Spanish America

“ I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my country, ‘born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.’ Whenever I think of Spanish America, the image irresistibly forces itself upon my mind, of an elder brother, whose education has been neglected, whose person has been abused and maltreated, and who has been disinherited by the unkindness of an unnatural parent. ”

“ For the Spanish Americans there seems to be no Past at all earlier than their own War of Independence. In all these respects the contrast between the position of Spain towards South America and that of Britain towards North America strikes an Englishman with surprise. If that revival in Spanish literature and art, of which there have recently been signs, should continue, and if Spanish commerce should develop, the position may change, for the tie of language will always have its importance. ”

“ If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more imposing monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher attainment in certain branches of science. ”

“ Spaniards had a certain amount of common Spanish feeling before Castile and Aragon were united, and Italians, so far from ceasing to feel themselves Italians during the centuries before 1848, when they were cut up into many states, some of them ruled by foreign dynasties, were stirred by a more vehement nationalism in that year than ever before. Can one, then, for any and for what purposes, treat Spanish America as being one whole, either intellectually or sentimentally? ”

“ Fortunately for us in recent years our knowledge of Spanish America has become larger and deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence there has been less assumption of knowledge founded on ignorance. Every gain in knowledge of Spanish America has raised Spanish America and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since at a public dinner the president of a great American university said, "We have only just discovered Spanish America." ”

“ The war for independence in the United States had no apparent influence upon the colonies of Spanish America. They remained loyal to Spain. The French Revolution seemed also without effect. But during the long Napoleonic wars, when Spain remained for years in the grip of the Corsican, and the people of Spanish America were left largely to govern themselves, a thirst for liberty arose, and a spirit of revolt showed itself about 1810 throughout the length and breadth of the colonies. ”

“ And as to the Spaniards, it is their strong individualism which presents a marked attraction here, though one which may not generally have been put into words: the individualism of nations founded upon historical and geographical bases, as has already been said. We approach here, not a mere United States of Spanish America, not a confederation of vast municipalities or provinces whose borders are imaginary parallels or meridians, but a series of independent nations, each stamped with its own character, bearing its own indelible and romantic name, whose frontiers are rivers and mountain ranges. ”

“ And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. ”

“ As a basis for a proper understanding of the fundamental present-day problems arising in Spanish America, it behooves us to examine more closely the basic principles and institutions existing there. Such a study will always lead us back to Spain and the contributions which were made by that nation to her former colonies. ”

“ Spanish America was no exception to this rule. While the sons of Spain that had settled in the New World were engaged in cultivating the soil, making roads in the rough country and laying the foundations of commerce and trade in the cities founded by their fathers or grandfathers, Spain had entered upon the heritage of many centuries of European culture, which on her soil had a rich admixture of Arabian elements. ”

“ Superiority over Spanish system.A considerable portion of Spanish-America already belongs to the United States, and has since attained an importance which could not possibly have been anticipated either under the Spanish Government or during the anarchy which followed. ”

“ Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. ”

“ Such considerations as these have made me believe that the natural propensity of a West European or North American traveller to judge Spanish Americans by his own standards needs to be corrected not only by making allowance for differences of intellect and character, but also by a comprehension of the history of these peoples and of the difficulties, many of them due to causes outside their own control, which have encompassed and entangled them ever since their ancestors first set foot in the Western world. ”

“ We have not improved our relations with Spanish America as wisely and as persistently as we might have done. For more than a generation the sympathy of these countries has been allowed to drift away from us. ”

“ The Spaniards have been so busy keeping the East out of the West, fighting the battles of other nations, keeping those wretched Bourbons on the thrones of Italy where they were not wanted, opening up the New World and making Spanish America, that they have neglected Spain. ”

“ Family ties between colonists and the motherland had, moreover, become few or loose. Seldom in Spanish America does one hear anyone speak of the place his ancestors came from, as one constantly hears North Americans talk of the English village where are the graves of their forefathers. Seldom do South Americans or Mexicans seem to visit Spain, either to see her ancient515 cities and her superb pictures or to study her present economic problems. They do not feel as if they had much to learn from her governmental methods, and her modern literature has apparently little message for them. ”

“ The Spanish-American empire was therefore much longer-lived than the first colonial dominion of Great Britain in North America, and the natural inference is, either that the Spaniards treated their colonies or dependencies better than the English treated theirs, or that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence, or that both causes operated simultaneously. ”

“ It should serve almost equally well for residents of both the English-speaking and the Spanish American countries, since the underlying idea has been that Americans generally are concerned with the growth of that Spanish civilization which was transmitted to the new world. One of the chief factors in American life today is that of the relations between Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic America. They are becoming increasingly important. ”

