South American problems

Preface

We call the South American people a Latin people. In part they are. The foreign blood that is in them is for the most part Latin blood. The upper class is dominantly and sometimes purely of Latin blood. But a great proportion of South American blood is not Latin but Indian. Nevertheless, the charm of the Latin inheritance is over the whole continent and no one can visit it and not come away without grateful memories of a warm-hearted, quick-minded, high-spirited people, citizens of a mighty land and forerunners of a mighty future. And the easy course for one who is asked to present his impressions is to picture the surface life of these nations and pass by the great political and intellectual and moral problems which they are facing. This easy course is not the course which can secure much help for South America and it cannot carry us very far toward a worthy understanding of our own duty.

The only things of real interest are, first, the facts as they are, and second, what the facts can and ought to be. We make no real headway by evasion and concealment, by rosy deception and smooth flatteries. We need first of all to look squarely at the

VI PREFACE

truth. That is what is attempted here. It is not attempted in any Pharisaical spirit. It is attempted with full acceptance of the principle, " With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." No honest American can flincV from the straightest and sternest judgment of his nation and he will not for a moment dodge the reaction upon himself of the contention of this book.

That contention is that where such need exists as exists in South America, there is a call for every agency which can do anything to meet it. The inevitable corollary is that if such need or any need exists in North America which South America or Europe can help us meet, it is their duty to give and it will be our pleasure to have their help.

The difficulty in analyzing the South American situation lies in the need of discriminating between the responsibility of the South American religious system and the burden of the racial inheritance. Some lay the full load upon one, some upon the other. (It belongs to both. Any Church would have found the problem difficult. Any race would have been depressed and retarded by the South American ecclesiastical institutions.

Some students deprecate all such judgments as harsh and intolerant. They say that we must judge men and institutions by their conditions and their age, that a just sense of the relativity of moral principles will lead us to overlook facts which in another

PREFACE vii

age or in other lands would appall us. On the other hand, we are content to take the view of the greatest Roman Catholic historian of the last generation, Lord Acton. It had become *' almost a trick of style," say the editors of his famous volume on " The History of Freedom and Other Essays," " to talk of judging men by the standard of their day and to allege the spirit of the age in excuse for the Albigensian Crusade or the burning of Hus. Acton felt that this was to destroy the very bases of moral judgment and to open the way to a boundless scepticism. Anxious as he was to uphold the doctrine of growth in theology, he allowed nothing for it in the realm of morals, at any rate in the Christian era, since the thirteenth century. He demanded a code of moral judgment independent of place and time, and not merely relative to a particular civilization. ... It is this preaching in season and out of season against the reality of wickedness, and against every interference with the conscience, that is the real inspiration both of Acton's life and of his writings.

" It is related of Frederick Robertson of Brighton, that during one of his periods of intellectual perplexity he found that the only rope to hold fast by was the conviction, ' it must be right to do right.' The whole of Lord' Acton's career might be summed up in a counterphrase, * it must be wrong to do wrong.' "

Vm PREFACE

And as it is always wrong to do wrong, so also it is always right to do right. That is why it is both the right and the duty of true Christians of every Church and of none more than of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to give sympathy and help to the aspiring people of South America who are wrestling with great problems and who deserve in their wrestling the good-will and practical aid of all friendly men.

No publications on South America are richer in information than those of the Pan-American Union in Washington, formerly known as The International Bureau of the American Republics. Readers wishing the latest statistics and reports from the South American nations should write to the office of the Union.

R. E. S.

Chapter I

The early peoples — The discoverers and explorers — The governors — Gains and losses from the Latin conquest — The liberators — Causes of movements toward independence — Struggle for liberty in various states — The republics — Their inheritance — Frequency of South American revolutions.

Chapter II The South American Republics Of To-day

General aspects — The more advanced nations — Argentina — Brazil — Chile — Uruguay — The less advanced nations — Paraguay — Bolivia — Peru — Ecuador — Colombia — Venezuela — Panama — South American cities — Taxation — Foreign trade — Immigration — Causes of South America's backwardness.

