During the two hundred years which followed the Spanish conquest, life on the Bolivian plateau was vegetative and changeless except for the occasional excitement caused by the discovery of a rich new silver mine. The Indians lived in their villages, herding their masters' sheep or cultivating maize and potatoes, paid tribute to the encomenderos or the Crown collector, and submitted with dull patience to all the exactions. They reverenced their caciques, listened submissively to the parish priests, and meekly suffered the tyranny of the corregidors. The language of the conquerors was unintelligible to most of the people. When summoned to work in the mines they went to slow misery and certain death with the stoicism of their race. The South American Indian changes his attributes but slowly, and we find a moral resemblance in tribes differing widely in material culture. The Inca emperor exacted and received the same blind, unquestioning obedience which the Paraguayans gave to Lopez four centuries later, and the rudeGuaranies on the banks of the Paraná, who had hardly entered the stone age, were no more readily submissive to the Spaniards than the Quichuas of Bolivia, whose engineering, agriculture, and architecture had reached a high degree of development.
Except the floating population of miners, the Spaniards and their descendants lived in the cities—La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Charcas, Tarija, Santa Cruz. Each city had its plaza, its townhouse, its officials, and its law-courts. Administrative centres for the surrounding districts, their inhabitants were mainly functionaries and hangers-on, who varied the sleepy monotony of their existence by factional quarrels and political intrigues. In these cities the slow process of amalgamating the white and red races began, and the dynamic restlessness of the Caucasian infiltrated by degrees into the static calm of the Indian. The lower classes of the towns became half-breed, while in the country districts pure Indians predominated. Late in the colonial period the Spaniards were still occupying the position of alien taskmasters, and the process of fusing the different races into a homogeneous mass had made little progress after two centuries and a half of contact. In a word, the social and political organisation of Upper Peru was largely a continuation of the Inca system, but that system had been deformed and deprived of its efficiency and was subject to constant arbitrary interference from the Spanish corregidors, while the cities were separately governed by military governors and their own cabildos.
Until the middle of the eighteenth century the authority of the Lima viceroy nominally extended over the whole of Spanish South America. However, boards of high judicial and civil functionaries called audiencias, responsible directly to the Crown, exercised very important and independent judicial and administrative functions, each over a great division of Spanish America. Hardly had the conquest been completed when an audiencia was established at Charcas and that city became the political and ecclesiastical capital not only of all Upper Peru but of the vast regions to the south. The viceroy was too far away to interfere, and in effect a great semi-independent province was created, whose boundaries extended indefinitely south and east from the transverse range which separated the Titicaca basin from the region immediately governed by the viceroy and known as Lower Peru. To the jurisdiction of this province the governors of Tucuman, Paraguay, and Buenos Aires were subject, as well as the missions among the Chiquitos and Mojos on the headwaters of the Paraguay and Madeira.
The Bourbon kings, who succeeded the House of Austria early in the eighteenth century, were forced to abandon the effort to centralise the administration and commerce of the whole continent at Lima. The Atlantic and Caribbean coasts could not be effectively governed from the Pacific and the rising currents of trade and immigration must be allowed more liberty to follow their natural channels. The viceroyalty of Bogotá was created in 1740 including the northern and north-western portions of the continent, and in 1776 the south-eastern parts were erected into the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires. The whole audiencia of Charcas was separated from Lima, and to its territory was added that portion of Chile which lay east of the Andes. Though the Bolivian plateau was the most populous and important division of the new viceroyalty, Buenos Aires, far away on the Atlantic and in a region then considered of little value, was chosen as the capital.
In spite of prohibitive regulations goods had long been smuggled into Buenos Aires and thence carried over the Argentine plains up the comparatively easy passes leading to southern Bolivia, and the selection of the Plate city was a recognition by the Spanish government of the futility of longer trying to divert the trade of the Atlantic slope from its natural channels. But the greater length of the Atlantic route largely overcame the advantage of easier gradients, and social and commercial habits centuries old could not be revolutionised by statute. Most of Bolivia's small intercourse with the outside world continued to be conducted along the old Inca routes to the Pacific, and political union brought about no organic and commercial incorporation with the provinces near the mouth of the Plate.
