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SOUTH AMERICAN CURRENTS. II

BY COLIN ROSS

From Die Neue Rundschau, July
(BERLIN LIBERAL LITERARY MONTHLY)

If one is to avoid an utterly false picture of South American social conditions, he must study first, and mainly, the situation and sentiment of country tenants and laborers, of land-owners, and the methods of running large

estates.

Throughout Latin America large estates are the rule. They generally date from the colonial epoch, and not infrequently equal in area a European duchy or kingdom. The Spanish and the Portuguese monarchs were wont to grant vast tracts in their overseas domains to distinguished soldiers or officials. Many of these grants were in such remote parts of the country that their development did not really begin until they came into the hands of their present possessors.

Such immense land grants have been issued even under the republican régime. Nepotism and party favoritism have had much influence in this business, even in recent years, when these great land deals have been handled mainly by foreign capitalists and corporations. Vast areas were alienated by the state for a trifling sum under the form of concessions. Naturally bribery played its part in these transactions. In many of these countries, especially Argentina, land was given away and squandered until the priceless government domain has been practically exhausted, and the title to most of the soil of the Republic has fallen into the hands of a relatively small number of territorial magnates.

Such vast areas can be profitably managed by a single proprietor only in thinly populated districts, where extensive methods of cultivation prevail, and labor occupies a more or less servile position.

In Argentina and Uruguay an exceptional situation has developed. The natives of these countries were familiar only with grazing industries. Cowboys, who are invariably horsemen, are a very independent class of men; and the gaucho of the gaucho of the pampa has therefore never submitted in an equal degree to these servile conditions.

Of late, however, Argentina has ceased to be exclusively a grazing country, and has brought large areas under cultivation. Meanwhile, rural labor conditions have grown worse. There is no public land left in this immense country, although it has but eight million inhabitants. The poor man has little opportunity to acquire a farm of his own. Great proprietors, although they cannot employ their vast estates profitably, are unwilling to sell. Eager to secure the higher profits to be obtained from farming as compared with grazing, they lease their land for short terms to

tenants.

This tenancy system invariably ends in the exploitation of tenants; very few of whom are able to become independent land-owners. While the gaucho, who asked nothing more than a free life in the saddle, was content to live and die a cowboy, the modern farm laborer or tenant revolts at receiving no more

than a meagre existence in return for a lifetime of toil and privation. He must have a chance to become independent. His discontent has grown stronger with the spread of education, with the immigration of people from other countries, and with the growing discrepancy between the huge profits of the landed proprietor and his own miserable in

come.

Consequently labor conditions in the country have rapidly grown more critical during the past few years. Anarchist propaganda finds a fertile field there. The land question is the great question in Argentina, upon the successful solution of which the political, as well as the economic, future of the nation depends; and the only solution is to divide up the great estates and to multiply the number of independent farmers. However, the resistance of the great proprietors, who, in spite of the change of power from the Conservatives to the Radicals, still exercise a controlling influence in public affairs, is still so powerful, that a thoroughgoing landreform is not to be hoped for. Up to the present the Argentine estancieros are blind to the statistics which show the higher productivity of land divided into small freehold farms, as compared with great estates, and deaf to the stern warning which every summer brings, when vast areas of grain go up in flames at the hands of revolting workers.

Brazil is in a much happier situation. For many decades the government has been striving to build up a strong body of small farmers. To be sure, that country has vast cattle-ranches and plantations, particularly of coffee and cotton; but it has also countless little independent holdings. Above all the Argentine tenancy system is unknown there. An immigrant of small means can usually count on becoming, in course of time, a freehold land-owner.

Of course the large cities and indus

trial districts of Brazil are foci of social discontent, as they are in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. I have already mentioned that South American labor is extremely radical. That does not appear at first on the surface. The working classes have few political and tradeunion organizations. They belong to so many races, speak so many different languages, move about so much, and constantly receive such large accessions from foreign countries, that attempts to organize them have usually proved abortive. Consequently, the political and economic influence of the working class is by no means as great as its real strength might lead one to believe. This applies even to Argentina and Uruguay, where Socialist organizations are the strongest. Naturally there are a few exceptions, for example, the Argentine Maritime Federation, which has maintained a strike against the rivertransportation companies for more than

a year.

