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PAPELES DE CLAUDIO. |
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Ayacucho was the greatest moment of
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Ayacucho was the greatest moment of
Bolivar's life. The Peruvian campaign was over, the independence of the last
and oldest Spanish dominion had been finally won. The international army
which Bolivar had build up had not failed him in his absence, and the
commander whom he had inspired and trained had shown the loyalty and
devotion expected of him. "Above all," Sucre wrote after the battle, "I am
happy to have complied with you orders. This letter is badly written, and
the ideas are confused. But in itself, it is worth something. It brings the
news of a great victory and the liberation of Peru. As a reward, I only ask
you to keep your friendship for me." Bolivar summoned Congress. It voted him dictatorial power which he did not want, a million pesos which he declined. They talked of statues, medals, memorial inscriptions. At last Bolivar, who had spend most of his private fortune in public works, and freed a thousand slave who were legally his property, suggested that the million might be given for charitable purpose in towns of the Colombian Union. It was never paid. The Liberator spent the first eight months of his dictatorship traveling through the different provinces of Peru, inquiring into local government, opening schools, and trying to improve conditions of the Indians. Some municipalities were readier with their gifts than with their reforms. At Arequipa, at the foot of a snow-capped volcano, they presented him with a fine horse, the bit, stirrups, and other metal-work was of solid gold. From Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, 11,500 ft. above sea level, the moved south-east to Puno, a thousand feet higher, on the shore of the great inland lake of Titicaca, site of the earliest Peruvian civilization. He sailed over the lake in one of the peculiar Indian balsas, rafts made of reeds, and then rode to La Paz, the modern capital of Bolivia, to Chiquisaca, the ancient Indian capital, and to Potosi with the famous mountain made entirely of silver. All these places are in the modern state of Bolivia, named after Bolivar himself. But originally they formed part of the provinces of Upper Peru (Alto Peru), and had later been transferred to the Viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata. La Paz had actually been the first town in South America to begin the revolution against the Spanish Government on July 16, 1809, an open council (cabildo abierto) had deposed the Spanish authorities and formed a junta of its won. But they were unlucky, their junta was suppressed, and they only secured definite independence after Ayacucho, when the assembly of the Alto Peru founded a republic, named after the Liberator, elected him president and asked him to draw up a constitution for them. Bolivar appointed Marshal Sucre his substitute.... he had been promoted to Field-Marshal after Ayacucho, and rode down to Lima. The constitution that sen them is not merely one more example of romantic constitution-making, it is among the Liberator's most important political pronouncements. The Bolivian Assembly adopted it with slight modifications, the most noticeable being the article referring to the new republic's religion, which Bolivar had left open but which the Assembly declared to be Roman Catholic to the exclusion of all others. Bolivar had deliberately refrained from laying down what the religion of the state should be, as he had in his earlier constitution for Angostura. He regarded a constitution as a guarantee of civil and political rights. Its only concern with religion was to safeguard a man's right to practice the religion dictated by his conscience. To establish religion by law was to stultify it. For by imposing necessity upon duty it removed all meaning from faith, upon which all religion rested. It was a moral question, not a political one. "Should the State rule the conscience of its subjects?" he asked, "watch over the fulfilment of religious laws and decree rewards and punishments in matters of faith? The tribunals for that were in heaven, and God is the Judge. Only the Inquisition could act for them in this world, but was a modern State to restore the Inquisition and burnings at the stake?" Bolivar's constitution for Bolivia, like the earlier one for Angostura, is a document of the greatest interest, and though it proved unworkable after a few years' trial, it is still among the most notable American contributions to political thought. At Angostura, in 1819, he had been fascinated by the constitutional practice of Britain, his Bolivian Constitution seems rather to be influenced by the First Consulate in France. Again, at Angostura, Bolivar had been little more than the commander of partisan Republican troops engaged in desultory warfare against the Spanish Royalists, with a capital which he had only just occupied and a congress which , as a rule, merely approved what he had already done. So he could formulate his political theories pretty much as he fancied, keeping an eye on the monarchial susceptibilities of Europe. But by 1826, many things had changed. Bolivar in Peru was no longer so free