VIEW OF VALPARAISO.VIEW OF VALPARAISO.
An indirect result of the common danger of the Pacific nations was an agreement in 1866 between Chile and Bolivia as to their boundary on the coast. The line was fixed at the 24th degree, but Chileans were allowed to continue to exploit guano and nitrate as far north as the 23d—an arrangement which gave their country substantial claims in a region which shortly proved a marvellous producer of ready money. The German colonisation in the South continued on an increasing scale during the late sixties; free land was given to immigrants and their passage paid. The Araucanians, resenting the influx of whites so near their own territory, began to make trouble, and a war went on through 1868, 1869, and 1870, which finally resulted in their suing for peace. A line of forts kept them in order and they ceased to be a disturbing factor in Chilean affairs.
Perez had been re-elected in 1866, and his second term marks the beginning of a new era in Chilean politics. The dynamic elements had finally become stronger than the static, and the pressure for amendments to the Constitution could no longer be resisted. But in the forty years since Portales had fixed the form of the government in its aristocratic mould, political traditions had hardened into habits. No really radical changes had any serious chance of success. A measure forbidding the president to be re-elected was passed, and a desperate fight made to extend the suffrage to all who could read and write. Though favoured by President Perez the last failed to carry, and the most the liberals could obtain was a law reducing the property qualification.
The election in 1871 was warmly contested. The advanced liberals pressed hard on the conservatives, who resisted further changes desperately. The latter united with the moderate liberals upon Errazuriz as presidential candidate to succeed Perez, and receiving the support of the outgoing administration he was elected. At first the elements who had elected him controlled a majority in congress, but the aggressiveness of the liberals and rival ambitions in the government coalition soon overthrew the reactionary ministry. Errazuriz changed as congress did and soon found himself pushing liberal reforms. The great issue was the amenability of the clergy to the civil tribunals. Though fifteen years previously President Montt had compelled the reinstatement of two church dignitaries deprived of their places by the archbishop, the clergy had nevertheless persisted in their claims. The liberals now insisted on the adoption of a criminal code which would leave no doubt, and amid bitter opposition it was passed. The clericals were further outraged by concessions as to Protestant worship and the obligatory teaching of the Catholic religion in the state colleges. Though the bill establishing civil marriage failed, the anti-clerical movement went so far that the old-line conservatives withdrew in disgust from the alliance which had existed between them and the moderate liberals since the revolt against Montt. Thenceforth the conservative party ceased to be an important factor, and the predominant liberals divided into factions who intrigued among themselves to organise working congressional majorities, which supportedministries and controlled patronage. Political reform went on with increasing momentum. To curb the control of elections which the ministry in power exercised through the local officers who made up the voting lists, minority representation was provided for, but only after the moderates had forced the radicals to a compromise, which exempted presidential and senatorial elections.
Meanwhile material prosperity was steadily increasing and population growing at the rate of one and a half per cent. a year. Coal mines had been discovered in southern Chile, railroad building continued, and the finding of the rich Caracoles silver mines in 1870, lying near the northern limit of the jointly occupied territory, not only opened up vistas of wealth, but brought to the front the troublesome question of the Bolivian boundary. Peru became alarmed at Chile's rapid progress in the nitrate and guano business, Bolivia feared aggressions on the part of her powerful neighbour, and in 1872 these two powers entered into a defensive alliance intended to protect their joint interests on the Pacific coast. The reaction inevitably consequent on rapid commercial expansion came in the middle of Errazuriz' term, and was aggravated by a fall in the prices of Chilean exports caused by the world panic of 1873. The already burdened government finances quickly felt the strain; outgo exceeded income, and it was necessary to reduce expenses. Happily the debt, though large, was not excessive. Chile had gone in for no such reckless carnival of borrowing as Peru and the Argentine, and her bondshad been opportunely refunded at a low rate of interest.
As the time for the election approached the radical liberals put forward Mackenna on a programme which included not only religious freedom in its widest sense, the extension of the common schools, and the abolition of the tobacco monopoly, but also railways and internal improvements enough to bankrupt the treasury. The moderate liberals were opposed to Mackenna and his programme, so the party split. The convention of moderates was at first unable to agree on a candidate, but on a second attempt Anibal Pinto was nominated. Favoured by the outgoing administration, his election was a foregone conclusion.
By this time the dispute with the Argentine over the possession of the southern extremity of the continent had become acute, and public feeling in both countries had risen to a height perilous to the maintenance of peace. The only boundary treaty between Chile and Argentina—that of 1856—provided that the limits should be as they had been during colonial times, but these were not certain because throughout the Spanish occupation the territory now disputed had been uninhabited, and neither the viceroy of Buenos Aires nor the captains-general of Chile had concerned themselves about it. Since independence Chile had always claimed to the Andes on the east and to Cape Horn on the south, including the region about the Straits of Magellan over to the Atlantic side. As early as 1843 she had established a post at the eastern end of the straits, andArgentina at first did not seriously dispute her possession. In 1870 guano was discovered in the region, and when Chile promptly proceeded to treat it as her own the Argentine government protested. For ten years the two countries bickered, but with the Peruvian war impending Chile thought it wiser to make some concessions, and the dispute was finally settled by a treaty in 1881 by which the territory was divided, Chile getting the more valuable part with the control of both ends of the straits, although this great interoceanic waterway was declared neutral and no fortifications may be erected there.