Strikes, in fact, are very numerous. Generally, however, they fail for lack of a strong organization behind them. Since the working classes are for the most part ignorant and undisciplined, and believe the government is against them, they naturally adopt radical dogmas, and regard any leader who shows the slightest conservatism as a traitor who has been bought by the capitalists.

Agitation of this kind is normally more susceptible to police control than a peaceful Socialist movement, which is progressing steadily and calmly. But it at once becomes dangerous when economic and political conditions are disturbed. What can happen is suggested by the bloody revolt which grew out of the general strike in Buenos Aires in January, 1918. Street-fighting raged in the city for several days. The outcome hung in the balance for a considerable period, since the soldiers

proved unreliable. The government was unable to restore order until troops were brought from Salta and Jujuy, and thousands had been killed in the street-fighting.

Incidents such as these naturally drive the labor leaders farther to the Left. In every important republic of South America the Socialists are debating violently over joining Moscow; and though the adherents of the Bolsheviki are still a minority, it is only a question of time when they will gain their point, or at least force their party to withdraw from the more conservative Socialist group.

Conditions are naturally quite different in the more backward republics. There oligarchy and feudalism still reign unchecked, and the social question is just dawning on the horizon. Such Socialist parties and labor-unions as exist are still in the rudimentary stage. From the standpoint of conservatism, the social and economic situation is essentially better; and it is sometimes predicted that these countries, so backward to-day, will speedily overtake their more progressive neighbors, because they are not afflicted with classconflicts, such as already trouble Argentina and Chile and are likely to increase in bitterness and violence there.

This is possible, but by no means certain. The fact that Socialism has few adherents in Peru and Bolivia today tells nothing as to its possible growth to-morrow. Furthermore, if these republics keep their people in the present state of ignorance and social backwardness, they will be threatened by an even worse danger rising and Mexicanization.

- Indian up

The social question is complicated in these countries by the race-problem. A handful of whites rules over masses of Indians and half-breeds. Now, social lines are by no means drawn parallel with color lines. Latin America has no

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race question in the North American sense. An Indian who accumulates property is received socially by the half-breeds, and eventually by the whites. He thus ceases to be an Indian or a half-breed, and is called a blanco a white man. Such blancos, without a drop of white blood in their veins, are to be found in the highest social circles, and even in the presidential chair. But such cases are exceptional. Furthermore, an Indian who thus rises in social rank breaks off all ties with his fellow Indians and, if such a thing is possible, oppresses and exploits them worse than the real white man. Consequently, social and racial inferiority go hand in hand, and the opportunity to rise out of this lower class is by no means an adequate safety-valve.

Indian revolts are not a matter of ancient history in Latin America. They are still almost daily events. Indian wars are no rarity even in Argentina, where uprisings recently occurred in Chaco. Naturally, it is easy to suppress them by force. Even in Bolivia, where the Indians vastly outnumber the whites, they have invariably been defeated.

The reason for this is the lack of unity among the Indians, and particularly the fact that the indio of ability and capacity for leadership becomes a blanco as soon as he gets ahead in the world. For example, the Bolivian army consists overwhelmingly of full-blooded Indians. In spite of that, it can be depended upon absolutely to suppress an Indian revolt. When Indians have become soldiers, they consider themselves much better than their fellow tribesmen, and enemies of the latter. During a recent revolt I personally observed that the soldiers guarding the prisoners were indistinguishable in color and features from the men in their custody.

Ordinarily Indian uprisings are confined to a few neighboring estates where

the oppression of the proprietors has become unendurable. Usually they are easily suppressed. They become dangerous only when they are associated with political objects, and some party furnishes the insurgents with arms in order to serve its purposes. In such cases instances have occurred when the old racial hatred flared up, and the fanatical Indians slaughtered enemy and friend alike. That danger always lurks in the background whenever there is an appeal to the traditions of the Incas.

However, the peculiar danger is that the Indian problem may be reinforced by the social problem, which is primarily a land question. In Bolivia and in Mexico the great estates have been built up by robbing the free Indians of their land, or by cheating them out of it. This has engendered a deep hatred in the minds of the Indian peasants and laborers, somewhat resembling the hatred which the Russian peasants felt for their landlords. I would name this process 'Mexicanization,' for its best example is to be found in that Republic. But a similar development is likely to occur in every backward country in Latin America.

