central american nationalty. (No. 2.), February 18, 1883

central american nationalty. (No. 2.)

I.

In giving to the press our pamphlet of the 30th of December of last year, we had the sole object of emitting our convictions on the important object of our union, and by no means that of initiating a polemic. We desired to keep silent, once being fulfilled that duty, for so we consider it; but the diverse manners in which we have been judged in various publications, provoked by ours, moves us to raise our voice anew.

Obliged by circumstances to consider Salvador as our country, we believe that we should watch that her genuine interests be not sacrificed to the imaginary interests of the rest of Central America, and this duty was one of the motives which guided our pen; but, disfigured by some, insulted and made sport of by others, we wish to rectify it as regards the first, paying no attention whatever to the second. We shall not have a word for them.

We have given reasons, and they answer us with scoffing and insults, thus taking the trouble to avenge us upon themselves. As little shall we say anything to those who, hiding their names, have spoken untruthfully in this matter.

We write for our country, and we do not wish nor try to deceive her, and we shall not waste our time refuting facts, whose truth, established in the public conviction, they cannot disfigure.

We shall have a public expression of gratitude for those who, not being of our opinion, have been pleased to make flattering references to our modest gifts and personality, like our old master and present friend, Dr. Luciano Hernandez.

II.

Once for all, in addressing our compatriots we are guided by one pole star—the truth. And whatever may be the circumstances and occurrences we obey, our pen will always be guided by it, without ever descending to offer, in the guise of incense, that nauseating thing called adulation, neither on the altars of the people nor on the altars of power.

III.

On examining the various publications provoked by ours, we have found that they do not touch the major part of our reasonings, although disfiguring some of them. We are not adversaries of the grand principle of Central American nationality; rather we proclaim it as loudly as the loudest. To examine whether it is realizable, to see if it will be a fruitful essay or a useless and bloody abortion; to weigh the obstacles which oppose it and analyze the elements which should produce it; to consider its actual results; to make patent its impossibility and inconvenience in the present moment and circumstances; to oppose, in consequence, its immediate realization, is not to promulgate the political creed of the men most noted for their retrograde ideas; is not to raise any arm whatever against the principle which occupies us; is not to defend village horizons nor narrow views; is not to kill the last hopes of realizing the legacy of our fathers, as some one has said; but, on the contrary, it is to make the autopsy of this living cadaver which is called “Central America”; it is to put the finger on the cancer which corrodes it; it is to make manifest the ulcer which is exhausting it, showing it to all men of enlightenment, of experience, and, above all, of honesty, in order that they may renew the miracle of Lazarus, removing it from its anticipated sepulcher.

IV.

The example of other peoples is invoked; the names of Italy, of Germany, of the United States, who have succeeded in union, is cited; but this has been the fruit of the constancy, the patriotism, the energy that those people have displayed, and let ns also say of the necessity they have experienced from the pressure or threats of neighboring countries. Let us seek in our country for constancy and we do not find it; we see its most prominent men change their political creed many times in a lifetime—the people spitting to-day in the face of the idol they deified yesterday. Let us seek patriotism, and we do not find it; in vain do the most sacred interests call on the citizen to exercise his sovereignty, by means of suffrage; the electoral urns remain deserted and abandoned, and in place of the august representation of the people, from those urns emerge congresses impossible every where else and possible only in Central America. Let us look for energy, and we seek it uselessly; not a single independent voice is heard, when in the high regions of power it is not agreeable that that voice sound, although the most arduous questions, of most vital interest for the country, are being discussed. And we wish thus to reach the resolution of the capital problem which occupies us! And we dare to invoke the name of public opinion! Let us, then, not offend those peoples, putting their moral grandeur in comparison with our littleness.

V.

We do not pretend that the counterfeit of an idea is the idea itself, that should therefore be rejected; but, when it happens that the counterfeits are the current money, and that the truth is only conspicuous by its absence, it is very logical to examine carefully if that truth or only a false imitation is offered us. Well, then, since our federal compact was broken, not by the malice of a party, which all reciprocally charge upon the contrary the culpability of such rupture, but from our inexperience, from our impudence, from the inherent vices of that compact, from the mutual intransigency of the bands, we find only very bad imitations of that great principle. How strange it is that, taught by dolorous experience, we should not examine first, and examine with extreme carefulness. Do we wish to continue those puerile essays that have cost so much blood, so many tears, which have all terminated in genuine and frightful dramas? It is denied that blood has been shed in the name of the nationality; and even prescinding the struggles, that, like dying convulsions, accompanied it in its ruin, even confining ourselves to the brief period of our life, “Nationality and liberty” was proclaimed by the Government which succumbed in the memorable expedition of San José de Arrazola. “Nationality” was the word inscribed on the standards which fell in this city in the year 1863, and directed to this end were the agitations that all Central America suffered. “Nationality” was being treated of, when in Pasaquina resounded the first cannon in 1871. “Nationality” was talked of in the congress united in Guatemala when the struggle broke out between that and this Republic in 1875.

