5: The Age of Dictators
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Independence without liberty and statehood without respect for
law are phrases which sum up the situation in Spanish America
after the failure of Bolivar's "great design." The outcome was a
collection of crude republics, racked by internal dissension and
torn by mutual jealousy—patrias bobas, or "foolish fatherlands,"
as one of their own writers has termed them.
Now that the bond of unity once supplied by Spain had been
broken, the entire region which had been its continental domain
in America dissolved awhile into its elements. The Spanish
language, the traditions and customs of the dominant class, and a
"republican" form of government, were practically the sole ties
which remained. Laws, to be sure, had been enacted, providing for
the immediate or gradual abolition of negro slavery and for an
improvement in the status of the Indian and half-caste; but the
bulk of the inhabitants, as in colonial times, remained outside
of the body politic and social. Though the so-called
"constitutions" might confer upon the colored inhabitants all the
privileges and immunities of citizens if they could read and
write, and even a chance to hold office if they could show
possession of a sufficient income or of a professional title of
some sort, their usual inability to do either made their
privileges illusory. Their only share in public concerns lay in
performing military service at the behest of their superiors.
Even where the language of the constitutions did not exclude the
colored inhabitants directly or indirectly, practical authority
was exercised by dictators who played the autocrat, or by
"liberators" who aimed at the enjoyment of that function
themselves.
Not all the dictators, however, were selfish tyrants, nor all the
liberators mere pretenders. Disturbed conditions bred by twenty
years of warfare, antique methods of industry, a backward
commerce, inadequate means of communication, and a population
ignorant, superstitious, and scant, made a strong ruler more or
less indispensable. Whatever his official designation, the
dictator was the logical successor of the Spanish viceroy or
captain general, but without the sense of responsibility or the
legal restraint of either. These circumstances account for that
curious political phase in the development of the Spanish
American nations—the presidential despotism.
On the other hand, the men who denounced oppression,
unscrupulousness, and venality, and who in rhetorical
pronunciamentos urged the "people" to overthrow the dictators,
were often actuated by motives of patriotism, even though they
based their declarations on assumptions and assertions, rather
than on principles and facts. Not infrequently a liberator of
this sort became "provisional president" until he himself, or
some person of his choice, could be elected "constitutional
president"—two other institutions more or less peculiar to
Spanish America.
In an atmosphere of political theorizing mingled with ambition
for personal advancement, both leaders and followers were
professed devotees of constitutions. No people, it was thought,
could maintain a real republic and be a true democracy if they
did not possess a written constitution. The longer this was, the
more precise its definition of powers and liberties, the more
authentic the republic and the more genuine the democracy was
thought to be. In some countries the notion was carried still
farther by an insistence upon frequent changes in the fundamental
law or in the actual form of government, not so much to meet
imperative needs as to satisfy a zest for experimentation or to
suit the whims of mercurial temperaments. The congresses,
constituent assemblies, and the like, which drew these
instruments, were supposed to be faithful reproductions of
similar bodies abroad and to represent the popular will. In fact,
however, they were substantially colonial cabildos, enlarged into
the semblance of a legislature, intent upon local or personal
concerns, and lacking any national consciousness. In any case the
members were apt to be creatures of a republican despot or else
delegates of politicians or petty factions.
Assuming that the leaders had a fairly clear conception of what
they wanted, even if the mass of their adherents did not, it is
possible to aline the factions or parties somewhat as follows: on
the one hand, the unitary, the military, the clerical, the
conservative, and the moderate; on the other,the federalist, the
civilian, the lay, the liberal, and the radical. Interspersed
among them were the advocates of a presidential or congressional
system like that of the United States, the upholders of a
parliamentary regime like that of European nations, and the
supporters of methods of government of a more experimental kind.
Broadly speaking, the line of cleavage was made by opinions,
concerning the form of government and by convictions regarding
the relations of Church and State. These opinions were mainly a
product of revolutionary experience; these convictions, on the
other hand, were a bequest from colonial times.
