BOOK IV

FORMS OF POLITICAL ANARCHY

Revolution is general in Latin America. There the most civilised nations have been rent by civil wars. But there are a few republics in which these conflicts have been perpetual: such is the case in Central America and the Antilles. It seems as though the tropical climate must favour these disturbances. Assassinations of presidents, battles in the cities, collisions between factions and castes, inflammatory and deceptive rhetoric, all lead one to suppose that these equatorial regions are inimical to peace and organisation.

There are two South American peoples in which Jacobinism has become a national malady, in which men of every creed are involved: they are Colombia and Ecuador. Their tragic history shows us a curious form of Ibero-American anarchy: namely, religious anarchy.

Chapter I

Colombia

Conservatives and radicals—General Mosquera: his influence—A statesman: Rafael Nuñez, his doctrines political.

A certain writer of New Granada, Rafael Nuñez, a President and a party-leader, writes that "there is not in South America a country more iconoclastic, politically speaking, than Colombia." Republican evolution there has been peculiar: it has witnessed perpetual anarchy, like other American democracies, and civil wars as long and as sanguinary as those of the Argentine, but no long succession of tenacious caudillo, personifications of local discord, whose ambitions determine the intention of political conflict.

In Colombia men have fought for ideas; anarchy there has had a religious character. The parties had definite programmes, and in the conflict of incompatible convictions they soon arrived at the Byzantine method of destruction. Public and private wealth was exhausted, the land was dispeopled, and inquisitors of religion or free thought condemned their enemies to exile. "With us," Rafael Nuñez admits "there has been an excess of political dogmatism." A Jacobin ardour divides mankind; the fiery Colombian race is impassioned by vague and abstract ideas. The champions of liberty and the supporters of absolutism apply their principles to an unstable republic; they legislate for a democracy devoid of passions and inimical castes; they build the future state by means of syllogisms.

These sanguinary struggles have a certain rude grandeur. On the continent men fight for crafty caudillos, for the conquest of power and fiscal treasure; the oligarchy which occupies the seat of government defends its bureaucratic well-being from the parties in opposition. In Colombia exalted convictions are the motives of political enmities; men abandon fortune and family, as in the great religious periods of history, to hasten to the defence of a principle. These hidalgos waste the country and fall nobly, with the Semitic ardour of Spanish crusaders. Heroes abound in the fervour of these battles. Obedient to the logic of Jacobinism, Colombia perishes, but the truth is saved.[1]

The liberal party, victorious in 1849, promoted a vast democratic programme: the romantic liberalism of the French thinkers, the socialistic ideas of the Revolution of 1848, had reached Colombia. The Colombians desired not only the liberation of the slaves, the abolition of industrial monopolies, and the autonomy of the communes, but also the realisation of the needs of democracy; all the political liberties, subject to prudent reserves; direct and universal suffrage, trial by jury, the suppression of the army, the abolition of capital punishment, the institution of universities and scientific diplomas, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, who in America were the obstinate supporters of the old colonial system. Federation, a weak executive, a secular State, and powerful communes: such was the aspiration of the liberals. A fraction of the party bore a symbolic name: it was known as Golgotha. In their civil wars the Catholics chose Jesus of Nazareth for their patron. Radicalism even aspired to religious consecration; it founded a Christian anarchy, like that of the primitive evangelical communities. It preached fraternity and liberty, condemning political power.

Nothing could be more disastrous to a disorganised republic than rationalism of this type. It applied the principles formulated by the extremest idealists in highly cultivated countries. Colombia, shaken by revolutions, had need of a strong government; radicalism destroyed it. There was no provincial life, yet it created the omnipotent commune; it suppressed the army in a democracy threatened by civil and external war, established trial by jury in a country swarming with illiterates, and granted liberties wholesale to a revolutionary people; it accorded political rights to the negro and the Indian, servile and ignorant as they were, and demanded federation, which is to say that it multiplied political disorder. Foreseeing the errors of the future, Bolivar told the Colombians: "I can plainly see our work destroyed and the maledictions of the centuries falling upon our heads."

From 1849 to 1853 the liberal party struggled to impose its doctrines. The Constitution of 1853, celebrated in Colombian annals, was doctrinaire and radical; it proclaimed the liberty of the press, of thought, and of suffrage. By separating Church and State it provoked a religious war and accepted a moderated political centralisation. Thus the excesses of unity and of federation were avoided.

