Читать книгу The South American Republics (Vol. 1&2) - Thomas Cleland Dawson - Страница 13

Table of Contents

The greatest name in the history of Buenos Aires during the early years of the seventeenth century is that of Hernandarias Saavedra. Of distinguished ancestry and pure Spanish blood, he was born at Asuncion in 1561. A thorough Creole, his education was confined to the instruction he received at the convent of the Franciscan Fathers in his native town. At fifteen he left school and joined an expedition against the Indians of the Andes. He showed remarkable capacity in fighting on the plains, and his shrewdness and firmness in dealing with the aborigines were even more valuable than his courage. Juan de Garay, the far-sighted Basque who founded Buenos Aires, was the patron, model, and hero of young Hernandarias, who followed him in his great expedition over the southern pampa. When Garay, the great Indian fighter and coloniser, perished, his mantle fell on the young man's shoulders. In 1588 Hernandarias distinguished himself in the defence of Corrientes against the Indians of Chaco and was the leader in the difficult campaigns undertaken in retaliation. By the time he had reached thirty he was the leading Creole in all the vast region from the Upper Paraguay down to Buenos Aires, and when the Spanish Lieutenant-General of Asuncion was deposed an open Cabildo called him to the vacancy.

Eleven years later (1602) the governor of Buenos Aires died, and by common consent Hernandarias filled the office ad interim. This popular selection was soon confirmed by royal commission. He signalised his term of office by an expedition down the coast in which he carried the terror of the white man's arms to the limits of the continent, and defeated the Indians wherever they resisted. Severe with the Indians when occasion demanded, he was inflexibly just, and as a rule protected them against the unlawful aggressions of his countrymen. Though he did so much to curb their military power, he left behind him the name of being their best friend. He manumitted his own slaves; he opposed the extension of the system of "encomiendas" with its enslavement of wild Indians, and after his first term as governor of Buenos Aires he was named official protector of the aborigines.

Although a Creole, such was his ability as a military leader, and his shrewdness, wisdom, and firmness as a civil ruler, that the Spanish government could not ignore him. Though a governor was soon sent out from Spain to replace him and fatten off the provincials, Hernandarias remained the most powerful man in the colony. The Spanish authorities found that they needed him, and he retained their confidence as well as that of the Creoles. He wisely advised the latter against open opposition, believing that continued peace must make the colony so strong that its interests could not continue to be ignored. In 1610 the Spanish government promulgated laws forbidding the further enslavement of Indians, and Hernandarias did much to secure their enforcement. At the same time he encouraged the Jesuits to extend their missions over the upper valley of the Uruguay, while he secured the ranchers of the western plains against the encroachments of these energetic priests. The Creoles prospered in the pastoral pursuits on the pampas, while the Jesuits developed the more purely agricultural resources of the wooded hills in the east. The success of his policy soon became evident in the increasing prosperity of the colony. Three hundred thousand hides were smuggled out of Buenos Aires in British ships alone in the year 1658, and by 1630 the Jesuit missions extended in a broad, continuous belt along the Paraná and the Uruguay from the Tropic of Capricorn to the thirtieth degree. They were the rulers of a great theocratic republic, whose area could not have been less than 150,000 square miles, and whose population of something like a million was concentrated in thriving and peaceful villages. The Jesuits systematically studied the resources of the country and taught their Indians the cultivation of many crops suitable for export. Their territory was commercially tributary to Buenos Aires and contributed to her growth and prosperity.

When the governorship of Buenos Aires again became vacant in 1615, by the death of the Spanish incumbent, Hernandarias entered on his own third term, and two years later, by his advice, the rapidly growing province was divided. Paraguay became a separate province, and the new province of Buenos Aires included all the territory east of Tucuman and south and east of Paraguay. The three provinces of Paraguay, Buenos Aires, and Tucuman were administratively separate, and each was directly dependent upon the Audiencia at Charcas and the Viceroy at Lima. One immediate purpose of the Spanish government, in erecting Buenos Aires into an independent province, was the enforcement of the prohibition of trade. It was thought that a governor always on the ground, and concentrating his attention on the subject, would be efficient in that direction. However, the result was the opposite of that expected. No governor of Buenos Aires could avoid making the interests of his capital city his own. If honest, he was constantly pressing the home government to open the doors a little and to make exceptions of particular cases; if dishonest, he went into partnership with the traders.

Hernandarias's career is the one striking example of success by a Creole in colonial times. Though the conquest and settlement of South America was accomplished by individual initiative, the men who had done the pioneering, who had fought and journeyed and suffered, who had stained their souls with horrible cruelties, whose adventures and successes would not be credited if the physical evidences did not prove the truth of the chronicles, were displaced with scant ceremony to make room for impoverished Court favourites. If the original conquerors were thus badly treated, the Creoles, unfortunate to have missed the inestimable advantage of being born on Castilian soil, could not look for favour, or equal treatment with the office-holders sent out from Madrid year after year.

