Part 3 (2/2)
Liberals in and outside of Ecuador tried feebly to shake off this masterful theocracy, for the friends.h.i.+p which Garcia Moreno displayed toward the diplomatic representatives of the Catholic powers of Europe, notably those of Spain and France, excited the neighboring republics.
Colombia, indeed, sent an army to liberate the ”brother democrats of Ecuador from the rule of Professor Garcia Moreno,” but the ma.s.s of the people stood loyally by their President. For this astounding obedience to an administration apparently so unrelated to modern ideas, the ecclesiastical domination was not solely or even chiefly responsible.
In more ways than one Garcia Moreno, the professor President, was a statesman of vision and deed. He put down brigandage and lawlessness; reformed the finances; erected hospitals; promoted education; and encouraged the study of natural science. Even his salary he gave over to public improvements. His successors in the presidential office found it impossible to govern the country without Garcia Moreno. Elected for a third term to carry on his curious policy of conservatism and reaction blended with modern advancement, he fell by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin in 1875. But the system which he had done so much to establish in Ecuador survived him for many years.
Although Brazil did not escape the evils of insurrection which r.e.t.a.r.ded the growth of nearly all of its neighbors, none of its numerous commotions shook the stability of the nation to a perilous degree. By 1850 all danger of revolution had vanished. The country began to enter upon a career of peace and progress under a regime which combined broadly the federal organization of the United States with the form of a const.i.tutional monarchy. Brazil enjoyed one of the few enlightened despotisms in South America. Adopting at the outset the parliamentary system, the Emperor Pedro II chose his ministers from among the liberals or conservatives, as one party or the other might possess a majority in the lower house of the Congress. Though the legislative power of the nation was enjoyed almost entirely by the planters and their a.s.sociates who formed the dominant social cla.s.s, individual liberty was fully guaranteed, and even freedom of conscience and of the press was allowed.
Negro slavery, though tolerated, was not expressly recognized.
Thanks to the political discretion and unusual personal qualities of ”Dom Pedro,” his popularity became more and more marked as the years went on. A patron of science and literature, a scholar rather than a ruler, a placid and somewhat eccentric philosopher, careless of the trappings of state, he devoted himself without stint to the public welfare. Shrewdly divining that the monarchical system might not survive much longer, he kept his realm pacified by a policy of conciliation.
Pedro II even went so far as to call himself the best republican in the Empire. He might have said, with justice perhaps, that he was the best republican in the whole of Hispanic America. What he really accomplished was the successful exercise of a paternal autocracy of kindness and liberality over his subjects.
If more or less permanent dictators and occasional liberators were the order of the day in most of the Spanish American republics, intermittent dictators and liberators dashed across the stage in Mexico from 1829 well beyond the middle of the century. The other countries could show numerous instances in which the occupant of the chief magistracy held office to the close of his const.i.tutional term; but Mexico could not show a single one! What Mexico furnished, instead, was a kaleidoscopic spectacle of successive presidents or dictators, an unstable array of self-styled ”generals” without a presidential succession. There were no fewer than fifty such transient rulers in thirty-two years, with anywhere from one to six a year, with even the same inc.u.mbent twice in one year, or, in the case of the repet.i.tious Santa Anna, nine times in twenty years--in spite of the fact that the const.i.tutional term of office was four years. This was a record that made the most turbulent South American states seem, by comparison, lands of methodical regularity in the choice of their national executive. And as if this instability in the chief magistracy were not enough, the form of government in Mexico s.h.i.+fted violently from federal to centralized, and back again to federal. Mad struggles raged between partisan chieftains and their bands of Escoceses and Yorkinos, crying out upon the ”President” in power because of his undue influence upon the choice of a successor, backing their respective candidates if they lost, and waiting for a chance to oust them if they won.
This tumultuous epoch had scarcely begun when Spain in 1829 made a final attempt to recover her lost dominion in Mexico. Local quarrels were straightway dropped for two months until the invaders had surrendered.
Thereupon the great landholders, who disliked the prevailing Yorkino regime for its democratic policies and for favoring the abolition of slavery, rallied to the aid of a ”general” who issued a manifesto demanding an observance of the const.i.tution and the laws! After Santa Anna, who was playing the role of a Mexican Warwick, had disposed of this aspirant, he switched blithely over to the Escoceses, reduced the federal system almost to a nullity, and in 1836 marched away to conquer the revolting Texans. But, instead, they conquered him and gained their independence, so that his reward was exile.