“ Indeed, in the connection, it is to be noted that Spanish American people—even in circles where it would be supposed that such matters would be beyond their ken—think much and talk profoundly on questions of government, polity, economics and so forth. They display a wider range of intelligence than—for example—the lower middle-class English folk in such matters. ”

“ Spain's rule, however inefficient, continued three centuries, and the political and social structure of present-day Spanish America is largely the outcome of this long period of Spanish administration. The social, cultural and political contributions which Spain made to Hispanic America, her one-time colonies, have not been taken into account sufficiently by those who have attempted to solve the problem of our political and commercial relationship with the nations to the south of us. ”

“ Although Spaniards have established themselves in Spanish America, even in the tropics, the evils of Spanish rule have largely arisen from the fact that Spaniards have gone to the colonies as adventurers, eager to make fortunes as quickly as possible, that they might return to Spain to enjoy them. ”

“ So far as the present population goes back to the early days of Spanish dominion, it may be said to be Spanish by name and Indian by blood. The families, which in many Spanish American countries have social prestige because of descent from the conquerors and rulers of the Colonial Period, must therefore attach all importance to the family name, and little or none to the many other lines of descent which have entered into the composition of their present generation. ”

“ And, however impolitically despotic the Spanish governments may be, still do these colonies enjoy the opportunities of improvement, which in every age arise from the knowledge of commerce and of letters—opportunities which were never enjoyed in South America under the reigns of Montezuma and Atabalipa. But if from Spanish, we turn our eyes to British America, what a glorious prospect! ”

“ If the South American "Republics" were to perish this day, the world would hardly lose a valuable experiment in Spanish political or social life, hardly a visible promise of future prosperity; so badly flourish the Spanish scions set in the green soil of America, and surrounded by the old institutions of the middle ages. Slavery is the one idea of the Spanish tribes—here African, there Indian or Caucasian. ”

“ The malady is but part of one that afflicts the whole world, whose cure awaits the turning of the next page of human evolution—a page which can be turned whenever slothful humanity desires to do it.
Spanish America is really one of the most interesting fields of travel in the world, even if it does not make great pretension of its attractions. ”

“ French adventure and enterprise had precedence in the actual colonization of the northern half of this continent. Spain was long content with conquest without colonization. She has in Mexico and in South America all that can be said to be rightfully hers in the perpetuation of her language, in exclusive privileges of commerce, in the mixture of Spanish with native blood, and in the still effective, though strained and fretting, ties of traditional loyalty recognized by her transatlantic subjects on main and island. ”

“ The achievements of the Conquistadores have scarcely a parallel in the annals of conquest; but it was the desire for treasure that led them on; and the treasure they discovered became the foundation of the Spanish Empire. In exchange for their gold and silver, Spain imposed upon the native races of America an enlightened despotism and the benefits of Christian civilization.
From Hispaniola as the first center, the Spaniards soon extended their dominion over the islands of Cuba, Porto Rico, and San Domingo, and to the mainland of North America. ”

“ The history of the Spanish conquest in America is a record of cruelty and of blood, while that of English colonization is marked by English rigor and enterprise, and is one of successful daring and ultimate triumph. ”

“ Notwithstanding the very considerable extent and interest of this field, few writers on Spanish America appear to have made any broad study of the subject, or at least to have set down much in the way of description of what is so noteworthy and important a feature of life in these widely-scattered communities, but it is a matter worthy of some study. ”

“ The more carefully the work of the Spaniards in America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is studied, the more praise is bestowed upon them. The more a writer knows of actual conditions the more does he feel poignantly the injustice that has been done by the Protestant tradition which abused the good that was accomplished by the Catholic Spanish and which neglected, distorted and calumniated his deeds and motives. ”

“ He made some progress towards a volume ‘on the interior economy and administration of Spain under the different periods of her history,’ with the object of illustrating the different causes that have checked her progress; but it was never finished. Two articles from his pen on Spanish America appeared in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (April 1801) , and in the previous year he printed in Spanish and English, though he did not publish, a pamphlet with the title ‘Suggestions on the Cortes,’ containing his views on the principles which should guide the Spanish statesmen. ”

“ The deadly rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, of Englishman and Spaniard, have left indelible traces upon their descendants which intensify race prejudice and misunderstanding. The Englishman or American looks with a contempt upon the economic blindness or incapacity of the Spaniard that veils his eyes to their real aims and achievements.
The tragedies and blunders of English colonization in America are often forgotten and only the tragedies and blunders of Spanish colonization are remembered. ”