as he had been at Angostura. According to the new constitution the supreme power was divided into four branches instead of three: the electoral body; the legislative (i.e. Congress); the executive (President); and the judiciary (law courts). Electoral power was vested in all male Bolivian citizens over 21 years of age. They must be able to read and write, a requirement which defranchised all the Indians and many of the half-breeds, and they must not be in servitude to another. Beside granting religious liberty, the Bolivian Constitution abolished slavery. The franchise required no property-qualification, or the need to posses private means. "The exercise of public power," Bolivar wrote, "demands knowledge and honesty, not money." Every four years the citizens were to choose an electoral body, one elector for every ten citizens, a plan which has been traced to the Napoleonic constitution of the years VIII and IX. This body elected the legislative assembly, including provincial governors and subordinates officials.... perfects, mayors, magistrates, senators and parish priests. Congress consisted of three chambers instead of two tribunes, senators and censors. "It takes two to make a quarrel," Bolivar implied, "but a third can generally make peace." He rejected the single-chamber government proposed in France by Sieyes. Tribunes and senators were to be elected for periods of four and eight years respectively, but the censors were elected for life. They were to exercise the political and moral power which Bolivar had proposed at Angostura. Executive power was vested in the President, assisted by three secretaries of state, it was a life-appointment and carried with the power of nominating a successor. "The authority of the President must be perpetual," Bolivar declared, "because in countries with no social distinctions, it is necessary to have some fixed point around which everything revolves." But as a check on tyranny, the life-president was deprived of all direct influence, he did not make either judicial or ecclesiastical appointments. The president-for-life is foreshadowed in the Jamaica letter, while in the Constitution of Angostura there is a president with a long term office and with the door left open for a life-appointment. The Colombian Union had in its constitution a life-president in the place of an English constitutional monarch, but Bolivia has a Napoleonic life-term Consul, with power to nominate the man who succeeded him. Bolivar did not admit where is model came from, rather than name Napoleon, he preferred to give the credit to Petion, the life-president of Haiti, who had helped him in his difficulties in 1815. Bolivar was careful to spread abroad the idea that a life-presidency would no lead eventually to monarchy. A restoration is impossible in America, he said, no king could endure without great nobles and high dignitaries of the church. Bolivar's four powers in the State have been compared with the five powers of the restored French monarchy by Benjamin Constant. Both were seeking a firm foundation for liberty, and Constant wished to add a fifth power to the four proposed by Montesquieu, and divide the government into, legislative, royal, executive, judiciary, and municipal branches. Bolivar conceived public power in a more complete and exact form. He divided it into four branches: the three already recognized, and an electoral power as well. He too hoped that his plan for the Bolivian Constitution might be a source of union firmness to Spanish American governments. It was, Bolivar claimed, as popular as any other, and by the importance it attached to the electoral bodies, it conferred sovereignty on the people in the act on which popular sovereignty most immediately depended, and casting their votes. Wit its life-president it should be strong enough and steady enough to resist the jolts and jars and sudden oscillations to which a new state was subject. In no other representative government was there so much popular liberty, Bolivar declared, so much direct intervention by the citizens themselves, and so much power in the president. It combined a just presentation of the federal system, the solidity of a centralized administration and the stability of a monarchy. The Bolivian Constitution had, in fact, all the advantages of a limited monarchy and a republic, "a throne draped in republican colors," a French diplomat described it. "Le colours," he added, "are an illusion. but Bolivar thinks that all his glory comes from them." The truth was the new constitution did not suit the social conditions of the people for whom it was intended, in the end they were to sacrifice all hope of peace and prosperity to the personal ambition of numerous caudillos and become involved in a succession of civil wars. "The fate of the Bolivian Constitution," the historian Gil Fortoul remarks, "was to be the same as that of many other Spanish American constitutions. It ended in tumult and was replaced by one which turned out to be worse." The first life-president to be appointed was Sucre, but he accepted only on condition that he might, if he wished, be allowed to resign after two years. His rule was "enlightened, progressive, liberal, and weak." Meanwhile domestic disturbance in Colombia, 1826, obliged the Liberator to return from Peru. His