The Unitaries wished to have a system of government modeled upon
that of France. They wanted the various provinces made into
administrative districts over which the national authority should
exercise full sway. Their direct opponents, the Federalists,
resembled to some extent the Antifederalists rather than the
party bearing the former title in the earlier history of the
United States; but even here an exact analogy fails. They did not
seek to have the provinces enjoy local self-government or to have
perpetuated the traditions of a sort of municipal home rule
handed down from the colonial cabildos, so much as to secure the
recognition of a number of isolated villages or small towns as
sovereign states—which meant turning them over as fiefs to their
local chieftains. Federalism, therefore, was the Spanish American
expression for a feudalism upheld by military lordlets and their
retainers.
Among the measures of reform introduced by one republic or
another during the revolutionary period, abolition of the
Inquisition had been one of the foremost; otherwise comparatively
little was done to curb the influence of the Church. Indeed the
earlier constitutions regularly contained articles declaring
Roman Catholicism the sole legal faith as well as the religion of
the state, and safeguarding in other respects its prestige in the
community. Here was an institution, wealthy, proud, and
influential, which declined to yield its ancient prerogatives and
privileges and to that end relied upon the support of clericals
and conservatives who disliked innovations of a democratic sort
and viewed askance the entry of immigrants professing an alien
faith. Opposed to the Church stood governments verging on
bankruptcy, desirous of exercising supreme control, and dominated
by individuals eager to put theories of democracy into practice
and to throw open the doors of the republic freely to newcomers
from other lands. In the opinion of these radicals the Church
ought to be deprived both of its property and of its monopoly of
education. The one should be turned over to the nation, to which
it properly belonged, and should be converted into public
utilities; the other should be made absolutely secular, in order
to destroy clerical influence over the youthful mind. In this
program radicals and liberals concurred with varying degrees of
intensity, while the moderates strove to hold the balance between
them and their opponents.
Out of this complex situation civil commotions were bound to
arise. Occasionally these were real wars, but as a rule only
skirmishes or sporadic insurrections occurred. They were called
"revolutions," not because some great principle was actually at
stake but because the term had been popular ever since the
struggle with Spain. As a designation for movements aimed at
securing rotation in office, and hence control of the treasury,
it was appropriate enough! At all events, whether serious or
farcical, the commotions often involved an expenditure in life
and money far beyond the value of the interests affected.
Further, both the prevalent disorder and the centralization of
authority impelled the educated and wellto-do classes to take up
their residence at the seat of government. Not a few of the
uprisings were, in fact, protests on the part of the neglected
folk in the interior of the country against concentration of
population, wealth, intellect, and power in the Spanish American
capitals.
Among the towns of this sort was Buenos Aires. Here, in 1829,
Rosas inaugurated a career of rulership over the Argentine
Confederation, culminating in a despotism that made him the most
extraordinary figure of his time. Originally a stockfarmer and
skilled in all the exercises of the cowboy, he developed an
unusual talent for administration. His keen intelligence, supple
statecraft, inflexibility of purpose, and vigor of action, united
to a shrewd understanding of human follies and passions, gave to
his personality a dominance that awed and to his word of command
a power that humbled. Over his fellow chieftains who held the
provinces in terrorized subjection, he won an ascendancy that
insured compliance with his will. The instincts of the multitude
he flattered by his generous simplicity, while he enlisted the
support of the responsible class by maintaining order in the
countryside. The desire, also, of Buenos Aires to be paramount
over the other provinces had no small share in strengthening his
power.
Relatively honest in money matters, and a stickler for precision
and uniformity, Rosas sought to govern a nation in the
rough-and-ready fashion of the stock farm. A creature of his
environment, no better and no worse than his associates, but only
more capable than they, and absolutely convinced that pitiless
autocracy was the sole means of creating a nation out of chaotic
fragments, this "Robespierre of South America" carried on his
despotic sway, regardless of the fury of opponents and the menace
of foreign intervention.