The story of the provinces that now form the territory of the Argentine Republic has not great interest during the long years that intervene from the completion of the romantic conquest until the uprising against Spanish authority. With the end of the sixteenth century, the spirit of enterprise among both Spaniards and Creoles diminished. Throughout the seventeenth century little progress was made in extirpating the savage Indians even in regions as close to Buenos Aires as Entre Rios and Uruguay. Settlements were confined to the right bank of the Paraná, and the Indians on the left bank, protected behind the wide flood of that river's delta, were left undisturbed. On the other hand, the dry and level pampas gave easy access to the thriving towns of the province of Tucuman. The Cordoba range, the greatest of the outworks of the Andes, rises from the plain less than two hundred miles from the Paraná at Santa Fé, and only four hundred miles from Buenos Aires itself. The city of Cordoba, in the fertile and well-watered slope at the foot of the sierra, was the capital of the province, the seat of a university from 1613, and the centre of Creole culture. The intercourse of the Buenos Aireans with their neighbours of the interior constantly increased in spite of the prohibitions of the Spanish government, while Cordoba and the other towns of Tucuman prospered with the sale of pack-mules to the mines of Bolivia.

In the fertile Andean valleys of Rioja and Catamarca had lived since Inca times the powerful nation of the Calchaquies. Though they had acknowledged the suzerainty of the Cuzco emperors, they were ruled by their own chiefs. The first Spaniards that penetrated south from the Bolivian plateau failed to reduce them to submission. After a bitter experience the invaders passed to the west. For fifty years this gallant people were left undisturbed in their Andean fastnesses. Late in the sixteenth century aggressions again began. The Indians fought desperately, but were overcome. Forty thousand were sold into slavery; eleven thousand were exiled to Santiago del Estero, to Santa Fé, and Buenos Aires. The town of Quilmes, now one of the suburbs of Buenos Aires, was named from the mountain fastness where the Calchaquies made their last stand. Rosario was also settled by families of these brave Indians who were dragged across the pampas by the victorious Spaniards.

About 1655 a leader presented himself to the remnants of this warlike people, claiming to be the descendant and heir of the ancient Inca princes. He was known to the Indians as Huallpa-Inca, while the Spaniards called him Bohorquez. A woman of his own race, by the name of Colla, accompanied him, and she was greeted with all the ceremonious honours that belonged to the Inca Queen according to ancient customs. Even the Jesuit missionaries recognised the validity of the claims of Bohorquez, but the governor regarded him only as a menace to Spanish rule. He was pursued relentlessly; his followers rose in revolt; the rebellion spread northwards, but with the capture of the Inca it collapsed. He was sent to Lima, tried for treason, and executed, while the Calchaquies were placed under a military deputy-governor, subordinate to the governor of Tucuman. Their descendants have repeatedly proved that they came of fighting stock. They were among the best soldiers on the patriot side in the war of independence; the province of Rioja never submitted to Rosas, it resisted Mitre even after Pavon, the last and decisive battle of the civil wars, and it was the last province to give its allegiance to the confederation.

The third province into which the whole territory which is now Argentina was then divided, was Cuyo—including the three modern provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luiz. In its early years, these settlements did not extend far from the Andes. Late in the sixteenth century San Luiz was added, thus connecting the Spanish dominions from Chile across to the borders of Cordoba.

The complicity of the Spanish governors with the contraband commerce which they were especially charged to suppress is abundantly shown by contemporary documents. The very first governor sent to Buenos Aires after its erection into a separate province was accused of agreeing to allow a Lisbon merchant to land a shipload of goods. He fled to sanctuary among the Jesuits and there perished of grief and shame. But others were more impudent and successful. Mercado Villacorta came to his post announcing that he would so effectively enforce the prohibition that "not a bird could pass with food in its beak from Buenos Aires to the interior." However, not many months passed before a Dutch ship applied for permission to disembark its cargo, presenting papers signed by a natural son of King Philip himself. The captain offered to turn over his cargo in return for a certain amount of hides, wool, silver, and enough food to take him back to Flanders. The proposition, on its face, was very advantageous, and Villacorta accepted it on account of the royal treasury. He made a faithful return of the enormous profits accruing from the cargo of the ship in question, but neglected to report that three other Dutch ships were anchored just out of sight and that she passed over to them in the night what had been laden on her the day before. By chance, a royal commissioner was in Flanders and watched the unlading of all four ships. He certified that three million dollars worth of hides, wool, woods, and silver were taken out of their holds. Villacorta was cashiered for the moment, but a few years later we find him installed as governor of Tucuman. Another governor, Andres de Robles, engaged so publicly and impudently in fraudulent transactions and corrupt contracts that his conduct was the text of sermons in all the churches, but he calmly went his way and paid no attention to the clerical boycott and priestly denunciations. Imports by way of Buenos Aires increased so rapidly that soon the Cadiz monopolists were complaining to the Council of the Indies that the Potosí shops were filled with goods which had come by way of the Plate. Absolute prohibition had manifestly failed, and so palliative measures were tried. Permission was given to special ships to sail from Cadiz for Buenos Aires, carrying only enough merchandise to supply the demand of Buenos Aires itself, and giving bonds to return to Cadiz, so that the return cargo could be checked over to see that no silver was included. Naturally, this system proved impracticable and only opened another road to evasion.

