The South American Republics Volume I Part 6

At this crisis public alarm and indignation found a vent in the formation of a revolutionary society, called the Civic Union, which was pledged to overthrow President Celman. On July 26, 1890, disturbances began and there was a little fighting in the streets. Police and troops, however, put no spirit into their efforts to suppress the rioters. The President's best friends urged him to resign, and Congress pa.s.sed a formal memorial to that effect. There was nothing for him to do but to obey the manifest wish of the people; he handed in his resignation and the Vice-President, Dr. Carlos Pellegrini, peacefully succeeded him.

The situation went from bad to worse; in 1891 the currency dropped to twenty-three cents on the dollar, the banks failed, and the laws for collection of debts were suspended for two months. The most which Dr.

Pellegrini could hope to do was to hold things together until the general election should be held fifteen months later. No human wisdom could devise measures that would give immediate prosperity, and the public would be satisfied with nothing less. Dr. Pellegrini had to wait until later years for a proper appreciation of his labours. The other two great national figures were General Roca and General Mitre. The first had the prestige of his strong and successful administration; he enjoyed the confidence of the army, and he was the head of the great Nationalist party which was especially powerful in the provinces.

General Mitre, the most eminent citizen of Buenos Aires, and in a way the living embodiment of the previous forty years of national history, had inevitably been selected as chief of the Civic Union. He had therefore led the movement through which the public opinion of the capital had overthrown Celman.

Mitre and Roca had co-operated in securing a peaceful transfer of the government from Celman to Pellegrini. Roca was inclined to favour Mitre for the presidency, but it soon became evident that the latter could not control the more radical members of the Civic Union, and that his candidacy would not reconcile all parties. February 19, 1891, an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate Roca was perpetrated in the streets of Buenos Aires. The spirit of mutiny grew alarmingly, and a state of siege was proclaimed; the Civic Union split into warring camps; trouble broke out in Cordoba, and successful revolutions overthrew the legal state governments in Catamarca and Santiago del Estero. Mitre and Roca formally withdrew from active political life in the hope that this might placate the dissident politicians.

The candidate fixed upon by the wing of Nationals who adhered to Roca, and the moderates of the Civic Union led by Mitre, was Doctor Luiz Saenz Pena, ex-Justice of the Supreme Court. The Pellegrini government gave him its earnest support, and charges were made by the Radicals that their votes would be forcibly suppressed in the election of October, 1891. They determined to antic.i.p.ate violence with violence, but, on the eve of the election in October, 1891, their leaders were imprisoned and a state of siege declared. Saenz Pena was elected, but the Radicals began to intrigue to obtain control of the provincial governments, which would enable them to force his resignation or his compliance with their wishes. Serious trouble broke out early in 1892 in the province of Corrientes, with which the Buenos Aires radicals openly sympathised. The new President quickly cut loose from the Roca wing of the Nationalist party and allied himself closely with the moderate Civic Unionists, now usually called "Mitristas." The President's own son, who had been a candidate against him, headed the faction of the Nationalist party that had renounced Roca's leaders.h.i.+p. Revolutionary movements against the governors who belonged to the Roca faction began in several provinces.

In February there were armed protests in Santa Fe against a new wheat tax; a revolt broke out in Catamarca in April; by July the Saenz Pena administration was in the gravest difficulties. San Luiz and Santa Fe rebelled, and in August Salta and Tuc.u.man followed. It was manifest that the President was not strong enough to hold down the selfish factions who saw in the general dissatisfaction and financial distress only an opportunity to get into office by force of arms.

Congress remained neutral until it became evident that no accommodation could be reached between the President and his opponents, and that the latter would press on to overthrowing the government and probably precipitate a serious civil war. In this crisis, however, the majority agreed to laws which authorised armed Federal intervention in the troubles in San Luiz and Santa Fe. But in September the national troops themselves showed symptoms of mutiny and by this time most of the provinces were convulsed by revolutionary movements which the central government was manifestly not strong enough to suppress or control.

