Francisco García Calderón

“ Juarez represented the natives, the democracy, as against the colonial oligarchy; like Tupuc-Amaru, he was the redeemer of the Indians; like Las Casas, the protector of the vanquished. Better than Guzman-Blanco and Rosas he realised the ideal of those American republics which were oppressed by memories of colonial days; hatred of all privilege, a dream of absolute liberty, war upon the tutelary Church, and a strict despotism designed to create classes and ideals. ”

“ If the troublous existence of the metropolitan state could be reduced to the simplicity of a formula, that formula would also explain the troublous history of a score of American republics, just as the deep root will reveal the germ of the vicious development of a tropical tree. But nothing would be more impossible than to reduce to an abstract and enforced unity the disturbed evolution of Spain, full as it is of anarchy and bloodshed. The Peninsula, divided into hostile regions, the refuge of inimical races, presents in its past such contradictions as defy synthesis. ”

“ The Emperor aims at equilibrium in equality; he destroys the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the people; in the political conflict he leans to one side or the other alternately. The popular tongue consecrates the equality of the social classes: "In a hundred years a king becomes a thrall; in a hundred and six a thrall becomes a king." "All are equal to the king, except in wealth."
The Spanish commune lasts, because it is the centre of this great democracy. From the beginnings of Peninsular history we see the cities struggling for their independence. ”

“ Japanese art strives to fix passing impressions; the dew, the pale light of the moon, the fleeting tints of twilight, the provisional {331} temples, the small houses of wood, the rice-paper shoji, on which the very shadows of those within are vague and momentary. There is nothing persevering in Japanese life; the inhabitant is a nomad and nature is variable. Impassive Buddhas, seated on their blue lotus flowers, contemplate the irresistible current of appearances. Mobility, and a religious sense of becoming: these would be elements of dissolution in a divided America. ”

“ After this war nothing could be more monotonous than Paraguayan life; military presidents and civil presidents have succeeded one another with intervals of anarchy. The spirit of dictatorship is not dead. The intellectuals—Dominguez, Gondra, Baez—deny Lopez and Francia; but new tyrants reign over the midland Republic.
The principle of authority, exacerbated and tenacious, has created modern Paraguay. This nation confirms a law of American history. Dictatorship is the proper government to create internal order, to develop wealth, and to unite inimical castes. ”

“ These republics are not free from any of the ordinary weaknesses of the Latin races. The State is omnipotent; the liberal professions are excessively developed; the power of the bureaucracy becomes alarming. The character of the average citizen is weak, inferior to his imagination and intelligence; ideas of union and the spirit of solidarity have to contend with the innate indiscipline of the race. These men, dominated by the solicitations of the outer world and the tumult of politics, have no inner life; you will find among them no great mystics, no great lyrical writers. ”

“ The Wars of Independence were a unanimous movement, an expression of profound solidarity. In 1865, after half a century of isolation, the democracies of the Pacific once more united to oppose Spain's attempt at reconquest. Soldiers of different nations, who had already fought in bygone battles, but against each other, now fought side by side for the common liberty. The same unity of inspiration has brought the nations together in opposition to many projects of conquest: the expedition of Flores against Ecuador, of France against Mexico, and the Anglo-French alliance against Rosas. ”

“ His Atlantide is the Latin future; Prometheus the eternal battle of thought and fanaticism. He is full of Spanish arrogance. Marvellously sonorous, his stanzas proclaim, with pomp and majesty, a romantic faith in America and liberty. The soul of Rome "destined to inaugurate history and embrace space," lives again beyond the ocean; Spain was the heir at first, until she choked beneath the "enervating shadow of the Papacy." France,
"Montana en cuya cumbre
Anida el genio humano," [9]
was now the leading Latin nation, and Napoleon the instrument of the ancient imperial spirit. ”

“ In the first period cupidity may be said to be the deus ex machina of the great epic acted by the conquerors: there is a bloody and barbarous conflict with the unknown territory, the hostile Indians, the mysterious forests, the enormous rivers, and the desert that swallows whole legions. This marvellous age is followed, in the silent cities, by a monotonous, pious, puerile existence. Exhausted by heroism, the race declines, mingles itself with the Indians, imports black slaves from Africa, and obeys its Inquisitors and viceroys. ”

“ The United States are conquering Asia economically, and the Japanese, the defenders of Oriental integrity, are slowly invading the Far West of America. The Philippines for the United States and Hawaii for Japan are the advance posts of commercial expansion on the one hand and imperialism on the other.
We are then face to face with a struggle of races, a clash of irreconcilable interests. In the proud northern democracy we note an uneasiness which reveals itself by the jealous exclusion of the Japanese from the life of the West, and by immovable racial prejudices. ”

“ In 1906, at the conference of Rio de Janeiro, Secretary Root, in the presence of assembled America, was the lay prophet of the new gospel.
"We do not wish," he said, "to win victories, we desire no territory but our own, nor a sovereignty more extensive than that which we desire to retain over ourselves. We consider that the independence and the equal rights of the smallest and weakest members of the family of nations deserve as much respect as those of the great empires. ”