Since 1873 the low prices of Chile's chief exports, wheat and copper, had turned the balance of trade against her. The government could not make both ends meet, and in 1878 the banks were compelled to suspend specie payments. They resorted to the issue of more notes, backed by the government's guaranty. Just at this juncture the Bolivian government levied a heavy royalty on the nitrate extracted by the Chilean companies operating in Bolivian territory. This threatened ruin to the most promising enterprise in which Chilean citizens were engaged, and was believed to be a manifest violation of the terms of the treaty of 1866. The government determined not to stop short of war itself if necessary to defend Chilean interests, though war on Bolivia also meant war on her ally, Peru.
A meagre description of the stirring events of this contest will be found in that part of this volume devoted to Peru. Chile's overwhelming victory not only profoundly affected her international position, but also her internal condition. The preparationsof the spring of 1879 plunged the government into expenditures which ordinary revenues were totally insufficient to meet. A new issue of paper money was resorted to, but the interest on the foreign debt was kept up. The first nine months of 1879 were an anxious time for Chileans. Pitted against two nations whose combined population was nearly double her own, her treasury empty, while that of Peru was supplied by the marvellous nitrate deposits of Tarapacá, the result appeared doubtful and the consequences of failure almost too horrible to face. When the Peruvians lost their iron-clad,Independencia, hope rose, but the ease with which theHuascareluded the Chilean ships made the people again lose confidence in their navy, and the coast towns were terror-stricken. But the destruction of the dreaded iron-clad in the naval battle of the 9th of October changed in the twinkling of an eye fear into confidence, apprehension of national ruin into the joyful assurance that a Chilean army would soon be in possession of the Golconda of the Pacific. Within a month the Chilean forces were landed in the nitrate country, the Peruvians and Bolivians had been chased across the desert, and the Chilean collectors were receiving a million and a half a month from the royalties of the nitrate mines. A net sum nearly equal to the total revenue which Chile previously had been collecting from all sources was added to her income, and she was no longer driven to painful expedients in order to raise money to meet her military expenses. Although the issues of paper money were continued and prices consequently rose, business flourished and a period of abundance replaced the hard times which had reached a crisis in 1878. The government was able to abolish the odious tobacco monopoly, and the war rather lightened than increased the burdens of commerce. The centralised government of Chile proved an admirable instrument for times of war. The president and his ministry, backed by a compact congress, wielded the whole force and resources of the country like a weapon fitted to the hand, striking heavy and relentless blows until Peru lay prostrate.
After the complete destruction of the allied army by the Tacna campaign in March, 1880, the government, confident that a treaty of peace would soon be signed, delayed further aggressive operations for several months. But the Peruvians were obstinate and later in the year it was resolved to carry the war to the centre of the enemy's country. Lima fell on the 17th of January, 1881, and the glorious news was received while the liberals were contending over whom they should select as a candidate to succeed Pinto. There was much striving among the rival chiefs and one convention had already adjourned without coming to any agreement. Pinto ventured to interfere in a more decided way than any previous president had done and his influence was sufficiently powerful to induce the liberal party to unite on his personal choice, Santa Maria. The opposition tried to rally around the candidacy of General Baquedano, the greatest general of the war, but the prestige of the administration was too powerful.
Although his nomination had been bitterly opposed by many prominent liberals, once in office Santa Maria found means to unite in his support a great majority of congress. The members who took their seats in 1882 were divided into three factions: the liberals proper, as the moderates were called, the radicals, and the nationals—few in number but counting in their ranks some of the ablest and wealthiest aristocrats in Chile. The conservatives, no longer an important factor, had abandoned their opposition to the civil reforms which the liberals pressed forward, concentrating their efforts on a hopeless but desperate resistance to religious innovations. Santa Maria was in full accord with his party, and his message of 1883 proclaimed that the time had come for the realisation of the oldest and dearest aspirations of Chilean liberals—civil marriage and registry, entire liberty of conscience, and the secularisation of the cemeteries. In the fierce discussion which followed, the eloquent prime minister, Balmaceda, took the lead. Although educated for the priesthood he had developed into an intransigent radical, a passionate advocate of the completest separation of Church and State.
The civil-marriage law was pushed through in spite of the sullen resistance of the conservatives and clericals. The women of Chile, the old-fashioned elements of society, and the clergy would not accept the result. The priests refused to perform a religious ceremony for any one who had been married by the civil law, and excommunicated the president and his cabinet. Devout Chileans of all classeswould not yield on this point of conscience, and cursed the liberal politicians as betrayers of their God. All other political questions were held in abeyance. Urged by their wives and the priests, the conservatives abandoned the attitude of abstention from politics which they had so long maintained, and went to the polls to do what they could to secure a majority for the repeal of the law. But ladies' entreaties and priests' absolutions availed little against the government's control of the election machinery, and the law remained on the statute books. Opposition centred against the presidential candidacy of Balmaceda—the radical, the Anti-Christ, the uncompromising. In vain Santa Maria tried to unite the four liberal groups—the government liberals, the radicals, the nationals, and the new division called dissidents. They refused to meet in a general convention. However, a majority, composed of the government liberals, the nationals, and a portion of the radicals, decided to support Balmaceda and he was triumphantly elected in 1886.