Chapter III

Education in colonial times — Present conditions — The more advanced nations — Argentina — Chile — Brazil — Uruguay — The less advanced nations — Peru — Colombia — Ecuador — Venezuela — Bolivia — Paraguay — Weakness of South American education — Lack of solidity — Unadaptiveness — Want of trained teachers — Neglect of education of women — Neglect of primary

education and consequent illiteracy Page 82

ix

CONTENTS

Chapter IV The Roman Church And The Problem Of Religious Liberty

The founding and development of the Roman Church in South America — Pioneer priests — Priestly orders — The Jesuits — Results of Church's work in colonial days — The problem of religious liberty — Gradual assertion of the spirit of freedom^Church and State not yet separate — Alternations in the movement towards liberty Page 113

Chapter V

Present religious conditions — South America claimed as a Roman Catholic continent — Conditions for which responsibility is assumed — Social immorality — Illiteracy and ignorance — Practical prohibition of Bible to people — Character of priesthood — Note on alleged correspondence between the Vatican and the Archbisoph of Santiago in 1897. .Page 141

CHAPTER VI PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS {continued)

Christianity not really given to people — Citations from " The Glories of Mary" — Religion encumbered with pagan superstition — Confusion of religion with politics — Strength and weakness of Roman Church in South America — Two testimonies from within Page 169

Chapter VII

The Indian blood in the South Americans— Effects on the Indians of the Latin occupation of the continent — The pure

CONTENTS zi

Indians — Argentina — Paraguay — Patagonia — Chile — Brazil — Bolivia — Peru — Colombia and Ecuador — Summary — Probable Indian population — Depth of their need Page 196

Chapter VIII

Sketch of history and extent of Protestant missions — Four questions involved — Are such missions in South America warranted? — Evidence already presented — Additional considerations — Can Protestant missions avoid Roman opposition? — If not, should they be continued? — How may they secure adequate recognition and support ? Page 217

Bibliography Page 257

Index Page 263

ILLUSTRATIONS

Avenida Central, Rio de Janeiro ; Opened Through the City in 1904 Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

A Group of Alcaldes of Peru; Village Presidents, Descendants of the Incas 6

Cuzco, Peru; Ancient Inca Capital 14

Docks and Grain Elevators at Buenos Aires, Argentina . 36

Gathering Coffee, Sao Paulo, Brazil 42

Immigrant Station, Sao Paulo; the "Ellis Island" of

Brazil 72

Methodist School for Boys, Concepcion, Chile ... 88

Modem PubHc School, Sao Paulo, Brazil .... 92

The Old Jesuit Church in Cuzco, Peru 116

Statue of General Bolivar, and Senate Building, Lima, Peru 122

Santa Lucia, a Pleasure Ground of Santiago, Chile . . 122

Office of Leading Newspaper, El Mer curio, Santiago, Chile 152 Avenue of Palm Trees in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . .186 Arequipa, Peru; Mount Misti in the Distance . . .186

Fountain in Buenos Aires, Argentina 190

Loads of Sugar Cane, Bahia, Brazil 206

Indians in Bolivia 206

Harbor, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 220

Mackenzie College, Sao Paulo, Brazil 246

Map End of hook

Chapter I

I. The early peoples. The origin and character of the earliest South American civihzation are completely hidden from view. The most ancient traces of man on the continent are the " kitchen-midden " found on the coast of Peru, consisting of sea shells and refuse, mixed with fragments of earthen pots and ashes and occasionally the implements used by these primitive people. After these men, who lived on sea-food, there came more advanced tribes of whom we know nothing except what may be inferred from their pottery and textures found in the deepest layers of the soil. This development, such as it was, was confined to the sea coast. It was followed by a wonderful civilization on the high tablelands. Where this civilization came from is a mystery. We know nothing of how long it lasted or what its nature was except as its architectural ruins show that it had Oriental kinships and that it was as interesting as it was powerful. These ruins can be seen well to-day at Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia, just south of Lake Titacaca. Immense stone pillars and gateways, which must have been brought from great distances, prove that a people lived on these high tablelands in centuries which we cannot fix now, akin to the race which left its massive monuments in Central America and Mexico, and capable of as great achievements as the ancient Egyptians. Of their ideas and language we know nothing ; but it is evident that their influence extended from Colombia on the North to Chile on the South, and as far as Tucuman and the Gran Chaco in what is now Argentina.

