Ernesto Quesada

“ In the river and mountain region, the urban was a reflection of the rural population, independent, haughty, brave, accustomed to making forays upon horseback over the endless pampas, trusting to its own decision and in the end to the knife, which was a symbol of the worship of personal courage, inherited from Spanish ancestors who had developed it during the centuries of the struggle against the Moors. ”

“ There is required in such a man extraordinary coolness, clearness of vision as to responsibility, perfect knowledge of the course to be run, besides ceaseless vigilance, iron nerve when the time of trial arrives and a complete concentration upon the task. The legitimate tasks of government, in this very grave period of Argentine evolution, require a special training on the part of public leaders. They must study thoroughly the problems of our social evolution, and they must form a clear idea of the necessary solutions. ”

“ Little by little this shadow of the old system changes into that of the "boss" of the settlement and ward. The boss makes his business that of the mass of the voters, he stirs them up from their indifference, makes them go to the polls, deliberately falsifies public opinion, and so wins for himself a political managership, which gives him a marked influence in the back offices of officials and in the lobbies of legislatures. From such methods there spring no little censurable legislation of privilege and a great loss of contentment on the part of the people. ”

“ Men were bedfellows in misery; there was no industry, no commerce; sin flourished and virtue was trampled under foot. These thirty [Pg 142] years of bloody and merciless civil strife made prominent the idea of the rule of force. People were taken from peaceful work, efficient teaching languished, every social bond was weakened and in the end a society evolved in which not education, ancestry or fortune exercised the least influence, but audacity, the impulse of the local leader, the mob instincts of the city population and of the rural gaucho. ”

“ Rarely in the history of humanity has it been possible to contemplate a like spectacle. The United States [Pg 150] presented it a half century ago, to the astonished gaze of men of that day who were but little familiar with social problems. The Argentine Republic is repeating now the same phenomenon, with this difference that it can observe itself and be guided by the experience acquired elsewhere. Other countries of the world, in the future will, no doubt, in their turn repeat a similar evolution, though perhaps in a different environment. ”

“ The nation is not hesitating or vacillating before the realization of its manifest destiny. It follows with profound interest the new and colossal social experiment, which is unfolding to the view of the world the different phases of the formation of a nation in whose development the shoals are being avoided where others were wrecked, and which is putting into practice the improvements suggested by the experience of the other nations in order to realize the new evolution easily, prudently, and successfully. ”

“ The student may contemplate this most interesting transformation, displayed before his eyes like the moving film of a gigantic cinematograph which permits him to grasp at once the different phases of the social problem which it presents. ”

“ They may even be committed to a policy that will cause eventual bankruptcy and an inevitable retrogression in the national development. The intellectual metamorphosis of the nation by a proper system of primary, secondary and higher education and by special schools of technical training, in order to form the national spirit of the future type of Argentine citizen, is certainly our most difficult governmental problem, because it is a question of molding the very soul of the nation. ”

“ From this point of view the present moment in the evolution of Argentine is of immense sociological interest. We are permitted to be present at the visible transmutation of a society, too weak even to direct itself, and absorbed in the fusion of different influences. ”

“ Federal sentiment made its appearance profoundly rooted in tradition and blood, and the tendency towards centralization only emanated from certain groups of dreamers at the metropolis who with their eyes closed to the past believed along with such deluded men as Rivadavia that, by destroying the traditional Cabildo, they would wipe the state clean of such precedents, just as the Jacobins of the French Revolution did with the institutions of the ancient régime. Argentine society issued from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries already shaped toward local self-government and local loyalty. ”

“ The Spaniards were established amidst a native population, who devoted themselves to commerce or to mining in the north, and to the raising of cattle and lesser trades in the river and central districts, and they always looked upon their residence in this part of American territory as a temporary sojourn, during which to acquire riches. The creoles, of every class, both of the city and of the country, perhaps because they seemed to be looked down upon by the Spaniards, were unconsciously trying to enlarge their hold upon affairs of all kinds. ”

“ Wherever the native population was dense and attached to the soil the creoles living in the country and about the cities show a closer affinity with it, than with the Spanish blood. They adopt native habits and conform to native peculiarities, even to the extent of adopting the melancholy rhythm of the music and songs, those unique tristes which are heard even to-day in the Argentine provinces of the north, from Santiago del Estero to the Bolivian frontier. ”

“ For here there was not the same atmosphere, the life was simple and democratic, the officials had no stage from which to display their importance, and within the narrow walls of the modest home of the government, the few inhabitants of this metropolis used to mingle in its marshy, unpaved streets, or in their unpretentious and simple adobe houses. They treated each other with a certain equality, which was due precisely to those conditions of intense individualism developed of necessity in a cattle raising community. ”

“ When public spirit strengthens and shakes from itself the dust of inertia, and when the laboring classes have passed beyond that first stage of money grabbing, all the inhabitants of the nation will commence to busy themselves about the common weal. ”

“ The Spanish colonies were founded and developed in the midst of a mass of people, who, because of their enormous superiority in point of numbers, necessarily reacted in turn upon the small number of the invaders, either by interbreeding with the latter, or by the contact of daily life, or by their superior adaptability to their natural environment. The conquerors themselves presented different traits, according to the region of Spain from which they came, and naturally they sought to group and to settle themselves in obedience to the ethnic affinities of their origin. ”