Before the new viceroyalty was in good running order, a great Indian insurrection broke out which involved a large proportion of the Indians of the plateau. Tupac Amaru, the legitimate heir of the Inca emperors, and a wealthy and influential cacique in one of the valleys between Cuzco and the Bolivian border, had received a good Spanish education andpossessed many friends among the whites. But his heart went out to his own people, and he had the courage to protest against the intolerable oppressions of the corregidors. Failing to obtain redress after repeated prayers to the Spanish authorities at least to enforce their own laws honestly, he resolved to appeal to arms, and in 1780 he captured and killed a particularly demoniacal corregidor, his own immediate superior, and summoned the Indians of southern Peru to fight for their rights under his banner. Tupac had secured some firearms and out of the vast multitudes which assembled at his call he equipped three thousand men. The Spaniards advanced from Cuzco with a force of twelve hundred men, but Tupac defeated them and hastened across the range to arouse the population around Titicaca. At every village he addressed the people from the church steps, saying that he was come to abolish abuses and punish the corregidors, and the Indians responded with acclamations for the Inca and redeemer. Meanwhile the Spanish officials were assembling a large force in Cuzco which, strange as it may seem, was mostly composed of Indians. The race possessed little instinctive capacity for organisation, was deficient in initiative, moral courage, and independence, and had not the resolution to refuse to follow the Spanish officers. There were only a few like Tupac who possessed the mental energy and originality to plan and to fight on their own account. Receiving news of the Spanish preparations, the Inca hurried back to his home province and attempted to negotiate.He recounted to the Spanish authorities his own earnest endeavours to obtain a measure of justice for his people, the habitual violation of Spanish law by Spanish officials, and the intolerable oppression of the system of impressment. He proposed a negotiation by which reforms might be attained without further bloodshed. Tupac's fame as an enlightened and unselfish patriot rests securely on the contents of the noble and able despatch which, on this occasion, he sent to the Spanish authorities. But the latter refused all compromise and ordered an advance on Tupac's position. He was surrounded, his army destroyed, and he himself sentenced to be torn in pieces by horses after witnessing with his own eyes the fearful tortures and death of his innocent and harmless wife and children.
The perpetration of such atrocities goaded even the dull and stoical Indians into a fury. They rose everywhere on the plateau and the Spaniards in northern Bolivia fled for refuge to La Paz and Puno. The Spanish army which had overcome Tupac advanced into the Titicaca basin, but was compelled to retreat before overwhelming numbers. Puno was evacuated and in 1781 the Spaniards had lost all foothold in northern Bolivia. But the habit of obedience was too strong; their first fury over, the Indians listened to promises of fair treatment and offers of compromise. Tupac's cousin, who had been made chief of the insurrection after the former's murder, was persuaded to submit on the promise of pardon, only to be arrested, tried, and executed as soon as his followers had laid down their arms.The family of the Inca was extirpated, ninety of its members, including women and children, being sent on foot, loaded with chains, over the hundreds of miles of mountain road to Lima and thence conveyed to Spain, where they rotted away in prison.
Many of the reforms to secure which Tupac had lost his own life and devoted his kin to destruction, were voluntarily put into effect by the Spanish government a few years later. The office of corregidor was abolished, and the district governors were made directly responsible to the governor of the province, who was in turn responsible to the viceroy and audiencia. Courts were established to protect the rights of the Indians and the higher authorities made a sincere effort to secure the enforcement of the laws. However, the reforms did not materially change the condition of the country, and the Indians apparently settled back into the same apathetic obedience to the whites. The anti-Spanish feeling took no active form for the present, but the events had proved that the Indian population had become a field well prepared for the springing up of a crop of bloody insurrections.
The South American war of independence began and ended on the plateau of Upper Peru. On Bolivia's soil the first blood of the great revolt was spilt and there the last Spanish soldiers laid down their arms. Lying on the great route from Lima to Buenos Aires, her territory inevitably became the battle-ground for the hardest and most continuous fighting on the continent, and her population, having been the most oppressed by Spanish misrule, showed itself the most tenacious in efforts to drive out the Spanish authorities.
From 1809 to 1825, with scarcely an intermission, battle succeeded battle, campaign campaign, and insurrection insurrection, as the Spaniards and patriots, alternately victorious, marched and counter-marched along the great mountain road that winds through the plateau from Humahuaca on the Argentine frontier to the barrier north of Lake Titicaca. Not a village but what was captured and pillaged, not merely once but many times, and the tale of garottings and hangings, of massacres, burnings, anddepredations, of heads and hands spiked up by hundreds along the highways, wearies in the telling. The Indians and half-breeds who formed the bulk of the Bolivian population joined by tens of thousands the bands that were continually being recruited by the patriot caudillos, or were impressed into the Spanish armies. Like Missouri in the American Civil War, Bolivia furnished more than her contingent to both sides, and her geographical position was similar to that of Virginia. The fighting on her soil was the longest continued and the severest, although the decisive battles were fought outside her territory. Suipacha, Huaqui, Ayohuma, Viluma correspond to Seven Pines, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg; while Chacabuco, Boyacá, and Ayacucho, like Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, were the fights that brought the real results.
