leader, an impassioned champion of the district, of the native country, as against any vast political concentration. As the Argentine pampa gave birth to Quiroga, and the Arabian desert engendered the mystic adventure of the Khalifs, so the llanos of Venezuela created Paez.

Among the haughty llaneros of Apure he grew to be a horseman, a lover of the infinite plains, the leader of a nameless troop, the hero of a host of adventures, romantic or brutal. He was born in 1790. He was a half-breed, representing the indigenous forces in conflict with the Spanish oligarchy and the Creole aristocracy. A democrat of the school of Castilla and Rosas, robust and audacious, with the perspicacity of the Indian and the pride of a tribal chieftain, he cared only to lead armies. He detested "literary people," "judges," and ideologues. A lieutenant of the Liberator's, he was with him in a hundred battles, but he loathed all discipline, and his incipient insubordination in 18 18 diminished the success of Bolivar. His pride revolted against all tutelage, even when this was just. At times he wished Bolivar to be an absolute chieftain, an invulnerable monarch; at other times he rebelled against him. In 1819 he led the patriots of the llanos to victory; he obtained power and honours but was always notably insubordinate. In 1821 he opposed the order of enrolment issued by Santander, the Vice-President of Colombia. The municipality of Caracas shared his desire for autonomy, and Venezuela followed the leader who represented the national instincts. Bolivar intervened to enforce the unity of Colombia and gave way to Paez. In 1826 the latter counselled the Liberator to assume the crown.

The fusion of the peoples, unity as against discord, was the Bolivian ideal. At this time the spirit of nationality was working obscurely, and spontaneous republics were springing up. The race, exhausted by its long tutelage, uneasily sought subdivision, thinking thereby to gain autonomy; Paez, profoundly American, followed the stream and exiled Bolivar. He broke up the Colombian unity, as Santander in New Granada and Flores in Ecuador, and liberated his country in 1830. The nomad guerrillero had then to organise the country, to give it stability and continuity; his supple nature adapted itself to his new duties. By instinct (writes an eminent historian, Gil Fortoul) he inclined to play the part of certain constitutional kings, leaving the government to his ministers. Without denying his democratic past, he frequented the society of the literate and the oligarchs. His presidency (1831-1835) resulted in domestic peace, strict order in matters financial, political conciliation, and economic progress.

Dr. Vargas, an enemy of militarism, succeeded him, but the brothers JosÉ Tadeo and JosÉ Gregorio Monagas, who had risen against Paez in 1831, renewed their attempt in 1835. The weak, irresolute President appointed Paez commander-in-chief of the army, while the revolutionists of Caracas proclaimed him supreme ruler. His immense moral force loomed paternally above the squabbles of the parties; he became the arbiter of Venezuelan quarrels.

He upheld the constitution and the presidency of Vargas, but the latter could not retain supreme power and abandon the reins of government to the hands of the vice-president. The chieftain of the plains was elected for a second presidential period in 1838. Militarism declined under his rule, foreign credit increased, the payment of the debt was assured, and orderly progress was effected. In 1843 his loyal friend, General Carlos Soublette, a republican of the antique mould, austere and liberal, was his successor. Once more the omnipotence of Paez was triumphant.

The political tranquillity of these two periods masked a social transformation. Venezuela was not a democratic republic; it was, like Chili, ruled by an oligarchy. The Constitution of 1830 conferred the enjoyment of political rights only upon the land-owners, property-owners, and government employÉs; as in the southern nation the territorial overlords ruled, and slavery persisted. The "doctors" belonged to the dominant group. The oligarchs were conservatives; they defended property, order, and wealth against militarism and demagogy. They recognised no State religion, nor did they practise intolerance.