On September 25th, General Roca took command of the army; the most dangerous radical leaders in Buenos Aires were thrown into prison; and on October 1st he captured Rosario, the second city of the Republic, and the chief place in Santa Fe, which for months had been in the hands of revolutionists. This was a beginning of the end of the troubles that menaced public order. Six million dollars had been expended by the government in fruitless marchings to and fro of troops, but no serious harm had been done. The scene of the contest between the ambitious factions was transferred to Congress, the Cabinet, and the Press.

Throughout 1893 and 1894 the President struggled with his factional and financial difficulties, and gradually lost control of Congress and prestige in the country.

Meanwhile, commercial liquidation was proceeding normally and, as always, painfully. The great Provincial Mortgage Bank, through the agency of which a vast amount of the land scrip had been issued in the Celman days, was granted a moratorium for five years. Other actual bankruptcies were legally admitted and enforced. The mortgage scrip payable in gold was replaced by currency obligations. The government had proved unequal to the task of balancing its own receipts and expenses.

Taxes were increased until rebellion seemed imminent, but expenditures still outran them. The deficits mounted in spite of the efforts toward economy and the returning prosperity of the business world. The boundary dispute with Chile had a.s.sumed a threatening aspect; war seemed imminent, and the military and naval estimates were largely increased.

In January, 1895, President Saenz Pena called an extra session of Congress to vote supplies for the expected war with Chile and to consider the financial proposals of the government. Congress demanded that political grievances should be redressed. The President had been persecuting the army officers who had been implicated in the revolutionary disturbances, and a vast majority of Congress insisted that a complete amnesty be granted to all political offenders. When the President refused, the Cabinet resigned in a body and Congress and the opposition brought every pressure to bear. It was soon evident that Congress must win, and on January 22, 1895, the President resigned.

The Vice-President, Doctor Uriburu, succeeded for the unexpired period of three years, during which little progress was made toward a settlement of the nation's financial difficulties. Symptoms of renewed extravagance appeared. In 1897, the issuance of $10,000,000 of mortgage scrip was authorised, and the city of Buenos Aires received permission to borrow $5,000,000. Work on the great docks of Buenos Aires, costing $35,000,000, was pushed to completion, and in February the paper dollars dropped back to 33 cents, while the deficit for the year was over $20,000,000.

In July, 1897, General Roca was nominated for the Presidency by the Convention of the National party, with Dr. Pellegrini in the chair.

There was no real opposition to his election. Again and again during a quarter of a century he had proved himself able to cope with the most difficult situations which had arisen in Argentine affairs. In 1890, his firmness and adroitness had saved the country from the agony of a useless political upheaval after the failure of the Celman administration. During the anxious months that followed the panic, his generosity had secured a co-operation of the moderates of Buenos Aires with his own immediate followers in holding back the Radicals and revolutionists in check. During the critical year of 1892, the outbreaks against the Saenz Pena administration increased in violence until it seemed as if the country would be convulsed with a serious civil war, but when Roca stepped in the tide of disorganisation turned, and his firm hand re-established the authority of the Federal government. His prestige and his personality enabled him to count upon an obedience from the chiefs of the provincial factions which was of inestimable value. He possessed those rare and indispensable qualities which make a man a centre around which other men can rally. He had built up the one really national party in the country and was faithful to his friends and his adherents, but sufficiently broad-minded to combine with other parties when the interests of the whole country demanded it.

General Roca entered upon his second presidential term in the beginning of 1898. One of his first acts was to intervene in Buenos Aires province and put an end to a deadlock between the governor and the Provincial a.s.sembly. The boundary dispute with Chile, a question which, in spite of the earnest desire of both governments for peace, might at any time precipitate a ruinous war, was submitted for settlement by arbitration.

W. J. Buchanan, the United States Minister at Buenos Aires, named as arbitrator for the northern frontier, quickly announced a decision which was promptly accepted by both parties. The more complicated southern frontier could not so easily be prepared for submission; a serious misunderstanding arose, and both countries felt compelled to spend large sums for armaments which they knew they could ill afford.

