u 0 t ttw Shrolojjia/ PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. Division Section Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/southofpanama00ross_0 » SOUTH OF PANAMA Natural bridge, “Puente del Inca,” on the Transandine Railway SOUTH OF PANAMA BY EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS, PH. D., LL.D. Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, of '‘Social Control,” “Social Psychology,” Changing Chinese,” “Changing America, “The Old World in the New,” etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH MORE THAN EIGHTY PHOTOGRAPHS Author “The NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. Copyright, 1914, 1915, by The Century Co. Published April, 1915 To ERNESTO QUESADA Scholar and Thinker Eminent among the Pioneers in the Scientific Study of Human Society This Book is Dedicated PREFACE “In writing about the South Americans,” said one of our Consuls, “no doubt you will always bear in mind that it is the traditional policy of the United States to cultivate their friendship.” I have done nothing of the sort. My first obli- gation is not to National Policy but to Truth. Enough has been written in furtherance of our trade and diplomacy; it is high time for a candid examination of the facts. This book is not in- tended to help sell our goods below the Equator, but to interpret to Americans the people who, in consequence of the opening of the Panama Canal, have become new neighbors of ours. It is the pet sentiment of Pan- Americanism that the peoples of the two Americas are spiritual cous- ins. Are we not all children of the New World? The fact is that the British, the Norwegians, the Dutch, even the Germans, have much more in com- mon with us than the South Americans. On the other hand, their mental affinities are with the Latins of the Old World, rather than with us. The differences between us in ideas and ideals run far deeper than the ordinary traveler imagines. South America is the victim of a bad start. It was never settled by whites in the way that they settled the United States. All the European blood PREFACE from the Caribbean to Cape Horn probably does not exceed that to be found within the area in- closed by lines connecting Washington, Buffalo, Du- luth, and St. Louis. The masterful whites simply climbed upon the backs of the natives and ex- ploited them. Thus, pride, contempt for labor, caste, social parasitism, and authoritativeness in Church and State fastened upon South American society and characterize it still. It will be yet long ere it is transformed by such modern forces as Industry, Democracy, and Science. It would be unpardonable for us ever to be puffed up because we enjoy better social and civic health than is usual in South America. If our forefathers had found here precious metals and several millions of agricultural Indians, our social development would have resembled that of the peo- ples that grew up in New Spain. Not race ac- counts for the contrast in destiny between the two Americas, nor yet the personal virtues of the orig- inal settlers, but circumstances. Edward Alsworth Ross. Madison, Wisconsin. March, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 3 Buenaventura and the Choco — Over into the Cauca Valley — Cali the Sleepy — Life in a patio — Character of the Caucans — Americans in exile — The Biblical An- tioquians — Down the coast to Guayaquil — Yellow Jack and plague — The climb to Quito — The gold legend of Latacunga — Climatic contrasts — Degradation of the na- tives — Indians of the Sierra — The future of the Ecu- adorans — Why no immigrants. CHAPTER II PERU, THE ROOF OF THE CONTINENT . . . . .33 Why the coast is rainless — Rivers that empty into the air — Cargo-collecting — The spell of Peru — Make-up of the Peruvian people — White and mestizo — Lima, “ the city of the Kings ” — - Up to Cerro de Pasco — The highest American colony in the world — The upland natives — Horrible diseases — Arequipa — Life on the Plateau — The highest cultivation on the globe. CHAPTER III THE NATIVE RACES 64 Cuzco as a goal of pilgrimage — Enthusiasm for Ameri- can archeology — Remains of Incaic architecture — Megalithic mysteries — Victims of prehistoric ferocity — Traces of strange diseases — An Inca country seat — The attitude of the natives — The Sacred Valley — Amazing agriculture — Kechua life — Lake Titicaca and Bolivia — La Paz — Rudeness of the Aymar&s — The future of the native races — The Oriental Peril. CHAPTER IV CHILE 94 Physique of the country — Reversal of the seasons — Valparaiso — Santiago — The Central Valley — Horses and highways — Araucania — A mission to the Mapuches — The Germans in southern Chile — A Switzerland among the Andes — Origins of the Chileans — Gothic inheritance — The welding of fighting breeds — Why the Chilean gentry remained vigorous — Traits of the rotos. CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE ARGENTINA 114 Through the spine of the Continent — Hot-house Men- doza — Appearance of the pampa — Argentine highways — The splendor of Buenos Aires — Physique of the Ar- gentines — The North Italian flood — Comely children — The reblooming of the Latins — Life on the up-curve — Immigration — Land monopoly — Latifundia — The slow subdivision of the soil — The exploitation of the culti- vators — A tenant revolt — The spirit of Argentina — Its development parallel to ours. CHAPTER VI LABOR, CLASS, AND CASTE 139 Preference for town life — Large estates and absenteeism — Rural decay in Chile — The German genius for agri- culture — The labor system — Types of colonization — Latif undid and peonage — Feudalism in inner Peru — The hooker and the hook — The pongos of Bolivia — The inquilinos of Chile — Argentine peons — Disdain of labor — Demand for menial service — The aristocratic temper. CHAPTER VII WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 173 Strong masculinism of South American society — Indian men and women — Guarded girls — Courting under sur- veillance — Male predaciousness — The mariage de con- venance — Why upper-class women are cleverer than their men — Mental “ fuzziness ” — Why women show more character than men — Unfathered children — Lax home discipline — The coleron — Neglect of housekeeping — Women’s sphere — Size of families — Terrible infant mortality — Mixed marriages — The clan-family — Women outside the home — Alan -made laws — Evidences of androcentrism. CHAPTER VIII MORALS 208 Courtesy of the South Americans — Amiability and geni- ality — Kindness to friends — Want of altruism — Un- neighborliness — Property sense — Chilean fatalism and ferocity — Evil influence of the bull-fight — Alcoholism — Ravages in Chile — Anti-social policy of the great vine-growers — The sex obsession — Prevalence of vene- real diseases — Incontinence of the male — Effect of the vertical sun — Contamination from servants — The ex- traordinary volume of illegitimacy — Innocent motives for avoiding wedlock — Weakness of the institution of marriage. CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE CHARACTER 231 Inability to organize — Mutual distrust as a hindrance to association — Excess of pride as a barrier to co- operation — Why the people are poor losers — One root of revolutionism — Self-indulgence and indolence — Horror of bodily exertion — Why the Indians lack in- centive — Chilean hustle — Argentine character — Want of persistence — Easy “ quitters ” — Kechua and Aymara — Is race crossing responsible for want of character ? — Defects of nurture — Can the tropical South Ameri- cans be saved? CHAPTER X EDUCATION 253 The old regime unsympathetic with popular education — Backwardness of elementary education — Multitudes of children growing up in darkness — Caste in Chile’s school system — Democracy in that of Argentina — School buildings — Teachers — Normal Schools — The blight of politics — Educational methods — The Latin mind — Centralization — Secondary education — The liceo8 are fitting schools for the University — Folly of the subsidy system — The Universities — No student life — Public libraries — Intellectual activity of the 6lite — Conditions of literary production. CHAPTER XI RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 299 Privileged place of the Church in the South American constitutions — Reminders of the Middle Ages — Saints’ haciendas — Wonder-working shrines — Irreverent use of religious names — The retailing of religious services — Old fashioned charity — The revolving cradles — Rela- tion of Church and State — The patronato — The Church as universal trustee of benevolent donations — The mar- riage question — The Church and education — Religious instruction in public schools — Parish schools in Chile — Character of the clergy — 'Grasping curas of the Sierra — Why the state of religion is low — The weakening hold of religion on the men — Protestant missions — Re- action upon Catholicism. CHAPTER XII POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 331 Why good government is difficult in tropical South America — The separation of races — Inherited bad economic conditions — Want of a middle class — Super- ficiality of progress — The progressives but a handful — Suffrage and elections — Soldiers at the polls — Vote- CONTENTS PAGE buying in Chile — Parties organized from the top down — Caudillismo — Nationalism vs. states’ rights in Ar- gentina — Centralization — No local self-government — Overgrown capitals — Stunted provincial towns — The spoils system — Political virtue and corruption — In- stances of graft and bribery. CHAPTER XIII CLASS DOMINATION 368 Government as a mode of acquisition — Selfishness of the ruling class — Who pays the taxes ? — The oligarchy of Chile — Disposition of the public lands — Why the paper-money regime is maintained — Neglect of public education, public hygiene and the protection of labor — The favored province of Santiago — Balmaceda’s attempt at reform — The coming of the “reds ” — Sansculotte up- risings — The coming social crisis in Chile — Who rules Argentina? — Not the transportation companies — Priv- ileges of land — Power of the landed interest — Nation- alism and expansion — Labor legislation — Contrast of Argentina and Australia. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Natural bridge, * ‘ Puente del Inca, ’ ’ on the Transan- dine Kailway Frontispiece PAGE Weavers of “ Panama’ ’ straw hats, Manavi, Ecuador 5 Station types, Ambato, Ecuador 5 Woman carrying keg of wine, Cali v 16 A native alcalde with rara or staff of office ... 16 A halt on the trail from Buenaventura to Cali . . 25 The laundry of Cali 25 Lowland architecture, Ecuador 36 A rural house of the lowlands, Ecuador .... 36 Native dwellings near Quito 45 One side of the Plaza des Armas, Arequipa, Peru . 45 Hucksters at Cuzco 56 Indian woman, vicinity of Quito 66 Indian women, Chinchero 66 Gobemador alcalde and native alcaldes with staves of office, Chinchero 75 CJiolas of La Paz in gala attire 86 Indian mother with child, La Paz 86 The California look of a Chilian landscape ... 95 El Tronador, “The Thunderer,” Chile, 11,300 feet high 106 View of the Central Valley of Chile, near Santiago 106 Mount Osomo, Chile 115 San Martin Falls, Iguazu, Argentina 126 xiii XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE “Christ the Redeemer,” on Andean boundary line between Chile and Argentina 126 Mount Aconcagua, from Argentina 135 Valley of the Aconcagua River, Chile .... 135 Pack train bringing coffee out of the Cauca Valley, Colombia 146 Cali. “The King’s Palace,” without the king . '. 146 Glacier-fed agriculture in the valley of the Urubamba 155 Llamas met in the highway 166 Alpacas in the Bolivian highlands 166 Wooden railroad from Laguna Fria to Lake Nahuel Huapi, Argentina 175 Indian and Incaic wall, Cuzco, Peru 186 Native woman, Puno, Peru 186 Just after Sunday Mass, Chinchero 195 Natives of the Sierra, near Cerro de Pasco, Peru . 195 Native wayfarer in Tiahuanacu, Bolivia .... 205 Waterman of La Paz 205 Sunday market within an ancient Incan inclosure, Chinchero 216 Under the ceiba trees near Cali, Colombia . . . 228 Types met on the trail from Buenaventura to Cali . 228 Indians of the plateau of Ecuador 233 Indians of Zambiza, Ecuador 233 My guide, little “Toniel” 245 Boy with a carga of bananas, Cali 245 Laguna Fria 251 Street Scene, near Cerro-de-Pasco, Peru .... 258 La Fundicion, Peru 258 Women’s dining-room, Immigrant station, Buenos Aires 264 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv PAGE Immigrant station and adjacent gardens, Buenos Aires 264 Summit hut, Uspallata Pass 270 General view of La Paz, Bolivia 274 Incaic wall, Cuzco, Peru 279 Incaic wall, Ollantaytambo, Peru 279 Mount Altar, Ecuador, as an artist sees it . 283 Two ways of securing strength. Modern masonry (with mortar) above Incaic masonry .... 289 Row of porphyry slabs, at Ollantaytambo . . . 289 Lake of the Inca, near the Transandine Railway . 296 The medanos, or sand-dunes, near the Mollendo- Arequipa Railway 296 Mapuche (Araucanian) children from near Quepe, Chile 301 Coming out of church, Chinchero 301 Head of a llama 307 Terraces at Ollantaytambo 314 Incaic walls at Pisac 314 Open-air weaving before a Mapuche ruca . . . 320 Oxcart with solid wheels, Chilian, Chile .... 320 The Andes from the crest of Santa Lucia Hill, Santiago, Chile 329 The haunting charm of Chile 329 The largesse of the Andes 335 On the Road to Chanchamayo 342 Tower of San Francisco Church, Cali, Colombia . 346 Police Headquarters, Quito 346 Indian balsa on Lake Titicaca 351 Indian balsas on Lake Titicaca 351 An Aymara of Bolivia 355 XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The cross on the summit of El Misti 366 The smoking volcano El Misti, Arequipa .... 366 One of Nature’s bastions. From Machepuchu . . 371 Hidden amid the fastnesses of the Andes .... 371 A part of Machepicchu 377 MAP FACING PAGE South America showing Professor Ross’ itinerary . 10 SOUTH OF PANAMA SOUTH OF PANAMA CHAPTER I WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR F ROM the windless Gulf of Panama it is two days of sluggish steaming, in a vessel built for the navigation of a mill-pond, to Buenaven- tura, wettest and unhealthfullest port of the West Coast, and once reputed one of the three worst spots on the globe for the white man. For all that, this inter-island harbor is the sole gateway to western Colombia and particularly to the famed Cauca Valley. Not long ago American engineers put a light railroad through the moun- tains seventy-five miles to Cali; but unprece- dented rains fell, — half a fathom in two days, — the floods descended, and the track was ripped out of the canon. So it was necessary to get to- gether from all over the country five thousand pack-animals to take care of commerce while the road was being thoroughly rebuilt on more solid lines. Behind Buenaventura, and reaching to the foot- hills of the Coast Range, is a malarious jungle, called the Choco, where it rains every day. Here no one lives save the descendants of the negro 3 4 SOUTH OF PANAMA slaves Las Casas, the friend of the Indians, caused to be introduced into New Granada in order to free his proteges from oppression. Certain virile Texans have acquired a huge Spanish grant in this belt, and are planning to bring out American families, settle them on the land, and go to lumbering hard woods and rais- ing cattle. The men are honest, but everybody who knows the climate of the Choco deems it a mad enterprise. In the Choco, slavery has been extinct since 1851, so that life has regained the simplicity of Eden. The women wear a short skirt, and for looks throw a napkin over the bosom; the men are stark but for a G-string. They live in palm- thatched bamboo huts raised about a yard above the ground. The bamboos of the frame are tied together with lianas, and the sides are of bamboos split and flattened into a kind of board. The builder needs no hammer, saw, nail, or screw; only the machete. Nor does the jungle black en- slave himself to hoe or spade or plow. He slashes away the jungle, starts a patch of plan- tains, or cooking bananas, and sows a little corn. His canes he crushes in a hand-mill, and boils the juice down to sugar. He fishes, hunts, con- verts molasses into rum, and rolls stalwart cigars of his own tobacco leaf. So he eats, drinks, smokes, loafs, and lets time pass, with no vanities, no interests, no ideas, no standards, no outlook, no care for the future. Nevertheless, this gymnosophist of the Choco Weavers of “Panama” straw hats, Manavi, Ecuador Station types, Ambato, Ecuador WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 7 is by no means a low type. The black people of this West Coast seem to have been drawn from the better tribes in Africa. Their heads are rather good, and the Guinea type, with thick, everted lips and retreating forehead, is less common than among American negroes. The Colombians in- sist that these blacks are more intelligent than their Indians, and that their cross with the white has given a better result than the cross of Indian with white. Why is it that tropical travelers leave so much untold? Those without experience of the verti- cal sun come upon a spring at the foot of a cliff, and drink, anticipating coolness. No one has warned them that springs cannot gush coolness when the heart of the cliff hoards up no winter cold. Nor have they realized to what steep cliffs trees will cling when there is no winter snow to sweep down and tear away the growth. Along the trail are sights which remind them that they are in the home of the only white men of the New World who tortured in cold blood. The pack- animals are horribly galled, and the bemired beast that does not respond to cruel beating will be left without any one putting it out of its misery. The native leaves his horse saddled through the nooning, not even bothering to loosen the girth. He justifies his practice as costumbre! At one spot the broken edge of the trail and a crushed pack-animal a hundred feet below bear witness that there is a limit even to the wisdom of a mule. Here and there one comes on flocks 8 SOUTH OF PANAMA of gallinazos dissecting the remains of beasts that have died in service. They are rather mannerly birds, and as they draw back from their pecking at our approach, they look, for all the world, like old ladies in black bombazine gathered about the coffin at a country funeral. Cali, a city of thirty thousand, toward which all the mountain roads converge, is like a pretty girl — considerably tanned — seated on a bank and paddling her feet in a brook. The life of the town revolves about the river that comes tumbling down from among the hills. Every bright day nearly the whole adult population bathe in it. From a single point one may see hundreds in the various operations. Gentlemen with white linen and black coats strip beside the negro muleteer and the swarthy peon. The pretty girl disrobes be- side the coal-black negress with a cigar between her lips. Every tree and bush yields fancied pro- tection. Behind their large sheet-towels, men and women undress not fifteen yards from one another, while lads and lasses splash about in the same pool. The men wear a napkin about the loins, the women a red calico “Mother-Hubbard,” which, when wet, discloses the form with startling fidelity. More leveling even than a bathing- beach, the river reveals to his fellow-citizens, al- most in puribus, the portly judge, the grizzled municipal councilor, or the skinny banker. But no one stares or is self-conscious, and the pro- prieties are strictly observed. Still, some de- plore this Arcadian daily dip, and point out that WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 9 only two children out of five in Cali have been born in wedlock. Down the middle of the streets gurgles clear mountain water. Why not, since in all Cali there are only three carts? There is, to be sure, an automobile, which was the pride of the town until, after a few runs, it blew out a tire. Nobody had thought to order extra tires with the machine, so for months it has been out of use, waiting a new tire from the States. From the Moors came the Spanish-American custom of taking the front yard into the house. This is the patio-, or court, paved sometimes, but more often graced with trees, shrubs, potted plants, a flower-bed, a pool, or a fountain. All the rooms open upon the patio, and about it is all the life of the family. It is deliciously intimate, this having a wee park within the house, but it is selfish. Your neighbor cannot enjoy your patio, nor you his. The beauty of the continuous lawns on an American residence street is free to all. Here the street slinks between blank walls, broken by a few barred windows, and all the charm of the patios is hidden from the public. Pretty homes you have, but not a pretty town. This Oriental house, planned for defense, and suited to the insecurity of a thousand years ago, is an anachronism to-day, and will doubtless yield in time to the democratic and neighborly type of home. Life in the patio is shut away, peaceful, and self-sufficing, and in a way this Cauca Valley is 10 SOUTH OF PANAMA one big patio. East across the valley the moun- tains loom through the haze. Boats ply the Cauca River north a hundred miles to Cartago, where the river falls rapidly and becomes in- navigable. Cordillera and Choco shut it from the Pacific, whose shuttles of commerce no more disturb the valley than the clicking hoofs of the passing mule-train break the drowsy calm of the patio. No wonder the life of the Calians is filled with trivialities. They are all interrelated, they re- member kinship even unto the nth degree, and they spend much of their time visiting back and forth and gossiping hours upon hours over the pettiest matters — who has become engaged, how the cattle are doing, and how the servants are behaving. Trifling details are dexterously made to yield interest, so that the talk flows on and on. The passion of these people for politics is due in part to the uneventfulness of their lives. They watch it as breathless and absorbed as “fans” watch a league game. It is pathetic to see how girls educated in a Quebec or New York convent return to Cali with a resolve not to sink into this listless, indolent way, but to “start something,” give a garden party or lawn fete, make a real social life. But the system is too strong for the poor things. They are steam-rolled by the church and by the established social customs. After a while, broken in spirit, they cease to struggle, sink into ac- quiescence, and become just as narrow in inter- Longitude Greenwich SOUTH AMERICA / 8*nt« Barranqim l, ill/ r»H"j| of DaritiiJ ENGLISH STATUTE MILE3 '^K- “ST" "Guucoid 0 100 *00 300 400 500 GOO 700 800 BOO 1000 Prof. Ross' Itinerary malpelo (Col.) LpCo^i l 2 }^jon Vlanoa 0 / 'liailuba ' fooMadoirn/ ” Hlo dc Coo JaouirU,. GALAPAGOS IS. (TO ECUADOR I Same scale as large map. piombo Mr !ol«0««»A r0U »TQB ) An/oturuV MODE JA? LI'-.capo .fEl"l?T o CM<«> I "(To CMl»7 htloso d»l : _Cru» Alio Cordoba paG 0 * Aot* f Vl - qJi] Valparala I u*f> A TlEOR* >■ v LTo CIiM *tlbCMl*5 BUENOS,, Ccnslii-l lC S .t'tlonio Concepclolj Blain i Bay V,i/,u«( l/napt ,S . .Valias Cu(‘ O. of C°f ci GUIl ECAS I® Tnyti'o P<< I* JP&C, of Tmo Datjo (Gulf of St.Gtorye -C.Trtt Pun to i \ 0UVO/ fJ C.VtPO*" we,T ' ,: *x .Strati of Hagtllan, hnnu fViUI»" J 30 t^JIERRA DEL FUEGO DELAIOE ABCmXJ»S Ll j/ l'/ay«llan vO(t \ 0E50UATI0N l.^j \ SANTA INE8 I. -,„..lon Boy eEEHKt socks / 8HAQ BOCKS, .^-WOCLASTON IS. ; Cape Hum WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 11 ests and pursuits as the women who have never been out of the valley. The way of doing business is leisurely. Sup- pose you want to hire horses. You go in, shake hands, and are invited to sit down. San Jacinto takes your hat, asks after your health and after the health of the members of your family. You talk over the details of the matter, arrive at an understanding, take your hat, and shake hands. Jacinto begs you to place him at the feet of your lady. You bow, lift your hat, and leave. There is plenty of time. Life is not intense, and a piece of business is quite too succulent and refreshing a morsel to be hurried over. Jacinto wants what- ever diversion it affords. “Life here,” observed an American of some years in Cali, “is a great lesson in self-restraint. These people regard swearing and storming as a sign of weakness. The more you storm, the politer they become. Till the last gasp they keep up appearances, preserve the semblance of mutual respect and courtesy.” The sentiment of per- sonal dignity is strong among poor as well as rich. The servants are not tip-extractors, and the wayfarer entertained in some humble home must be tactful in offering money. Under the good manners of the lower orders there is a sense of equality which will not brook abuse from any quarter. The laborers on the railway will not stand tongue-lashing and rough treatment from the foreman. In our climate hunger and cold are powerful allies of the employer, forcing the 12 SOUTH OF PANAMA bullied laborer to pocket bis pride and stick to his job. Here there is no cold, and free land is plentiful. Under harsh treatment the laborer sulkily retires to his hut and his banana-patch. He does not have to keep your job. You can get hi m to work with you when you cannot get him to work for you. A railway contractor told me he would say to his men going home to look after their families or their crops, “Well, boys, when will you be back to help us V ’ Here, as in Cuba, it is well to let the working-man feel he does you a favor by accepting employment with you. The limit factor to prosperity is not any lack of soil or climate, roads or markets, but the habits of the people themselves. The American who settles here, expecting to get rich developing the dormant resources of the valley, sometimes comes to grief from having failed to take into account the character of the Caucans. Thus a Colorado college man who, in partnership with a Colombian classmate, had started a shoe factory in Cali, ran upon an uncharted snag. He imported Ameri- can machines and trained the coffee-colored youths to run them, but the trouble came in sell- ing the shoes. The classes are crazy for the foreign article, and will not buy the local shoe at half the price of the imported. The masses, alas! wear no shoes at all. He thinks if he can get hides tanned here, he can turn out shoes so cheap that even peons will begin to wear them. But he has not made money, as he hoped, and he wishes himself back in the States. WESTEBN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 13 “Put it straight,” he said to me, “and dissi- pate the rosy dreams young Americans are cherishing as to the chances for them here. Then paint the life here : nothing to do in the evenings, no amusements, no society; no girls one would want to marry; nothing to bring a wife to.” I recall half a dozen Americans who, with coffee, sugar, and public utilities, have become wealthy according to the Colombian standard ; but they are exceptional men and would have suc- ceeded at home. Doubtless every one of them would be worth more to-day if he had stayed in the States. Soil and climate are here, and the valley does progress; but, owing to hitch after hitch, things have gone slower than they had hoped. The reopening of the railroad, port im- provements at Buenaventura, and the Canal burn like a comet in the imagination of the stirring spirits, however, and all expect this to be the year I of a new era. So the spell that held Cali in slumber is break- ing. The autumnal haze is lifting. Electric light- ing, telephones, a tram to the river, and a plaza with band music have come in within five years. Twice a week the ice-making machine “func- tions,” the sign “hielo” is hung out, and the gentlemen at the bars have something to tinkle in their glasses. Lately the motion-picture show has come, and the people are wild over it. Re- vealing the big world beyond the blue Cordillera, these films are bound to make the young folks restless. To-day you show a Caucan a good 14 SOUTH OF PANAMA chance to make money, and, as likely as not, the man will decline it with the remark, “We must leave something for our sons to do.” No doubt the sons will be ready to do it. Natural barriers so divide the country that Colombia in reality consists of a number of pro- vincial “tribes” loosely aggregated into a na- tion. Of these the most pushing and formidable are the Antioquians, whose home lies to the north of the valley. These people belong to the Old Testament. The lads marry at eighteen or twenty, the girls at fifteen or sixteen, although I have met some who were brides at twelve. The families are patriarchal in size, twelve children being nothing uncommon; one hears of a single couple with twenty-nine sons! The Antioquians are not only hard working and acquisitive, but they are enterprising and aggressive. Thanks to their Biblical prolificacy and their bracing climate, they are spilling over their boundaries into other provinces, and, since they capture branch after branch of business and make money, they are much feared by other Colombians. It is a striking fact that not only do the Antioquians often show the Semitic countenance and Hebraic traits, while their province abounds in Biblical place names, but they regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as Hebrews. It is supposed that long ago numerous converted Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled in this province, and be- came the seed of this pushful race. What with these and with the five thousand Syrians now in A native alcalde with vara or staff of office WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 17 Colombia, and more coming in all the time, the future of the country has a Semitic look. The ports along the coast from Buenaventura to Guayaquil seem to be spigots spouting natural products from an inexhaustible back country. Here is piled crude rubber in lumps as big as one’s two fists; there the warehouses are burst- ing with cocoanuts. In one town cacao nuts are everywhere spread out drying. In another the boys are growing up illiterate because their parents keep them out of school shucking and sacking tagua, or ivory-nuts, without which a third of the human race would go buttonless. Coffee comes out on the lighters, and some cotton. Sugar, bananas, and oranges ought to be pouring out of the interior, but they are not, because both labor and capital are lacking to subdue the wil- derness. Aside from gathering natural products, the only industry seems to be the weaving of “Panama” hats, which has its center at Manta, Ecuador. For the little ports backed by jungle the arrival of the weekly steamer is a festal occasion. The boats of the captain of the port, the customs officer, and the agent of the company, come along- side filled with their friends, eager to stroll about the decks and test the resources of the bar. The officer of the port brings several female members of his family, who of course must be invited into the captain’s cabin and regaled with his Scotch. If a prominent citizen is leaving for Guayaquil, his friends breakfast with him on board, quaff 18 SOUTH OF PANAMA toasts, cheer, slap one another on the back, and send him off in a blaze of glory. If, tarrying too long at his wine, one of them appears on deck after the last boat has left, and sees himself let in for an involuntary sea voyage, there is a hur- ricane of glee. These people attach no value to time, and the captain who lasts on this run is a man beside whom Job was testy and irascible. At Esmeral- das the ship was ready to leave at noon. She got off at four o’clock because a despatch-boat waited hours while the gobernador wrote various letters for Guayaquil. They might have been ready earlier or he might have shut himself up for an hour while writing them. But a relative or a friend dropped in, cigarettes were lighted, and the letter was thrown aside till they had talked themselves out. Thus the chance caller may delay the clearance of the ship, and nothing can be done about it. Always yellow fever and bubonic plague may be found at Guayaquil. Although most of the time they smolder in the huts of the outskirts, there are seasons when they blaze up dangerously. When we went in, it was the dry season, and mosquitos were few along the water front. Still, there were ten cases of bubonic and thirty of yellow fever. The Stegomya never troubles the highlanders of Ecuador, but Quito fears the bubonic, and allows no one to come up who has not been vaccinated for it in the municipal bacte- riological laboratory at Guayaquil. The native- WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 19 born of the port are immune to yellow fever, be- cause the babies get the fever in a mild form, and the survivors are ever afterward safe. Ameri- cans are determined to keep the Canal Zone free from infection, and their strictness about vessels that have touched at Guayaquil is putting a like strictness into the sanitary policy of other West Coast ports eager to benefit by the Canal. More and more Guayaquil is quarantined against; she therefore foresees grass in her streets if she does not clean up, and costly measures of sanitation are under consideration. Still, among the short- sighted native merchants one comes on the feeling : ‘ ‘ Sanitation will tempt the gringo to come in and wrest our business from us. Let our friend Yellow Jack stay.” Perhaps the most attracting thing about Guaya- quil is that from it an American train will set you in half a day on one of the two greatest plateaus in the world, and at the close of the second day will bring you to Quito, only five leagues south of the equator. Out across the plain to Bucay, where the two-mile climb begins, one fills a mental film with scenes from tropical agriculture : orange- trees glorious with yellow globes; palms bearing cocoanuts at every stage of growth; fields filled with a low, pinkish-green Spanish bayonet, hold- ing often a central spike that bears a pineapple; patches of toquilla, which yields the “straw” for making Panama hats ; banana plantations making a dense jungle four fathoms deep. Then there are trees bearing papayas , mangos, and bread- 20 SOUTH OF PANAMA fruit. The tall chimney-stack marks the sugar- mill. Over toy tracks cars carry the sugar-canes to the mill, and after they have been passed be- tween double rolls, the refuse is dry enough to burn at once in the furnace. Down orchard rows one sees the magenta or golden cacao-pods, as big as a bos’n’s fist, not drooping gracefully from twigs but stemmed right to the trunk and branches of the tree. Planted only three yards apart, the trees grow into a dark jungle and run to foliage. In one grove, however, they stood seven yards apart and were loaded with pods. This innovation be- tokens, no doubt, foreign influence. The for- eigner asks: “Why don’t you give your trees more room, trim off the dead and weak branches, and let the sun into your orchard?” “My father and my grandfather,” replies the Ecuadoran planter, “got from this estate enough to live on, so why should I depart from their ways? Spare me your new-fangled notions.” Still, there is a tale of one Don Ignacio who, in a corner of his cacao plantation, cut out every other tree and every other row to see what would happen. It became noised about that he was loco, and the rumor reached his ears. “Wait three years,” he said; “if then this field bears less than the others, call me loco.” After three years the neighbors saw his trees set thick with pods, and said, 1 1 So Don Ignacio is not loco, after all,” and they began to follow his example. WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 21 At Alausi, a mile and a half up, we are among irrigated patches of wheat, corn, cabbages, and other characteristic crops of the temperate zone. Above two miles we rumble over bleak paramos, or mountain pastures, with cattle and sheep cropping on the tawny slopes, while the bottom of the ravines is gemmed with fields of lucerne, potatoes, and barley, bright green in gray like jade set in granite. We lie over night at Riobamba, and thence to Quito is a golden day, with a chain of Andes on either hand. Surely no other city in the world is approached through a double avenue of volcanoes, from five to ten leagues wide and forty long. Chimborazo, Altar, Tungurahua, Cotopaxi, San- gay, and Cayambe thrust a mile or more of man- tled peak above the snow-line, which here under the equator is between fifteen and sixteen thou- sand feet. The train pants up wind-swept ridges and slips down into sheltered valleys. At Urbina we are near to twelve thousand feet, a thousand feet above the highest tillage. In ninety minutes we glide down thirty-four hundred feet to Am- bato, girt with vineyards and peach-orchards. It is like passing from Labrador to Maryland. One does not need the smoke-plume floating from the peaks or the jarring detonations to learn what manner of land this is, for every railway cutting exposes a tragic page of history. The blanket of volcanic ash dropped over the country every century or so gives vast gray landscapes like Nevada. Trees there are none, and the 22 SOUTH OF PANAMA houses are all of adobe and thatched. Beside the huts stand beehive stacks of yellow grain like those of an Iowa farmer. Near by is a threshing-floor, with a donkey going round and round while the husbandman plies the pitchfork. The irrigated fields, the sheepfolds, the oxen drawing an iron-shod, one-handle plow of the time of the Pharaohs, remind one of Biblical agri- culture. Between the fields run hedges of spiny Ameri- can aloe, or century-plant, the same plant that in Mexico yields pulque and in Yucatan the fiber for binding-twine. Cacti abound, clumsy and bulbous, bearing a top like the seven-branched candlestick of Solomon’s temple. Here, just as in China, one sees the tent-like cornstalk shelters of the nocturnal crop-watchers. Most of the day we are within sight of the famous carretera, or high-road, built forty years ago by Garcia Moreno, the best, but also the most ruthless, presi- dent that Ecuador ever had. One sees no wheel on it, but always there is in sight a mule-train or a file of burdened Indians. Although the eastern Cordillera marches be- tween us and the hot, steaming country of the Napo, we cross streams that break through and find their way to the Amazon. Latacunga, one of these crossings, is the birthplace of the most romantic gold legend in Ecuador. Benalcazar and his Spaniards, who came up from Peru and took the kingdom of Quito, although in their mad search they left not one stone upon another, never WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 23 found the treasure which Quito gathered for the ransom of Atahualpa, but secreted after word came of his murder by Pizarro. Long after, a certain Spaniard in Ecuador, Valverde, became suddenly very rich after his marriage to an Indian girl. Valverde returned to Spain, and on his death-bed told how his father-in-law had led him to a cave in the fastnesses of the Andes; wherein lay the ransomed gold of the Inca. He left for the king of Spain a written derrotero, or chart, with minute directions how to reach the treasure-cave from Latacunga. The derrotero was sent to Ecuador, copied, and many expedi- tions have set forth on the strength of it. The numerous landmarks it mentions tally perfectly with the locality until a certain hill of pyrites is reached, after which the trail vanishes. In Quito I met an American army officer of some years in Ecuador who had spent nearly a thousand dollars in two expeditions, both of which broke down at the critical moment owing to the desertion of the Indian porters. However, by passing the pyrite hill on the left instead of on the right, as all the others had done, he picked up the trail-marks of the derrotero, and was very near the goal when fear of starvation turned him back. He has no doubts of the derrotero, and is sure that the treasure will yet be found. Quito, lifted nearly two miles into thin air, has always boasted its “perpetual spring”; but, in sooth, it would be just as fair to call its climate “perpetual autumn.” With a temperature that 24 SOUTH OF PANAMA hovers about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, in the shade, the Quitonian passes his life in early April or late October. He escapes winter, to be sure, but misses the vernal miracle that redeems the higher latitudes. But, whether he feels chilled or baked, he can always turn his eye toward comfort. Out across the plain, about three miles to the north, the road drops three thousand feet through a stupendous ravine, and from the high places of Quito one can peer down into a semitropical valley, its coffee-trees and cane-fields dancing in the heat-waves. Far away and strange it seems, a landscape seen in a dream. On the other hand, when the overhead sun scorches, there are a score of snow peaks to refresh the eye. As you study through a field-glass the huge drifts and wild snow-storms on Antisana, which looks out over the rank forests of the “Oriente” or Eastern Province, you realize that it is easier and safer to get from where you are to Greenland than to reach those polar solitudes only a dozen miles away. Groves of eucalyptus in the environs of Quito agreeably relieve the majesty of the scenery, and it is said that this province has a third of a million of these trees. President Moreno introduced them from Australia half a century ago, and it is a saying among even the enemies of Moreno that on the day of judgment he will escape the penalty of his misdeeds with the plea, “I gave Ecuador the eucalyptus.” The numerous public squares, handsome monu- A halt on the trail from Buenaventura to Cali The laundry of Cali WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 27 \ merits after the latest ideas of French or Italian art, well paved though narrow, streets, and gay colors of walls and costumes, combined with its wonderful natural surroundings, make Quito a city to remember. Nevertheless, there are un- speakable stenches arising from the filth due to the primitive habits of the Indian population. Not even in the towns of southern China is one subjected to worse olfactory torture than in Quito. Slavery and ill treatment have sunk the native population into the depths of degradation and hopelessness. Perhaps nowhere on the globe do human beings so much resemble passive beasts of burden. In fact, the Indians used to be des- ignated in documents as “smaller beasts of burden” to distinguish them from pack-animals. Loaded, they clamber up the steep streets as stolid as little gray burros. One sees many an urchin of seven years bearing on his back a load of bricks as heavy as he is. One woman, bent under a burden, carries a child at her breast and is soon to become again a mother. Another laden woman plies distaff and spindle as she creeps along. Here is a file of barefoot women bent under loads of earth or bricks, escorted by a man with a whip ! The women wear several woolen skirts with- out shape. A breadth of raw red or purple cloth right from a native loom is hung in ample folds about the lower half of the body, and gathered in clumsy pleats at the waist. Half a dozen such skirts, one over the other, produce a monstrous 28 SOUTH OF PANAMA accumulation of cloth about the hips, which ut-' terly destroys the lines of the figure. Very striking is the contrast between the Indian women and the negresses of the lowlands. The negro woman shows coquetry in her walk and carriage, in her way of wearing her manto, and in her sidelong, challenging glances. The mo- ment she feels the eye of the stranger upon her, she bridles and her every movement betrays self- consciousness. But I have never seen an Indian woman show any desire to please or attract. She gazes dully at you, and endures your look as might a cow or a ewe. In natural function she heeds the beholder no more than if he were a stone. In the market-place the mothers while away the time looking over their children’s heads. Often one woman lays her head in another’s lap, while her hair is explored in quest of game which the finder at once pops into her mouth. The Indians wear the hair long and never wash or comb it, so that it becomes a tropical jungle, the happy home of many an insect that dies of old age. The Indians of the table-land are short and beardless, with big faces and large mouths. Many have red cheeks, due, some doctors say, to the multiplication of red corpuscles in the blood, while others attribute it to high blood pressure. It is certain that none of the lowlanders are ruddy, whereas pallid people, after a few weeks in Quito, often develop glowing cheeks, which, however, fade out on their return to the coast. WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 29 The women have wide faces and high cheek-bones, and can never be called beautiful. Most of the men look stupid, by no means as intelligent as the average negro. The women have a pleasant ex- pression and manner, and look brighter than the men. They pile on skirts and muffle themselves in bright shawls, while the men all wear cotton trousers and bright red or striped woolen pon- chos. What with solid red, pink, vermilion, lavender, or purple, the color scheme of a group of these people is wonderful. Not even in Tunis does one meet its equal. A file of Indians, in bright red ponchos, galloping along a trail on the other side of a gorge, the line undulating grace- fully as the trail rises or descends, makes a bril- liant picture. No doubt such color is a comfort to these poor people. Nowhere did I come upon such dismal highlanders as in a settlement of free Indians, at an altitude of eleven thousand feet, who banish all color from their costume. Sitting solitary out on the heath, huddled in black poncho or shawl, watching their flocks, they are the dreariest-looking mortals to be met. I found no foreigners who have faith in the future of this people. They point out that while this was a Spanish colony there was a continual flow of immigrants from Spain, many of whom, no doubt, were men of force. Political separa- tion interrupted this current, and since then the country has really gone back. Spain had pro- vided a ruling organizing element and, with the cessation of the flow of Spaniards, the mixed 30 SOUTH OF PANAMA bloods took charge of things, for the pure-white element is so small as to be negligible. No one suggests that the mestizos — in the lower classes they are known as cholos — equal the white stock either in intellect or in character. They lack self- reliance. If anything goes wrong, they look to the government to remedy it. “You will get cacao-trees planted far enough apart,’ ’ observed a diplomat, ‘ ‘ only when the government fines any man who plants them too close. It never occurs to one of these planters to experiment on his own account and see what would happen if special seed were used, or if the trees were planted or treated differently.” Among the rougher foreigners and Peruvians the pet name for these people is “monkeys.” The thoughtful often liken them to Eurasians, clever enough, but lacking in solidity of charac- ter. Their want of truthfulness no one denies. They distrust one another and prefer to deal with foreigners. For instance, the native lets his house to the foreigner rather than to the Ecua- dorian, because he is surer of his pay and counts on his property being better cared for. The na- tive tenant, when he vacates the premises, will steal every removable thing. Natives and foreigners alike declare that a large white immigration is the only hope for Ecuador. There are fewer than two million people in Ecuador, and two thirds of them are Indians. Yet several business men endorsed the opinion of the British consul, of thirty-five years ’ WESTERN COLOMBIA AND ECUADOR 31 residence in the country, that Ecuador could feed fifty millions of inhabitants, half of them in the lowlands, raising cacao, sugar, cotton, and tropi- cal fruits for export, and the rest on the table- land, growing cereals for themselves and the low- landers. White people could thrive here, for the coast-lands are cooled by the influence of the Humboldt current. But the coveted immigration of Europeans will not occur so long as the mestizo element dominates and misgoverns the country. The foreigners in Quito shudder still at the horrors witnessed here in 1912 as sequel to the abortive revolution led by Alfaro, former Liberal President of Ecuador. Alfaro, a coast-man, with the aid of his coast friends, got possession of Guayaquil, and there was bloody fighting across the river between his followers and the govern- ment troops sent down from Quito. All the while the highland soldiers were dying like flies from yellow fever. The Alfarists surrendered, but, contrary to the terms of the agreement between the parties arranged by the foreign consuls, they were taken up to Quito. The archbishop there was besought to restrain his people, but Alfaro as president had antagonized the church, so the archbishop was silent. The mob rose, took the revolutionists out of prison, and dragged them to death in the streets. After ghoulish orgies, their gory heads and members were carried about in triumph on pikes, while the bodies were burned before the populace in the plain beyond the city. “Why do you do this?” asked an American of 32 SOUTH OF PANAMA a cholo woman in the hideous forefront of fe- rocity. “Senor,” she replied, “this man caused the death of our brothers and our sons, and we cholos have strong hearts.’ ’ CHAPTER n PERU, THE ROOF OF THE CONTINENT F ROM the Gulf of Guayaquil to Coquimbo, in Chile, more than seven hundred leagues, stretches what is known as the “rainless coast,” a strip between Andes and ocean which contains as absolute a desert as exists in the world. It was Humboldt who accounted for this phenomenon. He pointed out how the moisture-laden winds from the southeast are chilled as they approach the gigantic uplift of the Sierras, and relinquish much of their moisture on their eastern foothills and slopes. After passing over the Andes, they meet the influence of the warm coast-land, and their temperature and saturation-point rise, so that rain is out of the question. But why does this coast receive no moisture from the Pacific 1 ! Humboldt discovered that a broad mass of cold water, the “Humboldt Cur- rent,” makes its way out of the Antarctic up along the South American coast as far as the western jut of Ecuador, and then sweeps off into the Pacific. Coming down the coast, one learns of it when suddenly the woods turn gray, and hun- ger begins again less than two hours after a meal. This current chills and draws moisture out of the winds from the Pacific, so that when they strike 33 34 SOUTH OF PANAMA the coast, up goes their temperature, and again rain is impossible. The coast strip is, therefore, a desert because it lies between two cooling influ- ences, the Andes and the current from the Ant- arctic. Generally this current makes itself a roof of clouds, and the traveler may pass many times along this coast seeing nothing but stretches of gray-yellow beach or cliff and chains of rocky hills, with the tawny sand drifted about their knees. But some afternoon when the sun has burned away the fog, across the hot desolation he sees high up, scarcely distinguishable from the clouds, a great serrate ghostly wall — a wall dim, but immense, unbroken, and forbidding, so far away that its jagged peaks and precipices melt into a single undulating line, and realizes that this is the outer rampart of a sky world of glaciers, condors, and llamas, nearly as strange to his every-day world as a ring of Saturn or a Martian canal. Along shore beats a creamy, thunderous surf, rolling over the sands, or against the rocks spurt- ing up into the fleeting likeness of a snow-laden fir-tree. Most of the ports are nothing but a sickle of curving beach, with a pile of rocks at the sickle’s point. From the anchorage often there is green in sight, the trees of some little valley that winds broadening down to the sea, yet dis- charges no water because all its river has been drawn off into the irrigating ditches. No blade grows here that has not drunk at man’s hydrants, Lowland architecture, Ecuador \ rural house of the lowlands, Ecuador PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 37 so that the short snow-fed streams from the Sierra empty into the air rather than into the brine. Even if no green is visible, the broad lanchas waddling out laden with cattle, pumpkins, bales of cotton or hides, boxes of chocolate, or bags of rice, sugar, or cotton seed, tell of smiling valleys somewhere back of the sand-dunes and dry mountains. Still, little of this rainless coast is growing any- thing. The President of Peru tells me that the coastal valleys are not cultivated as intensively as they might be. Even now not all the water is reclaiming desert. But the chief hope for the ex- tension of cultivation lies in storing reservoirs with the surplus water of the rainy sea.son, so that in the dry season it may be drawn upon to supplement the shrunken rivers. The Panama Canal, he thinks, will greatly stimulate the coast production of sugar, cotton, and coffee, and he looks for a furor in the growing of tropical fruits, once Peru has been brought within a fortnight of New York. “Why not,” he asks, “when near Mollendo there are single trees which yield ten thousand, nay, even twenty thousand, oranges in a season?” It is one of Nature’s jests that this coast ac- curst, just because there has never been rain to dissolve them and wash them away, has provided the two fertilizers — guano and nitrates — which more than any others have made exhausted fields in old Europe quicken with harvest. So that in its grim way the desert, as dingy and deadly- 38 SOUTH OF PANAMA looking as an elderly rattlesnake, has, after all, helped to fill the empty stomachs of humanity. Ship-captains confess that they prefer the West Coast to any run in the world. No other sea is so tranquil, so reliable, so easy on the nerves of the mariner, as the Pacific down to the thirties of south latitude. The great, lazy billows come ramping into port a hit exasperated at stubbing their toes against the shoal bottom. The lanchas, rowed out by swarthy, bright-eyed men with huge four-fathom oars, lie alongside; the swells heave and drop them through a score of feet, and they butt together like angry rams. Cables are snapped, and brine splashes over the sacks of raw sugar, but still the loading goes on. Danger enough there is, if any one is heedless ; yet in many hours of watching the work with cargo, I have never seen the heavy iron hook hit a man or a crate drop upon a bare foot or a hag slip out of a sling. As for the cattle taken aboard, there is none of the brutal yanking up by the horns de- scribed in old books of travel. Now the steer goes up in a sling, like a kitten, with never a struggle or bellow, and the bumps he gets would scarcely make a baby cry. THE SPELL OF PEEU Were I to be exiled, and confined for the rest of my life to one country, I should choose Peru. Here is every altitude, every climate, every scene. Coastal Peru is an Egypt, central Peru a Tibet, eastern Peru a Congo country. The lifeless desert PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 39 and the teeming jungle, tlie hottest lowlands and the bleakest highlands, heaven-piercing peaks and rivers raving through canons — all are of Peru. Here one meets with the highest tillage, the high- est mines, the highest steamboat navigation. The crassest heathenism flourishes two days in the sad- dle from noble cathedrals, and the hustling ports are counterpoised by secluded inland towns where the Past lies miraculously preserved like the mummy of the saint in a crypt. In the year 2000, when the Tyrol and' the Abruzzi, Dalmatia and Carinthia, have lost their Old-World character, travelers may be seeking the towns hidden away in the Andes — Cajamarca, Huancavelica, Andahu- aylas, and Ayacucho for rare bits of lustrous medieval life untarnished by the breath of mod- ernism. THE PERUVIAN PEOPLE Of the four million inhabitants scattered over a region as large as France, about half are pure In- dians, a million and a half are mestizos, while the remaining half-million are whites or near-whites. From sixty-five to seventy per cent, is the blood of the Indian, and mixing goes on all the time; for an Iberian-Catholic people does not draw the color-line like an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant people. In the lowlands are many negroes. The Japanese number 5000, and are coming in two or three thou- sand a year. As early as 1854, Chinese coolies were brought in to work on the Guano Islands and the sugar haciendas, but since 1908 the immigra- 40 SOUTH OF PANAMA tion of Chinese is prohibited. In Peru there are 35,000 Chinese ; in Lima, 9000, two thirds of them pure blood. One sees there many faces of a Mon- golian cast due to the mixing of these coolies with native women. The mothers are neither whites nor Indians, but cholas, and in Lima you insult a man by calling him a “Chino-cholo.’’ In Callao you call him a “Kanaka,” for once the South-Sea Islanders formed a part of the lowest laboring- class there. The future of tropical South America turns on the value of the mixed blood, for not in our time will any of these countries possess a preponderat- ing white element. There is a widespread convic- tion that mixed breeds lack nervous stability, and Houston Chamberlain attributes the proverbial lack of character in the tropical South Americans to recent race mixture. In Lima I talked with a German educator, a shrewd, critical man of sci- ence. ‘ ‘ I came out here, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ eight years ago in the firm conviction of the racial inferiority of these peoples to the Germanic peoples. I had read Chamberlain, and I looked upon them as hopeless mongrels. But I have faced about com- pletely. The faults of these Peruvians root in his- torical conditions, and can be eradicated. There is nothing wrong with the breed. They have ca- pacity, but they lack the tradition of hard work. The spirit of their past has been one of self-indul- gence. What they need is right education and dis- cipline. Even now these Peruvians turn off good PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 41 work when their pay is adequate and certain. They have, to be sure, a juvenile love of impress- ing, but the ability is there.” “Don’t forget, either, that climate is a handicap, and that, after a few years here, the Anglo- Saxons, too, show less energy and force of char- acter. ’ ’ On the other hand, the wisest sociologist m Bo- livia told me that the zambo, resulting from the union of Indian with negro, is inferior to both the parent races, and that likewise the mestizo is inferior to both white and Indian in physical strength, resistance to disease, longevity, and brains. The failure of the South American re- publics has been due, he declares, to mestizo dom- ination. Through the colonial period there was a flow of Spaniards to the colonies, and all the offices down to corregidor and cura were filled by white men. With independence, the whites ceased com- ing, and the lower offices of state and church were filed with mestizos. Then, too, the first crossing of white with Indian gave a better result than the union between mestizos, so that the stock has undergone progressive degeneration. The only thing, then, that can make these countries progress is a large white immigration, something much talked about by statesmen in all these countries, but which has never materialized. LIMA, “the CITY OF THE KINGS” “Don’t call this ‘Spanish America,’ ” warned a diplomat who knows these countries as he 42 SOUTH OF PANAMA knows his glove, and shares their religious faith. “Call it ‘Moorish America.’ The conquista- dores came from Andalusia, formerly the Moor- ish kingdom of Granada. The name of the leader who subjugated the kingdom of Quito was Benalcazar. The patio is not Hispanic, but Moor- ish. My first sight of Cajamarca took me back in a flash to Morocco. What is this manto the women wear over the head and often over a part of the face but the chumur of the Arabs ? Saddle, stirrups, and harness are Arab, as are, of course, the horses. So are the cuisine and the kitchen utensils. The Mexican hat is like hats you see in Morocco. The men here are polygamists, because the Arabs are racially polygamists. The first in- structions sent over by the Spanish Inquisition related to ferreting out Jews and Moors , not ‘Lutherans,’ mind you.” These words came back to me in Lima, for here, indeed, is many a touch of the Oriental — the lat- ticed balconies projecting from the upper story of the old colonial houses, the tiled patios, reminding one of Tunis, and the frontless shops closed at night by a series of folding-doors. With its 140,000 inhabitants, Lima is easily the first city in Peru, but its present is outshone by the faded glories of its past. Its noble cathedra^ the finest religious edifice in the Western Hemisphere, to- gether with its one hundred and twenty-six churches and twelve convents, recall the time when Lima was the capital of the larger part of Spanish South America and the most churchly city in the PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 43 world. The fearful devastation committed by the Chileans in the War of the Pacific, 1879-84, not only upon Lima, but upon much of the country from which the wealthy families of Lima drew their incomes, impoverished the city, and there is now little to remind one of the magnificent days when, on occasion, the pavement of the Street of the Merchants was covered with bar silver, and ten million dollars was spent in celebrating the canon- ization of Rosa of Lima, the only American woman saint in the calendar. Nevertheless, the country is going ahead a little, and on this capital, the show-place and pleasure-resort of Peru, consider- able money, both public and private, is being spent, always with the best of taste. In social conditions Lima is of the Orient. A study made not long ago for the University of San Marcos showed that Lima, thanks to the Indians, who breed two and one half times as rapidly as the whites, has a birth-rate from twenty per cent, to thirty per cent, higher than the leading cities of the world, but that its people die about twice as fast as other urban people ; that a quarter of the deaths are due to tuberculosis, which is from two to five times as deadly here as in other cities ; that the loss of infant life is twice what it is in Liver- pool, Hamburg, or New York, and thrice what it is in Scandinavian cities. Nearly half of the hos- pital patients are victims of malaria, and the num- ber of malaria-sufferers in and about Lima is reckoned at eight thousand or ten thousand a year. Much of the waste of life here traces to the 44 SOUTH OF PANAMA wretched housing and fatal overcrowding of the masses. Many of the unsanitary tenements are owned and let by the Sociedad de Beneficienca, Lima’s great benevolent organization. There is irony in the fact that it supports its hospital care for the poor by renting what a plain-speaking re- port to the Government calls “a chance to contract disease.” UP TO THE EOOF OF THE CONTINENT In a day the railroad to Oroya lifts one over a pass only a stone ’s-throw lower than Mont Blanc, the highest point in Europe. This is the Central Railway of Peru, the wonder of the world when it was building in the late seventies under the un- flagging will of the California absconder, Henry Meiggs. Since then, in Bolivia, higher lines have been brought into operation. That to Potosi reaches 15,806 feet, and that of Colohaussi is eight feet higher. The Oroya line richly deserves all that has been said for it. The savage gorges, the scenes of desperate engineering expedients, occur not in the higher levels, but about half-way down, where the streams have grown big enough to cut canons and carve out cliffs. Higher up, where the snow-fed rivulets are prattling babes, the mountains are not strongly sculptured, and their outlines are softened by quantities of loose matter which the streams are unable to bear away. The lower valleys we follow are lined with andenes, or abandoned agricultural terraces, One side of Ihe l’laza des Annas, Arequipa, Peru •let. PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 47 which in this dry climate keep their form ages after the hand of man has been withdrawn. One sees them rising like a titanic staircase to a height at least a thousand feet above the upper terraces of present cultivation. At a distance they look like marks left by the teeth of an enormous rake drawn along the slopes. In the gorges the an- denes are wanting, but they reappear wherever the jut of the mountain offered a little soil that might be molded into shelves two or three yards wide, supported by a wall of loose stones. Under the Incas every one of these terraces was irri- gated; but the ruthless conquerors seem to have wrecked the wonderful aqueducts which, heading far up, led the water higher and higher above the mother stream till it moistened the very shoulders of the mountains. They would ruin a populous valley by cutting the conduit leagues away. Then, too, tillage shrank, and the andenes were aban- doned to the degree that population melted away under the terrible mitas, or levies of Indian culti- vators, sent up in gangs to dig silver for the Span- iards in the freezing mines of Potosi nearly three miles above sea-level. As the train pants up into the thin air, some pas- sengers become spectacles of utter misery from soroche, or mountain sickness. Soroche ranges from headache and nausea to complete prostra- tion, and is caused by the abrupt change of atmos- pheric pressure. For it, as for sea-sickness, nu- merous remedies are suggested, but none of them avail. Liquor-drinking is bad for it, but as the 48 SOUTH OF PANAMA cold increases, nearly every passenger absorbs comfort from a bottle. A railroad superintendent told me of a well-known American man of science who experimented on vanquishing soroche by shut- ting himself in a specially constructed iron cham- ber in which the air was kept at Lima pressure. A telephone connected him with the train officials, and he reported himself comfortable while the train was traversing the highest tunnel. If he could have dropped again to sea-level, the experi- ment would have proved a complete success. But Oroya is over 12,000 feet up, and when, at the journey’s end, the chamber was opened, the pro- fessor collapsed under the sudden change in air pressure, and had to be carried out. THE HIGHEST AMERICAN COLONY IN THE WORLD From Oroya an American train, which out- classes at every point the English-model trains of the Central Railroad, climbs to the works of the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company. This American company controls the largest enterprise in Peru. It owns copper mines, coal mines, a smelter, a water-power plant, and a hundred miles of good railroad. The capital actually invested is thirty million dollars and the two thousand tons of pig copper a month now coming down promise big rewards for the company after a long initial period of outlay. The pigs are said to contain enough gold and silver to repay the cost of resmelting them and extracting the pure copper. In its em- ploy the company has twelve thousand Peruvians, PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 49 mostly Indians, and perhaps one hundred and fifty Americans. Life at Cerro de Pasco, nearly a league up, is as trying as life under a diving-bell at the bottom of the ocean. The newcomer gasps for air like a stranded fish and awakes at night gulping mouth- fuls out of the thin atmosphere. Three quick steps put one out of breath, and after a flight of stairs one sits down for a rest. “I now know,’’ panted a tenderfoot, ‘‘how I ’ll feel when I ’m eighty.” The company sends up no employee who has not passed a physician’s examination, but occasionally some one gets blue in the face, and has to be sent down forthwith. Thus the Inca Chronicle has such items as, ‘‘Jake L , who returned here last April, has been sent home with his heart machinery in bad order.” The young fellows play tennis and ball and even indulge in track athletics ; but the pace has to be slow, and, what with sports, late hours, and insuf- ficient sleep, the candle is burning at both ends. Singing is not popular, for you can’t get the breath to hold a note. Pneumonia is sure death here within forty-eight hours, so the sufferer may have to be rushed down in a special train that costs the company $500. The typhoid patient, too, must flee, and the gringo women must descend to Lima to bear their babies. The nerves become so taut that every six months one takes a sea-level vaca- tion. Nevertheless, it is possible to become only too well adapted to this climate. I met an Eng- lishman who, after twenty-three years’ residence 50 SOUTH OF PANAMA at Cerro de Pasco, learned that his lottery ticket had won him a prize of $5000. He took train for Lima, intending to cash his luck and have “one good time”; but as he reached the lower levels, he was so unpleasantly affected that he turned, and went back to the altura, doomed to pass there the remainder of his days. The company’s Americans are usually big, ath- letic, deep-chested, strong of jaw, sinewy of grip, and masterful in manner. They are well paid and looked after, but too many of them squander money and vitality in fighting off the demon of loneliness. The advent of a number of married ladies who have organized social gaieties has of late reduced the drinking and gaming ; but I have met nothing so sad as the utter ruination of some of these splendid fellows in the stews of Lima. It is a pity that a steadying influence, such as the Y. M. C. A., cannot be planted among these virile workers above the clouds. THE INDIANS OF THE SIERRA Until lately the Indian employees of the com- pany housed themselves and their families in low cave-kennels, with walls of loose stones and roofs of scraps of sheet-iron. Within the last two years, however, the management has provided plastered and floored cottages for its men, while the com- pany physician, Dr. W. F. Bailey, by means of persuasion and fines has suppressed the filthy hab- its of the Indians and freed the camp from typhus and smallpox. PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 51 The Indian miners have red cheeks, magnificent chests, and strong back muscles, but their arms and legs are poorly developed. As porters they are wonderful, but as laborers they cannot com- pare with Mike with his dudeen. They are specialized for the altura, for, if they descend to the coast, lowland insects infect them with diseases and parasites to which they are virgin, while the dense air leaves them an excess of breathing ca- pacity which makes their lungs a nesting-place for the bacilli of tuberculosis. If they are to live on the coast, they ought to be brought down at an early age. The army recruits from the Sierra are kept at Lima only two or three months, and then placed in upland posts. This specialization of physique explains why the malaria-depleted labor force of the coast estates is not renewed by migra- tion from the teeming highland, and why the coast population is stationary. From the Indians of the malarious tributaries of the Amazon the highlander has caught a dread of night air which prompts him to muffle his mouth, although in this altitude insect pests are few. The infants are small at birth and show lit- tle stamina, for not more than two out of five live a year. The survivors, however, endure well enough the harrow tooth of a hard existence. The men make extraordinary recoveries from ter- rible burns and wounds, while the mother who has just brought forth a child in the midst of a circle of women helpers rises and goes about her work without incurring fever. The women wear a lot 52 SOUTH OF PANAMA of woolen skirts, and wash tliem scrupulously, but never bathe. Doctor Bailey washed one of his first Indian patients, and the man promptly died of pneumonia. Since then the doctor respects their prejudice against water. Every native miner carries a quid of coca- leaves, which must be chewed with a little lime in order to get the coveted cocaine effect. In Bolivia they are chewed with an element derived from the ashes of corn-cobs, and sold in cakes called lluyta. The chewing of coca-leaves without lluyta brings on madness. In the department of La Paz alone are gathered 5000 tons of coca-leaves a year, worth $2,000,000, for wherever the Indian is under a strain, in the mines, in the Chilean saltpeter works, or on the sugar plantations of northern Argentina, he will have his quid. Coca-chewing wards off weariness, so that the Indian can trot for days, or swing a pick for thirty hours on a stretch, yet never feel tired. The coca-chewer longs intensely for his quid, and without it he has no strength. It is a mystery how coca enables the worker to work on less food than would otherwise be necessary. Is it a nutriment! Does it enable the system to extract more sustenance from food? Is it a means of borrowing from the future? Or does it tap those deeper layers of energy which, according to William James, most of us go through life without using? Quien sabef Excessive coca-chewing is the foe of longevity and resistance to disease. The look of stupidity on the Indian face is often chargeable to coca, just PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 53 as the fog that wraps the mind of many a Chinese peasant is opium-smoke. The infants of women who chew to excess are said to be very puny and weak at birth. The saturation of the system with cocaine results in relative insensibility to cuts, burns, and minor surgical operations. Unlike al- cohol, it does not disturb motor control or derange the functions of the brain. No one doubts, how- ever, that coca is a great factor in the destruction of the Indian race. HORRIBLE ANDEAN DISEASES There is a horrid fascination in the strange and ghastly diseases one meets with in these parts. In the coastal valleys there is a well-defined zone distinguished by the presence of verrugas, a dan- gerous fever attended by eruptions. In the build- ing of the Central Railway, fully seven thousand lives were lost from this cause. In 1909, out of a force of two thousand men in tunnel work on this line, two hundred died of verrugas. Every year the medical students in Lima lay wreaths on the grave of Carrion, the young student of medicine who thirty years ago inoculated himself with ver- rugas in order to study it, and during the eighteen days before his death cheerfully made observa- tions and took notes on the course of the malady. Only in 1913 did the researches of the government entomologist, Dr. Townsend of Kansas, establish that the transmitter of verrugas is a small night- flying gnat especially abundant in the ill-famed Verrugas Canon. 54 SOUTH OF PANAMA More terrible yet is the uta, a hideous skin dis- ease haunting the higher valleys of the Andes. Only five days before my arrival in Smelter an American had died of it in the hospital after a ghastly destruction of the flesh of the face. One may divine what takes place from the fact that the word “uta” is a Quichua word meaning to rot. That the ulcerations spread from a reddish pimple resembling an inflamed sting causes a widespread belief that uta, like verrugas, is insect-borne. Certain little repulsive clay figures from the Inca period which seem to portray the victims of uta suggest that the disease existed in Peru before the coming of the white man. To-day one meets occa- sionally a man who muffles his face to hide the sick- ening ravages of the disease. In its very early stages uta may be cured by cauterization, but later nothing can be done for the victim. AREQUIPA AND THE DESERT The gateway of southern Peru is Mollendo, a tin town of the desert type, the existence of which revolves about the steamers that halt in the roadstead and the ten-inch main that from Are- quipa, 105 miles away and half a league above it, supplies about half the water the townspeople need. The up-train runs south for ten miles along the beach past a glorious surf, then turns inland across a little delta blooming like a garden with the aid of water from an imperceptible river. The line between desert and verdure is as sharp and clear as if the plain had been cut out of green Hucksters at Ci PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 57 cardboard with scissors. Half a stride carries you from dust into alfalfa. This pregnant depth of contrast is, perhaps, the secret of the intoxica- tion irrigated horticulture produces in people bred in the rain belt. Here, at last, by the miracles he works through his control of water, man seems to realize the dream of the scientist, “I want to take life in my hands and play with it. ’ ’ Our route follows up a water-course among rounded hills over which hovers a faint green, like the light that seems to hover above certain rare Oriental rugs. It is a scant and fleeting vegetation evoked by the light rains that fall here in the win- ter. Our train rolls into an oasis, and bundles of sugar-cane joints are offered at the car windows. To the right we look down into an eastern para- dise, a long tongue of emerald cane-fields and or- chards winding between the salmon-hued walls of a canon. There is something heart-uplifting about riotous green in a setting of desert, and one un- derstands why the Oriental ’s abode of the blest is projected against an oasis background. As we rise, the vast foam-edged Pacific widens behind us. At three thousand feet we come out upon a mesa and strike across a brown-red, hot- looking pampa. Rain is unknown here, so there is no green. The soft, rounded hills have yielded to rocky buttes, with white sand piled like snow- drifts about their base. Pathetic crosses near the track mark the grave of navvies who died in the making of this road. At Haugri the volcano El Misti, under whose shadow lies Arequipa, lifts in 58 SOUTH OF PANAMA sight. It is symmetrical, like Fuji-yama, but not so slender. Flanking the pampa, appear bone- dry, white-streaked mountains, like the skeleton of a dead range or the spinal column of some mammoth saurian. Ahead, the plain looks to be dotted with thousands of pools, which presently resolve themselves into silvery sand-dunes. These are the famed medanos, which march across the plain from southwest to northeast, in line with the prevailing winds, at the pace of sev- enty feet a year. Moving sand-dunes are a famil- iar desert feature, but these are unique by reason of their symmetry. They form great crescents three yards high, and tapering delicately into sharp horns perhaps a hundred feet apart, point- ing always away from the wind. The windward slope of the drift is gentle, but the inner slope is as steep as sand will lie. The fact that the particles jump about three inches at a time gives the surface of the medano the effect of watered silk. Since the pampa existed and the trade-wind blew, these geometrical figures of pure sand have been marching across the pampa in the same direc- tion. What becomes of the sand, and why does not the supply run out? Now, the sand falls into the brawling Chile, and the Chile, no doubt, carries it down into the Pacific. There it is possible that alongshore currents sweep it south until it is thrown up on the beach, to be picked up by the wind and started again on its eternal triangle. A mile and a quarter a century the dune moves, so that the one now slowly drowning in the river may PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 59 have started up from the ocean before Moses lay among the bulrushes. Arequipa never dares forget this is a land of earthquakes. No building rises above two stories. The vaulted roof of the cathedral does not soar, and its towers come quickly to a point, as if afraid of the upper air. Ceilings are barrel-vaulted. In concrete walls now rising one sees iron rails set as stiffeners. In the splendid new hospital, one of the finest individual gifts to be found in South America, great patches of plastering are gone, while about the plaza linger traces of the terremoto of a few months ago. With its snow-crowned volcano, its glistening towers, its convents and cathedral, its great plaza, and its houses tinted soft shades, — green, azure, cream, ocher, salmon-pink, and terra-cotta, — Are- quipa is one of the world’s beauties, or, rather, would be if only, like Naples, she had water to look at herself in. Her clear air, sunshine, and brac- ing climate have made her a famous seat of cul- ture, and this high-spirited little city of 35,000, lying amid savage solitudes, is renowned for the leaders she has given Peru. The combination of spring climate, a university, and religious ardor seems to produce the forceful type of character. The city is the heart of a lovely oasis about eight miles by ten, nourishing some 60,000 people. Its aorta is the Chile River, the water of which is used as far as it will go. Adjacent are great mesas of disintegrating lava, which need only water to burst into bloom. Here is a fine oppor- 60 SOUTH OF PANAMA tunity for a reservoir at the head of the valley that will capture the excess of the rainy season, and water the mesas. Such a project is mooted, but the cultivators oppose it because it would rear up for them new competitors ! Arequipa is a city to attract an Oriental. There are twenty Japanese merchants here, and many Syrians have filtered in. While visiting schools, in four cases I inquired about some little fellow with a beautiful brow who was the smallest yet the brightest pupil in the class, and in every instance he turned out to be Syrian. There are many Are- quipa families that have never mixed with the mestizos, so that here is a good place to appraise the stock Spain sent to her colonies. I confess I was not prepared to find so much of the human thoroughbred. Among the no rmalista's one sees many fine faces. Quite often one comes upon the Greek type among the women school-teachers, and all are feminine to their finger-tips. In the white schools well-molded brows and clear-cut features seem to be commoner than in the average Ameri- can school-room. In the schools which include Indian and mestizo children, muddy complexions, poor features, and dull faces are frequent. There is no question that the white children here are cleverer than ours of the same age. In declama- tion they show fire and untaught grace of gesture. The limit factor for the whites here is not brains, but character, and their faults of character seem to be chargeable to the traditions from the old bad regime of the viceroys. PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 61 THE PLATEAU It is not from Arequipa that one can know El Misti. It is when you have been climbing for half a day, and from an altitude of 14,000 feet you see him forty or fifty miles away through the translucent air that reveals the cloud shadows trailing majestically across his face, that El Misti looks the giant he is. Across the leagues of mountain and desert he stands out so huge and clear that you fancy with a good glass you could make out the iron cross on his summit, fixed there in compliance with the Pope’s request to the faith- ful throughout the world to mark the new century by erecting crosses on peaks. Even at 14,500 feet one comes on big herds of llamas grazing on the paramo in the midst of fall- ing snow. Little bands of fawn-colored vicugnas, creatures about the size of an antelope, and quite as graceful, hound away as the train passes. It is illegal to hunt them, but somehow rugs made of their exquisitely soft fur are always to be had for forty or fifty dollars apiece in the towns on Lake Titicaca. At this altitude one sees great herds of mingled llamas, merinos, and alpacas. The former eat the coarse bunch-grass the alnacas will not touch. Strange to say, the alpacas do not thrive under 13,000 feet. They live on a very fine short grass which they nibble so close to the ground that the grit keeps their teeth properly worn down. On the lush grass of the lower levels their teeth grow so long they cannot graze, and 62 SOUTH OF PANAMA they starve while knee-deep in plenty. Sweet are the uses of adversity ! Surely it is a cheerless existence that the In- dians lead on this lofty table-land. Home is a thatched adobe hut in the corner of a farmyard fenced with sod or loose stones, in which are folded at night the merinos and the llamas. Lonely and insignificant the little hut stands in the vast cloud-shadowed, wind-swept spaces. No trees, no shrubbery or flowers, no birds, no color, no roads, no neighbors or town to visit — nothing but the dreary moor, the lowering clouds and the moan of the chill wind. Even the Greenlanders rejoice in the long Arctic summer. But here there is no change of seasons, and it is always cold. Fuel there is none, save straw, llama dung or chemisa, a huge fungus which grows on rocks, and it must all be saved for cooking. Never once in their lives have these people been comfortably warm, nor do they even know that there is warmth in the world. Such, perhaps, will be the survivors of our race three million years hence when the advancing frigid zones have nearly met and at the equator man makes his last stand against the em- pire of frost and death. In this upper world one becomes very curious as to the limit of cultivation. In Ecuador, time and again, one sees agriculture ceasing or recom- mencing at 11,000 feet. Crossing this plain, I saw potatoes and barley growing at 12,800 feet. North from Lake Titicaca, however, there is a benign air drainage that carries the crops much PERU, ROOF OF THE CONTINENT 63 higher. At Santa Rosa there is cultivation at 13,400 feet. One would take this for the limit, but later I found potato patches at La Raya on the divide between Lake Titicaca and the Amazon, 14,170 feet above the sea. But in La Paz I talked with a Brooklyn man who has a glacial barony over on the Sorata range east of Lake Titicaca, and he declares that on his place you can grow barley at 15,500 feet, provided that you shield it with a wall, so that the wind will not blow it out of the ground. This, then, is, I suppose, the upper limit of cultivation, not only for Peru, but for the world, for nowhere else on the planet has man the aid of the tropical sun in pushing tillage to Alpine heights. CHAPTER ni THE NATIVE RACES C UZCO, more than two miles aloft, once city of Manco Ccapac, center of the Inca culture, and capital of a great aboriginal empire, with its many furlongs of ancient walls, its Temple of the Sun, its splendid churches, and its megalithic for- tress of Sacsahuaman, is, to lovers of the past, the most fascinating spot in the New World. One day, surely, it will be a great goal of pilgrimage, like Rome, Jerusalem, or Cairo. Within a decade or two Cuzco will possess comfortable hotels from which parties of “see- America-first” travelers will tour in automobiles, visiting within thirty leagues the greatest monuments and the most im- pressive mountain scenery in the Western Hemi- sphere. A Cook who should organize a good tour- ist service, make known the wonders of the region, and turn in this direction a stream of appreciative travelers, would make his fortune, while at the same time giving encouragement to American archaeology. Since the uncovering by the Yale expedition, led by Professor Hiram Bingham, of the wonderful stone city Machepicchu, perched two thousand feet above the brawling Urubamba at a point about two-days’ journey from Cuzco, — a relic of 64 Indian woman, vicinity of Quito Indian women, Chinchero THE NATIVE RACES 67 the pre-Incan period of which the Incas them- selves knew nothing, — the intellectuals of Cuzco have been in a ferment over aboriginal America. At every social gathering you hear animated dis- cussions of ancient walls and monuments, prehis- toric conquests and migrations, Kechua language and customs. Dr. Giesecke, the American rector of the University of Cuzco, has traveled more than ten thousand miles visiting and searching for the relics of the past. “Do you expect more finds?” I asked him. “Many,” he replied emphatically. “Why, as yet we haven’t more than scratched the surface.” Portions of fourteen palaces of Inca rulers line the streets of Cuzco, and much of the walls of the Temple of the Sun has been incorporated into the Church of San Domingo. These walls are of finely cut blocks laid in courses without cement. It has often been said that the joints in this wall will not admit the point of a knife-blade. Not only is this true, but a needle, or even a hair, can- not be inserted between these great blocks. No doubt this is the finest mason’s work in the world; yet the microscope shows that these stones were wrought not with iron or steel, but with tools of champi, an alloy of copper and tin ! The front of the wall inclines a little away from the street, and the corners are beautifully rounded. The Incas were ignorant of the arch, so a gateway or doorway is spanned by a single great beam of stone, giving the effect of an Egyp- tian portal. On certain adjacent blocks in the 68 SOUTH OF PANAMA temple wall the mason left little knobs, which seem to be grouped in a definite order. The prior of the convent suggested that these projections rep- resent quippus, or writing by means of knots in strings, and give the date and builder of the wall. In some stones there are many holes, drilled for the purpose of attaching the plates of gold form- ing the great image of the sun, which later were removed in order to make up the ransom of Ata- hualpa. Not only are there thousands of square yards of Inca wall visible in Cuzco, hut unknown stretches of such walls have been plastered over. Some day they will be reverently restored by men more capable of appreciating that wonderful indigenous civilization than the avaricious adventurers who brutally destroyed it. Although the laws of Peru protect Inca remains, vandalism continues. Poking about the inner courts of Cuzco, I came upon masons, red-handed, pulling down a fine old wall, with stones as big as a bureau, in order to get cheap material for some mean construction of their own. But the stupendous stonework of the vast for- tress above Cuzco belongs to a period long before the sun-worshipers. Of the origin of these walls the Incas knew nothing. They are monuments, perhaps, of the same civilization that, at Tia- huanacu, a few miles south of Lake Titicaca, at an elevation of 12,900 feet, left the ruins of a city of a million inhabitants, which the archfeologists can account for only by supposing it dates from a THE NATIVE RACES 69 period when the Andean plateau was thousands of feet lower than it now is and enjoyed a milder climate. At the fortress of Ollantay-tambo, a day’s ride from Cuzco, there is a row of six por- phyry slabs ranging in height from eleven to thirteen feet, five to seven feet wide, and three to six feet thick. Another block is fourteen by five by three. These stones must have been sawed out, for at the bottom of certain cuts one finds the thin groove left by a stone saw. Half-way up the slope from the Urubamba lie the “Tired Stones,” which for some unknown reason the ancient work- men abandoned on their way to the fortress. One appeared to be nine feet by seven by five, another fifteen by ten, with three feet of thickness visible above ground. All these came from a quarry across the river, and three thousand feet up the mountain. How such monoliths were brought to their present resting-place beggars the imagina- tion. In a large museum of Inca relics collected by a Cuzco barrister, — battle-axes, hammers, combs, needles, utensils, pottery, ornaments, etc., — one’s attention is fixed by a dozen mummified creatures, apparently prisoners of war that were buried alive in a sitting posture. The agony and despair expressed in the faces and in the position of head and hands haunts the beholder for many a night. That any fellow-creature should have suffered so ! The mouth is open and the head thrown back, while the hands clutch the face, the fingers sink- ing into the flesh or the eye-sockets. In some 70 SOUTH OF PANAMA cases the finger-nails have torn deep into the cheek. One poor wretch had had his abdomen opened and his knees brought up and squeezed inside his ribs. From the torture-twisted face it is inferred that the fiendish operation was in- flicted on the living man. In the Pompeian Museum at Naples there are certain hideous casts of petrified agony, but nothing to match the des- iccated horror on the faces of these shriveled victims of prehistoric ferocity. Nowhere in the world has cranial deformation prevailed so extensively as it did in ancient Peru. In this collection are skulls elongated by pressure during the growing years till they became like the head of a dog, or even assumed the form of a fat cucumber. A “cradle-board” applied at the back of the head, caused the skull to flare out behind into two lobes. The owner could have donned one of our stiff hats, only he would have had to wear it crosswise. We know that there were “styles” in head deformation, and that the style changed from time to time within the same tribe. Several crania show successful trepanning, and in one skull a second operation had been performed within the healed-over orifice left by the first tre- panning. The finder of this curiosity wanted $7500 for it, but finally accepted $4. In the skeletons of pre-Columbian Indians with which the energy of Curator Tello, Harvard doctor of philosophy and pure-blood Indian, has recently enriched the museum at Lima, one comes on vestiges of diseases quite strange to us. One THE NATIVE RACES 71 malady, often fatal, left coral-like growths in the roof of the eye-orbit, or ate the bones of the cranium into a sieve-like condition. Many skulls show the ear canal nearly closed by little pearl- like bony growths. Very frequent, also, was a queer alteration of the “ball” of the femur, which fits into the pelvic socket. The neck was short- ened to almost nothing, while the head was flat- tened and broadened till it resembled a mushroom. Such a malformation must surely have spoiled the swing of the leg, but luckily the mountain Indians seem to have been exempt from it. These skeletal traces of strange diseases stir the imagination like tusk-marks of the saber- tooth monsters of Tertiary. What consuming of living flesh, what horrid defacements, what frightful pain, may have accompanied these un- known diseases that recorded themselves in bone, one can only conjecture. Cuvier reconstructed an extinct animal from a single bone, — not very ac- curately, it afterward appeared, — and there ought to be some way of reconstructing from its osseous traces an extinct disease which may have made the life of our vanished fellow-mortals a horror. AN INCA COUNTRY SEAT Three hours in the saddle from Cuzco is Chinchero, a town of almost pure Indian popula- tion. Its plaza occupies the site of a great Inca palace the niched side wall of which is still stand- ing. Terraced fields as even as a billard-table, sustained by laborious walls of cut granite, line 72 SOUTH OF PANAMA the slope below the palace. Royal gardens they must have been, tilled to perfection, for no mere hind would rear such walls for his fields. Then comes a granite knob, with a great number of seats, stairways, and passages cut with beautiful precision in the living rock. Here, no doubt, were wont to sit the Incas while they took their ease and feasted their eyes with the sight of the land they had blessed with peace and prosperity. On the one side they could see verdant vales and slopes, bearing shelves of abundance, against a remote background of red ridges, and beyond that a glorious amphitheater of purple, snow-capped mountains. On the other side a wild glen drew their glance down into a darkling canon leading precipitately into the Urubamba, thousands of feet below. One longs to enter into the feelings of these chiefs as, followed by attendants, they descended from their common hall to lounge in their lookout seats through a bright afternoon and watch the living panorama pass through its ever- changing phases of light and color and shadow. We entered the church on the terrace above the plaza, — a church built, perhaps, before the landing of the Pilgrims, — and found it packed with seven hundred Indians, every woman in her striped home-spun shawl, every man in his striped pon- cho. Not this side the Llama Temple in Peking have I come upon a spectacle so weird and out- landish. The eyes of the kneeling worshipers followed the chanting procession as it wound its way about the church, and at the supreme instant THE NATIVE RACES 73 of the mass they lifted their hands, pressed palm to palm, and yearned toward the altar in a mute, but passionate, adoration. The music, hearing no kinship to any church music I know, combined with the high-colored frescos which lined the walls, the strange aspect of the worshipers, and the ecstasy of their manner, made me feel that I was witnessing some pagan rite in Tibet rather than Christian worship in Peru. After services we met the gobernador, sole re- presentative of the central government among four thousand souls; the alcalde , or mayor, like- wise a Peruvian; and the twelve Indian alcaldes who aid him in preserving peace. Each of these last bears with pride his vara, or silver-mounted staff of office, the symbol of his authority. THE ATTITUDE OF THE NATIVES There could be no more eloquent testimony to the barbarities of Pizarro and his ruffians than the timid, propitiatory attitude of the Indians to- ward all white men. Every man, woman, or child we met on the road doffed the hat when we passed, and respectfully wished us “ Buenos dias” or “Buenas tardes. ,> In the remoter districts an Indian who sees a white man coming toward him along the trail will make a long and toilsome de- tour to avoid meeting him. If you approach an Indian abruptly to ask him a question, he will fall on his knees, put up an arm to shield his face, and cry, “Don’t hurt me, master!” The Indian never thinks of chaffering over the price of his 74 SOUTH OF PANAMA services. The patron pays a porter what he chooses, and if the Indian murmurs, a harsh “Be- gone!” causes him to shrink away. From a certain break in the bank of the road that leads down into Cuzco from the high country behind one gets a wonderful view of roofs, domes, and towers lying a thousand feet below in an in- comparable setting of glens and foot-hills. Com- ing or going, there is no sight of Cuzco to be had other than this single shining vision. Now, every native who passes this way stops, removes his hat, and, gazing at the sacred capital of his fore- fathers, murmurs in Kechua, “0 Cuzco, great city, I greet thee!” What must be the strength of the feeling that thus expresses itself after ten lifetimes in which to forget the old independence! In Cuzco I met a gentleman of education and travel who is said to be the only living lineal de- scendant of the Incas. He has great influence with the native element and voices their bitter- ness and their aspirations. He declares that the politics of Peru is a struggle between the Spanish mestizos of Lima and the coast and the natives of Cuzco and the interior, and predicts an upris- ing unless Cuzco is made the capital pf the na- tion. He even dreams of a Kechua republic, with Cuzco its capital and the United States its guar- antor, as she is guarantor of the Cuban republic. “No wonder Lima intends at all hazards to keep control,” he exclaimed. “Peru is about to make a new foreign loan of $35,000,000. Of the pro- ceeds certain families in Lima will contrive to Gobernador, alcalde and native alcaldes with staves of office. ( hinehern THE NATIVE RACES 77 absorb $15,000,000, leaving only a little over half to be expended for the good of the nation.” THE SACKED VALLEY A day from Cuzco brings one down into the deep, romantic valley of the Urubamba, which for about a hundred miles — until the river breaks through the main Cordillera and descends through the forested Montana to become the Ama- zon — constituted the heart of the old native civi- lization. In western China I supposed I had found the climax of man’s endeavors to extend by a limitless toil the food-bearing area ; but the prodigies of earth sculpture along the Urubamba surpass even those of garden-like Szechuen. The valley floor, from half a mile to a mile in width, has been molded into beautiful terraces, each of some acres in extent, and from six to nine feet above the next lower one. The line of drop of these fields is a diagonal between the direction of the river and the slope from the sides of the valley toward the river. The making of these regular terraces was a work for Titans ; yet it was com- pleted before the Spaniard appeared on the scene. Scarcely less wonderful are the narrow terraces, the andenes, which make a staircase to the height of a thousand or even fifteen hundred feet up the slopes, in places where some stream from the snow-fields can be captured for irrigation and led gurgling down from terrace to terrace. The walls of the andenes are made of rough-fitted stones, and are from four to fifteen feet high. 78 SOUTH OF PANAMA The andenes narrow as the slope becomes steeper, until you find a wall twelve feet high built in order to gain for cultivation a strip of earth not over a yard wide. No doubt in many cases the earth was brought in baskets from pockets among the distant rocks. Surely nowhere on the globe has so much sweat been paid for a foot of soil as here. Nowadays the population is much sparser than of yore, the food struggle is less dire, and the upper terraces have therefore been left wholly to the weeds. The earth sculpture of this valley could have been produced only under three conditions. First, a population multiplying at a natural rate. Even to-day among the Kechuas reproduction be- gins soon after puberty; “ proving” precedes marriage, and the unmarried mother of a couple of boys is a particularly desirable person, because boys are an asset. Second, lack of opportunity to expand. The Kechuas must have been bottled up between the warlike Aymaras to the south and the savage wielders of the poisoned dart to the north of them in the jungles along the lower Urubamba. Third, a long period of occupancy. Only the toil of several generations can account for such prodigies of earthwork as we find in this region. So one imagines a people of few wants, unwar- like, unadventurous, home-loving, as industrious as the denizens of an ant-hill, who, clad in two garments, bore earth on their backs, dressed stones, reared walls, and opened ditches, content THE NATIVE RACES 79 if the day’s work brought a fistful of beans or a double handful of parched corn. Only the occa- sional religious festival, with dance and a chicha debauch, brightened the gray of a toilsome ex- istence. So that this remote valley is a peep-hole into the old simple life of mankind before the ad- vent of trade and wants and letters — the life of Egypt and Babylonia, of Hittites and Etrus- cans, before ever there was Jew or Greek or Roman. Even to-day the life of the Kechuas retains the stamp of the primitive. They live in low, grass- thatched, one-room huts of mud or rough stone, without windows. House and stable are apt to he continuous, although they are distinct budd- ings. The one-handle plow, innocent of share or mold-board, is drawn by big slow-moving oxen. Women are in the field as much as the men, although they do not hold the plow nor guide the oxen. Always the woman’s hands are busy work- ing wool into yarn or thread and winding it on the spindle. She it is who hears the produce of the garden to distant markets. Whatever she has to carry she puts into her shawl, lifts it to her hack, and ties the corners of the shawl across her bosom so that her hands may he free for the distaff. The wife earns as much as she costs, so in the garb of the maidens there is no preening or prink- ing, no sex lure. Bright color is the only adorn- ment, and this is worn no more by girls than by old women. The maiden’s face is rarely washed, 80 SOUTH OF PANAMA and there is no effort to make of her hair an adornment. Sunday is drinking day, and every third farm- house is a place of public refreshment. A bunch of gay flowers tied to a pole sticking out over the road announces chicha (maize beer) for sale; a white banneret as big as your hand signifies that pisco (sugar-cane alcohol) is to be had. By the middle of the afternoon most of the liquor is gone, and the signs of drunkenness in the wayfarers multiply. But however tipsy the Indian becomes, he never loses his awe of the white man or for- gets to doff his hat. Now and then we would hear the sweet and plaintive notes of a shepherd’s pipe, and soon would pass an Indian blowing in a hollow joint of cane with several stops. Or we would meet a girl pursued by swains, who, with their pipes, were trying to make an impression on her. It is estimated that more than a third of the Indians of Peru belong to agricultural communi- ties, which, like the mark of our Germanic fore- fathers and the mir of Russia, hold common lands that are distributed afresh every year to the members. As if to heighten its resemblance to the mark, the Kechua ayllu lets part of the com- mon land lie fallow each season while another part is cultivated. Here, as everywhere else, the com- munal system makes for indolence, unprogressive- ness, and soil-robbing; but it is found that as soon as the common land is broken up into in- dividual properties and the ayllu dissolved, the THE NATIVE RACES 81 Indian is pounced upon by the Peruvian, who swindles him out of his land or robs him of it outright. LAKE TITICACA AND BOLIVIA There are no rock-ribbed conservatives like the Indians about Lake Titicaca. With the steam- boat whistle in their ears, they insist on living as their fathers lived. Women weave ponchos outdoors on their knees as our Navajo squaws weave blankets. The shops display factory fab- rics, but the woman sitting in the plaza, beside her stock of onions and mutton or knitted socks and caps, plies the spindle while she waits for customers. The Spanish introduced the ass, the horse, and the cow, but to these late-comers the Indian denies the care he lavishes on his dear llamas and alpacas. Senor Belon, a gentleman of Arequipa who has been in the United States, is trying to introduce better breeds of merinos, but his fellow-stock-raisers laugh at him, and keep on with their small, run-out sheep, good for neither mutton nor wool. This same gentleman is Bur- bank enough to have crossed alpacas with wild vicugnas in order to get a finer wool. He has two hundred such hybrids, allows them to breed only among themselves, and promptly removes from the herd every coarse-wooled lamb. The slopes above Lake Titicaca up to fourteen thousand feet grow barley, potatoes, and quinua, which looks like a glorified breakfast food. In the markets the staple is chuno, or potato desic- 82 SOUTH OF PANAMA cated into something about as light and toothsome as cork. The potatoes are frozen, trampled after they have thawed, in order to press out the juice, then dried in the sun. Repeated several times, this yields the black chuno. The “white” chuno comes from potatoes that have lain for weeks in water under straw. Nobody could tell me whether or not potatoes thus treated retain their power to cure scurvy. If so, we may yet see chuno in the kit of travelers, prospectors, and soldiers all over the world, and this food, known only to the highlanders, may become an important article of commerce. No wonder these plateau-dwellers worship the sun. The waters of Titicaca have a temperature of from 40° to 60° Fahr., and the denizens of the numerous islands in the lake never learn to swim, although they navigate the lake in balsas made of bundles of light reeds. In summer a lowering sky shrouds the mountains. In winter the great glaciers of Sorata glisten in the sunshine, but the water is gray, and the sky has the pale, unsmil- ing blue that suggests the chill of steel. Certain parts of the Bolivian plain beyond Lake Titicaca are dotted for miles with piles of stones picked out of the soil by the cultivator in order to make the ground fit to till. The scene is like a vast meadow filled with haycocks. A single sweep of the eye takes in perhaps ten thou- sand of these monuments of toil. In some places the area covered by the stone-heaps equals the soil between. Much of the land thus laboriously THE NATIVE RACES 83 won is so poor that it must be allowed to lie fallow the greater part of the time. Li. PAZ Certain cities seem as if posed in a tableau. Naples is as theatrical as an opera-dancer, Hong- Kong is as stagy as a geisha-girl, La Paz is as sensational as a bull-fighter. For leagues you have been gliding across a table-land toward the huge mass of Illimani, which resembles a crouch- ing dromedary — a white dromedary, for the mantle of snow is of such depth that scarcely any- where do the black bones of the mountain peer through the shining cover. Without warning you come suddenly to the edge of the plain, and, be- hold, a third of a mile below you, a city of sixty thousand people, the red of its tiled roofs girt with the intense green of the market gardens. It lies in a basin from which a valley twists down toward the lowlands of eastern Bolivia, and the bare mountains on the other side of the basin recall, in the richness of their mineral hues, the canon of the Yellowstone. La Paz is the loftiest capital in the world, higher even than Lhasa, in Tibet. For a city with a large Indian population it is very clean. It is gay with natty cavalry officers caracoling on met- tlesome Chilean horses and regimental bands play- ing on the Prado. Fine mansions line the Prado, and the aristocracy dash about in smart turnouts. I saw one team worth four thousand dollars, which had taken first prize at the Santiago horse- 84 SOUTH OF PANAMA show. The upper-crust pride themselves on be- ing a lap ahead of Lima and Santiago in dressing comme il faut. They leave a standing order with their Paris dressmaker or New York tailor to send on at once any new style that comes out. Thus they contrive to keep within a month of Fifth Avenue and the Rue de la Paix. There is a great display of jewelry, and the American minister told me how at a banquet he sat opposite a lady wearing precious stones to the value of $150,000. But the ultra-Parisian styles on the Prado seem simple and natural beside the costume of the chola. The lower part of her body is ballooned out with a great number of short skirts. On her feet are high boots with exaggerated French heels. A fringed silk shawl, draped from her shoulders, obliterates her waist-line. Her ears carry large pendants, while her head is surmounted by a high, bell-crowned, narrow-brimmed, enameled straw hat. One must ransack a century of fashion- plates to find anything so grotesque. Not in northern Africa, nor in China does one meet with such love of intense color as in La Paz. Startling indeed are the naive color combinations — a salmon shawl over a deep-green skirt, pink over ultramarine, cream over lavender, orange over magenta. Nor are the men far behind. The cholo in a white collar will drape himself in a poncho of solid saffron, pink, cerise, or vermilion. The Aymaras are a stronger and ruder race than the mild-tempered Kechuas. In the course of generations this breed has become fully adapted Cholas of La Paz in gala attire Indian mother with child, La Paz THE NATIVE RACES 87 to the cold and the thin air of this Ameri- can Tibet. They look with contempt on the soft inhabitants of the warm valleys and make mock of their sufferings in crossing the bleak Andean steppes. Tending alpacas and llamas, they grow up rugged amid bitter winds and lashing hail and, if they complain, it is never of the climate, but only of a grasping master, a squeezing cura, or a tax-gatherer without bowels. THE UNPATRIOTIC AYMARA They make far better soldiers than the recruits from the warm valleys, but never do they join the colors of their free will. Of the Republic of Bolivia the Aymara has no notion whatever. Province and canton are to him but names. When only two or three out of a hundred can read, how are they to arrive at a mental picture of “my country”? Nevertheless, political factions con- trive to draw the Indians into their quarrels, and the participation of these peasants, without the faintest notion of the issues involved but men enough to fight till they drop, is one reason why civil wars in Bolivia have been so stubborn and bloody. In these altitudes land is the very breath of life, and quarrels over land often give birth to sangui- nary feuds. The stronger peasant removes the landmarks and nibbles away his weaker neigh- bor’s field. If the robbed has friends, the land- grabbing provokes bloody strife, involving per- haps the whole district, and resulting in the an- 88 SOUTH OF PANAMA nihilation of one of the parties, for the Indian is pitiless with his beaten enemies. For all his ferocity, the Aymara lives in a strange sympathy with his live stock. He warms the new-born lamb with his own body, and will go to any trouble for a sick animal. The death of a ewe plunges him into grief, and he will weep more over the loss of an ox than over the loss of a son. The sick man will rather die of weakness than let a fowl be killed to make him broth. “Where I live,” observes a missionary, “the Indians are so fond of their sheep that they will not bring them to market. So the corregidor of San Pedro sends out his men and commandeers the needed sheep, paying the owner fifteen or twenty cents a head. With the latter price the Indian is perfectly satisfied, although he would have refused a dollar for the same sheep if you had tried to buy it. Yet this Indian will sell his child of five to a townsman in need of a servant ! ’ ’ Although nominally Christian, the Indian is an idolater at heart and will worship rough effigies of clay or any arresting natural object. In time of drought he worships lakes, rivers, and springs. If frost threatens, he adores the stars, lights bon- fires on the hill, or buys masses. In trouble he consults sorcerers, practises witchcraft, or peers into the future by opening animals and inspect- ing their entrails. His deity is St. Iago (St. James), as the church portrays him, on horse- back, putting the heathen to flight. The Aymaras have never forgotten that St. James was the pa- THE NATIVE RACES 89 tron of the conquistadores, that ‘ 1 Santiago ! ’ ’ was the battle-cry of these irresistible Spaniards, and in their hearts they suspect that this saint is more powerful than God. Every pueblo has its chapel, the abode of an overdressed effigy of the patron saint. Every year the saint is commemorated with a great eight- day feast, which is an occasion for wild danc- ing, carousal, and beastly drunkenness. Alcohol loosens the Indian’s tongue, and on such occasions, with tears running down his cheeks, this taciturn and unsocial being chants the story of his suffer- ings and his wrongs. Lately there has been a general movement of the Bolivian Indians for the recovery of the lands of which they have been robbed piecemeal. Con- flicts have broken out and, although the Govern- ment has punished the ringleaders, there is a feel- ing that, so long as the exploiting of the Indian goes on, Bolivians are living “in the crater of a slumbering volcano.” Last spring “El Tiempo” of La Paz, in an editorial under the heading, “How they rob them! How they kill them!” said : The condition of the Indians has changed all too little since the times of the Spanish domination. They con- tinue to be pariahs, exploited by provincial authorities and brutalized by alcohol. The state has entered into a kind of partnership with the church; the former to sell alcohol to the Indians (having a monopoly of its sale), and the latter to provide in her festivals the oc- casion for its consumption. 