During the first three years of his control, however, except for
the rigorous suppression of unitary movements and the muzzling of
the press, few signs appeared of the "black night of Argentine
history "which was soon to close down on the land. Realizing that
the auspicious moment had not yet arrived for him to exercise the
limitless power that he thought needful, he declined an offer of
reelection from the provincial legislature, in the hope that,
through a policy of conciliation, his successor might fall a prey
to the designs of the Unitaries. When this happened, he secretly
stirred up the provinces into a renewal of the earlier
disturbances, until the evidence became overwhelming that Rosas
alone could bring peace and progress out of turmoil and
backwardness. Reluctantly the legislature yielded him the power
it knew he wanted. This he would not accept until a "popular"
vote of some 9000 to 4 confirmed the choice. In 1835,
accordingly, he became dictator for the first of four successive
terms of five years.
Then ensued, notably in Buenos Aires itself, a state of affairs
at once grotesque and frightful. Not content with hunting down
and inflicting every possible, outrage upon those suspected of
sympathy with the Unitaries, Rosas forbade them to display the
light blue and white colors of their party device and directed
that red, the sign of Federalism, should be displayed on all
occasions. Pink he would not tolerate as being too attenuated a
shade and altogether too suggestive of political trimming! A band
of his followers, made up of ruffians, and called the Mazorca, or
"Ear of Corn," because of the resemblance of their close
fellowship to its adhering grains, broke into private houses,
destroyed everything light blue within reach, and maltreated the
unfortunate occupants at will. No man was safe also who did not
give his face a leonine aspect by wearing a mustache and
sidewhiskers—emblems, the one of "federalism," and the other of
"independence." To possess a visage bare of these hirsute
adornments or a countenance too efflorescent in that respect was,
under a regime of tonsorial politics, to invite personal
disaster! Nothing apparently was too cringing or servile to show
how submissive the people were to the mastery of Rosas. Private
vengeance and defamation of the innocent did their sinister work
unchecked. Even when his arbitrary treatment of foreigners had
compelled France for a while to institute a blockade of Buenos
Aires, the wily dictator utilized the incident to turn patriotic
resentment to his own advantage.
Meanwhile matters in Uruguay had come to such a pass that Rosas
saw an opportunity to extend his control in that direction also.
Placed between Brazil and the Argentine Confederation and so
often a bone of contention, the little country was hardly free
from the rule of the former state when it came near falling under
the domination of the latter. Only a few years of relative
tranquillity had elapsed when two parties sprang up in Uruguay:
the "Reds" (Colorados) and the "Whites" (Blancos). Of these, the
one was supposed to represent the liberal and the other the
conservative element. In fact, they were the followings of
partisan chieftains, whose struggles for the presidency during
many years to come retarded the advancement of a country to which
nature had been generous.
When Fructuoso Rivera, the President up to 1835, thought of
choosing some one to be elected in constitutional fashion as his
successor, he unwisely singled out Manuel Oribe, one of the
famous "Thirty-three" who had raised the cry of independence a
decade before. But instead of a henchman he found a rival. Both
of them straightway adopted the colors and bid for the support of
one of the local factions; and both appealed to the factions of
the Argentine Confederation for aid, Rivera to the Unitaries and
Oribe to the Federalists. In 1843, Oribe, at the head of an army
of Blancos and Federalists and with the moral support of Rosas,
laid siege to Montevideo. Defended by Colorados, Unitaries, and
numerous foreigners, including Giuseppe Garibaldi, the town held
out valiantly for eight years—a feat that earned for it the
title of the "New Troy." Anxious to stop the slaughter and
destruction that were injuring their nationals, France, Great
Britain, and Brazil offered their mediation; but Rosas would have
none of it. What the antagonists did he cared little, so long as
they enfeebled the country and increased his chances of
dominating it. At length, in 1845, the two European powers
established a blockade of Argentine ports, which was not lifted
until the dictator grudgingly agreed to withdraw his troops from
the neighboring republic.