Now the Escoceses were free to promulgate a new const.i.tution, to abolish the federal arrangement altogether, and to replace it by a strongly centralized government under which the individual States became mere administrative districts. Hardly had this radical change been effected when in 1838 war broke out with France on account of the injuries which its nationals, among whom were certain pastry cooks, had suffered during the interminable commotions. Mexico was forced to pay a heavy indemnity; and Santa Anna, who had returned to fight the invader, was unfortunate enough to lose a leg in the struggle. This physical deprivation, however, did not interfere with that doughty hero's zest for tilting with other unquiet spirits who yearned to a.s.sure national regeneration by continuing to elevate and depose ”presidents.”
Another swing of the political pendulum had restored the federal system when again everything was overturned by the disastrous war with the United States. Once more Santa Anna returned, this time, however, to joust in vain with the ”Yankee despoilers” who were destined to dismember Mexico and to annex two-thirds of its territory. Again Santa Anna was banished--to dream of a more favorable opportunity when he might become the savior of a country which had fallen into bankruptcy and impotence.
His opportunity came in 1853, when conservatives and clericals indulged the fatuous hope that he would both sustain their privileges and lift Mexico out of its sore distress. Either their memories were short or else distance had cast a halo about his figure. At all events, he returned from exile and a.s.sumed, for the ninth and last time, a presidency which he intended to be something more than a mere dictators.h.i.+p. Scorning the formality of a Congress, he had himself ent.i.tled ”Most Serene Highness,” as indicative of his ambition to become a monarch in name as well as in fact.
Royal or imperial designs had long since brought one military upstart to grief. They were now to cut Santa Anna's residence in Mexico similarly short. Eruptions of discontent broke out all over the country. Unable to make them subside, Santa Anna fell back upon an expedient which recalls practices elsewhere in Spanish America. He opened registries in which all citizens might record ”freely” their approval or disapproval of his continuance in power. Though he obtained the huge majority of affirmative votes to be expected in such cases, he found that these pen-and-ink signatures were no more serviceable than his soldiers.
Accordingly the dictator of many a day, fallen from his former estate of highness, decided to abandon his serenity also, and in 1854 fled the country--for its good and his own.
CHAPTER VI. PERIL FROM ABROAD
Apart from the spoliation of Mexico by the United States, the independence of the Hispanic nations had not been menaced for more than thirty years. Now comes a period in which the plight of their big northern neighbor, rent in twain by civil war and powerless to enforce the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, caused two of the countries to become subject a while to European control. One of these was the Dominican Republic.
In 1844 the Spanish-speaking population of the eastern part of the island of Santo Domingo, writhing under the despotic yoke of Haiti, had seized a favorable occasion to regain their freedom. But the magic word ”independence” could not give stability to the new state any more than it had done in the case of its western foes. The Haitians had lapsed long since into a condition resembling that of their African forefathers. They reveled in the barbarities of Voodoo, a sort of snake wors.h.i.+p, and they groveled before ”presidents” and ”emperors” who rose and fell on the tide of decaying civilization. The Dominicans unhappily were not much more progressive. Revolutions alternated with invasions and counter-invasions and effectually prevented enduring progress.
On several occasions the Dominicans had sought reannexation to Spain or had craved the protection of France as a defense against continual menace from their negro enemies and as a relief from domestic turmoil.
But every move in this direction failed because of a natural reluctance on the part of Spain and France, which was heightened by a refusal of the United States to permit what it regarded as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. In 1861, however, the outbreak of civil war in the United States appeared to present a favorable opportunity to obtain protection from abroad. If the Dominican Republic could not remain independent anyway, reunion with the old mother country seemed altogether preferable to reconquest by Haiti. The President, therefore, entered into negotiations with the Spanish Governor and Captain General of Cuba, and then issued a proclamation signed by himself and four of his ministers announcing that by the ”free and spontaneous will” of its citizens, who had conferred upon him the power to do so, the nation recognized Queen Isabella II as its lawful sovereign! Practically no protest was made by the Dominicans against this loss of their independence.