The dissidents, conservatives, and opposition radicals formed a formidable minority, determined to obstruct his administration. In the closing days of 1885 scenes were enacted on the floor of the Chilean congress which resembled recent sessions of the Austrian parliament. The revenue and appropriation bills were about to expire, and fresh ones for a new fiscal period had to be adopted. Under the regulations every member had a right to speak twice on each section, and the minority filibustered untilthe constitutional period for adjournment had expired. Santa Maria would have to finish out his administration and Balmaceda begin his without supply bills. Under a strict construction of the Constitution all government would cease, but Balmaceda was not the man to shrink from enforcing the right of self-preservation inherent in all governments. The executive calmly proceeded to collect taxes and pay expenses according to the provisions of the expired law until a new congress met shortly after Balmaceda's inauguration, and this solution was peacefully accepted by the country.
Chile had never known a time of such material prosperity as the first three years of Balmaceda's administration proved to be. The revenues, well-nigh doubled by the nitrate and copper of the provinces wrested from Peru, were further increased by the flourishing condition of commerce and industry. The administration initiated and carried forward many important public works. Large sums were voted for railways, colonisation, and schools. Public salaries were raised, the Araucanian country colonised, and the Indians finally incorporated as real citizens of Chile. The clericals made the best of their defeat, and the liberal majority in congress, inspired by Balmaceda's energy, pushed forward rapidly on the road of reform and change. A new election law was passed and a beginning made toward making the Constitution more democratic.
Balmaceda's first idea was to unite all the liberal factions, conciliate the conservatives, and devote himself to a policy of material development. Although owing his election to three political parties out of the six, he was unwilling and perhaps unable to govern solely by their assistance. Instead of regarding himself as the chief of a combination of parties, entrusted by it with the direction of affairs and under obligations to act in harmony with it, he did not hesitate to accept the help offered by his former political opponents when that help was needed to carry into effect his personal ideas of what was best for the public interest. On the other hand, the party which had elected him was really no party at all—it was only a temporary coalition of three discordant factions. It is not necessary to follow the many changes in his cabinet, the continual substitution of one group for another, the details of the efforts which he made during three years to govern as he pleased, and at the same time to govern in harmony with congress. His difficulties lay not so much in reconciling conflicts of opinion on matters of policy as with the personal rivalries and ambitions of the factions. Suffice it to say that toward the end of 1889 he found himself without a majority in congress and with no prospect of obtaining one. Heretofore the rival groups had been only too anxious to trade their votes in exchange for a share of patronage. Now, satisfied that the president was determined upon depriving them of their secular influence in public affairs, all the factions of the ruling aristocracy fought him bitterly. They feared that the president was plotting the formation of a personal party, cemented by hopes of office, responsible to him alone, and that the system ofparliamentary government which had grown up by tacit consent and long-continued custom, would be replaced by a real presidential government in which the executive would be the source of power and not merely its channel.
Indeed, circumstances and his own characteristics were rapidly forcing Balmaceda into this position. Conscious of his own integrity and the disinterestedness and patriotism of his motives, his irritation against the stubborn self-seeking of the cliques ended in convincing him that the old interpretation of the Constitution must be abandoned, and the president in person in reality vested with all the powers given by the letter of the fundamental law. He devoted the remainder of his life to an effort to free the presidency from the practical control which congress had exercised since the days of Portales. In January, 1890, he threw down the gauntlet by appointing a cabinet composed exclusively of personal supporters. The new ministers announced that, considering their power to be derived from the president, they would hold office so long as they continued to be satisfactory to him, regardless whether or not they were supported by a parliamentary majority. In May, Balmaceda went a step farther by selecting another cabinet at whose head he placed San Fuentes, his own intimate friend and a man regarded with particular hatred by the president's opponents because it was understood that he had been selected as the president's successor, pledged to the continuance of the same policy. Congress replied by passing a vote of censure. Balmaceda insisted that thecabinet should remain in power. Congress refused to pass any appropriation bills and summoned the ministers to the bar of the House. But the president was confident that he could carry the elections, and, sure of ultimate victory, felt he could afford to make present concessions. In August a compromise was agreed upon by which Balmaceda dismissed the San Fuentes cabinet and selected one composed of neutral men, while congress consented to pass the appropriation bills. The truce did not last long. The new ministers soon found that they were mere figureheads and that the Balmacedist executive committee was the real power in the administration. They resigned and Claudio Vicuña formed a ministry which was a re-edition of the May cabinet. The announcement of its appointment was in effect a notification that the armistice was at an end. Congress accepted the gage of combat and immediately began to organise for civil war.
The wealth, social distinction, and professional classes of the country were mostly on the side of the congressionalists, and all who were conservative and fearful of disturbance in the established order rallied around them. The democratic elements, the reformers, the radicals, the dissatisfied, supported Balmaceda, but the great mass of the common people, used for centuries to political subordination to the upper classes, remained inert. His opponents met with no encouragement in their efforts to suborn the army and General Baquedano refused the leadership of the insurrection which they offered him. However, the officers of the navy, recruitedfrom among the aristocratic classes, enthusiastically assured their undivided support, and Jorge Montt, who held a high position in the navy, was chosen as chief of the revolution.