In 1840 a liberal reaction set in against the dictatorship of Paez and the conservative clan; democratic institutions and "new men" were called for. It was a struggle of classes and races. The obscure mass—pardos (mulattos), mestizos, proletariats—subjected to slavery or servitude, oppressed by the privileged, hybrid and anarchical—attacked the established ruling caste. Thus political unrest was complicated by social conflict. Antonio Leocadio Guzman, a brilliant demagogue, comprehending the liberal ambitions of the crowd, founded a popular party upon the hatred of hierarchies and traditions. A tribune and journalist, he violently attacked Paez, Soublette, and their ministers; he offered the people the abolition of slavery and the repartition of the soil, with the violence of all the creators of democracies, from Tiberius Gracchus to Lloyd George. He was presidential candidate in 1846; Paez supported General Tadeo Monagas, a gloomy personage who represented the oligarchy. The supporters of Guzman rebelled against the influence of Soublette and the tutelage of the great llanero, and a social revolution commenced under the mask of a political quarrel. The Liberals wished to overthrow the "Gothic oligarchy." Guzman was made prisoner. He was judged as were the tribunes of antiquity who terrified the patrician class by the tumult of a hungry democracy. Condemned to death as a conspirator and anarchist, he saw his punishment commuted to banishment.

GENERAL JOSÉ TADEO MONAGAS. President of Venezuela (1846-1850 and 1855-1859).
GENERAL JOSÉ TADEO MONAGAS.
President of Venezuela (1846-1850 and 1855-1859).

The conservatives had won; the evolution of democracy was checked, thanks to the advent of certain crude demagogues. As in Chili, a moderate liberalism was germinating in the heart of the conservative group itself. Until 1861 the oligarchical constitution of 1830 was maintained, as in Chili the analogous constitution of 1833 persisted, in all its rigidity, until 1891. The liberals could hardly be distinguished from the conservatives; the democratic Guzman himself accepted slavery. There was not, therefore, any violent war of castes, but rather a slow infiltration of liberal principles in the substance of the aristocratic class. The man of this period of transition was President Monagas. He governed with liberals and conservatives, and founded a personal system. The Congress wished to impeach him, but the people defended him against the Congress. The independent Assembly was dissolved, amidst bloodshed and the bodies of the slain, on the tragic 24th of January, 1848, and the Executive was triumphant. The rule of oligarchies was followed by personalism or autocracy. Monagas struggled against Paez; these two predominant influences could not co-exist. The old caudillo took the head of a revolution; he was defeated, and, like Guzman, exiled. Curious analogy between the fate of the chieftain of the oligarchy and that of the leader of the democrats!

JosÉ Tadeo Monagas was replaced by his brother JosÉ Gregorio. The pair formed a strange species of dynasty in which inheritance was collateral. Guzman having again lost the presidency, his supporters and those of Paez rebelled against the government in 1853 and 1854; but the government was victorious, and in 1854 liberated the slaves. Better than the apostrophes of the popular tribune this radical measure prepared the way for the advent of the democrats. After JosÉ Gregorio Monagas his brother JosÉ Tadeo became President in 1855. A new Constitution of 1857, centralistic in tendency, permitted the re-election of presidents, and Monagas remained in power. General Castro defeated him at the head of a coalition of all parties. The old political groups were reorganised; the struggles between federalists and centralists recommenced; and the decline of the oligarchies saw the advance of democracy. The Convention of Valencia (1858) promulgated a liberal constitution, which established the autonomy of the provinces under governors and congresses of their own; the electoral capacity, restricted by the old statute, was enlarged; the jury system was established; and the Executive was weakened, with an eye to the personalism of Monagas. A civil war in which federals, liberals, centralists, conservatives, constitutionalists, and ideologists were mingled in motley assemblies disturbed the country. The battles lacked the simplicity of the old directorates, the rigidity of the old hierarchies. The democracy lamentably increased; the liberal factions were seized with an equalitarian frenzy. Their leaders—Falcon, Zamora—were demagogues on horseback. At the spectacle of this barbarism Paez, returning in 1861 from the United States, restored reaction and autocracy. On September 10th he proclaimed himself supreme chief in the face of the federal power; an octogenarian, he gathered all the powers of the State into his trembling hand; a melancholy symbol of the oligarchy, exhausted in its struggle against the invading democracy. In vain did he issue tyrannical decrees; he could not prevent the triumph of federation. At Coche, Guzman-Blanco, general of the federal forces, negotiated with Rojas, the omnipotent secretary of Paez, an agreement which put an end to the tottering dictatorship. The action of the founder of Venezuela, "the man of the plains," representing the conservative aristocracy, was over. He died in 1873, when his work of a half-century was about to be continued, under another form, by the great caudillo Antonio Guzman-Blanco.

