Francisco Bilbao, The Independence of the United States, 1858 Francisco Bilbao was one of the most well-known Latin American intellectuals of the mid- nineteenth century. Born in Chile, he spent many years living in Peru, Argentina, and France. The following excerpt is from an essay he wrote in 1858 celebrating the independence of the United States. I The old world wisdom, and the youth of South America, turn their gazes time and again to Washington’s homeland. All of the schools, religions, and systems seek to assimilate with the spirit of the United States. Every political institution and all the constitutional theories tend to rely upon the foundations of the American city. All examples of progress, all evidence of truth, all imaginary harmony between liberty and order; centralized government and federalism; the spirit of being united and independent, between life in your neighborhood, community, city, or country, and life as a nation, point to the exemplary spectacle, the grandiose spectacle that is the United States, in peace and liberty, conquering a continent, controlling the goods, scattering moral, intellectual, and material happiness over 30 million people, children of every climate and every race, of every nation and creed. It is the nation that pontificates, it is the nation that pioneers, it is the nation that lives up to its word. In the past the people turned to the intermediary, to the prophet, to the consecrated man, to hear the revelations of the Eternal. Today they turn to the people who prophesize with deeds, to the nation that creates utopias, to the working people who erect the most magnificent temple, to the citizen who builds the city that is most universal in its principles, that has extensive territory, that is most practical in its notions, and is the happiest in its results. These are not daydreams or visions. It is the UNION that confirms and responds to this truth with its very existence. II This attention, then, that the civilized world pays to each of the steps the giant takes is warranted. But what is the cause of this social marvel unknown to history? We seek to imitate, to avail ourselves of this example: we constantly invoke the name of the United States, and imitation has almost always been a lost cause; federation, anarchy; local independence, tyranny; freedom of the press, unrestraint; republic, one word to save the mere appearance of the dignity of man. We take on the mores, laws, institutions, and in our hands those forms become a double-edged sword, a legal weapon political factions wield to prevail. This, then, constitutes a problem that warrants examination, and which today—on the anniversary of the model nation’s independence—we endeavor to explore in a newspaper article. III Liberty-Order.—Federation-Unity! Behold the two poles of all politics.—Both are constants. Both coexist in social consciousness. This is the root of the problem. Why is there order and liberty, Federation and unity in the UNITED STATES?—Why is there not order, nor liberty, Federation, nor Unity, in the DIS-UNITED STATES of South America? This is the practical problem. There is liberty and order, federation and unity in the United States: because THERE IS RELIGION; And it does not exist in South America, because there is NO RELIGION. Every type of society relies on a belief system. Corporations rely on the accuracy of contracts, on the religion of credit. The political system, on the moral connection between sovereignty and obedience, on the religion of man’s liberty. Hence, any radical attempt to organize relies upon a CREDO, a BELIEF, a CREDIT, and this is what they call RELIGION. The United States has sought to craft the vastest, freest, and most universal society. What would be the CREDO of the most universal and free society? Sovereignty of reason, the basis being the right to free thought; the acknowledgment of this reason and this freedom to think for all God’s children, as a relationship of equals, and the mutual, supportive bond of all reason, of all that we think, unbreakably united by the identity of our common nature and the love of human unity. Such is the foundation of the sovereignty of the people. Give me this foundation, this fulcrum, and like Archimedes we can say we have the leverage to raise the world. IV Why has the United States been made the keeper of this religion? This is the problem of its history. The reign of the old world tradition has divided the despotic principle and the emancipating principle. The despotic principle was the Roman tradition. The emancipatory principle was the Saxon tradition. Both temperaments are personified in two races and in two geographical sections of Europe: Southern Europe and peoples of Latin descent embody the idea of authority, unity, centralization, and despotism. Northern Europe and the Saxon people represent the idea of the individual, the sovereignty of man, of family, of the tribe, of the clan, the foundation of future federations. In every age, from Romulus to Pope Pius IX, the Latin religion has been the credo of authority personified in a king, in a senate, city, council, church, or in a pope. The Saxon religion, from Arminius to Luther and Washington, has been liberty for all men, alliance of the sects, of the people or the confederation of the individual and social elements. These are the two great reasons, the two notions, if we can express ourselves in this way. The unitarian aspiration of the South and of the Latin people: The federalist aspiration of the North and the Saxon people. The idea of authority particularized in individuals is the Roman religion. The idea of authority universalized in all is the Saxon religion. These two currents of history divided Columbus’ world. The Saxon religion seized the North and produced the United States. The Latin religion seized the South and produced the Dis-United States. Now do you see the root of the essential differences between both worlds? V These have thus been the two ideas, two systems, two nations, two races, which have divided the American continent. The historic battle of the past, traversed seas, and within a magnificent palisade and with a brand new conflict, with warriors rejuvenated by the baptism of a new era, the perennial dualistic battle of history is reproduced. There is a difference that is important to remember; there has been an idea that has served as an intermediary and mediator between both worlds. THIS IDEA IS THAT OF THE REPUBLIC. The republican ideal, whichever shall be the religious dogma of those who accept it, carries with it the idea of SOVEREIGNTY, and it is because of this that logic, by the sheer force of events, inclines the republican to the religion of sovereignty or liberty. In Europe, France—for obvious reasons—represents the preeminent symbol of the confluence between the races, the North and the South; between Saxon individualism and Latin collectivism. South America, awakening from her 300-year-long dream to the dazzling light of the French revolution, could not logically free herself from the political control of Spain, but rather remained under the Republican ideal. The Republic in South America, although without profound roots in the temperament of the races, and much less by the education she had received, was truly the mediator between North and South America. They were not two hostile worlds. Between them lies an idea that prepossesses them toward alliance and that sheds the continent’s history of the radical opposition that the histories of Northern and Southern Europe present. A successful outcome naturally followed. The Republic prevails on the American continent. After independence a dualism was revived, one no longer personified in two geographical sections and in two races, but rather in the hearts of the young nations. The battle is not waged abroad; between Rome and Germany; between Pope Gregory VII and Luther, between King Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein, between Protestants and Catholics. No. Today it is at home within communities, within Latin peoples, within mankind’s own thoughts. We do not fight against the Spain of Ferdinand or of Isabella, but against the Spain of Phillip II that we carry within us, like the skin of a centaur clung to the backs of the symbolic Hercules. And we remain in the purifying pyre of that hero of old. VI The pilgrims who founded the New World colonies embarked on their journey at an auspicious time. They guided their fledgling society with hymns of the prophets that heralded the rise of a New Jerusalem in the wilds of the North American continent. They fled Europe to avoid subjugation, to maintain their identity, and to escape Latin centralization, a force that threatened to devour Northern European liberty in fire and blood. With the colony’s first word, freedom, it brought rise to a free world. The conquistadores who founded the southern colonies set sail at a particularly ill-fated time. They erected their cities upon the primitive societies that they summarily sacrificed for their own ends. The conquistadores hailed only the gold in the mines, which added to the wealth of the Spanish crown. These were not enlightened men in search of liberty, but rather the base emissaries of tyranny. Deep in their souls, they brought with them all the pagan fanaticism of the religious wars, in which Spain, serving as the strong arm of religious and political tyranny, eradicated both uprisings and privileges, avowing to exterminate liberty, which they have identified as the seed of all evil. Thus, it is evident that these two conquering races embodied the two essentially different ideologies and temperaments that divided the world.