The congressionalists resolved to make the issue upon the point whether the president had a right to maintain any military force, land or naval, after the 31st of December, the day upon which the existing appropriation law expired. Balmaceda did not hesitate an instant, but issued a proclamation that he would follow the precedent established in 1886—collect taxes and maintain the public service by executive authority until the assembling of the next session of congress. He expressly disclaimed any designs of establishing a permanent dictatorship, while expressing his firm determination not to permit the refusal of congress to interrupt the functioning of government. The issue was sharply drawn; neither side would recede; either congress would cease to exercise its immemorial control of the executive or would depose him.
JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA.JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA.
Five days after Balmaceda's proclamation the congressionalist chiefs embarked on board the war-ships lying in Valparaiso Bay, and the civil war was on. The army remained faithful to Balmaceda and he was in undisputed possession of the whole country, although his opponents had powerful sympathisers everywhere. The latter's plan of campaign was simple. Once again power on the sea was to decide the fate of the Pacific coast. The navy sailed away to the nitrate provinces, a region separated from the rest of Chile by the impassable Atacama desert and to which, therefore, Balmaceda could not send re-inforcements. The small garrison under Colonel Robles made a desperate resistance, but was soon overpowered, and there the revolution established its base of operations. The population of sturdy miners, used to discipline under their bosses,furnished an admirable supply of recruits, and a revenue of two millions a month fell at once into the hands of the congressionalists. Possessing the sinews of war, it was only a question of a few months to equip an army with the most modern weapons and have it thoroughly drilled and organised by experts. The blockade of the southern ports intercepted Balmaceda's supplies and the congressionalist partisans escaped by hundreds to make their way up the coast and join the revolutionary army. By August they were ready with a force of more than ten thousand men.
In the meantime Balmaceda had been making desperate efforts to get a navy, but iron-clads cannot be improvised, and the congressionalist agents in New York and Europe had money enough to outbid him and to command influences which effectually hindered prompt action. In Chile itself he adopted stern repressive measures against the plots of his enemies and vigorously recruited his army, putting into the field nearly thirty thousand soldiers. But the blockade prevented his procuring modern arms and they had to go into battle with old-style rifles whose range was only half that of those carried by their opponents. He was also at a disadvantage in that the enemy could strike where he pleased on a coast nine hundred miles long. Balmaceda was obliged therefore to keep his forces divided. Nine thousand were at Coquimbo, three hundred and fifty miles north of Santiago; as many at Concepcion, four hundred miles south of the capital; and five thousand at Valparaiso, a hundred miles north-west.At Santiago he kept the remainder as a reserve to be sent to the assistance of whichever of the three divisions might be attacked.
On the 20th of August the fleet of seventeen vessels carrying the whole revolutionary army suddenly appeared a few miles north of Valparaiso. Balmaceda had short warning and was not able to oppose the landing, which was skilfully conducted by Colonel Canto, the able strategist who commanded the congressionalist forces, with the valuable assistance of Colonel Koerner, a Prussion tactician of the first rank whose services had been hired. There was no time to get troops from Coquimbo and Concepcion. The congressionalist generals moved so rapidly that the best the president could do was to send the Santiago division, which, united with that at Valparaiso, made a force nearly equal in numbers to the enemy. The revolutionists landed with their rations in their haversacks and within a few hours were marching straight south along the seashore on Valparaiso. The Balmacedists tried to defend the passage of the Aconcagua River, which enters the ocean twenty miles north of the city, but they had hardly got into position on the heights which overlook its southern bank when the enemy was upon them. The latter's artillery was twice as strong and his infantry more numerous besides being armed with longer range rifles. In spite of the advantage of position and the fatigue of their opponents the Balmacedists were flung back in complete defeat by the volleys of the Mannlichers and the furious cannonading from both batteries and ships. The battlelasted the whole day and at its close two thousand of the government troops lay on the field, three thousand had been dispersed or deserted to the enemy, and scarcely three thousand held together for the retreat to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where three regiments of the Santiago division who had taken no part in the fight were waiting. Canto followed, but failing in a tentative attack on the strong northern defences of Valparaiso, he determined to make a circuit to the east, cut the railroad between Santiago and Valparaiso, and either take the latter place in the rear or march on the capital as seemed best. The movement, so masterfully conceived, was skilfully carried out without a moment's loss of time. The essential thing was to act so promptly that Balmaceda could not concentrate his forces. On the 25th the whole congressionalist army had reached Quillota, on the railroad twenty-five miles back of Valparaiso. But Balmaceda had also been active, and during those three days the Concepcion division had arrived at Santiago, and reinforcements had been got through to Valparaiso which raised the army to nearly ten thousand men. Four thousand troops defended Santiago and more were momentarily expected from Coquimbo.
Canto resolved to give him no time for any further concentration, but to fall upon the Valparaiso army before the railroad could be repaired and, by destroying Balmaceda's largest force, end the war. A forced march across country brought him to the old carriage road which comes into Valparaiso from the south. By the 27th his army had covered the incredible distance of forty miles and was within six miles of the government forces, who occupied a strong position between the congressionalists and Valparaiso. Tired though the congressionalists were, they were forced to attack without delay. The only provisions which they could count on were the rations that they had brought in their haversacks; and Balmaceda might at any moment receive reinforcements from Santiago. So they advanced resolutely to the assault. The Balmacedists fought with little enthusiasm or hope; the desertion of part of their cavalry and the inactivity of the rest discouraged the infantry and artillery, but at first they met the charges with the steadiness characteristic of the race. The battle was decided by a flank movement executed by Koerner, who turned the Balmacedist left, while the cavalry charged recklessly up the hill. Thrown into confusion, the government troops were simply swept out of existence by furious volleys and determined charges. Some had stood steady long enough to kill and wound a sixth of the enemy who charged up the hill, but more than a quarter of their own numbers perished in the battle and the pursuit.