He was the son of Antonio Leocadio Guzman, leader of the liberal party. He had travelled in the United States, was a diplomatist, and had followed a course of study in the law, and on his return to Venezuela had directed military operations during the revolt against Paez. He had the gifts of the military leader; he skilfully organised attack and retreat in that difficult warfare of many factions amidst the plains; he revealed himself as a heroic leader of men, dashing and persevering. In 1862 he attained the rank of General-in-Chief of the Army. The General Assembly elected him vice-president of the Republic, under the presidency of Falcon, after the agreement of Coche. Guzman-Blanco then contracted a loan of one and a half million pounds in London, where Venezuelan credit was ruined. It was necessary to restore the public finances after the long crisis of the revolution. The operation was onerous, and the liberal leader was criticised. However, the Venezuelan Congress awarded him a prize in the form of an award of money.

In 1865 and 1866, during the absences of President Falcon, he exercised command with admirable political tact, introducing severe financial economies, regularising the debt, and suppressing sinecures and pensions. In the political world, despite the triumph of the federals, he demanded the reinforcement of the central power, as against the anarchy of the autonomous provinces. In fact, a new constitution, extremely liberal, which was promulgated by the Assembly in 1864, had conceded an excessive degree of independence upon the provinces.

A revolution overthrew the federal President, and the conservative malcontents restored JosÉ Tadeo Monagas. Anarchy continued, and Guzman-Blanco intervened to repress partial revolts, to counsel political tolerance, and to negotiate abroad the unification of the public debt; he had inherited the moral power from Paez. Monagas wished to draw him into his party, and offered him the succession of the presidency. The struggle increased in intensity; the "Blues" of Monagas, as in Byzantium, defied the "Yellows" of Guzman-Blanco. The civil war lasted five years. The country seeking stability, even if it involved autocracy, JosÉ Ruperto Monagas succeeded to his father and the monarchical policy was again attempted. The chief of the federals was the enemy of the President, who exiled him, after a nocturnal attack upon his house, on the 14th of August, 1869.

Guzman arrived in CuraÇoa, and in September openly commenced to work for revolution. Monagas was anxious to compromise, and willing to agree to one of those conventions so frequent in Venezuelan history; but the caudillo imposed hard conditions. His father, the demagogue and tribune, accompanied him as journalist. After indecisive battles the Revolution triumphed in Caracas (April, 1870), and Guzman-Blanco assumed the dictatorship. The autocratic rÉgime accepted neither conciliation with the vanquished nor legal artifices; the figure of the Imperator looms above the passive crowd, a defence against federal disorganisation, economic waste, and incessant anarchy. The liberal leader attacked his adversaries energetically, directed battles, performing prodigies of strategy at Valencia and Apure. The "blues" recoiled, successively losing Valencia, Trujillo, and Maracaibo. General Matias Salazar, the seditious liberal chief, a friend of the dictator, was shot. Like Porfirio Diaz, the Venezuelan autocrat checkmated anarchy by decapitating its generals. Exile, battles, and confiscation of goods prepared the way for lasting peace. Two years the civil war lasted, and in 1872 Guzman-Blanco, a beneficent despot, commenced the material transformation of the country. He knew men, he had the gift of command; his decision was irresistible, his character of steel. He reduced import duties, and abolished export duties, founded a banking company which issued bonds guaranteed by the Government, and amortised the public debt. While introducing strict economies he attacked his political enemies with forced loans and special contributions. In the political arena he unhesitatingly repressed the revolts of the Blues and would grant them no amnesty; he exiled the archbishop because he refused to celebrate the triumph of the liberal Revolution by a Te Deum. The dictator was nationalist as against foreign pressure and threats; he aspired to the reconstitution of Venezuela, in matters domestic and foreign, despite the anarchy of the factions and the manoeuvres of European stockjobbers. Diplomatic conflicts arose with the United States, Holland, England, and the Papacy.

