Ladies and gentlemen:
Our tremulous
and exuberant thought, in the short time that discretion
demands, are hard pressed to put into words the joy that
overflows from our souls on this memorable night. What can
the imprisoned son say when he sees his mother again from
behind the bars if his cell? Talking is a small thing and
almost impossible, more because of its personal and haphazard
content and the throng of memories, hopes, and fears than
because of the certainty of not being able to give one´s
utterance worthy expression. For the man who sees himself
surrounded by the nations we love with a religious passion,
in the person of their illustrious delegate, whatever he
could say would be intemperate and chaotic. When he sees
himself how, by secret mandate, men have increased their
stature and women their beauty to receive them; when he
sees the dark and leaden air enlivened as if with the shadows
of eagles about to take flight, of heads passing by and
shaking their admonitory crests, of lands imploring, pale
and stabbed, without the strength to pull the dagger out
of their hearts, his words would be empty phrases. When
he sees the shadow of the magnanimous fighter of the North,
on the porch at Mount Vernon, give his admiring hand to
the volcanic hero of the South, he vainly tries to gather
the horde of feelings beating against his breast, like some
over-patriotic spirit, and all he finds are discordant strophes
and untamed odes with which to celebrate the visit of the
absent mother in the house of our America, and tell her,
in the name of man and women, that the heart can find no
better use than to wholly surrender to the messengers of
the American nations. How can we pay our illustrious guests
for this our of joy? Why must we hide with the duplicity
of ceremony what we see in these faces? Trim your rhetoric
with other vignettes and bells and gold fringe; tonight
we have Biblical eloquence flowing as restlessly and cheerfully
as a brook, from the generosity of the heart. Which of us
will deny, on this night when no lies are told, that no
matter how many roots our faith or affections or habits
or business affairs may have in this land of unrestrained
hospitality, no matter how lukewarm the faithless magic
of ice may have left our soul, we have felt-ever since learning
that these noble guests were coming to see us-as if there
were more light in our houses, as if we were walking with
a livelier step, as if we were younger and more generous,
as of our earnings were greater and more certain, and as
if in a vase without water there were flower budding? And
if our wives want to tell us the truth, are they not telling
us with their loyal eyes that certain fairy feet never went
through the snow more happily; that something asleep in
the heart, in the incomprehension of foreign soil, has suddenly
awakened; that a joyful canary has been flying in and out
of the windows these days, back and forth incessantly and
unmindful of the cold, with ribbons and bows in its beak,
because for this celebration of our America no flower seemed
delicate and exquisite enough? All this is true. Some of
us have been brought there by misfortune; others by legend;
others by commerce; others by the determination to write,
in a land that is still not free, the final stanza of the
poem of 1810. Others are ordered to live here by a pair
of blue eyes, as their acceptable command. But no matter
how great is this land, or how anointed the America of Lincoln
may be for the free men of America-for us, in our very hearts
where nobody dares to challenge or take issue with our secret
feelings, the America of Juarez is greater because it has
been more unhappy, and because it is ours.
In apostolic
days North America was born from freedom at its fieriest.
The new breed of light-crowned man was not willing to bow
before any other. Impelled by the mind, the yoke of human
reason that was vilified in empires created at sword's point,
or with diplomacy, by the great power crazed republic, broke
into pieces from everywhere in those nations born of an
amalgamation of smaller nation. Modern right sprang from
the small and autochthonous regions that had formed their
free character in continuous struggle, and they preferred
independent caves to servile prosperity. A king who came
told a man, who addressed his him familiarly and did not
remove his hat in his presence, to establish the republic.
The forty one souls from the Mayflower together with their
women and children, defy the sea and on an oaken table of
an anteroom establish their community. They carry loaded
muskets to defend their planted fields; the wheat they eat,
they plow. A land without tyrants for the soul is what they
seek. In long jacket and felt hat comes the intolerant and
irreproachable Puritan who despises luxury because men lie
for it. In waistcoat and knee breeches comes the Quaker,
and with the trees he fells he builds schools. Then comes
the Catholic, persecuted for his faith, and founds a State
where nobody can be persecuted for his faith. The gentleman
arrives in fine woolen cloth and plumed hat, and his very
habit of commanding slaves gives him the insolence of a
king wherewith to defend his freedom. One of them brings
in his ship a ground of Negroes to sell, or a fanatic who
burns witches, or governor who refuses to listen to anything
about schools. The ships brings men of letters and university
scholars, Swedish mystics, fervent Germans, French Huguenots,
proud Scotsmen, thrifty Batavians. They bring plows, seeds,
bolts of cloth, harps, psalms, books. The settlers live
in houses built with their own hands, masters and servants
of themselves. And as a recompense for the tiring task of
contending with Nature, the brave colonist found satisfaction
in seeing the old woman of the house, in hairnet and apron,
come with the blessing in her eyes and a tray of homemade
sweets in her hand while one daughter opens a hymnal and
another plays a prelude on the zither or the clavichord.
