THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAY^313Europe, they already possessed a sense of identity, economic aspiration,
and national purpose.*
In Latin America, independence came not of colonial ideology and
political initiative but of the weaknesses and misfortunes of Spain (and
Portugal) at home, in the context of European rivalries and wars. When
Spain proved unable to rule from across the sea, New World strongmen
exploited the vacuum and seized power, encountering only spotty re
sistance. Independence slipped in—a surprise to unformed, inchoate
entities that had no aim but to change masters.^5 This kind of anarchic
negativism invited macho warlordism (caudillismo). No wonder the
history of Latin America in the nineteenth century was a penny-
dreadful of conspiracies, cabals, coups and countercoups—with all that
these entailed in insecurity, bad government, corruption, and eco
nomic retardation.
Can any society long live in such an atmosphere? Or get anything
done on a serious, continuing basis? The answer is that these were not
"modern" political units. They had no direction, no identity, no sym
bolism of nationality; so no measure of performance, no pressure of ex
pectations. Civil society was absent. At the top, a small group of rascals,
well taught by their earlier colonial masters, looted freely. Below, the
masses squatted and scraped. The new "states" of Latin America were
little different, then, from Asia's autocratic despotisms, though some
times decked with republican trappings.
In such instability and insecurity, no writ of authority went far. In the
underpopulated open spaces, notables throned on their ranches and ha
ciendas, ruling as well as employing, exercising private justice and po
lice power. The nearest analogy would be the baronial domains of East
Elbean Prussia, where the state stopped at the front gate. In the cities—
usually ports where home goods crossed imports and customs duties
yielded hard cash—the notables and their henchmen divided the spoils.
The one coherent institution that might have made a difference, the
Catholic Church, had a vested interest in the status quo. It owned much
of the land, and its wealth hung there like an apple of envy and discord.
When the state got ready to seize these assets, the Church found few
friends. Its clergy, literate in a sea of ignorance, held fast to legal and civil
* Not all colonials. Cf. Fischer, Albion's Seed, pp. 252 ff, on self-deprecating nostal
gia in Virginia. Many of these "tories" simply left, voting with their feet against inde
pendence and for loyalty to the mother country. But that was a surrender to political
death—a rejection of the spirit that otherwise filled the land and united highly diverse
units into a single republic.