Guzman-Blanco favoured education; he wished to see "a school in every street." He reformed the civil and penal codes, and established marriage and civil registers. In 1873 he renounced the dictatorship before Congress, but the latter elected him President, and accorded him supreme honours. Statues and streets and medals bore his name; he was given the pompous titles of "Illustrious American" and "Regenerator of Venezuela"; nothing could be refused him by the servile and extravagant deputies. His statue, erected in Caracas in 1875, near that of Bolivar, glorified the Regenerator equally with the Liberator. The popular dictator satisfied the ambitions of all; he brought the peace desired by the oligarchs, he was the idol of the crowds, and he attacked the Church like the liberals and free-masons.

From 1870 to 1877 the Government fostered material development by means of the construction of railways and highways, public buildings in the large towns, and the transformation and embellishment of Caracas. It was said that the Dictator wished to imitate Napoleon III. by opening up promenades and avenues. Credit prospered, the service of the debt was assured, the public revenues increased, orderly and economical budgets were established, and statistics organised. The President reinforced and disciplined the army, and intervened in the politics of the states, in defiance of federalism. He endeavoured to found a Venezuelan Church, with a liberal archbishop and clergy elected by the faithful; he suppressed religious congregations and converted their goods into national property. His autocracy did not respect the powers of the outer world; he stimulated industries by a strict protectionism. An admirer of French art, he established museums in Venezuela.

In 1877 General Alcantara succeeded him. Guzman-Blanco stated in his message, reviewing his seven years' work, that he left behind him peace, administrative and political organisation, external credit, liberty of the vote, and "the triumph of the dignity and the rights of the Nation." He was acclaimed to the verge of apotheosis. He left for Europe, and in his absence the statues of the dictator were overthrown and his decrees annulled by those who had conferred such honours upon him. Democracy, unstable and feminine, burned what she had adored. Guzman-Blanco returned to Venezuela in 1878, devoured with dictatorial ambitions. He had sought in Paris to found a company which, like the East Indian and African companies of England, should transform his country. He longed for the power he had abandoned to an ungrateful mob. Upon his arrival a favouring revolution welcomed him, the state of Carabobo proclaimed him Dictator, and ten other states followed suit. The revolutionaries triumphed, and those who had overthrown his statues and reversed his statutes now praised him to the skies. Guzman-Blanco proposed to reform the Constitution; the Swiss federation was his political model. He reduced the number of states in Venezuela, and despoiled the Executive of many attributes, which he confided to a Federal Council. The Province approved the "Swiss" Constitution of 1882.

The "Illustrious American" then returned to France to realise a financial plan which was to transform his country, and to conclude a contract with the great Jew bankers. He formed a privileged company which was to exploit the country, obtain concessions of land, and organise what financiers call the mise en valeur of new territories. The Constitution promulgated, Guzman-Blanco was elected President of the General Council. In 1882 he expounded to Congress the benefits of his autocracy: material development, budgetary surpluses, extended cultivation, and political stability.

Until 1886 Guzman-Blanco was President of the Venezuelan democracy, or its minister in European capitals. His power was absolute; he imposed new leaders, left the country, returned; he was the Protector of the Republic. From the enchanted banks of the Seine he directed the febrile development of Venezuela. Like Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and Rosas in the Argentine he conquered all other leaders, imposed peace, organised and unified, and ruled by terror or by sentiment. A caudillo without definite political ideas, he loved power and his native country. State, Church, parties, and national riches, all were his; they were the domains of this feudal baron. His enemies accused him of enriching himself at the expense of the national property, but his work in the material world was fruitful; he built roads, erected buildings, and stimulated the development of the national fortune. In matters of policy he affirmed the inviolability of the country against foreign aggression; he was a democrat as against the conservatives. He loved pomp and triumph, sumptuous external shows, sonorous phrases, and the servile adoration of the crowd.