Under Porfirio Diaz, Mexico was a perfect example of oligarchy and feudalism. Madero raised the banner of revolt against these institutions. The most important planks in his platform were freeing the peons and dividing up the land. He had ideas that would have been stigmatized as Bolshevist if that word had come into vogue. Was Madero honest? Probably; at least he passed for an idealist in Mexico. However, his numerous relatives and supporters had only one object to overthrow the Porfirio Diaz gang, in order to get at the public crib themselves. For them the social programme served the same object as the shouting for freedom and liberty in the war for

independence. It was a convenient bait for the masses. So, when Porfirio Diaz was overthrown and Madero took the presidential chair, his social reforms vanished into thin air.

However, he was an example of the fact that, when you have sown ideas abroad in the world, they cannot be exterminated. Madero's social reforms had got into the heads of the people; and when a second revolution occurred under Carranza and Villa, they again stood in the foreground. Meanwhile the Indian peons had been slaughtering hacienderos and burning their haciendas. They lost their fear of the whites and learned the pleasure of exercising the power which their numbers gave them.

In all probability Bolshevist ideas will spread rapidly in Mexico. But whatever political developments may occur, a return to the old form of land tenure is as impossible in that country as in Russia.

Mexico and South America have very little intercourse at present. When easy paths of communication are opened between them, it is probable that these Mexican ideas will have a profound effect in the latter continent. However that may be, we may expect the same, at first sight absurd, phenomenon in South America - Soviet agitation to show its head in the socially backward countries before it does so in the more highly developed republics to the southward.

Most of these little countries are entirely blind to this danger. Only a few far-sighted people who, like their kind elsewhere, exert little influence in politics, see what is coming. On the other hand, the more advanced countries of South America are over-anxious about Bolshevism. The strict control they have established over immigration indicates this. Other active, vigorous measures are being considered, to avert this danger.

If we except, perhaps, Uruguay, wise social legislation plays little part in these new measures. Following in the footsteps of Europe, the leaders here are trying to divert the attention of the masses from their social hardships by arousing their patriotic passions. Chile's war excitement last July and August, when it mobilized its army and concentrated its forces on the frontiers of Bolivia and Peru, was partly inspired by this motive. The government of Sanfuentes thereby successfully diverted attention from the critical domestic situation. This measure gave the authorities an opportunity to put the restless elements under military law, and to ship them away to the northern deserts.

In Argentina the principal opponent of Socialism is the Liga Patriotica, which interprets all Socialist propaganda as the work of foreign agitators, and attempts to rally every patriotic Argentinean to the defense of his country. On the other side, the Socialists point out, with some show of reason, that, in spite of their international sympathies, they are the true people of Argentina; that they are defending the criollo, the native, from exploitation by the foreign capitalists who own the country's railways, wharves, cold-storage houses, and factories. These corporations, they say, are robbing the natives to enrich foreign proprietors.

However, the most powerful bulwark of the ruling classes in the social struggle is the Catholic Church. South America remains to-day one of the most loyal supporters of the Vatican. In the first place, the Church has the women absolutely under its control. But its power in other directions is much greater than appears on the surface. There are still districts in the remote interior where it is not wise to advertise that one is a Protestant, and where Protestants holding services.

would endanger their lives. There are many regions where the priests are absolutely masters of the bodies as well as the souls of their flocks.

Likewise the Church has accommodated itself to the prevailing political forms in South America with the same flexibility as elsewhere. After being ousted from power with the overthrow of the Conservative Party, it has returned to power in the garb of liberalism. For example, when the Conservative servative clerical government was overthrown in Bolivia, the Church interested itself in progressive measures, became the attorney of the lower classes oppressed by the new Liberal oligarchy, and returned to power in the July revolution of 1920, as the champion of a party sympathetic with liberal Socialism.

In Argentina the ruling Radical Party has clerical affiliations. The Church in this country, by emphasizing its friendliness for the workingman, has succeeded in winning enough of the latter away from the Socialists to constitute a majority in the city. Furthermore, in Irigoyen, it controls a leader of remarkable personal qualities, political foresight, and popularity.

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Even in Chile the Church is multiplying its efforts to accommodate itself to the extremely unfavorable situation from its point of view created by the election of Arturo Alessandri to the presidency.

Alessandri was elected upon an outspoken anti-Clerical platform. Among its important planks were separation of Church and State, and expropriation of the great church properties. The clergy did everything possible to prevent Alessandri's election. But after his victory they ceased open opposition, and to-day one meets almost as many ecclesiastical dignitaries in the government buildings of Santiago, as during the days of Conservative rule.

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