More than any other single factor, this intervention of France
and Great Britain administered a blow to Rosas from which he
could not recover. The operations of their fleets and the
resistance of Montevideo had lowered the prestige of the dictator
and had raised the hopes of the Unitaries that a last desperate
effort might shake off his hated control. In May, 1851, Justo
Jose de Urquiza, one of his most trusted lieutenants, declared
the independence of his own province and called upon the others
to rise against the tyrant. Enlisting the support of Brazil,
Uruguay, and Paraguay, he assembled a "great army of liberation,"
composed of about twenty-five thousand men, at whose head he
marched to meet the redoubtable Rosas. On February 3,1852, at a
spot near Buenos Aires, the man of might who, like his
contemporary Francía in Paraguay, had held the Argentine
Confederation in thralldom for so many years, went down to final
defeat. Embarking on a British warship he sailed for England,
there to become a quiet country gentleman in a land where gauchos
and dictators were unhonored.
In the meantime Paraguay, spared from such convulsion as racked
its neighbor on the east, dragged on its secluded existence of
backwardness and stagnation. Indians and half-castes vegetated in
ignorance and docility, and the handful of whites quaked in
terror, while the inexorable Francía tightened the reins of
commercial and industrial restriction and erected forts along the
frontiers to keep out the pernicious foreigner. At his death, in
1840, men and women wept at his funeral in fear perchance, as one
historian remarks, lest he come back to life; and the priest who
officiated at the service likened the departed dictator to Caesar
and Augustus!
Paraguay was destined, however, to fall under a despot far worse
than Francía when in 1862 Francisco Solano Lopez became
President. The new ruler was a man of considerable intelligence
and education. While a traveler in Europe he had seen much of its
military organizations, and he had also gained no slight
acquaintance with the vices of its capital cities. This acquired
knowledge he joined to evil propensities until he became a
veritable monster of wickedness. Vain, arrogant, reckless,
absolutely devoid of scruple, swaggering in victory, dogged in
defeat, ferociously cruel at all times, he murdered his brothers
and his best friends; he executed, imprisoned, or banished any
one whom he thought too influential; he tortured his mother and
sisters; and, like the French Terrorists, he impaled his officers
upon the unpleasant dilemma of winning victories or losing their
lives. Even members of the American legation suffered torment at
his hands, and the minister himself barely escaped death.
Over his people, Lopez wielded a marvelous power, compounded of
persuasive eloquence and brute force. If the Paraguayans had
obeyed their earlier masters blindly, they were dumb before this
new despot and deaf to other than his word of command. To them he
was the "Great Father," who talked to them in their own tongue of
Guarani, who was the personification of the nation, the greatest
ruler in the world, the invincible champion who inspired them
with a loathing and contempt for their enemies. Such were the
traits of a man and such the traits of a people who waged for six
years a warfare among the most extraordinary in human annals.
What prompted Lopez to embark on his career of international
madness and prosecute it with the rage of a demon is not entirely
clear. A vision of himself as the Napoleon of southern South
America, who might cause Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to cringe
before his footstool, while he disposed at will of their
territory and fortunes, doubtless stirred his imagination. So,
too, the thought of his country, wedged in between two huge
neighbors and threatened with suffocation between their
overlapping folds, may well have suggested the wisdom of
conquering overland a highway to the sea. At all events, he
assembled an army of upwards of ninety thousand men, the greatest
military array that Hispanic America had ever seen. Though
admirably drilled and disciplined, they were poorly armed, mostly
with flintlock muskets, and they were also deficient in artillery
except that of antiquated pattern. With this mighty force at his
back, yet knowing that the neighboring countries could eventually
call into the field armies much larger in size equipped with
repeating rifles and supplied with modern artillery, the "Jupiter
of Paraguay" nevertheless made ready to launch his thunderbolt.
The primary object at which he aimed was Uruguay. In this little
state the Colorados, upheld openly or secretly by Brazil and
Argentina, were conducting a "crusade of liberty" against the
Blanco government at Montevideo, which was favored by Paraguay.