This ancient pre-Inca civilization disappeared centuries before the discovery of America. Its remains, however, were scattered over the whole Andean plateau and " on this base of an ancient culture, not entirely lost in its effects, although its remembrance had disappeared from the memory of men, a new era of splendor easily revived " under the dominion of the Incas.^ Prescott's " History of the Conquest of Peru " presents the classic picture of the Inca civilization, but it is hard to separate fact from fable in the authorities on which all such accounts must be based. The Incas had no written language or literature, and while "there exist ancient chronicles written by some of the conquerors and missionaries . . . it is impossible to place absolute confidence in these narratives." ^ So that the real character of the empire of the Incas and the conditions of the South American people at the time of the Spanish conquest are but uncertainly known to us. It seems clear, however, that there was a widespread, socialistic, theocratic civilization organized and administered by the Incas, and reaching from Colombia to central Chile and the Argentine. Wonderful schemes of irrigation and not less wonderful systems of roads were constructed. Armies were organized which brought the whole Andean plateau under the Inca sovereigns, who appear to have possessed from the eleventh century,

» Garland, "Peru in 1906," 5. » Ibid., 11.

when tradition says they first came upon the scene, a sacred, semi-divine character. The Inca empire had reached its greatest prosperity in the generation before the Spaniards came, and the disruption of that prosperity by civil war was one of the conditions which played into Pizarro's hands when, with a handful of audacious desperadoes like himself, he came for glory and gold.

Apart from the Incas the only other great people in South America, whom we can identify, were the Caras of Ecuador. Tradition says that they came from the South in the seventh century and invaded the seaboard of central Ecuador, and by the thirteenth century the outlines of their empire, which was ruled by a male succession, appear. The Cara kingdom reached its zenith at the end of the fourteenth century, after which it was overthrown and absorbed by the Incas. The Caras were a vigorous stock, however, and survived the Inca conquest and also " outlived the decimating tyranny of the Spaniards, so that ninety-five per cent of the present population [of Ecuador] is composed of their descendants." ^

The Incas and the Caras are the only South American races which attained any sort of organized and advanced civilization. And their civilization was weak and inarticulate. History has shown us in their fate the frailty of a socialistic order. Under the Incas the State controlled everything — agriculture, commerce, marriage, work and play. The result was that when the central government fell, the whole civilization collapsed.

Those thousands of functionaries who spent their lives in superintending the furniture, the dress, the work, the * Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, aSgf.

very cookery, of the families under their charge, and inflicting corporal chastisement on those whom they surprised in a fault, might succeed in forming a correct and regular society, drilled like the bees in a hive, might form a nation of submissive slaves, but could never make a nation of men; and this is the deep cause that explains the irremediable collapse of this Peruvian society under the vigorous blows of a handful of unscrupulous Spaniards. It was a skilfully constructed machine, which worked like a chronometer; but when once the mainspring was broken, all was over.i'

Beyond the empires of the Incas and Caras the native peoples were Indians with a primitive social and political order, not very different probably from the Indians of the present time. The strongest and most virile race among them were the Araucanians of Chile, who showed themselves well nigh unconquerable and whose sturdy, truculent qualities characterize the Chilean people of to-day. In Brazil, covering one-half of the continent, and with an Indian population whose size is absolutely unknown to us, there was only a stagnant and rudimentary civilization, and the Brazilian Indians melted away before the white man's coming even more pitifully than the Indians of the Andean plateau.^

The savage Indians of South America, whom the discoverers found, were tame and feeble in comparison with the Indians of North America, and while the civilization of the Incas surpassed that of the Aztecs in Mexico, their resisting power was as nothing in comparison with the energy and fierceness of the Aztec race. The differences between North and South America to-day are not more the transported differences between the Latin and the Germanic peoples

iReville, "The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru," igSf. 2 Pawson, " South American Republics," Vol. I, 298!

than the continuance of the ancient and primitive dissimilarities. " It is a common misconception on the part of the EngHsh pubHc that the racial basis of the South American peoples is Spanish or Portuguese. It is not so — it is Indian ; for it is only another misconception to suppose that the native races were wiped out by the Conquistadores." ^ They were decimated by disease and misuse, but at the same time they were made the stock upon which the Latin blood from Europe was grafted. To this day no small part of the diversities of character among the South American republics is due to the differences in the Indian racial stocks — Quichua, Aymara, Araucanian, Guarany; and in the Latin racial grafts — Galician, Basques, Catalonian, Andalusian, Portuguese.

II. The discoverers and explorers. Brazil was one of the first parts of South America to be discovered and the men who really found it were not Spaniards but Portuguese, though Pinzon, a Spaniard of Palos, and one of the companions of Columbus, was the first European to see the new continent. Before Pinzon reached the limit of his journey, the mouth of the Amazon, Portugal had despatched Pedro Alvarez Cabral, who in April, 1500, sighted what is now the State of Bahia. The Portuguese were looking for such a treasure as Spain soon afterwards found in Peru and Mexico and upon Cabral's return and report, Amerigo Vespucci, whose name was given to the new world, and the greatest techincal navigator of the age, was sent to explore. He looked for gold and spices and civilized inhabitants and found nothing but the brazil-wood, a dye wood well known and highly valued in Europe, of a bright red color which gave it

^The Times. London, South America Supplement, August 30, 1910, 11.

its name, " wood the color of fire." This name soon displaced the name of Santa Cruz which had been given to the land, and it became " the country of brazil wood," or, more briefly, Brazil. For thirty years Brazil was left unsettled. There was greater wealth elsewhere, but increasing French trade led Portugal to recognize the need of occupying the land in some formal way, and Martin Affonso de Souza founded the first colony at Sao Vincento, near the great coffee port of Santos, in January, I/B32. The newcomers soon pressed up to the high tablelands only a few miles from the sea, and another settlement was founded near the present city of Sao Paulo. The people intermarried with the Indians and struck out into the beautiful interior. The Paulistas, as they are called, became a stirring, capable race, the European element increasing with fresh immigration and showing also a capacity of reproduction superior to the Indian. As a result of the success of these colonies, the whole coast of Brazil was divided into twelve feudal fiefs or captaincies, and assigned to courtiers. Six permanent colonies resulted, and ultimately the four centers for the settlement of the country became Sao Paulo, Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. The sugar industry was soon established at Pernambuco. The law of Portugal forbade the enslavement of the Indians save as punishment for crime, but Brazil paid no attention to the law, and with the establishment of the sugar trade in Bahia, the import of Africans began between the two continents, which were not far apart. The Brazilian occupation was confined to the coast, and to-day there are still vast unexplored areas in the interior of the land.

Columbus himself began the Spanish exploration of

South America. On his third voyage he sighted the Venezuelan coast on August i, 1498. The country was then inhabited by numerous Indian tribes who were not of a pacific character and who bitterly fought against the cruelties and enslavements of the Spaniards. Not until 1545 were permanent settlements effected in the interior. On his fourth and last voyage in 1502 Columbus sailed along the Colombian shore, but no attempt to conquer the country was made until 1508, when Ojeda effected a settlement on the coast. In 1536 Quesada undertook the subjugation of the Chibchas, a civilized people similar to the Incas on the high plateau, and established his capitol, the present city of Bogota, near the site of the Chibcha capitol. On his fourth voyage Columbus sailed on to Panama and planted a colony on the Isthmus which the Indians drove away. Not until 1570 was a settlement effected by Diego da Nicuera, governor of the province of Castilla del Oro, which extended from the Gulf of Darien to Cape Gracias a Dios. In 15 13 Balboa crossed the Isthmus after a journey of twenty-six days and discovered the Pacific Ocean, in the name of the King of Spain, claiming it and all the land it laved. Darien, founded by Enciso in 151 1, and Panama, founded by Davila in 15 18, became the great centers of Spanish exploration, and as these were the treasure ports from which the gold of Peru was shipped, they attracted adventurers from all lands.

It was Pizarro who opened this wealth of Peru to the world and established Spanish dominion on the whole Andean plateau. In 1532, after several experimental expeditions with a little company of one hundred and two foot soldiers and seventy-two horses, the daring adventurer seized the Inca emperor at

Cajamarca, overpowered his futile soldiery and took possession of Peru, gathering in as the first booty gold worth more than four millions sterling. Pizarro wasted no time and stood on no scruples. The Inca emperor he slew, the wealth he confiscated, and within half a dozen years the whole of the vast region ruled by the Inca power was overrun and subdued. Pizarro's lieutenant, Benalcazar, conquered the northern region of Ecuador and entered Quito on December 6, 1534. Pizarro's brother, Gonzalo, was appointed Governor of the Province of Quito, and here, as elsewhere, the Spaniards apportioned the land and people among themselves and established feudal estates on which they lived upon the labor of the natives. To the south of Peru, Pizarro's triumph was even easier, and his brother Hernando was given charge of Bolivia. Almagro, another of Pizarro's lieutenants, was sent further south to Chile, but here he encountered a vigorous, hardy people, not debilitated by the weakening socialism of the Incas. Individual ownership of property, rough struggle with nature and men, had made the Chilean tribes strong and virile, and though Almagro was victorious in his battle he soon turned back from such an inhospitable and goldless land. Returning to dispute with Pizarro his possession of the wealth of Peru, Almagro fell at Pizarro's hands and the conquest of Chile was accomplished in 1540-45 by another lieutenant, Pedro Valdivia, who after heroic marches and campaigns subdued the land and set up the landed aristocracy which rules the country to this day. In the thirty years following Valdivia's invasion, settlers from Chile and Bolivia passed over the Andes and established Santiago de Estero, Mendoza and Cordoba in western Argentina.

THE GREAT PAST II

Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires in 1536, although it was not till thirty years later that the settlement was securely established. The natural approach from Europe to the valley of the Rio de la Plata and its tributaries was, of course, direct by sea, and Juan Diaz de SoHs, coming by water, is credited with having discovered the great river in 15 15. The explorer lost his life at the hands of the Uruguayan Indians, and it is an odd fact that Paraguay, far inland, was an earlier settlement than Uruguay on the sea. A settlement was made on the site of Asuncion, the present Paraguayan capital, in 1536, while the first permanent establishments in Uruguay were not set up until the Jesuits came in 1624.

The rapidity with which the Spanish explorers overran the western and southern sections of the continent is extraordinary. In fifty years they had laid the foundations of practically all the Spanish states which are now organized as nine independent republics. One reason for the rapidity of conquest was the fact that the Spaniards had not come as agricultural settlers, but as adventurers for gold. They were looking for quick and easy wealth. They did no more work themselves than was avoidable. They were equal to any heroism but to no industry. The Indian populations were impressed to support and enrich them. The newcomers passed on to their children no inheritance of industrious conflict with common conditions, no disposition to seek wealth in the orderly development of common resources, no agricultural knowledge, but only the dominant ideas of quick action or feudal ease.

III. The governors. Upon the discovery of the new world, the Pope made a division of the globe between Portugal and Spain, and the two countries, by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, had fixed the line of division. The lands which they discovered they claimed to possess and undertook at once to govern. The era of independent adventurers and proprietors soon passed, and the two nations marked out provinces and viceroyalties and organized permanent political institutions.

In Brazil the captaincies were reabsorbed by the Portuguese crown, and Thome de Souza was appointed governor-general and arrived in Bahia in April, 1549, with six Jesuits, the first to set foot in the new world. There were struggles with the French and the Dutch, and in the South with the Spaniards, but Portuguese power was steadily solidified. The colonists were heavily taxed for the benefit of Portugal. Brazil learned thus early to bear a crushing burden, or it could not endure to-day the load of internal revenue duties which retards the development of the land and makes the prices even of home manufactures exorbitant. " All goods imported from the mother country paid twelve per cent duty. Salt and iron were taxed one hundred per cent. Every article introduced into the mining districts was surcharged 2d. per lb." ^ A printing press appearing in Rio was ordered to be destroyed by the Court. The country was supported on slaves and forced Indian labor. Nevertheless, the land with its immense resources and small population, less than 3,000,000 people in 1800, the number of Indians unknown, in a country as big as Russia or the United States, greatly prospered,^ and in 1807 John, the Prince Regent of Portugal, fleeing from Napoleon, transferred the Por-

