Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/589

Rh mixture of fifty races, and it is hard to say who has the right to be considered the typical Bostonian or New Yorker, he of English or Dutch extraction or he of Irish or Jewish ancestry.

Things are not quite so bad in South America, for most of the republics have seen but comparatively little immigration and the politics of South America are to-day directed by men of Spanish and Indian descent. Even in Argentina, where the census shows a more cosmopolitan population than in any other republic, the game of politics is controlled almost exclusively by Argentinos whose ancestors were Spaniards and Indians. In another generation this may be changed, for, thanks to an increasing and extensive immigration, the Argentine type is becoming more and more Europeanized. In Bolivia and Peru, on the other hand, owing to the scarcity of available and accessible agricultural lands and the consequent lack of immigration, the typical politician is nearer a simple cross between Spaniard and Indian. In Chile there is more Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic blood, while in Venezuela and Colombia there is very much less. In Brazil there is more African. In fact, one is almost inclined to leave the Brazilians out of the case, for their ancestors have been of a very different stock from that in the Spanish-speaking republics; Portuguese instead of Spanish, Amazonian Indian instead of mountain Indian, and far more African blood than in any other republic. Nevertheless, they too, by the very fact of their being a mixture of Caucasian, American Indian and African, living under similar geographical conditions, have many of the same traits that are found elsewhere on the continent.

Making due allowance then for the exceptions, what are the characteristics of the South Americans of to-day?

As one travels through the various South American republics, becomes acquainted with their political and social conditions, reads their literature and talks with other American travelers, there are a number of adverse criticisms that frequently arise. I shall attempt here to enumerate some of them, to account for a few, and to compare others with criticisms that were made of the people of the United States half a century ago by a distinguished English visitor.

Although it is true that the historical and geographical background of the South Americans is radically different from ours, it is also true they have many social and superficial characteristics very like those which European travelers found in the United States fifty years ago. The period of time is not accidental. The South American republics secured their independence nearly fifty years later than we did. Moreover, they have been hampered in their advancement by natural difficulties and racial antipathies much more than we have. Although the conditions' of life in the United States as depicted by foreign critics seventy-five years after the battle of Yorktown, were decidedly worse than the conditions of life in South America seventy-five years after