Happily, a decision was at last rendered in 1902. No question now remains open which is likely to involve the external peace of Argentina.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RIVER ROAD IN ARGENTINA.

[From a lithograph.]]

Internal peace has not been menaced during General Roca's term. The commercial situation of the country has vastly improved. Immigration, which had largely ceased after 1890, has again risen to over a hundred thousand a year. Wheat exports rose from 4,000,000 bushels in 1897 to 61,000,000 in 1900. The total exports in 1899 were $185,000,000, twice as great per capita as the record export of the United States. There have been no issues of paper money, and the value of the currency has risen to forty cents. The government has established a new artificial par at a little more than this sum, and has begun acc.u.mulating a gold reserve. A resumption of specie payments is soon expected.

Nevertheless the chief difficulties and preoccupations of the Roca administration have been with financial questions. A deficit of $70,000,000 had acc.u.mulated in the few years before 1898, and the interest on the immense public debt makes an equilibrium in the budget almost impossible. Many of the provincial governments have defaulted, and the national government has had to carry their burdens in addition to its own, to satisfy clamorous foreign creditors. In 1901 it was proposed to unify the debt, refunding the whole at a lower rate of interest, and specifically pledging certain sources of public income.

This plan had the approval of the government, but the national pride was touched by the latter feature. The populace could not bear the idea of giving a sort of mortgage on the country. The pa.s.sage of the bill by Congress was met with so many demonstrations of popular disapproval that it was abandoned. This change of front was accompanied by the formation of an alliance between the followers of General Mitre and those of General Roca.

The industrial impetus already acquired by the Argentine Republic is sufficient to carry it over all obstacles, and it seems a.s.sured that there will be a rapid settlement of the whole of this immense and fertile plain. Here nature has done everything to make communication easy, and a temperate climate insures crops suited to modern European civilisation. Two grave perils have so far been encountered--namely, a tendency toward political disintegration and an abuse of the taxing power. The former is now remote, for since the railways began to concentrate wealth and influence at Buenos Aires, and to destroy the prestige and political power of the provincial capitals, the national structure built by the patriots of 1853 has stood firmer each year.

The Argentine has had a bitter lesson of the evils of governmental extravagance, and still groans under the burden of a debt which seems disproportionately heavy, but the growth of population and wealth will soon overtake it, and the very difficulties of meeting interest are the cause of an economy in administration, of which the good effects will be felt long after the debt itself has been reduced to a reasonable per capita. A nation is in the process of formation in the Plate valley whose material greatness is certain, and whose moral and intellectual characteristics will have the widest influence on the rest of South America.

PARAGUAY

CHAPTER I

PARAGUAY UNTIL 1632

The beginnings of the settlements in Paraguay have been sketched in the introductory chapter on the discoveries and conquest. In 1526, Cabot, searching to find a route to the gold and silver mines of the centre of the continent, penetrated as far as the site of the present city of Asuncion. He had already, in the exploration of the Upper Parana, skirted the southern and eastern boundary of what has since become the country of Paraguay. Ten years later the exhausted and discouraged remnants of Mendoza's great expedition sought rest and refuge among the peaceful agricultural tribes of this region. Under Domingos Irala, these six hundred surviving Spanish adventurers founded Asuncion in 1536, the first settlement of the valley of the Plate. They reduced the Indians to a mild slavery, compelling them to build houses, perform menial services, and cultivate the soil. The country was divided into great tracts called "encomiendas," which, with the Indians that inhabited them, were distributed among the settlers. Few women had been able to follow Mendoza's expedition, so the Spaniards of Asuncion took wives from among the Indians. Subsequent immigration was small, and the proportion of Spanish blood has always been inconsiderable, compared with the number of aborigines. The children of the marriages between the Spanish conquerors and Indian women were proud of their white descent.

The superior strain of blood easily dominated, and the mixed Paraguayan Creoles became Spaniards to all intents and purposes. Spaniards and Creoles, however, learned the Indian language; Guarany rather than Spanish became, and has remained, the most usual method of communication.