90 SOUTH OF PANAMA The moral, intellectual, and material condition of the Indians is the worst possible, and hinders thq progress of the nation, at the same time bringing us face to face with very many and very grave problems which must be solved, the tranquillity of outlying districts being mean- time in constant danger. Any one analyzing the stagnant and miserable life which the Indian leads, cannot but wonder at the strength of that race, which, badly fed, ignorant of hygiene, deci- mated by diseases, exploited by everybody, and poisoned by alcohol, does not disappear or at least lose its vigor. When, his cup filled to overflowing by that condition of semi-slavery in which he lives in a country at once free and liberal, the Indian protests, then, as the only remedy, as a supreme argument, we apply fierce whip- pings to his back. THE FUTURE OF THE NATIVE RACES “When you have filled up Korea and Man- churia,” I said to Count Okuma in Tokio the day after the annexation of Korea, “whither will the increase of your people go? Your population tends to double every thirty or forty years, and Japan is crowded. Will you not be obliged to quarrel with France for Indo-China, with England for Australia, or with the United States for the Philippines ? ’ ’ “No,” replied the veteran statesman and sage; “South America, especially the northern part, will furnish ample room for our surplus.” I recalled his prophecy when I noted how the Japanese are sifting into Peru. The statesmen of the West Coast lie awake nights dreading lest THE NATIVE RACES 91 the Orient should overflow in their direction. They may exclude the Chinese for the present ; but every one foresees that new China will in time launch a navy, and will then be able to exact for Chinese the same treatment that other immi- grants receive. As for the Japanese, no South American government or possible combination of governments dares discriminate against them. Japan’s navy is too strong for the South Ameri- can navies. This Asiatic anxiety is not confined to the countries fronting on the Pacific. The nations of the East Coast, from Venezuela to Argentina, re- alize that it will not be long after the opening of the Panama Canal before Oriental immigration becomes a problem for them, as it already is for the West Coast. Not long ago the immigration authorities at Buenos Aires, confronted unex- pectedly with a shipload of Hindus, promptly turned them back as “undesirable.” Their ac- tion was high-handed, for there is nothing in the immigration laws of Argentina to warrant dis- crimination against Asiatics, but it met with gen- eral approval. Provided that no barrier be interposed to the inflow from “man-stifled” Asia, it is well within the bounds of probability that by the close of this century South America will be the home of twenty or thirty millions of Orientals and descendants of Orientals. To predict this in 1915 is certainly less rash than it would have been to predict in 1815 that before the close of the nineteenth 92 SOUTH OF PANAMA century a single country in North America would receive nearly twenty millions of Europeans and that in 1900 the surviving immigrants, with their descendants, would number more than thirty-one millions! This, however, is precisely what has occurred. But Asiatic immigration of such volume would change profoundly the destiny of South America. For one thing, it would forestall and frustrate that gTeat immigration of Europeans which South American statesmen are counting on to re- lieve their countries from mestizo unprogressive- ness and misgovernment. The white race would withhold its increase or look elsewhere for out- lets; for those with the higher standard of com- fort always shun competition with those of a lower standard. Again, large areas of South America might cease to be parts of Christendom. Some of the republics there might come to he as dependent upon Asiatic powers as the Cuban re- public is dependent upon the United States. In any case, an Asiatic influx would seal the doom of the Indian element in these countries. The Indians have excellent possibilities, but it will take at least three generations of popular educa- tion and equal opportunity to enable them to re- alize these possibilities. At present they are de- pressed, ignorant, and unprogressive. Outside the larger towns, virtually nothing is being done for their children, who will grow into men and women just as benighted and hopeless as their parents. As they now are, the Indians could THE NATIVE RACES 93 make no effective economic stand against the wide-awake, resourceful, and aggressive Japanese or Chinese. The Oriental immigrants could beat the Indians at every point, block every path up- ward, and even turn them out of most of their present employments. In great part the Indians would become a cringing sudra caste, tilling the poorer lands and confined to the menial or re- pulsive occupations. Filled with despair, and abandoning themselves even more than they now do to pisco and coca, they would shrivel into a numerically negligible element in the population. Strange to say, whether such is to be their fate depends upon the policy of the United States ; for this is the only power in the Western Hemisphere strong enough to “speak in the gate” with the armed Japan of to-day or the armed China of to-morrow. When the South American countries, especially those of the West Coast, beseech the United States to back them up in discriminating against Asiatic immigrants, we shall face a de- cision of tremendous import to mankind ; namely, whether or not the Monroe Doctrine shall not only protect the South American republics against the Old World powers, but shall also be held as a buckler between the South American peoples and the teeming Orient. Then we shall be obliged to consider, for one thing, whether the race pos- sibilities of the millions of upland Indians are such as to warrant our shielding them for a time from the annihilating competition of the capable Orientals. CHAPTER IV CHILE I F Italy is a boot and France a teapot, surely Chile, twenty times as long as it is broad, is an eel. Twenty-six hundred miles long, it re- sembles our North Pacific Coast, small and up- side down. Its rainless North is the counterpart of Lower California. Central Chile, with its plain running between the lofty Andean axis and the low Coast Range, is a vest-pocket edition of the valley of the Sacramento or the San Joaquin. Valparaiso, for all its insecure harbor, is San Francisco to the South Pacific, while Santiago has the site of Sacramento in a climate like that of Los Angeles. Southern Chile like Oregon is so wet that its inhabitants are playfully said to have web feet. The island of Chiloe, its dripping trees bearded with moss, answers to Vancouver Island, Smyth Channel to the inside channel up to Juneau, while Tierra del Fuego matches in a way with Alaska. In Chile, as in Australia, the seasons are the reverse of ours, and one is startled to realize that all our poetic allusions to the months need to be revamped. They speak of “March vintage,” “brown April ale,” “sultry January,” “bleak July,” “February dog-days,” “dreary May,” 94 The California look of a Chilian landscape CHILE 97 and ‘‘gentle Boreas.’ ’ They make Keats sing of a “ drear-nigh ted June”; Coleridge of “the leafy month of December”; Burns of “chill May’s surly blast”; while a famous song must run: “Oh that we two were Novembering.” In Chile, Milton would exclaim : “Hail, bounteous November, that dost inspire Mirth and youth and warm desire.” Bryant would celebrate “ . . . flowery December When brooks send up a cheerful tune.” Lowell would ask, “What is so rare as a day in December f” We should hear Shakespeare rhapsodizing, “The October’s in her eyes; it is Love’s spring.” We should learn that “Sweet October showers do bring November flowers,” While the Tennysonian refrain would be meta- morphosed into, “For I am to be Queen of the November, Mother, I’m to be Queen of the November.” In Valparaiso one is struck by signs of Eng- lish influence. On the commercial streets every third man suggests the Briton, while a large pro- 98 SOUTH OF PANAMA portion of the business people look as if they have their daily tub. The cleanliness of the streets, the freshness of the parks and squares, the dress- ing of the shop-windows, and the style of the mounted police remind one of England. The climate is invigorating, and one notices a ‘ ‘ snap ’ ’ that is alien to Guayaquil and Lima. Nature provided little space for the city. Much of the business section is filled-in bay, while the resi- dences climb the ravines and crown the bluffs. Not even trolley cars can breast the grades, so a dozen ascensors may be seen climbing tire heights like beetles on a wall, lifting people thirty to fifty yards for a penny. When, as in 1906, the earth quakes under the houses on such perilous sites, the ruin is appalling. The official avowal of the loss of life then was over three thousand, but private opinion more than doubles the figures. The night view of Valparaiso from the balco- nies of the cliff dwellers is one of the great sights of the world. The vast sickle of the shore lit for nearly two hundred thousand people, the scores of ocean vessels lying at anchor, the harbor lights, the glowing avenues below from which rises mellowed the roar of nocturnal traffic, the rippling water under the moonlight and the far horizon of the illimitable Pacific produce an effect of enchantment. Santiago the capital, with half a million in- habitants, lies thirty leagues inland on the valley floor about ten miles from the foot hills and in midsummer one may cool himself in imagination CHILE 99 by contemplating, at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, the eternal snows of the Andes. To see them in the crimsoning light of sunset, from the terraces of Santa Lucia, a rocky wooded hill rising abruptly in the midst of the city, is one of the golden experiences of South America. Through the streets races the brown water from the mountains, so laden that in a glass of it there will be an inch of sediment. On the fields such water leaves annually a fertilizing quarter of an inch, so that here, as in the valley of the Nile, the land never wears out. When tillage began here, nearly four centuries ago, the plain was gravelly and the thickness — two to fifteen feet — of the soil that now overlies the gravel measures the spoil from the irrigating waters. The Central Valley, running south for two hundred miles, crossed by a dozen rivers from the Sierra, now twenty miles wide, now nearly pinched out by the advance vedettes of the ranges, is the heart of Chile. In su mm er it unreels a film of ripening wheat, luxuriant emerald alfalfa, well-kept vineyards and dusty highways where oxen draw clumsy carts on enormous wheels, vehicles so old-fashioned that you instantly think of them as “wains.” From such highways there lead to the estates the lofty green tunnels of alamedas, shut between rows of poplars and cooled by the flashing waters of the acequias. From the valley no vast tangle of foot hills hides the Alpine world as the high Sierra is screened from the dwellers in the great valleys 100 SOUTH OF PANAMA of California. Above the ruminating kine in the lush pastures the snow fields lift into the still air so near and so clear that you can see the breaks in their surface. Here as in California with the advance of the dry season the dust haze thickens till the mountains are blotted out. Then the first autumn rain washes the laden atmosphere as a shower washes a dirty window pane and, lo, your dear friends are there again so close that you can see the eagle hovering above the abyss. The luxuriant blackberry hedges, the double rows of slim poplars, and the mud walls coped with tiles to prevent the rain wearing them down, divide the valley into pastures that would surely be counted Elysian Fields if cattle had ever dreamt themselves a heaven. When one is not in the midst of vineyards or wheat, the land is a succession of parks grazed over by a fat happy kine and sleek prankish horses shut in by green walls sixty feet high and six feet thick. Yet, from end to end of this agricultural paradise one never sees what we would call “a good farm residence.” Save for a rare hacienda home no dwellings ap- pear but the miserable reed or mud huts of the inquilinos or agricultural laborers, the descend- ants of the old-time slaves. This is a land of great estates held chiefly by absentees and the produce of the fields goes not to sustain a flourish- ing rural life but to keep up an ambitious house in a provincial capital or a mud-and-marble man- sion in Santiago. Roads and draft animals are like the ends of CHILE 101 a teeter-board; when one is up the other is down. The finest mules and the worst roads in the world coexist in Shansi in North China. The second best mules and the second worst roads were to be found a generation ago in Missouri. When, as in southern Europe, the roads have the Roman per- fection, the draft animals are the donkeys, dogs and old women. Now, the best thing in Chile is the horse. He is of Arab strain, short-bodied, but with powerful legs that can bear a rider all day long at a gallop. Not only is he docile and intelligent, but nothing can break his spirit. I have yet to see a Chilean horse so old or spent that his ears are not pricked forward with an air of interest and hope. How natural, then, that the worst thing in Chile is the roads. Never are they rounded or provided with side ditches. The solid-wheel ox-carts grind them down till they are lower than the fields, rutty and hummocky; in summer ankle-deep in dust; in winter knee-deep in mud. Thoughtful men realize they are a heavy clog on the advancement of the country, but the Government pleads lack of funds and there is no system of compulsory road work, such as we have. Going south we notice the streams are becom- ing broader and upon crossing the beautiful Bio Bio River, which was for nearly three centuries the boundary between Spanish Chile and uncon- querable Araucania, we enter the “dark and bloody ground” of the Continent. This is a new country, for it was only in 1883 that a column of soldiers brought under the once redoubtable 102 SOUTH OF PANAMA Mapuches, weakened then by alcohol and disease to a mere shadow of their old selves. The result was a development like that which in Wyoming and Montana followed the suppression of the Sioux. European immigrants poured in and caste never struck root. Here, one finds some- thing of the rough frontier democracy of Idaho or Alberta. The common people hold themselves as good as anybody and dress up to their means. The young women are garbed like daughters of American farmers, while the maids at the rail- road eating house show the emphatic stylishness of our waitresses. Below Temuco in the very heart of old Arau- cania I visited a mission maintained by the Church of England for the Mapuches. The trail led through a beautiful high-lying country with forest trees still standing on the unfinished clear- ings and wheat springing amid the stumps and charred logs. A blue trout-infested river brawled down under high banks. The effect of the translu- cent stream, the grassy glades, the wooded hills, and the clumps of lofty trees was that of an abandoned royal park. Thatched Mapuche rucas, the dark interior soot-festooned from the open fire in the middle of the dirt floor, alternated with the rough board cabins of the Chilean set- tlers. Highroad there was none and our way led through many gates and bars. The mission consists of a church, a boys’ school, a girls’ school, a sawmill, shops, barns, orchards, and eight hundred acres of land. Apple and cherry CHILE 103 were in blossom, dandelions starred the blue grass, the currants were in bloom, and the mis- sion bees went zooning amid the white clover. You could fancy yourself in the south of Eng- land. Copper-colored lads, broad of face and heavy of feature, were snaking logs for the saw- mill, making benches, building a porch, and water- ing the garden. It was a delightful scene of peace, work, and aspiration where once had reigned sloth, drunkenness, injustice, and hatred. No doubt the monasteries in the Dark Ages stood for about the same things as this mission. When Araucania was opened to settlement, the natives were allowed to keep the lands they were actually using, so that about half the soil here belongs to them. The Government aims to fur- nish from seven to twelve acres to each male and, as population grows, to provide the surplus with plots in other provinces where there is still public land. Up to ten years ago the Mapuches were diminishing in number, but now, thanks to the teaching of temperance and right-living by the missionaries, they are holding their own. Crossing goes on at a great rate and some think that before long the pure stock will be gone. Bit by bit the Chileans are filching the acres from the Mapuches and the official “Protector of the Na- tives” is of little use to them. At the time of my visit a delegation of caciques was in Santiago praying for protection. The mission schools have done such good work that they receive govern- ment aid and their aim is to work out a type of 104 SOUTH OF PANAMA industrial education so suitable that the Govern- ment will provide it for all native children. The mission teachers insist that the Mapuche is more truthful and honorable than the Chilean. His sex morality is higher even if the cacique does keep a wife in each corner of his ruca. The Mapuches never molest the missionary ladies and here as elsewhere the lone woman dreads the Chilean more than the Indian. “They are big children,” observed a teacher. “They sulk like children, they trust like children.” One of the mission headmen insists that the Indians are in every way equal to the whites, but the teachers agree that among their pupils there are fewer with mental initiative and organizing power than there would be among an equal number of white children. To my eye a group of Mapuche chil- dren promises nothing fine, although the faces are by no means dull. On down toward Osorno the heavier woods and ranker undergrowth tell of increasing rainfall. The shaggy hills and ridges recall Oregon land- scapes. The great lumber piles at every station, the mean, unpainted houses, the unkempt towns, and the rough garb belong to man’s first grapple with nature. The adobe hut is gone and the log fences, frame houses and long piles of cordwood show a most lavish use of forest wealth. Further south cultivation is rare and the country is nearly wilderness. Clearing is going on, great piles of brush are burning, while greener piles are dry- ing for later holocaust. Forest destruction ap- El Tronador, “The Thunderer," Chile, 11,300 feet high View of the Central Valley of Chile, near Santiago CHILE 107 pears to have affected the climate, for an extreme drought prevails and hundreds of square miles are being devastated by fire. In a single afternoon from the train I counted thirty fires. The outcry over this fearful waste of natural wealth will probably call into being a forest service for Chile. Presently we leave Araucania and the wilder- ness gives way to farms. About sixty years ago a stream of German immigration laved southern Chile, so there are now in these parts about thirty thousand of German blood, two-thirds of them born in the country. La Union, Osorno and Val- divia are centers of German influence and betray Teutonic characteristics, although the Chilean ele- ment preponderates in numbers. The country abounds in fine farmhouses and big bams like those of the Germans in Wisconsin, while the towns show a dignity and solidity I have not seen since leaving Santiago. This is a moist climate — ten feet of rain fell in a recent five months — so that the flanks of the Andes are full of lovely lakes like those of the Bernese Oberland or the Sierra Nevada. Lake Llanquihue is about the size of Lake Tahoe in California and its waters are nearly as blue. The mountains and smoking volcanoes wear a thick cap of snow and the country is full of singing brooks and green rushing little rivers. In the right season this is for the lover of the temperate zone the sweetest, goodliest spot in all South America. It is a land where it neither freezes or burns, fresh in summer and mild in winter, a 108 SOUTH OF PANAMA land of tender green grass, dandelions, violets, wild roses, hawthorn and white clover. Three hundred German families dwell about the Lake and they have converted its wooded shores into smiling farms. There are neat frame buildings, white palings and post-and-rail fences enclosing stump-dotted pastures where contented cattle graze and look off into the virgin woods a mile or two away. Chile is a rich field for the student of races. Its conquerors were not altogether of the same type as those who ravished the treasures of the Incas. The gold washings by Indian serfs working all day in icy water and weeping while they worked soon came to an end and thereafter there was little to attract to Chile the eager gold-seeker. The early history of the colony is drab pastoralism and agriculture streaked crimson by slave uprisings and Indian fighting. Chile attracted the born fighters — men content to face a life in saddle and camp and a death under a Mapuche club. A Chilean scholar has published a book to show that they were the descendants of the Visigoths of Euric and Pelayo, who found in Araucania a chance to slake their racial thirst for fighting. What a romance of history that leads the Goths in the third century from southern Scandinavia to the shores of the Black Sea, in the fifth cen- tury makes them masters of Italy, and in the next century drives them to Spain, from which a thou- sand years later they flock to Chile to mate with native women and become ancestors of the roto, CHILE 109 the Chilean peasant of to-day ! I have met Chile- ans whose stature, broad shoulders, big faces, high cheek-bones, and tawny mustaches pro- claimed them as genuine Norsemen as the Ice- landers in our Eed River Valley. In the upper classes of Chile there is much Ger- manic blood. One sees it in stature, eye color, and ruddy complexion. A couple of centuries ago when the Panama route was blocked by the Eng- lish buccaneers, so that traffic to the West Coast sought the Straits of Magellan, the north Euro- peans who visited the Pacific fell under the spell of a scenery and climate so like home and settled in Chile. Such names as O’Higgins, Edwards, MacKenna, Lispenperger and Blumenthal, crop up often in Chilean history. Among the pupils of Santiago College there are as many blonds as brunets, while not over a third have both parents Chilean. This Germanic element has given Chile a very different slant from Peru. Neither lottery nor bull-fight has ever struck root in Chile, while its political life has been marked by an energy and self-control rare in South America. The Chilean masses are descended from the crossing of Europeans with captive native women. Early Chile was a man’s colony, and white women were few. The Spanish trooper fared south to the frontier with from four to six native women to attend him. Four to one was the ratio of the sexes in the frontier garrisons and soon there was a swarm of half-breed children. In a single week in 1580 sixty such children were born in a post 110 SOUTH OF PANAMA with one hundred and sixty soldiers. In 1550 the married men in Valdivia had up to thirty concu- bines apiece. Aguirre, one of the conquistadores, left at his death fifty legitimate sons, to say noth- ing of daughters. De Escobar left eighty-seven living descendants, and he by no means held the record for his time. It is doubtful if the exploits in parentage of the Chilean pioneers can be matched in history. The men of two of the most bellicose breeds the world has ever known wore each other down by endless warfare, so that innu- merable native women became the booty of the sur- viving white men and bore them children. As late as 1776 in Santiago the women were ten times as. numerous as the men. This blending of strains occurred so long ago and was so complete that the modem Chileans do not reveal the atavism of mixed breeds. They are virtually a new race with definite transmissible characteristics and betray, it is said, no tendency to revert to either of the ancestral stocks. In the other colonies of the West Coast the Spaniards subdued docile cultivators who went on tilling the soil without needing the master’s atten- tion. In Chile the whites met a wild, stiff-necked people, unbroken to toil, so that they had to live out on their estates and oversee their serfs. This made the Chilean fiefholders more active and prac- tical than the Peruvians corrupted by town idle- ness and luxury. In rural tastes the Chilean hacendados resembled the Southern planters, al- though of late the passion for town life is grow- \ CHILE 111 ing. The public spirit and political steadiness which long distinguished Chile from other South American republics reflected country-gentleman character. The rotos are dare-devil fighters and spirited workers under proper direction, but they did not impress me as a high type. Beside them the Teutons of the southern provinces stand out like a natural nobility. Although in the towns the Ger- man contingent is but a small minority, it takes the lead and is readily conceded the upper hand. In every case the mayor is a German elected by Chilean votes, for the Germans enjoy a great rep- utation for probity in public office. Once the Chileans owned all the land about Lake Llanqui- hue, but it has all come to the Germans owing to their hard work, thrift, and close attention to the details of farming. An old Chilean put his finger on the weaknesses of his people when he said: “We have the pride of the Spaniard and the lazi- ness of the Araucanian. ’ ’ The first generation of Germans came poor, and even worked as laborers for the Chileans. They prospered so fast that sometimes the son of the Chilean landowner be- came inquilino for the son of the very German who had worked for his father. Now in the third gen- eration it is said that some of the young Chileans, having learned thrift from the Germans, are be- coming landowners again. The prevailing German opinion of the Chileans is not high. “Good raw material; we need them as laborers, but of course we don ’t regard them as 112 SOUTH OF PANAMA our equals. They are bright enough, but don’t look ahead. Once they had all the farms, but they sold out to us — couldn’t resist the temptation of cash — and now they are our inquilinos.” For a long time it made a great scandal for a Teuton to marry a Chilean, but now the Teutons are broad- minded enough to admit that some Chileans are fine people. Educators insist that the crossing of the two stocks gives no good result. The off- spring seem to inherit the bad points of their parents rather than the good points. They are said to be bad in disposition, lazier than either parent, and lacking in the will-power to control their appetites and passions. All the observers agreed that the rotos are clever. From operating machinery to playing music, they are “quick in the uptake,” as Mrs. Poyser says. But the quickness is offset by su- perficiality ; what comes easily goes easily. Then, too, they seem unable to advance under their own steam. “Unless there is some one to stir him up,” observed a German merchant, “the Chilean simply doesn’t think at all. He is a creature of habit and routine, incapable of self-criticism. Without a jolt from some one he would go on for centuries planting potatoes with a crooked stick. ’ ’ As laborer the Chilean has good points — physical endurance and energy ; but he must have direction for, working on his own place for himself, he is fitful. Teachers find the Chileans quicker of percep- tion than the Germans, but think that no amount CHILE 113 of schooling will free them from the sway of shift- ing impulses. The German has aims and goes farther because he moves only in one direction. The day after election Chileans who but yesterday were vilifying each other will bury the hatchet and embrace. The Germans despise a quicksilver people who get over their political grudges so easily. Two Chileans will come to blows, make up, embrace, drink together, quarrel, fight, make up, embrace, drink together, and so da capo. The Chilean readily pours out a stream of foaming elo- quence which sounds fine, but the matter-of-fact German blows the lather off and asks in wonder, “What, then, did the man really say?” “We say in ten words,” observed a pastor, “what they need a hundred words to utter.” CHAPTER V ARGENTINA A LONG summer day suffices the Transandine Railway to transport one through the gigantic backbone of the Continent to Mendoza, the Argentine gateway of the Andes. Sad experi- ence with earthquakes has left Mendoza a low- built, very extended city. Lying under the lee of the mountains it enjoys a hot-house climate and, like Ispahan and other oasis cities of the East, it is in large part garden, orchard, and vineyard. Through the doorways in the high walls along the suburban streets you glimpse long arbors, clumps of maize, patches of berries or melons, and trees laden with figs, apricots, and peaches. Down both sides of the street gurgles mountain water and the runnels are lined with the rootlets of drooping willows, lofty poplars, leafy cottonwoods, spread- ing locusts, and tatterdemalion eucalypti. The water recalls the tawny fluid that fattens the fields about Santiago, for the wear of the Andes is an inexhaustible source of fertility for the volcanic soil that bears the vineyards of Mendoza. After a night’s run we awake to find ourselves flying swiftly across a vast productive plain. The pampa is amazingly level — as flat as the flattest prairies of Illinois. Channels, erosions, or other 114 Mount Osorno, Chile ARGENTINA 117 signs of running water there are none. In on© hundred and fifty miles I noticed not one bridge or culvert on the railway. No side ditches have been provided for either highway or railway. We are gliding across a boundless, fertile expanse, which curves like the surface of the sea. In the foreground graze great herds of blooded cattle knee deep in rank prairie grass or succulent lucerne. In the middle ground appear ranch buildings surrounded by poplars, orchards, and grain stacks and flanked by the inevitable wind- mill. Into the distance, like ships “hull down,” recede poplars and windmills, until nothing is vis- ible but the tree-tops and the vanes. Above the horizon peer long yellow stacks, recalling the mat sails of Chinese junks. The dark bulks that heave above the cornfields like the backs of bison are old hayricks, eaten small about the base. It is no doubt the most metallic of new coun- tries — metal fences, posts, gates, railway ties, windmill towers, and telephone poles. Even the houses are of adobe, brick, or corrugated iron. The land holdings are large and there are fenced fields miles square. Dwellings are far apart and the roads are merely strips of unworked pampa. They are wide, twenty to thirty yards apparently ; a width which is said to have originated with the custom of driving cattle to market. The road had to be spacious enough for them to graze in it by day and camp in it at night. There are few graded highways in Argentina and often the roads have been worn down until, 118 SOUTH OF PANAMA as in China, they are lower than the rest of the country — in some cases, I was informed, as much as a yard lower. Much of the pampa has been fenced and grazed, but never yet has been tom by the plow. Whole estates held for a rise in value have been allowed to become overgrown with a tall thistle that will hide a man. The long line of fence posts, each mantled with lodged windle- straws, looks like a procession of penitents. Myriads of pigeons, ducks, gulls, wild geese, and barred falcons fly about, and for miles at a time there is nothing to be seen but coarse, tufted wild grass. It is natural that the American visitor, realiz- ing that Buenos Aires is the chief port of a vast food-producing area at about the stage of develop- ment of our Northwest forty years ago, should look for a rough, work-place city of the type of Chicago in 1875. Imagine, then, his surprise to find Buenos Aires a clean and handsome city, em- bellished with a great number of beautiful parks and plazas and furnished with buildings in the best French taste, ornamented with innumerable domes, turrets, cupolas, cornices, balconies, and loggias. It may be “a plaster imitation of Paris,” as I have heard it called, but it is certainly not the exponent of crude commercial utility. The beauty motive is nearly everywhere in evi- dence, splendid public edifices in granite or marble are rising, while the numerous blocked streets and the air filled with the dust of demolition, witness to the great rate at which the city is being recon- ARGENTINA 119 structed. The one heavy handicap to the beautifi- cation of Buenos Aires is that it was laid out with streets only ten yards wide, admitting of side- walks only four and one-half feet in width. The result is in the busy parts a congestion of traffic and pedestrians, which a few broad avenues and a subway system seem entirely inadequate to re- lieve. THE PEOPLE The Argentines impress one as a bigger breed than the people on the West Coast. When at the summit of the Transandine Railway our train passed into Argentine hands, the greater stature, the massiveness of body, and the bigness of face of the train crew was at once noticeable. The men of Buenos Aires looked to me nearly as big as New Yorkers, though certainly smaller than the men of Chicago. Is it that the bigger Latins have migrated hither? Or have we here the re- sult of a more generous nourishment? Certainly Buenos Aires with its million and a half inhabit- ants is a veritable Niagara of human power. The people look ruddy and vigorous. Their move- ments are swift and energetic and the pace of the street recalls the bee-line rush of the business dis- trict in Denver or Seattle. Argentina has the destiny of a white man’s country. In the hot provinces of the North, to be sure, you find a considerable substratum of Indian mestizos, but for the nation as a whole I doubt if the proportion of non-Caucasian blood is over five 120 SOUTH OF PANAMA per cent. For our own people those returned as non-white constitute eleven per cent, and the non- Caucasian blood cannot be less than eight or nine per cent. Racially no people of the Western Hemisphere, save the Canadians, is so European as are the Argentines. The working class, white, eager and self-assertive, gladdens the traveler’s heart by its profound contrast with the dark, ill- clad, slow-moving, down-trodden, apathetic labor- ing mass that is present in some degree every- where else in South America. As absorber of European immigrants Argentina comes second only to the United States, and we may yet see it take the lead. Spaniards and Italians predominate, and, although the latter have been decidedly in excess, the immigration from Spain has in the last four years surpassed that from Italy. While the United States has ab- sorbed great numbers of the chaffy sort from Naples and Sicily, Argentina has attracted chiefly North Italians, who are much superior, and who engage in commerce rather than in earthwork. Her Italians are of bigger mold than ours and not much given to gesticulation. Among them you note heads like those you have seen on the can- vases of Tuscan and Umbrian painters. No doubt it is owing to this excellent North Italian blood that the women in even the poorer quarters of Buenos Aires are so comely and their children so remarkably pretty. Ugly children are far rarer there than in the corresponding parts of our own cities. ARGENTINA 121 Although the scientific men of France and Italy have written much on ‘ ‘ the decadence of the Latin peoples” and the rest of us have politely accepted their judgment, the student of races will do well to keep an eye on Argentina. It is rapidly filling up from the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and bids fair to become for the south European brunets what the United States once was for Anglo-Saxons and Celts. As the traveler trav- erses these vast, sparsely populated regions, which within the lifetime of our children will cer- tainly be the home of thirty, perhaps forty, mil- lions of human beings, it dawns upon him that here under his eyes the Latins are blooming again. Economic opportunity has called into being hope, and hope is the parent of that energy and that fecundity which make a great people. For, indeed, Argentina is a land of hope, the first country I found below Panama where life is on the up curve, not for traders and planters alone, — men with capital, — but for the wage-earners as well. The conventillas or congested slum courts, which play so great a part in the housing of the poor in Lima and Santiago, have nearly all disap- peared from Buenos Aires. But whither have the wage-earners gone? Out toward the outskirts of the vast tentacular mass — perhaps eight or ten miles from the docks where the greatest numbers are employed — one notices numerous little one- room stucco houses with a blank wall facing the street and a bit of garden in front. These are embryo homes, coming into existence on the instal- 122 SOUTH OP PANAMA ment plan. The workingman buys a house lot on long time, paying one or two dollars a month. Near the rear end he builds a single room, in a year or two he has put a bedroom in front of it and later, as his family expands or he gets ahead, he adds a couple of rooms toward the street. Lo ! a complete little home with molded fagade and with flowers in front as is the South European way. Thus by the time his children are grown the wage-earner has a property worth from $1200 to $3000 — no great sum from the view-point of an American wage-earner, but a bonanza in the eyes of a West Coast laborer. IMMIGRATION. The Government provides at Buenos Aires an intelligent and humane immigration service closely modeled on the greatest service of the kind in the world, namely, that of Ellis Island. There is a huge “immigrants’ hotel” where the aliens are allowed to remain up to five days free of charge. Those entering the country for the first time receive free transportation to any part of Argentina. Even wives coming out to join their husbands are forwarded without expense. Span- ish and Italian newcomers need little care, for they have the language and all are going to join friends. Nearly a quarter of the inhabitants of the capital are Italians and well nigh half are foreign born. It is the German, British, Scandi- navian, and Russian immigrants that need aid in getting established. Often by means of telegrams ARGENTINA 123 a place is found for the immigrant ere he starts inland. The immigrant young women are in great demand for domestic service in Buenos Aires and a room is provided where ladies may meet and engage them. But before a girl takes a place the inspectors make sure that the mistress is a decent woman and not a “white slaver.” Ow- ing to this danger, an effort is being made to establish a home in which immigrant girls may stay until they are properly placed. Every effort is made to get the immigrant men and families past the lure of the capital and into the spacious interior, where their labor is needed and opportunity abounds. In one room of the station is maintained an exhibit of farm machin- ery in the hope that the immigrants may become interested in these implements, so unlike what they are used to, and take a fancy to engage in the ultra-modern farming of Argentina. The em- ployees of the hotel are regularly instructed in the economic geography of the country so that they may meet all enquirers and turn them toward the best chances. Every evening after supper an illustrated lecture is given in the great dining- room of the hotel, showing life in the interior, characteristic products, industrial successes, etc. ; but never is there thrown on the screen a scene from the city. At the chief points in the interior are stationed government agents to whom parties of immigrants may be consigned. Apprised by telegram, the agent meets the train bearing the immigrants, looks after their needs, and attends 124 SOUTH OF PANAMA to their further disposition. Each provincial cap- ital, too, has its immigration bureau with accom- modations which the alien may enjoy free up to ten days. Besides those who come to stay, there is an im- mense seasonal movement of agricultural labor- ers between Argentina and southern Europe — the famous ‘ ‘ swallow migration. ’ ’ Taking advantage of the reversal of the seasons below the Line, tens of thousands of farm hands, after the crops have been gathered at home, take steerage passage for Argentina where they work through the harvest season at good wages. Then they return home, where living is cheaper and life more interesting. This splitting of the year between two hemi- spheres is, I fancy, a new thing in the life of man- kind, but no doubt it will be commonplace enough to our children. During the next half century or more Argentina is to be the great receptacle of immigration, the big melting pot, and so through all this time she is bound to exhibit the characteristics of a new, half-formed people. National character will be wavering and uncertain. Good customs will not have time to strike root before they are washed away in the flood of motley newcomers. It will not be safe to take much for granted. There will be confusion as to standards and unsettledness as to many points on which an old people has long had its mind made up and its decisions fixed in tra- ditions which do not admit of defiance or discus- sion. Continually the elite will set good examples MM San Martin Falls, Iguazu, Argentina “Christ the Redeemer,’’ on Andean Boundary between C hileand Argentina ARGENTINA 127 and precedents for the rest and continually the notions and ways of the unassimilated immigrants will weaken standards in Argentina, as in our own time they have weakened them with us. There will be the openmindedness, the boyish eagerness to learn, the enthusiasm for betterment that char- acterize a young hopeful people, but there will also be a deal of cropping out of raw human na- ture, and the collective mind will be turbid like a stream in freshet. While there is growth and prosperity in store for this new people, there is room for doubt if it is likely to manifest as much initiative and force of character as the American people has shown. Among the founders of Argentina one does not find religious groups refusing to be crushed into acquiescence by an established church. They were simply bold men bent on adventure or profit, not rebels, independents, and come-outers. Well might President Roca declare in 1898 at the open- ing of the new port works in Rosario : “The proud conquerors who, with their peculiar no- tions of liberty, trod under their iron heel portions of the South American continent were very different from those Pilgrim Fathers who landed in New England with no arms but the Bible, and no purpose save to establish a commonwealth based on the principles of civil and religious liberty.” Not only is Argentina without these precious idealistic stocks, but the huge immigration — recent and to come — that is to fix the soul and 128 SOUTH OF PANAMA determine the character of the Argentine people, is selected more by economic motives than the great nineteenth-century influx into the United States. One may therefore reasonably question whether the great southern republic will pursue as individual a path or contribute to humanity as many ideas and institutions as has the republic of the North. LAND MONOPOLY A half century ago at the time the United States, at the instance of democratic social re- formers, was adopting for the distribution of its public lands the thrice-blessed homestead system, the Government of Argentina was short-sighted enough to be willing to alienate to a single indi- vidual, Pedro Luro, a Basque immigrant, a hun- dred square leagues, or 625,000 acres, of good soil at a price averaging three and one-half cents an acre! He got fifty Basque families upon his grant and several of them became millionaires, for the land to-day is worth 500 times what Luro paid for it. This same Luro, who in 1837 at the age of seventeen landed at Buenos Aires with a few shillings in his pocket, died some years ago owning nearly a million acres of land besides half a million sheep and 150,000 cattle. In 1879 General Roca entrapped and extermi- nated the roving savages of the pampa and the Government thereby became master of a hundred million acres of fertile land. “From this epoch,” writes an Argentine economist, “dates the real ARGENTINA 129 progress of the republic. With the greater secur- ity of the back country, with the rapid building of railroads, with the harbor improvements at Buenos Aires, immigration set in and every year agriculture gained in importance. The introduc- tion of steam-driven farm machinery contributed much to this development. “As land gained in value public lands were eagerly sought. In all the provinces persons with money or political influence or a military record acquired great tracts at trifling cost. In order to cover the cost of Roca’s expedition the greater part of the soil conquered from the wilderness was alienated at a price of three cents an acre and the remainder divided among the officers who took part in the expedition. Thus the latifundia sys- tem was fastened upon the country.” To-day one hears of single proprietors or com- panies owning 300,000, 400,000, even 500,000 acres, and in the newer territories to the south there are holdings of a million and a quarter acres. In the far North nearly under the Tropic of Capri- corn I met an Englishman who with his brothers has a ranch which the train takes the best part of a day to cross. Probably never in modern times has a government, controlled evidently by pro- moters and speculators caring nothing for the healthy democratic development of the country, flung about territory so recklessly. If the public domain had been offered as free homesteads to actual settlers, millions who are now American citizens would to-day be speaking Spanish under 130 SOUTH OF PANAMA the Southern Cross. Formerly the smallest unit the Government ever considered was the square league and the sole question was how many such leagues the grantee should obtain. The land law of 1903, however, forbids the alienation of more than 6250 acres of public land to a single person and the land officials told me they are getting down to the square mile as the unit even in the newest territories. Sobered by the consciousness of past mistakes, the Government is studying how to get the rest of its domain — which is still exten- sive — into the hands of bona fide settlers. Even yet, however, the value imparted to private hold- ings of wild land — amounting often to a hundred- fold increase — by government railroads and irri- gation works, is all harvested by speculators, while the public lands within the zone of influence of the railway are auctioned off without imposing on the buyer any obligation to settle upon and improve his plot. Between 1895 and 1908 the number of land hold- ings in Argentina appears to have increased from 172.000 to 227,000 or 30 per cent. Of the latter number about 13,000 ranged in size from 750 to 1250 acres, 11,000 from 1250 to 2500 acres, 10,000 from 2500 to 6250 acres, 5000 from 6250 to 12,500 acres, 2800 from 12,500 to 25,000 acres, 1200 from 25.000 to 62,500 acres, 233 from 62,000 to 125,000 acres, and a thousand above 125,000 acres. Never- theless, a fifth of all the holdings are less than 25 acres in extent and a quarter run from 25 to 125 acres. ARGENTINA 131 Through the inheritance of co-heirs some of the latifundia are breaking up of themselves. A lawyer told me of a case known to him in which an estate of seventy square leagues originating no longer ago than 1880, had already in part been broken up into one-league holdings by division first among the children and later among the grandchildren of the grantee. Then, too, there is an encouraging tendency, after grazing gives way to grain growing, to di- vide the large holdings among tenants, who may become owners. In the Province of Cordoba even the raw immigrant does not work for wages but rents land for one-fifth of the crop. The store will carry him until his crop is harvested. Unless it is a bad season the thrifty but penniless immigrant in a year or two buys a plot on time, paying very little cash and giving a mortgage for most of the purchase price. Although the lati- fundia are thus being nibbled away, the process is so slow that the governor of the province has been authorized to buy large tracts and resell them in lots of from 50 to 250 acres on fifteen or twenty years ’ time. Far to the north in the lovely valley of Salta — so like certain valleys of California — one sees again how the original mal-distribution of the pub- lic domain is being corrected. The average hold- ing of irrigated land is perhaps 500 acres, worth $50,000 or $60,000; but the tendency is steadily toward smaller farms. Estates break up through the equal inheritance of children. The advent of 132 SOUTH OF PANAMA the railroad causes a shift from grazing to tillage, which promotes subdivision, especially as agricul- ture tends to become more intensive. Then there is the moral and intellectual advance of the peon class, owing to the influence of common schools, newspapers, and military service. First the peon from being a wage laborer becomes a tenant, and then from tenancy he rises to the ownership of the 30 acres or so of irrigated land which will keep a family busy. It is by such process that the num- ber of farms in older provinces like Buenos Aires, Cordoba, and Santa Fe increased, in the decade 1901-1911, respectively 57 per cent., 60 per cent., and 80 per cent., while in a latifundia territory like the Central Pampa the number doubled. But there are shadows. In the older provinces, after the land has been cropped from three to five years, it becomes weedy and needs to be seeded down and grazed. The landowner who will rent his estate for farming will not rent it for grazing, because he can make more by handling it himself with the aid of hired peons. So in order to get land his tenants have to remove to some other district, thereby losing that valuable personal credit which accrues to the good man who lives permanently in one neighborhood. In some parts a middleman or dealer rents a big tract for a dol- lar or two an acre, divides it into farms and sub- lets them for wheat growing for a third of the crop in sacks — a rental perhaps six times as great as he has paid. By their contract his tenants are obliged to obtain of him all their sacks and farm ARGENTINA 133 implements, to have their crop threshed by his machine, to sell him their crop, and to buy all their supplies at his store. On each of these transac- tions the dealer gouges, and these profits added to the rent leave the tenant scarcely enough to keep body and soul together. The game is to prevent the tenant making anything, and in a promising season, after the danger of crop failure has passed away, it is the storekeeper’s duty to shove on to the tenant customer all the goods he possibly can, so as to have a big bill to present to him after his crop is sold. In 1912 in the province of Santa Fe the tenants reached such a pitch of desperation that they united and went on strike against the one-sided contracts which bound them hand and foot. Barns were burned, farm machinery smashed, fence wires cut, and beatings dealt out to non- strikers. Many small farmers, once tenants them- selves, joined with the strikers to help them out. The dues to the tenants’ association were two cents the acre, and some members in order to pay these dues sold the sole live stock they possessed, their chickens. Alarmed by the rising, the mid- dlemen lowered rents and agreed to let their ten- ants buy and sell as they pleased. Out of this movement ought to come the regulation of tenancy contracts by law. Farm-owners, in the hands of merchants’ and grain buyers’ trusts, are some- times little better off than tenants, and there is a growing demand for cooperative elevators, rural cooperative insurance and rural credit associa- 134 SOUTH OF PANAMA tions, and for extending to small farmers the serv- ices of the government mortgage hanks. THE SPIRIT OF ARGENTINA Argentina is the one South American society I studied which is plainly shifting from the old colonial foundations. Forty years ago, no doubt, it was as truly the heir of Spain a’s Colombia or Peru. But the rush of material development, the flood of cosmopolitan immigration, the rapid growth of riches and the exciting prospect of the future have made the soul of this people plastic. The leaders are openminded and welcome change. “Progress” has become a term to con- jure with. They wish not only railroads and irri- gation works, packing houses and sugar refineries, they are willing to consider new institutions and ideals of life. The ascendant element has come to misdoubt the very spiritual foundations of the old society as you find it still in half-colonial interior centers like Cordoba and Salta — its disdain of labor, its indolence, its contempt for business, its reserve and personal pride, its social exclusive- ness, its masculinism, its seclusion of women, its patriarchal customs, its clericalism, its spirit of authority and its hostility to the ‘ ‘ gringo. ’ ’ Any- thing that has worked well in the advanced coun- tries now obtains an attentive hearing in Argen- tina. Its policy of lay education, its democratic school system, its education of girls, its normal schools, its reliance upon the woman elementary teacher, its cultivation of athletic sports, its boy Mount Aconcagua from Argentina Valley of the Aconcagua River, Chile ARGENTINA 137 scouts, its public libraries, its bacteriological laboratories, its experiment stations, its boards of health, its National Department of Agriculture, which spends half as much as the United States Department of Agriculture — all these innovations witness to