The fight was over at half-past ten in the morning, but the news of the utter ruin of all his hopes did not reach Balmaceda until half-past seven. It was his wife's saint's day and friends were coming to dine at his house. Characteristically he did not recall the invitations, and not until the dinner party was over did he arrange to turn over the government of the city to General Baquedano. Then hequietly walked to the Argentine legation and received asylum. Vicuña, the recently elected president, who would have succeeded Balmaceda on the 18th of September, was in Valparaiso and fled to a foreign warship followed by the principal Balmacedist chiefs. No further resistance was made and the congressionalist junta, with Jorge Montt at its head, assumed the supreme direction of affairs. Balmaceda's fall was followed by some riots, but the arrival of the responsible chiefs of the victorious party ensured the re-establishment of order. Like the Anglo-Saxon, the Chilean fights desperately on the field of battle, and when his blood is up he is relentless, but when beaten he phlegmatically accepts the consequences, and when victorious he is not cruel. The Chileans resemble their prototypes of the northern hemisphere in lacking the vivid imagination which makes the inhabitants of warmer climates vengeful. Slow, silent, serious, practical-minded, hard to themselves as well as to others, they turned at once to the work of reconstruction.
No one suspected that the defeated president was at the house of the Argentine minister. It was supposed that he had escaped in disguise, but on the 18th of September, the day upon which his legal term as president expired, the country was astounded to hear that he had shot himself that very morning. The unhappy man feared that he might get his generous host into danger, and his theatrical temperament could not bear the humiliation of a public trial or the risk of being torn to pieces by a mob in case he were discovered. He offered himselfas an expiatory sacrifice, knowing that his death would save his friends from further persecution and hoping that it might do for the cause of democratic government in Chile that which his life had so signally failed to accomplish.
An election had been called and Jorge Montt chosen president of Chile with all due regard to legal forms. The aristocratic and parliamentary form of government, under which Chile had so long lived in peace, order, and prosperity, growing at home in intellectual and moral graces and in material welfare, while abroad the nation had waxed great in the consideration of the world, was restored as it had been before Balmaceda attacked it. Not only the arbitrament of battle, but the verdict of the people, so far as the latter can be gathered from the convinced enthusiasm shown by the congressionalists and inferred from the passiveness of the masses, had decided that there should be no radical change; that the president should be advised by the congress and rule in harmony with its majority; that the ballot should be guarded by both an educational and a property qualification; that political evolution should proceed by slow amendment and not by radical innovation—by experiment, not by theory.
The last twelve years of Chile's internal political history offers little of special interest to the foreign student. Jorge Montt, though raised to power by force of arms, proved a modest and non-aggressive president. For two years the anti-Balmacedist groups managed to keep a majority together, but incompatible ambitions rather than differences ofprinciple soon divided them. Balmaceda's old partisans quickly rallied and elected nearly a quarter of the members of the congress of 1894, holding the balance of power amid the warring factions. Curiously enough, it was with the conservatives that the Balmacedists formed a combination, and though they held no cabinet position in Montt's time, they were a principal factor in the coalition which elected Errazuriz to the presidency in 1896. The jealousies among the rival factions of the liberals were too bitter to permit the bulk of that party to make any effective combination against the conservative-Balmacedist-liberal alliance, and the latter remained in power during most of Errazuriz's administration. At its end, the liberals having failed to agree, German Riesco was nominated and elected by much the same influences over Pedro Montt, son of the old president.
The present Chilean parties do not embody any definite and conflicting political principles. Each one derives its origin from some great conflict which took place under a former administration. Once welded together in battling for a common cause, friendship, gratitude, the hope of mutual aid in their ambitions have kept the members united. The latter-day Balmacedists are not enemies of parliamentary dominance; the nationals are now classed as liberals, though they started as ultra-conservatives under Montt; the conservatives do not especially oppose reforms, though they defend the Catholic universities against radical attacks. The property qualification for suffrage is liberally construed; anyone who has an income of a thousand pesos is legally entitled to vote, and if the elector can read and write he is not rigidly cross-examined as to the exact amount of the wages he receives. However, this wide extension of the suffrage has not brought about any material change in the personnel of congress. Discussion of the advisability of changing the present system is purely academic, and if dissatisfaction exists it ferments far beneath the surface. Like the English aristocracy that of Chile is truly representative, wielding its power with a keen sense of its responsibility to the nation, and rarely refusing to adopt a reform which is clearly demanded by the country.
THE PLAZA VICTORIA VALPARAISO.THE PLAZA VICTORIA VALPARAISO.