Difficulties which should have been foreseen by Spain were quick to reveal themselves. It fell to the exPresident, now a colonial governor and captain general, to appoint a host of officials and, not unnaturally, he named his own henchmen. By so doing he not only aroused the animosity of the disappointed but stimulated that of the otherwise disaffected as well, until both the aggrieved factions began to plot rebellion. Spain, too, sent over a crowd of officials who could not adjust themselves to local conditions. The failure of the mother country to allow the Dominicans representation in the Spanish Cortes and its readiness to levy taxes stirred up resentment that soon ended in revolution. Unable to check this new trouble, and awed by the threatening att.i.tude of the United States, Spain decided to withdraw in 1865. The Dominicans thus were left with their independence and a chance--which they promptly seized--to renew their commotions. So serious did these disturbances become that in 1869 the President of the reconst.i.tuted republic sought annexation to the United States but without success. American efforts, on the other hand, were equally futile to restore peace and order in the troubled country until many years later.
The intervention of Spain in Santo Domingo and its subsequent withdrawal could not fail to have disastrous consequences in its colony of Cuba, the ”Pearl of the Antilles” as it was proudly called. Here abundant crops of sugar and tobacco had brought wealth and luxury, but not many immigrants because of the havoc made by epidemics of yellow fever.
Nearly a third of the insular population was still composed of negro slaves, who could hardly relish the thought that, while the mother country had tolerated the suppression of the hateful inst.i.tution in Santo Domingo, she still maintained it in Cuba. A bureaucracy, also, p.r.o.ne to corruption owing to the temptations of loose accounting at the custom house, governed in routinary, if not in arbitrary, fas.h.i.+on.
Under these circ.u.mstances dislike for the suspicious and repressive administration of Spain grew apace, and secret societies renewed their agitation for its overthrow. The symptoms of unrest were aggravated by the forced retirement of Spain from Santo Domingo. If the Dominicans had succeeded so well, it ought not to be difficult for a prolonged rebellion to wear Spain out and compel it to abandon Cuba also. At this critical moment news was brought of a Spanish revolution across the seas.
Just as the plight of Spain in 1808, and again in 1820, had afforded a favorable opportunity for its colonies on the continents of America to win their independence, so now in 1868 the tidings that Queen Isabella had been dethroned by a liberal uprising aroused the Cubans to action under their devoted leader, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. The insurrection had not gained much headway, however, when the provisional government of the mother country instructed a new Governor and Captain General--whose name, Dulce (Sweet), had an auspicious sound--to open negotiations with the insurgents and to hold out the hope of reforms. But the royalists, now as formerly, would listen to no compromise. Organizing themselves into bodies of volunteers, they drove Dulce out. He was succeeded by one Caballero de Rodas (Knight of Rhodes) who lived up to his name by trying to ride roughshod over the rebellious Cubans. Thus began the Ten Years'
War--a war of skirmishes and brief encounters, rarely involving a decisive action, which drenched the soil of Cuba with blood and laid waste its fields in a fury of destruction.
Among the radicals and liberals who tried to retain a fleeting control over Mexico after the final departure of Santa Anna was the first genuine statesman it had ever known in its history as a republic--Benito Pablo Juarez, an Indian. At twelve years of age he could not read or write or even speak Spanish. His employer, however, noted his intelligence and had him educated. Becoming a lawyer, Juarez entered the political arena and rose to prominence by dint of natural talent for leaders.h.i.+p, an indomitable perseverance, and a st.u.r.dy patriotism. A radical by conviction, he felt that the salvation of Mexico could never be attained until clericalism and militarism had been banished from its soil forever.
Under his influence a provisional government had already begun a policy of lessening the privileges of the Church, when the conservative elements, with a cry that religion was being attacked, rose up in arms again. This movement repressed, a Congress proceeded in 1857 to issue a liberal const.i.tution which was destined to last for sixty years. It established the federal system in a definite fas.h.i.+on, abolished special privileges, both ecclesiastical and military, and organized the country on sound bases worthy of a modern nation. Mexico seemed about to enter upon a rational development. But the newly elected President, yielding to the importunities of the clergy, abolished the const.i.tution, dissolved the legislature, and set up a dictators.h.i.+p, in spite of the energetic protests of Juarez, who had been chosen Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and who, in accordance with the terms of the temporarily discarded instrument, was authorized to a.s.sume the presidency should that office fall vacant. The rule of the usurper was short-lived, however. Various improvised ”generals” of conservative stripe put themselves at the head of a movement to ”save country, religion, and the rights of the army,” drove the would-be dictator out, and restored the old regime.
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