Liberal Thought in Argentina, 1837–1940. Группа авторов

them into the fatal whirlwind that drags them, against their will and without being able to evade its evil influence? Was it not worth knowing why in Paraguay, a land cleared by the wise hand of the Jesuits, a wise man educated in the classrooms of the ancient University of Córdoba turns a new page in the history of the aberrations of the human spirit, encloses a people within the bounds of its primitive forests, and, erasing the paths that lead to this hidden China, conceals and hides its prey for thirty years in the depths of the American continent, without letting it utter a single cry, until, dead from old age and the still fatigue of standing motionless trampling on a submissive people, it may in the end say, in a weary and barely intelligible voice to those who roam his environs: I am still alive!, but how I have suffered! quantum mutatus ab illo!⁴ What a transformation Paraguay has suffered; what bruises and sores the yoke has left on its neck, which put up no resistance! Does the spectacle of the Argentine Republic deserve study, which, after twenty years of internal convulsion, of experiments with organization of all kinds, produces, in the end, from the depths of its bowels, from the depths of its heart, the same Doctor Francia⁵ in the person of Rosas, but greater, more self-possessed, and more hostile, if that is possible, to the ideas, customs, and civilization of the peoples of Europe? Is not the same rancor against the foreign element discovered in him, the same idea of government authority, the same insolence to challenge the disapproval of the world, and in addition, his wild originality, his coldly fierce nature, and his obstinate will, even to the sacrifice of the fatherland, as in Saguntum and Numantia;⁶ to the abjuration of the future and the rank

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      of a cultured nation, like the Spain of Philip II and Torquemada?⁷ Is this an accidental whim, a mechanical deviation caused by the appearance on the scene of a powerful genius; just as the planets leave their regular orbits, attracted by the approach of another, yet without quite escaping the attraction of their center of rotation, which then resumes its preponderance and brings them back into their regular course? M. Guizot⁸ has said from the French rostrum: “There are two parties in America: the European party and the American party; the latter is the stronger”; and when alerted to the fact that 108 Frenchmen have taken up arms in Montevideo and have joined their futures, their lives, and their welfare to the triumph of the civilized European party, he merely adds: “The French are most meddlesome, and compromise their nation with other governments.” God be praised! M. Guizot, the historian of European civilization, who has determined the new elements that modified Roman civilization, and has penetrated into the tangled labyrinth of the Middle Ages to show how the French nation has been the crucible in which the modern spirit has been elaborated, mixed, and recast; M. Guizot, minister of the king of France, as the only solution to this expression of deep sympathy between the French and the enemies of Rosas just says: “The French are most meddlesome!” The other American peoples who, indifferent and impassive, look on this struggle and these alliances of an Argentine party with any European element lending its support, filled with indignation in their turn, exclaim: “These Argentines are very friendly with the Europeans!” And the tyrant of the Argentine Republic takes it upon himself officiously to finish their sentence, adding, “Traitors to the American cause!” True! they all say; traitors!, that is the word. True! we say; traitors to the barbarian, absolutist, Spanish, American cause! Have you not seen the word savage fluttering over our heads?

      There’s the rub: to be or not to be savage. Is not Rosas, according to this, an isolated incident, an aberration, a monstrosity? Or is he, on the contrary, a social manifestation; is he a formula for the way of being of a people? Why do you insist on fighting him, then, if he is inevitable, necessary, natural, and logical? My Lord! Why do you fight him! … Because a venture is arduous, is it therefore absurd? Because the evil principle

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      triumphs, should the field be abandoned with resignation? Are civilization and freedom weak in the world today because Italy groans under the weight of every despotism, because Poland wanders the face of the Earth begging a loaf of bread and a little freedom? Why do you fight him! … Are we not alive, those of us who, after so many disasters, still survive; or have we lost our awareness of what is right and of our homeland’s future because we have lost a few battles? What! are ideas also left among the remains of the fighting? Are we able to do something different than what we do, precisely as Rosas cannot stop being what he is? Is there nothing providential in these struggles of the people? Was victory ever awarded to him who does not persevere? Indeed, are we to abandon one of the most privileged soils of America to the ravages of barbarism and have a hundred navigable rivers abandoned to the water-birds that are in calm possession and wander them ab initio?

      Are we voluntarily to close the door on European immigration, which knocks repeatedly on it to people our deserts, and make us, in the shadow of our flag, a people as innumerable as the sands on the shore? Are we to leave aside, illusory and vain, the dreams of development, power, and glory with which we have been lulled since childhood, the forecasts that are enviously directed at us by those in Europe who study the needs of humanity? After Europe, is there any uninhabited Christian world that can be civilized other than America? Are there in America many peoples who are, like the Argentine people, called on to receive the European population that overflows like liquid in a glass? Do you not ultimately want us to invoke science and industry to our assistance, to call to them with all our might to come and sit in our midst, the one free from any obstacle to thought, the other safe from all violence and all coercion? Oh! This future is not so easily relinquished! It is not relinquished because an army of twenty thousand men guards the gateway to the fatherland: soldiers die in combat, desert, or switch flags. It is not relinquished because fortune has favored a tyrant for long and heavy years: fortune is blind, and the day she does not happen to find her favorite amid the dense smoke and suffocating dust of combat, farewell tyrant! farewell tyranny! It is not relinquished because all the brutal and ignorant colonial traditions have accomplished more, in a time of irrationality, in the mind of the unskilled masses: political upheavals also bring experience and light, and it is a law of humanity that new interests, fertile ideas, and progress will ultimately triumph over antiquated

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      traditions, ignorant habits, and stagnant concerns. It is not relinquished because there are thousands of guileless men in a people, who take good for evil, selfish men who profit from it, indifferent men who see it but take no interest, timid men who do not dare to fight it, corrupt men, in short, who unknowingly deliver themselves to it out of an inclination to evil, out of depravity: there has always been all this in every people, and never has evil definitively triumphed. It is not relinquished because the other American peoples cannot lend us their aid, because governments see from afar only the glint of organized power and cannot distinguish in the humble and desolate darkness of revolutions the great elements that are struggling to develop; because the so-called liberal opposition abjures its principles, imposes silence on its conscience, and, to squash an importunate insect underfoot, stamps the noble sole the insect was attached to. It is not relinquished because the peoples en masse turn their backs on us on account of our miseries and our greatnesses being too far away from their sight to affect them. No! a future so immense, a mission so lofty, is not relinquished because of such a series of contradictions and difficulties: difficulties are vanquished, contradictions end by dint of contradiction!

      From Chile, we cannot give anything to those who persevere in the struggle under all the hardships of privations and with the exterminating blade, which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs above their heads at all times. Nothing! save ideas, consolations, encouragement; no weapon is allowed the combatants save the one that the free press of Chile supplies to all free men. The press! The press! Here then, tyrant, is the enemy you suffocated among us. Here then is the golden fleece we try to conquer. Here then is how the press of France, England, Brazil, Montevideo, Chile, and Corrientes will disturb your sleep amid your victims’ sepulchral silence; here then is the fact that you have felt compelled to steal the gift of tongues in order to palliate evil, a gift given only to preach goodness. Here then is the fact that you stoop to justify yourself and go among all the European and American peoples begging a venal, fratricidal pen, so that, by means of the press, it will defend him who has put it in chains! Why do you not allow in your homeland the discussion you keep up in all other peoples?