The liberal charter gave rise to lengthy quarrels. The States gave themselves conflicting and opposite constitutions; some were conservative and reinforced authority; some were radical and founded an anarchical democracy; some were liberal and extended the suffrage; some were moderate and conciliatory, uniting the ideas of all parties in unstable equilibrium. In a country already divided by religious questions this variety of status created a perpetual disorder.

A new Constitution, more precise than that of 1853, established the federal system without restrictions; it was the triumph of the "Golgothas" over the "Draconians," the radicals over the classic liberals. The battle was renewed with fresh vigour. The religious communities lost their legal character, and could no longer acquire property; the State usurped their wealth and ruined them as in Mexico. The impetuous radicals sapped not only the ecclesiastical power, but the political power also. They reduced the presidential period to two years, granted the provinces full sovereignty, prohibited the death penalty without exception, conceded the absolute liberty of the press, and authorised the buying and selling of arms.

Excessive liberalism disorganised the country. Colombia suffered much from this vain idealism; she became the social laboratory of professors of Utopianism. The radicals created fresh elements of discord; they attacked authority, religion, and national unity. In 1870, in the face of bankruptcy, the party abandoned its original extremeness; it no longer professed anti-militarism, nor desired the complete separation of Church and State. Sceptical as to the benefits of the suffrage, it re-enforced the executive, in spite of its original federal creed.

The conservatives governed the country from the dissolution of Greater Colombia, in 1829, until 1849; they performed the work of organisation. Without forming an oligarchy, as in Venezuela and Chili, they represented permanent interests and effective powers; religion, the colonial nobility, and the patricians who won autonomy for their country. They were conservatives in so far as they opposed the radicals, but in 1832 they granted a political charter in which they accepted liberal principles; they respected municipal liberties and the liberty of the press, surrounded all the powers of the State with prestige and authority, as also the senate and the magistrature, created a Council of State, so necessary in an improvised democracy, protected Catholicism, and limited the suffrage. To be a citizen a man required "an assured subsistence without subjection to any one whatever in the quality of servant or workman." In the social world they accepted the old division of castes. They did not free the slaves, and they tolerated the exportation of human merchandise. The radicals protested against this shameful traffic; in 1842 regulations were passed affecting black immigration, and 1849 marked the fall of the conservative party. Then arose eloquent demagogues, who preached a social gospel much like that of the French revolutionists of 1848.

Political life was less imperfect in Colombia than in other Latin democracies. The opposition did sometimes triumph in the electoral struggle; thus in 1837 Dr. Marques was elected president against the will of General Santander, the government leader. I have spoken of the solid organisation of the parties: however, there was no lack of caudillos, whose influence in neo-Granzdan history was a lasting one.

The first President, General Santander, was one of Bolivar's lieutenants, as was Flores in Ecuador and Paez in Venezuela. He inherited the moral authority of the Liberator, and governed pacifically from 1831. He aspired to absolutism, founded schools, and organised the public finances; in London he commenced the negotiation of the Colombian debt, declared Panama a free port, and endeavoured to enforce unity and peace; conspirators and revolutionaries he shot.

After the founder of the nation came two strong personalities who hold a prominent place in the history of Colombia: General Mosquera and Dr. Rafael Nuñez.[2] Their long rule is comparable to that of Garcia-Moreno in Ecuador, or of Paez and Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela.

General Mosquera was at first a conservative leader; his education, his origin, and his travels in Europe all divided him from the democracy. He had the gift of command, which had been developed by the direction of armies in his youth. President in 1845, he developed the national wealth. His government, which lasted from 1845 to 1849, was distinguished by an intense material progress: railways were constructed, steam navigation commenced on the River Magdalena, the teaching in the universities was improved, the finances were organised, the service of the debt was assured, and the moral prestige of the country improved.

This conservative President had liberal leanings. He presented laws to Congress which made his old supporters uneasy; the abolition of the "tenth" or tithe paid to the Church, and the diminution of fiscal protection. It is difficult to believe that this lucky soldier conceived the wise ambition to transform his government into a liberal régime without violence. Mosquera knew that after 1848 and its echoes in Colombia the basis of his future popularity must be a violent liberalism, and he became a federal and a democratic leader. As military dictator he placed himself at the head of the revolution of 1860, seized the capital, Bogota, and was elected President in 1861. He imposed his variable will, changed his ideas and his party in order to retain power, and attempted to govern above the law and above mankind.

