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Prowling About Panama

<h3>THE FAMILY TREE</h3> When came this Latin-American? Is he a mystery, a complex, or a racial conundrum defying analysis and baffling understanding? So many people have said. Others have reported a something impossible to name or describe about this man from the southlands—all of which is nonsense. There are few human mysteries when once we have the key. Any people may be understood if we know their racial origin, social history, and reaction-power. Such knowledge usually explains these so-called race peculiarities. As North Americans we are ourselves the present product of social forces that have driven us for centuries past. With a northern European race origin we have been mixed in many molds and infused with many tinctures till we emerge a new blend of blood. This new and vigorous stock shows a reaction-power that has made much of educational, scientific, and material opportunities, but, after all, these traits themselves are largely the result of the social stimuli of the past five hundred years. Had our ancestors in the sixteenth century removed to Spain, we should all now be Spanish dons. [Pg 161] If we could know the social, religious, intellectual, domestic, industrial, and political environment of a people, we could account for ninety per cent of race characteristics. And this social history measures, not only potent forces and compelling sanctions, but itself in turn registers reactive power and character values. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 310px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-159.jpg" width-obs="310" height-obs="450" alt="San Blas Indian Chief" title="" /> SAN BLAS INDIAN CHIEF</div> The Latin-American has no cause to apologize nor explain when we inquire into his racial antecedents. Out of the remote ages of antiquity a branch of the human family moved westward, and on the Italian peninsula developed a civilization and founded a city that in time dominated the world. The lust of conquest and the intoxication of power debauched the rulers of Rome, but the rising Christian Church took over the scepter, and for fifteen hundred years Rome dominated the civilization of the world. Fundamentally, there was no difference between the blood of southern and western Europe, and but for the corrupt and demoralizing influence of the papacy and its trailing blight upon the human spirit Rome might still have been the dominant power of European civilization. The abuses that compelled the Reformation [Pg 162] also vitiated the Latin spirit. The wakening life of the sixteenth century shifted the center westward but the blight of papal despotism kept the Latin races from their full share in the developments and democracy of the modern age. And now that the Teutonic peoples of the north have become the victims of the most deadly despotism that the world has yet produced, it is possible that the center and motive of progressive thought in continental Europe may again swing to the southern peoples. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 192px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-160.jpg" width-obs="192" height-obs="600" alt="No Race Suicide Here" title="" /> NO RACE SUICIDE HERE</div> No one can trace the splendid march of the Latin races through the conquests and explorations and discoveries of the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and then read the record of achievements down to the present time and still maintain that there is anything decadent about the Latin races. Had the Roman yoke been broken from the Latin neck as it was from the Teuton, we should have had a very different [Pg 163] tale to tell, and the dominant civilization of the twentieth century might have been Latin instead of Saxon. A closer examination of the social factors that have dominated the Latin-American world and produced the present composite result on the western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors that have in combination produced our neighbors. All Latin-America reflects a European background. Nearly all relations of life are defined in European terms. Out of the more or less subconscious inheritance and ideals of European origin arise the sanctions of social relations. Ideals of politics, business, education, home life, social customs, and religion all come from this fountain of associations. The church in South America is the church in southern Europe. The collegio is not the North American college, but the European school which grants a Bachelor of Arts degree at what corresponds to the end of the freshman year in an American college. South American "republics" have their "prime ministers," and the electorate is on the European basis. The presidents of some of these republics exercise more arbitrary power than the king of England or the entire executive of the United States. They are European "presidents." Revolution is not the incurable habit of the "people" but the profession of a few adventurers who oppress and afflict the long-suffering and usually silent [Pg 164] populace. This is not saying that revolution is a characteristic of European political procedure, but that the forms of representative government imposed upon the ideals of dictatorship and monarchy produced the curious mixture of revolutionary political progress known as a South or Central American "republic." South American democracy is a hybrid product of European ideals and American forms of government. Naturally enough, it is neither one thing nor the other, and will not be anything very different until new forces are brought to bear upon the political life of the Latin people. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 273px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-162.jpg" width-obs="273" height-obs="500" alt="Jungle Guide" title="" /> JUNGLE GUIDE</div> A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. The great basic impulse that sent men and women westward in search of religious liberty has persisted and widened and developed a homogeneous system of political ideal that has become the unquestioned [Pg 165] background of our whole political system. From free consciences have come free institutions, free schools, free votes, and as long as it lasted, free land, unrestricted economic opportunity, and a welcome to the world. Upon this foundation have been reared American independence, modern democracy, higher education, the feminist movement, scientific advance, and American Protestantism. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 227px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-163.jpg" width-obs="227" height-obs="600" alt="One Use for a Head" title="" /> ONE USE FOR A HEAD</div> Certain influences from this stream have affected Latin-American life. The nomenclature of South American politics is that of the United States, and many constitutions contain provision for every modern practice. But these model constitutions are like a beautiful and costly piano imported into a home where no one knows how to use it. It takes a democratic spirit to get democracy out of a democratic constitution. The best piano yields only discord, and the most advanced constitution does not prevent revolution if there be no musicians or statesmen to play and administer. People [Pg 166] living beside the stream of democratic progress have caught the names and forms drifting on the current, but only those people have advanced with the current who have not been tied to the shore by moral and intellectual despotism. The influence of geographical nearness is slight beside that of historical background and social relations. Mexico is much closer to Spain than to the United States. After twenty years of successful administration of the Philippines on the most colossal scale of national benevolence that the world has ever seen, nearly all the Filipinos who had reached maturity in 1898 are still Spanish at heart and out of sympathy with American ideals and administration. If the United States can hold the islands until every person who was ten years old or over in 1898 is thoroughly dead and safely buried, there will be a chance for some form of democracy, but the old-time leaders will retain so long as they live the ideals derived from three hundred years of Spanish administration. If there are in the mountains of the South isolated neighborhoods that have been passed by in the current of modern American progress, and are to-day practically ignorant of all that makes up American life, even though surrounded on all sides by the march of a virile and restless race, what must be the results of the isolation from this stream of North American development, of the whole Latin-American race, while maintaining [Pg 167] close and vital connections with European standards and ideals? But Latin Americanism can never be explained merely by its European background and its isolation from the progress of North America. The keynote to the present product in Latin lands is to be found in that system of religious despotism that has checked the free growth of every people whose life it has dominated. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 193px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-165.jpg" width-obs="193" height-obs="600" alt="Beggars and Cathedrals" title="" /> BEGGARS AND CATHEDRALS</div> Jesuitism is what is the matter with the civilization southward. We have had Romanism and Jesuitism in the United States, but people who have never seen any form of these forces except that which has developed in the free air of North America have much to learn. Romanism checked and balanced by a virile Protestantism and a democratic political life is an altogether different [Pg 168] institution from Romanism dominant, degenerate, and intolerant. The latter becomes the religion of the bound Bible, the chained spirit, and the crippled conscience. It is the center of spiritual infection and the microbe of moral weakness. No land has ever advanced under its leadership. Like a blight on the human spirit, it has cast its spell of ignorance and superstition over the millions of men and women who have had no other ethical code or spiritual leadership. It has been claimed that the rigors of New England winters had something to do with the sturdy New England conscience. But the Pilgrims brought their consciences with them, and the climate came near exterminating the colony. If the Pilgrims had landed in Cuba and the Spanish in Boston, civilization might be very different to-day. If rigorous climates produce vigorous men, how is it that some of the most terrible of men sailed the Caribbean sea and devastated the whole mid-American world, while the northern coasts of the Atlantic never saw a pirate's sail? The tropical zephyrs of the Bay of Panama never softened the tempers or dispositions of the bloodthirsty men who came near exterminating whole populations and left a trail of blood and terror behind them. And these same unconscionable scoundrels used to attend mass and plant wooden crosses wherever they went. The effort to account for South American civilization [Pg 169] by climate falls to pieces before the splendid and bracing altitudes of the Andes, the ideal conditions of Argentine, Uruguay, and Chile, and the delightful regions of the higher elevations of Central America. There is nothing inherently demoralizing in the climate of lands inhabited by the Latin peoples in America, but there is something distinctly vitiating in the moral miasma breathed by these peoples for three hundred years. If cold climates produced inflexible consciences, the Eskimos ought to be the most conscientious people on earth. But the moral climate of Jesuitism has produced a uniform effect everywhere that it has supplied the soil for soul-growth. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 400px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-167.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="390" alt="Far from the Madding Crowd" title="" /> FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD</div> [Pg 170] It is impossible to grow liberty of life, apart from its natural soil and necessary nourishment. If we are to have free institutions, we must first have free men. We cannot have a stream of water without a flowing fountain, nor ripe fruit without a living tree. Political liberty is impossible without moral freedom, and it is idle to expect independence of political action without the established right to think for oneself. When consciences are forced into fixed and prescribed molds it is useless to ask that men turn about and practice the principles of a free democracy. Majority rule is meaningless where the confessional dominates the consciences of men. If we apply these factors in the social history and life of the Latin-American to the traits of his development most subject to criticism, we find much illumination. Out of all the discussion three items emerge, each significant and each closely related to the factors just mentioned. The Latin mind is given to an idealism that reaches out for large things but often stops short of large actual realization. Out of this tendency grow weak initiative and superficial standards. As evidence of this characteristic may be cited the tendency in education to stress the superficial and showy features of the curriculum, leaving in the background the foundations and essentials of the intellectual life. Anything that makes a good [Pg 171] appearance is given place over the less spectacular realities. In architecture, a florid ornamentation is achieved, even at the expense of good plaster and proper surface stone, later with the resultant unsightliness. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-169.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="261" alt="Seawall Church and School, Panama" title="" /> SEAWALL CHURCH AND SCHOOL, PANAMA</div> Deductive processes of thought are much in evidence. In outlining a plan of provincial government, or a system of national education, the paper plans will include every needed feature of a complete and theoretical system, without much regard for the local needs and actual conditions under which the full scheme is to be realized, which in all probability it will never be. To have projected and announced a grand undertaking in any department of human life is as important as to have accomplished something. It is the grand-piano constitution and the one-finger administration. It is not hard to find automobile undertakings and wheelbarrow accomplishments. [Pg 172] Now, all this is not cause for railing accusation but for thoughtful analysis. And the dominant cause is not far to seek. Where effort to translate ideals into realities is met by a barrier of official indifference, it is not strange if men give their time to dreaming rather than actualizing their visions. Where belief and conduct are prescribed and commercialism dominates the moral lives of men, it is easy to see that initiative is crippled at its source. Where a people is divested of responsibility for the final outcome and taught to pay the price and "believe or be damned," it is a rash spirit that will try to do more than dream dreams and write books and project utopias. Without the incentive of encouragement to produce practical results, no real efficiency has ever appeared among any people. There are accusations of moral duplicity among Latin-American peoples. More serious and fundamental than impotent idealism, this defect registers itself in perversion of public trust, in the degradation of public office to the uses of private gain, in deception, graft, and greed. Promises are easy, but performances are delayed until the would-be enterprising citizen gives up in despair. In regard to this two things are to be said. In the first place, our own records as a people will not bear any too close inspection. Aside from race riots and labor disturbances, our Civil War furnishes our only revolution, except the one [Pg 173] that produced the original United States. But when it comes to political prostitution of public office and the invention of grafting schemes, large and small, our own history does not give us much ground for boasting. And many a "revolution" has caused less bloodshed than a North American labor row. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 227px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-171a.jpg" width-obs="227" height-obs="300" alt="Mandy Did Her Share" title="" /> MANDY DID HER SHARE</div> <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 253px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-171b.jpg" width-obs="253" height-obs="300" alt="The Canal Digger" title="" /> THE CANAL DIGGER</div> Further, so far as there is a difference between the conduct of the North and South, the explanation is not far to seek. Once admit the validity of the principle that it is right to do wrong for a good end, and a whole stream of moral duplicity is turned loose in public and private life. Jesuitism will account for almost any moral lapse in a land where all thinking has come under the spell of a creed in which the end justifies the means. Let this principle be ever so carefully guarded and proscribed, so long as human nature remains what it is, where personal interests are at stake the individual is going to be his own final judge of the value of the end for which the means are devised. And on the basis of every man adapting means to his own ends we have moral chaos. Much has been said of the personal immorality [Pg 174] of many people of these southern lands. That the Latin-American is in any whit behind his northern neighbor in the integrity of his personal and domestic life remains to be proven. That his deflections from the straight and narrow path are much less concealed and by him are regarded as of small account is to be conceded. Here, again, the cause is not far to seek. With a sacerdotal example loose and irresponsible, it would be strange indeed if the men of South America showed a higher personal chastity than their spiritual leaders and moral guides. The third accusation brought against our neighbors is that of political undemocracy. Government by revolution is said to be the rule, and an election in which the "outs" win a victory over the "ins" is practically unknown. Victorious majorities are governed in size only by the discretion of the dominant power, and the Latin mind seems a stranger to the fundamental principle of accepting a majority decision as binding until the next election. To accept gracefully a majority decision against himself or his party is an art slowly acquired by any politician. On the playgrounds we see this trait; in amateur clubs and literary societies we find it; in the arena of political strife it does its worst and results in a state of affairs in which revolution becomes the general substitute for elections. [Pg 175] I stood one day on the campus of a Christian college in a Latin republic. The young men were playing baseball, and they were playing it well. I discovered that baseball was a regular part of their curriculum, that they were required to play so many games per week, and that they received credit for the games, provided they were played according to rules. When I inquired as to the reason for this I was informed by the efficient director of the school that baseball was in his opinion one of the most important subjects in the course. "There are two things that we can teach through baseball better than any other way. One is team work—a fellow can't play the game alone; and the other is the art of accepting defeat gracefully. Half of the boys must be defeated every day, which is an invaluable drill for them." <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 223px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-173.jpg" width-obs="223" height-obs="600" alt="The Town Pump, Interior Village" title="" /> THE TOWN PUMP, INTERIOR VILLAGE</div> Even as we discussed the matter, a tall fellow got into a dispute with the umpire, and after a dramatic flourish swung his arms in the air and shouted, "No juego mas" ("I will play no more"). [Pg 176] "There—do you hear that?" remarked the director. "That is what we are trying to cure." As far as my observation has gone, nobody except the educational missionary is trying very hard to cure this most unfortunate trait in an otherwise very fine character. <div class="imgcenter" style="width: 500px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-174.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="241" alt="Wayside Cemetery in the Jungle" title="" /> WAYSIDE CEMETERY IN THE JUNGLE</div> Here, again, it is not difficult to trace this stream to its sources. We understand much better since 1914 whence came this political peculiarity. The ideals of European politics have been transferred across the Atlantic and their fruits on foreign soil have not been tempered by the vigor of free institutions grown strong in the processes of centuries. If Central-American republics are only constitutional monarchies in which the monarch governs the constitution, there is very good reason for the anomaly. If it is true that there is not a single republic on American [Pg 177] soil south of "the line," then it is to be said that there never can be such a republic until Latin-America ceases to think in terms of European history and Jesuitism is broken from its hold on the moral consciousness of the men who make and unmake republics in the Latin world. Successful republics have been developed in that turbulent but onmoving stream of Western and modern ideals that has found its most complete expression in the United States, but which has also tinctured the thinking and influenced the political processes of practically every country on earth except Prussia. We ourselves are not perfect yet, and it behooves us to withhold the stones from our neighbors until we can show a clean record. We will have some distance to go before democracy is a finished product, and it will be a good plan to take the neighbors along with us. <hr /> [Pg 178] <h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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