To-day, therefore, we fear, and we fear with reason.

VI.

We are told of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Argentine Republic, as palpable examples of union. But Colombia, the primitive, the grand, was disrupted never to be reorganized, and in the present Colombia, in Mexico, Venezuela, and the Argentine Republic, where the same error was committed which we are committing, of breaking unity to adopt an exotic form—federation—they do not strive to constitute this. Their various states have remained united, although in continual struggles, and the case is not identical. There they have a whole, although dislocated, united. We struggle to establish that unity, broken long ago. Thus to adduce similar examples leads to nothing.

VII.

It is imputed to us as a crime that we invoke opportunity; but do they not know that opportunity is the half of success; that the fruit is not good before it ripens? What would we accomplish by sterile attempts? Only misfortune, anarchy, and effusion of blood. Italian unity the most beautiful dream of her most illustrious sons, sublime conception of her most powerful geniuses, engraved in the sublime and terrific pictures of the Divina Comedia, could only become a fact when the Austrian bayonets, routed in Magenta and Solferino, blunted in the fields of Sadowa, could no longer tear the vitals of that generous people. German unity, already existing many centuries before, was consolidated only when the eagles of the second French Empire were beaten down at Gravelotte and Sedan.

VIII.

Our unprogressive, politico-social mode of existence is acknowledged, but it is desired to attribute to the union a virtue it does not possess, which it cannot possess. It is pretended that with it that mode of existence would disappear to give place to a complete and radical reform. Let us not deceive ourselves. The unitarian Republic is impossible, and from necessity we have to think of the federal form; our little states would continue being what they are—that is to say, little groups in which the hand of the governor covers all, embraces all, from the greatest to the smallest; from the affair of state to the private and insignificant business of a family.

The influence of the general power would only make itself felt in the general affairs, and if emerging from its orbit, as is logical to expect, it should invade the particular ones of each state, by that fact itself we would have the equilibrium destroyed and anarchy subverting all. Not even the vast aggregations can by the sole force of their dimensions.

Russia, the most colossal Empire, is yet the prisoner of a frightful tyranny, while Switzerland, a little Republic, and Belgium and Portugal, Monarchies relatively insignificant, enjoy the most certain and complete liberty. Mexico, with 8,000,000 inhabitants, has not known a truly regular administration, while Chili, with a fourth part of that population, has enjoyed for a long time an entirely republican régimen of complete guarantees and a liberty unknown in the rest of Spanish America.

It is not political laws nor groupings of peoples which produce social revolutions; these occur in ideas, and ideas are translated afterward into adequate institutions. In Central America we have followed the opposite course, and in spite of results almost null, in spite of the demonstrations of experience, we insist on continuing it, and we see enlightened minds wedded to that absurd system.

IX.

La Republica of the first of the present month adorns its columns with a most beautiful editorial article under the title of “The National Union,” in which this question is treated of with a skillful and well-handled pen, although, in our judgment, the modest author of that work spends his principal energies in an unnecessary demonstration. We are all convinced of the convenience, of the necessity of establishing the union; that the reconstitution of Central America is indispensable. We all desire this, we are all anxious for it, we are all unionists. In consequence it is useless to discuss this point; but we are not intransigent unionists, and therefore we examine if this principle is yet ripe for its application.

That article, which breathes loyalty and good faith in all its lines, accuses its author of somewhat of utopianism. With a master hand he manages the scalpel of the critic, to bring into relief our vices, our deformities, our social littlenesses; philosopher, while judging of our manner of existence, he ceases to be one on proposing the remedy for those diseases; let us form the union, he says, and those littlenesses, those deformities, those vices will disappear. Error and lamentable error! As well might health be proposed to the sick man as a panacea for his ills; the end is confounded with the means, thus failing in all. If the union is impossible for to-day, if we cannot bring it into the practical domain, if it remains until the present day as a mere speculation, it is because those vices of which we have spoken, that all know, that all confess, rise between us and our aspirations like a wall of bronze. Why do we not arise and unite our exertions to remove them?

Let us improve these moments of calm, says the writer, to lay the foundations of the old country. Oh, in this we agree entirely. Let us lay the foundations which are to sustain an edifice of ponderous weight; but let us think that to make the cement is the first thing; that this is an indispensable previous condition; that to proclaim to the sound of drums and clarions that nationality is decreed, is not to found a solid edifice, but to throw a soap bubble into the air; a bubble which not only contains air, but also all the evils inclosed in the symbolic box of Pandora.