He had an enormous faith in his own work. In 1883 he stated that Venezuela, under his authority, "had undertaken an infinite voyage towards an infinite future." His dictatorship appeared to him as necessary, providential: "the people insist upon it so that we may be saved from anarchy." He aimed at "the regeneration of the country"; and his was the responsibility for this work; but the greatness also was his. "I have never followed the thought of any but myself," he said. Indeed, we may apply to him the classic phrase descriptive of absolutism: "L'Etat c'est moi."[1]

[1] En defensa del Septenio, Paris, 1878, p. 29.

CHAPTER II
PERU: GENERAL CASTILLA—MANUEL PARDO—PIEROLA

The political work of General Castilla—Domestic peace—The deposits of guano and saltpetre—Manuel Pardo, founder of the anti-military party—The last caudillo, Pierola: his reforms.

The gestation of the Republic of Peru was a lengthy process. The vice-kingdom defended itself against Colombian, Peruvian, and Argentine troops: against the armies of Bolivar and San Martin. Here the penates of Spain were preserved: the treasure, the vigilant aristocracy, the warlike armies. It was not until 1824, when America was already independent, that the victory of Ayacucho liberated Peru from the Spanish rule.

Bolivar wished to give Peru the same constitution as Bolivia; to force the institution of the irremovable President on the anarchy of these republics; but the municipality of Lima refused the project. The Peruvians exalted the Liberator; "hero" and "demi-god" the poets called him; his praise was sung in the churches; the Congress granted him riches and honours. His generals were struggling for the supreme command. The Colombian hero returned to his own country, and at once President followed President and revolution revolution. The history of the first twenty years of the Republic, as in Mexico and the Argentine, records only the clash of the forces of society organised and disciplined by the colonial rÉgime. Generals and "doctors," autocracy and anarchy, the oligarchy of the vice-kingdom and the advancing democracy, all were at war among themselves. Byzantine factions struggled to attain the supreme power in the assemblies and the barracks. Aristocratic Presidents—Riva Aguero, Orbegoso, Vivanco, and military Presidents—La Mar, La Fuente, Gamarra, followed one another with bewildering rapidity. In the south Arequipa, the home of a tenacious race, engendered terrible revolts. External wars, such as that with Colombia in 1827 and Bolivia in 1828 and 1835 (to repulse the protectorate of Santa-Cruz), were really due to the quarrels of ambitious generals who were disputing the succession of Bolivar. New nations, whose frontiers as yet were vague, had not yet acquired a national consciousness. Santa-Cruz, President of Bolivia, unified Peru, founding a confederation, from Tumez to Tarija, necessary to the equilibrium of American politics; but he was a foreign President. Amid the host of provincial chiefs a general presently arose who for twenty years was the energetic director of the nation's life—Don Ramon Castilla.

GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ. President of Bolivia (1829-1839).
GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ.
President of Bolivia (1829-1839).

He recalls Paez rather than Rosas. He was no invulnerable tyrant, but a caudillo of great influence. Born in Tarapaca in 1796, he was a mestizo, having in his veins the blood of an Indian grandmother. This origin perhaps explains his endurance and astuteness. His father was Asturian, a member of a warlike race. Castilla passed his youth at Tarapaca, in a region of vast plains and narrow valleys, and the desert made him a nomad, a chief of legionaries. A Spanish soldier in Chili, he was made prisoner at Chacabuco; set at liberty, he travelled through the Argentine and Brazil, and on his return to Peru he offered his services to San Martin; in 1821 he fought beside Sucre at Ayacucho, followed General Gamarra against Bolivia, and retaken prisoner at Ingavi, he finally became general, then marshal. Short, with virile features and a penetrating glance, he was a great leader, strong and tenacious in the field. His bearing was martial; men felt that opposition irritated him, that he was an autocrat by vocation. Without much culture, he was astute enough to seem learned. He intuitively knew the value of men and the manner in which to govern them. His strong point was the gift of command. Experience made him sceptical and ironical; his speech was stern and incisive. His ideas were simple; a conservative in politics, he respected the principle of authority. Like San Martin, to whom he wrote some suggestive letters, he hated anarchy. In the midst of the tumult of revolution he understood the necessity of a strong government. He defeated the dictator Vivanco, in skirmishes and pitched battles, at Carmen-Alto, and became President of Peru in 1845. He granted an amnesty to the vanquished and re-established order. His government marked the commencement, after twenty years of revolutions, of a new period of administrative stability, during which commerce developed and the public revenues increased; new sources of wealth, namely, guano and saltpetre, transformed the economic life of the country. The telegraph united Lima to Callao in 1847; the first Peruvian railroad was inaugurated in 1851. The service of the external debt due to foreign loans commenced, and the internal debt was consolidated. The first presidency of General Castilla resulted in peace and economic progress.