The patriots from the Argentine wished to carry the war to the seat of Spanish power and made continual efforts to get to Lima by way of Bolivia, but though they often reached the plateau they could never long maintain themselves. The farthest that they ever penetrated was to the south end of Lake Titicaca, where they were still distant from their goal by more than a thousand miles of difficult mountain road. The Spanish generals were more successful, but any army in possession of the plateau was immediately impelled to dissipate its forces in keeping open lines of communication with the seaboard and in tedious marches.
The news of the French usurpation in 1808 and the consequent civil disturbances in Spain demoralised the Spanish authorities in the Bolivian cities, and the Creoles immediately conceived the hope that they might possess themselves of the offices and the revenues. Early in 1809 a few influential native Bolivians and disaffected Spaniards took forcible possession of the government buildings in Charcas and La Paz and deposed the Spanish officials. The insurgents managed to arm a few troops, but were able to make no effective resistance to the forces which the viceroys at Buenos Aires and Lima promptly sent to quell the movement. The rebellion was quenched in blood. Goyeneche, the Lima general, ordered wholesale executions among those who had taken part, and the news of his dreadful cruelties roused a bitter desire for revenge in the hearts of the Creoles of all South America.
The deposition by Buenos Aires of her viceroy on the 25th of May, 1810, was shortly followed by the advance of an Argentine army into Bolivia, and the forces which the Spanish authorities at Potosí and Charcas had been able to collect were defeated at Suipacha, near the southern border of the plateau. All the cities of Bolivia fell into the hands of the patriots, while the villages rose in revolt against their Spanish tyrants. The Buenos Aireans wished to subject the Bolivian provinces to a centralised government and rule them from the capital on the Plate, but every town in Upper Peru had its ambitious Creole leaders who wished to control their own country. These disagreements had much to do with the crushing defeat which the Argentine army shortly suffered at Huaqui on the southern shore ofLake Titicaca. The projected triumphal advance through Cuzco and Lower Peru to Lima was turned into a precipitate retreat through La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí into the Argentine. Alone the Bolivian patriots were not strong enough to prevent the re-establishment of the Spanish authority in the cities along the main route. But in the villages and the outlying cities like Cochabamba and Santa Cruz the insurgent bands kept up a desperate resistance.
The main body of the victorious Spanish army pursued the fleeing Argentines into their own territory, only to be defeated by General Belgrano in the battle of Tucuman—a victory which probably saved Buenos Aires from capture and the South American revolution from extinction. In 1813 the Argentines again invaded Bolivia, but they had not proceeded far beyond Potosí when they were met and routed in the battles of Villapugio and Ayohuma. The Bolivian patriots were once more left to their own resources, and their country subjected to the most awful devastations. Though unable to concert a general plan of action or to assemble one large army, nevertheless they had courage to die in battle or on the scaffold. The most famous leaders in the south were Camargo and Padilla, whose daring forays helped prevent the Spaniards from advancing into the Argentine, while Arenales at Santa Cruz and other patriot leaders farther north continually threatened the line of communication to Titicaca, Cuzco, and Lima.
BALSAS ON LAKE TITICACA.BALSAS ON LAKE TITICACA.
Late in the year 1814 the region north of Lake Titicaca to and beyond Cuzco burst into insurrection under the lead of an Indian cacique and an indefatigable agitator of a priest named Munecas. The Indians roseen masseand the Spanish army in southern Bolivia was cut off from Lima. Twenty thousand insurgents assembled near the north end of Lake Titicaca, but they possessed neither arms, officers, nor organisation. Not one in twenty had a musket, and though their invasion down the Maritime Cordillera to Arequipa was at first successful, a comparatively small force of Spanish regulars chased them back over the passes to the region of the lake and there dispersed them at the battle of Humachiri. Meanwhile the guerilla bands in southern Bolivia and the Argentines in Salta had been more successful. The Spaniards were compelled to retire from the Argentine border back beyond Potosí. The Argentines again invaded the plateauand advanced in force on the road to La Paz and Lima. Once again the Spanish forces which concentrated to meet them were victorious and the allied patriots were completely overthrown in the battle of Viluma, November, 1815, which marks the end of the first period of the war of independence. Thenceforward for seven years the Spanish generals were dominant on the plateau, and the Bolivian patriots made only a desultory and scattered resistance.