“ The Creole, the Spaniard born in America, has lost the prickly characteristics of the hidalgo: the proud individualism, the love of bloody adventure, the stoicism, the tenacity in resistance and conflict, and the rigidity of faith.
In flexibility, brilliance, and grace he has surpassed the rude Iberian; but his effort is transitory, his will weak; his hatred is as ephemeral as his love. The new race produces neither mystics nor men of action, but poets, orators, admirable intriguers, superficial scholars, brilliant commentators of exotic ideas ”

“ In Asia it is still more impossible to guess whence a future unity might arise. Mussulmans and Buddhists share India; Japan has won only an ephemeral superiority; China retains all her irreducible independence; in Manchuria and Korea Russian and Asiatic interests are opposed; in Turkestan, Persia, and Tibet the conflicts of race and religion are enough to destroy any hope of union.
In America and in America only the political problem is relatively simple. Unity is there at once a tradition and a present necessity, yet in spite of this fact the disunion of the Latin democracies persists. ”

“ In the clash of Spanish individualities, in the rude assertion of municipal prerogatives, in the democratic developments which are so hostile to any hierarchy, an African or Semitic patriotism is revealed, which converts history into a bloody tragedy. In the arid Castilian plain, confined by its glaring horizons, under its burning sun, we see the spectacle of a proud people defending absolute principles with aggressive faith. Religion is dry and fiery as the desert. ”

“ Often of an evening, in the sober hour of twilight, hearing you comment upon a page of Plato or a line of Goethe, or explain to me with unfailing geniality and marvellous lucidity the troubles of the present day, I have gained a fuller understanding of the magnificent radiance of the French genius; and always, on leaving you, I have found pleasure in repeating the thought of Emerson, of the Emerson whom you love, concerning the utility of great men: "They make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious." ”

“ Will not a community of interests in America give a new strength to the union of these peoples in Europe? Great political changes would result from these new influences: the American Latins, by entering into the combinations of European politics, would divide Italy, whose interests in the Argentine and Brazil are so great, from the Triple Alliance, and would strengthen the understanding between England and France against Germany, which disputes with them not only the hegemony of Europe but also the preponderance in America. ”

“ The German learns more readily than the Englishman the language of his new country; he studies local manners and adopts them; he brings to the restless and turbulent democracies of America his deliberation, his spirit of industry, and his methodical activity. In the Argentine, in Chili, in Peru, in countries where he has not yet undertaken to establish the foundation of an empire, his influence has been fruitful.
The tutelage of the United States seems to us more dangerous than the German invasion. ”

“ Hayti is still a barbarous democracy. It is not easy to turn a colony of negro slaves into an orderly and prosperous republic merely by virtue of political charters of foreign origin; and it has not been proved that parliamentarism, municipal life, and the classic division of powers, the creation of the East, form an adequate system of government for negroes and mulattos. In vain did General Légitime, once President of Hayti, affirm that had they been properly encouraged and directed, his people would already have arrived at "the highest degree of prosperity and civilisation" ”

“ History is merely a succession of turbulent hegemonies: of Spain, England, France, and Germany. We find artificial nations, like Austria; unions of democratic and theocratic peoples, like the Franco-Russian Alliance; rival empires of the same race, like England and Germany; political alliances of alien races, like Germany and Italy; and the dispersion of peoples painfully seeking to recover their lost unity, like the Poles, the Irish, and the Slavs. ”

“ The enormous power of the North American nation is the result of this unity. If the patricians of the South had been victorious in the War of Secession, if they had succeeded in annihilating the Federal bond, then instead of the Republic which overawes Europe and aspires to Americanise the world there would be two powerless and inimical States; in the South an oligarchic nation served by slaves, and in the North a feeble assemblage of Puritan provinces, while the Far West would be incapable of resisting the Yellow Peril. ”

“ Forty years ago Alberdi thought it necessary, and believed it possible, to redraw the map of America.
To-day the Latin nations overseas are less plastic; the frontiers seem too definitely established, and prejudices too deeply rooted to allow of such a recombination; but the formation of groups of nations is no less urgent. If the unity of the continent by means of a vast federation in the Anglo-Saxon manner seems impossible, it is none the less necessary to group the Latin-American nations in a durable fashion, according to their affinities. ”

“ The transatlantic Creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the spirit of race survives: the Republic reproduces the essential traits of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous, flowing past the ancient landmarks. ”

“ The federation of Europe is a Utopian dream.
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Africa is not yet autonomous; it is a vast group of enslaved peoples of primitive races, colonised by the great European powers. There the Anglo-Saxon genius is seeking to establish a political union between English and Dutch, and one day, perhaps, the empire dreamed of by Cecil Rhodes will stretch from Cairo to the Cape. But the unity of Africa is impossible; for the colonists come to the Dark Continent as conquerors, as the representatives of hostile interests; they can but quarrel over Morocco, Tripoli, and the Congo. ”

“ The formation of a great Bolivian State, after a period of isolation lasting more than a century, is certainly the dream of generous statesmen. It is not easy to conceive of the political union of peoples as far removed as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, but this assembly might well result in a natural union of the peoples of the North; a new Greater Colombia, whose provinces would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ”