Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

Here is a book that should be read and digested by every one interested in the future of the Latin genius. It is written by a young Peruvian diplomatist. It is full of life and of thought. History, politics, economic and social science, literature, philosophy—M. Calderon is familiar with all and touches upon all with competence and without pedantry. The entire evolution of the South American republics is comprised in the volume which he now submits to the European public.

M. Calderon, a pupil in the school of the best modern historians, seeks in the past the laws of the future development of the Latin republics. By means of a scholarly and painstaking analysis, he shows us, in the South American Creole, a Spaniard of the heroic age, slowly transformed by miscegenation and the influence of climate; he sees in him, modified by time and enfeebled by cross-breeding, the most ancient characteristics of the Iberian race; and he expounds, in a few pages, the heroic epoch in which the individualism of Spain broke out into the audacious adventure of the conquistadores and the savage mysticism of the Inquisitors.

Then comes the colonial phase, with its disappointments, its illusions, its abuses and errors; the domination of an oppressive theocracy, of crushing monopolies; the insolence of privileged castes, and the indignities of the Peninsular agents. A thirst for independence gradually possesses the Spanish and Portuguese colonies; they rebel not merely against the economic and fiscal tyranny which is crushing them, but also against the rigours of a political and moral tutelage that leaves them no political liberty. It is a great and terrible crisis. The movement of liberation fulfils itself in three phases: firstly, the colonies seek to obtain reforms of the metropolis, still anxious to remain loyal; then they consider the question of submitting themselves to European monarchs; and, finally, the republican idea appears, develops, and is victorious.

A cycle of pioneers and a cycle of liberators: M. Calderon expounds this tragic history with a sense of gratitude. He examines with remarkable insight the fundamental causes of the Revolution—the excesses of Spanish absolutism; the influence of the Encyclopædia and the doctrines of 1789; the example of North America; the gold of England, and the intervention of Canning; the various converging forces whose fulminating combination created a new world, ill prepared for social life, fragmentary, and in travail.

M. Calderon transports us into certain of the portions of this newborn America. He makes this the occasion of setting before us a whole gallery of vigorously painted pictures. The field of vision is occupied successively by Paraguay, with the long dictatorship of its first caudillo, the gloomy, taciturn Francia, with his authoritative traditions and warlike instincts; Uruguay, with its intensely national life; Ecuador, bearing the heavy imprint of Garcia Moreno; Peru, with its tormented history, the powerful but fortunate dictatorship of Don Ramon Castilla and Manuel Pardo and the epidemic of speculation, the insanity of the saltpetre and guano booms, the abuse of loans, warfare and anarchy, and the present effort towards economic recovery and national stability; Bolivia, with the cold and crafty ambition of Santa-Cruz; Venezuela, with the gross and material audacity of Paez, and the empirical despotism of Guzman-Blanco, that politician without doctrines, avid of power, but a patriot and a paternal ruler. As M. Calderon says, the history of these Republics is difficult to distinguish from that of their caudillos, those representative men who personify, at any given moment, the virtues and vices of their peoples.