With admirable foresight the victorious Spanish general, Pezuela, went to work to subdue thoroughly the whole of Upper Peru. The viceroy, Abascal, backed him up in establishing in this natural fortress a strong military state, whence money and soldiers could be drawn for offensive operations against the insurrection in any part of the continent. The mines supplied the funds of which the viceregal government stood in such desperate need, and the hardy, sturdy Indians of Bolivia afforded a stock of excellent recruits whose fidelity might be enforced by white officers and severe discipline. Pezuela remorselessly pursued the patriot chiefs; Camargo was finally run to earth, captured, and garrotted; Padilla fell in the midst of his little band and was brutally beheaded as he lay wounded on the ground. Garrisons occupied all the towns and important positions, the irregular excesses of the Spanish soldiery were sternly forbidden, a measure of order and security replaced the confusion of the previous years, and the whole resources of the people were carefully husbanded and devoted to the upbuildingof an army. Before the end of 1816 Pezuela had a well-equipped and efficient force of eight thousand men ready for an advance into the Argentine.
The year 1816 was the blackest for the patriot cause since the beginning of the revolution. Chile had been reduced to obedience; the Argentine was convulsed by civil war; Uruguay had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese king; the Spaniards were triumphant in Venezuela, and New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia were making no resistance. Pezuela had been promoted to be viceroy at Lima and La Serna in the beginning of 1817 led the Spanish army into the Argentine and advanced far beyond the frontier. But he made his campaign according to the rules of regular European warfare, and though the gauchos of Salta did not venture to give him battle they kept up a harassing series of night attacks, ambushes, and daring forays into his very lines. Mounted on their fleet and hardy plains horses, living on wild cattle, and needing no baggage or provision train, their mobility was phenomenal, and they rendered the advance of the Spanish army through the long stretches of desert and pampa almost impossible.
Meanwhile San Martin's great victory at Chacabuco in Chile completely changed the situation throughout the continent. It was necessary for the viceroy to drain the other provinces of troops to attempt Chile's recovery. Even if La Serna did succeed in pushing toward Buenos Aires, San Martin could recross the Andes and strike him in flank with a victorious army. So the Spanish general withdrewfrom the northern Argentine and took up the old position near the Bolivian border. The Argentines never attacked him in force, although they kept up a war with incursions over the frontier, and the indomitable Bolivian patriots rose in one local revolt after another during the next four years. The country was never pacified, although the relentless vigilance of the Spanish commanders prevented the insurrection from becoming general.
In 1820 San Martin sailed from Valparaiso and landed his army of Argentines and Chileans on the Peruvian coast near Lima. His masterly dispositions soon compelled the Spaniards to evacuate the capital and thenceforth their power was confined to the Andean region which extends south-east from the Cerro de Pasco to the southern boundary of Bolivia. The patriots had the advantage of being able to land troops at any point on the coast, and the Spanish generals, to meet these invasions, were compelled to move their armies over the tortuous mountain paths. Late in 1822 an expedition attempted to reach the Bolivian plateau by the pass which leads directly up to La Paz. Valdez, the Spanish general, managed to get to the threatened point before the patriots had pushed their way up the mountain. They attacked at a disadvantage, and their army was destroyed.
A year later a similar effort was made by an army of five thousand Peruvians under the command of Santa Cruz, a Bolivian half-breed of noble Inca lineage who had been engaged in the Spanish service until 1821, and then, deserting, had risen to supremepower in the patriot army after the retirement of San Martin. Northern Bolivia had been denuded of troops by the Spanish generals in the course of their operations near Lima. No army disputed the pass, and Santa Cruz penetrated to La Paz without opposition. Valdez hastened from Peru, and the Spanish army in southern Bolivia moved toward the threatened region. Santa Cruz's position lay directly between them; his forces were superior to either of the Spanish armies and apparently it would not be difficult for him to whip them in detail. But he made the mistake of dividing his own forces, and Valdez came up with such unexpected speed that he failed to unite his two divisions before the Spaniards reached La Paz. He retreated to the south in order to join his other division, closely followed by the enemy, and scarcely had he effected the junction when Valdez skilfully outflanked him and united his forces to the army of southern Bolivia. By this manœuvre the patriot army found itself hopelessly outnumbered and fled north in disorder. By the time it reached the coast it had been practically annihilated. One body of Spaniards resumed at its leisure a position threatening Lima, while the Bolivian division occupied itself with crushing the insurgents who had risen at Cochabamba and other points during Santa Cruz's stay upon the plateau.