presence seemed necessary everywhere to inspire that loyalty and common sense without which his schemes would not work, and not even Bolivar himself was able to prevent the eventual dissolution of the Colombian Union into its original components. In spite of 300 years of Spanish colonial government, each viceroyalty, captaincy-general or presidency had become a foreign country to its next-door neighbor, and hopes of union between Spanish speaking countries were already remote. To many observers, particularly London, the chief difficulties of the Colombian Union were financial. The six percent loans had been eagerly taken up when first issue, bu the Colombian Government had never been able to make regular payments of the interest, and the Colombian and Venezuelan representatives sent to London were either too inexperienced in financial matters to inspire confidence, or had not sufficient command of the English language to maintain it. Many of them, as, for instance, as Francisco Zea, were men of unblemished integrity, but in money matters they were incompetent, and sometimes found themselves in gaol for debt. In Colombia it was necessary to maintain a comparatively large standing army, in case Spain, might renew the war, or disturbances break out at home, and the condition made demands on the treasury which prolonged the precarious composing the Colombian Union until after the Union broke up. Andres Bello, Bolivar's former tutor, now secretary of the Colombian Legation in London, wrote Bolivar on March 231, 1827, the following: "One thing deserves your attention above all others, and that is the public credit of Colombia. On the other side of the Atlantic, perhaps, it is not so clear as it is here how impossible it is to raise another loan in London. I say impossible, because if anything were arranged now, the sacrifice would be enormous, and our government would be obliged to negotiate with speculators of doubtful character. But even if were able to shut our eyes to everything in order to raise another loan, Your Excellency knows very well that by this means we should not restore our credit, but lower it even more.... Believe me, the proposal would produce the most unfortunate impression in London against our government. On the contrary, one of he methods most likely to conciliate the good will of these people who are so influential in the world, is the religious payment of all obligations contracted." In 1829, Bolivar's A.D.C., Belford Wilson, wrote in the same sense. The technique of alternate defaults and funding loans was already beginning to wear thin. As soon as Bolivar reached Lima on his return from the south, February 10, 1826, he sent for the British Consul-General and had a long conversation with him. Historians have perhaps been too greatly concerned with Bolivar's attitude towards monarchy. In North and South America his supposedly monarchist leanings had bred suspicion, while in England...both statesmen of the time and since the Liberator's understanding of monarchy has hardly seemed to go far enough. The most interesting side of Bolivar's view is its friendliness to Britain. His admiration for British institutions and British policies has never been sufficiently appreciated. There can be no doubt of his genuineness, and he infected his diplomatic agents abroad with something of his own enthusiasm. In the House of Lords he was described as the basis of the Union which gave support and security to liberty of Spanish America. Affable to foreigners, and particularly to foreign diplomats, admirer of North America idealism and still more of the French way of life, Bolivar gave all who saw him the impression that he understood their anxieties and would never offend their susceptibilities. Yet, taking all his pronouncements into consideration, the conclusion of a Venezuelan historian is that "in spite of his Spanish soul, and his French culture, he would have given his America, if could, the institution, the character, and the political virtues of the people of England." British support was one of the things which Bolivar most earnestly desired, and he took particular trouble to adapt his conversation to English officials, and to make it clear to any British representative he met that he was not a "red republican." He had, he insinuated, no objection to monarchy in the abstract. He did not mind monarchies in other places, provided there was no attempt to introduce them in Spanish America. There was, it was true, an Emperor in Brazil, and there has been an Emperor in Mexico, but one crowned head in the New World was enough. America was not meant for monarchy. British official were agreeably surprised. What attracted them to Bolivar was not so much his very real admiration and friendliness for Britain, his ideas of a life-president seemed to naval men and consular official hardly republican at all. They begin their reports guardedly enough, with references to "a foreign commander of a foreign force." That is how the Liberator is first described by Thomas Rowcroft, British Consul-General at Lima, in a letter to Canning, July 19, 1824, and he refers in a supercilious manner to "the war which General Bolivar is supposed here to be carrying on against the person who considers himself the Viceroy of the King of Spain." He sent