The Spaniards of Asuncion were turbulent and disinclined to submit to authority. They paid scant respect to the adelantados, whom the Castilian king sent out one after another as feudal proprietors. Until his death Irala was the most influential man in the colony, but his power rested on his own energy and capacity, and on the fear and respect in which he was held by his companions, more than on the royal commission that finally could not be withheld from him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ASUNCION.]

Across the river from Asuncion stretched away to the west the vast and swampy plains of the great Chaco. It was inhabited by wandering tribes of Indians whom the Spaniards could not subdue. They fled before the expeditions like scared wild beasts, only to turn and mercilessly ma.s.sacre every man when a chance was offered for ambush or surprise. To the east of the Paraguay River the country was dry, rolling, and extremely fertile. Though covered with magnificent forests it was easily penetrable all the way across to the Parana. Its inhabitants were the docile Guaranies, who knew something of agriculture and in whose villages considerable stores of food were to be found. The population was dense for savages, but they had no political or military organisation. Divided into small tribes which did not co-operate, they rendered little respect or obedience to their chiefs. Under these conditions Spanish authority rapidly spread over central and southern Paraguay. Before Irala died, in 1557, the settlers had reached the Parana on the western boundary and founded settlements nearly as far north as the Grand Cataract.

Shortly afterwards, the Creoles of Asuncion began their expeditions to the South. By 1580 they controlled the Parana River from its confluence with the Paraguay to the ocean, had established Santa Fe and Buenos Aires on its right bank, and opened up the southern pampa. The pastoral provinces on the Lower Parana were slowly peopled. A large proportion of the energetic Paraguayan Creoles preferred the semi-nomadic life of the plains to indolence among their Indian slaves in the tropical forests of Paraguay. The two regions were distinct in climate, habits of life, social and industrial organisation. They became separated in interests and soon were to be divided politically. Though, until 1619, the whole province continued to bear the name of Paraguay, the usual residence of the governor was Buenos Aires. Asuncion was often forced to be content with a lieutenant-governor, and was fast relegated to the position of a neglected and isolated district.

In the days of the Spanish conquest, Franciscan monks were the priests who most often accompanied the expeditions, and they took the most prominent part in the earliest establishment of religion. The members of this Order, however, with a few notable exceptions, took no special interest in the evangelisation of the aborigines. On the contrary, they were as fierce as the soldiers themselves in their cruelties to the poor Indians. The shouts of a Franciscan monk set on Pizarro's ruffians to the slaughter of the Incas that surrounded Atahualpa. Those that came to Paraguay preferred to live in the towns, and their conduct toward the Indians differed little from that of the lay Spaniards. It was the genius of Ignatius Loyola that conceived and perfected a machine able to carry Christianity and civilisation to these remote and inaccessible peoples and regions. Within a few years after its foundation, the Society of Jesus turned its attention to the evangelisation of South America; in 1550 the Jesuit Fathers began their work in Brazil. Their successes and failures in that country had little relation with their work in Spanish South America. It is curious, however, that their most successful early work in Brazil should have been done in So Paulo, on the extreme eastern border of the wide plateau which drains to the west into the Parana. For a decade or two after 1550, they laboured hard to gather the Indians of that region into villages, to teach them Christianity, and protect them against the tyrannies and exactions of the Portuguese settlers. The contest was unequal; the Jesuits were not long able to prevent the enslavement of their proselytes. The Paulistas destroyed the Jesuit missions in their neighbourhood and became the most expert in Indian warfare and the most terrible foes of the Jesuit system of all the colonists of South America. Their determined opposition was the most potent cause in preventing the subjection of South America to a theocratic system of government.

About 1586 the Jesuit Fathers entered Paraguay for the purpose of beginning the evangelisation of the Indians of the Plate valley. They established a school in Asuncion and pushed out on foot into the remoter districts. Their success was phenomenal. They spared no pains to learn the language of the savages so that they might teach them in their own tongue. They approached them with kindness and benevolence showing in every gesture. They availed themselves of the Indians' love of bright colours and showy processions. They went unarmed and alone, offering useful and attractive presents, conforming to savage customs and prejudices, and imposing on the vivid savage imagination with the pomp of Catholic wors.h.i.+p. They taught their savage pupils how to cultivate the ground to get greater results, how to save themselves unnecessary labour, and how to live comfortably. They persuaded them to gather into towns, where they built comfortable houses and tight warehouses, while the men cultivated the soil and the women spun and wove cotton.