This disastrous campaign seemed to destroy all hope of Bolivian freedom for years to come. But Olañeta, the renegade Argentine who commanded the Spanish army in Bolivia, quarrelled with LaSerna and the northern generals. They sent a force to fight him, and while the Spaniards were thus warring among themselves word was received that Bolivar had arrived on the Peruvian coast, accompanied by his great lieutenant, Sucré, and a large army of Colombian veterans. To meet this pressing danger the viceroy abandoned his efforts to reduce Olañeta to submission, recalled the troops he had sent into Bolivia, and sent north as large a force as he could muster. Bolivar climbed the coast range unopposed and met the Spanish army not far south of Cerro de Pasco. On the 24th of August, 1824, he won the cavalry action of Junin, and the Spaniards were compelled to retire to Cuzco. Bolivar went to Lima to consolidate his political position, leaving the command with Sucré. Four months later the viceroy suddenly broke out of Cuzco, outmanœuvred Sucré, and marched toward Lima closely followed by the Colombian forces. The two armies finally met at Ayacucho, December 9, 1824, and though the royalist army fought on a field of its own choosing and had the advantage in numbers and artillery, it was annihilated.
The only Spanish troops which remained in the field were Olañeta's in southern Bolivia. He struggled desperately to hold his men together and make another stand, but the news of Ayacucho was the signal for an uprising of the patriots all around him. The royalist officers and troops had no heart for a hopeless fight, and as Sucré approached the detached garrisons deserted. In March Olañeta received word that one of his lieutenants, Medina Celi, whowas in command at Tumusla near Potosí, had declared for the patriots. The Spanish general promptly marched with the few troops who remained faithful, and, on April 1, 1825, fought the last action of the war of independence. Olañeta was defeated and himself slain, probably by a ball fired by one of his own men.
After his great victory at Ayacucho, Sucré advanced rapidly to Cuzco and thence into the Titicaca basin. By February he had reached Oruro in what is now central Bolivia, and Upper Peru rose as one man to welcome the deliverer. The next step was to decide upon the future government. For thirty years before the beginning of the revolution this country had been part of the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, and when the city on the Plate had expelled its Spanish rulers the patriots there had expected that Upper Peru would continue to be connected with the new nation. Although in the early years of the war these provinces sent delegates to congresses which assembled in the Argentine cities, the Creoles of the plateau never showed any anxiety to incorporate their country with the Argentine, and the successes of the Spanish generals virtually renewed Bolivia's ancient connection with Lima. Now that the Spaniards were expelled, the Bolivian Creoles were no more willing to unite with Lower Peru than with Buenos Aires, and Bolivarencouraged this sentiment. The ambitious and lucky soldier had formed the Napoleonic conception of making himself supreme dictator of a confederation of small states, each of which was to be ruled by a subordinate dictator named from among his creatures. To organise Upper Peru into a separate country with Sucré at its head would be a long step in this direction. Bolivar himself was president of the confederation of Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador, as well as dictator of Lower Peru, and at the head of a victorious army of Colombians. Argentina's influence was nullified by civil war. Chile's strength was as yet unsuspected. For the moment Bolivar was supreme in South America. At his dictation Peru and Buenos Aires promulgated decrees leaving to the provinces of Upper Peru the right "to decide freely and spontaneously as to what form of government would be most conducive to their prosperity and good government."
When Bolivar himself reached the country he was received in a delirium of joy and gratitude, and the enthusiastic Bolivians acclaimed him father of their country. In a literal sense he deserved the title, for his intervention had conferred independence on Bolivia, and his decrees now fixed her boundaries. In general he followed the ancient limits of the audiencia of Charcas. Peru retained the seacoast directly to the west as well as all the Titicacan basin north and west of the lake, compelling Bolivian commerce to pass through foreign territory in order to reach the ocean. Far to the south Bolivia was conceded a little ribbon of coast, but the routethither lay over the bleak and barren Puna and was too long to be of any practical service.
On the 11th of August, 1825, official proclamation was made that the new republic had begun its existence, taking the name "Bolivia," in honour of the liberator. Congress said in the act of independence that: "Upper Peru is the altar upon which the first blood was shed for liberty, and the land where the last tyrant perished. The barbarous burning of more than a hundred villages, the destruction of towns, the scaffolds raised everywhere for the partisans of liberty, the blood of thousands of victims that would make even Caribs shudder; the taxes and exactions, as arbitrary as inhuman; the insecurity of property, life, and of honour itself; an atrocious and merciless inquisitorial system; all have not been able to extinguish the sacred fire of liberty and the just hatred of Spanish power."