School was taught by rote and with the lash, but going to
it through the snow was the best kind of schooling. And
when couples trudged along the road, faces to the wind-the
men in leather jackets and carrying shotguns, the women
in heavy flannels and carrying prayer books-they were usually
bound for church to hear the new minister who refused to
give the governor power in the personal aspects of religion,
or they were on their way to elect their judges or called
them to account. No unscrupulous breed of man came from
outside. Authority belonged to all, and was given to whomever
they desired. They elected their own magistrates and governors.
If the governor was unwilling to convoke the council, the
"free men" did so over his head. The taciturn
adventurer there hunted both men and wolves in the woods,
and could sleep well only if he found a recently fallen
tree trunk or a dead Indian for a pillow. And in the manorial
mansions of the South, all was minuet and candlelight, and
choruses of Blacks to greet their masters as his coach drew
up to the door, and sliver goblets for the fine Madeira
wine. But nothing in life was not food for freedom in the
republican colonies that received certificates of independence
from the king rather than royal charters. And when the Englishman,
for granting them independence in the capacity of master,
levied a tribute which they resented, the glove that the
colonies threw in his face was the selfsame one that the
Englishman himself had put upon their hands. They led a
horse to their hero's door. The nation that was later to
refuse to help, accepted help. Triumphant freedom is like
it: manorial and sectarian, with lace cuffs and a velvet
canopy, more a matter of location than of human weakness,
a selfish and unjust freedom teetering upon the shoulders
of an enslaved race of men who before a century had passed
hurled the litter to the ground with a crash. And ax in
hand, out of the tumult and dust raised by the falling chains
of a million emancipated men, emerged the woodcutter with
the merciful eyes! Over the crumbling foundations of the
stupendous convulsion rode Victory, proud and covetous.
The factors that set the nation upon its feet appeared again,
accentuated by war, and beside the body of the gentleman,
dead among his slaves, were the Pilgrim(who refused to tolerate
a master above him or a servant below him, or any conquests
other than those made by the grain of wheat in the earth
and by love in heart) and the shrewd and grasping adventurer(born
to acquire and to move forward in the forests, governed
only by his own desires and limited only by the reach of
his arm, a solitary and dreaded companion of leopards and
eagles)-both Pilgrim and adventurers fighting for supremacy
in the republic and in the world.
And how can one fail to remember, for the glory of those
who have known how to conquer, in spite of them, the confused
and blood-soaked origins of our America, although the faithful
memory(more necessary now than ever) may be stained with
untimely senility by the one whom the light of our glory-the
glory of our independence-had hindered in the work of compromising
or demeaning that America of ours? North America was born
of the plow, Spanish America of the bulldog. A fanatical
war took from the poetry of his aerial palaces the Moor
weakened by his riches; and the remaining soldiers, reared
to heresy on hate and sour wine and equipped with suits
of armors and arquebuses, rushed upon the Indian protected
by his breastplate of cotton. Ships arrive loaded with cavaliers
in their half-cuirasses, disinherited second sons, rebellious
lieutenants, hungry clergymen, and university students.
They brought muskets, shields, lances, thigh-guards, helmets,
back-plates, and dogs. They wielded their swords to the
four winds, took possession of the land in the name of the
King, and plundered the temples of their gold. Cortés
lured Montezuma into the palace he owed to the latter's
wisdom or generosity, then held him prisoner there. The
simple Anacaona invited Ovando to one of her festivities
to show him her country's gardens, its joyful dances, and
its virgins, whereupon Ovando´s soldiers pulled their
swords from beneath their disguises and seized Anacaona´s
land. Among the divisions and jealousies of the Indian people,
the conquistador pushed on in America. Among Aztecs and
Tlaxatecas, Cortés reached Cuauhtemoc´s canoe.
Among Quichés and Tzutuhils, Alvarado was victorious
in Guatemala. Among the inhabitants of Tunja and Bogotá,
Quesada marched forward in Colombia. Among the warriors
of Atahualpa and Huáscar, Pizarro rode across Perú.
