South America and the WarKirkpatrick, F. A. (Frederick Alexander)
History
South America and the War
Kirkpatrick, F. A. (Frederick Alexander)
Latin America -- Economic conditions; World War, 1914-1918 -- Latin America
Not only have war conditions favoured a more clearly defined national
development, both economic and political, in each of the states. These
conditions also conduce to closer and more real intercourse between the
Latin-American states. There has been on the one hand a national
consolidation in each republic: but there has also been a movement
towards international consolidation in the Latin-American world. The war
has drawn these republics closer together and has taught them to feel
their need of one another, to supply one another's needs and to
recognise a nearer community of social and political interests. The
sentiment of _Americanismo_ is more than a sentiment: it is growing into
a solid fact. Apart from the war, there are many indications of a
kindlier and more intimate intercourse. The Universities of Argentina,
Chile and Uruguay exchange professors. Brazil and Uruguay agree
concerning navigation of the Lago de Merim and the river Jaguarão; and
also arrange a seasonal migration of labourers, who work from April to
September on the São Pãolo coffee estates and pass the other half-year
working on Uruguayan estancias. The same two republics adjust a
financial matter through the foundation of a joint Brazilian-Uruguayan
agricultural college. Uruguay has declared that an injury to any South
American country is an injury to them all. Envoys from the
neighbour-republics visit Bolivia to salute the newly-elected Bolivian
President, among them an envoy from the United States. Junior embassies,
hardly less interesting in character, are the visits of boy scouts from
capital to capital. The five tropical republics which hail Bolívar as
Liberator lately clasped hands in a joint celebration of his memory, and
at the same time concluded a commercial agreement concerning trade marks
and similar matters. The study of history, now actively pursued by
competent scholars in all the republics, is a unifying as well as a
humanising power: for the student who explores or writes the early
history of his own republic necessarily treats the history of all Latin
America. The history of the struggle for South American emancipation is
a single epic. And a pleasing symbol of this historical unity is to be
seen in the portrait of the Argentine commander San Martín and of the
Venezuelan Bolívar imprinted on the postage stamps of Peru. The railroad
helps this movement. The trans-Andine railway is a link of peaceful
intercourse between Chile and Argentina. A direct mail train service has
been established between Rio and Montevideo and also between Rio and
Buenos Aires. There is a prospect that the last difficult link to
connect the railway systems of Bolivia and Argentina will soon be
supplied. This is an imperfect and rather haphazard list of symptoms of
a natural and tranquil movement towards international unity, which
accompanies and supplements a more vigorous economic and political
development within the several states. The war situation has favoured
this movement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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