Early in the following year Bolivar presented a Constitution all ready for the approval of congress. Written in his own hand, it stands a curious proof of his political ideas. After laying down the somewhat vague principle that liberty is a mere island which the waves of tyranny and anarchy alternately threaten to engulf, and establishing a legislative system, too complicated to be workable, he shows the cloven hoof by providing for a president elected for life and possessing the right to nominate a successor. Sucré was made the president as a matter of course, but hardly had he begun his regular government when troubles broke out. His own character, the internal conditions of Bolivia, and theinternational jealousies felt against him as the friend and representative of Bolivar, combined to make his position untenable. A general of the first order, a statesman of enlightened ideas, and a single-minded and unselfish patriot, Sucré would not deign to impose himself by force of arms on a reluctant people, nor make undignified compromises with the turbulent caudillos. He had accepted the presidency only after it had been repeatedly pressed upon him by the Bolivian congress, and though he was probably influenced by his loyal wish to aid Bolivar in the latter's scheme of uniting all Spanish-America under a strong, semi-monarchical government, he was unselfishly anxious to restore peace and order. The heterogeneous population of about a million who lived upon the plateau was, however, demoralised by the terrible experiences through which it had passed in the previous fifteen years. Three-fourths were Indian, a stoical, docile race which would not make much trouble, but which was divided into two nations speaking different languages and possessing little capacity for organisation. The few whites and the more numerous people of mixed blood were the dominating elements, and these had been trained to lawlessness and ferocity by the long war.
Sucré vainly tried to replace anarchy by some semblance of orderly government. The revenues of the country had fallen from the two millions annually of colonial times to almost nothing. His attempt to substitute a rational system of direct taxation for the countless Spanish imposts failed. Money topay the Colombian troops could not be raised and the mercenaries became mutinous. At the same time symptoms of rebellion appeared among the Bolivian caudillos. Troubles in Colombia and Venezuela had forced Bolivar to retire from Peru and the troops he left behind almost immediately mutinied, and Santa Cruz pushed himself to the head of affairs at Lima. The Bolivarian Constitution of Peru was overthrown, and Santa Cruz and Gamarra advanced upon Bolivia to expel Sucré. The latter's Colombian troops mutinied and bands of insurrectionists rose in various parts of the country to aid the Peruvian invaders, while Argentina and Chile plainly showed their desire for Sucré's overthrow. On the 28th of July, 1828, a little more than three years after his triumphant entry into Bolivia, Sucré made a treaty with the leader of the Peruvian army agreeing to withdraw from Bolivia with all the natives of Colombia. General Santa Cruz was named president, and the Peruvians occupied many of the Bolivian provinces for several months, only to withdraw when it became evident that their continued presence would surely provoke a universal uprising. Santa Cruz soon triumphed over all opposition and established himself as master of the country.
The new president was a man whose general intelligence and ability and knowledge of diplomacy, law, and economics gave the country a successful and rational government. Though he abandoned Sucré's premature attempt to reform the taxing system, he energetically applied and improved the old imposts and soon brought some order out of thefinancial chaos. His army was the best organised, disciplined, and equipped in South America. He also tried to attract European immigration and to improve agricultural, commercial, and social conditions and methods. The difficulties of communication and the conservative and industrially unenergetic character of the population, however, prevented any rapid development. Peru was distracted by civil commotions, and Santa Cruz pressed hard on the northern country. He probably could have forced the cession of adjacent seacoast to the inestimable and lasting benefit of Bolivia, but his ambition led him farther. Appealed to for help by one of the rival Peruvian factions, he gave it upon the condition that that country should be divided, the two parts uniting with Bolivia in a confederation of which he was to be the supreme head. In 1835 he invaded Peru and made himself master of the country.
The creation of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation was an especial menace to Chile and the Argentine. The latter country, still a prey to the most lamentable civil disorders, was in no position to undertake any effective intervention, but Chile's already strong and well-established government determined to restore the balance of power. Pretexts for war were soon found, and the more solid texture of Chile's social and political organisation, the energy of her people bred in cold regions, and her command of the sea, quickly made themselves felt. The first expedition sent to Arequipa in 1837 was compelled to retire by an army which Santa Cruz despatcheddown the Cordillera from La Paz. The factions in Peru, however, rose and in the following year Chile renewed the war. On the 20th of January, 1839, with the aid of the Peruvian auxiliaries, the Chileans overwhelmingly defeated an army of Bolivians and Peruvians under Santa Cruz at the battle of Yungay.
