Sunday, December 16, 2012

Our America. Carlos Octavio Bunge.1903 (fragments).


The Spanish
 I. Arrogance, the mother quality in the psychology of the Spanish nation.
            Violent and confusing at first glance appears the psychology of the Spanish. Violent because its most typical. Confused, because these features do not always seem harmonious and homogeneous, reaching deep contradictions appears ... But if the further study of the collective psyche gather more and more data and investigated the principles and similarities, is that such contradictions are more simulated than real, that there are certain lines which are conductive towards a mother idea, a dominant quality ... I find this idea or quality on arrogance.
            The genesis of this arrogance is lost in the mists of prehistory, that is, more than race, geography. Indeed, the three large peninsulas of the Mediterranean, Greece, Italy and Spain, have had to continually fight against foreign invasions, as they were always affordable and coveted by the extent of its coasts defenseless, its mild climate and fertile their lands. Greece, whose civilization was the work of asia-europeans, triumphed, with Alejandro. Italy, that received mostly afro-europeans the South and asia-europeans  in the North  defeated also Africa when Scipio destroyed Carthage ... But Spain's position was even more critical than those of Italy and Greece, because it arises between Africa and Europe as a nice intermezzo , as a very generous garden tending to his neighbors bridges of silver in the Strait of Gibraltar shortly before isthmus , and the easy steps of the Pyrenees. So God placed Spain, open on all sides for everybody. The land was populated with immigration from Africa, from where the primitive Iberians emerged.
            These prehistoric natives, whatever they were, afro-europeans and asia-europeans, mixing of each other, once  they possessed the coveted peninsula,  they had continuously to defend  it against all enemies: Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Jews, Moors ...Their life was thus a continuous struggle, which could only hold a value passionate worship . Courage, heroism became a habit, a secretion of the Iberians; secretion with which they were formed, as certain mollusks, shell protective, hard and thorny. This chronic state of defense against foreign attack gave powerful spirit of aggressiveness, his combativeness, long excited, became aggressive ... Reinforced the defense to the offense. Thus we have a geographical fate imposed on the Spanish one psychic fatality.
            The first form of this psychic fatality was defensive heroism, which give us very beautiful examples with the siege of Numantia site and the Cid campaigns. So when it said "the heroic Spain" referring to the past, there is no much an hyperbole as it sounds: it could not be anything but heroic. Or be, or not to be. No other nation was so tyrannically forced to be like it, for his eternal Geographic fate , which is somewhat exclusive ... And  it was heroic, not only in Numantia, but in Granada, in America, in Bailen and Albufera ...

Modern Age: The Collective Degeneration.

            Summarizing the discussion in the previous chapters, we have the Spanish character is full of anti-Catholicism and anti-Christian spirit, and anarchic individualism apparent hereditary uniformity, stiffness and rascality, avarice and prodigality...
The psycho-sociological theory I develop luminously explains such contrasts and contradictions, because, recalling Hegel's method, it solve the antinomies in their first and common origin: the collective arrogance, ethnic, geographic! But I must confess that this theory does not explain just how political and religious despotism came to be enthroned over people so brave and rebellious. The exposed moral factors do not explain the transformation of the race ... Is that indeed we need also certain material factors. Psychological elements are not enough, we also require the physiological ones ... The material and physiological key to explain the transformation of the proud and strong medieval Spanish into the weak and resigned modern Spanish is the degeneration of the race. If the religious-political despotism is a decadent form of Spanish supreme arrogance, although an indirect result of this arrogance, and therefore also supremely decadent, is the physical degeneration.
            Between the current Spanish and the one of " the Middle Ages, between the brave old Castilian and the current lazy Andalusian, there are differences similar to those between the pickpocket from White chapel and the gentleman from the City, even though they are produced by the same causes: poverty, hunger, lack of hygiene. Differences are not only mental, but also physical, primarily physical.  The brave paladins who conquered the empires of Moctezuma and Atahualpa should have muscles of steel and stone . Instead, the average height and current Spanish life are unfavorable, and the common-type I must confess despite our deep sympathy is not very handsome ... Definitely with malicious exaggeration, and speaking about the inhabitants of the cities, it has been said that “today Spanish is sickly and sordid, short of stature, sunken chest, skinny, flabby, sallow, big head, long arms and short legs. Because their neuroartritism, their hands sweats, even more when greater is their affection to extend them in greeting. For lack of sufficient eyes hygiene, chronic conjunctivitis is present as an inexhaustible source of sleep ... Their average life is short. "
The whole history of Spain gives unwittingly the key to this amazing transformation. Poverty and hunger are due to overspending and lack of industries, unhygienic life because the Inquisition stigmatized and outlawed sciences, and because they considered body care lustful, sinful body care, including ablutions that Islamic religion advocated for.