» OakenfuU, " Brazil in 1909," 67. » Ibid., 62,

THE GREAT PAST I3

tuguese Court from Lisbon to Rio, and soon raised the colony to coordinate rank with the mother country. This transfer of the Court transformed Brazil. In spite of the Regent's dread of Liberalism, the opening of free ports, the allowance of free manufacture, the tide of immigration, the introduction of the printing press and the advent of the best elements from Portugal produced a steady development of political consciousness. The adoption of a liberal constitution by Spain in 1720 led, by example, to a demand for constitutional government in Brazil which was taken up by Dom Pedro, John's son, and issued in the establishment of an independent monarchy with Dom Pedro as emperor.

Pizarro was the ruler of the Spanish territories south of Panama until his assassination by Almagro's followers in 1541, in Lima which Pizarro had built as his capital city. Upon Pizarro's death the right to nominate a governor reverted to the Spanish Crown, and in 1^42 the viceroyalty of Peru was established. For nearly three centuries Peru was governed in the name of the King of Spain by a succession of thirty-eight viceroys, and when there was no viceroy, power was provisionally exercised by a Court of Justice, or, as it was called, the Real Audiencia de Lima, founded in 1544.

Though the viceroys who followed each other in rapid succession were selected from among the greatest grandees of Spain, they were held to an increasingly rigid account, and the smallest concession to commerce or a failure to send home the utmost farthing which could be wrung from the people was severely and peremptorily punished. Their jurisdiction extended over all Spanish South America; the captains-general of New Granada, Venezuela, and Chile, the royal audience of Bolivia, the president of Ecuador, and the governors of Tucuman, Paraguay, and Buenos Aires being all nominally subject to their orders. But in practice these widely separated divisions of the continent were largely independent. Lima was, however, the political, commercial, and social center of South America. To its port came from Panama the goods destined for Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and even Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Many of the viceroys were lovers of letters, and the university produced scholars and authors not unworthy of comparison with those of the old world. The continual influx of Spaniards of distinguished Castilian ancestry and gentle training made the language of even the common people singularly pure, and the sonorous elegance of the Spanish tongue as spoken during the classical period has been best preserved in the comparative isolation of Peru. The influence of the bishops and priests, the Jesuits and the Franciscans, was hardly inferior to that of the officials. The clergy controlled education; every village had its parish priest who compelled the Indians to go to mass and made them pay heavily for the privilege; the Inquisition was early introduced and performed its dreadful functions without let or hindrance.!

The Spaniards founded cities, which the Indians had never done, with the exception of Cuzco in Peru, Quito in Ecuador, and Charcas in Bolivia. And in spite of all hindrances, the country slowly developed, although not without grave retrogressions. The natural efforts of Spain to monopolize all trade provoked smuggling and illegal commerce, and in order to administer the vast territories more efficiently, they were divided, in the eighteenth century, into three viceroyalties, (i) New Granada, embracing Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, (2) Peru, corresponding to Peru of to-day, and (3) Buenos Aires, embracing Paraguay and what is now the Argentine and the audiencia of Chanos or Bolivia. Chile remained attached to Peru as a semi-independent captaincy-general.

* Dawson, " South American Republics," Vol. II, 67flf.

u u

The dominant object of both Portuguese and Spaniards in the government of South America was the rapid exploitation of the available v^ealth of the land, especially gold and silver. The Europeans did not come to settle, to find a home for freedom, to increase the local v^ealth and prosperity. They came to deplete that wealth. Their ambition was to return with riches and power to the homelands. They brought with them also only such political ideals and institutions as they knew. The characteristic form of government in Spain had been town or communal. Spain was not a centralized or unified state. Basques, Galicians and Andalusians were about as distinct in character and temper as diverse nationalities. For centuries Spain had been a set of loosely joined provinces and the provincial governments were made up of municipalities. These characteristics found expression in the new world. There was no strong sense of nationality, no notion of state government resting on personal rights and duties. There were only the old ideas of semi-independent feudal divisions, with a ruling privileged class and an underworld of serfs.