the willingness of Argentina to risk change of soul. Her eager, forward look gives assurance that in time she will have even library schools, college settlements, public playgrounds, athletic ‘ ‘meets,” social centers, local institutions and all other things which have been found good elsewhere. To be sure, the new institutions and agencies have not yet had time greatly to affect the national soul. The character of the people is still “South American” — with modifications due to economic opportunity and to an enormous influx of foreign- ers. But in view of the influences being brought to bear on the rising generation one may expect a great change in spirit within our own time. The aristocratic prejudices and values are going rap- idly. Obviously the forces contending for the soul of the Argentine people are the same that we know so well — democracy and plutocracy. The problem is how to transform the spirit of the cre- ole society without at the same time losing the poise, the self-restraint, the sense of honor and the idealism fostered in the dominant element of the old regime, just as they were fostered in the by- gone planter aristocracy of the old South. The Argentines are the one South American people likely to have enough in common with us 138 SOUTH OF PANAMA to found a genuine friendship on. Our people ought to feel a sisterly sympathy with this new motley people, engaged in subduing the wilder- ness and making it the seat of civilization. We ought to understand the problems forced upon them by the disposal of a vast public domain, the urgent need of means of transportation, the ex- clusive reliance upon foreign capital, excessive dependence upon oversea markets, heterogeneous immigration, sudden fortunes, the spread of the get-rich-quick spirit, wastefulness in government expenditures and the reign of sordid interests in public life. Have we not had them all? On the other hand the Argentines ought to feel a sym- pathy with us because we have had most of their experiences, because by the study of our history they are able to avoid certain costly errors we committed, and because the institutions we have fashioned in order to help us realize our demo- cratic ideal seem better suited to their needs than those of any other country. CHAPTER VI LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE T HE Spaniards brought with them to the New World the old Latin fondness for town life and few of their descendants have ever acquired rural tastes. The extreme backwardness of coun- try in comparison with town is, in fact, to-day one of the chief things marking off Latin America from what I may call Anglo-America, i.e., the United States and Canada. In the Cauca Valley in Colombia I noticed that the owners of agricul- tural land do not live on their farms if it is possi- ble to manage them from town. Every Monday large numbers, leaving their families in Cali, ride out to their farms up and down the valley, and there they remain most of the week. Even greater, I am told, is the infatuation for the capital. The land of the fertile plateau of Bogota is held in large estates, the* owners of which live for the most part in Bogota and daily go out, often a long distance, in order to direct their peons. All the productive land of the Ecuador Sierra, save the toilsome and hazardous tillage the patient Indians have pushed far up the bleak flanks of the volcanoes, is owned by absentees, who live in Riobamba, Ambato, or Quito — when they 139 140 SOUTH OF PANAMA do not live in Paris — and leave their estates — sometimes of vast extent — to be managed by a mayor domo of mixed blood. There are no inde- pendent white farmers tilling land of their own, nor is there a rural gentry as in Europe. The landowner lives in town and an occasional visit on horseback to his hacienda does little to mod- ernize an agriculture that descends directly from that of the Incas. He never dreams of settling his family on his hacienda, for the country lacks roads, decent houses, wells, police, postmen, schools, and so- ciety. It is not that the landed families here have given up country residence and removed to town, as we have seen them do in other parts of the world. They never lived on their estates, not even in colonial times. From the conquest on, the Spanish dwelt in towns under protection and re- quired their encomienda, or assignment of agricul- tural Indians, to send in produce and servants for the town household. Later, when grants were of land rather than of serfs, the master took more notice of agriculture, but it will yet be long before he lives out on his hacienda and helps form a rural society. It is much the same in Peru and Bolivia. The glitter of Lima, Arequipa, and La Paz is chiefly agricultural in origin, though, to be sure, one must not forget the wealth from the mines. The cur- rent that feeds these arc lamps of civilization is not rents paid by tenants, but the profits from the direct cultivation of estates by means of semi- LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 141 servile labor. An American, long established in Cuzco, thus sums up what he sees about him : The passion for city life deters the owner of a large place from living on it and improving it. He leaves much to his administrador, who robs him of course, and agriculture goes on as in the days of Solomon. The reading of an agricultural journal like La Hacienda — published, be it noted, in Buffalo, N. Y., — has absolutely no effect upon their methods. On the tinea everything is done according to the time of the moon. Thus the inherited contempt for rural life and distaste for things bucolic acts like a ball-and- chain on the economic advancement of these countries. No alert, progressive resident farm- ers ; no enlightened country gentlemen vying with one another in the improvement of breeds or mak- ing elaborate experiments in tillage; no agricul- tural fairs; no stimulating agricultural press; no development of an intelligent, prosperous rural population. Special crops, like sugar and coffee, do receive some expert attention, but in general the landowners are mere parasites on agricul- ture, absorbing all the profits but furnishing noth- ing in the way of capital or intelligence. In Chile the hacendados had country residence forced upon them by their slaves being wild Mapuches, not docile Kechuas. Hence the mas- ter class acquired a rural habit that has made it more English than any gentry in South America. Of late its taste has changed and with it have shifted the very foundations of Chilean society 142 SOUTH OF PANAMA and government. Formerly the landed families lived on their estates the year round save for a short season in winter. Now town life is every- thing to them and they stay on the hacienda for only two and three months in the year. Through the park-like Central Valley the small towns ministering to the country-side are stag- nating because more and more the big landown- ers spend their time and money in siren Santiago, while the little ones haunt some provincial capital like Chilian or Talca. Observed a shrewd ranch- man: “The duenos about here all live in towns with the result that they net little from their estates. The mayor domo gets the profits while the owner gets the experience.” Often I heard it remarked that the landowners who interest themselves in starting rural schools or providing better dwellings for their inquilinos will be resi- dents of the nearest town, who have kept in touch with their haciendas. On the other hand, the estates most neglected and the inquilinos least considered belong to absentees who have become extravagant and insatiable from trying to keep up with the smart set of the capital. Santiago is ruining the rural gentry of Chile as Paris and Versailles ruined the feudal nobility of France. A Chilean author, Encina, after referring to “the habit contracted by the rural proprietors of living in town, leaving to hirelings the manage-* ment of their agricultural affairs,” says: “This has been one of the factors which has most hin- dered our agricultural development during the LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 143 last thirty years. Confided to rule-of-thumb countrymen or to employees who have no interest in improving them or in increasing production, some of the big estates have deteriorated, many have stood still, and all have failed to advance as they would have done if the owners had continued to reside upon them.” After pointing out that it was the more capable and intelligent proprietors who first abandoned the countryside Encina remarks: “The great mass of country dwellers with aboriginal blood, deprived of the strong civilizing influence which the higher element, until then in close contact with them, had exercised through suggestion, could not progress as formerly. Their moral development was checked. Lacking leadership they stagnated, even retrograded. The countryman became more lazy, drunken, and careless when he did not turn thief or bandit.’ ’ “The absence of the more civ- ilized element engendered in the open country an increase of robbery and assault, the relaxation of justice and the neglect of the highways. ’ ’ In the south of Chile the German landowner, a type about as plain and thrifty as our Pennsyl- vania German, lives on his place and improves it, while the Chilean with an estate no bigger lives in town and farms from the saddle. If the Ger- man merchant has a farm, he goes out to it often and looks after it very closely. The difference in financial return is so marked that the Chileans begin to follow the sound example of their German neighbors ; so that the province of Llanquihue bids 144 SOUTH OF PANAMA fair to develop a wholesome rural life sooner than any other part of South America. In Argentina, where there was no native popu- lation to till the soil, the Spanish colonists had to live out on their ranches and form some kind of rural society. The Latin love of town life was never extinguished, as we see from the mushroom growth of Buenos Aires; but on the huge rancli- erias grew up an expansive, free-handed, patri- archal manner of life which must have been very similar to that which prevailed in old California before the advent of the 1 1 gringos. ’ ’ THE LABOR SYSTEM Most travelers in South America have no eye for the fundamentals which make society there so different from our own. One may read a bushel of the books visitors have written on these coun- tries without ever learning the momentous basic fact that from the Rio Grande down the West Coast to Cape Horn, free agricultural labor as we know it does not exist. In general, the laborers on the estates are at various stages of mitigation of the once universal slavery into which the native populations were crushed by the iron heel of the conquistador. TYPES OF COLONIZATION IN AMERICA To account for this servile stamp one must ap- preciate the profound contrast between English America and Spanish America in the relation of the colonizing whites to the natives. The North Pack train bringing coffee out of the Cauca Valley, Colombia Cali. “The King's Palace, without the king LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 147 American Indians, inasmuch as they had not emerged from the hunting stage, could not be en- slaved; they were too “wild.” So the English colonist slew them, drove them away or bought them off, and put his own back into the labors of the field. The Spaniard, on the other hand, came upon peoples who had made marked advancement in agriculture and the industrial arts. Such were the Chibchas of Colombia, the Nescas, Chimus, and Kechuas of Ecuador and Peru, the Aymaras of Bolivia, to some extent even the Mapuches of Chile. The masterful invaders had only to beat these native peoples to their knees, seat them- selves firmly on their backs, and remain there while the Indians washed gold for them, or tended herds, or grew food. Thus the colonial Spanish never had to set foot upon the ground and their descendants even to-day will go any lengths rather than humble themselves to the physical labor necessary to existence. Spain never really colonized her possessions; she exploited them. The number of white men who subdued the New World was trifling. Cor- tez invaded the plateau of Mexico, populated by several millions, with a band of 553 men and finished his conquest with the aid of the 880 soldiers of de Narvaez together with a few squads of adventurers. Pizarro brought to ground the empire of the Incas, containing perhaps ten mil- lion inhabitants, with 310 soldiers, to which were added six months later the 150 men enlisted at Panama by his lieutenant, Almagro. Valdivia 148 SOUTH OF PANAMA tackled Chile, inhabited by perhaps half a million natives at about the culture level of the Iroquois, with 150 Europeans, later reinforced by 70 troop- ers from Peru. All these bands were aided by thousands of native auxiliaries who were made to bear the brunt of the fighting in order that the precious handful of white horsemen might be held in reserve. The English colonies in America were peopled from Holland, France, Germany and Sweden as well as from the British Isles. Spain, on the other hand, allowed none but her own subjects to settle in her possessions. The English colonies at- tracted great numbers — Puritans, Quakers, Huguenots, Presbyterians and Roman Catholics — who preferred the hardships of the wilderness to suffering religious and political oppression. The Spanish colonies offered no asylum to liberty- lovers, while their mineral riches attracted the avaricious and ruthless rather than the industri- ous and frugal. LATIFUNDIA AND PEONAGE Broadly speaking, light and freedom wax as you go south from Panama. Ecuador is less medieval than Colombia, Peru than Ecuador, Chile than Peru. Hence, the status of the agri- cultural laborer, which is at its nadir in Colombia, rises gradually until, in Argentina, the last traces of his former servile condition have disappeared. In the rich region about Pasto in southern Colombia the land is all held in large estates. LABOE, CLASS AND CASTE 149 There is no chance whatever for the agricultural laborer to become an owner of land. Four days in each week — how like the “boon-days” the feudal tenant owed his lord! — he is bound to work at a wage of from five to ten cents a day, in return for the use of a plot for his house and truck patch. Of course, such pitiful earnings do not suffice for the needs of his family, so he is obliged to run into debt to his amo or master for money or supplies. Since he can never work off this debt and the law does not permit him to leave the estate until it is liquidated, the peon becomes virtually a serf bound to work all his life for a nominal wage. He can change employers only in case some one pays his debt and this binds him to a new master. An Englishman of twenty-five years’ residence in Colombia thus describes the labor system: The peon gets ten cents a day if he works, but is charged twenty cents for each boon day he fails to work. For what he buys through his patron he pays double. If he is in the way of getting out of debt, a timely pres- ent of a couple of bottles of aguardiente will make him drunk, and in this expansive mood he may be induced to take enough goods to plunge him again up to his neck in the quagmire of debt. In a court of law the mas- ter’s book account always outweighs the word of the peon. It is the game of the masters and of their allies the priests to keep the peons ignorant savages the more easily to exploit them. As regards the free peons, the masters are too shrewd to bid against one another for their services. This would violate class ethics, just as with you it is “wrong” for one lady to “steal” the domestic of another by offering her more wages. 150 SOUTH OF PANAMA In Ecuador the peon has the free use of an acre or two on which he raises food for his family. Four days in the week he must put in eight hours of labor for his master, for which he receives about forty cents in the lowlands — where there is chronic scarcity of laborers — and twenty cents in the uplands. As there are no stores within reach, he takes his pay in supplies, furnished by the mas- ter always at a good profit, and often at an exorbi- tant price, seeing that the peon is too ignorant to know when he is being fleeced. Most of them are in debt and their condition, as an Ecuadorian statesman put it to me, is “virtual slavery.” It is certainly worse than the villeinage of the Mid- dle Ages, for the debt may be sold and with it the debtor. Flogging is practised on some planta- tions and the police will bring back the peon who has run away from his debt. The chief differ- ences between this concert aje, as it is called, and chattel slavery are that the family is left intact, the concierto may not be obliged to work more than four days in the week, and he has no claim on his master in sickness or old age. Since 1895 the Liberals have been in the saddle in Ecuador and they have made some effort to safeguard the interests of the peon. For exam- ple, the master’s account against the peon does not become a legal debt until it is acknowledged by the peon himself in the presence of a public official. Once a year this formality takes place. Formerly the day’s labor of an indebted peon wiped out only five cents of his debt. Now the law gives it a LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 151 value which, appears to be about three quarters of what the free laborer receives for the same work. The business men of Guayaquil admit that con- certaje is a medieval institution but defend it on the ground that if you cut the lariat of debt slavery by which the planter holds the peon, the fellow is likely to decamp, squat on the wild land of which there is an abundance in coastal Ecua- dor, and go to raising food on his own account. This would leave the cacao and sugar plantations without an adequate labor force and might “ruin” the planter. The ghastly alternative of paying the peons what their labor is really worth the planters cannot bring themselves to contemplate. A heavy European immigration, indeed, by pro- viding the planters with plenty of white labor, would free the peon’s neck from the noose of debt; but so long as the huge sign confronts the railway : “ Se necessita continualmente peones” (laborers in constant demand), the planters will want a legal hold on the laborer. One planter wiped out all debts due him from peons, with the result that his peons worked for him six days a week instead of four and, having cash to look forward to, they worked better. He advocates limiting by law the amount of debt for which the peon may be obliged to labor, but still he would not abolish the system entirely. He points out that in bad seasons the peon would starve without help from his master and his mas- ter will not advance him supplies without some 152 SOUTH OF PANAMA form of security. Others say, however, “Slash off this manhood-destroying concertaje and let the peon start to learn the necessity of living on his cash earnings instead of relying on advances from his master. The sooner he starts the sooner he will learn.” For all its stucco front of modernism and lib- eralism, Peru is feudal at the core. On the great ranches in the plain north of Lake Titicaca one gains a peephole into the thirteenth century. The Indian herdsman earns fifty cents a month for every hundred head of alpacas, llamas or merinos he tends and for every fifty head of cattle. If an animal is missing, he has to make it good out of his wages. He has the use of land for his house and potato patch and pasture for his own little flock, which yields the wool from which his family clothes itself. Altogether his income is two or three dollars a month, out of which the master must be paid for the wheat, maize, and coca leaves he has furnished at a liberal profit to him- self. If an Indian landowner is so unfortunate as to “join farms” with a white man, he must each year deliver his neighbor a quintal (100 lbs.) of alpaca wool at a customary price of $8.00. The master sells this quintal in Arequipa for $22.50. The Indian must also furnish one sheep, worth sixty cents, for which he is allowed twenty cents. Then too he is to help his white neighbor during sheep-shearing and sheep-killing without other wages than food, coca and rum. In case he has LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 153 the temerity to withhold these feudal dues, the herders of the ranchowners will slaughter his live stock without mercy whenever they happen to stray upon the white man’s land. THE HOOKER AND THE HOOK The mining companies in Peru recruit most of their underground labor through agents who go about and “hook” ( engancliar ) the guileless na- tive. The “hooker” turns up in a village some weeks before the annual fiesta in honor of its patron saint. On such an occasion the Indian is wont to “blow” himself because his entire emo- tional, recreative, and social life centers about this fiesta. "What with presents of vestments or jewels to the effigy of the saint, fees to the priest for masses, and a feast for his numerous relatives and friends, he is in a mood to embark on reckless spending. Comes now the wheedling “hooker” and offers him from $30 to $50 cash, provided only the Indian will sign a bond to repay the debt by labor. The Indian signs and, after sobering up from the fiesta, he reports to the “hooker” and is sent up to the mines to dig ore at perhaps 14,000 feet above sea-level. The Cerro de Pasco Mining Co. alone has 4000 natives in its employ under the enganche system. The miner gets, say, seventy-five cents a day, of which a third keeps him while the rest is applied on his debt. On the average four months of labor is necessary to make him a free man again. The estates of the montana region east of the Andes, 154 SOUTH OF PANAMA as well as those of the Coast, snare the natives of the highlands by this method. Often the Indian signs the contract when drunk and usually he fails to realize where he is to work and how. He thinks he is to work for the “hooker,” whereas he may be sent a hundred miles away to toil in a freezing mine gallery or a hot cane field. Buried far from home in a coast sugar hacienda or a montana coffee estate, the poor fellow finds himself a slave without a shred of legal protection and quite at the mercy of his employer. Repeatedly I was assured that the laws of Peru do not compel the debtor to work off his debt, but, to quote the words of a foreign diplomat, “Lima has no rule outside the cities. ’ ’ Peonage is fixed in usage, the victim does not know his legal rights and, moreover, the gobemador or sub- prefect, who stands in with the capitalist or the “ hooker,’ ’ threatens imprisonment if the debt is not repaid. The manager of the Cerro de Pasco Company reports a loss of $12,500 a year by ad- vances on enganche contracts and complains of the increasing difficulty in inducing the “hooked” to “come up to the scratch” because the Liga pro Indigena or Native-Rights Association, a Lima society standing up for the rights of the Indians, has told him he is not obliged to work off his debt. One wonders why the company cannot go after labor with a cash offer as we do at home. The manager replies that cash wages will attract Indians for surface work but that only the “hook” Glacier-fed agriculture in the valley of the Urubamba LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 157 will provide him with enough underground workers. The Liga pro Indigena stigmatizes en- ganche as a device for evading the payment of a just wage that would make up to the Indian for the hard and health-destroying labor in the mines. The operators, however, insist that the Indian lacks initiative and that no offer of cash wages would supply the mines with labor from a dis- tance. In Bolivia a farm is a finca and the laborer is a pongo. In return for the use of the two to four acres he puts into barley, potatoes or beans for his family the pongo works every week two, three, or four days for his master. For these “boon days” he receives nothing but his ration of coca leaves, aguardiente , and, usually, but not always, his food. Each year the pongo gives, besides, an entire week of unpaid service called pongueaje. If the master does not need all the customary services of his pongos, he may rent or sell them. He takes a contract to build a section of road or a railway embankment, has his pongos do the work, then pockets the proceeds. Not only does all this yield him an exorbitant rental for the plot the pongo uses, but, thanks to the igno- rance and timidity of the Indian, the master often exacts from him services and produce over and above the customary dues. The master lives in town and manages his finca through a cholo foreman. Under him are trusty native capataces, or headmen, who carry a whip and see that the pongos duly render their custo- 158 SOUTH OF PANAMA mary services. The pongos are not indebted, nor is debt slavery legal in Bolivia. I heard of no forced labor save in the rubber districts of eastern Bolivia, which are beyond the reach of the law. Although the pongo is free to leave, the lure of mine or railway job does not strip the finca of its labor force. The family of the miner or the navvy sticks to the ancestral plot and renders service in his place. Besides, the man always returns at harvest time to gather his own crop and the master’s. The laboring population of the farms is so stable that a finca is advertised not as so many hectares, but as a place with so many ‘ ‘ arms, ’ ’ or, as we should say, ‘ ‘ hands. ’ ’ THE INQUILINO OF CHILE In Chile the inquilino, or contract laborer, works under a verbal agreement which gives him the use of a hut, a plot or two of from two to six acres, the aid of the master’s oxen in plowing his plot, and pasture for a limited number of animals. In return he works for the master for the wage current in the district which, thanks to the masters’ joint pressure, is certain to be low. About San Fernando I found him getting from ten to eighteen cents a day and meals, while the independent laborer gets fifty cents a day in summer. Masters are careful not to bid against one another and they compete only in respect to the accommodations, privileges, etc., they offer. At Chilian the inquilino has the use of six acres, pasture for five animals and wages of sixteen LABOE, CLASS AND CASTE 159 cents a day with food. He is to furnish 300 days of work a year at this price. The free laborer gets from twenty cents a day in winter up to fifty cents in summer. As one approaches the frontier the status of the inquilino rises until finally all that distinguishes him from free laborers is that he contracts by the year and takes part of his pay in kind. The inquilino is free to leave the estate but, owing to his feudal attachment to the master’s family, he tends to remain in the hut of his fore- fathers, even when he could better himself by removing. Newspapers, town influence and labor agitation are undermining this attachment, but it will take at least a generation to make the in- quilinos keen pursuers of their own interest. There is no tenancy, no breaking up of big estates and no chance for an inquilino to become inde- pendent. I know of no completer demonstration of the dependence of the rate of wages upon the demands of the worker as well as upon the productiveness of his labor than the fact that, although the sur- plus meat and grain from Chilean farms is sold in oversea international markets at the same price as the foodstuffs exported from the United States and Canada, the laborer is paid not over a quarter or a fifth as much as the American farm hand. What makes the difference is not the low efficiency of the Chilean but his low standard of living and want of aspirations. His master is able to keep the extra dollar a day that the American farmer 160 SOUTH OF PANAMA would pay him simply because the inquilino is con- tent with the coarse miserable life of his servile forefathers. No wonder Don Arturo fosters the rude ways and the “good old customs” among his people and tries to keep them far from schools, newspapers, town life, agitators, missionaries and everything else which might raise their standards, suggest new wants, and arouse a desire to rise in the social order. The servile features of inquilinaje are not quite effaced. Said one master, “If I go on a journey, I am entitled to have any one of my inquilinos at- tend me as my servant without pay.” The in- quilino is regarded as belonging to his employer. Remarked a landowner to me, ‘ ‘ I should n ’t think of accepting the inquilino of a neighbor without first speaking to him about it.” The inquilino is liable to eviction at any time, although he has the right to gather the crop on his plot. For- merly the master or the mayor domo treated the pretty daughter of the inquilino as his legitimate prey, but this is said to be dangerous nowa- days. The ration of boiled beans provided for the laborer is handed over to him as if to a dog. No board, bench or dish is provided. Often the man receives the helping of beans on his shovel and eats them with a chip. An American told me with a chuckle how he had scandalized his neighbors by providing his four hundred inquilinos with table, benches and great tubs of beans from which each could help himself. He finally had the best LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 161 inquilinos in the district but his neighbors were furious with him for forcing the pace. When he is paid by the job the Chilean is a great hustler, but the customary wage paid on the estate furnishes him no inducement to let himself out. “Go easy” is the word. With no prospect of ever owning a place of their own the sons of the inquilinos often become wanderers. They drift to the nitrate fields of the North, to Bolivia, to Argentina. Want of a home makes the laborer loath to assume family responsibili- ties. He “takes up” with one woman after another, but the woman must take care of her- self and the resulting children while the man wanders on and on, a hard-drinking vagrant. A cash tenant system with compensation for unex- hausted improvements would be a great boon to Chile. If the capable inquilino could look for- ward to a home and all he could make off his holding above a fixed rent, he would rise rapidly in the social scale and agriculture would speedily improve. Now he is without hope and intensive agriculture is impossible. In Argentina agricultural labor is as free as it is with us. During the long dictatorship of the cow-boy hero Rosas, 1835-1852, the laborers on the estates shook off the last fetters of feudalism. This, indeed, is the one society in which I found a visible social capillarity, some laborers rising to be tenants and some tenants becoming land- owners. Nevertheless, although land has been the chief basis of economic opportunity in Argentina, 162 SOUTH OF PANAMA her enormous public domain has never been dis- tributed in a democratic spirit, but, until lately, has been alienated in such a way as to foster great estates. Nothing but the difficulty of access to land can explain why the Argentine farmhand should receive only half of what is paid the Amer- ican farmhand. Not only does the fixity of eco- nomic conditions set a great social gulf between landowner and peon, but even the renter will not sit at table with his peons. As soon as a man employs labor, he enters a higher social class. The peon sleeps in bam or granary with his sad- dle blanket for bed, his poncho for coverlet, and his saddle for pillow, while his food is passed out to him from the master’s kitchen. In the cane-growing region of Argentina the peons are unbelievably stupid. “Beside one of these peons,” observed an experiment station American, “the ordinary Louisiana nigger is an educated gentleman. He doesn’t think at all. He can’t even carry out an order unless it is of the simplest. If on the other side of the field there are three stakes you have used in rowing, you mustn’t say: ‘Juan, see those stakes? Well, bring them to me.’ You ’ve got to proceed this way. ‘Juan, see that stake? Bring it to me.’ After he has brought it you do the same for each of the remaining stakes. The stupidity of the peon forbids the introduction here of any com- plicated farm implements.. You simply can’t get him to walk behind the plow. He insists on walk- ing beside the plow and guiding it with one hand. LABOB, CLASS AND CASTE 163 So s6me American manufacturers are making a one-handle plow and sending it down here.” DISDAIN OP LABOR Under the exploitive colonial regime labor be- came indissolubly associated with servility, while complete exemption from useful exertion was the hall mark of the master caste. Again and again in their remonstrances to the King of Spain against his edicts aiming to abolish or mitigate the slavery under which the Indians groaned, the colonial masters inquired, “Who, then, will till the fields and tend the cattle?” “If we may not exact personal service from the natives, who will serve us?” The idea that they, might work and wait upon themselves in the house no more oc- curred to them than that they should eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar. Thus became rooted the idea that labor is vile, that there must be an upper caste to think and enjoy and govern, and that it must be served though the rest starve. The whole religion, so- cial philosophy and ethics of the colonials became adjusted to the parasitic maimer of life. The separation from Spain a century ago and the adoption of liberal institutions did not break up the old habits of thought. The vicious colonial traditions live on, so that even to-day Spanish- America is cankered with a contempt for labor which reveals itself in a hundred ways. No first-class passenger carries any hand lug- gage to or from the railway coach. Not that he 164 - SOUTH OF PANAMA minds the exertion, but no gentleman dares be caught doing anything tainted with utility. A swarm of men and boys storm every cab and car and their incredulous amazement and disgust at seeing a gentleman lug his satchels is most divert- ing. They simply cannot imagine he is going to carry them himself and half a dozen will present themselves one after another, each attributing the discomfiture of the others to some lack of obse- quiousness. No self-respecting person will appear in the street with a parcel in his hand; he always en- gages a boy to carry it. No cdballero will carry his saddle between house and corral. A traveler who blacks his shoes is as dirt in the eyes of the hotel staff. In Quito, where the servile Indian has left the deep stigma on every form of manual labor, the plazas are haunted with well-dressed, white-collared neverworks, some of whom are fain to dull their hunger with parched corn eaten from the pocket. In Argentina the machinery expert setting up American steam-threshers who yields to his im- pulse to doff his coat and “pitch in” may find himself at elbows with the peons in the barn in- stead of sitting at the ranchman’s table. So he has schooled himself to keep on his white collar, shun overalls and stand about directing stupid peons, although his fingers are twitching with eagerness to “take hold and show them how.” The German professor of science in a colegio found his pupils quite aghast at the idea of doing Llamas met in the highway Alpacas in the Bolivian highlands LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 167 the experiments themselves. They wanted to watch the professor do them. Even after he had broken them in to laboratory work, they held themselves above the drudgery of it and would call for a mozo. to clean up the muss caused by the breaking of a retort' or the overflow of a test tube. Americans have the name of being wonderfully “practical,” so one of the engineering schools in Peru sought to have its students in mining ac- quire some experience in one of the big mines under American management. The chief engi- neer was willing enough, so a few of them were placed under his direction. They lasted about two days. The budding engineers firmly refused to don overalls, flounder about in mud and water and lay hands to the greasy machinery. Their idea of a gentleman’s technical education was to stand by in clean raiment and watch the machine go, while a professor explained to them its opera- tion. American astronomers have noticed how it grates upon the Argentine assistant in the ob- servatory to care for his instruments, clean up after a breakage, or unpack costly apparatus. Confronting a packing case containing perhaps $2000 worth of imported instruments, his impulse is to turn it over to a peon worth fifty cents a day. The star-gazer’s idea of astronomical ob- servation is to lie on a mattress with his eye to a meridian telescope and call the instant of transit of a star, while one assistant adjusts the instru- ment, another records his readings and a third 168 SOUTH OF panama; computes their significance. He wants to coniine himself to the purely mental process, which alone comports with the high dignity of science. In Peru the ambitious cholo apes the “decent people,’ ’ shuns real labor and seeks a light, clean- cuff, ill-paid job rather than work as carpenter or smith. He will stoop to any parasitism, accept any lick-spittle dependence, in order to avoid honest sweat and be able to wear white linen, swing a cane, and play the dandy on street corner or in church porch. In Chile, where the master aim is to “live at the fiscal teat” — to use a local phrase — the poor flee useful labor at the first chance. “My mozo,” said a Valparaiso physi- cian, “who came raw from the hacienda seven years ago, a mere ragamuffin glad to carry a bag for a dime, is now so uppish that he won’t be caught in the street with a parcel in his hand, let alone carrying a box on his shoulder.” Not only manual labor but any kind of strenu- ous exertion is regarded as something for the lower orders. Until the German military com- mission came out to Bolivia about five years ago and smartened up the young officers till they be- came social pets, army service was looked down on by the youth of good families there as too much like work. The evening of the reception to Colonel Roosevelt on Santa Lucia Hill in Santiago I was talking with a Conservative senator about the Boy Scouts, of whom I had seen 1500 reviewed the day before. Don Jose was patronizing. “They are all boys of the poorer classes,” said LABOB, CLASS AND CASTE 169 he, “and I think it is rather a good thing for the children of the poor. Of course the movement does not extend to the children of the higher social classes.’ ’ DEMAND FOR MENIAL SERVICE The traditions from a parasitic upper class cause the South Americans to require much need- less personal service. The lady of the house is very loath to answer the door-bell. Waiting in the vestibule of a residence, how often have I heard the mistress or her daughter scurry in quest of an Indian servant to open the door ! In Peru, when a lady appears in the street, she is at- tended at a respectful distance by a small servant carrying her umbrella. At Cuzco the Peruvian ladies were at first rather taken with the accom- plishments and self-sacrifice of the cultivated' ladies of the mission hospital. But presently it became known that at times these English ladies could be seen openly plying broom and dustcloth about the mission. This damned them socially. The high-toned families inferred these gentle- women “must have been cholas in their own country,” and ostracized them. In Chile a lady will ring for her maid to put on her slippers or to hand her something in the room. No matter how late master and mistress remain out, the servants must stay up for them. I heard of a lady who routed out her servants at one o’clock a. m. and berated them for presuming to go to bed. The foreigner who waits upon him- 170 SOUTH OF PANAMA self is despised by the servants and is not served so well as the exacting Chilean. Happily the young South Americans appreciate our democratic feeling about service, once the vicious tradition is broken. The Young Men’s Christian Association of Buenos Aires shocked its Latin members when it installed a “help-your- self” restaurant in its basement; but presently they "came round.” In the Association summer camp amid the Uruguay hills not a servant was about, for the members of the party took turns in serving at table. The young South Americans soon caught the spirit and some who at first had nursed their dignity later insisted on serving. The American rector of the University of Cuzco, in numerous archeological excursions with his students, induced them by his example to care for their animals, make camp and cook their meals. Once the spell was broken, they took their tasks gaily and became just as self-reliant as young Americans. THE ARISTOCRATIC TEMPER “The whole Peruvian people is aristocratic,” observed a Lima publicist, — “the whites from conquistador traditions and the Indians from their recollections of the Inca regime. Spanish pride and Inca pride combine to produce a people aristocratic to the backbone.” Certainly I have never beheld such port and glance of pride as one sees in the ladies attending mass in fashion- able San Pedro in Lima. On these handsome, LABOR, CLASS AND CASTE 171 well-chiseled faces, marbly with the pallor of the tropics, sate enthroned the unshakable convic- tion of superiority. Their look said, “Whatever be the fate of others, we must be provided for.” The Government does, indeed, make desperate efforts to provide for the decaying families of the higher class by maintaining for their male members a great number of useless government jobs. A missionary remarks that when a well dressed woman enters a street car in Guayaquil every gentleman in the car will rise and with elaborate politeness offer her his seat, even though there are vacant seats in the car. But in a crowded car he will not even move in order to make place for a woman of the people. It is not the woman or the mother that is the object of Ecuadoran chivalry, but the lady. In Santiago the fares for the roof seats of the street cars are less than for places below. This has made the top of the car so disreputable that, although the passenger there has more air and sees more, no one with a shred of self-respect will ride on the roof in broad daylight. I was much amused at the nervousness of friends who went aloft with me in order to show me the city. Not merit but caste determines social considera- tion. When an American organized a football team among Cuzco lads, he found that the son of the blacksmith was liable to be roundly scolded for tackling hard the son of a gentleman. “How dare you knock over your patron!” the other boya 172 SOUTH OF PANAMA would exclaim. In Bolivia, on the other hand, appearances seem to count for more than caste. In a private house with a stately reception room, the kitchen may be vile, for no caller will see the kitchen. An American was called on by a man in frock coat and silk hat who, when he sat down, disclosed a complete absence of socks. In La Paz fashionable attire is so essential that the missionaries have to acquire silk hats in order to receive any social consideration whatever. The Chileans, too, are said to love show and to go in for the fagade type of life rather than for solid values. They will spend on plaster orna- ment for the outside of a house what an American would prefer to put into closets and plumbing. Many of the very beautiful and pretentious man- sions of Santiago are found by the visitor to be lacking in conveniences and comfort. CHAPTER VII WOMEN AND THE FAMILY I N South America the position of woman re- flects not only the South-European or Latin tradition, which is less liberal than the Celtic- Teutonic tradition, but as well that imperious Oriental male jealousy which the Spaniards seem to have caught from the Moors. From the first, Spanish America was a theater of male domination. "Women had only such lib- erty of thought and action as collective male opin- ion approved, and this strict tutelage does not appear to have been in the least mitigated by the wresting of independence from Spain or by the subsequent gradual recognition of the rights of the individual as against government and church. The struggle with the governors to make the people servants rather than masters had scarcely perceptible effect upon the domination of the one sex over the other, nor did it lighten the pressure of male-guided social opinion upon the individual woman. Just as in our own country the woman’s movement owes little to the Ameri- can Revolution or to the democratic advance under Jefferson and Jackson, but is chiefly a thing of the last seventy years, so among our neighbors to the south the thirst for liberty from king and govern- 173 174 SOUTH OF PANAMA ment does not appear to have made women de- mand more liberty or men grant more. In Ecuador and Pern the presence of three social strata, the “decent people” ( gente de - cente), the cholos, and the Indians, makes the re- lation between the sexes various. For each of the strata the relation is different and, besides, there is the important relation of the males of the upper class to the cholas. INDIAN MEN AND WOMEN Observers find no tinge of romance in the sex- relations of the natives. To the Indian a woman is just a female and he will not work himself into a tragic mood over the winning of a particular woman. He rarely shows jealousy and not often do Indians fight over a woman. The young people enter into relations early and, after the old manner of the country folk in Europe, do not marry until they have “proved” each other. The Indians have their love affairs, but they take care to be “off with the old love” before they are “on with the new.” At the Cerro de Pasco mines a woman “takes up” with a man and so long as she lives with him she will be true to him. There is no promiscuity nor wall the Indian women sell themselves for money. One never hears of them ogling or luring the whites as the negresses of the Coast are apt to do. The very woman who will enter into casual relations with an Indian will reject indignantly the advances of a white man on the ground that she is beneath him in \\ ocden railroad from Laguna Fria to Lake Nahuel lluapi, Argentina WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 177 caste. In general the sex-conduct of the Indians seems to be regulated by certain primitive but strict standards well fixed in their public opinion. After the church has blessed their union the Indian couple are faithful to each other through life. Said a La Paz missionary: “The Indians are the most moral element in Bolivia. ’ ’ Children come close together — about one a year — and the loss from superstition, ignorance and neglect is appalling. For example, the mother will give pisco even to the babe at her breast, so that the in- fant of two years may be a confirmed alcoholic! Children are too many to have much individual value, so the child lacks in care. Over the body of their dead child the parents make a great wake, but still they grieve little, for the priest has assured them their baby is in Heaven and the mother is rather proud of her angelito. They find life bitter and think the luckiest of their children are those who die in in- fancy. Both men and women love to drown care in chicha or pisco. On Sundays they will drink to in- toxication but the more canny couples are careful not to go on a spree at the same time. Husband and wife take turns in getting drunk so that the sober one may see the other safely home. In the later stages of their eight-day fiestas the Indians are quite too drunk to know what they are doing. To the resulting incest some observers attribute no small part of the physical degeneration of the natives. It is significant that the results of chin- 178 SOUTH OF PANAMA ning, jumping and running tests on 1500 Lima school children give the following figures for com- parative race performance : negroes 50, whites 35, cholos 28, Indians 14. GUARDED GIRLS The upper social class has very strict standards for its women folk and will go to any trouble in order to realize them. Indeed, the essential thing that lifts the “decent people” above the cholos, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world, is not riches or education or purity of race • — although these have their value — but the living up to certain standards. These standards relate to occupations, which are finely discriminated in respect to reputability, to the forms of social in- tercourse, to attire and manners, to modes of entertainment, and, above all, to the conduct of wives and daughters. The daughters of the people run about pretty promiscuously with the lads, with results which careful parents wish to avoid, so in the more self- respecting families the daughter is guarded with the utmost care. Never until her marriage is she permitted to spend one moment alone with a man, not even her betrothed. An invitation out ac- cepted by a young lady is always held to include some older member of her family. At an Ecua- dor ball the men sit on one side, the women on the other. A girl may feel flattered if a bold young foreigner crosses over in order to sit down beside her and converse, but she will be dread- WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 179 fully uneasy thinking of what people may say. In Guayaquil it was cited as a proof of freer customs that whereas formerly only a parent or a married sister might chaperon a girl, now her brother or unmarried sister is sufficient safeguard. In Arequipa the motion picture show is emanci- pating the girls, seeing that now they are per- mitted to attend the cine in company with their sisters or cousins. The mothers have great faith in the honor of North American young men and will allow them a freedom of association with their daughters they would never dream of extending to the na- tive-born youths. In general their lynx-eyed surveillance is no senseless custom but is alto- gether justified by the predatory spirit of the South American male. Bred to regard the other sex as fair game the young men are rarely worthy of confidence. Most fathers have no chivalrous respect for women to impart to their sons, and even when they strive to bring up their sons to this attitude they get no such support from school and church and general opinion as do American fathers. The unprotectedness of girls under masculine dominance is well brought out in an incident told me by a steamship captain. An Ecuador father brought aboard his two daughters destined for a port two days up the coast. Since he could not accompany them, he locked them in their cabin, gave them the key and forbade them to let them- selves out during the voyage. Having made his 180 SOUTH OF PANAMA own daughters safe from other fathers the worthy paterfamilias thereupon prowled about the ship before leaving it to see if he might not perchance find some other man’s daughter to ensnare. Such is the state of morals when women have no share in making public opinion, or law, or moral standards. The only male protectors of a pretty girl are her father, uncle and brother and these are eager to pick the lock that secures some one else’s daughter, niece, or sister. A Kentucky girl engaged in social work in Buenos Aires said she had found far less respect for women there than in New York. At home she had always felt that, if annoyed, she could “bank on” the average man in the street, but she did not feel so in the Argentine capital. In streets and public places stares and odious attentions follow the unattended good-looking young woman. She had known a man with a family of ten children to insult modest women on the street. “Still,” she added earnestly, “I have met with the most beautiful and consid- erate treatment from some Argentine men.” It is the existence of this sort of men that gives one faith in the moral future of the Argentine people. In time this elite will gain the leverage to impose their standard upon all would-be-re- spectable people and the street oglers will be despised. It is encouraging that a chival- rous Minister of the Interior a few years ago be- gan to discourage the convicted Buenos Aires “masher” with a 50-peso fine. He was laughed WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 181 at at first ; but it has been retained and will never be given up. It is a stake driven. In Cali there is no meeting of young people save at very rare picnics, or at one or two big balls, given every year by certain clubs. As such opportunities are entirely insufficient there is nothing for the young man to do but dangle. In every girl’s thoughts the two supreme things are dress and the novio. The novio is the youth who follows her in the street, waylays her in the church porch, shadows her in the plaza and gazes ar- dently when she appears on her balcony. Not a word can be exchanged till the young man calls and is received by the family, and this is virtually a declaration of serious intentions. Thus the in- nocent experimental approaches and friendships by which our young people test their likings are confined to glances. No opportunity for conver- sation until matters are as good as settled. In Chile the smitten young man “does the pea- cock” before the windows of his inamorata, i. e., promenades up and down on successive days looking for some eye-shot of encouragement. If she responds and her parents have satisfied them- selves he is eligible, he will be invited in. There is no opportunity for the young people to become acquainted before the courtship has entered upon the formal stage. Another social institution is the parade on the plaza in the evening while the band plays. The girls with their chaperons circulate about the plaza in one direction, the young fellows stroll in 182 SOUTH OF PANAMA the reverse direction and Cupid has a chance. It is needless to point out that without opportunity of speech the young people become marvelously skilled in the language of the eyes. What a senorita looking over the edge of a fan can ex- press with her dark eyes would rouse a poet from the dead. A charming young matron of the Santiago elite, who had lived in Germany, assured me that the domestic position of the Chilean woman is much higher than that of the German woman. The mother has the say as to the education of the children and it is the mother, not the father, who disposes of the hand of the daughter. In the ex- clusive social circle she moved in she had never known a girl to be coerced into a marriage and in only one instance had the parents come be- tween their daughter and the man of her choice. Still the “marriage of convenience” is by no means unknown and I was told of one Chilean lady who, at the age of sixteen, on disembarking at Valparaiso, home from her schooling in Europe, was presented to the man, fourteen years older than herself, to whom her parents had promised her. Now she proposes to marry her daughter in the same high-handed way. She justifies her- self saying, “Let her learn to be happy as I had to.” After making due allowance for the marvelous adaptability of young brides, close observers still consider that under this system unhappy unions are more numerous than they are with us. The WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 183 lack of association between young men and women, between even the betrothed, often delays until it is too late the discovery of incompatibilities which under our freer customs are fortunately perceived in time. UPPER-CLASS WOMEN CLEVEKEK THAN THEIR MEN I was surprised and for a time much puzzled by the remark, made both by observant foreigners and by philosophical South Americans such as ex- President Andrade of Venezuela, that in the higher classes of tropical South America the women are distinctly brighter than the men. They are of course less schooled, but in intellec- tual grasp and quickness of comprehension they were rated higher by all with whom I talked save one. Nobody had an explanation to offer, but this agreement of so many independent observers from Guayaquil to La Paz convinced me that I was in the solemn presence of a fact. The clue of a reasonable explanation was given me by the com- ment of the German principal of a renowned boys’ school in Peru. “Up to the age of four- teen,” he said, “the average boy here is just as bright as the German boy. But at about this age the boys all enter into relations with the female servants, the Indiangita or the always available chola, with the result that about the sixteenth or seventeenth year there is a marked mental arrest due to sexual indulgence while the organism is im- mature. Boys who were very bright in their school-work become quite stupid.” 