All the history of America, and the inheritance of the Spaniard and the Indian, has ended in the exaltation of the _caudillo_. Government by _caciques_, absolute masters, like the _caudillos_ themselves, is very ancient in Spain, as was shown by Joaquin {366} Costa in his analysis of the foundations of Spanish politics. In each province, in each city, was a central personage in whom justice and might were incarnated; admired by the crowd, obeyed by opinion, enforcing his manners and his ideas. The American Indians obeyed _caciques_, and the first conquerors quickly saw that by winning over the local chiefs they would at the same time subject the native populations. The existence of the _caudillos_ may also be explained by territorial influences. It has been written that the desert is monotheistic; over its arid uniformity one imposing God reigns supreme. It is the same with the steppes, the _pampas_, and the table-lands of America; vast and monotonous tracts; Paez and Quiroga were divinities of such regions. No other force could limit their authority. Contrasted with the uniform level of mankind which is the work of the plains, their firm chieftainship assumed divine attributes. American revolutions are like the Moorish wars directed by mystic Kaids. Señor Raphael Salillas writes that in Spain the _cacique_ is a hypertrophy of the political personage; he symbolises the excess of power and of the ambition of Spanish individualism. In America the first _conquistadors_ quarrelled for the supreme authority. The civil wars of the Conquest arose from conflicts between chiefs; none of them could conceive of power as real unless it was unlimited and despotic. After them the all-powerful viceroy, a demi-god in his powers, exercised a similar domination. The South American President, the heir to the traditions of the governors of the colonial epoch, also possesses the maximum of authority; the Constitution confers upon him powers like those of the Czars of Russia. Power for its own sake is the ideal of such men. The less important chieftains are satisfied by the government of a province; the great leader aspires {367} to rule a republic. Questions of personality are the prevailing characteristics of politics; and despotic rulers abound. When a "Regenerator" usurps the supreme power a "Restorer" appears to dispute it with him; then a "Liberator," and finally a "Defender of the Constitution." The lesser gods fight to their hearts' content, and the democracy accepts the victor, in whom it admires the representative leader, the robust creation of the race. Such a man is not like the character of Ibsen's, who is strong in his isolation; in the _caudillo_ the average characteristics of the nation, its vices and its qualities, are better defined and more strongly accentuated; he obeys his instincts and certain fixed ideas; he conceives of no ideals; he is impressionable and fanatical.