By the light of burning temples the red banner of the Inquisition
was planted in the breast of the last Indian. The women
were carried off. When the Indian was free his roads were
paved with stones, but after the Spaniards came he had nothing
but cowpaths used by the cow as she went nosing her way
to the pasture, or by the Indian deploring how wolves had
been turned into men. The Indian worked for what the Spanish
commissioner ate. So many Indian died, like flowers that
lose their aroma, that the mines had to shut down. Sacristans
grew rich on the trimming of their chasubles, and gentlemen
went on walks, or burned the King's colors in brazier, or
watched heads fall in fights between viceroys, regent, and
judges, or in rivalries among the commanders. When the head
of a family wanted to mount his horse, he kept two Indian
pages for the stirrups and two boys for the spurs. Viceroy,
regent, and town council were appointed from Spain; when
the town councils assembled, they were branded with branding
irons. The mayor ordered the governor to stay out of the
town because of the harm he did to the republic, ordered,
ordered the councilman to cross himself when entering the
town council, and ordered twenty-five lashes for any Indian
who galloped his horse. Children learned to read by means
of bullfight posters and highwaymen's jingles; the schools
of rank and prestige taught them "contemptible chimeras".
And when groups of people gathered in the streets, it was
to follow the old hags who carried proclamations, or to
talk in hushed voices about the scandal of the judge and
the heavily veiled woman, or to go to the burning of a Portuguese
where hundred pikes and muskets led the procession, and
where the Dominicans with their white crosses and the grandees
with their staffs and rapiers and gold-embroidered hoods
ended it. There were trunkfuls of bones carried in the back
and flanked by torches; the guilty with ropes around their
necks, their sins written upon their head coverings; the
stubborn with pictures of the enemy painted upon their sanbenitos.
There were the distinguished gentlemen, the bishop, the
higher clergy: and in the church, between two thrones brightly
lit by candles, the black altar. Outside, the bonfire. At
night, dancing. The glorious Creole falls bathed in blood
every time he seeks a way out of his humiliation, with no
guide or model but his honor, today in Caracas, tomorrow
in Quito, thereafter with the common people of Socorro!
Either he buys, hand to hand, the right to have Bolivian
councilmen in Cochabamba, or he dies like the admirable
Antequera, professing his faith on the scaffold in Paraguay,
his countenance glowing with happiness; or growing weak
at the foot of Chimborazo, "he exhorts the people to
strengthen their dignity." The first Creole born to
a Spaniard-the son of Malinche-was a rebel. Juan de Mena´s
daughter, in mourning for her father, dons her festive attire
and all her jewels, for the day of Arteaga´s death
is a day of honor for all humanity! What is happening so
suddenly to make the whole world pause to listen and marvel
and revere? From beneath the cowl of Torquemada comes the
redeemed continent, bloody and with sword in hand! All the
nations of America declare themselves free at the same time.
Bolívar appears with his cohort of luminaries. Even
the volcanos acclaim him and publish him to the world, their
flanks shaking and thundering. To your horses, all of America!
And over plains and mountains, with all the stars aflame,
redemptive hoof-beats resound in the night. The Mexican
clergy are now talking to their Indians. With lances held
in their teeth, the Venezuelan Indians outdistance the naked
runner. The battered Chileans march together, arm in arm
with the half-breeds from Peru. Wearing the Phrygian or
liberty cap of the emancipated slave, the Negroes go singing
behind their blue banner. Squads of gauchos in calfskin
boots and swinging their bolas go galloping in triumph and
feathered lances held above their heads, put spurs to their
horses. The war-painted Araucanians, carrying their cane
lances tipped with colored feathers, come running at full
gallop. And when the virgin light of dawn of flows over
the cliffs, San Martin appears there in the snow crossing
the Andes in his battle cape-crest of the mountain and crown
of the revolution. Where is America going, and who will
unite her and be her guide? Alone and as one people she
is rising. Alone she is fighting. Alone she will win.
And we have transformed
all this venom into sap! Never was there such a precocious,
persevering, and generous people born out of so much opposition
and unhappiness. We were a den of iniquity and we are beginning
to be a crucible. We built upon hydras. Our railroads have
demolished the pikes of Alvarado. In the public squares
where they used to burn heretics, we built libraries. We
have as many schools now as we had officers of the Inquisition
before. What we have not yet done, we have not had time
to do, having been busy cleansing our blood of the impurities
bequeathed to us by our ancestors. The religious and immoral
missions have nothing left but their crumbling walls where
an occasional owl shows an eye, and where the lizard goes
his melancholy way. The new American has cleared the path
among the dispirited breeds of men, the ruins of convents,
and the horses of barbarians, and hi is inviting the youth
of the world to pitch their tents in his fields. The handful
of apostles has triumphed. What does it matter if, when
emerging as free nations and with the books always in front
of our eyes, we saw that the government of a hybrid and
primitive land(molded from a residue of Spaniards and some
grim and frightened aborigines, in addition to a smattering
of Africans and Menceys) should understand, in order to
be natural and productive, all the elements that rose in
a marvellous throng -by means of a grater politics inscribed
in Nature-to establish that land? What does it matter if
there were struggles between the city of the university
and the feudal countryside? What difference if the servile
marquis felt a warlike disdain for the half-breed workman?