184 SOUTH OF PANAMA Thereupon it occurred to me that if the daughters of good families are kept pure until marriage, while their brothers enter upon an un- regulated sex life soon after puberty, we have here a possible cause of the greater cleverness of the women. That in Chile and Argentina no one finds the women brighter than the men may be owing to the fact that in sex experience the lads of these countries appear to be less precocious by from two to four years than those of the tropics. I submitted this hypothesis to a number of scholars and educators and not one demurred. There are other observations which seem to corroborate it. “Outside of Chile and Argen- tina,” remarked a diplomat, “the whole of South America suffers from brain anemia. I don’t know why but the fact is there.” A cross-country globe trotter fresh from many an interview with gobernadors and prefects said to me in Cuzco, ‘ ‘ There ’s something fuzzy about the mind of the average Peruvian official. He ’ll make an inquiry and while you ’re replying his attention wanders, coming back with a visible start when you prod him with a question. Even when he is talking the thread of his thought seems to slip at moments from his grasp. I ’ve often wondered what his mind flies off to and my guess is, it ’s women.’* Then there is the testimony of a mining man. 4 ‘ 1 miss in the men here the steady concentrated ab tention and the quick anticipation of your idea you find in the American business man. In this city not one successful merchant is Peruvian; he Indian and Incaic wall, t.uzco, Peru Native woman, Puno, Peru WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 187 will be Spaniard, Italian or Syrian.” “Have you noticed,” asked a business man, “that five foreign bouses, namely, the Cerro de Pasco Mining Co., the Peruvian Corporation, Duncan Fox and Co., W. R. Grace and Co., and Backus, Johnson, and Co., are behind about all the modern undertak- ings in Peru?” Now the mental keenness of the school children, the women, and the men of the few families which have been strict in the rearing of their sons for- bids us to charge this “fuzziness” to race weak- ness. The literary and scientific productiveness of the many able foreigners who have made their home in these equatorial countries forbids us to charge it to climate. So that it may indeed be the consequence of over-early access to females of a low social caste. If so what a confirmation of the saying, “If you put a chain about the neck of another human being, you fasten the other end of the chain about your own neck.” WHY WOMEN SHOW MOEE CHAKACTER THAN MEN Surprising again was the unanimous testimony on the West Coast that the women have more character than the men. “Much more moral and decent than the men,” was the judgment of a steamship agent at Bahia. “At all social levels,” said a minister at Quito, “the women are better. The men tend to be drinkers, gamblers and spend- thrifts.” Said another minister, “The women here are as good as you will find in any country in the world, — much more upright in character 188 SOUTH OF PANAMA than the men.” The chief sociologist of Bolivia declares that the chola is superior to the cholo, who is drunken and dissipated, while its leading American educator notes that the men of the cholo caste are apt to be unreliable and lazy while the women keep the small shops and are thrifty. None averred that the Indian women have more character than their men folk. The assertion re- lated usually to the mestizo common people of the towns, the obscure black-and-tan mass. I was puzzled until I learned that from a third to a half of these people have been brought up single-handed by an unmarried mother. Even in the case of the married the father, owing to his interest in other women, often runs loose and plays but a minor role in the life of the family; so that, in general, fathers are of little help in bringing up the children. Now, the mother with no yoke fellow at her side to share the responsi- bility of training the children, forms their charac- ters as best she can, but she succeeds better with her daughters than with her sons. She can make the girls pattern after her, but it is not so simple to mold the hoy aright. Besides, the boy early realizes that his mother is of an inferior sex, so that from the beginning of adolescence he gets quite beyond her control. In the absence of paternal authority such as you find exercised in China or Germany, the as- cendancy of masculine opinion, charged as it is with the sense of the superiority of the one sex WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 189 over the other, has everywhere a most disastrous effect on the character of the adolescent male. The Japanese town youth from the time he is fifteen or sixteen years of age, until military train- ing has cut the comb of his self-conceit, is a cocky insupportable cub sorely in need of the “swift kick” one of my consular friends used to yearn to plant upon his person. It is much the same with the youth of the West Coast towns. Missing the firm hand of a father and despising his mother for her sex he easily develops into a vicious loafer supported by some woman at distaff, washboard, or counter. In general the family discipline is looser than we approve. This is why the Ecuadorian “never willingly recognizes authority or lets himself be commanded.” “In Peruvian families,” re- marked a Lima sociologist, “the child is allowed to do what it pleases and is not under family law. How often have I seen children insist on staying up until they fell asleep in the chair from sheer weariness.” An Arequipa headmaster com- plained that parents take no hand in the educa- tion of their children but leave it all to the colegio. “The parents tell us to punish the children if they neglect their studies but will not apply pres- sure themselves. Since they will not require their children to study at home, we have to see that the work is done at the colegio during study hours under the master’s eye.” “The children of the common Chileans do what they like and govern the home,” said a German philosopher in Val- 190 SOUTH OF PANAMA divia. “The parents don’t know how to make them mind.” In Bolivia an American school principal ob- served that, with the exception of a few better- class families, parents do not give close attention to the training of their children. The boys come to him quite lacking in self-control. Said another, the head-master of a famous boys’ school: “When the boy first comes to us we have to watch him closely, for in a fit of temper he will, like as not, hurl a stone at the head of another boy. Three or four months of our firm discipline generally enables him to bring his temper under control.” Now, this home laxity may account for the fact that among the cholos of Bolivia the coleron or “great choler” is a recognized cause of death, especially among the women. In such a fit of temper a mother will beat, kick or jump up and down upon her own child. Two quarreling women will burst into perspiration, foam at the mouth and become so exhausted by their rabia that they will take to bed for a fortnight. If a mother suckles her infant soon after such a rage it will die within three or four hours. Some at- tribute these rabias to the altitude — 10,000 to 12,000 feet — but one finds just the same thing in China. I attribute it in both cases to want of early discipline due to the fact that young utterly ignorant mothers, married as green girls without knowledge of life, are rearing children with no idea of the importance of controlling them for their own good. WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 191 NEGLECT OF HOUSEKEEPING In the tropical countries the abundance of cheap and inefficient servants coupled with the inherited stigma on labor makes for wretched housekeeping. The lady of the house considers it beneath her dignity to concern herself with household econ- omy. Buying and cooking are left to some dirty Indian crone and the food of a refined fam- ily may come out of a grimy hole of a kitchen into which the mistress never glances. It has not been long since the butter served in the principal hotel of Quito was made by an Indian woman sticking her arm up to the shoulder into a tub of milk and churning it about till the butter came. The aver- age wife does not know how to make a home and has no housekeeping art to pass on to her daugh- ters. Girls are taught music and drawing but not cooking and sewing. I was told of an Arequipa man with a wife and five grown-up daughters who wdien the cook fell ill had to take his family to the hotel to dine, for none of them know how to pre- pare a meal. In the sick room the women are quite as helpless as in the kitchen. All this indo- lence is from a paralyzing social tradition, not from race. “In town the women are do-noth- ings,” said a Cuzco woman missionary, “but on the farms where there is nobody to see them work, they are very industrious.” In Bolivia going to church once took precedence over caring for the home and a lady would leave her house in dis- order in order to attend mass. Thanks, however, 192 SOUTH OF PANAMA to the better schooling of girls, the numbers of women who can make homes is very noticeably on the increase. woman's sphere. When masculine opinion rules, the streets, plazas, public vehicles, public places, such as ho- tels, restaurants, and theaters, and the more pre- tentious parts of the house belong to men ; women without escort are safe only at church, in man- teau, going to or from church, or in the penetralia of the home. In Panama every attractive fe- male without a visible protector is pursued, even American girls on their way to school. In the cities of Colombia women travel very little. No girl can appear unattended on the street with- out being insulted by young men of her own class. In hotels the dining-room is for men. Save in the few hotels with a special dining salon the lady has her meals sent to her room. A colporteur ob- serves that when he is entertained at a house the women never sit at table, and surmises that the women do not take their meals with their own men folk hut eat apart in the kitchen. On the passen- ger boats I noticed that the ladies rarely appeared on deck. In Quito the diplomats observed that the Minister of Foreign Affairs called on them accompanied not by his wife, as is the custom everywhere else, but by his secretary. Not until the reception to the Diplomatic Corps did they learn of the existence of his wife. In Argentina the women live withdrawn and the foreigner is not WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 193 admitted to the family as he is with us. “My most intimate friends,” complained an attache, “will have me to dine with them at the Jockey Club, hut never invite me to dine at their homes save when they give a large and formal dinner.” When the husband is absent, even for months, the wife remains close at home, her vigil unre- lieved by calls, promenades or visits to places of amusement. The idea — of male origin, of course — is that she ought to be too disconsolate to care for recreation. The same idea underlies the dis- approval of a widow remarrying, in case she has children to comfort her. So heavy is the pressure of conventionality that ladies take no exercise, follow no sports, and get the air only in a drive or a promenade about the plaza in the evening. Besides various ailments this indoor life and im- mobility subjects them to frequent corpulence and early fading. SIZE OF FAMILIES The birth rate of Buenos Aires is 36, of Rosario 39, of La Plata 40, which sets them apart from all other cities of the white race and groups them with Alexandria, Madras and Canton. Families are large even in the higher social circles. So- ciety women do not seek to evade the bearing of children, while the childless wife considers herself the most unfortunate of beings. Among the com- mon people of the West Coast the birth rate is quite medieval. A Chilean country doctor gave me an estimate that of the wives of the rot os, half 194 SOUTH OF PANAMA average a child a year, the other half a child every eighteen months. The women dread such fre- quent pregnancies but the brutality of their hus- bands compels them to submit. In the higher classes the mothers are home-stay- ing and self-sacrificing — “as fine as any women in the world,’ ’ declared an American clergyman long resident in Buenos Aires — and in return they see their children like olive plants about their table. The women of the people are devoted, but, owing to their ignorance and to bad living con- ditions, they have poor luck with their children. In Cali half the children die under two years of age while Colombians assured me that in Bogota 80 per cent, die under two years. It is not good form for the mother to nurse her babe, so after the first month it gets cow’s milk, bread, melon, everything. Said an Ecuador missionary : “If I ask the mother of four or five living chil- dren how many she has had altogether, I expect her to reply, ‘Twelve’ or ‘Fourteen.’ ” Lima, I was told, has an infant mortality of 236 per thou- sand children under one year of age. The causes are an unguarded milk supply, an appalling dif- fusion of venereal diseases and a state of morals which leaves half the children to be reared by an unmarried mother without aid from the father. In Chile the deaths of children under one year are one third of the births that year. In the “registration area” of the United States in 1911 eighteen per cent, of the deaths were of infants, in Chile in the same year forty-one per cent. * Just after Sunday Mass, Chinchero Natives of the Sierra, near C’erro de Pasco, Peru WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 197 One evening in Valparaiso a lady deeply inter- ested in child welfare work was telling how cruel the lower classes are to their children, — how to keep them quiet they give them an infusion of poppy leaves which sometimes kills them, and how the mothers of the higher classes worry lest the nurse maids give this drug to their charges. “What is your infant mortality here!” I asked. “Wait,” she replied. “Let me call up our child specialist. ’ ’ Consulted over the telephone the doc- tor replied: “Add to the highest recorded infant mortality in the world 30 per thousand and it will not exceed that of Valparaiso.” The official fig- ures are 333. Among the Chilean rotos the children are car- ried off by milk watered, adulterated or drawn from tuberculous cows, by the giving of solid food to the infant of a few months and by the ignorant neglect of all regularity and measure in feeding. In the ports of the South venereal disease is ter- ribly rife so that it is estimated that half the chil- dren die. In fact the figures given for Concep- cion are 46 per cent., for Valdivia 43 per cent. Yet in the same towns the infant mortality among the Germans will be only an eighth or a tenth of that of the Chileans. Llanquihue, a province as large as Bavaria, has only a fiftieth as many people, so it is not a question of overcrowding. The humanitarians in Chile rightly demand the taking of vigorous administrative measures to lessen the appalling waste of infant life — milk in- spection, certified milk for nurslings, free dispen- 198 SOUTH OF PANAMA saries, and the teaching of mothers how to care for their children. None notice the bearing upon race expansion of the differential in infant mor- tality between Chileans and Germans. At present the Germans by their intelligence and forethought succeed in making most of their offspring live. This advantage of theirs over the half-Indian rotos will disappear, if the stupid and careless rotos are helped to save their numerous children as well as the Germans now do. The preservation of children from above delays the replacement of the lower stock by the higher and may even aid the prolific lower element to outbreed and replace the higher. “Why should we cut our own throats?” the Germans might protest. MIXED MARRIAGES Free thinking or foreign husbands are managed more than they suspect because the wife has the support and counsel of the priest. The children of free-thinkers usually attend a church school and not infrequently a liberal or radical public man is swayed from an intended line of action by his women-folk. When an Englishman or Amer- ican marries a daughter of Peru or Chile, he is more likely to come to her standards than she to his. Behind the wife, advising and bracing her, stands the priest and the two together are usually more than a match for the husband. The children will be intensely national and Catholic in senti- ment, while often the man himself succumbs finally to pressure. What irony in the contrast between WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 199 the proud confidence of the young Anglo-Saxon that he can lead his meek, insipid, bigoted little convent-bred bride out into his larger intellectual life and his capitulation forty years later when, weary of isolation, he yields to the entreaties of his wife, backed by their intensely religious chil- dren and grandchildren, and makes his first con- fession! THE CLAN-FAMILY Among the creoles, especially those of the prov- inces, persists the patriarchal family of olden time. The married sons and daughters are in no hurry to set up for themselves. Father, mother, sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren dwell together in some big rambling establishment or in neighboring houses, continually unite about the same table to the num- ber of twenty or thirty and live harmoniously in an atmosphere of deep affection. With us mar- riage marks the beginning of a man’s independent responsibility and we despise the son who marries with no home for his bride but his father’s house. In South America a young man quite without pros- pects will marry and live a year or two off his amiable family without incurring criticism. If the father has means the couple will settle upon him waiting to come into his property at his death. It is not assumed as it is among us that the son of a well-to-do man will make his way in the world and support his own family. “According to Chilean law,” remarked a Valparaiso lawyer, “a man must leave at least three fourths of his prop- 200 SOUTH OF PANAMA erty to his lineal descendants. Hence his boys, looking upon his property as their own, are likely to make no effort to fend for themselves and we are cursed with a crop of worthless sons of rich men.” WOMEN OUTSIDE THE HOME As yet there has occurred no such emergence of unincumbered women from the confines of the home, no such entrance into the industries and professions, no such participation of gifted women in public discussions and public life as has taken place in the United States since the mid- dle of the last century. There is scarcely any paid work for women outside the home. In Cali a local editor, by employing some girls in his printing shop, had opened the first industrial op- portunity the women of the place had ever known. The priests were criticizing the innovation pri- vately, but, however, had said nothing in public. In Colombia nearly a third of the elementary school teachers are women. Girls are taught by women, but not boys unless it be urchins under ten years of age. Farther south the proportion of women teachers rises until in Chile it is seventy- five per cent., while in Argentina it is the same as with us — eighty per cent. Aside from teaching there are few careers open to women. No chance in the pulpit, of course, while the difficulties of obtaining preparation in medicine or law are greater even than those which dismayed the young women who forty years ago broke in upon American clinics and law lectures. WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 201 A few are met with in journalism but the South American newspaper, unlike some of our dailies, does not maintain its “squab sob-squad” of young women reporters. There are few saleswomen and the manufacturing industries south of Panama are still too embryonic to offer appreciable em- ployment to women. On the West Coast women in industry are so few that there is no demand whatever for laws to protect them. Matrimony being well nigh the sole vocation, the lot of the unmarried woman is very hard. She is looked upon as a “cull” in the matrimonial mar- ket, just as our people regarded the “old maid” in grandmother’s time. Without love and chil- dren she looks in vain for some useful work to do, some place where she will count. This is why, after realizing with bitterness how superfluous she is, the spinster is apt to take the veil and dedicate herself to a service in which her prayers are sup- posed to have the same efficacy as a man’s. MAN AND WOMAN BEFORE MAN-MADE LAW A distinguished jurisconsult and former rector of the University of Santiago, Dr. Valentin Letelier, has called my attention to the subordina- tion of woman in the law of Chile, which is much the same as that in force in the other Hispano- American countries. Thus according to the code the husband owes his wife protection while she owes him obedience. He is legally responsible for her actions, although 202 SOUTH OF PANAMA not for her crimes. She has no voice as to place of residence but is bound to follow him, whatever may be the danger to her health or her life. Without the husband’s consent she may not bring a lawsuit, make or dissolve a contract, forgive a debt, take or reject a gift, inheritance or legacy, be executrix, or buy, alienate or mortgage produc- tive property. If the husband should object, even the deserted wife may not pawn her jewels to buy herself bread, nor may she hire herself as servant, needlewoman, mill operative or stenographer. In the case of divorce granted for the unfaith- fulness of the wife she loses all right to profits from their joint property; but male legislators have taken care to preserve the rights of the hus- band to such profits, when the divorce has been granted on account of his offending. The hus- band may legally kill his wife surprised in flagrante delicto , but the wife has no such right as against her unfaithful husband. The illegiti- mate child may institute legal inquiry to ascertain who is his mother but not to ascertain who is his father because this would “threaten the peace of the home. ’ ’ Strange that the law does not think of this “peace” when it scents the trail of an erring wife ! To the father alone, not to both parents, the law gives the authority to direct the education of the children, to choose their occupation and to enjoy the usufruct of any property possessed by them. The widow may not educate her children, nor man- age their property in her capacity as mother, but WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 203 only in case the court has appointed her to be their guardian. SOUTH AMERICA ANDROCENTRIC The lot of women in South America recalls the goldfinches one sees the peasant of the Harz Mountains carrying to market in tiny cages about six inches each way. Among the girls of the San- tiago upper class one notices, after admiring their rose-leaf and alabaster complexions and large languorous eyes, that the lower jaw and chin are less developed in the ’teens than they are in the American girl. Is not this because the latter by greater exercise of her will has through un- conscious sympathetic contraction of the muscles built up her chin? Otherwise why should the lads have more chin than their sisters of the same age ? Happily, however, the eyes of these women are holden so that few of them will ever realize what slaves they are. A philosophical French visitor in order to show certain ladies of Buenos Aires how they were op- pressed by man-made conventions cited a number of limitations upon their liberty unknown to the women of his own country. Driven from one po- sition after another one of the ladies finally vindi- cated the freedom of the Argentine wife in this wise: “In this perpetual sacrifice of herself to her husband and children the woman finds her no- bility and beauty.” “If she never goes to the theater during her husband’s absence, it is not that he objects or that she dreads criticism, it is 204 SOUTH OF PANAMA because without him she could not enjoy herself. If she shuts herself up at home, it is because it is her pleasure to do so.” The men have not only determined what is duty and what is propriety for the woman, but they have gone so far as to fix her idea of masculine nature. The girls have been reared in the notion that morally the two sexes are altogether “differ- ent,” that men cannot control their passions while women can and must control theirs. Thus the de- ceived wife is expected to pray for her infatuated husband rather than to resent his unfaithfulness and part from him. Indeed some wives have been so well trained out of their natural jealousy as to be quite philosophical about the goings-on of the spouse — will even joke him about his amours, and in the presence of others. They draw the line not at infidelity but at certain aggravations of it. One will say, “I tell him it ’s all right so long as he does n’t bring her to the house.” Another will declare, “I don’t complain of his affairs with low people but he ’d better not run after any woman in our social position.” Besides imposing a “jug-handled” sex morality the men appear to reserve to themselves more than their share of the good things of life. No matter how bare the home or how dull the life of the wife, the merchant or professional man in the provincial town must drive in a cab, have a boy carry his valise, add from a third to a half to the price of every meal in hotel or dining car by con- suming bottled goods, and every now and then buy Native wayfarer in Tiahuanacu, Bolivia Waterman of La Paz WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 207 himself an amour. The wives do not smoke nor drink, they are little seen in restaurants and places of public amusement and it is not easy to see what they get that costs money. CHAPTER VIII MORALS ‘T^TE are thinking of having our telephone V V taken out,” remarked an American in Buenos Aires. “When the operator is tired she will ignore your call or else report ‘ occupado * when, in fact, the number you want is free. She finds it easier to lie than to connect you.” “And incivility,” I asked, “much complaint on that score?” “No,” he replied; “central is never impertinent. ’ 1 This brings out one aspect of Spanish- American manners; the other appears in the creole station agent of an English railway in Argentina. Ow- ing to a closed switch two trains had collided at his station with great loss of life. Questioned as to why the switch had not been opened after he had received notice of the meeting of the trains at his station, he replied, “The switchman was sick abed and there were no other peons about.” “But why did n’t you throw the switch yourself?” “I? Why I am the station agent. How should I do it? One has his dignity to consider.” The old social order of the colonial era fostered courtesy ; and now that privileged classes are gone and good manners have been generalized, society is the richer for the vanished regime. In the man- 208 MORALS 209 ner of muleteer, of field peon, even of negro long- shoreman there is something of the old time defer- ence. Yet underneath it there is no servility but rather a democratic sense of personal worth which will stand abuse from no one. The Peruvians, being nearest to Lima, the chief radiant point of Spanish influence, have probably been more affected by Old World cortesia than any other South Americans. One happy result is their comparative freedom from brawls. In five months Harry Franck, the traveler, had seen but one fracas. Even in their cups men do not quarrel. Since each knows the right thing to do and say in every situation, there is little friction. Among Americans how many brawls arise from misunderstandings ! But when peaceful intent is made known in conventional forms misunderstand- ings are rare. There are probably two reasons why ordinary Americans are so lacking in manners. One is the continuous westward movement causing the per- petual recurrence of rude frontier conditions. The other is the sudden growth of a feeling of in- dependence in multitudes of immigrants from the humbler strata of Europe. The old American, as you find him in the South, knows that there is a politeness for equals as well as a feudal polite- ness. But the immigrants soon drop their native manners as servile and think by roughness and surliness to express the spirit of the true demo- crat. The courtesy of the South Americans of the up- 210 SOUTH OF PANAMA per class warms the heart of the stranger. Lie overnight in a village and next morning the gobernador and his friends will ride with you a couple of miles. After you have stopped a few days in a town several persons you have met will be at the station to see you off. If you are ill the faithfulness of your friends of a day or two in calling and inquiring about you is a real solace. On shipboard the South American passengers are the most approachable, the quickest to reach a footing of good fellowship. Friends embrace on meeting or parting and one soon ceases to object to it. Even business communications are not pared down to bare utility. An Ecuador mer- chant wants the steamer to pick up his coffee, so he wires up the coast : Senor Capitan del Vapor Manavi — I salute you most affectionately. I have five hundred sacks afloat and ready. Your affectionate friend, Concha. An American would wire : Five hundred sacks afloat. Smith. It is easy to belittle such demonstrativeness as empty form but I believe such depreciation is un- just. These people are affectionate in the family, and seem to carry out some of this warm-hearted- ness to their relatives and their friends. In trop- ical South America people are good to their MORALS 211 friends, and their warmth of manner is not a mask. An American lady in Lima prob- ably hit the bull’s eye with the shrewd remark, “The Peruvian women being so simpatica and affectionate in manner are charming friends, though of course you can’t depend upon them in a tight place.” Generous these people are but their generosity is for family and friends, not often for a cause or for the common good. “Altruism,” said a min- ister, as we surveyed the glorious scenery from a peak above Quito, “scarcely exists here. I have never known of more than two or three Ecuado- rans working for the public interest. Rich men do not consider ways of serving their fellows. In an emergency everybody looks to government to pro- vide relief. The recent bequest by a woman of $60,000 for the benefit of superannuated Indian female servants is the only philanthropic gift I have heard of in five years. ’ ’ “Ordinary Peruvians,” declared a Lima so- ciologist, “are affectionate and generous in dispo- sition but care nothing for the general welfare. Theirs is a life of egoism tempered by affection.” Nor is the Bolivian any better. “In my thirty years here,” said a German merchant, “not once have I known a rich man to give five centavos for education although they do leave money for hos- pitals and orphanages,” — which tallies with the statement of an educator, “I have never known a rich Bolivian to give a penny to a public utility, such as a school.” 212 SOUTH OF PANAMA A Chilean of American ancestry illustrated the egoism of the Chileans by the fact that when, as not infrequently happens, a country house is attacked by bandits, the neighbors do not rush to the aid of the beleaguered but each barricades himself in his own house. Nor does it occur to them to form a posse to pursue the bandits. They leave that to the police. A little peering about in Spanish-American society helps one realize what a socializing in- fluence democracy has been in this country. For example Minnesota implement men working in the wheat belt of Argentina are struck by the lack of neighborly consideration there. The decent pedestrian must not expect a lift from the passing vehicle nor an invitation to stop if night overtakes him. The respectable traveler, unless he comes recommended, will be put off with the peons, if indeed he is allowed to set foot on the place at all. A machinist who could not drink the brackish well water sent a peon nine miles to ask a ranch- man for a jug of rain water and the water was refused. Often the owner of a big estcmcia lying on the direct route to town will oblige his neigh- bors to go miles out of their way, rather than allow a public highway to cross his land. Owing to the political domination of the landed interest, there is no legal way of forcing through such a public utility. Again, it is noticed that Argentine ranchmen who are on good terms with one an- other do not gather so often for social enjoyment as our farmers do. MORALS 213 The agricultural Indians of the West Coast had a developed property sense before ever the white man came and centuries of mistreatment since then does not appear to have broken it down. One hears little complaint of their pilfering. The negroes, too, have an enviable reputation for honesty. The Anglo-Colombian Mining Co. will entrust a negro employee with thousands of dollars worth of platinum to carry down to the Coast. It is the mestizo who is complained of as dishonest. The Chilean masses, on the other hand, have a bad name for larceny. In Chilean ports ship passengers are warned to lock their cabin doors and loaded lighters have to be guarded at night. Chilean stokers will saw through the bulkhead into the vessel’s hold, steal goods and hide them in the coal bunkers till the night after they arrive in port, when they find opportunity to lower them overside to a confed- erate in a boat, under cover of darkness. Harbor thieves will even cut a hole in the bow of a vessel and make off with boatloads of freight. The Germans of southern Chile have the worst opin- ion of Chilean honesty and in Santiago I was bidden notice the high walls and grated windows of the houses of the better class. The thievishness of the common Chileans is commonly held to be a heritage from the Indian side of their ancestry. The Mapuche had not de- veloped far in the morals of property and the two centuries of harsh slavery after the Conquest would certainly not tend to foster honesty in J 214 SOUTH OF PANAMA them. Nor should one forget that the Chileans, although from a third to two thirds of their blood is European, draw their moral standards chiefly from aborigines at the level of development of the Stone Age. The breed sprang from the union of white men with native or mestiza women. The resulting children were reared by the mother alone and of course absorbed completely her stock of ideas. They had the white man’s blood, but noth- ing of the white man’s culture save certain re- ligious notions and practices. So, through the female line, the rotos are heirs of the primitive superstitions, ways and customs of the aborigines and this heritage it is which fixes such a deep gulf between classes and masses in Chile. It is the Mapuche in him that makes the Chilean a fatalist. “The common people here,” said a Valparaiso lawyer, “make no effort to shield their families or themselves against a contagious disease. Nor is there ever a panic or an exodus when smallpox or other epidemic breaks out any- where. ’ ’ Being without fear of death the Chilean is as reckless of his own life as he is of the lives of others. After some words over their wine two rotos will step outside and go at each other with their long curved knives, known as curbos, till one or both are dead. I have heard of two brothers lashing their left legs together at the knee and fighting to the death with their knives. It is his penchant for ripping open the abdomen of his opponent with a slash of his curbo that makes the Chilean so dreaded as a soldier. A Sunday market within an ancient Incan enclosure, Chinchero MORALS 217 shudder runs through the West Coast at the thought of hostilities with Chile. In the attack on the Morro at Arica in the War of the Pacific the Chilean assailants threw aside their guns and went at the Peruvians with their curbos. The ruling class of the Republic make a pet of their army and have much to say of the soldierly quali- ties of the Chilean private, but, after all, it is the Araucanian demon in him that they are banking on. That the bull fight has never been tolerated in Chile must be credited to the classes rather than to the masses. The common people are said to be terribly cruel to their children and their treat- ment of dumb animals stirs the indignation of the stranger. The rural roto, like the Bedouin, ap- pears to have grown into a certain intimacy with his horses and oxen and is considerate of them; but the town Chilean will lash a poor beast doing its utmost from sheer pleasure in the infliction of suffering. When a horse lies spent he will jab it with a stick or knife although he well knows that it cannot get up. The bull fight which flourishes in Peru is quite as ghastly and demoralizing as it has been said to be. No cultivated man justifies it; it is always explained as “ancient custom”; yet when the students of the University of San Marcos get up a fiesta they can think of nothing better to do than to invite the public to watch them kill a few bulls. It is incredible but true that high dignitaries by their presence lend the bull fight a qwusi-official 218 SOUTH OF PANAMA character and that respectable people take their children of tender years to witness the spectacle. They think such sights tend to foster manliness, but they are mistaken. Manly men find a zest in their own danger, not in the danger of others. The bull-ring enthusiasts are soft, even if their hearts are hard enough to enjoy seeing poor horses spurred to a fresh charge with their en- trails trailing on the ground. One can feel noth- ing but contempt for the weak, well-dressed, self-indulgent spectators who sitting safe cry “nearer” to the matador so that he may risk his life in order to give them a thrill, and hiss the bull fighter who shows himself wary of the sharp horns. ALCOHOLISM The South Europeans are proverbially sober, so wherever in South America the Spanish ele- ment predominates there is little hard drinking. The peons of the pampas gamble recklessly but drink little. Wassail is by no means as rife among the students of the University of Buenos Aires as it is in our own universities. Said a young Argentine, “When we are planning a ban- quet it makes a great difference to us whether or not there are to be foreigners among the guests. The presence of foreigners obliges us to add from a third to a half to the cost of the banquet in order to provide liquors.” Still, even Iberic sobriety is not fool-proof. In the ports the native born are affected by the customs of the foreign ele- MORALS 219 ment. In Guayaquil there are twenty bars where there was one forty years ago and within the last ten years the consumption of spirits has increased fifty per cent, chiefly owing to the spread of the brandy-and-soda habit. In the University Club at Lima the outstanding feature is not the two or three pieces of gymnastic apparatus, the baths — which are noticeable by their absence — or the locked and unused library, but the large and varied display of bottled goods at the bar. The victims of alcohol on the West Coast are chiefly the natives and mestizos, who crave it as the North American Indians craved firewater. Drinking makes the holiday or feast for the na- tives and is becoming worse as rum from the sugar plantations displaces their ancient chicha. The Peruvians of the interior drink to a serious extent. In every little town is a bodega or two stocked to the ceiling with bottles of many colors. Aside from hard goods there is nothing to slake thirst but ditch water. The lack of soft drinks is a misfortune, for I am sure a thousand soda fountains well placed would work a moral revolu- tion in Peru. In La Paz it is said that most of the Bolivian school teachers drink. The judges of the High Court agreed that 90 per cent, of the crimes of the Indians are due to liquor. Recently the law prohibiting the sale of spirits in and about ceme- teries has put an end to the grewsome orgies of All Souls’ Day, when the Aymaras sat in groups about the graves of their recent dead and 220 SOUTH OF PANAMA “ waked” themselves into beastly intoxication. Unlike the Indian, who drinks on occasion, the cholos are habitual drinkers and often sots. It is in Chile, however, that one meets with perhaps the worst alcoholism to be found in the world to-day. Said one foreigner, “I have been in twenty-two countries and I have never seen it so bad. ’ ’ The root of the trouble is alleged to be the well-nigh uncontrollable love of ardent spirits the masses inherit with their Mapuche blood. The Mapuches, a more primitive people than the Kechuas, seem to have been less experienced with alcohol and were certainly less steadied by in- dustrial habits. Not military subjugation but al- cohol was the cause of their ultimate downfall. They recklessly parted with their lands for liquor and in some instances Indians who were in some- body’s way were deliberately exterminated by ply- ing them with firewater as they wanted it. I was told of an Englishman who in the old days under- took to reduce the “unconquerable Araucanians” by setting up among them a distillery of wood alcohol. He entirely cleared them from his field of operations and became a land magnate. Chile is a vine land so the grape,, rather than corn, rye or potato, furnishes stimulant for her sons. Nine tenths of the common people consume a cheap native wine sold at eight cents the quart while the remainder drink native spirits made from grapes or grape skins. So strong is the po- litical influence of the great vineyardists that the same government which imposed a tax of twenty MORALS 221 cents a quart upon the production of potable spirits from cereal, thereby driving five sixths of the grain distillers into bankruptcy, taxed the pro- ducers of alcohol from grapes, not by the quart, but by the acre of vineyard, which of course made their tax a mere bagatelle to them. It is impossible to exaggerate the ravages of alcohol among the half -Indian masses. Often the husband drinks up all he earns and the woman by her labor supports the children. Encina de- clares, “With few exceptions the Chilean laborer gambles away or drinks up most of his wages.” Fortunately, the women almost never drink. There is no instruction of school children in tem- perance and, so far, moral suasion has had little effect. The lack of diversions in the rural dis- tricts makes it very hard to wean the country folk from their liquor. Compulsive social action is needed but the great vineyardists are politi- cally powerful enough to prevent it. The law forbidding the sale of liquor within 650 feet of a school is often ignored. The employers are against alcohol so far as it lowers the efficiency of labor, but they set no example of temperance. THE SEX OBSESSION Lubricity, as well as thievishness, courage, ferocity and alcoholic thirst, seems to be a part of the Chileans’ inheritance from the Mapuches. The sharpness of sex appetite in the common people is a matter of frequent remark among the foreigners settled in Chile. The male is a danger- 222 SOUTH OF PANAMA ous rapist and at several places in South Chile I was told that no white woman ever goes alone on the country road. The danger is not from the Indian, who stands in awe of the whites, but from the Chilean, whose lust seems at times to know no bounds. Dark and unnamable practices occur among the Chilean sailors in the rancJias, or fore- castles, of the West Coast steamships. The ni- trate fields of the North, which employ 45,000 laborers, half of them Chilenos, present an extra- ordinary spectacle of male human life reduced to its simplest terms. The hulk of the men after working a month or so at the nitrate plants spend a week at the nearest port squandering health and savings on liquor and prostitutes. The pro- fessor of nitrates at the State University declares that ninety per cent, of these workingmen are in- fected with venereal disease. The same figure was given me as measuring the infection of men in the sea-ports of Chile. It is worthy of notice that according to the report of Dr. Coni of Buenos Aires in 1908 a quarter of the Chilean army and more than a fifth of the Argentine army are treated for such infections in a single year. The Mapuche inheritance does not manifest itself in the male sex alone. There is a reason why the Chilean prostitute is a familiar figure in all the ports and mining centers of Western South America. The head of a missionary school reported difficulty in curbing and safeguarding the girls entrusted to the school. Said an elderly ranchman near a provincial capital: “There is MORALS 223 no morality among tlie daughters of the people. It is almost impossible to obtain a domestic who is not encumbered with one or two children. Very few prostitutes can make a living here, not because the men are chaste but because the women are easy.” In Valdivia the judgment ran, “Every servant girl here is loose. Outside the higher social class no girl over fourteen is a virgin. Among the lower orders the entire family sleep in one room and there is much incest.” Save in pietistic circles, continence before marriage does not seem to enter into the mascu- line ideal of the South Americans. Without exception the physicians and educators questioned agreed that all young men sow their wild oats. Outside of Chile it is hardly a matter of blood, for in point of sensuality the Indians of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia do not seem to differ in endowment from the Spaniards. The fact that sex is an overmastering concern in males from puberty on may be attributable in part to climate. There is, indeed, very unequivocal evidence that, irrespective of altitude, the human organism in the tropics is affected in ways adverse to the moral standards wrought out in the lands of the slanting sun. Then one must allow for the factor of early contamination. Throughout tropical South America the mother of the better classes does not care for her children herself but turns them over to native nurses and servants, so that the obscenities and low standards of the ignorant servile element are emptied into the minds of even 224 SOUTH OF PANAMA the children of the ruling caste. Add to this the easy accessibility of the chola and it is clear why in these countries it is well-nigh impossible to keep any life current free from pollution from below. Another reason why the young men ‘ ‘ think and talk of nothing but women,” why they listen with polite incredulity to an account of the relations between the sexes in the United States and re- gard our moral tone as pure hypocrisy, is the bareness of life, the paucity of things to do. With us athletics, games, sports, camping, scholarship, public discussion, political reform, social work, business and travel compete with the sex interest and aid men to control it. If life presented more interests to the young South Americans, their morals would be better. It is strange that such a flank attack on evil does not seem to have oc- curred to their spiritual leaders. From the pul- pit one hears perfervid denunciations of sensua- lity, but the preacher can suggest no remedy but the conquest of the sensual man by the spiritual man, while virtue is presented as a sheer dead-lift against the downward pull of one’s nature. He might well take a hint from the Yankee educators in Bolivia, who keep their boarding-school lads straight by the simple expedient of crowding the day so full that they have no time for naughty thoughts. WEAKNESS OF THE FAMILY The extent to which marriage is ignored is, no doubt, the most extraordinary social phenomenon MORALS 225 in South America. In Cali the “barefoot” are very free and easy in their relations, while it is said that the sons of the “shod” all have mis- tresses from the daughters of the people. Half the children are returned as illegitimate, but the editor of the leading paper insisted the propor- tion is nearer three-fifths. In Manta, Ecuador, it is given as one half, in Guayaquil as from one quarter to one-third. In Lima through a series of years the proportion of “natural” children has been 51 per cent. The Peruvian statistician Fuentes writes of the “sad picture” Lima presents and adds, “a shocking proportion of the people avoid marriage and live in a complete libertinage, which increases as one descends the social scale.” The taker of the census of Cuzco finds “an aston- ishing proportion of unmarried people with chil- dren.” Ample justification for these utterances lies in the fact that, while among us two-thirds of the people over 15 years of age are or have been married, the proportion for Cuzco is 30 per cent, and for Lima 20 per cent. ! In Bolivia twenty-eight per cent, of the army recruits in 1910 were born out of wedlock. It is not chiefly the Indians who offend in this respect, for some of their groups have an illegitimacy as low as two per cent, which is probably a little above the rate in the United States. A mission- ary in a Bolivia mining center thus summed up the situation; “Among the cholas here there is very little marriage. They take up with one another like the lower negroes in the South. Some have 226 SOUTH OP PANAMA a new partner about every year. In the relation between man and woman there is very little stead- fastness or loyalty, while in the community there is no crystallized moral sentiment regulating the conduct of the individual. Social standards do not exist, so each does about as he likes.” The situation is lit up by the questions asked in perfect innocence by a lady calling on the wife of an American missionary in La Paz. Her first inquiry was “Are all these your children?” Her second, “Are they all by the same man?” Her third, “Are you married to the father of these children ? ’ ’ In Chile thirty-eight per cent, of all births are out of wedlock, while in the cities the neglect of the institution of marriage is simply astounding. In Santiago the proportion of illegitimate births in 1911 was 45 per cent., in Osomo, 50 per cent., in La Serena 55 per cent., and in Concepcion 57 per cent.! Said a business man of Valdivia, “In the country a couple live together with some con- stancy but in the towns there is the utmost free- dom in sex relations. Any number of unmarried women have their children to bring up with no man to help.” Argentina, in the main a white man’s country, makes a far better showing. Its illegitimacy is only one-fifth. In the city and province of Buenos Aires it is only one-seventh, but in the provinces to the north having a considerable mestizo ele- ment the proportion exceeds a third and in one case reaches three-fifths. Under the ceiba trees near Cali, Colombia Types met on the trail from Buenaventura to Cali MORALS 229 Before drawing dark inferences from these figures one ought to take notice of certain facts. In Colombia and Ecuador it is frequently declared that many loyal couples live unmarried owing to the high cost of the church marriage. Eight dollars, the minimum fee, is a serious charge for a peon earning a few cents a day. Even the men of the higher social class are not likely to marry until they are well on in the thirties, the reason being the cost of a first class wedding, which may run into $800 or $1,000. Not only are the church services in such a case very elaborate and hence costly, but even more expensive is the social pomp and entertainment that goes with such a wedding. It is perhaps the same factor which in La Paz delays marriage to such an extent that the number of persons marrying between 40 and 45 years of age is thrice the number marrying between 35 and 40 years, thrice the number marry- ing between 30 and 35 years, and four times the number of brides and grooms between 20 and 25 years of age. Ecuador, it is true, unlike Colom- bia, provides civil marriage at a nominal cost, but most of the brides feel that a marriage is not real unless the priest performs it. In Chile ecclesiasti- cal marriage is not recognized by law, and many worthy couples of the lower classes who content themselves with the priest’s blessing and ignore the civil ceremony, find that their children count as illegitimate. There is a story of an aged colored couple in J amaica who after sixty years of faithfulness were 230 SOUTH OF PANAMA persuaded by their children to get married. They did so and in the wedding procession there were seven coach loads of their descendants. Such a tale helps us interpret not too harshly the West Indian illegitimacy, which ranges from a half to three-fifths of all births. In the same way we should beware of taking the statistics I have cited as an exact measure of the departure of South Americans from the monogamic family. Men and women stand by one another better than the figures show, although no one is ready to say how much better. Yet, after such allowances are made, the marriage institution appears to be weaker on the West Coast of South America than in any other Christian land, in the Mussulman countries or in the societies of India, China and Japan. CHAPTER IX CHARACTER A RICH Ecuador planter was cursing the out- come of the elections. “Did you vote?” asked his friend, the American Consul. “No.” ‘ ‘ Then why do you complain ? ” “ But I would n ’t be allowed to vote. With troops at every polling place driving away those of my party what would be the use of my trying?” “Then why don’t you and other intelligent people who are treated that way organize and march to the polls in a body, thus overawing the squad of troops?” It had never occurred to these planters to band them- selves together in order to get their rights; nor did they act on the Consul’s suggestion. Another who sought the nomination for the presidency told the same Consul that he saw no way of getting his name before the people. The Consul, who in his youth had been secretary of the State Committee of his party, suggested to the aspirant that he form in every province, district and parish a committee of his political friends who should bring his merits to the attention of the voters. The aspirant ignored the Consul’s advice and shortly afterward withdrew his candi- dacy. 231 232 SOUTH OF PANAMA MUTUAL DISTRUST The cause of the lack of organization in Ecuador is generally held to be mutual distrust. Said an educator in Manta, “Ecuadorans are fluent and effective speakers but their eloquence means noth- ing — is mere words. For all these fine phrases they do not trust one another. Some one will point out something greatly needing to be done and all will be for forming an association until the critical moment arrives for paying member- ship fees. Then they balk.” “These people dis- trust one another with good reason,” observed a diplomat at Quito. “The tendency of each mem- ber of a society to exploit the society for his own selfish ends is so universal that the Ecuadorans are incapable of association in a common work.” A British diplomat who knows the continent from Panama to Patagonia went so far as to declare : “Distrust is universal here. No South Ameri- can will put his faith in another South Ameri- can. ’ ’ In La Paz the numerous failures of Bolivians in undertaking to operate joint stock companies were attributed to their want of confidence in one another. In Chile it was frequently remarked that popular societies usually come to grief be- cause each member is likely to follow his personal interest every time that he is called upon to choose between his personal interest and the welfare of the society. A missionary had noted that in or- ganizing a church his converts preferred to give Indians of the plateau of Ecuador Indians of Zambiza, Ecuador CHARACTER 235 the treasurership to a foreigner rather than to a fellow-countryman. EXCESS OP PRIDE An American cannot but be struck by the dearth of associations among the university students in Lima ; no fraternities, no athletic teams, no social, literary, debating, press, dramatic, musical, ath- letic or scientific societies such as flourish among the youth in an American university. Most of the “student activities” which threaten to engulf scholarship here are unknown in Lima. Some of the young men of San Marcos had started a University paper, but few students would buy it although many would read a borrowed copy. It is pathetic to witness the disappointment of earnest young Peruvians educated in our universities when on returning home they find in the Lima student body no class feeling, no University spirit, no love of Alma Mater, no heart-warming reunions of alumni, and in general none of those forms of corporate life which loosen the hard soil of natural egoism and prepare it to admit later the spread- ing roots of such virtues as public spirit and good citizenship. It was while probing a similar state of affairs among the students of the University of Arequipa that I laid bare the chief obstacle to association in the higher social class. I learned that these students fail in their endeavors at cooperation because individually they will not compromise. Again and again valuable organizations serving 236 SOUTH OF PANAMA a real common purpose have been wrecked by the touchiness and self-will of the members. This in turn is due to an excess of personal pride, the heritage from the old aristocratic social order. The reigning upper-class ideals intensify the self feeling to such a point that it becomes a bar to organization and team work. Thus students interested in the same study will not form a society as our fellows do. They will meet two or three in a room to discuss the subject, but never organize. In Arequipa there is but one literary club. Others have been started but after a brief existence have expired, not from lack of interest but from jealousies and dissensions among the members. Not long ago this club an- nounced an excursion on a certain day and promptly the centro universitario, a student club, announced an excursion of its own on the same day to the same place. Naturally the two parties met and there were high words followed by hostil- ities. The failure of these proud young men in the give-and-take necessary for cooperation drives home to an American the value of our democratic fratemalism in fostering that spirit of compro- mise in non-essentials which is indispensable to good team work. Sociologically aristocracy is, in its later phase at least, a failure. The students of Buenos Aires are nearly as in- dividualistic as those of the Peruvian universities. Class spirit and college spirit are wanting and the students will not “dig up” for their various societies as ours will. There is little attention CHARACTER 237 paid to athletics, owing to lack of organization rather than to lack of interest. What is probably the root of the trouble came to light when my in- formant remarked that fellows who play some musical instrument are very shy about playing before others, “awfully sensitive to criticism.” Here again crops up that ptomaine from decaying aristocracy, the exaggerated sense of personal dignity, which is such a hindrance to cooperation among South Americans. Some years ago Secretary Taft said at Havana that in politics the peoples to the south of us are poor losers. Not only is this true but we have here one cause of their ready resort to revolu- tion. Trouble will begin after an election for the same reason that student societies go to pieces on some trivial question — the losers have too much pride to submit to defeat. In the society they walk out, hut in the state they start a revolt. I fancy the introduction of organized athletics by promoting the spirit of good sportsmanship might have a salutary effect on the politics of Spanish America. In the earlier football matches between the teams of the missionary colleges in China, a team would retire from the field with great dignity when the game was going against them and they were in danger of ‘ ‘ losing face. * ’ The lesson they gradually learned of taking bitter medicine with a smile is greatly needed by the young men below the Equator. Not that they should have less pride, but that their pride should be set on “being a good sport, ’ ’ rather than on sulking and quitting. 