“ But, where the native population was more scattered and nomadic, the creole population became transformed and converted into the gaucho or cowboy of the pampas, a very handsome half breed, full of energy, of noble instincts, accustomed to the freest sort of life over boundless plains, where each one depended solely upon himself and recognized no superior. ”

“ These material interests appear to have conspired to bring about that indifference towards the state, as such, which makes men look mistakenly at a political career as a profession which thrives off the real working classes. For, our government both municipal, provincial and national appears to be the heritage of a well-defined minority—the politicians—who devote themselves to politics just as other social classes devote themselves to agriculture, stock raising, industry, commerce, etc. ”

“ The social evolution of the Argentine Republic has finally found its true channel and to-day is in full course of development. In proportion as the foreign immigration continues bringing therewith its happy complement of foreign capital, the country will continue to develop industrially. The astonishing increase in industries, with a total production out of all proportion to the growing population, is only explained by the use on a large scale of the most advanced machinery. But such a metamorphosis spreads from the river districts toward the interior of the country. ”

“ The molding of the national spirit by uniform and compulsory schools and the slow adaptation of the mass of the immigrants to historical traditions and to future national aims, demand much time and they are now in the full process of being worked out. The celebration of the Centenary of our independence has made prominent the fact that such an evolution is much more advanced than one would think. ”

“ The development of the national resources, in turn, has given birth to such conservative interests that it is incomprehensible to the new generation that the former generation could, at the signal of a semi-barbarous chief jump on their horses and, rushing over the fields, kill, pillage and destroy. ”

“ The mass of the natives, with whose women the military and civil population cohabited, since relatively few Spanish women came to America, took no interest whatsoever in the affairs of a monarchy which was not that of their ancestors but of a race different from themselves. They showed, rather, such a passive indifference that each community seemed a world unto itself, occupied and pre-occupied only with its own matters. The religious and civil officials, in their turn, were soon contaminated by this environment. ”

“ A monopoly of riches cannot be prolonged beyond a single generation because with the system of compulsory division of descendants' estates, it soon returns to the common mass of the population. Social conditions in our evolution, present distinct problems from those which characterize other nations and demand, therefore, a direct study on the ground and must not be viewed through the doctrines developed in other nations and amid other conditions. ”

“ This enormous territory thus embraced every sort of climate, and was inhabited by a heterogeneous collection of aboriginal races. Its conquest and colonization had been effected upon two convergent lines, that by water, by the River Plate, that by land, from the north. This impressed upon the civilization of these regions different characteristics which must be defined since, even after a century of political independence, their mark is still stamped upon the ideals, aspirations and conduct of the inhabitants. ”

“ In the River Plate region, leaving aside the factor of geographic interest, to which I have just made allusion, the racial history was limited to the Spanish population and its Creole interbreeding with the native races, because the negro population had no importance whatsoever, in this part of America. The quantity of negro slaves introduced by the "dealers" was reduced to a minimum, and even these, upon the breaking out of the war of independence, were killed off, for now that their masters were freeing them, they formed the great body of the troops. ”

“ To teach different and contradictory systems, to do and then undo, each day changing the courses of study to successively adopt antagonistic standards and show a real lack of fixity in pedagogic methods, is to commit the greatest of all crimes, because it is not a crime against the exchequer of posterity but against its very soul. ”

“ The social antagonism raised by an arrogant plutocracy on the one hand and poverty stricken proletariat on the other, is not presented as an Argentine problem, because riches are still in process of formation there, and easily pass from one hand to another. ”

“ Starting from the port of arrival, the stream of immigration continues to spread clinging closely to the land and little by little it mixes with the existing population, inter-breeds with it, fuses with it, and gives a great surging impulse to agriculture, industry and commerce. ”

“ To be strictly truthful, neither party can be absolved from wicked and culpable action. Nor can I shut my eyes to the fact that the great power bred pride, and that pride bred hatred of the subject class. But this prolonged dictatorship saved the country from the anarchy of the petty republics of 1820, it solidified the country into a sovereign entity and it gave to the different parts the cohesion of a nation capable of victoriously resisting the French and Anglo-French interventions. ”

“ Despite the local character of the revolution of Buenos Ayres, on the eleventh of September the country at large adopted the fundamental constitution of 1853, at the Congress of Santa Fé. The government of the recalcitrant province of Paraná realized but slowly the new organization, with which it finally incorporated itself, while the nation continued developing in the path established by its constitution. Without losing sight, therefore, of the bitter lessons of this [Pg 144] phase of our evolution, it is but fair to show an appreciation of its benefits. ”

“ The interbreeding with the Indians formed an inferior class of half breed which approached the type of the mother more than that of the father and which was certainly not a robust or handsome race. In the river region, the population lived on a democratic plane of equality in the cities, while in the rural districts they became that creole type known as the gaucho. [6] Found amidst a scattered population and inheriting the far from sedentary habits of the Spanish mother race, the gaucho preferred the free and roving existence of the pampas. ”