The Jesuits came almost immediately into conflict with the interests of the Spanish colonists. They were welcomed at first, because they were expected to lend themselves to the enslavement of the Indians. When their real purposes were discovered feeling against them rose high. The Creoles clearly saw that it was going to be far more difficult to extend their power over the Indians gathered together in villages under Jesuit protection than over unorganised and friendless bands of unconverted savages.

Before 1610 the number of Jesuits that had come to Paraguay was very small. Among the first was the Father named Thomas Fields, a Scotchman.

As a matter of fact, the Jesuits were recruited from all the nations of Europe and under their military system had to go wherever they might be sent. English, Irish, and German names, as well as Spanish, are to be found in the lists of Jesuits who laboured in Paraguay.

In 1608 Philip III. of Spain attended to the complaints that came to him through the powerful chiefs of the Order of the indifference and opposition shown by the settlers and colonial authorities, and gave his royal and official sanction to the Jesuit conversion of the Indians along the Upper Parana. By this time the Fathers had penetrated across to the Parana and had followed up that stream far north of the Grand Cataract in lat.i.tude 24, which marks the northern boundary of Paraguay proper. It is hard to understand how they overcame the difficulties of travelling. To this day it is well-nigh impossible to reach the Grand Cataract, and years pa.s.s without that wonder of nature's being seen by the eyes of civilised man. No part of the world, outside the Arctic regions, is less accessible than the Parana above the Grand Cataract.

Yet these heroic priests made that region the princ.i.p.al theatre of their operations in the early years of the seventeenth century. The territory is now all Brazilian,--the boundaries of that republic extend on the east bank of the Parana south nearly to the twenty-sixth degree and on the west bank to the twenty-fourth. The rivers Paranapanema and Ivahy are great tributaries coming down from the east between the twenty-second and twenty-third degrees, and draining a vast extent of the plateau that extends to the Brazilian coast mountains between Curitiba and So Paulo, and on their banks the Jesuits established their princ.i.p.al missions.

In those days there were no clearly defined boundaries between the Portuguese and Spanish dominions. From 1580 to 1640 the king of Spain was also monarch of Portugal. The Jesuits held his royal letters patent for the conversion of the Indians of the province of Guayra--the name which this remote region bore. They had no reason to antic.i.p.ate that they would be accused of being invaders of Portuguese territory, or that they would be interfered with by any Portuguese subjects of the Spanish Crown. The nearest Portuguese settlement was at So Paulo, from which Guayra could be reached only by the long and tedious descent of the Tiete River to its confluence with the Parana, and thence down that river to the Ivahy. Months would be necessary to make such a journey, great difficulties encountered with waterfalls and rapids, and great privations from want of food in the vast uninhabited regions on the route.

The first Jesuits to arrive after the granting of formal authorisation by the Spanish king were two Italians. They left Asuncion October 10, 1609, and it took them five months of incessant travelling to reach the Paranapanema. The work already done there by the earlier Fathers had borne some fruit. The Indians were prepared for the coming of the new missionaries and readily gathered into the towns which they founded in rapid succession. For the first few years all went well, and within a very short time they claimed to have at least forty thousand souls under their guidance. In 1614 there were 119 Jesuits in Paraguay and Guayra, and the work of evangelising and reducing to obedience the whole Guarany population of the Parana valley went on apace. For twenty years these Guayra missions spread and prospered, while to the east and south the Jesuits acquired more and more influence with the Indians in Paraguay proper, and more and more hemmed in the Creoles of Asuncion.