238 SOUTH OF PANAMA SELF-INDULGENCE AND INDOLENCE The Panamanians are so indolent and use- less that some of the engineers on the Canal will not hire them under any circumstances. A friend of mine noticed in the Cauca Valley a good field growing up to weeds. He asked the owner the reason and received this answer: “Last year, senor, the Lord blessed me with so bountiful a crop that by the exercise of strict economy I have been able to dispense with the cultivation of my farm this year.” One must visit the provincial colleges of China to see students with such poor physical develop- ment as one finds in the universities of the West Coast. The well-dressed young men on the streets fill out their clothes poorly and impress one as on the whole a weak lot. “In Lima,” said an American doctor, “I never see a good physical specimen of a man.” Pace crossing has some- thing to do with this poverty of physique; also neglect of hygiene, bad habits and early vices. The chief factor, however, appears to be a res- olute avoidance of every form of bodily exertion, from labor up to athletic sports. “It is almost impossible to get four people together for a tennis set,” complained a foreigner in Quito. A padre from Cuenca, an inland town of southern Ecua- dor which is grandiloquently known as “the Athens of South America,” just as Quito is proudly called “The City of Light,” stated that in his vicinity the whites have so degenerated in CHARACTER 239 consequence of abstention from labor that in the schools the cholo children often outstrip the white children. Said a Peruvian sociologist, “I see no hope for the people of Lima and Callao. Every- body I meet who has come here from some other part of Peru impresses me as a superior person. Lima, a pleasure city with parasitic traditions, tempts to an excess of self-indulgence that per- manently weakens the will.” “In the whites here,” said a savant of Sierra origin, “you find the same indolence as in Spain, the same scorn of industry. The ignorance of housekeeping of the ladies here is unbelievable. As for the gentle- men their sole aim is to get a government job, which is virtually a sinecure.” Manuel Vincente Ballivian, Bolivia’s “grand old man,” sees clearly the cause of the palsy that binds the energies of the one per cent, or less of the Spanish remaining in the popula- tion of Bolivia. Excel they may in brain power, but they are of little social value owing to the disdain of exertion descended to them from their colonial forbears. The head of a girls’ liceo observed that the girls come to her quite un- fit for steady work, because they have never been required to exercise such self-control as close study implies. Nor can they stand being held strictly to their duties, or bear reproof. The mother, too, is easygoing and thinks nothing of keeping her daughter out of the liceo a day in order to have her company shopping. Such people are as soft as a mollusk out of its shell, 240 SOUTH OF PANAMA and only slowly can they acquire some firmness of character. The mestizo has the name of being lazy by na- ture and it may be that he really lacks the vitality of either of the parent races. The Indians, on the other hand, having none of the white man’s false pride, retain their old industriousness. In the schools of Lima the swarthy youths from the mountain villages often do better than the scions of old Lima families, not from superior ability but because they are earnest and not ashamed to work hard. What holds the natives back is not aversion to labor but discouragement — the para- lyzing reflection: “After all, what ’s the use?” They do not look upon the government as “our government,” and at every point of contact with the powerful they find the dice loaded against them. What must be the effect, for example, of the incessant absorption by force or by fraud of the small holdings of the Indians of the Sierra by the owners of the great haciendas ? The courts fail to protect the property rights of the poor natives because too often the judge is the land- owner himself or his friend. In Bolivia certain self-governing Indian communities hold tracts of good land by ancient grant and parcel it out among their members. But bit by bit it is being nibbled away by their powerful neighbors and there is no other land they might acquire to make up for their losses. No wonder these Indians hate the whites to such a degree that they refuse to sell them anything! CHARACTER 241 Or consider the system discovered by the Liga pro Indigena. A sub-prefect is ordered to furnish from a certain place four recruits for the army. He gathers up all the young men and each thinks he is to be taken for two years of military service. Now, they dread this service because they will suffer terribly from homesickness and because the conscripts taken down to the Coast are very liable to contract tuberculosis. So when the Indian is told that for $25 he will be let off this year he is very willing to sign a contract to work for the kind hacendado who offers to advance him the $25. The sub-prefect lines his pocket with the price of the Indian’s industrial servitude and a year later his victim may be called in and shaken down again. In Chile Spanish disdain of labor was matched by the laziness of the Araucanian savage who left all work to the women. But the bracing climate, the habit of country life and the continuous in- fusion of North European blood have saved the upper classes from the dry rot of indolence, while the masses inherit a bodily vigor and an emulative spirit which make them splendid workers when there is due incentive. In the words of a ship captain, “Pay the Chilean by the day and you get little. Pay him by the job and it makes you sweat to look at him. ’ ’ In Chile ideals are not radically unsound as they are in the North. Complete popular education coupled with a good economic order would suffice to unleash the energies of the neglected common people of Chile. 242 SOUTH OF PANAMA In the provincial towns of Argentina the old creole contempt for work survives and you may meet men who, like the Orientals, let the nail of the little finger grow very long. But a new spirit is abroad. Both the love of gain and the demo- cratic respect for labor are encroaching upon the worship of do-nothing. That a third of the men are industrious European immigrants and that this element constantly gains on the other seems to make certain the disappearance of the old false pride. This is not to say that idealism reigns. The spirit of the new society is pleasure-loving. “Let us eat, drink and be merry for to-morrow we die,” expresses the prevailing mood. There is an ac- tive patriotism of the flag-wagging, jingoistic type, but not much self-sacrificing love of country. It is said that when there are signs of trouble the distinguidos of Buenos Aires simply decamp across the river to Uruguay and safety. The old Spanish element, which possessed firm character and much idealism, is being swamped by the freshet of immigrants brought together by very commonplace motives. In the capital three- fourths of the births are in families of the foreign born. Sensitiveness to praise and blame is keen, and public opinion is a powerful molder of con- duct. The humane spirit is ascendant and the new standards it inspires emerge and harden under your eyes. The code of honor in public life has stiffened much since President Celman’s time and a proven crook is more promptly and relent- CHARACTER 243 lessly driven out. Nevertheless, strong character and a dominating sense of duty are relatively rare and only time and stress will give idealism here the long and tough roots it has among certain of the older peoples. WANT OF PERSISTENCE The more masterful Americans regard the Colombians as children and will not take them very seriously. In Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia there is much complaint that the young men “won’t stick to anything difficult. ’ ’ A missionary in Lima told how in his early years there he gladly taught classes in English in order to gain an opening, but that later he gave it up in disgust as a waste of his time. “There is hardly a young fellow here,” he declared, “who hasn’t made two or three starts to learn English and every time given it up.” An American superintendent of schools cited the numerous buildings, especially school buildings, never completed and used, as proof of Peruvian instability of purpose, and added: “But I ’ve got several hundred of my school boys play- ing football and before long there ’s going to be a generation of young fellows who ’ll despise bull- fighting and scorn a ‘quitter.’ ” Said a German educator in an inland town, “These people have no shame about giving up. The young men get enthusiastic over a thing at first, but soon lose interest. There ’s not a department of life in which they have learned to put forth sustained effort.” In another provincial center the Ameri- 244 SOUTH OF PANAMA can educator reported that twenty young Peru- vians would enter his twice-a-week class in Eng- lish, but not more than two would stick to the end of the year. The Bolivians are not strong on seeing a thing through. They lay with great pomp the corner- stone of a monument, then neglect to build it. I was assured that outside of La Paz, which has be- come sensitive on this matter, there are many un- finished monuments. A Cochabamba missionary averred that nearly a score of times he had started classes of young men keen on learning English, but that nearly all had dropped out within six weeks. Only two had hung on until they could speak some English. He, too, had been struck by the fre- quency of unfinished residences, some of which had been standing for years. An Oruro mission- ary had likewise observed that the Bolivians are good beginners but poor finishers, enthusiastic in taking up a thing but without the strength of char- acter needed to carry it out. His converts are “very wobbly,” easily moved toward the good but just as easily turned away from it. Each year his mission gains' and loses hundreds of people. With the Catholic priest they are just as wobbly and undependable as with the Protestant mission- ary. Classes in English shrink terribly after about three months, and in his district there are houses and monuments which stand year after year unfinished. To the same infirmity of charac- ter he attributes the evasion of marriage and the want of constancy in the cholo couples. My guide, little “Toniel Boy with a carga of bananas, Cali CHARACTER 247 Some thoughtful observers attribute the ascend- ancy of La Paz in Bolivia to the fact that it is the center of the Aymara element, which in point of character is stronger by far than the Kechuas. The latter were the sustainers of the Inca civiliza- tion, and it is suggested that their long subjection to the patriarchal regime of the Incas had the effect of taking the iron out of their blood. The strong-willed and variant individuals sooner or later bumped up against the established order and came to grief, while the pliant and docile survived and multiplied. Certain it is that the will of the Kechua is strong only in a passive way. He is tenacious and persistent but not aggressive. Of- ficers say that he makes a good soldier, enduring under hardship, faithful, docile and obedient. Well trained he will lay down his life obeying orders, but he is no such wild-cat fighter as the Chilean. As a worker he is patient but lacks in- itiative. In Chile one hears little complaint of weakness of character. The stubborn and indomitable Mapuches transmitted plenty of iron to their lat- ter-day descendants. Then, too, the pure white element has been numerous enough and strong enough to uphold certain standards and to set the example of living up to them. In both Chile and Argentina the pace-setting class is distinctly less strenuous than English, German or Ameri- can, but one sees nothing of unfinished buildings and monuments and never hears the sneer of “quitter.” 248 SOUTH OF PANAMA NATURE OR NURTURE ? Is the observed weakness of character in the mixed bloods of tropical South America charge- able to heredity or to environment? Nothing would throw so much light on the future of these peoples as the answer to this riddle. Alas! we are not sure who holds the key. One German ed- ucator after four years’ experience will say, “The superficiality and moral flabbiness of my boys cannot be laid to want of training or to the defects of their elementary education. There is constitu- tional weakness here. The crossing of races has produced a chaotic, unstable, nervous organiza- tion, resulting in a type at war with itself.” On the other hand, another German of longer expe- rience has completely given up his former as- sumption of the congenital inferiority of the mes- tizo. One wise old savant of La Paz insists that the mestizos in ability stand somewhere between the two parent races, and that the more white blood there is in them the cleverer they are. But his fellow townsman, a judge and the author of a number of admirable studies in Bolivian socio- logy, concluded wholly from his wide observation that the mestizo is by nature physically, morally and intellectually weaker than either Spaniards or Indians, that the weakness increases the further you are from the original crossing and that noth- ing can redeem this element, which has involved all but a handful of the whites, from its laziness, CHARACTER 249 its want of imagination and its feebleness of thought. One missionary, after bringing to bear the supreme religious influences at his command and producing converts who have little in common with converts from a strong pure race like the Chinese, concludes that the weakness of character of these mestizos is inherent and can never be outgrown. Another missionary, however, a cou- ple of hundred miles away, after noticing the same faults in his people, attributes them to the glar- ing deficiencies of their upbringing and educa- tion, to the flimsiness of the religion they have been reared in and to their lack of the discipline of organization. The author believes that both schools have some of the truth, but the environment school is nearer right. Heredity is a cheap offhand ex- planation of the characteristics of a people at a given moment, but how is it that continually characteristics change when there has been no change in heredity? The observed traits of French, Germans and English to-day are by no means the same as the traits they manifested about the middle of the last century. Many of the faults of contemporary South American character can easily be duplicated from the history of our own people. To-day we succeed in mak- ing certain virtues fairly general among ourselves because gradually our society has equipped itself with the home training, the education, the religion, the ideals of life, the standards of conduct and 250 SOUTH OF PANAMA the public opinion competent to produce these virtues. Societies that lack the right soul molds will of course fail to obtain these virtues. But there is no reason why they may not borrow such molds from the more experienced societies, just as we ourselves have sometimes done. Let me clinch this point by the observations of the American head of a large secondary school in Chile. He said in effect, “After all the stress I have laid on veracity these hoys will lie. The girls cheat shamelessly in examinations. Our at- tempt to apply the honor system proved a flat failure, for the pupils cheated unanimously.” One might imagine himself on the track of a race characteristic until he added: “The boys of Eng- lish or American parents lie just as freely as the others.” So after all the trouble is not race hut something in the moral atmosphere. The educa- tor believed that something to be the Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means and that an untruth is all right, if it is serving a good cause. Laguna Fria CHAPTER X EDUCATION P OPULAR education in a people saturated with the traditions of the old Spanish co- lonial regime is like a plant in an alkali soil. The benighted hewers of wood and drawers of water do not desire education, because they do not see that it will help their children to earn more than their fathers, or that it will lead them up into occupations and rewards reserved for the higher social class. The higher class certainly desire education for their own children — how else should they be trained for public life or fitted to follow the learned professions ? — but they never think of education as a means of diffusing opportunity throughout all classes. That, decidedly, is not their program. For the children of the peons the Church desires no education other than that drill in the rudi- ments of her faith which she herself provides. Secular education will not promote their eternal welfare and it may endanger it. That education should give them a chance to rise in life does not appeal to her. What is “rising in life” com- pared with saving the soul? Let the children of the well-to-do be trained to fill worthily those 253 254 SOUTH OF PANAMA high and comfortable places in life to which it has pleased God to call them, while the children of the peons continue their fathers’ labors. No wonder, then, that the gospel of universal education has never germinated in the South American people. It has always been an exotic introduced from abroad by idealists and social reformers. It has entered the country via the capital and has won the national legislature be- fore it agitated the councilors of the interior towns. This is why in South America public ed- ucation is centralized to a degree that astonishes a North American. Its administration from the capital gives the handful of enlightened reformers at the political apex of the nation the leverage they need. Local option in education, or even local control, would in the remoter parts of the country spell apathy and prolong the reign of darkness in the social deeps. State initiative is the only means of bringing about a general up- lift. It is not easy for us to realize how many power- ful interests in a South American country are pouring sand on the axles of educational prog- ress. The Liberals may enact their school law but it is quite another thing to plant public elementary schools. The owners of the estates sell all their product at its world-market price, but they buy their labor at an arbitrary figure far below its true market worth. They tie the peon with debt so that he must accept whatever they allow him. They defraud him because he is too ignorant to EDUCATION 255 reckon the amount of his debt to the amo or to check up the account of his purchases at the amo’s store. Unable to read he learns nothing of his legal rights or of better chances in other jobs. Hence, it is a part of the master’s game to keep knowledge from his peons in order that they may remain helpless, unambitious and submissive to the master’s will. How otherwise shall he be able to send Manuel to a Paris lycee or Carmen to a Quebec convent? Of course, in these humanita- rian days the masters conceal the nakedness of their avarice under a decent drapery of phrases, insisting that schooling will “spoil” the children of the peon, give them “foolish notions” or make them “feel above their work.” Bear in mind, too, that the illiterate peon whose title to the suffrage is his ability to trace the let- ters of his name is likely to vote with a simple- minded faith in the political advice of his amo. Is it likely that the master will care to have such child-like trust disturbed? In Chile the ordinary landed proprietors are said to look with disfavor upon popular schools lest thereby the children of the inquilino grow up demanding, or restless and migrant. They want the son to stay on in his father’s mud hut, content with the old wage and the old hard, rough life, attached to the hacienda and its master and deaf to the call of opportunity elsewhere. As one put it, “We don’t want the children of our inquilinos disturbed in their minds.” In gen- eral both master and man agree that the children 256 SOUTH OF PANAMA of the poor ought to follow the father’s calling and that to aspire is a piece of presumption. The Church loves public schools as little as the master, but for reasons of her own. The priest wants the peons ignorant in order that he may preserve his authority over them, keep their feet from straying from the path of eternal salvation and be relieved from the necessity of defending his doctrines, combating heresies and meeting the competition of the Protestant missionary. If, however, education must come, the Church wants to provide it herself in her own parish school, where, as a clerical editor put it to me “religion saturates the entire course of study.” Outside the towns the parents generally are too ignorant to recognize the burden of their igno- rance. They feel about schooling as we should if for two years our children were taken from us every day to study cuneiform inscriptions. The law may command attendance but, as a consul put it, “If the parent protests that the earnings of the child in shucking ivory nuts are needed, what can the authorities say?” Consider, too, that many children are waifs, unknown to their father and neglected by their mother if she has children by another man, so that there is no one to send them to school. The Indians of the Sierra have no use for edu- cation. They say that reading and writing makes one a rascal because in fact the clever, schooled Indian has often turned shyster and used his knowledge of letters to trick and exploit his illit- Courtesy o! Or. W. F. Bailey Street Scene, near Cerro-de- Pasco, Peru Courtesy oi Dr. W. F. Bailey La Fundicion, Peru .- . 1 EDUCATION 259 erate fellows. Like the educated Crow or Apache who used to revert to the blanket after returning from the government school to the tepees of his tribe, the Kechua youth who has completed the colegio in some provincial capital of Peru soon “goes Fantee” after he returns to live among his people. He reverts to their ways without having in the least benefited them. As for the little fel- low who learned to read Spanish during his two years in school, he soon forgets it all living among people who speak only Kechua. “The problem of the Indians,” said to me a University rector, “is not to be met by schooling a few individuals, but by educating the whole mass by means of an elementary school with strong industrial emphasis planted in every Indian community. ’ ’ In Chile the country-dwellers care little for the education of their children and many will let their urchins run wild rather than keep them in school. After the twelfth year they are liable to be taken out of school, the boys in preference to the girls, because their help is more needed. The town people are more willing to let the school have their children. ELEMENTARY EDUCATION Given such conditions, we ought to be neither surprised nor self-complacent to find the state of popular education very backward. According to the Colombian census about one person in twenty- two is attending a public school. In Ecuador one in sixteen is enrolled in school. There are some 260 SOUTH OF PANAMA 800,000 Indians in Ecuador in a population of a million and a half. Most observers declare that the children are getting no schooling at all. One man thought that perhaps a quarter of the chil- dren of the peons might be receiving instruction. The law requires the master having ten or more families of laborers on his estate to maintain a school for them, but the law is not always ob- served. Many families live quite too scattered for their children to be brought together every day. It might require a hundred square miles to furnish enough children to make a school. Half the people in Peru are Indians, while three- fourths of the other half are mestizos. No won- der that out of 900,000 children of school age not over eighteen per cent, are in school. Peru gets about 15,000 annually through the elementary school, which covers two years of instruction and is compulsory. The recent Educational Commis- sion of Peru estimated that two-fifths of the chil- dren live in districts so remote or under such con- ditions that the State cannot hope to reach them at all. In the next higher type of public school — comprising the third, fourth and fifth grades — the enrolment out of a population as large as that of Missouri or Texas is 5000, 2000 and 1000 respec- tively. In 1910 only 480 pupils completed the fifth year of work. One must bear in mind that the children of the well-to-do are not in such schools but in private schools maintained by the various teaching orders of the Church. In Bolivia it takes forty or forty-five people to EDUCATION 261 furnish one child attending a public school. It is interesting to find that the State tries to dispel the darkness in which the country population lives by sending out circuit-riding schoolmasters, who go about from village to village holding in each a brief term of school. In planting schools Chile has not had to contend with great natural obstacles like those of the countries to the north of her. It gives one there- fore a vivid sense of the aristocratic spirit of the Government of Chile to find that there are only 3026 public elementary schools, whereas ten thou- sand are needed in order to accommodate the 700,000 children of school age. Only 300,000 chil- dren are enrolled in elementary schools, of which number perhaps 50,000 are in parish schools maintained by the Church. The existing public schools are full and children have to be turned away. The sense of responsibility a Conservative Government feels for the education of the masses may be gauged from the remark made to me by a ranchman of Chilian: “Popular education has made great advances in twenty years. Now the Government will give you a teacher for the chil- dren of your inquilinos provided that you supply the schoolhouse and board and lodge the school- master.” To a democrat the interesting thing is that, al- though the State maintains fine high schools (liceos), the public elementary school does not lead up to the high school at all. To get your children ready for the liceo you must pay tuition for them 262 SOUTH OF PANAMA in some private school. Here you have the kind of school system aristocracy likes: liceos leading on up into the University, both supplied at the public expense, hut no ladder provided by which the children of the poor may climb into the free state system ; so that its benefits are reserved for the children of the well-to-do who can pay for a ladder. As for the free common schools they are an afterthought, do not connect with the state sys- tem above and do not impair the monopoly of gov- ernment and of all the higher occupations which the upper class enjoys and hopes to transmit to its children. Thanks to the influence of the famous Sarmi- ento, school teacher, friend of Horace Mann, and afterward President, Argentina has developed its education along more democratic lines. A tenth of the population are to be found in the elementary schools, about half the proportion for the United States. The reason for this deficiency in enrol- ment is said to be not so much the indifference of parents, as the lack of accessible schools. By law every twenty children are entitled to have a school but with population so sparse not always can the necessary twenty be found. Then, too, just as with us, colonies of South European peasants are not always eager for schools. I was told of a prosperous small-farm district in the long-settled province of Santa Fe, colonized a generation ago by Piedmontese. They have become so wealthy and distrust the banks so much that they actually pay their trust- Women’s dining room. Immigrant station, Buenos Aires Immigrant station and adjacent gardens, Buenos Aires EDUCATION 265 iest compatriot four per cent, per annum to take care of their money for them. Nevertheless, rural schools are said to be conspicuous by their ab- sence. The Governor of Cordoba showed me architect’s plans for a portable wooden building combining under one roof the school and the master’s resi- dence. He hopes to lay out a million dollars in providing the province with a large number of such buildings which can be set up in rural dis- tricts and removed elsewhere when the time comes for permanent school buildings. The backwardness of some provinces has prompted the Federal Government to plant ele- mentary schools of its own where there appeared to be great need of them. Sixteen hundred such national schools exist and plans are afoot to in- crease their number to five thousand. Since the nation pays more than twice the salary of the province it has the pick of the teachers, and since its schools are planted where facilities are lacking the country gets the national school rather than the city. Thus it may happen that rural children are better taught than the town children. As was to be expected, the planting of national schools has not always resulted in more schools. A province may be pauperized as well as an individual. Sometimes the province closed its own school and diverted the money to other purposes. In some cases, I was assured, the Federal Government simply took over the staff and outfit of the exist- ing provincial school, so that all that happened 266 SOUTH OF PANAMA was a shifting of the burden of support. Others maintain that the entrance of Buenos Aires into the field brought real aid to popular education. BUILDINGS One reason public education lacks in South America the large impressiveness it has elsewhere is the absence of proper school buildings. Most of the schools are held in dwelling houses often ill- suited to such use. In Ecuador all the schools are said to be in rented quarters either unadapted or but slightly adapted to school purposes. Less than a third of the 1900 places used for public edu- cation in Peru are owmed by the State. I doubt if half of this third were built to be schools. All the seventeen public schools in Arequipa are in rented private houses. The only playground is the bare court and in a patio ten yards square I saw ninety children trying to frolic. In one windowless room about eight yards by four, lit only by two door- ways that gave upon the corridor about the patio, were sixty tots sitting three to a seat. The wall paper hung in tatters and the worn and hummocky brick floor exhaled dust at every step. In an- other school room the seats were full and a dozen bairns perched on a board along the wall propped on stones. The ventilation of these family chambers used as school rooms may be imagined. In Bolivia and Chile school men assured me that most of the schools are conducted in rented prem- ises and the same seems to be true of Argentina. In Rosario I found that many schools are held in EDUCATION 267 private houses, although there is talk that the province is about to build two hundred school buildings at a cost of four million dollars. The secondary schools in South America are not much better off than the primary, for, as a rule, the colegio or liceo is housed in an old convent or the mansion of some decayed family. TEACHERS In Colombia the State turns over much of its school money to religious orders like the Francis- cans and the Marists, which devote themselves to teaching. Lately the State is establishing normal schools where students entering at the age of twelve or fourteen are for four years lodged, fed and taught on condition of serving after gradua- tion at least two years as teachers. Ecuador is practically without trained teachers and not one person connected with the department of public in- struction has had professional training. A dozen years ago the Government established a boys’ nor- mal school and one for girls at Quito, but so far their output is scanty and has contributed little to improve teaching. Neither school is in charge of a person with normal training. Ecuador teachers are poorly paid and sometimes not paid at all. The soldier is the first servant of the State to get his pay and the teacher, being harmless, the last. One hears heartrending stories of the distress of unpaid teachers. In Lima the State maintains a normal school for men and one for women. The latter, established 268 SOUTH OF PANAMA in 1878, in an old Jesuit convent, had for a long time only a few pupils. Now it is training 105 girls appointed from the various departments of Peru. The normalists, in charge of the Sisters, are lodged and fed free and in the dormitory each girl is provided with her brass-top bed and sta- tionary marble wash-basin in a dainty cubicle formed by white muslin curtains. The teachers lay stress on the practical spirit of their curricu- lum and one does see lovely things made by the students of drawing, modeling, painting, leath- erwork, carving, embroidery and crocheting — nothing useful, however. In aristocratic thought the useful is degrading, so the girls learn lace mak- ing but not plain sewing and darning. In the cooking class the girls may learn to make a cake, but to bake bread? Never! The graduates of this school are in great de- mand in their home districts and all have places. The Peruvian young woman, however, is timid and does not move about freely ; so it is almost impos- sible to induce the normalists to go away from home out into the country districts where they are most needed. The inspector in Arequipa is try- ing to mobilize the graduates of the local normal school by refusing to recommend them for town positions until they have served in country schools. As yet normalists are few and most Peruvian teachers are untrained. In Lima the teaching positions go much by favor and places will be held by women of good family who have Summit lull, Llspiilluta. EDUCATION 271 never gone beyond the seven-year elementary school or opened a book on pedagogy. The Peruvian youth fights shy of the teaching profession, seeing no career in it. The State being the sole employer of teachers, the normalist who falls into disfavor with the Education De- partment is ruined. Then there is the blight of politics. The department has sixty-six well-paid inspectorships at its disposal and, if these were reserved for successful normal graduates, they would serve as prizes to attract the ambitious into this ill-paid profession. But usually the inspec- torships are plums to be given young lawyers for party work. No wonder the discouraged normal- ist takes up the study of law or medicine. Bolivia has a normal school under Belgian pro- fessors but not more than two or three score of its graduates are available. Chile, on the other hand, early showed itself progressive in this mat- ter. In 1842, only two years after this type of institution had been planted in the United States, Chile founded a normal school, its first director being Sarmiento, then a refugee from the tyranny of Rosas. Under the lead of imported German experts normal training has been so developed that now the State maintains, besides a Pedagogic Institute which forms high school teachers, fifteen such schools which have turned out a third of the public school teachers in Chile. The State boards the normalists and expects in return at least seven years of teaching service. Men and women are 272 SOUTH OF PANAMA trained in separate institutions and every year it is harder to drum up students for the men’s normal schools. Just as with us the young women are taking the elementary schools. The undue concentration of higher educational opportunities in Santiago has created the problem of getting normalists out into the country where they are most needed. Not long ago one hundred and sixty Santiago normal school graduates re- fused provincial positions, preferring to teach without pay in the schools of the capital in the hope that eventually places might open for them. When they were given to understand that it was the provinces or nothing, some chose the latter. American educators in Chile observe that the teachers there lack social prestige and are looked upon as merely upper servants. The gulf be- tween the director of a school and his teachers is wide, and, since the parent will deal only with the director, the teacher has to be very discreet in mat- ters of discipline. With the aid of imported' American experts, Argentina has developed sixty-five normal schools with upwards of six thousand students. What- ever the present deficiencies of public instruction in that country, this broad provision for the re- cruitment of teachers is an earnest of fine educa- tional performance in the future. Standards of proficiency and pay are fairly good. Still, there is complaint that politics influences the filling of high school positions and it is said that for this reason few bright young men take the excellent General view of La Paz, Holivia EDUCATION 275 teachers’ course provided in the national Univer- sity of La Plata. EDUCATIONAL METHODS Until recently the schools of tropical America were a century or two behind the best contempo- rary schools. In Colombia still the prevailing education is authoritative. The pupil learns by rote and, instead of being led to seek truth him- self, is taught to look upon the text-book as the last word. Cabinets of materials and specimens are lacking as well as laboratories where the pupil might learn by doing. In China I have heard a school before coming upon it around a bend in the road, and in Ecuador the children study out loud just as in China. A port Briton complained to me that every morning his rest was shattered by the noise from the school across the way. The text-book consists of questions and answers which the child is obliged to memorize. The result, of course, is mere par- rotry, for the poor thing comprehends little of what it so glibly recites. An American teaching English in an Ecuador high school noticed that the answers to the examination in psychology were couched in the choicest Castilian. On inspection he found that the answers consisted in verbatim passages of the text-book, reproduced from mem- ory. Such a system, of course, cannot develop the power to think. For some of her high schools Peru imported trained Germans and for a period of years she 276 SOUTH OF PANAMA sent annually three bright young men to study in American Universities. Antiquated methods, in her secondary schools at least, are going out. In the colegio at Arequipa it was a joy to see the spots and stains on the tables in the laboratory. There were scientific charts worth $2000 and ap- paratus showing signs of use and the lads were doing real work. A little manual training there was in paper and cardboard, but no money was to be had to install shop work. One German principal told me that when he ar- rived in Peru he found that the students in the University were learning chemical reactions out of a book but were given no reagents to use. An- other recalled the time when the Instituto de Lima boasted a better chemistry outfit than the vener- able University of San Marcos. Once, on inspect- ing a girls ’ high school, he came upon a fine chem- ical cabinet, but, alas, the bottles of chemicals had never been unstoppered, while the retorts still bore traces of the sawdust they had been packed in! Meanwhile the girls had been memorizing chemical formulae from a text of the question- answer type that begins with the query: “What is chemistry?” or “What is arithmetic?” When a few years since the American school was opened in La Paz the pedagogy of Bolivia was incredibly primitive. The rural schools were without equipment, often without desks, and the memoriter method prevailed. Pupils studied aloud and recited in concert. One taught children in order to get them through the examinations set EDUCATION 277 by the outside authorities. A month before the ordeal, long lists of questions and answers were worked over with the unfortunates until they could rattle them off correctly “without stopping to think. ’ ’ How like the methods in many of our little red schoolhouses forty years ago ! Normal graduates have introduced modern ped- agogy into the schools of Chile and Argentina, but still we must not suppose that all is well with their education. A very wise man, Dr. Ernesto Nelson of the Department of Education, pointed out to me how the ideas of the old social regime still gov- ern. “The child,” he said, “is not sufficiently considered in family or school. Its individuality is given no chance to develop. It is told how to behave and what to believe until it feels itself to be a puppet. Since all the consideration and priv- ileges are reserved for adults, it is eager to be grown up as soon as possible. The keeping under of the child, the neglect to study it and understand it, to consider what it wants instead of what we want, cause it to grow into a man who will bully or cringe, according as he is on top or underneath. Hence, the ‘good citizen’ of a democracy is not yet being produced by our education. Only free personalities developing together will ripen into citizens who will neither abuse power nor consent to be abused by it, who will respect the rights of others because they value their own. ’ ’ It is fortunate that at La Plata the Government has given Dr. Nelson a chance to realize his ideas in a boarding school which in the end will prob- 278 SOUTH OF PANAMA ably greatly modify the secondary schools throughout the nation. THE LATIN MIND From long study of our education Dr. Nelson has come to perceive certain intellectual vices in the South Americans. “The Latin,” he said, “insists on logic and symmetry. For example, he adopts the plan of planting a national colegio in the capital of every province, which is usually an important city. But the logic of this scheme obliges him to keep up in Jujuy, a city of a few thousand, a national colegio which has only forty pupils, while some big seaport town goes without a colegio. If most colegios need furnaces the symmetry-loving Latin leaps to the conclusion ‘All colegios should have furnaces/ and so a furnace will be provided for in the plans for a colegio in the sugar-cane belt! “The Latin is so fond of the theory of whatever he undertakes to do that he is apt to lose sight of the concrete. He will work out elaborate plans for an educational system — course of study, scheme of examinations and promotions, and all that — but loses sight of that simple concrete thing, the child, for whom the system exists and whom it must fit. An elaborate theory precedes and con- trols the action of the Latin. You Americans let the theory of a thing, say a social settlement or university extension, develop little by little out of your experiences in dealing with the concrete. “The Latin- American university is located in Incaic wall, Cuzco, Peru Incaic wall, Ollantaytambo, Peru EDUCATION 281 an important city, because as a matter of pride each city must have its university and it must be convenient to the professional men who are to lecture in it. The American realizes that a uni- versity exists not for city or faculty, but for its students, and so he plants it in a small town like Ithaca or Ann Arbor where the student will escape the temptations and distractions of the city. ‘ ‘ The Latin considers the result rather than the process. Show him drawings made by two chil- dren and he praises the better drawing; but the American educator considers the mental process involved and may prefer the poorer drawing be- cause it shows a better use of the facilities at hand or the exercise of the child’s higher faculties.” How true this is. The man in the street wants Buenos Aires to take over all the schools of Ar- gentina because Buenos Aires commands the requisite ability. He overlooks that in running, albeit awkwardly, their own elementary schools, the provincials come to feel an interest in the schools and, besides, develop among themselves some skill in team work. In the capital of a sugar cane province I came upon an amusing exhibition of the Latin mind. The provincial experiment station in charge of American experts and the national agricultural school managed by Argentines are both conduct- ing field tests of different varieties of imported sugar cane. The Americans grow the canes in small adjacent plots under identical conditions and those varieties which are not suited to that 282 SOUTH OF PANAMA soil and climate advertise the fact by their stunted and yellow appearance. The Argentines, how- ever, cannot bear that their visitors should see anything sickly about their place, so they spoil the experiment but enhance the sightliness of their fields by giving the ill-adapted canes extra hoeing and manure. The Argentines mistrust the Latin mind and ad- mire Americans for being “practical.” For in- stance, at a banquet of 1800 covers given him in Buenos Aires, Colonel Koosevelt found himself at the table of honor, at one end of a long hall, from which he could not make himself heard by all. A Latin would hold that one must speak from the table of honor surrounded by his distin- guished hosts. An American holds that one speaks in order to be heard and so the Colonel, when he was called upon, went half way down the hall, mounted upon the table and was heard by all. The banqueters all praised his practical action, although to none of them would it have occurred. CENTRALIZATION It is well enough for the South Americans to centralize the administration of their schools, but Peru for the last ten years has been under a sys- tem centralized to the verge of paralysis. Al- though internal communications are perhaps as difficult in Peru as anywhere else in the world, the inspector, or even the prefect, of the remotest sky province may not, save at his own expense, install a bench or have a leaky school roof repaired Mount Altar, Ecuador, as an artist sees it EDUCATION 285 without first reporting the need to the Minister of Education at Lima and obtaining his authoriza- tion of the outlay. The inevitable delay of three or four weeks in hearing from Lima, to say nothing of the dif- ficulty of making local needs understood by an office clogged with business, is a great obstacle to efficient management. A school vacancy may be permanently filled only by an appointment signed by the President of the Republic and the Minister. The municipality, having not the least responsibility touching education, not called on even to furnish a lot or a building for the accom- modation of its own school children, is dead to the whole matter. The attitude of the President for the time being is decisive for education and if he is not interested in it the schools languish. When Congress faces a deficit it is always public education that is cut, seeing that the children and the school masters cannot protest and the parents will not. In Chile, too, the school budget is the first to feel the knife when times are hard. Those who are tired of seeing the schools a foot- ball of politics are agitating for the creation of a special school fund, such as prevails in nearly all our States, formed not from the proceeds of ordinary taxes — which would invite a movement to exempt from such tax Catholic parents who send their children to the parish schools — but from the yield of public land sales or of inheritance taxes. 