Latin American independence movements

“ The result was that, for at least a generation after the achievement of independence, most of the Spanish-American states were agitated by a turmoil of multitudinous constitutional experiments, confused conflict and destructive civil war, alternating with periods of rigorous and often tyrannical personal despotism. These movements have been perhaps unfairly judged in Europe. The young communities of Latin America, wanting in political experience and torn by a long and unavoidable struggle, were engaged in sweeping up the débris of their great revolution. ”

“ She opposes the Anglo-Saxon invasion, being still thoroughly Spanish, her deliverance being a matter of yesterday, but American also by the mixture of the two races, the conquerors and the vanquished, by the usual Latin virtues and defects. The loss of her independence would be a painful lesson to the republics of Central America, and to Mexico even, where anarchy is paving the way for servitude. The United States offer peace at the cost of liberty. The alternatives are independence or wealth, material progress or tradition. The choice between dignity and a future is a painful one. ”

“ It has served, firstly, to show that the great advance made by the leading South American Republics is not merely an advance made for selfish purposes, but for the benefit of the whole of the Latin nations of the American continent. The great statesmen of those countries, whilst recognizing the occasionally intemperate political acts which take place in some of the lesser Republics, have placed a cloak of protection around the weaker sisters of their countries to prevent attacks upon their national independence and sovereignty. ”

“ Carranza, the special protégé of our State Department, posed before the neighboring presidents as a guardian of Latin-American rights, and had envoys touring the southern continent in an effort to align Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and other countries, in a secret entente against the United States.
Personally I dislike our meddling in Latin-American affairs. It seems to me that it should be any government’s privilege to run a revolution in its own country if it so chooses. ”

“ To-day in Latin-America the second great struggle for freedom is under way. Bound minds and consciences, superstitions and moral despotisms—these are the stumbling-stones across the pathway of progress. All over Latin-America men are rising and enlisting their hearts and minds in the struggle for free consciences and independent judgment in the things of the Spirit. Nearly all these countries achieved political independence within a few years. ”

“ Certain influences from this stream have affected Latin-American life. The nomenclature of South American politics is that of the United States, and many constitutions contain provision for every modern practice. But these model constitutions are like a beautiful and costly piano imported into a home where no one knows how to use it. It takes a democratic spirit to get democracy out of a democratic constitution. The best piano yields only discord, and the most advanced constitution does not prevent revolution if there be no musicians or statesmen to play and administer. ”

“ They must lead their country and must govern it, they must prepare the common people of Mexico to discharge the duties of self-government, which a century of experience has shown they do not yet possess.
The failing of Mexican statesmen in the past has been the one that has beset Latin American countries generally from the day of their independence. They have not realized that true ability for self-government on the part of the people at large comes with the slow growth of national ideals and the gradual adjustment to more advanced standards of political thinking and action. ”

“ So swiftly did they learn the lessons of liberty that hardly had the conflict which won complete freedom for the United States closed before the inevitable struggle for the same priceless heritage was in full swing in all Latin-America. And be it said to their everlasting credit that this sacred cause, in spite of revolutions and reactions, which at times hazarded the whole scheme, has made steady advance, all critics to the contrary, notwithstanding. Political liberty is potentially at least achieved in South America. ”

“ Now, we can help them; help them govern themselves, help them to acquire capacity for self-government, help them along the road that Brazil and the Argentine and Chile and Peru and a number of other South American countries have travelled—up out of the discord and turmoil of continual revolution into a general public sense of justice and determination to maintain order. ”

“ The National General Assembly of the People declares that the acceptance by the governments that officially represent the countries of Latin America of that continued and historically irrefutable intervention betrays the ideals of independence of its peoples, negates tits sovereignty and prevents true solidarity among our nations, all of which obliges this assembly to repudiate it in the name of the people of Cuba with a voice that echoes the hope and determination of the Latin American people and liberating accent of immortal patriots of our America. ”

“ Whatever the ultimate conclusion, it seems useless to hope for prosperity and expansion in countries whose industries constantly suffer from the galling blight of ever-recurring revolution. The great problem that lies before the American people, if the Latin America of the future is to become like the Anglo-Saxon America of today, is that of devising a policy which will insure conditions of peace and good will in the several sword-ruled countries south of the Rio Grande. ”

“ And I look forward - as do all the people of this country - to the day when the people of Latin America will take their rightful place beside the United States and Western Europe as citizens of industrialized and growing and increasingly abundant societies. The United States - Europe - and Latin America - almost a billion people - a bulwark of freedom and the values of Western civilization - invulnerable to the forces of despotism - lighting the path to liberty for all the peoples of the world. ”

“ Central America, exhausted by anarchy, may aspire to unity; these five small nations maintain a precarious independence in the face of the United States. Until 1842 Central America was only one State, and subsequent attempts at unification proved that this was not merely the artificial creation of its politicians. When the Panama Canal has divided the two Americas, and increased the power of the United States, these nations, together with Mexico, might form a true Spanish advance-guard in the North. ”