X.

On treating of the economic questions which retard the reality of our aspirations, some affect to view them with profound contempt, with sovereign indifference; they speak of the gibbet of numbers, questions of the grocery and shop, &c. We do not look with indifference upon economic questions; if wealth was in ancient times “the sinews of war,” in modern times it is the sinew which gives energy and vigor to the life of nations. We are not now in the golden age, when man ate acorns for his sole aliment and covered his nakedness with hairy skins. The progress accomplished in all senses has created new necessities as imperious as those imposed by nature itself, and to-day economic questions are of as much importance as those which relate to political and social order. Let us not disdain them, therefore; to do so is to deny material progress, the solidifier of all other progress.

XI.

They speak of extinction of the debts of our sisters, or at least advantageous arrangements that will soon be made between them and their creditors. The day when the cable shall announce us that happy news, the day when we know that the evil caused to our brothers by the unskillfulness of some or the sordid avarice of others of their sons has been remedied, we shall be the first to clap our hands, the first to exclaim, “What a grand obstacle has disappeared from the path of our aspirations!” But while it remains threatening and impassable, our finger inflexible as that of destiny, will point it out; not to impede with retrograde intentions the realization of the grand thought, but in order that those who proclaim and sustain it in the sterile domain of phraseology may try it by ways logically practical.

It is useless to compare our economic situation with that of countries which in this regard march at the head of the rest. In England, to maintain the debt is a politic measure: in Central America it is impolitic. If in the United States the increase of the revenues threatens, by the plethora of the public vaults, the day of the amortization of the debt, in Central America there is no threat of other plethora than that of exhaustion, owing to the little judgment and irregularity in the management of the public business.

XII.

We are not ignorant of the extension of right nor international life, nor the modern epoch; on the contrary, founded in the knowledge of the latter, we know that nations have no moral respectability except as far as they give it, nor material respectability unless founded in numerous mouths of fire.

Abroad we are considered and treated like the Barbary States, with very little difference, owing to the fact that the scandals that are repeated with such frequency in the interior cross the frontiers, are known abroad, taken up and commented on by the press, thus giving us a barbarous physiognomy. In our international relations this influence is felt, and what would be a crime with respect to another nation is logical and natural in the European sense with respect to us. Our physical impotence is plain to be seen, isolated or united, and merits no demonstration. With such antecedents, whatever attempt is feared, is feared with reason; and if examples are called for, there is that of Egypt, over which the eyes close involuntarily, over the consequences of a bad economic situation.

XIII.

“Let us aggrandize Central America, let us raise her to the height of virtue, of liberty, and of glory, that she may fulfill her providential destiny; let us launch her into the spheres of the superior ideal.” Most beautiful programme, which would doubtless conduct us to the union, but which we must not expect to come from the union; no. This will be the fruit of a slow and constant labor of peoples and Governments. While we see servants in place of citizens; while rights are such a dead letter that the moth eats the shelves of the archives; while the people forget that they have duties towards their country; while principles remain forgotten, and, what is worse, trampled on; while personalism battles on its own account, vitiating the air which gives life to the institutions; while our congresses are only laughable parodies on national representation; while the opinion of the majority continues to be represented by the formula which at present represents it, which is zero, symbol of nothing; while people and governments conspire, each in its orbit, to maintain our actual situation; in a word, while we do not make a social revolution, that is to say, in ideas that shall substitute right, to-day unknown, for fact, the only commander; the citizen for the servant, the kingdom of institutions for that of one man, all will be in vain, all sterile, all contra-productive.

For it there are very obvious reasons. An institution like that which is being discussed should have very solid foundations; now, then, the union at the present time would lack them. It is not enough that everybody desires it; it does not suffice that it be a material necessity, as it is to-day; it should also be a moral necessity; it is necessary that all consciences have that conviction—that all wills aspire to that end. And if all we Central Americans desire it, the great majority lacks faith; is fearful, lacks confidence; sees in it a new epoch of struggles, and, at the end of those struggles, a separation more profound than the present.

XIV.

Bastard ambitions are agitated to-day more than ever; opinion does not exist, and personalism has been elevated almost to the category of a science, How long would the fragile federal bond last in a territory so extensive, so thinly populated, of communication so difficult? What would be the powerful means to stifle the voice, not now of political bands and passions, as in other times, but of illegitimate ambition, which only asks of illegitimate means the satisfaction of the immoderate desire for lucre, of personal interest, &c.? To-day that our civic virtues are dead, or at least lethargic, to-day that we look in vain for men of principles and convictions, that we only act when urged by petty motives, can we, with these deleterious elements, bring into the domain of the practical the great end we seek? No, by no means, no.