General Echenique succeeded him, and financial scandals, guano concessions, speculations, and a corrupt thirst for wealth engendered discontent. The prophecy of Bolivar was accomplished: gold had corrupted Peru. Castilla hesitated before revolting against a constitutional government. A lover of order, he respected authority in others and in himself. But finally a fresh revolution broke out, and triumphed at La Palma in 1855. In the same year Congress elected Castilla as President.

In the preceding year the general-President had already proclaimed the emancipation of the negro slaves, in order to ensure that the revolution which he now headed should be welcome. Congress declared the personal tribute demanded of the Indians abolished. A new constitution, the basis of that of 1860, which is still in force in Peru, changed the political organism in several essential aspects. It suppressed the Council of State and replaced it by two vice-presidents; it organised the municipalities, and set a term of four years on the duration of the presidency. Vivanco rose against Castilla in 1857, but was defeated. The government of General Castilla terminated peacefully: from 1844 to 1860 he directed the national policies with a hand of iron. None before him had been able to give the life of the nation such continuity. All the moral and economic forces of the country were developed; the exports attained to three millions sterling, which sum was in excess of the imports; railways and telegraph lines crossed the wilderness, and the credit of the country permitted of new and important loans. Peru, conscious of her progressive energy, aspired to extend her domains. Castilla declared war upon Ecuador in 1859, the pretext being a question of frontiers; as victor he granted generous terms of peace. He built ships to oppose the future maritime supremacy of Chili; then, divining the importance of Eastern Peru, he sent out expeditions to explore the great unknown watercourses. Like Garcia-Moreno in Ecuador and Portales in Chili, he established peace, stimulated wealth, promoted education, created a navy, and imposed a new constitution on the country. His action was not only political but social; by freeing the slaves and Indians he prepared the future of democracy. The journals of the period condemned his absolutism. "The formula of the General is 'L'Etat c'est moi,'" wrote Don JosÉ Casimiro-Ulloa in 1862. For fifteen years he was the dictator necessary to an unstable republic.

After him the national life was personified by a civil President, Manuel Pardo, who represented the reaction of lawyers and business men against the militarism of Castilla and his predecessors. He did not govern for two terms, like the autocratic General, nor did his personal influence last ten years; yet his reputation increased after his death, so that his name, like that of Balmaceda in Chili, presides over the fortunes of a party.

Pardo was born in Lima in 1834. He was the son of a poet, Don Felipe Pardo; but he soon abandoned dreams for action; to him material interest seemed superior to all other questions.

He detested "pure politics"; he regarded the Constitution as a "dead letter in national life." His vocation impelled him to protect the financial affairs of the country; he was Minister of Finance from 1866 to 1868, fiscal agent in London, and founded a bank in Lima. His best address deals with the subject of taxation. As President he decreed a monopoly of saltpetre in 1875, an economic measure often criticised as having provoked the disastrous war with Chili.

An economist and champion of order, he continued the work of Castilla, was triumphant over revolution, and organised the country.