GENERAL MOSQUERA.
President of Colombia (1845-1849, 1861-1864, 1865-1867).

Mosquera declared a Kulturkampf, separated Church and State, exiled the bishops, confiscated the goods of the convents, and, like Guzman-Blanco, created a national Church. Without the authorisation of the supreme power no priest could exercise his religious functions. The civil power was the supreme power; the Church and her ministers were subject thereto.

The President shot or suppressed his enemies, and imposed his policy by terror; he enthroned militarism. Faithful armies followed him, accustomed to victory. The domestic policy of New Granada did not satisfy his ambition; he aspired to restore the Greater Colombia, and dreamed the dream of Rosas and Santa-Cruz; the hegemony of his country to be forced upon other peoples. He declared war upon Ecuador, and was victorious. In 1864 he was followed by another liberal, Dr. Murillo-Torro. In 1865 the military caudillo resumed the reins of government. He was hostile to Congress, and proclaimed himself dictator; he violated the Constitution and the law, intervened in the struggles of other States, and sought an absolute and irresponsible authority. His own supporters conspired against him, and sent him into exile. In Colombia he was the indisputable authority, as Paez in Venezuela, from 1845 to 1867.

After this long empire came a period of civil Presidents and military Presidents, who moderated the ambitions of the liberals. Presently a new caudillo arose: Dr. Rafael Nuñez. Mosquera was first a conservative, then a liberal. Nuñez, a liberal, fomented a conservative reaction and dominated Colombian politics for twenty years.

At one time secretary to Mosquera, he had made a study of the evolution of great States. He was not only a leader, but also a diplomatist, and a philosopher in his political disinterestedness, his lasting moral influence, and the width of his views. A theorist like Balmaceda and Sarmiento, he none the less did not forget the inevitable imperfections of Colombia. He became President of the Senate in 1878, and a minister of the Reformation and head of the Republic in 1880. Democracy looked to him for a renaissance.

In the heart of the liberal party Dr. Nuñez directed a new independent group. He had been a radical in 1850, but he departed from the rigidity of his original beliefs before the persistent suggestions of experience. Why weaken the executive in an anarchical nation—why increase the national troubles by the bitterness of religious warfare? Nuñez became a liberal-conservative; he forgot his original socialistic principles, the theories of Louis Blanc and Saint-Simon, and applied a British common-sense to Colombian politics.[3]

His political ideas (expounded in various articles) were prudent and conciliatory; no sterile idealism dominated Dr. Nuñez. He believed, with many English statesmen, that "in politics there are no absolute truths, and all things may be good or evil according to opportunity and extent." This was the policy he opposed to Colombian dogmatism. He believed that "politics is indissolubly bound up with the economic problem."

A conservative in religion, tolerant in the art of governing, he taught the Jacobins of America some admirable lessons. "Our population," he wrote, "does not exceed three millions of inhabitants, the majority of whom are but slightly civilised. If the social fraction called upon by its aptitudes to the functions of government divides and subdivides itself and occupies itself in weakening itself we shall never succeed in doing anything of importance as legatees of the Peninsular domination." His ideal was a free oligarchy, coherent in intention, and in action persistent.

Equally lamentable were the division of the best class of the nation and the intolerance of the governing parties. Rafael Nuñez preached respect for minorities. "The absolute exclusion from the government of the parties in a minority," he said, "weakens the national spirit, envenoms discussion, and creates extraordinary dangers." Majorities have need of discussion and opposition. "The myopia of party spirit," adds the caudillo, "fails to perceive the virile vigour which a political group obtains by the mere fact of giving proofs of tolerance, justice, and respect for its defenceless adversary." "When for some extraordinary reason one of the great parties disappears, the surviving party splits up into fractions, and these fractions fight among themselves as bitterly as when they have to face a common enemy: even more bitterly."

The leader of the independents had studied political science not only in foreign books, but also in practice, in public life; he had a profound acquaintance with the country which he governed, and with the Latin American vices which are the incurable weakness of these new democracies. "We have no viceroy in Colombia," he said, "but anonymous rulers. We have a written liberty, but no practical liberty. We have a Republic, but only in name, for opinion is not expressed by the only legitimate means, which is the suffrage." "It is a grave error, generally accepted by us, that the sole object of a political party and all its efforts should tend toward the possession of the public power, represented by the leadership of the national army."