In 1629 a thunderbolt burst upon Guayra out of a clear sky. The Portuguese from So Paulo appeared before the Mission of San Antonio and destroyed it utterly, burning the church and houses and driving off the Indians as slaves. Other missions shortly suffered the same fate, and within the short s.p.a.ce of three years the towns had been sacked, most of the inhabitants of the region carried off or killed, and the remnants had fled down the river under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Fathers. The Paulistas were animated by motives, some good, some bad. Primarily they wished to capture slaves. They hated the Jesuits and had themselves suffered from the latter's system of segregating the aborigines. Only a few decades before, their fathers had destroyed the Jesuit missions near So Paulo, and they were determined not to permit themselves to be hemmed in and crowded out by Indians ruled and protected by Jesuits.

They believed in the doctrine of "Brazil for the White Brazilians," and they regarded the Jesuits and their neophytes as natural enemies and fair prey. The sentiment of nationality also animated them. As descendants of Portuguese they hated the Spaniards and their rule. Their allegiance to the Spanish dynasty that had usurped the crown of Portugal sat lightly. The Jesuits came by way of Asuncion, their communications were with the Spanish authorities, and most of them were Spaniards. The Paulistas, as Portuguese, viewed with alarm a rapid spread of Spanish ecclesiastics up the Parana valley, which threatened soon to reach their own neighbourhood. Avarice, love of adventure, race pride, patriotism, hatred of priestly domination, all co-operated to push them on to undertaking these memorable expeditions.

The great extension of the Jesuits over the northern and eastern regions of the Parana valley occurred during the period when Hernandarias was the dominant figure of the Plate. Creole though he was, this remarkable man was a friend to the Indian and to the missionary work of the Jesuits. His aid and encouragement in 1609 were essential to the latter's success, for he might easily have nullified the effect of the royal permission to evangelise Guayra, a formal doc.u.ment that would have been of little value against the delays and excuses of an unwilling governor aided by the jealous people. After his first term as governor at Buenos Aires, the Spanish government determined to put a stop to the more flagrant of the abuses practised against the savages and created the office of "Protector of the Indians." Hernandarias was named to fill it, and carried out his instructions in a moderate spirit. He understood the country and the situation of the colony well, and did not undertake to abolish Indian slavery. In that tropical climate the whites will not labour in the fields so long as there are Indians who can be forced to work, and the Spaniards still regarded the Indian as little better than an animal.

On the other hand, Hernandarias was too intelligent not to see that there must be restraints on the cruelties and exactions of the Creoles if the Indians of Paraguay were to be saved from the extermination that had been the fate of the Haytians a century before. The outcome was, that though a new code of laws was promulgated by the impracticable Spanish king, which forbade any further enslavement of the aborigines, its provisions were largely disregarded. At the same time, however, the Indians acquired a legal status, and their condition was gradually improved until it became not much worse than that of the contemporaneous European peasantry. The Jesuits were guaranteed against interference and allowed to go out into the remoter wilderness and give to the yet unslaved inhabitants the invaluable protection of members.h.i.+p in their missions.

In 1619 the natural and commercial division between Paraguay proper and the rest of the province was officially recognised. The region between the Paraguay and the Parana rivers was made a separate province, directly dependent upon the Viceroy at Lima and the Audiencia at Charcas in Bolivia. It included officially the Jesuit missions south-east of the Parana as well as the present territory of Paraguay.

When the Paulistas began their terrible attacks on the Guayra missions in 1629, the governor of Paraguay refused to send any a.s.sistance to the Jesuits. The latter charged him with a corrupt understanding with the invaders, by which he was to share in the profits of the slaves sold.

The Order had agreed with the Spanish government not to put any arms into the hands of the Indians, so the latter were defenceless against the Paulistas, who attacked musket in hand. The Creoles and Spaniards in Asuncion resented more and more the presence and power of the Jesuits, and viewed with ill-concealed satisfaction the misfortunes that now overwhelmed the priests. The governor, in declining to send help, was only carrying out the wishes of the people around him. Had the number of whites in Paraguay not been so very small the Jesuits might have been expelled as they were in So Paulo.

CHAPTER II

THE JESUIT REPUBLIC AND COLONIAL PARAGUAY