formal notice of his arrival to Bolivar, who was a Huancayo, up in the Andes, with his troops. He enclosed a copy of the Polignac Memorandum. The account of a conversation which had taken place in the spring of 1823 between Canning and the French Ambassador in London, the Prince de Polignac, when the latter had given assurance that French forces would not be used against the new states in America to support any attempt of Spanish Crown to recover them. This document which showed so clearly the intentions of the British Government with regard to the future of Spanish America, and the stand made by Britain for independence, is now believed to have done more to keep European from intervention that than the famous declaration of President Monroe known as the "Monroe Doctrine." It is worth quoting some of the original words of presidential declaration, for comparison: "The occasion has been judged proper for asserting.... that the American Continents, by the free and independence condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.... We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." President Monroe's message was published December 2, 1823, bu the conversation to which the Polignac memorandum refers, though not published until March 1824, had already taken place when the President's declaration was made, and canning had even suggested (August 1823) that a joint declaration against European intervention in America should be made by Britain, and the United State of America. This was refused on the ground that the United States and Great Britain were not in the same level. The United States had already recognized (1822) the independent government of Rio de La Plata, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, while Britain had not. There could be no joint declaration, because Britain and the Unites States had not the same standing in the matter. Canning did not see the point, but John Quincy Adams saw the United States' opportunity, and the presidential declaration of the Monroe Doctrine was the result. The occasion had indeed "been judged proper." At the time, the declaration meant little, its full implication were not apparent. It was only later that, by famous irony, the Monroe Doctrine was made to stink the nostrils of the very peoples for whose protection it had been formulated. That was in 1889, when Pan-Americanism became a diplomatic trademark (as it was called) for United States exports, and when President Theodore Roosevelt assumed, as corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the right to forestall European occupation by taking charge of the collection of American debts to European creditors. As a matter of fact British policy had for many years bee moving in the direction of non-intervention, as the history of British recognition of Spanish American independence show. What Britain really wanted was the right to trade, and British governments were on the watch for any action from any other European power which might interfere with their trading privileges. British command of the sea was absolute. No fleet could move against Spanish America unless Britain allowed it to pass. Indeed, it could be only by the help or connivance of the British Navy that Spain could have re-established her empire. Bolivar gratefully acknowledged the fact, in a letter of 1823: "Only England, mistress of the seas, can protect us against the united forces of European reaction." British statesmen were, of course, led mainly by motives of self-interest, which is ultimately "the determining factor in the policy all nations." But on the side of Bolivar and the armies of liberation there were powerful currents of English opinion, and when it became known that Ferdinand VII had re-established the Spanish Inquisition, his absolutist and persecuting government became extremely unpopular. That feeling, like the indignation expressed by Wordsworth at the Convention of Cintra in 1807, or, to take a modern instance, the disgust felt by opinion in Britain at the official British treatment of the Spanish Republic after 1936, was altogether from the commercial and other interests which decided foreign policy and eventually dictate it. Public opinion in England in the time of Bolivar had more in common with the visionary justice of Byron and Shelley than with the cool calculations of Castlereagh and Canning, and this opinion was strengthened by the feeling which found conspicuous expression in the movement in favor of the abolition of slavery> A feeling which was stoutly Protestant and Liberal. In 1813 Britain had protested at the expedition of Morillo, and Catlereagh saw that the former Spanish Colonies must be given self-government, if only that they might trade freely with the rest of the world. In 1817, he favored British mediation between Spain and former colonies. Spain refused to agree to the terms, and at the moment nothing could be done. Yet Castlereagh had made the independence of Spanish America a foregone conclusion. In 1822, when the United State recognized Colombia, the Colombian Government threatened to close their ports to the shipping of all other countries. British merchants were greatly alarmed. There were protest, and a petition form the City urged that some kind of recognition was essential. Castlereagh accordingly