He defends the principle of authority as against anarchy. "The best of instruments, destined for the long and arduous task of civilising the human species."

Respect for the constituted powers is unknown in Colombia. All "dynamic mechanism" should have a governor, that is, a counterpoise to the predominant impulse. Nuñez writes: "Monarchies need liberal accessory institutions, and republics restrictive or conservative institutions, without which the former degenerate into autocracies and the latter into anarchies, which announce the approach of despotism." In default of the principle of authority, so necessary and generally so feeble in democracies, Rafael Nuñez sought for "elements of order in the moral domain."

He became a conservator; he protected religion, like Portales, in order to give a disorganised nation the firm unity of a law. The ex-radical ordered the teaching of religion in the schools. "Traitor!" cried his former supporters, but if he renounced his former dogmas it was in his intellectual prime, before the lamentable spectacle of an unstable republic. "Fanaticism," he wrote, "is not religion any more than demagogy is liberty; but between religion and morality there is an indissoluble bond."

Colombia had need of a stable internal law, of a morality. To obtain order Dr. Nuñez desired a Catholic unity; he abandoned his radical convictions, and put his trust in authority, religion, and moderate centralisation. But were not the articles of his new programme the result of a free examination of reality and of history? The leaders of the independents were inaugurating an experimental politics.

He accepted neither abstract principles nor theories imported from other continents. Free trade obtained in Colombia: it is the English economic dogma. "With us," explained the statesman, "free mercantile exchange simply transforms the artisan into a mere proletarian working man, into food for powder or a demagogue, for free trade practically leaves only two industries vigorous—commerce and agriculture—to which those who lack capital and credit cannot as a rule devote themselves." This caudillo wished to see a real autonomy based on a moderate protectionism: as President he fostered industries and condemned the bureaucracy; he knew that the latter favoured revolutions, and that men seldom fight in civil conflicts except to obtain public employment. "The motives for disturbing the peace," said he, "will be less and less powerful as the official system ceases to monopolise the opportunities of work."

Dr. Nuñez was a sociologist; he had studied Comte and Spencer; he wrote of society and its laws, starting from the liberalism of Lamartine to arrive at the British prudence of Guizot. An eminent Colombian, Don Miguel Antonio Caro, called him "the providential and necessary man," and demanded recognition of his political infallibility.

When he came into power in 1880 he was supported by the independents and the conservatives; men hoped for reform and peace as the result of his political action. Under his government public order was untroubled. He introduced economies in the finances, and realised, like Mosquera, many works of material progress; he founded a national bank, reformed the university, and convoked, like Bolivar, a Congress of plenipotentiaries at Panama.

Dr. Zaldua followed him in 1882. But the influence of the great caudillo was not yet at an end; he was re-elected in 1884 for a period of two years, and exercised a moral dictatorship. He proposed to a friendly Congress the revision of the Constitution of 1863.

He then applied his political ideas, condemning the two years' presidency, excessive federalism, and the licence and demagogy of the country; he organised a strong executive, conceded liberty to the Church, increased the duration of the presidential term, and initiated a prudent measure of concentration. The Constitution of 1885 ratified the triumph of the conservatives.

From that time forward the President was imperator; elected for six years in 1886, re-elected in 1892, he continued to exercise the supreme power at intervals. He lived at Carthagena, and Vice-Presidents (designated by himself) replaced him. He became the tutor of the Republic; the governors were his pro-consuls. He was the last great man produced by Colombia, that fruitful soil for politicians and men of letters.

Mosquera represented federalism and radicalism; Nuñez unity and tolerance. Fresh revolutions, conflicts between conservatives and liberals, have retarded the national development; new chiefs have arisen, demigods of the world of politics. The conservative work of Nuñez has proved sterile: Colombia is always the land of eloquence and Jacobinism, extravagant and excessive as the tropics themselves. She still awaits fresh dictators who shall organise the democracy of the future.

[1] In his book Desde Cerca (Paris, 1908) General Holguin writes that Colombia has known 27 civil wars. In that of 1879 she lost 80,000 men. She has spent 37 million pesos (gold) in revolutions.

[2] There was one demagogue President in this State who, when the slaves were freed, excited a conflict of castes: General Obaudo.

[3] Rafael Nuñez, La Reforma politica en Colombia, Bogota, 1885.