In 1862, when he had already been minister and mayor of Lima, a popular election carried him to power. In four years his extraordinary activity reformed all the public services: education, finance, and immigration. He ordered the census to be taken in 1876; he endeavoured to attract foreigners; founded the Faculty of Political Sciences and the University of Lima for the education of diplomatists and administrators, and the School of Arts and Crafts for the improvement of popular education; he opened new primary schools, sent for German and Polish professors, and entrusted the pedagogic direction of the country to them. He promulgated new regulations dealing with education on the classic European lines. He re-established the National Guard, as Portales had done in Chili, and organised departmental juntas with an eye to decentralisation. His action was restless and universal. He preferred a positive policy, devoid of doctrinaire quarrels, dreamed of a practical republic, like Rafael NuÑez in Colombia and Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela, and preferred the faculty of political sciences, which formed administrators, to that of letters, which created literary men and philosophers.

Nevertheless, the country became bankrupt. Loans, the great undertakings of President Balta, and speculations in guano and saltpetre had exhausted it. Pardo could not prevent this financial disaster. He assured the service of the foreign debt and informed the democracy, intoxicated by the economic orgy, that it was ruined. He vainly sought the alliance of the Argentine and Bolivia in order to erect a triple bastion of defence against the ambitions of Chili. His efforts were fruitless, both at home and abroad. He was succeeded by a military President. The alliance of Peru and Bolivia was powerless against the might of Chili, and Pardo himself was assassinated during a supreme reaction of the demagogy which he hoped to rule.

MANUEL PARDO. President of Peru (1872-1876).
MANUEL PARDO.
President of Peru (1872-1876).

Death made his influence lasting, as was the case with Garcia-Moreno and Balmaceda. A strong ruler of men, he had gathered about him enthusiastic and even fanatical partisans. His work of reformation became the evangel of a party, the civil party which he had founded. As early as 1841 the dictator Vivanco had united, in a conservative group, the leading men of the time: Pando, Andres Martinez, Felipe Pardo. Ureta, Pardo's rival in the presidential campaign, united the first elements of a civil party. But it was his rival who concentrated all these forces, making them lasting and harmonious. A scion of ancient families, of the Aliagas and Lavalles, Pardo represented the colonial traditions in a disordered democracy.

Thanks to the discovery of new sources of wealth —saltpetre and guano—and to fiscal monopolies, a powerful plutocracy suddenly arose in Peru, which was soon, by the prestige of its wealth, to overpower the old Peruvian families. Pardo, not opposing the national transformation, joined this plutocracy; and his party, reinforced by the alliance, became the obstinate champion of property, of slow reform, and of order, against the anarchy of the Creoles. It was conservative without rigidity, liberal without violence, like the moderate parties of monarchical governments, or the Progressists of the third French Republic. Originally an aristocratic power, it abandoned its old severity, and became the party of the wealthy classes, taking mulattos and mestizos to its bosom. So, as in other South American democracies, the ancient oligarchy was replaced by a plutocracy which included the sons of immigrants, half-breeds, and bankers.

The influence of Pardo was greater and more lasting than that of Castilla. It responded to many of the needs of Peru; placed between militarism and demagogy, the civil element was the only agent of order and progress. The work of Pardo, interrupted during the war with Chili (1879-84) and the period of anarchy which followed, despite the efforts of a military leader who had fought like a hero in the war against Chili—Colonel Caceres—was by the irony of human affairs continued by the sworn enemy of Pardo: Pierola, the last of the great Peruvian caudillos; restless, romantic, and always ready to seize the reins of power by the violent aid of revolution.

In 1869, at the age of thirty, he was Minister of Finance, following Garcia Calderon, who had resigned his post rather than authorise the waste of fiscal resources. Ten years later Pierola proclaimed himself dictator, and prepared, with unusual energy, to defend Peru against the invasion of Chili. A reformer after the methods of the Jacobins, he thought to transform the nation by heaping decree upon decree and by changing the names of institutions. His noble enthusiasm makes it easy to overlook his errors.