The first severe blow to the extension of the Spanish dominions over the valley of the Paraná was struck by the Portuguese Creoles of São Paulo in 1632. Though King Philip of Spain was at that time also monarch of Portugal and Brazil, the Paulistas viewed with alarm and jealousy the encroachments of the Jesuits into the regions lying to the south-east of the homes they had occupied for a century. They had had a hard fight to keep the Jesuits from establishing villages in their own neighbourhood, and now they saw these old enemies creeping up the slope of the tributaries of the Upper Paraná, shutting them off from expansion over the remoter interior. The Paulistas hated Spaniards and Jesuits; they wanted Indian slaves; they recked little of the fine-spun discussions as to the whereabouts of the dividing line between the Castilian and Portuguese possessions; their allegiance to the Spanish monarch sat lightly upon them. Their homes were on the headwaters of tributaries of the Paraná, and their expeditions followed fearlessly down the streams and across the plateau and burst unheralded on the northern villages of the Jesuits. The poor Indians were defenceless and totally unprepared. The Jesuits had taught them the arts of peace but not of war; they had no arms; their spiritual rulers had bethought themselves safe in these remote plateaux in the middle of the continent; the few thousands of Paulistas, away over on the Atlantic border, had not been considered worth taking into consideration. Though few in number, the band of Portuguese Creoles created immense havoc. The Jesuit chroniclers say that three thousand Paulistas killed and carried away into captivity four hundred thousand Indians in a few years. This is certainly an exaggeration, but we know that all the Jesuit villages were wiped out as far south as the Iguassu, and that north of that tributary the Spanish line was pushed back to the Paraná. The Jesuits protested, but their complaints availed nothing. A few years later Portugal regained its independence of Spain and the work of the Paulistas stood. Spain lost her opportunity of securing the whole Plate valley, and the way was opened to the Brazilians to make the interior of the continent Portuguese.

The Paulistas' raids extended as far as the Jesuit villages in Paraguay and those on the Upper Uruguay, but here the priests managed to hold their own. Portugal's next move toward getting possession of all the territory east of the Paraná and the Uruguay was made from the coast. In 1680, an expedition sent by the governor of Rio landed directly opposite the city of Buenos Aires and built a fort—calling it Colonia. This was the first permanent occupation of Uruguayan soil, either by Portugal or Spain. Both nations claimed it under differing interpretations of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portuguese historians claim that the Paulistas had explored and asserted a right to the region in the early years of the seventeenth century; and Spanish authorities state that Jesuits had established a mission on the Lower Uruguay about the same time. As a matter of fact, Colonia was the first permanent European settlement south of Santa Catharina and north of the Plate, on or near the Atlantic coast.

The governor of Buenos Aires promptly raised a force, sailed across the estuary, and captured the new fort. However, Spain's diplomatic position in Europe at the time did not justify risking serious trouble over a matter that seemed so trifling as the possession of a piece of desert in South America. The governor was ordered to restore Colonia to the Portuguese authorities, leaving open for subsequent discussion and determination the question as to which nation was entitled to the territory on the north bank. With some interruptions, Portugal remained in possession of the port of Colonia for a century, and its existence was a constant source of annoyance to the Buenos Aireans. It immediately became a rival for the trade with the interior, and its merchants had the advantage of the open aid of their own government. Their competitors at Buenos Aires across the river were confessedly engaged in breaking the law of their country. Exportable goods were never safe from seizure until they had left Argentine soil. Colonia was a convenient storing-place, and the river crafts, once within its port, could discharge at their leisure, free from anxiety that active officials might threaten to enforce inconvenient laws. Every time a war broke out between the two countries in Europe, the exasperated governor of Buenos Aires would send over an expedition and capture the Portuguese town. Three times was it taken and as often restored on the conclusion of peace. Colonia in Portuguese hands interfered with the trade of Buenos Aires merchants, and the illicit gains of Spanish officials, and also destroyed any remnant of efficiency remaining to the prohibition of commerce across the Atlantic. Back of these commercial and temporary considerations was the menace to the future occupancy by Spaniards of the vast and fertile region extending from the boundaries of São Paulo to the mouth of the Uruguay.