XV.

We do not exaggerate; the situation of our country is that we have painted, except some small details, as in Nicaragua, where there is liberty of thought, although sometimes it is punished with prison and banishment, and where there is a remnant of electoral liberty. In the rest, let us look over our history—the history of the last twenty-five years—and we shall not encounter more than social disorganization, stagnation, and consequently corruption. The constitutions, except that of Salvador in 1871, promulgated to be broken immediately afterward, have been charters which have not been decreed by the people, but stipulated by the Governments, according to the dictation of their convenience, of their circumstances, and according to the interests of the moment. The legal transmission of power, the youth hardly know it as a tradition, not as a practical fact; the election of the high functionaries is an affair which is not incumbent on the national will, which the latter abandons to other wills, very far from being for the public convenience; the habeas corpus is a guarantee null and sterile; the independence of the tribunals does not exist; the congresses only know how to approve, the people to be silent, and the citizen to suffer. We do not think that any one will be bold enough to deny these facts; that any one will dispute us in good faith; and if any one shall do so, it will be knowingly departing from the truth; it will be lying.

XVI.

Who has the blame of all? The Governments? A little. The people? In great part; but a part, and not a small one, belongs also to the professional adulators, whose only task is, now orally, now by the press, to deify him who commands, and to barefacedly lie to him who obeys; to extol even the most iniquitous acts of power; to give a decent appearance to that which the whole world condemns; to form around the commander a dense veil interposed between him and the citizens; to drown with their outcry the few voices that arise from the bosom of the people, and thus divorce I the general will from the will of the governor. Abject, most abject task! Role, infamous and degrading! Those men should be marked in the forehead; with an indelible mark should fall upon them the social anathema.

XVII.

And these vices, these deformities, cannot be corrected by laws, by institutions, by decrees, for these have no force if they are not founded on customs, if they are not a reflection of the disposition of the people. When a disease is in the blood we should modify, regenerate, purify the last, and not apply palliatives. Well, then, our social blood is corrupted, and we should modify, regenerate and purify it; this is the task which we should undertake but without vacillation or delay. Let us put aside the palliatives, which, far from curing, make worse; let us preach the civic virtues more by example than by word; let us re-establish the right of choice, those who think, those who see, guiding the masses who cannot or do not wish to see and think, but guiding them in the path of law, not of acts, not of crowds nor riots; let us speak with the independent word of the citizen, not with the offensive and calumnious chattering of the satirist; let us follow the example of the tribune of Ireland struggling at the head of its people in the field of right, by legal means, and which thus succeeded in conquering, one by one, all the liberties which reformed England denied to Catholic Ireland; let us re-establish the empire of the Jaw, sending to our Congresses genuine representatives of the people, men of good sense, of intelligence, of independence, who will know how to make the law, to fulfill it, and to cause it to be respected.

XVIII.

It will be said, perhaps, that this is impossible, that every one is afraid, that the agents of power abuse, oppress the electors; but these reasons are mere sophisms; that which has been possible for the exertions of an isolated municipality, as has been practically demonstrated on more than one occasion, cannot be impossible for our Republics; fear is not a reason, except for peoples that have lost all shame, all dignity, all energy; and it is these fears which we combat; abuse and oppression are strong only when they are exercised against an isolated group of citizens, not against the majority of a people; it is easy to imprison and even to torture one or two individuals, but not a hundred thousand electors who present themselves to exercise their rights.

XIX.

This should be our task; a task long and difficult, but not impossible; these are the only foundations of our union, of our nationality. If opinion is its corner stone, let us cast this opinion first of all, because resting only upon the will or convenience of a few it would be ruined and fallen when that will was wanting, when those conveniences change their direction. On the contrary, it will remain unalterable, being sustained by the will of all, although some few might struggle to oppose it. Let us now leave this child’s play; let us work like men.

XX.

We address ourselves to all, governors and governed; let us have pity on our country; let us love her a little; let us try for her good by the only means possible; let us struggle against corruption; let us cause virtue to triumph; let us not scandalize the world longer with our crimes of perverted civilization; let the law rule; let abuses cease; it is now time that the Governments change their course; put yourselves at the head of the social revolution; aid it, guide it; do not retard nor denaturalize it; cease proclaiming irrealizable abstractions, indeducible consequences, while the elements which should give them existence are not reunited and combined, while the premises from which they could be deduced are not felt. Let lirism (lirismo) be abandoned for genuine and practical interests; let us be guided by the principles of science, not by the figures of rhetoric.

Energy, constancy, and, above all, honesty, much honesty, and in some years we will have succeeded in our object; we will have made practical the ancient legend of our shield—

God, Union, and Liberty.