Latin America’s evolution was predetermined by the Spanish Conquest. That very word “conquest” tells the story. The United States was
settled by colonists planning homes and bringing their women. It was thus a genuine migration, and resulted in a full transplanting of white stock to new soil. The Indians encountered were wild nomads, fierce of temper and few in number. After sharp conflicts they were extirpated, leaving virtually no ethnic traces behind. The colonization of Latin America was the exact antithesis. The Spanish
Conquistadores were bold warriors descending upon vast regions inhabited by relatively dense populations, some of which, as in Mexico and Peru, had attained a certain degree of civilization. The Spaniards, invincible in their shining armor, paralyzed with terror these people still dwelling in the age of bronze and polished stone. With ridiculous ease mere handfuls of whites overthrew empires and lorded it like gods over servile and adoring multitudes. Cortez marched[Pg 106] on Mexico with less than 600 followers, while Pizarro had but 310 companions when he started his conquest of Peru. Of course the fabulous treasures amassed in these exploits drew swarms of bold adventurers from Spain. Nevertheless, their numbers were always infinitesimal compared with the vastness of the quarry, while the proportion of women immigrants continued to lag far behind that of the men. The breeding of pure whites in Latin America was thus both scanty and slow.
On the other hand, the breeding of mixed-bloods began at once and attained notable proportions. Having slaughtered the Indian males or brigaded them in slave-gangs, the Conquistadores took the Indian women to themselves. The humblest man-at-arms had several female attendants, while the leaders became veritable pashas with great harems of concubines. The result was a prodigious output of half-breed children, known as “mestizos” or “cholos.”
And soon a new ethnic complication was added. The Indians having developed a melancholy trick of dying off under slavery, the Spaniards imported African negroes to fill the servile ranks, and since they took negresses as well as Indian women for concubines, other half-breeds—mulattoes—appeared. Here and there Indians and negroes mated on their own account, the offspring being known as “zambos.” In time these various hybrids bred among themselves, producing the most extraordinary ethnic combinations. As Garcia-Calderon well puts it: “Grotesque generations with[Pg 107] every shade of complexion and every conformation of skull were born in America—a crucible continually agitated by unheard-of fusions of races.... But there was little Latin blood to be found in the homes formed by the sensuality of the first conquerors of a desolated America.”
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To be sure, this mongrel population long remained politically negligible. The Spaniards regarded themselves as a master-caste, and excluded all save pure whites from civic rights and social privileges. In fact, the European-born Spaniards refused to recognize even their colonial-born kinsmen as their equals, and “Creoles”
[57] could not aspire to the higher distinctions or offices. This attitude was largely inspired by the desire to maintain a lucrative monopoly. Yet the European’s sense of superiority had some valid grounds. There can be no doubt that the Creole whites, as a class, showed increasing signs of degeneracy. Climate was a prime cause in the hotter regions, but there were many plateau areas, as in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, which though geographically in the tropics had a temperate climate from their elevation.
Even more than by climate the Creole was injured by contact with the colored races. Pampered and corrupted from birth by obsequious slaves, the Creole[Pg 108] usually led an idle and vapid existence, disdaining work as servile and debarred from higher callings by his European-born superiors. As time passed, the degeneracy due to climate and custom was intensified by degeneracy of blood. Despite legal enactment and social taboo, colored strains percolated insidiously into the creole stock. The leading families, by elaborate precautions, might succeed in keeping their escutcheons clean, but humbler circles darkened significantly despite fervid protestations of “pure-white” blood. Still, so long as Spain kept her hold on Latin America, the process of miscegenation, socially considered, was a slow one. The whole social system was based on the idea of white superiority, and the colors were carefully graded. “In America,” wrote Humboldt toward the close of Spanish rule, “the more or less white skin determines the position which a man holds in society.”
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The revolution against Spain had momentous consequences for the racial future of Latin America. In the beginning, to be sure, it was a white civil war—a revolt of the Creoles against European oppression and discrimination. The heroes of the revolution—Bolívar, Miranda, San Martín, and the rest—were aristocrats of pure-white blood. But the revolution presently developed new features. To begin with, the struggle was very long. Commencing in 1809, it lasted almost twenty years. The whites were decimated by fratricidal fury, and when the Spanish cause was finally lost, multitudes of loyalists mainly of the superior social[Pg 109] classes left the country. Meanwhile, the half-castes, who had rallied wholesale to the revolutionary banner, were demanding their reward. The Creoles wished to close the revolutionary cycle and establish a new society based, like the old, upon white supremacy, with themselves substituted for the Spaniards. Bolívar planned a limited monarchy and a white electoral oligarchy. But this was far from suiting the half-castes. For them the revolution had just begun. Raising the cry of “democracy,” then become fashionable through the North American and French revolutions, they proclaimed the doctrine of “equality” regardless of skin. Disillusioned and full of foreboding, Bolívar, the master-spirit of the revolution, disappeared from the scene, and his lieutenants, like the generals of Alexander, quarrelled among themselves, split Latin America into jarring fragments, and waged a long series of internecine wars. The flood-gates of anarchy were opened, the result being a steady weakening of the whites and a corresponding rise of the half-castes in the political and social scale. Everywhere ambitious soldiers led the mongrel mob against the white aristocracy, breaking its power and making themselves dictators. These “caudillos” were apostles of equality and miscegenation. Says Garcia-Calderon: “Tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they dominate the colonial nobility, favor the crossing of races, and free the slaves.”
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[Pg 110]The consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. Latin America’s level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days. Spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and social stability. Now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and colors grappled to the death. Ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished.