The fragility of the foundations upon which Santa Cruz had rested his system was now apparent. The "Peru-Bolivian Confederation" disappeared from the map. Peru re-established her independent existence with her old boundaries. Santa Cruz's enemies in Bolivia rose in rebellion and he fell without a struggle. As a matter of fact the ten years of his more or less orderly government had not changed the character of the Bolivian Creoles and mixed-bloods. His government had been military, reactionary, and a mere makeshift; the Indians still occupied their inferior position, the lower classes regarded the ruling coteries as self-seeking aristocrats, a dull discontent fermented among the whole population, and the ambitious chieftains found little difficulty in seducing the soldiery. Bolivia, definitely cut off from the Pacific, helpless to defend her interests in the plains surrounding the plateau, unable to attract the fertilising and civilising currents of commerce and immigration, entered upon an epoch of civil war, pronunciamentos, and dictatorships which lasted nearly half a century. A recital of the literally countless armed risings, and of the various individuals who exercised, or claimed to exercise, supreme power, would throw little light on the progress of the country. Foreign commerceand domestic industry were so small that the government was always poor and unable to meet its expenses. Peru's possession of the seaports held Bolivian commerce at her mercy, and the military and naval power of Chile was a continual menace. Either of Bolivia's larger neighbours could easily bring on a revolution by opportune aid to ambitious factions, and the turbulence of the Creole military classes was not restrained by any powerful and intelligent commercial and industrial population.
In the midst of the fighting which followed the overthrow of Santa Cruz, a liberal Constitution was proclaimed which attempted to take from the executive his preponderance in the government. Negro slavery was abolished and the movement was altogether in the direction of democracy and against the property-holding classes. In 1840 General Ballivian overcame all his rivals and gained supreme power. In the following year the dictator of Peru, taking advantage of the continual disputes over questions of transit through Peruvian territory, and thinking that in Bolivia's enfeebled condition she would not be able to resist incorporation, led a large army over the border and occupied the province of La Paz. But the Bolivians rallied around Ballivian and defeated the Peruvians in the battle of Yngavi near the end of 1841, a victory which definitely assured the independence of Bolivia.
Ballivian had risen to power by brute military force and crushed out the feeble attempt at popular government made after the fall of Santa Cruz. Despotic, irritable, and ambitious, he had not thewide knowledge or administrative capacity of Santa Cruz, and he gave the country a much worse government. The pride of the turbulent half-breeds was roused by the victory over the Peruvians, and conspiracies and insurrections occurred more frequently. Ballivian ordered the liberal Constitution of 1839 to be repealed and the preponderance of the executive in the governmental system was restored by the Constitution of 1843. He ruled until 1848, but the partisans of Santa Cruz grew bolder and bolder. In spite of the president's efforts to surround himself with officials of talent and intelligence, the power of the government decreased. The irrational and artificial boundaries given to Bolivia by Bolivar continued to involve her in disputes with Peru, and in 1847 the imposition of practically prohibitive duties nearly brought on war. Ballivian assembled an army, but Castilla, the Peruvian president, found means to foment an insurrection, and the Bolivian president was soon engaged in a desperate conflict with the very men whom he had expected to lead against the foreign enemy. Successful at first in his operations, one mutiny was suppressed only to be followed by others more formidable, and he finally gave it up in disgust and retired to exile.
A year of confused struggling followed and at last General Belzu succeeded in establishing himself as dictator. Of low origin and uneducated, passionate and violent, the new ruler owed his elevation to his popularity with the common soldiery and the lowest classes of the population. His so-called policy of conciliation amounted in fact to permitting theguerilla bands to do as they pleased. Rapine, robbery, and riot became almost the normal condition of the country, while the better elements never ceased their conspiracies. Doctor Linares, a man of probity and learning, though stubborn and uncompromising, persisted untiring in his efforts to rid the country of the dictator. For seven years, however, Belzu maintained himself, while Bolivia fell lower and lower into the pit of anarchy, disgraced abroad by the actions of an ignorant tyrant who broke treaties, refused to listen to the protests of foreign ministers, and finally bundled them all out of the country, secure that on his mountain-tops no army could reach him to avenge the insult. The British foreign office literally wiped Bolivia from the map, declaring that she could no longer be recognised as a civilised nation. At last the dictator tired of his place and voluntarily resigned it, leaving as his successor a bastard son-in-law, named Cordova. The latter suppressed nine revolutionary movements in three years before he was at last overthrown by the indefatigable Linares.
