The Colonial Heritage

...The history of Venezuela, Peru and Argentina is equally stained in blood...

...Surely it would be absurd to speak of the Spanish triad as the ruling force in Brazil, Mexico or Chile at the time of World War I, though this pattern of power prevails even now in some other Latin American republics...

...The drive for industrialization is one of the many aspects of this campaign, a part of the refreshing new Latin American nationalism which is not sufficiently understood in the United States...

...Since human feelings were different in the North and the South, history took a different course in the two areas...

...Thus, the young Latin American republics inherited the rigid social stratification established by colonial masters, a system which provided the upper classes with all sorts of comforts and privileges, leaving the masses of the people only the blessing of poverty...

...Thus, Latin America today remains a mixture of modern aspirations and old prejudices...

...The material they publish—serious political and economic articles, literary essays, surveys of local and international art—would find no readers in a society that consisted of a self-sufficient nobility and masses of illiterate serfs...

...This code of honor of the Latin American ruling classes in the early years of independence negated their initial advantages, in comparison with North America, in accumulated wealth or (using the modern term) the capital at their disposal...

...What counted was not the principles solemnly proclaimed in organic laws but the psychology of men...

...They initiated modern labor legislation after World War I, in faithful accordance with the suggestions of the International Labor Office...

...Whatever the flaws in the governments of the two nations, they maintained the spirit of hard work and a relentless drive for improvement in the people...

...They were better off with a dozen or more capitals, each with a sovereign head of state, each sovereign surrounded by his own court with diplomats and generals, each a source of privileges, lucrative appointments and honors, each tied by blood with the best local families...

...Physicians, architects, educators and journalists, some of them with French training, became more conspicuous on the social scene of Latin American cities...

...What is more important, they tried to improve the educational system and modernize public administration in the more advanced republics...

...But, because of the deep difference between Spanish and British colonization, liberation did not mean the same thing in the two areas...

...A nobleman may enrich himself through the labor of slaves on his plantation, by speculating in real estate, lending money, obtaining gifts from the government or graft from the people, but he betrays his birthright if he uses his muscles for work...

...The intellectuals in Latin America are essentially carriers of liberal, democratic ideas...

...Once free from foreign tutelage, responding to the challenge of the austere environment, they established an essentially plebeian society on virgin soil...

...The progress of the campaign is marked by clearing the area of dictators, consolidating democratic regimes, modernizing ways of life...

...Without the incentive to work, which is the mainspring of economic progress, the Latin American nations were bound to fall back while the former British colonies were advancing...

...The difference in the social fabric of the American nations that emerged in the 19th century—and, more specifically, the difference in the composition of the upper classes—determined the contrast in their further development, even though the constitutions of the South were molded largely after the Northern pattern...

...Molding the new nations required compromising divergent interests and ideas...

...New members joined the old triad of landowner, priest and soldier—the intellectual, the businessman, the professional politician, all risen from a humble environment to mingle with the descendants of the landowner families...

...2. The Colonial Heritage WHY IS IT THAT the Spanish colonies in the South of the Western Hemisphere, which once were economically far ahead of the British colonies in the North, have fallen behind...

...Such reigns of violence were, of course, detrimental to the development of modern economic civilization, but the ruling classes were well off and satisfied with the status quo...

...It brought little change in the social fabric and economic structure of the respective nations, and little improvement in the standard of living of the masses...

...Economic improvement through work—the goal of the people in the North—demanded peace and the expansion of the United States from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific...

...The monolith of the Spanish colonial empire was shattered, but its spirit remained alive...

...The U. S. and Canada did not embody all the golden dreams of the early pioneers, but they did go farther toward realizing aspirations for individual freedom and equality than other nations then existing...

...But customs and attitudes rooted in centuries do not change radically in a couple of decades...

...A society based on such a foundation tends to consider manual work distasteful and, to some extent, this applies to all economic activities except those reserved for the hereditary aristocracy...

...But intervals of peace were followed by outbursts of violence and revolutions...

...It is being fought on the ideological and cultural levels rather than by force of arms...