recognized the flags of South American ships, an act which amounted to recognition de facto of their government. Canning's interest in Spanish America was also due to its importance to British trade. He began by sending out Consular agents. He failed to stop the French from invading Spain in 1823, and the isolation of Britain which followed made him turn to the United States. This approach, coming just at that moment removed the last American fears of European intervention, and so provided the opportunity for the declaration of the Mon roe Doctrine. Yet so far as the Spanish American countries were concerned, the main point was already won before the publication of President Monroe's message. Canning had obtained, in the interview with Polignac, "an avowal that force would not be used against the new states," and his agents in Spanish America used it with great effect to show that Britain had been first to protest against attack from Europe. The result was that when at last British recognition came, it seemed to the Spanish American peoples to be of far greater importance than recognition by the United States. The method of recognition adopted was to negotiate commercial treaties. Such was the background of Mr. Thomas Rowcroft, and the communication which he sent to Bolivar in the Andes. The Consul-General's letter had been delivered by Lieutenant Kelly, R.N. of H.M.S. Cambridge, sent by the senior British officer commanding on the station, Captain Maling. Kelly found Bolivar "much pleased by the attention shown to him, greatly attached to the British and much prejudiced against the United States and the French." The war seemed to be going well. The Liberator found "more difficulty to get over the country and to get at the enemy than to fight him, but this was only natural "in a country of hills and rocks and sands, without roads, rivers, canals, or wheels." Later on Captain Mailng himself had a conversation with Bolivar. It was duly reported to the Foreign Office, but the comment was that perhaps "Captain Mailing did not fully embrace what he could have desired." He made the Liberator seem so monarchist and anti-democratic that he was probably expressing his own feelings rather than the ideas which Bolivar had expressed to him. C.M. Rickettes, a later Consul-General in Peru, writing to Canning on February 18, 1826, makes Bolivar more guarded. Perhaps he understood him better than Captain Maling did, for they conversed :in the french language, which he speaks very fluently." "He had nothing to do, as a public character, with any of the European systems, though he might respect some more than others, and he most assuredly did not at this juncture uphold a Republican form of government as superior to any other, for he was aware that with imperfect materials it might be despotic or tyrannical. All he had sought was freedom from Spain, as the South Americans felt that they were sufficiently strong to throw off the foreign rule and to govern themselves.... Circumstances might vary the form, and an Emperor should not be objected to in Brazil nor a Federal Government in the sister state of Buenos Aires, but he had his notion for the Government of Colombia, and other forms again for Upper and lower Peru. "These were the sentiments," he added, "which he had wished Captain Maling to convey to you." "At that moment he was impressed with an apprehension owning to a French coming suddenly to these seas, that the Allied Sovereigns were preparing to coalesce with Spain under false conception that a radical spirit was raised in South America which would not rest until after their ascendancy had ceased." He did not consider a federal system of government to be the one best calculated for "these infant states," as "the minds of the people were not yet prepared to take a leading part in the administration of public affairs." The United States was a solitary instance of a nation uniting and at once establishing a Federal State without anarchy and on a just and solid basis. In South America, on the contrary, the inhabitants had just emerged from a state of slavery, and to expect good ordered and honesty from such materials was preposterous. Some governments, he mentioned particularly that of Buenos Aires, had endeavored to counteract that result, but unfortunately each providence was so busy discussing liberty, justice and national rights that: "although few of them could read, each had its own Sancho for a governor... and all thought they spoke of liberty, that they were free, and wise, and because they had armed a small force, that they had become one among the powerful and well regulated notions of this earth." Bolivar added that his own principle was to encourage education and industry, and to issue rules and laws founded on the plainest and most simple principles, for which he should take as his guide the civil "Code Napoleon," the only wise thing, he thought, that Bonaparte ever did. He was certainly anxious of British support, and he needed it for the realization of one of his greatest projects, the international American congress at Panama. He seemed to them a mass of paradox, a revolutionary general who was not on the make, and could even resist the temptation to make himself an emperor. |
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