How important was the grim and stubborn duel between Antonio
de Nariño and St. Ignatius Loyola? Our capable and
indefatigable America conquers everything, and each day
she plants her banner higher. From sunrise to sunset she
conquers everything through the harmonious and artistic
spirit of the land that emerged out of the beauty and music
of our nature, for she bestows upon our hearts her generosity
and upon our minds the loftiness and serenity of her mountains.
She conquers everything through the secular influence with
which this encircling grandeur and order has compensated
for the treacherous mixture and confusion of our beginnings;
and through the expensive and humanitarian freedom, neither
local nor racial nor sectarian, that came to our republics
in their finest hour, and later, sifted and purified, probably
has no more spacious site in any nation than the one prepared
in our boundless lands for the honest effort, the loyal
solitude, and the sincere friendship of men. Would that
the future might brand my lips!
Out of that troubled
and sorely tried America, born with thorns upon her brow
and with words and the heart's blood flowing out through
the badly torn gag like lava, our eager striving have brought
us to our America of the present, at once hard-working and
heroic, frank and vigilant, with Bolivar on one arm and
Herbert Spencer on the other. It is an American without
childish jealousies or naïve trust, fearlessly inviting
all races to the fortunes of her home, because she knows
she is the America of Buenos Aires´ defense and of
Callao´s endurance, the America of Cerro de las Campanas
and of the new Troy. And would she prefer the hates and
appetites of the world instead of her own future, which
is that of bringing equity and justice in an atmosphere
of unrestricted peace, without a wolf's greed or a sacristan's
admonitions? Would she rather disintegrate at the hands
of her own children than undertake the grandiose task of
becoming more firmly united? Would she desire to lie, because
of neighboring jealousies, instead of following what is
written by the fauna and stars and history? Or would she
prefer to act as a legend to anyone who might offer her
his services as a footboy, or go out into the world as a
beggar to have her cup filled with terrible riches? Only
self-created wealth and freedom earned by one's hand can
endure, and it is for good. Whoever dares maintain that
she would compromise, does not know our America. Rivadavia,
the man always seen themselves, and so they have. The sea
has been plowed. Our America also builds palaces, and gathers
the useful surplus from an oppressed world. She also contributes
her forests and brings it the book, the newspaper, the town,
and the railroad. And our America, with the sun on her brow,
also rises over deserts crowned with cities. And when the
elements that formed our nations reappear in this crisis
of their elaboration, the independent Creole is the one
who prevails and asserts himself, not the beaten Indian
serving as spur boy who holds the stirrup and puts his own
foot into it so that he can be higher than his master.
That is why we live here with such pride in our America
to serve and honor her. We certainly do not live here as
future slaves or dazzled peasants, but as people able and
determined to help a man win esteem for his good qualities
and respect for his sacrifices. The very wars that are thrown
in her teeth by those who misunderstand her out of pure
ignorance, are the seal of honor for our nations that have
never hesitated to hasten the course of progress with the
enriching sustenance of their blood, and that can display
their wars like a crown. Devoid of the friction and daily
stimulus of our struggles and passions that come to us from
the soil where our children have not been reared-and from
a great distance!-in vain does this country invite us with
her magnificence, her life and its temptations, her heart
and its cowardice, to indifference and forgetfulness. We
are taking our America, as host and inspiration, to where
there is no forgetting and no death! And neither corruptive
interests nor certain new fashions in fanaticism will let
us be uprooted from her! We must show our soul as it is
to these illustrious messengers who have come here from
our nations, so they may see that we consider it faithful
and honorable. We must convince these delegates that a just
admiration and a usefully sincere study of other nations-a
study neither too distant nor myopic-does not weaken the
ardent, redemptive, and sacred love for what is our own.
Let us allow them to see that for our personal good-if there
is any good in the conscience without peace-we will not
be traitors to that which Nature and humanity demand of
us. And thus, when each of them, content with our integrity,
returns to the shores that we may never see again, he will
be able to say to her who is our mistress, hope, and guide:
"Mother America, we found brothers there! Mother America,
you have sons there!"
El Partido Liberal.
México, April 12, 1889