Neither of the two great powers wished to see an alliance formed
between Uruguay and Paraguay, lest when united in this manner the
smaller nations might become too strong to tolerate further
intervention in their affairs. For her part, Brazil had motives
for resentment arising out of boundary disputes with Paraguay and
Uruguay, as well as out of the inevitable injury to its nationals
inflicted by the commotions in the latter country; whereas
Argentina cherished grievances against Lopez for the audacity
with which his troops roamed through her provinces and the
impudence with which his vessels, plying on the lower Parana,
ignored the customs regulations. Thus it happened that obscure
civil discords in one little republic exploded into a terrific
international struggle which shook South America to its
foundations.
In 1864, scorning the arts of diplomacy which he did not
apparently understand, Lopez sent down an order for the two big
states to leave the matter of Uruguayan politics to his impartial
adjustment. At both Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires a roar of
laughter went up from the press at this notion of an obscure
chieftain of a band of Indians in the tropical backwoods daring
to poise the equilibrium of much more than half a continent on
his insolent hand. But the merriment soon subsided, as Brazilians
and Argentinos came to realize what their peril might be from a
huge army of skilled and valiant soldiers, a veritable horde of
fighting fanatics, drawn up in a compact little land, centrally
located and affording in other respects every kind of strategic
advantage.
When Brazil invaded Uruguay and restored the Colorados to power,
Lopez demanded permission from Argentina to cross its frontier,
for the purpose of assailing his enemy from another quarter. When
the permission was denied, Lopez declared war on Argentina also.
It was in every respect a daring step, but Lopez knew that
Argentina was not so well prepared as his own state for a war of
endurance. Uruguay then entered into an alliance in 1865 with its
two big "protectors." In accordance with its terms, the allies
agreed not to conclude peace until Lopez had been overthrown,
heavy indemnities had been exacted of Paraguay, its
fortifications demolished, its army disbanded, and the country
forced to accept any boundaries that the victors might see fit to
impose.
Into the details of the campaigns in the frightful conflict that
ensued it is not necessary to enter. Although, in 1866, the
allies had assembled an army of some fifty thousand men, Lopez
continued taking the offensive until, as the number and
determination of his adversaries increased, he was compelled to
retreat into his own country. Here he and his Indian legions
levied terrific toll upon the lives of their enemies who pressed
onward, up or down the rivers and through tropical swamps and
forests. Inch by inch he contested their entry upon Paraguayan
soil. When the able-bodied men gave out, old men, boys, women,
and girls fought on with stubborn fury, and died before they
would surrender. The wounded escaped if they could, or, cursing
their captors, tore off their bandages and bled to death. Disease
wrought awful havoc in all the armies engaged; yet the struggle
continued until flesh and blood could endure no more. Flying
before his pursuers into the wilds of the north and frantically
dragging along with him masses of fugitive men, women, and
children, whom he remorselessly shot, or starved to death, or
left to perish of exhaustion, Lopez turned finally at bay, and,
on March 1, 1870, was felled by the lance of a cavalryman. He had
sworn to die for his country and he did, though his country might
perish with him.
No land in modern times has ever reached a point so near
annihilation as Paraguay. Added to the utter ruin of its
industries and the devastation of its fields, dwellings, and
towns, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children had
perished. Indeed, the horrors that had befallen it might well
have led the allies to ask themselves whether it was worth while
to destroy a country in order to change its rulers. Five years
before Lopez came into power the population of Paraguay had been
reckoned at something between 800,000 and 1,400,000—so
unreliable were census returns in those days. In 1878 it was
estimated at about 230,000, of whom women over fifteen years of
age outnumbered the men nearly four to one. Loose polygamy was
the inevitable consequence, and women became the breadwinners.
Even today in this country the excess of females over males is
very great. All in all, it is not strange that Paraguay should be
called the "Niobe among nations."