286 SOUTH OF PANAMA SECONDARY EDUCATION Colombia reports 229 schools (colegios or liceos) with an attendance of 19,000. Two thousand lads are studying in Ecuador in 19 such schools. Peru has 27 state colegios with an attendance of 2000 and enough private colegios — most of them be- longing to religious orders — to round out the num- ber to 50. Bolivia has 14 such schools — 8 of them government institutions — with 1800 pupils. Chile has 61 government colegios, two-thirds of them for boys, and subsidizes 67 private secondary schools. Argentina records 28 national colegios with an attendance of 8000. Her number of sec- ondary pupils altogether does not exceed 15,000. Such a proportion is amazingly low. In Salta, a province of 160,000, only 339 persons are in high school. In Rosario, a city as big as St. Paul, there is one national high school with 450 stu- dents. Pennsylvania, with about the same popu- lation as Argentina, has six times as many pupils in her high schools, although the number of years is four as against six for the colegios of the southern Republic. The public high school is obliged to make its way against the opposition of pay schools, some of them with a strong commercial bent like our “business colleges,” others maintained by the teaching orders — Jesuits, Salesians, Dominicans, Mercedarians, Sacred Heart or Christian Brothers — and favored by the wealthy either as more re- ligious or more exclusive than the free public high EDUCATION 287 schools. The high school, moreover, is not, as with us, the people’s college; it is a fitting school for the University and the professional schools. Eighty per cent, of its graduates go on to pursue higher studies. It belongs therefore on the whole to the upper class, while the great bulk of the people never aspire to advance their children be- yond the elementary school. There is a deep gulf between the two grades of education and between the teachers of the two grades, so that both pupils and teachers are drawn from different social classes. Latin and Greek have been wiped out of public high schools in Peru and Chile. In general the Latin American liceo demands less in mathematics and laboratory science than our high schools, but it offers such subjects as psychology, logic and philosophy. The pupils progress rapidly, grad- uate at sixteen or seventeen, and plunge at once into one of the professional courses in the Univer- sity. Some principals insist that the bachelor of the high school is not really ready for university work and ought to spend two years more in mathematics and natural science before beginning his professional studies. Instead of standing stoutly by the principle of public education Chile has been giving part of her school money to private high schools, some of which make Dickens’ “Dotheboys Hall” look like Groton or Exeter. A recent Congressional Com- mission, after visiting a great number of these subsidized schools, reported that the most obvious 288 SOUTH OF PANAMA thing about them was their dirtiness. “In some,” they say, “it is so dreadful that one knows not whether to marvel more at the laziness of the principals, or at their ignorance of the elementary rules of hygiene.” In several of these boarding schools the dirt, overcrowding, underfeeding and misteaching were such that the Commission rec- ommended their summary closure. It found that many a school has come into existence just to get the government subsidy, which with the fees it extracted from the pupils made the concern a good speculation. The Brobdingnagian capac- ity for growth which lurks in the subsidy system appears from the fact that in twenty years the annual grant to private schools had risen from $4000 to $400,000. THE UNIVERSITIES The quarters of a South American University are urban in location and cloistral in type. In the majority of cases it is housed in an old mon- astery. The University has no campus, athletic field, tennis courts, gymnasium, chapel, social hall, dormitories, commons or other means of caring for youth. It publishes no catalog or circulars. It has no registrar, keeps no list of its students, nor does it know their addresses. The young men live all over town and remain unorganized. The professors are for the most part active profes- sional men — lawyers, editors, doctors, publicists, engineers, pharmacists, architects, and dentists — who give each one course. Three times a week Two ways of securing strength. Modern masonry (with mortar) above Incaic masonry Row of great porphyry slabs, at Ollantaytambo EDUCATION 291 they lecture and then vanish. They are likely to be abler men than the few full-time professors teaching the natural sciences and they do bring with them into the class room an atmosphere of actuality ; but they have little leisure for produc- tive scholarship and no time to get acquainted with their students or to guide their individual work. Thus the University is a seat of learning but not an environment, not a soul mold. From the moral point of view the precious plastic years the youth passes in the University are wasted. Nei- ther with his fellows nor with his instructors does he form associations that shape his character. A professor of San Marcos had been telling me of the lack of noble enthusiasms in Peruvian students. “What we need,” he said, “is full- time professors each entering into relations of personal intimacy with his students. By fellow- ship, by coming to know the individuality and problems of each he will be able to influence them. In this way he might inspire them with his own ideals of manliness and self control, of honor and devotion to duty, so that Peru might have a new type of citizen and public servant.” An Argen- tine educator, who has studied universities all over the world, saw still deeper when he said, “If the founders of the University of La Plata had only gone out a couple of miles, bought two hun- dred acres of land, turned loose a landscape gar- dener and built halls, dormitories, gymnasium and athletic field, they would have created something 292 SOUTH OF PANAMA no South American University has, viz.: student life. ’ ’ The lecture system prevails even in the first years, and there are no prodding quizzes or mid term tests. In general the professor does not call out the individual student nor develop an in- terest in him. In the law course many students cut lectures cheerfully, since for money one may acquire a stenographic report of what the pro- fessor has said. The examinations come at the end of the year, so that many students drift along care-free until about two months before the ex- aminations and then buckle down to work. This does not, however, hold for the “medics” who have a stiff course and much laboratory work. The reformers wish to get rid of the lecture-ex- amination system and substitute small classes in which the professor may reach and guide the work of every man. The University of La Plata, by limiting the size of a class to fifty, aims to foster such teaching. One looks in vain for what we know as the “liberal arts” course. All the students seem to be pursuing professional courses and nobody fol- lowing liberal studies. Pure science, indeed, is little considered in the South American univer- sity, but the apparent neglect of liberal studies is owing to the fact that the law course is full of culture subjects — political economy, sociology, criminology, public finance, Roman law, history of law, philosophy of law, etc. — and is pursued by many who have no intention of practising law. EDUCATION 293 It is a five or six years ’ course and equivalent to our ordinary professional law course on top of two or three years of college study. In both law and medicine the South American universities give a broader training than has been received by the average young doctor or lawyer in this country. LIBRARIES ' Only in Argentina does one come upon a public library movement. Early in the seventies Presi- dent Sarmiento, having brought back the idea from his long diplomatic residence in the United States, sent collections of books to many towns to serve as nuclei of public libraries. But the people were not up to the level of good books and there were no skilled librarians to make reading popular. It is recorded that in 1872 the librarian of La Rioja was an illiterate and the story goes of another librarian who was found consoling him- self for the non-payment of his salary by smok- ing cigarettes rolled in leaves from Buff on’s Nat- ural History ! About ten years ago a new library movement came up and in 1910 a National Board of Public Libraries was formed. One of the most obvious needs is a school to supply trained librarians to make books acces- sible and alluring. At present an Argentine public library is a place for storing books rather than for using them. The hours of the Biblioteca Nacional at Buenos Aires show clearly that the library is administered for the convenience of the 294 SOUTH OF PANAMA staff rather than for the convenience of the public. In the University of La Plata there are two thou- sand students, yet the book calls in the library run about 1800 a month. The various provincial libraries I visited kept their books locked behind glass doors in wall cases and were without loan desk, card catalog, magazine holders, everything in fact which might make the room seem other than a book sepulcher. In Salta the drawings of books in a year equal the number of inhabitants. The Municipal Library and the Biblioteca Popo- lar of Rosario together show an average daily attendance of 115 and daily book calls to the num- ber of 100. INTELLECTUAL LIFE In Lima, Santiago and Buenos Aires, as well as in certain minor cities, there are knots of in- tellectuals pursuing learning with as much devo- tion as you will find anywhere. The equipment and productiveness of some of these scholars is amazing. For example, Ernesto Quesada, the Argentine sociologist, has a private library of 25,000 books and his published works fill a five- foot shelf. Those of his compatriot, the jurist Estanislao Zeballos, who has collected for him- self a library of 28,000 volumes, occupy nine feet of shelf room, while his unpublished manuscripts take up four feet more. Scholars and thinkers like Cornejo of Lima, Ballivian of La Paz, Letelier of Santiago and Gonzalez of Buenos Aires, would be an ornament to any people. Lake of the Inca, near the Transandine Railway EDUCATION 297 Such intellectual activity is the more creditable when one considers the difficulties under which it is carried on. The centers are far from Europe and from one another. The cost of men in the same line getting together is almost prohibitive. The smallness of the intellectual groups forbids specialization and obliges the scholar to write for the general reader rather than for his peers. This results often in an excessive emphasis on literary form and a fondness for displaying ver- satility. It is natural, too, that the scholar should consider it his first duty to transmit to his fellow countrymen European and North American thought rather than to devote himself to independ- ent research. The conditions of publishing constitute a heavy handicap to South American authors. Said a dis- tinguished Argentine writer: “We have no real publishers and no organization of the book trade. The ordinary edition of an Argentine book is 500 copies and the author pays for it. The publisher is a retail book-dealer who sells it at his own shop but does not make it accessible in other book shops in Buenos Aires, in other Argentine towns or in other South American centers. I have the great- est difficulty in obtaining for my collection copies of important books published in Lima or Santiago. In a word, there is absolutely no means of getting a South American book before the public either here or in Europe. On the other hand, the Span- ish publishing houses flood the South American shops with their output, ‘dumped’ here at any 298 SOUTH OF PANAMA low price since the book is supposed to have paid for itself in Spain. Hence, it is the Spanish books, not the native books, that make money for the Buenos Aires bookseller. No wonder we have to publish at our own expense.” One must not forget either that the book-read- ing public is very small, for, like the people of our Far West, nearly all are absorbed in material pursuits. Said a University rector: “Ten thou- sand persons do all the thinking and directing for the seven or eight millions of Argentines. Consumers of French novels may number a hun- dred thousand, but the readers of serious, non- technical books are between 2000 and 4000.” In a word, the intellectual life of South America is a tall but slender spire. What chiefly is lacking is a cultured class large enough to consume the output of the elite. Learned periodicals circulate some hundreds of copies and in Buenos Aires there are two great newspapers, but South Ameri- can magazines for the general public are tenth rate. In the office of the “Review of Law, His- tory and Letters” of Buenos Aires I saw about five hundred serious Argentine books and reviews which had appeared in the course of a half year. This is extraordinary considering the narrowness of the intellectual circle and one might infer that many an author must have published chiefly to see himself in print, seeing that the other mem- bers of this circle are too busy writing to have any time to read his book. CHAPTER XI RELIGION AND THE CHURCH I N no other part of the world has the Catholic Church been so protected as in South America. Its position in the Constitutions of the various states has been extraordinary. Chile since 1865 permits non-Catholics “to practise their religion inside private buildings belonging to them.’’ Colombia grants religious liberty but declares, “Public education shall be organized and con- ducted in accordance with the Catholic religion.” Ecuador, after recognizing Catholicism as the re- ligion of the Republic, directs the authorities “to protect that religion and cause it to be respected. ’ ’ It is only ten years since Bolivia was prohibiting every non-Catholic form of public worship. Until 1907 the law decreed that any person conspiring “to establish in Bolivia any other religion than that which the Republic professes, namely, that of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church,” is a traitor. Peru still declares: “The Nation pro- fesses the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion; the State protects it and does not permit the exercise of any other.” The movement in Peru to cut out the last clause has met with the bitterest opposi- tion. . 299 300 SOUTH OF PANAMA Owing, perhaps, to this special protection, one comes upon many things which recall the state of the Church before the reforms of the Council of Trent. A Scotchman of Puno on Lake Titicaca told me how, thirty years ago, when his little niece died, he had to put her body into an iron coffin and sink it in the waters of the lake because, her parents being Protestant, she could not be buried in conse- crated ground. One of the first measures of the Bolivian Liberals, who came into power in 1898, was to take the cemeteries from the Church and put them under the control of the municipalities. They also abolished the privilege enjoyed by the clergy of being tried only before an ecclesiastical court. The Ecuador Liberals abolished the legal right of the clergy to collect tithes, but, so great is the moral authority of the padre, in many cases the tithe is still collected. In the interior of Peru one comes upon estates bequeathed to a certain saint. After paying for masses for the repose of the testator’s soul, the income of the property, as administered by the local cura, goes to provide vestments, candles and jewels for the saint’s image and for the annual outing of this image in solemn procession. A friend of mine needed a day and a half to walk across one of these saint’s haciendas. In front of a Santiago church there is a large empty cross to which are attached models of the various objects connected with the Crucifixion — Mapuche (Araucanian) children from near Quepe, Chile Coming out of church, Chinchero RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 303 hammer, dice, pincers, cock, ear, knife, lantern, etc. In an inscription below the Archbishop “grants eighty days of indulgence to the faithful who before this cross utter a credo or a pater- noster.” Not less interesting is a small tablet set up on Santa Lucia Hill forty years ago to mark the site of some Protestant graves. The inscrip- tion reads: “To the memory of the expatriates from Heaven and from home land who in this place lay buried during the half century, 1820- 1872.” (The italics are mine.) Among the books published in Santiago in 1912 I noticed a work entitled “Catholicism or Protestantism 1 A ques- tion of the greatest importance — Do we believe in God or do we protest against that which He tells us?” In a church of Cordoba is a richly decorated wonder-working shrine. The jewels of the Virgin are said to be worth 100,000 pesos. “Our Virgin of the Miracle” is famous for cures and many halt and sick resort to her. On the wall in large frames hang nearly a hundred gilded replicas of the parts of the body healed at this shrine. Among them I saw models of feet, legs, hands, arms, eyes, ears, chest, heart, and trunk. In a church above Santos in Brazil one comes upon a like exhibit. Over against such simple piety there is a start- ling irreverence of expression. One comes on such signs as ‘ ‘ Butcher shop of the Holy Spirit, ’ ’ “Furniture shop of the Savior.” A well-known bottled mineral water of Peru bears the name 304 SOUTH OF PANAMA “Jesus Water.” There is a “Wine of the Last Supper” which uses Leonardo’s famous picture as its advertisement. On Good Friday a maga- zine comes out with a picture representing Christ in the foreground, Judas and others in the back- ground smoking a certain brand of cigarettes. Judas is remarking: “If I had had such ciga- rettes to smoke, I wouldn’t have betrayed Him.” The German Catholics in southern Chile are scandalized by the want of reverent demeanor in Chilean Catholics and there is no little complaint of the lack of reverence in South American churches. Said an American in Cali: “When we started to operate our electric-light plant, the padre asked for free current for his church. He put it on the ground that his simple-minded parishioners, to whom the production of electric light is a mystery, were coming to him to inquire whether or not it is of the Devil, and he could be of great service to our company by assuring them that the light is all right. ’ ’ In the cemetery of La Paz on All Souls’ Day I saw a woman and a priest standing before a cham- ber in the wall in which the bodies of the dead are placed. The priest was rattling off a paternoster, making an unintelligible sound like the hum of bees. When he had finished the woman said, “Otra” (another). He repeated the prayer and again she said “Otra.” After the third recita- tion, satisfied that the repose of her husband’s soul was secure for another year, she inquired RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 305 “Cucmto valeV ’ (How much?). He named a sum equivalent to twenty-five cents, she paid him and he went on to serve some other sorrower in the same way. In the poor section of the ceme- tery I saw a priest in full canonicals, attended by a boy to collect the fees, going about as solicited from one grave to another, sprinkling holy water and muttering paternosters. Daily before the Franciscan convent in Lima one may witness a rite of old-fashioned charity. The Franciscans, or “barefoot” friars, who are greatly respected for the poverty and purity of their lives, daily visit with wallet the markets and kitchens and beg gifts of raw food. These are made into a soup and early in the afternoon brought out in great caldrons to the waiting throng. A brother, who looks like Sir Galahad, stands by and, with a long rod, taps drunken men and “stiffs” on the shoulder to make them get out of the line. As befits this androcentric so- ciety, all the men are helped before any of the women. The latter are cleaner than the men, bring clean pails for their soup instead of cans from the dump, and eat with spoons. The women were mostly poor people, the men mostly “bums,” and I was glad to see that more women than men got a second ladleful, — for their children, no doubt. In the front of a foundling asylum in Santiago one may see a device of medieval charity. It is a revolving double-cradle like an upright half-bar- rel. One may lay an unwanted baby in the cradle, give it a turn, and vanish down the street with no 306 SOUTH OF PANAMA one the wiser. The turn leaves the baby inside the asylum, rings a bell which summons a Sister to take charge of it, and brings round an empty cradle ready for the next superfluous infant. No- body has told the good Sisters that, the world over, the turn-cradle, invented to lessen infanti- cide, has been discarded as a fosterer of illegiti- macy. An aged American of seventy years’ residence in Chile confided an interesting bit of family ex- perience. “My brother-in-law,” he said, “an American, died recently without confessing. His family, all devout Catholics, were desolated by the conviction that his soul was eternally lost. But a Mexican nun in Santiago who had the gift of vi- sions of the other world reported to the sorrowing family that she had seen him in Purgatory. Shown his photograph she identified him as the very soul she had beheld. Accordingly masses and prayers were brought to bear and soon the nun announced that his soul would be released from Purgatory on Wednesday week. On that day the family and their friends gathered, and celebrated with great rejoicing the salvation of the father. I have noticed,” he added, dryly, “that the griefs of the rich are more often assuaged in this way than those of the poor.” THE RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE The maintenance of public worship is generally recognized as a duty of the State and every Gov- ernment contributes to the Church for this pur- Head of a llama RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 309 pose. The annual subsidy ranges from $25,000 in Bolivia to $100,000 in Peru and nearly half a mil- lion in the two republics of the South. Moreover local authorities make special donations for the upkeep of the church, the bishop’s residence, etc. In return the Government enjoys certain very substantial benefits arising from the patronato, or right of the Sovereign, conceded to the King of Spain by the Holy See. Thus the Bolivian Senate has the right to nominate to bishoprics, the Pope, of course, reserving the right to approve or re- ject. The Liberals are not in a hurry to sepa- rate Church and State, for they judge that the right to nominate bishops, — who appoint the curas, — may be worth $25,000 a year. “No,” said an Argentine thinker, “the million pesos the Church costs us annually is not too much to pay for peace. Our Senate nominates and the Pope confirms our four bishops. Naturally the Senate picks loyal patriotic Argentine priests free from any taint of Ultramontanism. No bull or re- script of the Pope can be published here without the O.K. of the Government. The Church will never set up among us a system of church schools in opposition to the public schools. Were it under no obligation to the Government, it might do so. The separation of Church and State would set the Church free to follow an independent, non- national line which might later on bring us trouble. As it is we have peace, and it is worth the price.” The penetration of the Church by numbers of foreign ecclesiastics without any patriotism to 310 SOUTH OF PANAMA balance their loyalty to Rome is dreaded by the governments. Ecuador will not allow an alien priest to exercise his office and in Peru the same restriction has been mooted. Chile tolerates numerous foreign priests, but, like all Chileans, the national clergy are intensely patriotic and, during the recent eventful visit of the Papal Nuncio, supported the nationalism of the Arch- bishop against the policy of the Nuncio. On the other hand, it is urged that the natives are too backward to assume charge of the Church, and that the better-educated foreigners are needed to lift the plane of learning and character among the clergy. Since the secularization of schools in France, many French priests have come and are said to have a bracing influence. “My friend, the Bishop of La Paz,” remarked an eminent Bolivian Catholic, “sees no remedy for the low state of the Church here but the introduction of foreign ecclesiastics.” I submitted this to a political leader, also a Catholic, and he scouted it. “The Government,” he insisted, “will never allow the introduction of numerous alien priests. The only means of reforming the Church is the spur of Protestant competition.” A couple of generations ago a Liberal Govern- ment in Colombia sequestrated the productive property of the Church, but the Conservatives re- stored it. The fact that the Italian Bishop of Cartagena was not long ago found to be vesting the title to ecclesiastical property in his diocese in a church society domiciled in San Francisco was RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 311 generally interpreted as a move to forestall like action by any future Government. The religious orders in Peru are said to pos- sess many agricultural domains, the proceeds of which go to support a declining number of monks and nuns, to enrich worship or to build churches, but do not render social service. In La Paz lately the Government took over the convent of La Merced and its farms with the intention of de- voting them to educational uses. The convent contained but four monks and their only service to society appeared to be the getting up of re- ligious processions. It is expected that eventually the Government will nationalize the property of all the religious orders. In Chile the Church has the name of being enormously wealthy, in both city and rural lands. A German business man declared the wealth of the Church to be not less than one hundred millions of dollars. A monk I met later smiled when I men- tioned this estimate, but nodded when I inquired if the wealth of the Church is as much as thirty millions. The State has never shown any dis- position to nationalize such property, but the re- cent action of the Nuncio in selling a church prop- erty and taking the proceeds out of the country was hotly resented. In general, the rich and philanthropic South American does not leave his money to a distinct institution with its own governing board. He gives it to the Church, which is the universal im- mortal trustee for such benevolent donations, and 312 SOUTH OF PANAMA the Church devotes it to religious, charitable, or educational uses, as it sees fit. This massing of gifts avoids the waste and duplication that may occur among distinct foundations, but it adds greatly to the social power of the Church. In any struggle with the State its host of dependents and its harvest of gratitude are an asset. “This vast and profuse charity,” remarked an American astronomer, “is used to make the poor contented in their place, to put them under obligation to the Church and to keep them loyal to it.” Thought- ful men feel that it would be better if large donors should create distinct schools, hospitals and insti- tutions instead of leaving their wealth to a single trustee. THE CONFLICT OVER MARRIAGE Fierce and long has been the struggle between Church and State over marriage. If the State joins people in wedlock, it not only abolishes a sac- rament but it cuts off an important source of cleri- cal revenue. In Colombia at one time civil mar- riage existed, but the Conservatives gave the mat- ter back to the Church. The Government of Ecuador insists on marriage before a magistrate, and has punished priests for disobeying the law that gives the civil ceremony precedence over the ecclesiastical. The civil marriage is much cheaper than the other, but is little felied on owing to the feeling of brides that only a priest can marry people. Peru provides civil marriage only for non-Catholics. Bolivia like Ecuador has made Terraces at Ollantaytambo Incaic walls at Pisae RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 315 civil marriage obligatory, and recently the secre- tary of the Bishop was before the court for cele- brating a church marriage for a couple that had not stood up before a magistrate. Thanks to an agitation led by Dr. Trumbull, one of the earliest Protestant pastors in Valparaiso, the law of Chile recognizes no other marriage than the civil. There is no restriction on church mar- riage, however, and many of the common people rely on the church rite alone. The provisions sur- rounding civil marriage are so onerous, that one suspects it was intended to he unpopular. Brides and grooms under twenty-five years of age must bring the formal consent of their parents and, if a parent is dead, must produce death certificate and burial certificate. To prove one is of age, wrinkles, gray hair or grown children do not suf- fice; one must furnish one’s birth certificate, or two witnesses who have known one for twenty- five years ! Argentina recognizes only civil marriage, and the fact that 55 per cent, of the couples in Buenos Aires dispense entirely with the church ceremony shows how secular the people have become. THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION The struggle between the old and the new in South America rages chiefly about education — whether it shall be clerical or lay. In Colombia the Church has its way with the result that the State has the privilege of paying the bills of the public schools, but not much else. A French 316 SOUTH OF PANAMA Marist informed me that, in the Cauca Valley at least, the priests supervise the schools and the catechism must be taught. Every school teacher is by law required to have his Catholic faith certi- fied to by the Bishop. Moreover, the local priest watches the teacher and may have him removed on religious grounds. Two or three times a week the priest instructs the school children in religion and every Sunday the teacher must take all his pupils to mass. Twenty years ago the Liberals ousted the Con- servatives in Ecuador and since then efforts have been made to advance lay education. Normal schools were opened in Quito but, from the first, the ecclesiastics did their best to induce parents to keep their children away from these “godless” schools. In Peru all schools are required to teach the Catholic religion and to send their pupils to confession. In general the padres are hostile to state education and imbue parents with the idea that the public schools neglect the morals and re- ligion of their pupils. In Arequipa shortly be- fore my visit a leading physician, the organizer of the local medical society, had greatly scandal- ized the devout by advocating before a teachers’ institute school instruction in sex-hygiene. The clerical view is that the priest should impart what- ever the young need to know about sex, and that to put this duty upon the teacher would be robbing the priest of one of his proper functions. Only recently Bolivia has eliminated religious instruction from the curriculum of its public RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 317 schools and substituted moral instruction. For two hours a week the school room is available for religious instruction provided by such person as the parents may designate. Whether a child shall receive this teaching depends entirely upon the wish of the parent. Although in Chile, in colegios as well as in pri- mary schools, religious instruction is obligatory and is under the supervision of the parish priest, the results have not been satisfactory to the Church. “The priest,” said an educational ex- pert, “knows no pedagogy and therefore talks right over the heads of the children. Hence, in most cases, such religious teaching seems to have no effect whatever.” For the last quarter of a century, accordingly, the Church has been labor- ing to build up parish schools which, with the numerous religious liceos and the Catholic Uni- versity at Santiago, will form a complete church system of education. Often there is no one to teach the parish school but the priest himself and hence these schools are still so backward and weak that the Conservative party opposes a compul- sory school law, lest the public schools should get all the additional pupils. Lately church normal schools for girls have been opened expressly to train teachers for these parish schools, and it is believed that in time the Conservatives will be willing to accept the principle of obligatory school attendance, confident that the parish schools will get their share of the pupils. In Argentina there is no religious teaching in 318 SOUTH OF PANAMA the national schools, but in some provincial schools the priest comes in and teaches religion to chil- dren whose parents wish it. After Chile, one is amazed to find so general the acceptance of the public school. In Cordoba, the strongest Catholic center in Argentina, it is true that the parish schools are subsidized by the province and have as many pupils as the public schools. In Buenos Aires, on the other hand, not over one pupil in fifteen is in a parish school. No educator or pub- lic man expects a church system of schools to ap- pear. They insist that the Argentine Catholics will not give money to found a separate system, nor will they generally send their children to them if such schools should open. They evince the same confidence in the finality of the public school system which American educators felt twenty years ago. THE CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY “The moral character of the Argentine clergy is high,” testified an American pastor in Buenos Aires. “In my twenty-one years here I never heard of any scandals involving priests.” “In the seventy years I have known Chile,” declared a Santiago American, “there has been a great im- provement in the character of the clergy. I can recall when high ecclesiastics, like the Bishop of Concepcion, openly traveled about with their families of children. Now the priest is a pretty reliable sort of man.” Further inquiry brought out the fact that Archbishop Valdivices, a very Open-air weaving before a Mapuche ruca Oxcart with solid wheels, Chilian, Chile RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 321 pure and strict man, who ruled the Church of Chile some thirty years ago, did much to key up the clergy to its present plane. Very striking is the contrast presented by the tropical countries. “What do you think of the state of the Church here?” I asked a diplomat in Quito, a devout Catholic. “It proves to me that the Church is divine,” he replied. “How, other- wise, could she survive?” Yet, thirty years ago, nearly all the native clergy in Ecuador were sus- pended and replaced by Europeans, so that prac- tically a new hierarchy was established. German Jesuits replaced Spanish Jesuits in the University and the seminaries, and the clergy to-day are con- sidered “a decided improvement” over forty years ago. In the Peruvian cities there are padres of learn- ing and piety serving enlightened parishes, but in the interior the situation does not seem to be much better than that described in the eighteenth cen- tury by the academicians Juan and D’Ulloa in their “secret report” to the King of Spain. Fewer young men of good family go into the priesthood than fifty years ago, so that the ordi- nary clergy are drawn from a lower social level. The noble-minded ecclesiastics are powerless to stem the tide. The Indians of the Sierra are exploited by prac- tices which have been illegal since the Council of Trent. Indeed, I have been informed by an ex- pert of the Pan-American Union that the decrees of this Council were never promulgated in South 322 SOUTH OF PANAMA America. In Puno, on Lake Titicaca, a judge, a leader of the bar, a gentleman rancher, a Swiss professor and a Scotch trader agreed that the curas absorb the entire surplus of the Indian, that they collect their baptismal, marriage and burial fees in advance and that these fees are not fixed, but are assessed according to the ability of the family to pay. The grasping rural cura has in each village of his circuit a trusty, who keeps tab on the pros- perity of each Indian family, so as to know how much he may extract when there is a marriage or a funeral. The curas, moreover, are financially interested in the shops that retail coca and alco- hol, the scourges of their flock. The motive in their recent raid on the Protes- tant mission at Chucuito, where a missionary had gone among the Indians without a cura, persuaded them to give up coca and pisco, taught them to read and write and to speak Spanish, and prompted them to present themselves dutifully for their military service, was not at all religious bigotry but resentment at interference with a lu- crative monopoly of selling religious services. In Bolivia, too, the situation is very bad. The cura gets round to the little chapels on the fincas at least once a year and says as many masses as he is paid for. The tariff has been fixed by the bishop, but he works a “combination” so that the same mass is counted as A’s mass and paid for by him, but is also counted as the mass ordered by B and C, and so must be paid for by them. Then there RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 323 is the alferez or Indian designated by the cura to stand the cost of the religious festival of the coming year. The victim, always an Indian of means, will sometimes have to ruin himself pro- viding the mass and the food and drink for this feast. To relieve the alferez and remove a great occasion of drunkenness, Congress, against the protest of the bishops, has recently abolished these feasts. A gross, ignorant half-breed cura up among the poor natives of this Thibet may extract an income that would do credit to a metropolitan pulpit. The cura of San Pedro is said to take in $4800 a year, while the cura of Sacaca, a village of 2000 souls, derives from this and the neighboring ham- lets $7200 a year! The trouble comes from the poor material available for curas. “These half-breeds,” said Dr. Ballivian, member of all the great learned so- cieties of the world, “are incapable of forming a metaphysical idea of God.” “The French pro- fessors in the seminary do their best to inculcate their spiritual conception of religion,” said Judge P., “but the cholo does not grasp it. Despite their instruction he will turn out a corrupt and avaricious cura. No reform is possible until there are more white men in the Church. Not even alarm from Protestant inroads can put spiritual life into it.” Most critics of the religious state of tropical America assume that the Church, which from the first has been in full control, is alone to blame. 324 SOUTH OF PANAMA They ignore three great lords of human life — Climate, Pace and Social History. In these coun- tries all three work against the prevalence of vir- tue and character. If they were as adverse in Argentina as they are in Ecuador, then the Church in Argentina would be like the Church in Ecuador ; whereas it is vastly superior. It is not by chance that the plane of the Church in these countries is so far below the plane of Catholic Ireland, Bel- gium or Bavaria. An American Protestant mis- sionary may be a power for good in Peru, but so might be an American Catholic missionary, if he were let alone. It is one thing to send in picked educated white men; it is another thing to fashion your clergy out of the material at hand. If Protestant congregations of simple-minded Kechuas under the vertical sun were entrusted to mestizo pastors with Spanish traditions in the back of their minds, the results would be far from satisfactory. Let the critics recall the African- ized Christianity of our South and the West In- dies, and be charitable. THE WEAKENING HOLD OF RELIGION The growth of unbelief among the men is the outstanding fact in the religious life of South America. A Guayaquil Consul with an Ecua- doran wife observed that religion has little hold on the rising generation and even the women are much more independent than when he came forty years ago. ‘ ‘ Then all the women wore the manteau to church ; now some wear hats, while others will RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 325 even go uncovered to mass. The padres don’t like it, but protest would do no good.” “In the educated class,” averred two Lima editors, “few of the men are devout; most are deists.” At a dinner attended by nine public men and scholars I learned that all were skeptics, although every one had been educated in the Jesuit colegio. Most of the University students come through the church colegios and yet, almost to a man, they are Liberal. The women, on the other hand, are very devoted to the Church. In Bolivia I was told that few men who wear coats go to confession. The women and the wearers of ponchos are for the Church, while the young men are against it. Of the cathedral, slowly rising in La Paz for sixty-odd years, they are wont to say: “It will never be used as a cathedral, we’ll make a municipal theater of it.” In Chile on the other hand the hold of the Church on the middle and upper classes is as strong as anywhere in South America, while the men of the upper class seem to be nearly as loyal as the women. THE PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES In an interior town I met an American mission- ary representing a Bible society who had come down knowing not a word of Spanish. In four- teen months he has had eight attacks of the fever and, being a middle-aged man, he cannot get on with the language. He preaches, but the people laugh at him in their sleeves and he makes no con- verts. The priests sent their followers around to 326 SOUTH OF PANAMA take his tracts, and then burn them. His three fine children, in their teens, are missing all chance of an education. Meanwhile he has the fanatic’s faith that the Lord will open a way. In Bolivia I came upon traces of two philan- thropic Protestant ladies who came down to con- vert the Indians, not only ignorant of Aymara, but knowing not a word of Spanish. I heard also of an evangelist distributing tracts in English among the Indians, who know no language but Aymara, and, besides, are quite unable to read! A Guayaquil missionary, a very rare and noble man, admitted that the results of Protestant work in Ecuador have been very slight and that the proselytes generally remain on a low plane of spiritual development. The only visible religious result of his labors appeared to be a better feeling about Protestants due to the self-devoted life of this man and his family. In Peru the stimulating of thought and discus- sion on religion, the heartening of the laity and the breaking of the absolute monopoly the Church now enjoys there, are the main fruitage of mis- sions. The making of Protestants goes on but slowly. In Chile, on the other hand, one can find fair- sized churches resulting from the labors of single missionaries. Still, the impression made upon the community and the stimulus given the domi- nant Church are, I think, much more important than the winning of adherents. At first the Protestants are known as coludos, or tailed people, RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 327 from their patron the Devil. They are also called “mano negra” or “black hand.” One Chilean lady took the woman missionary aside and asked her very earnestly if the missionaries were not in league with the Rothschilds to buy souls for Satan. Their windows will be stoned and their steps de- filed. In Ancud the firemen refused to throw water on to the threatened mission building, hut a citizen seized the hose and saved it. In Concep- cion the molestation of the Protestants at worship reached such a point that a policeman had to be stationed at the door of the chapel during the service. In Osorno the mission church has been burned down so often that it has been rebuilt of cement. The Lutheran pastor, after receiving assurance of special protection from the authori- ties, has ventured to hang a bell in his belfry. One missionary in the course of his first five years in Santiago occupied with his flock thirty different premises, owing to the protests of the property owner against the vandalism of which his property was made the object when used by Protestants. In time these gall stones of prejudice are dis- solved by the example of pure living and religious devotion. In results the best missions of the Protestants cannot compare with their best schools. Take, for example, the American Institute planted in La Paz five years ago by the Methodist Board. Its teach- ers are models of piety but no religious instruction is given. All the classes are conducted in English. The pupils come from the best families all over 328 SOUTH OF PANAMA the country. In twenty or thirty years the lads it is educating will be leaders, and Bolivia will feel a stronger sympathy with American ideas and ideals than any other South American country. Congress soon recognized the fine work the Insti- tute was doing by giving it a grant and later it actually took away its subsidy from the Jesuit colegio and gave it to the Institute. A branch, also subsidized, is now at Cochabamba, another is to be planted at Santa Cruz and three other cen- ters are asking for branches. Such work is in line with the true strategy of Protestant work in South America, which is to make virtue and true religion to abound in either of the great Christian con- fessions. The Andes from the crest of Santa Lucia Hill, Santiago, Chile The haunting charm of Chile CHAPTER XII POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT T HE one certainty in approaching South American politics is that they cannot pos- sibly be like those of the United States. In the first place, the Spaniards brought to the New World no such traditions of local self-government as our ancestors imported from England. Such elective local officials as district attorney, town- ship road supervisor, county sheriff and county superintendent of schools, enforcing or adminis- tering state laws are quite inconceivable to a people of Spanish extraction. Again, the distribution of the population into whites, mestizos and Indians makes well-nigh im- possible the emergence of a general will and of a government truly reflecting the general will. The Indians, who in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia constitute more than half the population, stand apart with their own language, customs and social status, devoid of the least ambition to control the Government, and, indeed, counting themselves lucky if only they may escape its blighting notice. They are, nevertheless, by no means a purely neg- ative political element, for even if they contribute nothing of judgment or will to government, they 331 332 SOUTH OF PANAMA may be made to fight either in the army or in the revolutionary forces. So that, counting as they do on the fighting side of life hut not on its deliberative side, they aid the uglier side of poli- tics to prevail over the nobler. Let it not be forgotten that the economic re- lations in the West Coast countries afford a poor foundation for a stable popular government. Until a little over a century ago the bulk of the population were serfs. Even to-day the land is held chiefly in large estates, the agricultural popu- lation is in a state of dependence and stagnation, and there is no such class of intelligent, independ- ent small farmers as have constituted the back- bone of democracy in this country. The natural check on the political ascendancy of the hacen- dados would be Business, or an alliance of Busi- ness and Labor. But so much of the foreign trade, shipping, banking, mining, insurance and railroads of the South American countries is in the hands of foreigners that by raising at need the anti-foreign cry the landed oligarchy can keep the common people jealous of Business and un- willing to join with it in curbing the domination of the territorial magnates. The perpetual obstacle to the improvement of political life in South America is the want of that element which in Europe is known as “the middle class.” In each of these republics there are men of purpose as high and ideas as sound as one will find anywhere. But, in the absence of an intel- ligent self-assertive commonalty to respond to POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 333 their appeals and to clothe them with power, this type comes into office only by accident, so that in general the man who rules is either the army officer with troops to place and keep him in authority, or else the politician who has gathered about himself a great number of followers ani- mated by the prospect of capturing political jobs and of being let in on such graft as the country may he made to yield. One who looks for good popular government in tropical South America would expect to gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles. Take, for example, Bolivia. In the small enlightened class there is rife a spirit of progress. There are a few men of character, ability and education, who are working together for definite public ends. At present they hold the reins of power in the Central Government and have carried through various excellent reforms. But this bit of leaven is too small in relation to the lump to be leavened. Men of broad outlook and high firm character are too few. They lack following and support. With us the moral and intellectual peaks rise from a plateau, in the Bolivian people they rise from the plain. The Indians are exploited, helpless and inert, and practically nothing is being done to elevate them. The cholos are bigoted and ego- istic, of very little worth either intellectual or moral and they show few signs of improvement. Such progress as has been achieved in recent years is the work of mestizos who by education or by residence abroad have acquired new ideas. 334 SOUTH OF PANAMA But the progress they can bring about will of necessity be slow. It is obviously impossible that a people so com- posed should make the solid advance of a homo- geneous people. It is not difficult to introduce railroads, telegraphs, tramways, port works, electric lighting, water-supply, parks, telephones and wireless installations, for these may be pro- vided from above by a stroke of the pen that signs a contract with a foreign firm. By a skilful parade of such improvements it is easy to create in remote observers an impression of rapid so- cial progress in South America. But the real evidences of social progress are such things as efficient popular education, public sanitation, an enlightened penal system, the control of alcohol- ism, the protection of labor and the providing of justice for the humble suitor — blessings which cannot be bought with cash from a foreign con- tractor or realized by the action of a few enlight- ened men at the top, but require the intelligent cooperation of many devoted public servants sup- ported by a vigilant public opinion. The President of Bolivia sends out to his pre- fects a statement of the laws in force designed to protect the Indians against abuses and oppres- sion and an urgent admonition to them to see that the rights of the natives are respected. The prefect passes the circular down the line to sub- prefect and corregidor. But the treatment of the Indian depends actually upon two men, corregidor and cura, and it is impossible either to imbue them The largesse of the Andes POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 337 with the ideals of the prefect and the bishop or to find enough good men to fill their places. There is no vigilant and independent press to expose them, no association of citizens to keep them under surveillance, and no well-directed pub- lic opinion to control their conduct. In a word, there is no “people,” as we understand the term. SUFFEAGE AND ELECTIONS Although in South American countries manhood suffrage prevails, limited only by the citizen’s ability to sign his name, the propertied class has found ways of maintaining itself in power. Most of the peons on the estates are simple-minded enough to vote as the master wishes, for they think that he knows which is the better candidate or cause. In Colombia the priest from the pulpit thunders out denunciations of the wicked Liberals, who have arrayed themselves against the cause of God, and tells his parishioners how they ought to vote. In Ecuador each president picks his suc- cessor and directs every provincial governor, jefe politico and chief of police — all of his appointment — to see that his man is elected. The meetings called on behalf of other candidates are broken up by soldiers or police, their placards torn down and their headquarters gutted. Usually these candidates take the hint and find some decent pre- text for withdrawing their names. On election day, therefore, there is no contest. The soldiers vote three or four times apiece and these together with the ardent supporters of the official candidate 338 SOUTH OF PANAMA enable him to make a respectable showing at the ballot box. In Peru it is said that 35 men dominate the 150 members of Congress and that these are Lima men, not always bom in Lima but still members of its intellectual circle. Often a man of pro- vincial origin continues to be returned to Congress by his native department years after he has given up residing in his department and has identified himself with the life of the capital. Of course such a man has to go back to his constituents from time to time and justify to them his political con- duct. Now, one wonders why some local man of demagogic arts does not undermine the deputy or senator who for years has been absent practic- ing at the Lima bar, and capture his seat from him. I put this query to a high official of the Republic and my doubt was promptly resolved. “The electors are not free,” he confessed with charming candor, “and besides if, up in the Si- erra, one of our valued intellectuals should be beaten by some local nonentity, he would contest the election and his fellow intellectuals in control of the Chambers would decide the contest in his favor.” In Chile the problem of maintaining class rule under popular suffrage is solved without the coarse methods in use in Ecuador. The reliance of the oligarchy is not on force at the ballot box but on fraud. To a great extent the inquilinos vote as their master directs, but more and more they expect him to buy their votes. A friend of POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 339 mine met in a train an old planter who lamented that while in the old days he voted his four hun- dred inquilinos as a matter of course, now he had to give them from $1 to $4 to get them to vote, and even then he couldn’t be sure the vote was delivered. Since there is no shame in offering or taking money for a vote, vote buying is open and general. In a hot contest one hears of as much as $250 being paid for a single vote. Who- ever can write his name may vote ; hence many an illiterate practises until he can write his name, so that he may sell his vote for the wages of a week’s work. The democratic or workingman’s party makes no small noise in the campaign but on election day many who have shouted and worked for it sell their votes to the Conservative side. The names of dead men are kept on the register for the convenience of repeaters of the dominant party. Of course extensive vote-buying makes an elec- tion costly. A deputy will have to spend from $3000 to $6000 on his election, although it is said that in Valdivia as much as $10,000 is needed. A senator, inasmuch as he has a larger district to irrigate, will spend from $10,000 to $16,000. Such an outlay is prohibitive for the local man who would really represent in Congress the wishes and interests of the province. But for the sake of retaining their national political control the rich Santiago land-owning oligarchy can afford to stake their candidate with such a corruption fund. Hence it is the Santiago group that determines 340 SOUTH OF PANAMA who shall stand for a given seat in the provinces, and finds the money needed to elect him. Natu- rally the Conservatives, who keep their con- trol only by the use of money, have not the least idea of sawing off the limb they perch on, so it is not surprising that after years of* publicity and agitation over electoral frauds Congress doggedly refuses to enact a corrupt practices act. In Argentina an eminent statesman assured me that free elections are a matter of only the last ten years, and even now in up-country provinces — as strikingly illustrated in December, 1913, in the province of San Juan — the old spirit of official interference lives on. Secret ballot, although for several years it has existed in law, has existed in fact for only four or five years. POLITICAL PABTIES A greater obstacle to popular government than even peon subserviency or tampering with elec- tions is the absence of genuine political parties. “If the Liberal party held a national convention and chose its candidate for president,” said an Ecuador senator, “it would not be necessary as now for President Plaza to pick his successor. If a single candidate duly nominated were in the field for the votes, Plaza would not need to use his soldiers to break up the meetings and the propaganda of the friends of other Liberal candi- dates than his own. Now he has to interfere lest the Liberals scatter their support and lose the elec- Courtesy ot Dr. W. F. Bailey On the Road to Chanchamayo POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 343 tion. The Conservatives, too, ought to organize and pick their candidate ; then the two rival candi- dates would represent opposed political principles and we should have a fruitful battle of ideas.” But there is not the least prospect of an organi- zation of parties in Ecuador. The materials for building up a party from the bottom do not exist. Caudillismo or bossism is the curse of this as of most other countries in Spanish America. A candidate is not a nominee, but simply a man with a following. His followers adhere to him not be- cause he is the doughtiest champion of their ideas, but because he may be a winner, and if he wins they share the spoil. “Don’t support me in order that I may do something for you but because I represent your ideas” was the exhortation of President Plaza to a follower. “If my op- ponent better represents your ideas, support him.” But such ideas are utterly strange to the Ecuador mind. In Peru likewise the political party, like State and Church, is built from above down, not from below up. A political aspirant puts out his “pro- gram” as a basis for getting together, and this constitutes the only platform his party ever knows. Why this must be came out very clearly at a dinner attended by an ex-president of Peru, the presidents of the Chambers, the Dean of the University and other public men. To my ques- tion, “What are the national questions agitating the public mind?” came the reply, “There are no national questions agitating Peru because a na- 344 SOUTH OF PANAMA tional consciousness of such questions does not exist. The environments and the races of Peru are so diverse that a collective opinion does not form on any question. What matters the people shall consider depends upon what is uppermost in the minds of the group of men who constitute the government of the moment. When they fall and a new prefect is sent out by another group of men, the discussion of the public takes a new direc- tion. In a word, public opinion does not deter- mine the course of government, hut government controls the course of public opinion.’ ’ Under such circumstances it is not surprising that, in all the departments, the candidates of each party are named by the Central Committee of that party and not by a local convention. This, of course, gives Lima a great control over the repre- sentation of the interior. In Chile the outstanding political feature is not caudillismo but the well-knit ruling class of large proprietors. They keep control of the Con- servative or clerical party by controlling its Ex- ecutive Committee, which picks the men who are to stand as the candidates of the party in the provinces. Once in every three or four years there is a convention of elected delegates which formulates the platform of this party, hut there are no conventions in the provinces and depart- ments to nominate a candidate for Congress. Such gatherings might put up local men who in Congress would perhaps block the spending of the Tower of San Francisco Church, Cali, Colombia POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 347 lion’s share of the national revenues upon the improvement and embellishment of Santiago. So the Executive Committee is likely to pick a safe Santiago man to stand for Tarapaca or Coquimbo and the Conservatives of that province have to accept him, for only he can command the Santiago money that will buy the needed votes. Thus of the four deputies from the province of Valdivia only one permanently resides there, while two of them never show their faces in the province save in the course of an electoral campaign. From the first the Radical party has been dem- ocratically organized and has always left it to a provincial convention to pick its candidate for senator and to a departmental convention to pick its candidate for deputy. Only lately the Liberals have organized themselves on the same plan ; but, since the Conservatives with their great corrup- tion fund keep a comfortable majority in Con- gress, the policy of the weaker parties has no effect upon the political system of the Republic. Argentina has known great party struggles, Federalists with Unitarians during the Rosas re- gime, 1827-1854; later, Nationalists with Autono- mists. Then followed, however, the era of parties formed about a leader or caudillo. The leader did not rely solely on the attractiveness of his pro- gram. He was a boss with a strong Tammany tendency to hold out to his loyal followers the prospect of places and favors once he came into power. At present the Socialists constitute the 348 SOUTH OF PANAMA only true party in Argentina, but tbe old chiefs are gone and the time seems ripe for the ap- pearance of other national parties. One possible basis for such cleavage appears to be the free-trade-protection issue. The old cattle- raising and agricultural interests are naturally for free trade, for with their product they fill the home market and overflow into the foreign market. But the wine industry about Mendoza and the sugar industry about Tucuman crave protection in order to be able to enjoy the home market, and they may unite with the nascent manufacturing industries that already show themselves in Buenos Aires, Rosario and a few other centers, to form the nucleus of a protectionist party. Tobacco, lumber and citrus fruits are mentioned as other possible claimants of protection, and on the basis of our own experience one can easily foresee how a home-industry movement may arise. Then there is the possibility of a cleavage on nationalism versus states’ rights. In old creole Argentina the provinces were isolated and self- centered. National unity came only with rail- roads and telegraphs and after bloody strife. In theory the nation is now a federal union of fourteen states, but the extension of the activi- ties of the Central Government threatens to throw the federal system out of balance. In the prov- inces (states) there are federal, as well as pro- vincial, highways, insane-asylums and hospitals. In the city of Cordoba there are three kinds of hospitals and parks, municipal, provincial and na- POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 349 tional. Not only are the national universities overshadowing the provincial, but the Central Government actually provides elementary schools to supplement those of a weak or backward prov- ince. Most of the irrigation reservoirs and canals are national, and the fighting of insect plagues the country over is directed from Buenos Aires. Most of the banks and all the insurance companies operate under a Federal charter. The code of law is national, so that there are none of the vexations we experience from the diversity of state laws respecting bankruptcy, partnership, sales, bills of lading, marriage and divorce. It is the provincial courts and police, however, that enforce this code. Buenos Aires pushes national undertakings for the same reason that Tammany pushes public works in New York City — because every fresh ex- penditure means a rake-off or at least a profit for the insiders. Then too, just as with us, the Fed- eral revenues, being derived to the extent of 80% from customs duties, come more freely than state revenues and are felt less. When the council formed to provide a water system for the national capital offered to install water works for interior towns, the service was gladly accepted, since thereby one more local burden was rolled on to the broad back of the nation. Filled with faith in the power, the resources and the efficiency of the National Government, the young men come out of the universities with the maxim, “Let Buenos Aires do it.” “I ’ll tell you 350 SOUTH OF PANAMA why I ’m for letting a single minister of education here direct the schools of the whole country,” said a public man. “Because it ’s easier to find one able educator than to find fourteen.” This passes for logic and no one in politics seems solicitous to conserve the political vitality of the provinces and municipalities, thereby keeping the citizens interested in and dealing with their im- mediate communal concerns. Only the rare soci- ologist points out that if the people miss the ex- perience of discussing and managing local matters they will be poorer citizens. Few foresee that in time the interior backward provinces will over- take the seaboard states in population, wealth, standards and men of capacity and will then re- sent Buenos Aires, managing for them things which they could manage better and more to their liking with their own resources and their own men. CENTRALIZATION Alexander Hamilton was defeated in his at- tempt to give the President of the United States the power to appoint the governors of the States. In Spanish American countries his ideal is gen- erally realized. The President of Colombia ap- points the governor of each department and the governor appoints the prefects and mayors. The President of Peru appoints the prefects, these the subprefects and the latter name the governors. Reports flow up this official staircase and orders flow down, so that the whole administration dances to Lima’s piping. In Chile there is a complete Indian balsa on Lake Titicaca POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 353 chain from President through intendant, governor and subdelegate to inspector. There are munici- pal councils for cities, but nowhere is there a place for the county as we know it, electing its own prosecutor, judge and sheriff. Peru has three universities out in the provinces — Arequipa, Trujillo and Cuzco. Lima wishes to center all professional education in the University of San Marcos, leaving to these venerable pro- vincial institutions nothing but two years of in- struction in letters and science. The opposition is bitter and Cuzco even talks of a revolt if its university is thus pared down. One can but sym- pathize with the provinces as against the blind ambitions of the capital. Aside from the expense of getting to remote Lima, living is twice as dear there and for the stranger youth the environment is of the w T orst. To say nothing of the debilitat- ing climate, the tone of the capital is lax, tempta- tion is rife, extravagance reigns and the highland student who is not ruined in his morals may have to drop out because the spending pace is too hot. In fact, despite its circle of intellectuals, Lima is the last place in Peru to gather young men for study. One may doubt, too, the wisdom of the Church in recently limiting the course of instruc- tion in its seven provincial seminaries and requir- ing all clerigos to complete their education in the Seminary of Lima. The Government of Chile relieves the cities of the burden of pavement, sewers, water-supply, fire protection, police and hospitals, so that the 354 SOUTH OF PANAMA municipality has nothing to do but care for streets and parks, light them and provide band music. Its taxation is limited to three mills in the dollar. No doubt, the department of public works has given some cities better water than otherwise they would have. On the other hand, German-managed towns like La Union and Osorno would have good drinking water if only they might provide it for themselves; but, thanks to their dependence on remote Santiago, their water is bad and typhus is rife. Still worse is the concentration of govern- ment institutions and improvements at Santiago. There the governing oligarchy have their resi- dences and interests, so the streets of the nitrate ports go unpaved in order that there may be more asphalt for the nine hundred automobiles of Santiago to roll over. In the capital one finds the arsenal, the penitentiary, the astronomical observatory, the “zoo,” the botanic gardens, the national museum, the museum of fine arts, the national institute, the national library, the mili- tary school, the school of arts and crafts, the normal school of preceptors, the pedagogical in- stitute, the school of agriculture, and the state university. Out in the provinces one finds some liceos and normal schools, but the schools of the capital are favored far above the others. When now to this lavish outlay of national in- come on the capital is added the resulting tend- ency of the landed proprietors to abandon their estates and spend their income in Santiago, so- An Aymara of Bolivia POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 357 ciety is thrown quite out of balance. As the country gentlemen leave for Santiago there is no one to take an interest in roads, rural schools and police, so that the country runs down. The better class of agricultural laborers move to town where their women will be safe and their children taught. The more people move away, the more deserted, dreary and rude the country becomes, with the result of stimulating still more the exodus from the fields. Meanwhile the capital finds itself with crowded slums, unemployed, processions of the starving and like signs of overgrowth. The net outcome of class rule is that an undue share first of public revenue, then of private income, lastly of population, has been concentrated in the capital. True statesmanship would have planted many of the state institutions in provincial towns, thereby helping them to hold their population, and would have spent more money on the roads, schools and police that make the country good to live in. THE SPOILS SYSTEM The public service in South America resembles that of some of our cities before civil service re- form. In one Colombian port of five thousand souls I found two hundred persons drawing pay from the public treasury. When the export duty on ivory nuts brought more revenue into the municipal treasury, the treasurer, who had one helper, enlarged his staff with two secretaries, one doorkeeper, one inspector and four policemen — all his political friends. In Peru there is no conscious 358 SOUTH OF PANAMA preparation of young men for the service of the state. The President appoints his friends and supporters to the prefectures and they look upon their duties and opportunities with the eye of the true politician. “Every Chilean,” say the Germans of southern Chile, “yearns to live at the expense of the State. If he is of good and old family he deems it the duty of the State to provide for him.” Men horn in Chile estimate that 75% of the educated people live off the State. The government railways lose $80,000 a month and one reason is, too many political deadheads and employees. In Tucuman in Argentina I found that young men rely on a government post to tide them over the difficulties of getting estab- lished in a profession. There are, in fact, great numbers of little government jobs of a clerical character, which are nearly sinecures and which are available for those with any “influence.” Thus the “Library of Congress” of Tucuman, a small affair of two hundred and fifty volumes, half of them government reports to be had for nothing, is looked after by a librarian who gets $140 a month for never coming near the “library.” POLITICAL VIRTUE AND CORRUPTION Superficially the politics of tropical South America bears the aspect of the endeavor of a public-spirited group of citizens to dislodge from office a band of greedy politicians. The “outs” prove their case against the “ins” and, seeing POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 359 that they profess the noblest sentiments, you ex- pect a general clean-up once they gain the upper hand. What generally happens, however, is that the supplanters make the Government an instru- ment of profit just as did the supplanted. Since usually the taxes go to swell the private fortunes of the “ins,” the object of the revolutionary leader and his friends is to gain access to the public treasury. In the main, politics is a struggle between sections of the governing class for the proceeds of taxation and not, as in more ad- vanced countries, between interests for the control of laws and policies. The recent President of Colombia, Dr. Restrepo, fairly startled his people by actually using the revenues of the Government for public works. The Governor of an Ecuador province assured me that the former President, although an honor- able man, seemed to regard the public monies, of whatever origin or for whatever purpose de- signed, as his to do with as he saw fit. Having the conquistador spirit he obliged town and pro- vincial treasuries to yield up their funds on orders from Quito. Under his administration, averred the Governor, the greatest corruption prevailed. For instance, when the school teachers presented their vouchers to the treasurer at the provincial capital, they were told there was no money to pay them. A confederate of the treasurer induced the disappointed public servants to part with their vouchers at a discount and these being presented 360 SOUTH OF PANAMA again were promptly paid. Thus an inside ring absorbed a considerable part of the monies des- tined for the public employees. The secret of the constant failure of the Peru- vian Government effectually to restrain the rub- ber gatherers on the Putumayo River from their enslavement of the forest Indians is attributed, not to any want of zeal at Lima, but to the fact that any representative the Government sent out to Iquitos as judge or prefect or commandant was corrupted, and after elaborately doing noth- ing returned with the report that all was well. With one exception every weapon Lima wielded against the rubber demons went soft as lead. The quality of Peruvian administration may be gauged from the state of the custom house at Cal- lao. Many articles sent from the United States never reach the consignees at all. Out of a single box of books one educator lost sixty. If the ship’s manifest shows you bringing in ten boxes of goods, and two of them chance to slip out of the sling and go to the bottom of the bay, you must pay duty on them or lose the remaining eight boxes. All sworn statements must be made on certain stamped sheets of paper, which are re- jected in case of an erasure or a half line too much. The slightest discrepancy between the contents of a box and your statement of what it should contain results in a fine. Callao’s exorbi- tance may be gauged from the fact that a church organ costs as much to get from the ship’s hold through the custom house as the factory price plus POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 361 the transportation from Virginia to Callao. Of Callao’s charges only about one-half went to the Government treasury. One importer of a $16 Morris chair had to pay $36 in duties. The Amer- icans at Cerro de Pasco have become so exasper- ated by the thefts and extortions in the custom house, that they admit that they beat the Peruvian Government every chance they get. They bribe the inspector to pass their baggage and one lady told with glee how by slipping an inspector $10 she escaped $500 in duties. Near Cerro de Pasco an American mine man- ager was assassinated in his bed at night by an Indian workman who had a grudge against him. His friends could not stir the authorities to act in the case until by bribes they had stimulated the various officials from the prefect down. The pre- fect had to have $250. Altogether it cost the mur- dered man’s friends $900 to get the assassin tried. He was found guilty. In Bolivia the end man of the Government, the corregidor, is said to use his power freely to ex- tract for his personal benefit a great deal of pro- duce and labor from the Indians living still in communities on their own land. In Valparaiso my attention was called to three instances in which influential Chileans in strait- ened circumstances had been able to sell their mansions at fancy prices to the Government for school buildings, although the houses were un- adapted to such use and the Government could have done much better to build for itself. In 362 SOUTH OF PANAMA Valdivia solid German merchants charged that justice is for sale. Only the rico or the caballero ever wins a lawsuit. The officials mark the indus- trious prospering German and make him their prey. In Chile it is declared on all hands that political corruption is increasing. In Congress the men of the old governing families are honest, but there is a fringe of “administrative people” — representa- tives of large mining and nitrate companies, of foreign banks, street railways and certain private railways — who are without the civic traditions of the oligarchy and are quite unscrupulous in using their money in making politics and their politics in making money. With the advent of new men into the charmed circle corruption has increased, though, to be sure, younger and cleaner men seem to be coming into the parties and fighting lobby- ing and jobbery. Most of the shady politicians are over forty years of age. The old political families of Argentina have a most honorable reputation. President Mitre, for example, after giving his best years to the public service, went out of office poor. To his paper La Nacion he imparted a reputation for honesty and reliability which makes it succeed even in other hands. Among the public men of Argentina to- day one meets with big men actuated by an unsel- fish devotion to the common weal. Nevertheless, a cool observer like Professor Quesada declares : ‘ ‘ Our Government appears to be the heritage of a well-defined minority — the politicians — who devote POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 363 themselves to politics just as other social classes devote themselves to agriculture, stock-raising, industry or commerce. ’ ’ One day I ran into an old acquaintance selling, let us say, varnish, for a very old and reputable English firm. Said he: “Our goods are famous but it is impossible to get an order for varnish without buying it. I have to give money to the man who has the say-so about ordering it and to the man who tests it and reports on it. Other- wise no order. Various government depart- ments have used my varnish and in every case a bribe of from $25 to $50 was necessary. At first I couldn’t conceive that a dignified, white-mus- tached, frock-coated bureau chief would take my money, but never yet has it been refused. Some- times when I am to submit a bid the official has said, ‘Add five per cent, for me.’ In the United States I never went further than a dinner or a theater party in order to get business, but here you give money as well as entertainment. My house is simply aghast at this way of doing busi- ness.” An American university professor retained for expert work by one of the government depart- ments was authorized to purchase some furniture for his office. At the shop he picked out a certain piece which was to cost $30. When the dealer learned where it was to be delivered he exclaimed, “Oh, this is on government account, is it? Then the price will be $60, of which you will get half.” The professor refused the “rake-off” and con- 364 SOUTH OF PANAMA sequently came to be regarded as an impossible man. From a friend very much on the inside came the story of a foreign promoter who found the indispensable government permit for his business strangely difficult to obtain. After he had wasted a year he was told to see a certain private in- dividual at a certain address. He called there, stated his trouble and was directed to call again at two o’clock the next afternoon. He came and was told that if he meant business he should give a check for a certain number of thousands of pounds sterling. Eventually he did so and the matter of the government permit was soon ad- justed. An old college friend, now an engineer in charge of a large construction in Buenos Aires, had an interesting experience with officials of the build- ing department of the municipality. After his walls were nearly up, he was informed that they encroached a meter or so upon the plaza. He understood what was wanted but, having cleverly retained in place the stone laid by the President himself at the initiation of the enterprise, he was able to defeat the attempted hold-up. At the time of my visit the splendid new Na- tional Capitol was in men’s minds and I had ex- plained to me with much detail the method by which, in spite of minute specifications and sealed bids, the work was jobbed and certain favored contractors were enabled to reap huge illegiti- mate profits. I The cross on the summit of El Misti The smoking volcano El Misti, Arequip: v, POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 367 For all its great area Argentina has no more people than our largest states. It is fairer there- fore to compare its government with that of New York or Pennsylvania than with onr Federal Gov- ernment. From such a comparison I am not sure that the great republic of the South would come off at all badly. There is no little political corrup- tion in Buenos Aires, but I doubt if the Capital by the Plate River has cause to blush before Albany or Harrisburg. CHAPTER XIII CLASS DOMINATION A LTHOUGH the South American govern- ments are republican, the needs of the com- mon people receive from them but scant con- sideration. Those who work with their hands are without an understanding of their interests and have therefore little political importance. The ruling class uses its control of Government to draw to itself the lion’s share of the advantages of the social union. In the tropics the abuse of political power is the shortest road to wealth. Like gold-mining, or rubber-gathering with en- slaved forest Indians, the capture of the proceeds of taxation is a splendid get-rich-quick enterprise appealing strongly to the conquistador imagina- tion. Government is a mode of acquisition suffi- ciently predatory, profitable and perilous to suit the taste of the born gentleman. The interest of the common people in politics springs from natural pugnacity or from love of watching a dangerous sport, rather than from any benefit they are likely to get from it. In Ecuador a kind of free masonry unites the members of the upper class, so that the law bears only on the masses. No respectable man with 368 CLASS DOMINATION 369 money or influence is ever annoyed on account of any homicide he may have committed. The per- petrator of a murder may be punished, but not the gentleman who hired it done. Army officers who have engineered a futile military outbreak are let off, but the poor soldier hoys they seduced are shot. The upper classes are so accustomed to favors that they were deeply shocked when the American company operating the Guayaquil-Quito Eailroad insisted that everybody, even prominent persons, should pay fare. Although the children of the people are grow- ing up in darkness, the Government spends $10,000 in encouraging a third-rate opera company from Spain to come up to Quito and brighten life for the social elite. The Ecuador system of taxing the produce of the land rather than the land itself is obviously for the benefit of the haciendados. There being no penalty for holding land unused, great tracts lie sterilized by speculation, while the natives grub a miserable living out of remote ravines up to- ward the snow fields. Concessions from colonial times pass down for generations, only a part be- ing tilled. A tax on land values which would oblige the monopolizers of the soil to use their land or sell it would burst up the estates, but of course it will never be imposed. Peru has fallen upon evil days and the princi- pal evidence of class bias upon the part of its Government is the multiplication of petty salaried posts to take care of the proud but impoverished 370 SOUTH OF PANAMA ' old families. To appreciate what its governing class has been capable of, one should recall how, during the third quarter of the last century, the huge state revenues from guano and nitrates went to enrich a few insiders, and left behind very little in the way of public institutions or public works. Chile affords one of the prettiest examples of government for a class to be found in the world to-day. Formerly the landed class provided a stable public-spirited government resembling that of England a century ago but well suited to the stage of development of the people. Gradually however the economic independence of this ele- ment has been impaired by the competitive ex- travagance radiating from the Capital, its pecu- niary interest has become more involved with the maintenance of its political control, while, in the meantime, slighted needs of the masses become ever more pressing. The public revenues are over seventy millions of dollars, which is enormous for a people of three and one half millions in a country not more than a quarter of which is fit for farming. The secret is that over two thirds of it comes from export duties on nitrates. There being no taxes to keep them concerned over what the Government does with its income) the people have suffered the rul- ing class to absorb much of it by the continual creation of government jobs awarded by favor. Most of the public lands of Chile have been alienated in large blocks to capitalists and specu- lators rather than to settlers. The original colo- One of Nature's bastions, l-'roui Machepucchu Hidden amid the fastnesses of the Andes CLASS DOMINATION 373 nial grants were intended to create great estates, and this aristocratic system of land distribution has never been fundamentally modified. The dominant class of landed proprietors deliberately perpetuates the regime of paper money, under which in forty years the peso has fallen to a fifth of its former value. The reason is simple. The haciendado sells his product in Europe for gold and the lower the rate of ex- change the more he gets for it in Chilean cur- rency. Farm wages do not rise to the same de- gree as the peso depreciates, so that he makes a profit off his inquilinos, who have not the dim- mest idea why every year it is harder to make both ends meet. Again, two thirds of the big estates are encumbered and the depreciating pesos are as good as ever in the payment of the interest and principal of these mortgages. There are many other things, queer but alto- gether natural under a simon-pure oligarchy of from 100 to 150 families. There are common schools for only a third of the children, and they do not connect with the high schools. The neglect of public hygiene may be measured from the fact that in one of the finest climates in the world the death rate equals that of Russia, being more than twice that of the United States and Western Europe and a half more than the mortality of Brazil and Argentina. The avarice of the great wine growers has prevented any state check to an alcoholism which cannot be matched elsewhere on the globe. Save in respect to rural laborers’ 374 SOUTH OF PANAMA dwellings, the oligarchy has taken not one step in social legislation. Regulation of mines and fac- tories, safety provisions, workmen’s compensa- tion, limitation of hours, protection of working women and children — all are regarded as anar- chistic. A few who have been abroad or know what has been done elsewhere urge such legisla- tion, but the governing class will have none of it. Since that class has its estates chiefly in the province of Santiago, the land of that province is under-assessed so as to keep taxes there unfairly low. I was assured that on one pretext or an- other poor girls are kept out of the state liceos for girls, so that it is the daughters of the rich who get the free government education. On the state railroads freight rates on agricultural pro- duce are kept unremuneratively low for the benefit of the haciendados. A national statistical bureau which prints many tables of minor im- portance somehow does not collate and print the facts of land distribution in its possession. One wonders if it is because the oligarchy objects to the publication of such significant data. The cabinet of the Chilean President must re- sign if it encounters an adverse vote in Congress. It does not have even the privilege the British cabinet has of dissolving Parliament and order- ing a new election. A quarter of a century ago a far-sighted statesman, President Balmaceda, tried, against the will of the Congressional oli- garchy, to obtain a revision of the Constitution which would give the President something like CLASS DOMINATION 375 the place lie has in the Government of the United States. After bloody strife he was defeated, hut now all thoughtful men admit that he was right. I talked with several public men who had been imprisoned by Balmaceda and not one slurred his memory or impugned his action. Since the opening of the Transandine five years ago many Catalunians and Italians have filtered into Chile from Argentina, so that a propaganda of the anarchistic South- European type is spread- ing among the laboring class of the towns. Anti- militarism, which before was quite unknown in Chile, is showing its head. Three years ago several hundred “reds” marched in procession, one of their banners bearing the words, “The Army is the School of Crime,” a sentiment so shocking to ordinary Chileans that it evoked a huge counter-demonstration. The Panama Canal will lessen still further the isolation of Chile and revolutionary working-class ideas may quickly spread among her exploited and neglected masses. Even a decade ago the temper of the people was so ugly that once, when the troops were ab- sent at maneuvers, a fearsome mob of three thou- sand persons, that seemed to spring from the gutter like the Paris revolutionaries of the Fau- bourg Saint Antoine, marched about Santiago destroying property. Nothing but the desperate exertions of the mounted police, who, by remain- ing in the saddle forty-eight hours, were able to keep the rioters within certain bounds, pre- vented the burning and sacking of the city. The 376 SOUTH OF PANAMA soldiers were brought back as soon as possible and four hundred persons were shot down. The gilded youth of the Capital, who as an emergency measure had been armed, amused themselves by potting scms-culottes. This rising affrighted the governing class and now it shows plain signs of nervousness. One evening in Santiago when the strike of the shoe- makers for a living wage was at its last gasp, I came upon two squads of mounted police — per- haps fifteen in all — drawn up watching a pitiful little demonstration with transparencies being prepared by a score or two of striking shoemakers* Not long ago Enrico Ferri, the Italian sociol- ogist, told the Santiaguans that the social ques- tion will find Chile worse prepared to meet it than any other country. He was right. Blind to the signs of the times, the masters have neg- lected popular education, so that once these be- nighted masses come to feel a sense of wrong they will turn savage and destructive. The most thoughtful men in Chile anticipate the outbreak within fifteen or twenty years of a bloody labor revolt, which even the soldiers will not be able to quell because it will be universal. A few far- sighted patriots who think there is still time to escape the day of wrath are agitating for popular education, public hygiene, labor legislation and the combating of alcoholism. But the ruling class is uncomprehending and uncompromising. It denies the inevitableness of the social ques- tion, insisting that but for the foreign-bom A part of Machepicehu CLASS DOMINATION 379 agitator discontent would never enter the heart of the well-fed and cheerful roto. I noticed that the mercantile community in Valparaiso seemed ferocious enough to skin alive the “agitators” whom they held responsible for the longshore- men’s strike. Few of the propertied recognize class strife as the necessary accompaniment of capitalism. Like Marshal De Broglie they expect proletarian discontent to vanish with “a whiff of grape shot” and, firm in the government saddle, they stake their future on carabineers. Out of the governing class have issued a few hundred University men, teachers, members of the liberal professions and small landed proprietors, who take the social point of view and are forming cur- rents of opinion which affect even the Conserva- tives in Congress. Will the oligarchy get its eyes open and yield ere it is too late? I am bound to say that the hardest heads in Santiago and Buenos Aires do not expect it. In Argentina one fact is certain, viz., that the great transportation companies do not domi- nate the State. The fact that the railroads are foreign-owned weakens them politically and they have never controlled Congress as at times Ameri- can railroads have controlled certain of our legislatures. Not only is the policy of state regu- lation fully accepted, but the Government even exacts two per cent, of the gross receipts of the Argentine railways and lays it out on national highways. One hears no little praise of a remarkable law 380 SOUTH OF PANAMA which penalizes tardy delivery of freight by a common carrier. Suppose that eight days is con- sidered an ample allowance of time for forward- ing a certain class of freight from Buenos Aires to Tucuman. In case the shipment is not deliv- ered until the ninth day, one-eighth must be de- ducted from the freight charge. If it arrives three days late the rebate will be three-eighths. If the company takes twice as long as it ought, it gets nothing for its trouble, and beyond that point it begins to indemnify the consignee for the delay. So eager are the English-owned railway com- panies to obtain concessions for new lines that they make little protest against the creation of such obligations to the public. The immunities enjoyed by landed property give a strong hint as to who ’s who in the politics of Argentina. Many of the great landowners are able to utilize only a part of their land, but this fact does not constrain them to sell their surplus holdings. They sit tight and let the waste land grow in value, for so long as it is idle it is tax free. Such exemption of course encourages speculation and makes it harder for the poor man to obtain a bit of land. In Rosario, a city of 200,000, the death rate of children under five years is 49 per thousand for the three-eighths of the inhabitants in the part of the city supplied with sewers. But in the other quarters the mortality of children ranges from 60 up to 160 per thousand. If you inquire why sewers are lacking, the municipality pleads that CLASS DOMINATION 381 it cannot find the money to extend the water and sewer systems as they are needed. It cannot find the money because the owners of real estate are not obliged to contribute one penny to the city treasury and because, unlike American cities, the municipality is not permitted to defray the cost of improvements by taking a part of what an improvement has contributed to the value of the adjacent properties. Even to the provincial treasury Rosario real estate contributes only a paltry three mills on the dollar of assessed valuation. In most of the provinces one-half of one per cent, seems to be about the limit of taxation upon land. But before inferring the political predominance of the landed interest in Argentina, let it be noted that such tenderness for land may spring from the compe- tition of province with province to attract immi- grants. During the trying period of getting a start land is all the settler has and nothing is more reassuring to him than light taxation of this form of property. Within the same province the long settled portions will be paying taxes on their true value, while the land tax scarcely touches the newer parts because purposely their valuation has been put very low. Had the landed interest been in the saddle the Central Government would never have been al- lowed to push as it has its policy of internal improvements. The development railways and irrigation works it has put through on borrowed money have glutted the market with available 382 SOUTH OF PANAMA land. So much virgin soil has been brought within reach that in the older parts of Argentina the value of land has been prevented from rising or has even fallen, so that the big holdings are being divided. Moreover, the newly opened dis- tricts have drawn away so many men that land- owners complain that they cannot find hands to work their ranches. Some deputies oppose further colonization by the Government unless the colonists are brought directly from Europe. Thus it is clear that in the policy of the Argen- tine Government the impulse toward economic development and national expansion has over- ridden the interests of the powerful landowning class. Nor has the welfare of labor been so con- sistently ignored in Argentina as in Chile. Not only is there a National Department of Labor on the model of our own, but there is a Federal law prohibiting Sunday labor and another protecting women and children in industry. To the claims of labor the National Government is far more re- sponsive than the provinces excepting, however, the province of Buenos Aires, which has the kinds of industry which create among laborers a senti- ment of solidarity, whereas the agricultural and stockraising industries of the interior are not favorable to the political cooperation of labor. Many intelligent men are laboring to introduce the social policies of the advanced nations and the principle of social legislation seems to encounter no such stubborn resistance as it met with in the United States. CLASS DOMINATION 383 In Argentina therefore we find something very different from the class state of Chile. The big ranchers and the speculating landholders have been strong, but they have not had their way all the time. The minds of legislators have re- sponded to an ideal of national greatness. Social ideas are not without influence. The plutocratic tendency has been marked, but the growing demo- cratic spirit bids fair to check and qualify it. There is no better appraisal of the Argentine state than that made recently by the eminent so- ciologist, Ernesto Quesada, on his return from Australia. Contrasting the two great Southern countries he says : “There as here immense territory and sparse population. There as here stock-raising and agriculture lead while manufacturing is secondary. In the one country as in the other is forming a new race, there homogeneous, here heterogeneous. The economic and social problems are the same in both countries, but their solution is diametrically opposed: here, the individualistic criterion gov- erns, there, the socialistic. “Both are countries of immigration: but there it is restricted by racial, linguistic and social standards, while here the gates are open to all. Both export meat and grain, but there the state fosters production and exportation, while here they are left to individual initiative. Both bor- row foreign capital, but there the loans are ex- pended in productive works and the State assumes the administration of undertakings of a monopo- 384 SOUTH OF PANAMA listic nature, such as transportation, insurance, refrigeration and like industries, representing a business based on the interest of the community; while here the State divests itself of the conduct of such enterprises even if perchance it has them in its hands, as once it had certain railways, and leaves to private enterprise such important public services as telephones, lighting and docks. There no danger of trustification of any industry because the State intervenes and assumes its man- agement ; here private capital is left free to com- bine, in form more or less covert, and constitute true monopolies. There the absence of great pri- vate companies conducting public industries which employ thousands of persons makes unknown the political influence which these inevitably exer- cise; here such companies wield a considerable influence, which they may be tempted to use, by means of the vote of their employees or by the natural seduction of favors direct or indirect, to the injury of democracy. There the settlers are aided with loans from the public treasury; here they are abandoned to the banks and the private money lenders. There likewise certain agricul- tural or stock-raising industries are helped by the credit of the state; here the state does not inter- vene in what is considered to be a matter of pri- vate concern. There despite such financial inter- ventions the Treasury reports regularly show a surplus ; here, in spite of withholding public money from such purposes, they generally close with a deficit. CLASS DOMINATION 385 “Finally, — to sum it all up — there the functions of the State are extended wherever the public wel- fare requires it, and no individual right is valid as against that of the collectivity ; here the radius of government action is limited and the State main- tains intact the private right of each, which the general interest may not set aside. ’ ’ INDEX INDEX Absentee landowners, Ecua- dor, 139, 143. Agriculture, patriarchal, 22 ; of Incas, 47 ; in high alti- tudes, 62; intensive, 132, 161; cooperation, 133; ab- sentee landowners, 139-143; Labor system, 143, 159, 282; wages, 158 ; Chile, 159, 160; Argentina, 161, 129, 387 ; Australia, 383; see also Land. Alcoholism, 218-221; among Keehans, 80; at fiestas, 218- 221, 323; among Mapuches, 220; among Chileans, 221; fostered by wine industry, 370. Alfaro, his revolution and fate, 31. Altruism, want of, 211-212. Altura, the, effects of, 49, 56. American Institute, 327, 328. Americans, the, manners, 209; business firms, 48, 363-367 ; educators, 272-275; com- pared with Latins, 278. Anarchists, Italian and Cata- lunian, 375. Anti-militarism, 374. Antioquians, the, 14. Araueania, 102-107, 220. Archaeology, enthusiasm for in Cuzco, 66. Arequipa, 54-60. Argentina, 114—136; people, 119; immigration, 122-134; collective mind, 127 ; land, 128-134; spirit, 134-138; labor, 144, 167 ; agriculture, 161; peons 162, 164; alco- holism, 218; illegitimacy, 226; education, 272, 277, 291; libraries, 293; intellec- tual life, 294; publishing firms, 297, 298; church, 309; marriage, 315; education, 317, 318; clergy, 318; elec- tions, 340; politics, 347-348- 362; bribery, 363, 364, 367; hygiene, 373; anarchy, 375; transportation, 379, 380, 381 ; finance, 381 ; economic development, 382 ; compared with Australia, 383-385. Aristocracy, 170, 172, 237, 262, 370; see also Class Domina- tion. Atahualpa, treasure gathered for, 23. Australia, compared with Ar- gentina, 383-385. Aymar&s, the, 84, 87-90; hardiness, 87; fondness for animals, 88; religion and superstition, 88, 147; com- pared with Kechuas, 247. Bailey, Dr. W. F., 50. Ballivian, Dr. Manuel Vin- cente, cited, 239, 294. Balmaceda, President, 282. Basque immigration to Argen- tina, 128. Beautification of cities, Buenos Aires, 118, 119; La Paz, 244. Benalcazar, 22, 42. Bingham, Professor Hiram, 64. Birth rate, the, 43, 193-197. Bolivia, 81—83 ; agriculture, 83; native races, 87-89, 334; caste, 172; morals, 223; il- legitimacy, 227 ; character, 232; aristocracy, 239; races, 390 INDEX 247 ; education, 260, 271, 276, 328; intellectual life, 294; religion, 299, 316, 317, 325; marriage, 315; philan- thropy, 326; politics, 331, 333, 334, 361. Boy Scout Movement, aristo- cratic attitude toward, 168. Breeding, scientific, 81. Bribery in politics, 339, 360- 364. Buenaventura, 3, 13, 17. Buildings, educational, 266, 267. Bull fighting, in Peru, 217. Business, in hands of foreign- ers, 332-381; bribery meth- ods with Government, 365- 369. Buenos Aires, beauty, 118; comeliness of children, 120; people, 121-123; treatment of women, 180; birth rate, 193; illegitimacy, 228; sec- ularism, 315. Cali, 8-13, 139, 181. Caste, 139-172; see also Class Domination. Cathedral, La Paz, 325. Cauca Valley, 3. Cauca River, 10. Caudillismo, 343, 344, 347. Cemeteries, municipalization of, 300. Central Railway of Peru, 44, 48. Centralization, education, 254, 265, 272, 282-285, 353; church funds, 311, 312; gov- ernment, 338, 447, 350-357 ; public institutions, 347, 354. Cerco de Pasco Mining Co., large influence, 48; enganche system, 153, 154. Chamberlain, J. Houston, cited, 40. Character, 239-252 ; courtesy, 11; mestizo, 30; indecision, 124; lack of organizing power, 237 ; lack of persist- ence, 243-247 ; race and en- vironment, 248-250; naivety in religion, 303. Charity, see Philanthropy. Child, the, education, 277, 278; see also the Family, Educa- tion, etc. Chile, 94-113; seasons, 94-97; transportation, 101; mis- sions, 102, 104; climate, 107; races, 108-110; character, 111-113; courtship, 181; women, 182; marriage, 198; larceny, 213; fatalism, 214; cruelty, 217; alcoholism, 220; sex obsession, 221,222; illegitimacy, 238; disdain of labor, 241; stubbornness, 247; mendacity, 252; educa- tion, 255, 259, 261, 266, 271, 272, 287; religion, 306, 311, 317, 326; politics, 338, 344; government, 353; spoils sys- tem, 358, 361, 362; class domination, 370, 374, 376; labor, 382. Chinese immigrants in Peru, 39, 91. Chivalry, in Ecuador, 171. Chico, the, 3, 4. Church, the Roman Catholic, attitude toward education of the lower classes, 253 ; competition with Protestant- ism, 256; position in Consti- tutions, 299; relation to the State, 306-312; control of marriage, 306, 312-315; property, 309-311; seminar- ies, 353. Classes, social, 139-172, 254- 262, 287, 331-337, 354. Class domination, 370-385. Clericalism, in Argentina, 134; in politics, 344; see also the Church, Religious Orders, etc. Climate, determinism, 41, 49, 324 ; causes over-sexuality, 223. Coca chewing, 52, 53. INDEX 391 Cochabamba, 328. Collective mind, 127. Colombians, 3-26 ; cruelty, 7 ; “tribes,” 14; labor, 139, 148, 149; women, 192; birth rate, 194; education, 200, 259, 267, 286; marriage, 229; character, 243; politics, 337; spoils system, 357. Colonies, English compared with Spanish, 148. Colonization, types of, 144—148. Common lands, in Peru, 80. Communal system, makes for indolence, 80. Concertaje, 151. Conservation of natural re- sources, neglect of, 107. Conservatism, of Calians, 10; of Indians, 81 ; in interior of Argentina, 134; fostered by masters, 1 60. Conservative Party, ignores popular education, 261 ; pro- tects Church property, 310; opposes compulsory educa- tion, 317; management of funds, 340; candidates, 343- 347 ; see also Polities. Cooperation, agricultural, 133; lack of spirit of, in unversi- ties, 232-237. Cornejo, Dr. M. H., 294. Cortez, 147. Costume, of Quito women, 27 ; of Keehua women, 79-80; see also Fashions. Courtesy, 11, 209, 210, 211. Courtship, customs of, 181. Cranial deformation in Ancient Peru, 70. Cruelty to animals, 7, 217. Custom-house frauds, 360-361. Cuzco, 64-68, 74, 227, 353. Democracy, in Argentina, 137, 262; socializing influence of, 212 . Diseases, Andean, 53-54; ve- nereal, 197, 222. Divorce, un equal laws of, 202. Domesticity, 169, 170; neg- lected in girls’ education, 268. Domination, of Spanish over Indians, 73, 89, 90; see also Class Domination. Earthquakes, 59, 98. Economic development, 384. Economic immigration, 128. Economic opportunity, parent of energy, 121, 161. Ecuador, 3-32; races, 147; labor, 148, 150; chivalry, 171; women, 178, 179; fam- ily, 189; illegitimacy, 227; marriage, 229, 312; charac- ter, 231, 243; education, 259, 260, 286; church, 300, 324; Indians, 331; politics, 337, 340, 343; bribery, 359; class domination, 368, 369. Education, 253-298 ; girls’, 134; Argentina, 134, 317, 318; improvement of, 192; Colombia, 200, 259, 267, 286; and the Church, 219, 253, 315-318; Bolivia, 238, 266, 271, 276; discipline, 239, 241; mistrusted by Indians, 256; elementary, 259-266 ; Ecua- dor, 259, 260, 286, 316; sta- tistics, 260, 261; aristocratic and democratic systems, 262, 268, 287 ; instability in, 243, 244 ; class inequality, 253 ; centralization, 254-265, 282- 285; Chile, 255, 259, 261, 266, 271, 272, 277, 287; buildings, 266-267 ; teachers, 267, 275; Peru, 270, 275, 276; German educators, 271; ad- vancement of teachers, 271; methods, 275, 278; American educators, 275-277; secon- dary, 286-288 ; universities, 288^-293 ; libraries, 293-294 ; payment of teachers, 359. Elections, conduct of, 231, 337- 340. English, Business Firms, 48. 392 INDEX English Influence, 97, 98, 141. English Colonies, 148. Environment, influence of, 248, 249, 291, 324. Esmeraldas, 18. Exploitation, of Indians, 89, 333; of laborers, 142, 144, 149-152, 158, 159, 160; en- ganche system, 153, 162; of a society by its members, 232 ; of rubber gatherers, 360; of teachers, 359. Family, the, 173-207; clan, 199; weakness of, 224, 227, 228, 229, 230; see also Mar- riage. Fashions, in La Paz, 84, 172; in Santiago, 172. Feudalism of Peru, 152. Feuds among Indians, 87. Foundling Asylum, Santiago, 305. Free Trade, 348. Frontier, influence of, 109. Fruit growing, in Ecuador, 19, 20; in Peru, 37; in Argen- tina, 114. Germans, 40, 107, 109, 111, 143, 271, 275. Giesecke, Dr. A. A., 67. Goths, supposed ancestors of Chileans, 108. Government, 331-364; pater- nalism, 30, 331; bribery, 361, 362; and business firms, 363- 367 ; officials, 369 ; class domination, 370; see also Politics and the State. Guano, 37. Guayaquil, 17-19. Heredity, influence of, 248. Hindus, excluded from Argen- tina, 91. Home life, lack of, among Chilean peons, 161; lack of discipline, 190; see also the Family. Homestead system, 128. Housing, of laborers, 122, 373, 374. Housekeeping, neglect of, 191— 192. Humboldt Current, 31, 33, 34. Hygiene, public, 197 ; lack of, 238; in school buildings, 266, 288, 375, 376. Idealism, lack of, in Argentina, 242. Illegitimacy, 224-230; in Cali, 9, 227; among mestizos, 188; legal inquiry into, 202; in big towns, 227 ; due to high fees for church marriage, 229; double cradle in Santi- ago, 305. Immigration, white, 30, 41; Japanese, in Peru, 90; Chi- nese, 90; problem of Asiatic, 91, 92; European to Argen- tina, 120, 122-127. Incas, the, agriculture, 47 ; architecture, 67 ; civiliza- tion, 68 ; Museum of relics, 69; houses and gardens, 72; terraces, 77. Indians, the, see Native Races. Indolence, 238-247. Infant mortality, among the Indians, 177 ; German and Chilean, 197-198; statistics of, 197. Inquilinos, of Chile, 142, 158- 163; see also Peonage. Intellectual life, 294-298. Interrelationship; of Calians, 10 . Irrigation, coastal, 34, 37 ; at Arequipa, 54, 57 ; under the Incas, 47, 77, 78; in Chile, 99. Japanese immigrants, in Are- quipa, 39; in Peru, 90; fu- ture, 90-93. Joint Stock Companies, fail- ure of, 232. Journalism, 200, 298, 337. INDEX 393 Justice, for sale, 334, 362; and class domination, 369. Kechuas, 73-81, 147, 297. Labor, conditions, 11, 12, 27, 144, 147, 163, 164, 167, 168; contempt for, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170, 239, 193, 242; and education, 254; revolt of, 375, 376; legislation, 376; women and children, 382; see also Peonage. Land, common, 80 ; home- steads, 128-129; latif undid, 129-13.1; statistics, 130; Argentine law, 130; absentee landowners, 139-143; Cor- doba, 131; Salta, 131; eco- nomic opportunity, 161; transportation, 380 ; taxa- tion, 369, 381; public, 370; holdings, 373; Argentina, 383. La Paz, 83, 84, 244, 304. La Plata, University of, 292, 294. Las Casas, introduces negro slaves, 4. Latacunga legend of Inca treasure, 22, 23. Latifundia system, 129, 131, 148-153. Latin mind, the, 278-282. Latins, supposed decadence of the, 121. Law, the teaching of, 292, 293. Letelier, Dr. Valentin, 294. Liberal Party, the, and the Church, 300; and church property, 310; agnosticism-, 325; organization, 340. Libraries, public, 137, 293, 294, 358 ; private, 294. Liga pro Indig ena, 154, 157, 241. Lima, 41-44; 239, 350, 353. Machepicchu, 64, 67. Malaria, ravages of, 5. Manners, 11, 208-210. Manta, Ecuador, 17. Mapuches, The, 147, 213, 214, 247. Marriage, Argentina, 315; Bo- livia, 315; Colombia, 229; Chile, 198; Ecuador, 229; Peru, 312; trial system among Indians, 174; of con- venience, in Chile, 182; mixed marriages, 198; patri- archal system of, 199; sole vocation of women, 201; neglect of, 228; high church fees, 229 ; weakness as in- stitution, 230; evasion of, 244; and the Church, 312- 315; civil, 312; regulations, 315; statistics of, 315. Masculinism, 134, 192, 201- 204. Meiggs, Henry, 44. Menial service, demand for, 169-170. Mestizos, see Race crossing. Middle, class, 332. Militarism, of Chileans, 108, 110; and politics, 332; maintains class rule, 338; class domination, 369, 376. Mining, Enganche system, 153. Minority rule, in intellectual matters, 297, 298; in poli- tics, 362-363. Missions, Protestant, 103, 325- 328. Monroe Doctrine, possible de- velopment of, 93. Moorish influence, 9, 42. Moral instruction, 317. Morals, 208-230; cruelty to animals, 7 ; choler, 190 ; fam- ily affection, 210-211; altru- ism, 211; egoism, 212; hon- esty, 213; thievishness, 213; recklessness, 214; sex, 221- 224 ; distrust, 232 ; pride, 233, 243; self indulgence, 238-241; mendacity, 282. Moreno, Garcia, 22, 24. 394 INDEX Motion picture show, influence of, 13, 179. National consciousness, lack of, 344. National expansion, Argen- tina, 382. National traits, changeability of, 249, 250. Nationalism, 348, 349. Nationalization of church prop- erty, 311. Native Races, the, 27-29; 64- 93; religious music, 73; hu- mility, 73; exploitation, 89, 333 (see also Peonage) fu- ture, 92, 93; education, 256, 259; Church, 321; alcohol- ism, 80, 218-221, 323; si- mony, 322, 323 ; protection, 334 ; see also Aymaras, Kechuas, Mapuches. Nelson, Dr. Ernesto, cited, 277. Negroes, 3, 4, 28, 162, 213. Nitrate fields, 37, 161, 222. Nitrates, 37, 372. Okuma, Count, cited, 90. Old rfigime, 208, 209. Organization, lack of, 231- 237, 288. Panama hats, 17, 19. Papal Nuncio, visit of, to Chile, 310. Parasitic manner of life, 163- 168. Parental authority, weakness of, 189-190; vested in father, 202 . Patriarchal conditions, among Kechuas, 80; in Argentina, 144; among creoles, 199. Patriotism, 87, 242. Peonage, 132, 144, 148-153, 161, 162, 254-255; see also Labor. Peru, 33, 82; climate, 33-37; labor, 140, 141, 148, 152, 153, 154, 168, 169; feudalism, 152; aristocracy, 170; women, 183, 184, 268; family, 189; birth rate, 196; sex, 184, 223; courtesy, 209, 211; il- legitimacy, 227 ; universities, 233, 234; intellectual life, 239; character, 243; race, 260; education, 271, 275, 276; centralization, 282, 287, 291; religion, 300, 311, 321; marriage, 312; politics, 338, 343; universities, 353; rub- ber gatherers, 360; officials, 369. Philanthropy, 211, 305, 311. Pizarro, 23, 73, 147. Plague, the bubonic, 18. Plaza, President, 340. Plutocracy in Argentina, 137. Police, and elections, 337 ; and working class, 376. Political morals, 358-367. Politics, 331-367 ; passion for, in Cali, 10; and education, 286; and population, 331; Bolivia, 331, 333, 334, 361; Colombia, 337 ; Ecuador, 337-340, 343; Peru, 338, 343; Chile, 338-344; Argen- tina, 347, 348, 362; pugnacity in, 368. Pongos, 157, 158; see also Peonage. Potatoes, desiccation of, 82. Progress, spirit of, 233. Property, sense of, 213; rights of, ignored, 240. Protectionism, 348. Protestantism, 256, 303, 323- 328. Public opinion, over-sensitive- ness to, 242; lack of, 337; undeveloped, 343-344. Public utilities, 334, 348, 349, 353. Publishing firms, lack of, 297. Quesada, Ernesto, 294, 364, 383, 385 Quito, 18-27. Race Crossing, in Ecuador, 29, INDEX 395 30; in Peru, 39-41; in Chile, 108-112; results of, 213- 216, 220, 221, 248-249, 323. Race determinism, 324. Railways, see Transportation. Religion, medievalism of, 300- 305; in education, 315-318; debasement of, 322-324 ; weakening hold of, 324-325. Religious orders, the, 286, 305, 310, 311, 321. Revenue, public, 357, 370. Roads, see Transportation. Roca, President, 127, 128, 129. Rosa of Lima, 43. Rosario, 127, 266, 294, 380, 381 Rosas, 161, 347. Rubber gatherers, exploitation of, 360. Rural problem, the, 139-143, 357. San Marcos, University of, 217, 233, 291, 353. Santiago, 98-99, 172, 357, 374, 375. Sarmiento, President, 262, 271, 193. Salta, 131. Sanitation, lack of, in Quito, 27; in Lima, 44; prejudice against, 57; English, in Val- paraiso, 98. Science, teaching of, 276, 292. Self-indulgence, 238, 247. Sex hygiene, and the Church, 316. Sex ratio, in early Chile, 109, 110 . Sex relations, 42, 174, 177, 183- 187 221-224. Simony, 304, 305, 321-323. Size of families, 193, 194, 197. Slavery, 4, 144. Smallpox, among Indians, 50. Social capillarity, 161. Social History, determinism of, 324. Social intercourse, lack of, 101- 178-183, 212. Social leadership, lacking in rural Chile, 143. Social problem, the, in Chile, 373-379. Socialist party, the, 347-348. Soroche, 47, 48. Spoils system, the, 357-358. Sports, athletic, 134, 178, 224. Standard of living, 159, 160. State, the, and the Church, 229, 306-312; and marriage, 312- 315; and labor, 376, 382; in Argentina and in Australia, 383-385. Student life, see Universities. Subsidy system, the, 288. Suffrage, 337-340. Sun worship, cause of, 82. Symmetry, Latin love of, 278. Syrian immigrants, 14, 60. “Swallow migration,” Argen- tina, 124. Taxation, 369, 374, 380-381. Tello, Dr. Julio, 70, 71. Tenancy, in Argentina, 133, 161 ; see also Land. Titicaca, Lake, 63, 64, 300. Town life, passion for, increas- ing, 88, 110; fondness of Spaniards for, 139, 141-144; and Universities, 291, 353. Transportation, 3, 19, 22, 38, 44, 101, 114, 117, 118, 379-383. Typhus, among Indian miners, 50. Universities, 233-234; in cities, 281 ; aristocratic, 287, 288- 293; lack of organization in, 288; La Plata, 292; San Marcos, 288; agnosticism of students, 325; national over- shadow provincial, 349; and town life, 353. Uta, 54. Valparaiso, 97-98, 182, 197. Valverde, 23. Verrugas, 53. Volcanic eruptions, 21. 396 INDEX Wages, 158, 159; see Labor. War of the Pacific, the, 43. Wealth, rapid growth of, in Ar- gentina, 134. White slave traffic, 123. Wine industry, the, 375. Women, and the Family, 173— 207 ; education of, in Argen- tina, 134; despise menial work, 169, 173; position of, among Indians, 174-178; guarded girls, 178; unpro- tected tinder masculine dom- inance, 179; domestic posi- tion higher than German in Chile, 182; cleverer than men of tropical S. A., 184-188; neglect housekeeping, 191 ; church-going of, 191; segre- gation of, 192-193; self-sac- rifice of, 194; outside the home, 200, 201 ; marriage sole vocation of, 201 ; before the law, 201-202; sex obses- sion among, 222, 223; aris- tocratic education of, 268; more religious than men, 325; beauty of Peruvian, 171. Yellow fever, 18. Y. M. C. A., Buenos Aires, 170. Zambo, the, 41. Zeballos, Dr. Estanislao, 294.