Chile recovered with some difficulty from the industrial disorganisation and tremendous expenditures caused by the civil war. Balmaceda's vast issues of paper money disturbed government finances and made the returns of private enterprise uncertain. The world-wide fall of prices in the years following 1893 hurt Chilean exports, and an era of economy made necessary by closely balanced budgets succeeded the flush times. Meanwhile, the marvellous material growth of the Argentine Republic began to make Chileans doubt if their country could retain that military and naval hegemony which she had possessed since her great victories over Peru and Bolivia. Shut in between the Andes and the sea, on the north an uninhabitable desert and on the south the bleak Antarctic waste, Chile naturally envied the limitless and fertile plains over which her neighbour might spread her population, and the Argentine navy was fast approaching her own in size and efficiency.
By the year 1895 Argentina's revenue exceeded Chile's nearly twenty per cent., while the former's foreign commerce was seventy per cent. and her population fifty per cent. greater. Their rivalry, none the less real because tacit, explains the seemingly unreasonable bitterness of the dispute over the differing interpretations of the treaty of limits. That treaty fixed the boundary at the crest of the Andes, but when the joint commissioners appointed to make the surveys reached southern latitudes where the range becomes ill-defined and runs off into the sea they found it difficult to determine justwhere the crest was. The Argentines insisted on a line drawn between the highest peaks because that would give them more territory, while the Chileans contended for the watershed between the two oceans. Another dispute also arose about the line which ought to divide the Argentine from the province which Chile had taken from Bolivia. Though in both cases the disputed territory was comparatively valueless, national feeling rose to an extraordinary pitch and more than once war has been imminent. The northern dispute was at length settled in 1898 by the arbitration of the American minister to Buenos Aires, but, though a similar method of settlement had been agreed upon as to the other and more important question, its final submission was delayed from year to year, and meanwhile each nation suspected the other of aggressions. Argentina ordered new iron-clads, which she could ill afford; Chile ordered still better ones, and Argentina kept pace. In 1898 and again in 1901 the two countries were on the brink of a war which certainly would have ruined either one or the other. Happily, better counsels prevailed and arbitration by the English government was hurried forward, resulting in 1902 in a settlement with which both parties are in reality satisfied, and the fine iron-clads building in Europe are now for sale.
BOLIVIA
Between latitudes fourteen and a half and twenty-three and a half, the mighty Andean chain is massed into a plateau five hundred miles wide, over twelve thousand feet high, and interspersed with a complex system of mountains and ridges, parallel, transverse, and interlaced. Geographers estimate that this central portion of the Andean system contains nearly five hundred thousand cubic miles of matter above sea level, and that it would, cover the entire area of South America to an average depth of four hundred feet. The great ranges which stretch north to the Caribbean and south to Cape Horn are mere arms of this massive elevation of the earth, the highest and largest in the new world. Within a few miles of the coast rises a lofty and continuous range of mountains which can be scaled only over a few passes, none of which fall far below fourteen thousand feet. From the top a vast plateau stretches to the lofty chain which forms the inland rim of the Andean massif. This plateau is Bolivia. The northern portion forms the Titicacabasin, the whole of which was formerly covered by an immense fresh-water sea, fed by the snows of the surrounding mountains, and draining south-east into the Plate Valley. Now, however, the rainfall has so decreased that the great lake is shrunk to a mere tithe of its original dimensions, and none of its waters escape out of the dry plateau. In its southern part the plateau is bifurcated by a high central range, which divides southern Bolivia into two portions, the western of which, called the Puna, is too high, cold, and dry for cultivation. To the east the plains are lower and moister, sloping very gradually toward the east until they plunge off abruptly into the great central valley of South America.
The northern part of the Titicaca basin was the cradle of civilisation in South America. On the shores of the lake are ruins of great buildings erected by a race who occupied this plateau unknown centuries before the rise of the Inca power. One doorway exists in an almost perfect state of preservation, carved out of a single block of stone seven feet high and twice as long, covered with figures elaborately sculptured in high relief, while dozens of heroic statues, and walls containing hewn stones twelve yards long, remain to attest the skill of the old workmen.
MONOLITHIC DOORWAY AT TRAHUANACO.MONOLITHIC DOORWAY AT TRAHUANACO.
Bolivian history emerges from the realm of conjecture with the invasion of the Incas, a warlike and civilised tribe who inhabited the slightly lower plateaux and valleys north-east of the Titicaca basin. The ancient Titicacan civilisation had long since fallen from its high estate and the Inca armies easilyovercame the resistance of the scattered shepherd tribes. The conquered aborigines were incorporated with the Incas and Quichua became the principal although not the only language. Great colonies of the dominant race spread south and east over the massif into the fertile regions of Yungas, Cochabamba, and Charcas. Bolivia became one of the principal seats of the Inca power. There they built their most magnificent palaces; in the northern mountains they found the copper for their tools and weapons, and the gold which they used to ornament their temples. Over the higher plains roamed flocks of llamas and vicuñas. The slightly lower parts of the plateau produced potatoes and quinoa, and the warmer valleys maize, cocoa, and cotton. The broad lake, the rivers, and the roads over the comparatively level country favoured intercommunication and social and industrial consolidation.