Unlike many nations of Spanish America in which a more or less
anticlerical regime was in the ascendant, Ecuador fell under a
sort of theocracy. Here appeared one of the strangest characters
in a story already full of extraordinary personages—Gabriel
García Moreno, who became President of that republic in 1861. In
some respects the counterpart of Francía of Paraguay, in others
both a medieval mystic and an enlightened ruler of modern type,
he was a man of remarkable intellect, constructive ability,
earnest patriotism, and disinterested zeal for orderliness and
progress. On his presidential sash were inscribed the words: "My
Power in the Constitution"; but is real power lay in himself and
in the system which he implanted.
García Moreno had a varied career. He had been a student of
chemistry and other natural sciences. He had spent his youth in
exile in Europe, where he prepared himself for his subsequent
career as a journalist and a university professor. Through it all
he had been an active participant in public affairs. Grim of
countenance, austere in bearing, violent of temper, relentless in
severity, he was a devoted believer in the Roman Catholic faith
and in this Church as the sole effective basis upon which a state
could be founded or social and political regeneration could be
assured. In order to render effective his concept of what a
nation ought to be, García Moreno introduced and upheld in all
rigidity an administration the like of which had been known
hardly anywhere since the Middle Ages. He recalled the Jesuits,
established schools of the "Brothers of the Christian Doctrine,"
and made education a matter wholly under ecclesiastical control.
He forbade heretical worship, called the country the "Republic of
the Sacred Heart," and entered into a concordat with the Pope
under which the Church in Ecuador became more subject to the will
of the supreme pontiff than western Europe had been in the days
of Innocent III.
Liberals in and outside of Ecuador tried feebly to shake off this
masterful theocracy, for the friendship which García Moreno
displayed toward the diplomatic representatives of the Catholic
powers of Europe, notably those of Spain and France, excited the
neighboring republics. Colombia, indeed, sent an army to liberate
the "brother democrats of Ecuador from the rule of Professor
García Moreno," but the mass of the people stood loyally by their
President. For this astounding obedience to an administration
apparently so unrelated to modern ideas, the ecclesiastical
domination was not solely or even chiefly responsible. In more
ways than one García Moreno, the professor President, was a
statesman of vision and deed. He put down brigandage and
lawlessness; reformed the finances; erected hospitals; promoted
education; and encouraged the study of natural science. Even his
salary he gave over to public improvements. His successors in the
presidential office found it impossible to govern the country
without García Moreno. Elected for a third term to carry on his
curious policy of conservatism and reaction blended with modern
advancement, he fell by the hand of an assassin in 1875. But the
system which he had done so much to establish in Ecuador survived
him for many years.
Although Brazil did not escape the evils of insurrection which
retarded the growth of nearly all of its neighbors, none of its
numerous commotions shook the stability of the nation to a
perilous degree. By 1850 all danger of revolution had vanished.
The country began to enter upon a career of peace and progress
under a regime which combined broadly the federal organization of
the United States with the form of a constitutional monarchy.
Brazil enjoyed one of the few enlightened despotisms in South
America. Adopting at the outset the parliamentary system, the
Emperor Pedro II chose his ministers from among the liberals or
conservatives, as one party or the other might possess a majority
in the lower house of the Congress. Though the legislative power
of the nation was enjoyed almost entirely by the planters and
their associates who formed the dominant social class, individual
liberty was fully guaranteed, and even freedom of conscience and
of the press was allowed. Negro slavery, though tolerated, was
not expressly recognized.
Thanks to the political discretion and unusual personal qualities
of "Dom Pedro," his popularity became more and more marked as the
years went on. A patron of science and literature, a scholar
rather than a ruler, a placid and somewhat eccentric philosopher,
careless of the trappings of state, he devoted himself without
stint to the public welfare. Shrewdly divining that the
monarchical system might not survive much longer, he kept his
realm pacified by a policy of conciliation. Pedro II even went so
far as to call himself the best republican in the Empire. He
might have said, with justice perhaps, that he was the best
republican in the whole of Hispanic America. What he really
accomplished was the successful exercise of a paternal autocracy
of kindness and liberality over his subjects.