The Peruvian troops defeated, Pierola did not resign power, and divided the country. Ten years later, in the full maturity of his intellectual powers, he was elected President (1895-99); from which period we may date the Peruvian renaissance. Without raising loans he transformed an exhausted country into a stable republic. Like all the great American caudillos, he was an excellent administrator of the fiscal wealth of the country; he established a gold standard as the basis of the new monetary system, promulgated a military code and an electoral law, and by means of a French mission endeavoured to change an army which was the docile servant of ambitious factions into a force capable of preserving domestic peace. His organising talent, his patriotism, and his extraordinary ability, surprised those who had known only the revolutionary leader.

DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA. President of Peru (1895-1899).
DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA.
President of Peru (1895-1899).

He founded a democratic party, as did Pardo a party inimical to militarism. But in spite of the denomination of this party it has lent its aid to the military leaders, and no law in favour of the workers has emanated from the democrats. Pierola, who called himself "the protector of the native race," established a tax upon salt, which was a great hardship to that poverty-stricken race.

DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON. President of Peru (1881-1884).
DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON.
President of Peru (1881-1884).

The leader of the democrats is himself an aristocrat; not only by origin, by the somewhat old-fashioned elegance of his style, and by his patrician tastes; he has always preferred to surround himself with men of the old noble families: the Orbegosos, Gonzalez, Osmas, Ortiz de Zevallos, &c. This contrast between his tastes and tendencies and the party which he founded does not detract from the great popularity which the old ex-president enjoys in Peru; he is popular by reason of qualities which are wholly personal, like those of Manuel Pardo, and his supporters become fanatics. His mannered phrases, his heroism and his audacity, have a religious significance in the eyes of his believers; like Facundo in the epic of Sarmiento, he is the nomadic khalif who brings to a democracy in the throes of anarchy the promise of a divine message.

CHAPTER III
BOLIVIA: SANTA-CRUZ

Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia—The tyrants, Belzu, Molgarejo—The last caudillos: Pando, Montes.

Bolivia sprang, armed and full-grown, as in the classic myth, from the brain of Bolivar. The Liberator gave her a name, a Constitution, and a President. In 1825 he created by decree an autonomous republic in the colonial territory of the district of Charcas, and became its Protector. Sucre, the hero of Ayacucho, succeeded him in 1826. During the wars of Independence this noble friend of Bolivar resigned from power, disillusioned; he was the Patroclus of the American Iliad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV,
URUGUAY: LAVALLEJA—RIVERA—THE NEW CAUDILLOS

The factions: Reds and Whites—The leaders: Artigas, Lavalleja, Rivera—The modern period.

A small southern republic, situated between an Imperialist state, Brazil, and a nation ambitious of hegemony, the Argentine, Uruguay, "the Eastern Province" (Banda Oriental) has struggled for its liberty since the commencement of the nineteenth century. Artigas represented the principle of nationality in the long wars against Buenos-Ayres and the Spanish armies: he was the first caudillo, the forerunner of the Independence. Rivera and Lavalleja inherited his unconquerable patriotism, and proclaimed the independence of their country. In 1822, without the constant aid of armies of liberation, such as those of San Martin and Bolivar, but by the heroic efforts of its own soldiers, the ancient province of the vice-kingdom of La Plata constituted itself a new State, governed by a Unitarian constitution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V
THE ARGENTINE: RIVADAVIA—QUIROGA—ROSAS

Anarchy in 1820—The caudillos: their part in the formation of nationality—A Girondist, Rivadavia—The despotism of Rosas—Its duration and its essential aspects.

The Argentine passed through a crisis, a time of anarchy, like the other American nations. But the struggle between autocracy and revolution assumed epic proportions in the vast arena of the pampa. It was the clash of organic forces. Tradition, geography, and race gave it a rare intensity. The provinces fought against the capital, the coast against the sierra, the gauchos against the men of the seaboard, and the various parties represented national instincts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIVADAVIA. President of Argentina (1826-1827).
RIVADAVIA.
President of Argentina (1826-1827).

This Brazilian victory aroused the indignation of the Argentine Unitarians; they overthrew Dorrego and elected General Lavalle to be Governor. A storm of tragedy broke over the divided city. Dorrego was shot by order of Lavalle, and then began the terrible war of hatred between federals and Unitarians—a Jacobin conflict.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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