In the terrible civil war which broke out about 1525 between Atahuallpa and Huascar, Bolivia suffered less than the Peruvian and Ecuadorean provinces, but thousands of her sons were drafted into the armies which Huascar successively launched against Quizquiz and the horde of northern tribes which relentlessly marched from Quito to Cuzco, and after five years of slaughter captured the southern capital and the legitimate emperor. But before Quizquiz had had time to pursue his conquering way into Bolivia, news came that Pizarro had imprisoned and murdered Atahuallpa, and that the Spaniards were on their way to Cuzco to give battle to Quizquiz and restore the legitimate succession. Thenorthern Indians were defeated and at the close of 1533 Pizarro entered Cuzco in triumph riding at the side of Huascar's heir. The people of southern Peru, Bolivia, Tucuman, and Chile regarded the Spaniards as deliverers and allies. Within a few months after the occupation of Cuzco the strangers rode out of the city along the splendid stone-flagged Inca roads, crossed the transverse range into the Titicaca basin, and followed south-east to the extremity of the plateau, encountering little resistance and regarded as ambassadors from the Inca emperor. They found the country teeming with a docile and prosperous population, and the mountains on its borders were reported to abound in silver, gold, and copper. Almagro, Pizarro's partner and associate, to whose share had fallen the southern half of the empire, resolved not only to take possession of Bolivia, but also to conquer the great province which the Indians told him lay far to the south in fertile valleys on the western side of the Andes and hard by the Pacific Ocean.
In 1535 Almagro marched from Cuzco with five hundred Spaniards and ten thousand Indians, the latter under the command of a brother of the Emperor. After crossing the Titicaca basin, he surmounted the difficulties of the bleak and icy Puna, the snowy passes, and the Atacama desert, and descended finally into Chile. But he found the people poor and warlike, and encountered little gold. Returning in 1538 to make war on Pizarro, he was defeated and died strangled in prison by his relentless rival. Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco's brothers, became dominant on the Titicacan plateau, and began establishing great feudal lordships, dividing the country among their followers and exacting tribute and forced labour from the Indians. In 1540 the great Marquis himself visited Charcas, the southern capital and only large Indian city in Bolivia.
Late that same year his quartermaster, Pedro de Valdivia, led another expedition along the route over the Bolivian plateau into northern Chile. Meanwhile the Spaniards were diligently searching Bolivia for the Indian gold mines. Though the Incas were known to have extracted immense quantities of the metal from the placers around Lake Titicaca, the surface deposits had been pretty well exhausted, and the Spaniards were disappointed. Silver, however, existed in abundance and the strangers began to work the mines shortly after they reached the plateau. About 1545 the great deposits of Potosí were discovered on a bleak mountainside four hundred miles south-east of Titicaca and near Charcas, in the regions where Gonzalo Pizarro possessed immense estates. At that time Gonzalo was virtually independent monarch of the whole Inca empire, having headed a successful revolt against a viceroy sent out to reorganise the country and put a stop to Indian slavery. But he did not long enjoy his riches, for in 1548 he risked his all in a hopeless battle with a new Spanish governor and ended his stormy life on the scaffold.
The discovery of Potosí revolutionised Upper Peru—as Bolivia was then called. It is probablethat the high and inaccessible plateau would have largely escaped Spanish settlement if it had not been for the marvellous riches now offered to Spanish cupidity. Pizarro's original followers came as conquerors and not as settlers. They overran a great and civilised empire whose revenues they proposed to absorb and whose inhabitants they subjected to tribute, but after they had obtained all the gold accumulated in the hands of the Indians there would have been little to have induced them to remain in Bolivia. But as soon as the unprecedented extent of the silver deposit at Potosí was recognised, Bolivia became the greatest source of that metal in the known world and the most important province of the transatlantic dominions of the Castilian king. That one mountain has produced two billion ounces of silver. Even by the early rude processes which the Spaniards found in use among the Indians seventy million ounces were taken out in the first thirty years, and the discovery of quicksilver in Peru, with the invention of the copper-pan amalgamation process in 1575, quadrupled the output. A great mining camp sprang up on the Potosí mountainside; royal officials, contractors, and merchants flocked to this Eldorado; the mountain roads to Lima swarmed with mule trains, carrying down silver and painfully toiling back again laden with supplies; the routes of the Bolivian plateau became the greatest arteries of travel in Spanish America.
The year of Gonzalo's execution the city of La Paz was founded in a valley lying in the open plains just south of Lake Titicaca, and soon became a greatemporium of Spanish trade. On the fertile plateau to the east of Potosí the city of Charcas flourished and was made the political and ecclesiastical capital of Upper Peru, Potosí being too high for Europeans. Soon other great mines were found, among which those of Oruro, on the south-eastern edge of the Titicaca basin, proved especially rich. Nearly ten thousand abandoned silver mines testify to the activity of the Spaniards in hunting the precious metal, and the total production of silver in Bolivia during the colonial period exceeded three billion ounces. To work these mines the Spaniards ruthlessly impressed the helpless Indians. Each village was required to furnish a certain number of labourers annually. Lots were drawn as if for a proscription, and the unhappy creatures who drew the bad numbers went off to meet a certain death in the dark wet pits and galleries, bidding good-bye to their wives and children like men stepping on the scaffold. The destruction of life was frightful, the official returns made by the officials charged with the impressment demonstrating that in the neighbourhood of Potosí the Indian population fell within a hundred years to a tenth of its original numbers.