“ He said:
"Why should we take into account Spain's intentions? What shall we care if she chooses to keep us as her slave or sell us to Bonaparte, since we have decided to be free? That great projects should be patiently weighed, I hear; but are not three hundred years of waiting long enough? Let us set without fear the foundation of South American independence. To tergiversate is to fail."
With Bolivar to Venezuela came General Francisco Miranda, who had fought under Washington for the independence of the United States and under Dumouriez for the freedom of the French people. ”

“ Really to know Latin-America is to believe in its high and fine possibilities. What Latin-America needs is a fair chance.
The end of the last great despotism of earth has left democracy a triumphant political principle in human government. Henceforth no nation may hope to keep step with the advance of mankind unless its political procedures are essentially democratic. And while South America has long had the form of democracy, it now becomes essential that her republics develop the [Pg 252] working reality of effective self-government. ”

“ The recent invasion of Mexico, and the effect thereby produced upon her domestic policy, must have a controlling influence upon the great question of South American emancipation. We have seen the fell spirit of civil dissension rebuked, and perhaps for ever stifled, in that Republic by the love of independence. If it be true, as appearances strongly indicate, the spirit of independence is the master spirit, and if a corresponding sentiment prevails in the other States, this devotion to liberty can not be without a proper effect upon the counsels of the mother country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A certain writer of New Granada, Rafael Nuñez, a President and a party-leader, writes that "there is not in South America a country more iconoclastic, politically speaking, than Colombia." Republican evolution there has been peculiar: it has witnessed perpetual anarchy, like other American democracies, and civil wars as long and as sanguinary as those of the Argentine, but no long succession of tenacious caudillo, personifications of local discord, whose ambitions determine the intention of political conflict. ”

“ The South American states, it is true, have not yet realized the blessings of emancipation, partly owing to their inexperience in the practical secrets of civil liberty; partly to the want of public virtue in the people, and their rulers, and partly, as we are much inclined to suspect, to the secret intrigues of more than one European power. But their natural and inevitable tendency is, we believe, towards a stable government, combining a complete independence of foreign powers, with such a portion of civil liberty as may suit their present circumstances and situation. ”

“ The steps it may be necessary to take to assure order, and to impress upon the local government its duty to maintain it, may offend the susceptibilities of those in control in Mexico. In the past America has been frightened too often by such possibilities. There has developed a pallid Pan-Americanism, which has led the United States too often to refuse to do anything for fear of offending a Latin American country, even though by inaction its own just interests were caused to suffer. If that is the price that must be paid for Latin American friendship, it is not worth the price. ”

“ Venezuela, that hive of revolution, sent forth Bolivar to found the new republics of Colombia and Bolivia. Mexico freed herself, and Brazil separated herself from Portugal. By 1822 European rule had been practically swept off the American mainland, from Cape Horn to the borders of Canada, and, except for the empire of Dom Pedro in Brazil, the newly born nations had adopted the republican form of government which the European monarchs despised. The spirit of unrest leaped eastward across the Atlantic. ”

“ A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. ”

“ For the policy that led to the imposition of a restraining hand on proposals to free Cuba, in those early days, the people of the United States today must blush. The independence movement in the States of Spanish-America may be said to have had its definite beginning in 1806, when Francisco Miranda, a Venezuelan, sailed from New York with three ships manned by American filibusters, although the first land battle was fought in Bolivia, in 1809, and the last was fought in the same country, in 1825. ”

“ The struggle which broke out among Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras, lasted until 1829, when Francisco Morazan, at the head of the "Allied Army, Upholder of the Law," entered the capital of the republic and assumed dictatorial power.
Of all the Hispanic nations, however, Brazil was easily the most stable. Here the leaders, while clinging to independence, strove to avoid dangerous innovations in government. Rather than create a political system for which the country was not prepared, they established a constitutional monarchy. ”

“ To the struggles of classes was added the war of races; the half-breeds fought against the national oligarchy; the new American class was hostile to the aristocracy of the capitals. The Indians lived in the towns of the interior, in which the colonial isolation was unchanged; the metropolis—Buenos-Ayres, Lima, or Caracas—was still Spanish and increasingly alien. On the coast, where feeling was more mobile and will more variable, the ideas of reform took root ”

“ Deprived of the rich benefits of custom dues, revolutions did not prove profitable, and a period of comparative quiet ensued. But it seems that a Latin-American people cannot long remain stable, and now they are again on the rampage. ”

“ Not only have war conditions favoured a more clearly defined national development, both economic and political, in each of the states. These conditions also conduce to closer and more real intercourse between the Latin-American states. There has been on the one hand a national consolidation in each republic: but there has also been a movement towards international consolidation in the Latin-American world. ”

“ Hasty conventions would be powerless to uproot the hatreds and the narrow conceptions of patriotism peculiar to the American peoples. The organisation of the continent should be the work of thinkers, statesmen, and captains of industry, a work fortified by time and history. To the tradition of discord we must oppose another, the tradition of union.
A series of partial commercial treaties, navigation treaties, railway systems, customs unions, and international congresses (like those recently held at Montevideo and Santiago) may all be indicated as means of realising unity. ”