...The history of Latin America in the 19th century—with continuous clashes of brutal force, wars, revolutions, seizures of power, elected presidents becoming ruthless dictators and bloody dictators transforming themselves into elected presidents—was colorful and dramatic but void of internal dynamism...

...Why is it that even now the South cannot come closer to the North, despite its abundance of natural resources, the high quality of its population, the competence of its economists, architects and engineers, and the efforts of its governments...

...The transformation, slow and spotty at the beginning, was accelerated during and after World War I. The middle classes became more articulate, their influence increased...

...The independence leaders perpetuated this system in their new republics...

...The Spanish triad—the rich landowner, priest and professional soldier—stood at the top of the social pyramid, native serfs, imported slaves and common workers at the bottom...

...Bolivia experienced 60 revolutions within a century and had seven presidents in the 1936-46 decade...

...New waves of immigrants were reaching the shores of Latin America, bringing new blood and new ideas...

...The old social pyramid began to crack...

...The weight of the intellectuals and middle classes in Latin America today is evidenced by the high standards of local newspapers...

...Thus, people have been on the move since the early days of independence, but the United States fo-ught only one major war in the first century of its existence, a war to preserve the unity of the nation...

...Of course, along with the aristocrats, humble people were in the ranks of the independence armies just as other humble people fought under the Spanish banner...

...The most striking manifestation of the clash between modern times and the colonial heritage is the state of its educational institutions...

...the backbone of their resistance had been broken by bloody repression of Indian revolts before the wars for independence...

...Special privileges for the rich were not completely abolished but were checked in time by the people, and opportunity for all was protected by law and custom...

...The ruling classes of Latin America, on the contrary, had nothing to gain from unification of their continent...

...But one has to travel to Southeast Asia or Egypt to observe such miserable rural schools or such a lack of village schools as in some Latin American countries...

...The distribution of economic power in our hemisphere changed drastically in the century that elapsed between the Latin American wars for independence and World War I.In terms of accumulated wealth, large cities, ports, established foreign trade and even the technical equipment of plantations, the liberated Spanish colonies probably had a better start than the United States and Canada...

...The British colonies in the North were founded by settlers who came to the New World from England and other parts of Northwestern Europe in search of a place to live, relying on their own efforts...

...It is enough to examine the leading newspapers in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and Mexico to realize that they address themselves to steadily growing social groups and are at the same time their spokesmen...

...Colombia lost 100,000 lives in the famous Thousand Day Revolution, and another 100,000—according to local estimates—fell as victims of political murders and terror in the late '40s and early '50s...

...Although closely connected with the old ruling classes, the intellectuals became spokesmen for the middle classes—businessmen and craftsmen—slowly emerging from the aristocratic society...

...The war for liberation from the colonial heritage is still being fought in Latin America...

...In comparison with the changes which took place in this period in North America and Northwestern Europe, the 19th century in Latin America was a time of economic and social stagnation, the Dark Age of the Southern Hemisphere.Beginning of the New Era: By the tur.n of the century, things began to change...

...Relations among the sister republics degenerated into protracted wars of each against all...

...Some leaders of the independence movement were open to the liberal ideas of their time, but most of them had no quarrel with the oolonial socio-economic system...

...It took a long time before new social groups appeared on the Latin American scene as champions of equality, social justice and economic progress...

...The magnificent National University of Mexico is second to no university campus in the world...

...Why should the masters of the land sacrifice these advantages to Bolivar's dreams of unity for Latin America...

...During the first century of independence, some Latin American republics enjoyed considerable periods of political stability under the regime of a president or dictator strong enough to crush all opposition...

...Thus, the area was divided among a dozen independent states, and the struggle for power among local rulers resulted in a chain of border clashes...

...In contrast, the wars for independence in Latin America were essentially revolts of local (Creole) ruling classes against the appointees of the Spanish Crown, who appropriated the lion's share of the produce of the subjugated land and people...

...They had no fear of opposition from the lower classes...

...Foreign capital penetrated the area, bringing railroads, electricity, modern utilities...