If more or less permanent dictators and occasional liberators
were the order of the day in most of the Spanish American
republics, intermittent dictators and liberators dashed across
the stage in Mexico from 1829 well beyond the middle of the
century. The other countries could show numerous instances in
which the occupant of the chief magistracy held office to the
close of his constitutional term; but Mexico could not show a
single one! What Mexico furnished, instead, was a kaleidoscopic
spectacle of successive presidents or dictators, an unstable
array of self-styled "generals" without a presidential
succession. There were no fewer than fifty such transient rulers
in thirty-two years, with anywhere from one to six a year, with
even the same incumbent twice in one year, or, in the case of the
repetitious Santa Anna, nine times in twenty years--in spite of
the fact that the constitutional term of office was four years.
This was a record that made the most turbulent South American
states seem, by comparison, lands of methodical regularity in the
choice of their national executive. And as if this instability in
the chief magistracy were not enough, the form of government in
Mexico shifted violently from federal to centralized, and back
again to federal. Mad struggles raged between partisan chieftains
and their bands of Escoceses and Yorkinos, crying out upon the
"President" in power because of his undue influence upon the
choice of a successor, backing their respective candidates if
they lost, and waiting for a chance to oust them if they won.
This tumultuous epoch had scarcely begun when Spain in 1829 made
a final attempt to recover her lost dominion in Mexico. Local
quarrels were straightway dropped for two months until the
invaders had surrendered. Thereupon the great landholders, who
disliked the prevailing Yorkino regime for its democratic
policies and for favoring the abolition of slavery, rallied to
the aid of a "general" who issued a manifesto demanding an
observance of the constitution and the laws! After Santa Anna,
who was playing the role of a Mexican Warwick, had disposed of
this aspirant, he switched blithely over to the Escoceses,
reduced the federal system almost to a nullity, and in 1836
marched away to conquer the revolting Texans. But, instead, they
conquered him and gained their independence, so that his reward
was exile.
Now the Escoceses were free to promulgate a new constitution, to
abolish the federal arrangement altogether, and to replace it by
a strongly centralized government under which the individual
States became mere administrative districts. Hardly had this
radical change been effected when in 1838 war broke out with
France on account of the injuries which its nationals, among whom
were certain pastry cooks, had suffered during the interminable
commotions. Mexico was forced to pay a heavy indemnity; and Santa
Anna, who had returned to fight the invader, was unfortunate
enough to lose a leg in the struggle. This physical deprivation,
however, did not interfere with that doughty hero's zest for
tilting with other unquiet spirits who yearned to assure national
regeneration by continuing to elevate and depose "presidents."
Another swing of the political pendulum had restored the federal
system when again everything was overturned by the disastrous war
with the United States. Once more Santa Anna returned, this time,
however, to joust in vain with the "Yankee despoilers" who were
destined to dismember Mexico and to annex two-thirds of its
territory. Again Santa Anna was banished--to dream of a more
favorable opportunity when he might become the savior of a
country which had fallen into bankruptcy and impotence.
His opportunity came in 1853, when conservatives and clericals
indulged the fatuous hope that he would both sustain their
privileges and lift Mexico out of its sore distress. Either their
memories were short or else distance had cast a halo about his
figure. At all events, he returned from exile and assumed, for
the ninth and last time, a presidency which he intended to be
something more than a mere dictatorship. Scorning the formality
of a Congress, he had himself entitled "Most Serene Highness," as
indicative of his ambition to become a monarch in name as well as
in fact.
Royal or imperial designs had long since brought one military
upstart to grief. They were now to cut Santa Anna's residence in
Mexico similarly short. Eruptions of discontent broke out all
over the country. Unable to make them subside, Santa Anna fell
back upon an expedient which recalls practices elsewhere in
Spanish America. He opened registries in which all citizens might
record "freely" their approval or disapproval of his continuance
in power. Though he obtained the huge majority of affirmative
votes to be expected in such cases, he found that these
pen-and-ink signatures were no more serviceable than his
soldiers. Accordingly the dictator of many a day, fallen from his
former estate of highness, decided to abandon his serenity also,
and in 1854 fled the country--for its good and his own.
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