The new dictator started in with the good wishes of the respectable elements, and earnestly tried to raise his country from the abyss into which she had fallen. But the nation had been so thoroughly demoralised that there was no foundation to build upon. The public offices were filled by political favourites, but when he threw them out and tried to put honest and competent men in their places he lost the good-will of the office-holding class. He tried to reform the army and dismissed the uselessswarm of officers without commands, but this gained him the enmity of the military. The very ministers whom he had selected to aid him in putting reforms into effect plotted against him, and it was a conspiracy led by Fernandez, the member of his cabinet in whom he placed his greatest confidence, that brought about his fall after he had ruled three stormy and anxious years.
A period of frightful confusion, known as the presidency of General Acha, ensued. The chiefs fought among themselves with such ferocity that in Chile and Peru the partition of Bolivia was seriously discussed. Finally, at the end of 1864, a remarkable man came to the front out of the tangle. This was the celebrated dictator, Melgarejo, who frankly abandoned all pretence of governing by any sanction except that of brute force and terror. He kept up a great army of spies, and the conspiracies which they reported were ruthlessly crushed by the well-paid ruffians who composed his army and blindly obeyed his capricious commands. One day the dictator, drunk, as was his habit, called the guard and ordered them to jump out of the windows in order to show a visiting foreigner the superior discipline of the Bolivian soldier. Several had broken their arms or legs, but he did not even look to see, and continued his demonstration by ordering his aide-de-camp to "lie dead" like a poodle dog. Taxes were arbitrarily levied; peaceable citizens were exiled and shot; around him circulated a crowd of parasitic functionaries. But in spite of his extravagances and cruelties Melgarejo gave somesolidity and consistence to the governmental structure. The production of silver had been declining until about 1850, but at the beginning of Melgarejo's administration had again reached ten millions annually, and thereafter rapidly increased with the encouragement given by him to the investment of foreign capital. Money was freely spent on public works, and the Mollendo railroad, extending to the head of Lake Titicaca, dates from this time. It is the principal route for Bolivia's foreign commerce, though it does not touch Bolivian territory. The isolated desert region on the coast began to be exploited and the guano, nitrate, copper, and silver found there vastly increased the country's revenues, although a considerable foreign debt was incurred.
Melgarejo's enemies succeeded in overthrowing him in 1871, and their leader, General Morales, succeeded to the supreme power. There followed some relaxation of the system of personal tyranny, but in the main the form of the administration changed little, either under Morales or his immediate successors. The first named was able to negotiate a European loan to be employed in the building of railways, and in fact one was constructed—running from Antofagasta on the nitrate coast over the Cordillera and across the Puna table-land to the centre of the country at Oruro. Heavy gradients, the unproductive character of the region along the line, and its length, have prevented its furnishing the cheap and practical outlet to the sea which had been hoped for. Insurrections continued to break out from time to time, and in 1876 General Dazausurped supreme power. His rule lasted until the Chilean war of 1879, but the first decisive defeat was the signal for his fall.
Narciso Campero became president, and the Bolivian nation, hopeless of recovering its coast provinces by force of arms, began the task of re-adjusting itself to the new conditions. The Constitution was re-written in its present form, and a succession of presidents have since ruled the country in a peace and security which forms a happy contrast with the anarchy that preceded Melgarejo's advent. The production of silver rapidly increased, reaching fifteen million dollars in 1885, when Pacheco was president, and growing to twenty millions in 1888 with Arce in the executive chair. Potosí still yields three million ounces per annum, and the great Huanchaca mines far surpass Potosí, making Bolivia the third silver-producing country in the world. But her great resources can never be profitably utilised until a practical outlet to the sea has been found. On the Pacific she has been absolutely shut in since the Chilean war—Peru controlling the northern fourth of the coast which separates her from that ocean and Chile the remainder. Bolivia is without a seaport, though she retains a hope of receiving compensation for the loss of her nitrate territory in the cession of one such outlet, when Chile and Peru are able to come to an agreement about the province of Arica. But the explorations of Heath on the upper tributaries of the Madeira resulted in discoveries which may ultimately enable Bolivia to utilise the magnificent fertile plain lyingjust at the foot of the table-land, but so far well-nigh as inaccessible as the South Pole. Broad and navigable rivers meander through this vast region, needing only the construction of a railway around the Madeira rapids to communicate with the Amazon and the Atlantic.