Spanish America: Its Romance, Reality and Future. C. Reginald Enock
given to oratory, and they produce many poets, many of which, however, would, if criticism is harsh, be termed versifiers. They are fond of what might be termed descriptive embroidery; what, indeed, one of their own race has termed desarollos lyricos ("lyric developments"). Love verses are an absorbing theme, and their small magazines overflow therewith, and even the daily Press does not disdain such. It might be said that versifying in Spanish in matters amorous may be facile, because amores (love), flores (flowers), olores (perfume), and dolores (grief) all rhyme! One cynical Spanish American poet, however, has propounded the following, descriptive of the social and natural ambient:
Flores sin olor
Hombres sin honor
Mujeres sin pudor!
That is to say: "Flowers without perfume, men without honour, women without modesty." It is true that the flowers in the New World here sometimes lacks perfume, where we might have expected to find such, and that at times men and women lack the cardinal virtues, but the same could be said anywhere, and is merely an epigram.
The verse-making of the young poets is often erotic and neurotic, addressed to the object of undying affection, or to the shades of night, or the cruelty of destiny—which tears lovers apart or carries them off to early graves. In this connexion Byron is well regarded (but let us say nothing derogatory of Byron) and Shakespeare appreciated.
However, it is to be recollected that these are rather symptoms of youth in a nation, and if the more blasé and practical Briton—and the still more practical and less poetical North American—finds their verse hackneyed (if he be able to read it, which is not frequently the case), this sentiment has its valuable psychical attribute. The English, indeed, are regarded by the Spanish American as of a romantic temperament, or of having a reputation for romance, and this is possibly due in part to Byron.
But let it not be forgotten that there are famous Latin American poets, to which space here forbids even the barest justice to be done.
The Spanish Americans are great panegyrists, moreover. The most extraordinary adulations of public personages are made and published, such as it might be supposed would cause the object thereof to blush. The late President Diaz of Mexico was always to his admirers—or those who hoped to gain something by his adulation, and this it is not necessarily unkind to say is often the motive of the panegyric—a "great star in a Pleiades or constellation of the first magnitude," and similar matters are found in all the republics. A stroke of ordinary policy becomes thus "un acto de importancia transcendental," which sufficiently translates itself; and so forth.
Of course, it is the case that the Spanish language lends itself peculiarly to "lyric developments"; it is expressive and sonorous, and even the uneducated person has in it a far wider range of thought and expression than has the apparently unimaginative and tongue-tied Briton, or American of Anglo-Saxon speech. Upon this theme we might greatly enlarge, but we must refrain.
As I have already remarked, the general conception of the Spanish American people by English folk is a vague one. To such questions or remarks as: "Are they mostly Indians?" or "I suppose they are not mainly niggers, or at least half black?" in brief terms, the reply is that the Spanish American people are a blend of the aboriginal Indian race—which possessed an early civilization of its own in certain districts, as in Mexico and Peru, and has many valuable qualities—and of the Spaniard, or in Brazil of the Portuguese. They are not "half-breeds" now. We might as well, in a sense, call the English half-breeds, because we are a mixture of Celt and Saxon and Norman.
The "Indians" of Mexico and Peru—they are, of course, not Indian at all in reality, that was an error of Columbus—had, before the Spaniards destroyed it, a fine culture of their own and practised the most beautiful arts. As to the modern culture, or that of the upper strata, it surprises good cultured English folk to learn that in matters of serious culture, knowledge and social etiquette, and knowledge of the world, they themselves would have difficulty in holding their own. The world, or outlook, of the educated man or woman of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, or any other of these States, is a wider one than that of the British middle-class folk: that great respectable body of persons so closely engaged upon their own affairs.
Some writers have deplored the separate autonomy or absence of "unification" of the Latin American States. They would like to see a "United States of South America" or a Federation of Central America.
But this largely arises, perhaps, from the peculiar ideas of hegemony which the last and present century brought to being. We were to have vast empires. Weaker nations were to be controlled by stronger. There were to be great commercial units. Is this advisable, or will it be possible? The condition of the world after the Great War would seem to indicate the negative. It would seem to show that small nations have their own destiny to work out.
As regards Spanish America, its different States are, in general, better in being separated. Both geographical conditions and those of temperament support this. These States, or their capitals and centres of population, are generally divided by Nature from each other, often by tremendous barriers of mountain chains, rivers or impenetrable forests. How could a single or centralized government be set up to control either their home or foreign policy? Where would it be, and how would it operate?
It might be said that similar topographical conditions obtain in the case of the United States, Canada, or Australia, which prefer to live as federations. But the natural geographical barriers of Spanish America are, in reality, much more formidable. Again, the present multiplicity of states, each with its complement of president and state officers, gives opportunity for more intensive political training, more pleasing social life and a greater general opportunity for partaking in government by the people than does a centralized government.
Let us thus refrain from judging too hastily or too harshly the Spanish American people. Their temperament, their environment is different from ours. They have not chosen or been able to follow the more prosaic, more useful life of England or North America in the commercial age. They had not our inventive, our mechanical gifts. Under their warmer skies idealism played a stronger part. They could not agree to live together unless idealistic conditions were to dominate them—conditions which were impossible of course, and they never were able to oil the wheels of life with that spirit of compromise which providence—if it be a providential gift—gave to us. Moreover, they have a dreadful history of oppression behind them, and the dead-weight of a great Indian bulk of folk who were ruined by the arrogant Spaniards, who despised them without a cause.
Rather let us see that they are endowed with many gifts, and that a different phase of world-development and civilization may give these people an opportunity to display their best qualities, of overcoming their serious errors.
The thoughtful traveller will find matter of interest in Spanish America wherever he journeys, in the delightful place-names he encounters, which a little trouble will enable him to pronounce, and often whose pleasing origin some study will permit him to understand. Here are no duplications of "Paris," "Berlin," "London"; no monstrosities of "Copperville," "Petroleumville," "Irontown," and so forth, such as in Anglo America, the United States and Canada, the developers of that part of America in some cases hastily assigned to their places of settlement or industry, either through lack of or laziness of search for original topographical nomenclature. Here in Spanish America its old and rightful folk had given poetical baptism to their localities. Such were often the abiding places of deities or spirits. Yonder mountain, for example, was "the home of the wind god" of the Quechuas; yonder point the "place of the meeting of the waters" of the Aztecs, or the "field of the fruitful," or the "forest of the dark spirits"; and thus is imprinted upon them for all time the poetic fancy of their founders. There rises the "snow-forehead" of the Andes, there is the "cañyon of a thousand ripples," there is the "pompa of the Holy Saints." The names flow liquidly from the lips of the Indian, perhaps our harsher tongues can ill articulate them in comparison.
Moreover, let us remark the wealth of topographical nomenclature, both in the native languages of Mexico and Peru, and all the sisterhood of states, and in the later Spanish tongue. Every hill, hill-slope, stream, wood, plain, valley, desert, every kind of hill, feature and topographical change of