The influx of Spanish adventurers and officials also stimulated the extension of the system of agricultural encomiendas—that is, the grants of large tracts of land with the privilege of enslaving the Indian occupants. Sheep were introduced from Spain within twenty years of the conquest, and immense herds belonging to the Spanish proprietors and tended by Indian slaves soon covered the vastpasture grounds which are found even on the higher and colder portions of the plateau. Horses had come with the first conquerors and the breeding of mules flourished, especially in Cochabamba, the great agricultural centre which was founded in 1573, as well as in Charcas and the far southern districts of Tucuman. Cattle spread quickly over these same regions, and their beef, maize, mules, and horses found a good market in the mining districts.
By the year 1580 the Spanish colonial system affecting the natives had been perfected, codified, and put into general operation. The whole country was divided into about thirty districts, each governed by a corregidor who in theory was controlled by a complicated and carefully drawn system of regulations, but who in practice was a petty tyrant against whom the white Creoles had little chance of redress, and who held the Indians absolutely at his mercy. The regulations framed by the distant viceroy at Lima for the protection of the natives were evaded by the corregidors, intent solely on extorting money from the poor creatures committed to their charge. Encomiendas had nominally been abolished, but landed proprietors still exercised the right to exact tribute from the Indians on their estates and great numbers were forced to serve as life servants under various pretexts. Those Indians who retained a semblance of freedom obeyed their own caciques, who were often the descendants of the royal Inca family. The principal duty for which the Spaniards held these chiefs responsible was the collection of the head-tax in their respective villages.
The letter of the law required a seventh of the adult male population to work for the benefit of the Government, and in practice this resulted in an unlimited farming out of Indians as slaves to the rural proprietors. As much as possible the Indians retired to their villages to escape the notice of the officials, hoping to find under their own caciques a measure of security and a chance to live in modest poverty. Misrule, slavery, labour in the mines, neglect of that intensive and government-directed agriculture which had alone rendered it possible to sustain the dense population of Inca times, decimated the Indians.
Few parts of the plateau escaped coming under Spanish rule, but the white conquerors, like their Inca predecessors, stopped short when they reached the dense forests and steep valleys, eroded by wildly rushing rivers, which cover the eastern slope of the great mountain region. Down these terrific gorges no progress was made, and only occasionally did some devoted priests manage to establish a mission among the intractable Indians who inhabit the open prairies interspersed among the beautiful forest-covered plains drained by the tributaries of the Madeira. The roads the Incas had built to the Pacific continued even in Spanish times to be the only practicable way of communication between Bolivia and the outer world. Transportation over the steep and tedious route from Potosí to La Paz, thence around Titicaca, and along the high valleys of southern Peru to the beginning of the tremendous descent to Lima, was too expensive to permit anyexport except of the precious metals. To the south there was a somewhat easier route to the valleys of north-eastern Argentina, into which the Spaniards had spread within a few decades after the discovery of Potosí, and whence food and pack animals were drawn for the mining regions. Spanish law forbade the use of the Atlantic ports at the mouth of the Plate, and for more than two centuries Bolivia continued under both administrative and commercial subordination to Lima.
Jesuit missionaries arrived in Bolivia within twenty-five years after Loyola had founded the order. They established an important mission on the banks of Lake Titicaca in 1577, and five years later introduced the printing-press in order to distribute among their proselytes grammars and catechisms in the native tongues. In the seventeenth century they succeeded in penetrating down the eastern slope of the Andes and across the great central plain to the outlying hills of the Brazilian mountain system where they established several missions among the Chiquitos Indians. They even reached the grassy prairies which lie three hundred miles north of the inner angle of the great plateau, converted the Mojos, and taught them to herd cattle. But in the forests and along the base of the Andes the fierce tribes held their own as they had against the Incas and as they have continued to do against the Spanish-Americans to this day.
In 1619 another great silver find was made, this time near Lake Titicaca. A few years later civil war broke out among the Potosí miners caused bythe rancorous greed of the speculators who worked the mines under contract. Official authority could do little to suppress the bloody encounters, and the factions were only reconciled after three years of fighting. The discovery, in 1657, of another very rich silver mine near the lake brought on desperate fights among the miners who flocked to the place. The chief contractor enraged the other Spaniards by his exactions, and the situation became so serious that in 1665 the viceroy went in person and summarily tried and executed forty-two persons, among them the contractor's own brother.
For one hundred and fifty years the Spaniards had failed to find gold deposits equal to those from which the Incas had drawn the fabulous treasures that paid Atahuallpa's ransom, but about the end of the seventeenth century rich placers were discovered in the mountains east of Lake Titicaca. The town of Sorata soon rivalled Potosí in opulence. Shortly thereafter other great gold deposits were found on the eastern slope of the inner Andes by adventurous Brazilians who had made their way across the continent to the eastern headwaters of the Madeira and ascended the Beni River as far as the escarpment of the great plateau. The news of the discovery brought a crowd of Spanish miners from Chile, and as the placers were rich and Indian labour abounded, fortunes were rapidly accumulated. The gold was sold in annual fairs which continue to be held to this day, but as is always the case in gold washings the first results were the best. The region is too difficult of access for quartz mining, and the productionrapidly fell off. Activity in that part of Bolivia ceased in the eighteenth century and only a few Indians continued to wash a little gold in the remoter streams. In 1781 Sorata was destroyed and the gold country virtually abandoned.