Book II

Indians, blacks and mestizos
Complication in the elements of Sociology and Psychology of Spanish- American
II. The existence of primary ethnicities: European, Indian and black

            When Christopher Columbus saw, close the continent already, a large flock of birds, were heading south, also looking for the coast, the navigator followed, and, following them, instead of arriving at Florida, arrived in the West Indies. Never has been said bird flight had such major consequences! Because of him, a nation where afro-European races dominated, dark and alive, conquered and populated central and South America, later leading another nation, dreamy, blond and from asia-european origin, the Anglo-Saxons, to occupy the North . And coincidentally, they, accustomed to colder climates, populate the coldest regions of this modern Atlantis, and that, those of the South, the warmest. So these mysterious birds arranged, harbingers of a new world history.
  In the absence of European women the first Spanish conquerors gave their soldiers Indian wives. This example, was perpetuated throughout time and across the colonial Hispanic American expanse,  therefore,  most settler families became mestizos, half-breeds.
              While Central and South America was populated by rough soldiers, adventurers of the Flanders and Italy campaigns, who started to cohabit with Indian women, the North was being colonized by European immigrants for political and religious reasons. Anglo settlers had always European women pur sang. If missing, the metropolis sent prostitutes to them, in merchant ships. When a single settler had no wife and wanted to make a home, he would pay I tobacco for a ship to bring him a wife.  ... Such was the business: a mother for a bale of tobacco ... And full of these bales returned the vessels that imported white meat. For the metropolis, it was triply lucrative barter:  it got rid of prostitutes, provided families for the settlers, and, moreover, tobacco favored trading. Undoubtedly, the biggest difference between the colonization of both Americas, greater even than that of laws and systems is that of race. If the North is populated only by Europeans colonizers, the South was populated by Europeans and mestizos. Then black slaves were imported to both Americas ... And , while Anglo-Saxon settlers isolated them, the creoles in the south tied with them, thus producing a complicated and diffuse mixture of breeds and colors.
Why did Spanish soldiers incur, unlike Anglo-Saxons, in so barbarous crossbreeding? I think because their adventurous character, theirs greedy system of peaceful conquest and colonization, and, finally, by ethnic affinities. These affinities are explained by the origin of the afro-European books and the Carthaginian and Arabic conquest. Besides, their  more southern climate temperament predisposed  them to connecting with people as warm as Indian and Blacks were ... The Yankees are therefore pure European, Hispanic Americans are always Europeans, by a preponderance of the stronger race, but more or less half breed. Through their veins runs Hispanic blood (Spanish or Portuguese), Indian (Mexican, Quechua, Guarani and other), and black (Kaffir, Hottentot, Mozanbique). This triple ancestral base has created the psychology of its "republics" ...  Later, European immigration brings new elements, but they alter the mass of the people only I regions exceptionally prone to be europeized because its climate, or the shortage of a Creole-ethnic basis, as the coast of Argentina.  Even though new emigrants exercise some influence, once rooted, by the second, third or fourth generation, they are contaminated with the characteristics of the first Spanish-Indian-African sediment.
            Every race is a physical race is also a psychic race. Each race has a typical character, whatever the concept is given to this enigmatic word, angle base of Story.
              Amalgamated with such diverse elements, rare and heterogeneous the character of Hispanic mélange must be! The neo race, formed or in formation! To study thoroughly this salad of men and things, we must therefore decompose it into its three main factors.
Mental composition of the ingredients can be represented as follows: Spanish give us arrogance, indolence, indifference, theological uniformity, decorum; the Indians, fatalism and ferocity; blacks, servility, malleability, and when they breed with whites, they produce certain over excitement for power that could well be called hyperesthesia of ambition. 
Singular study of these substances or psychological qualities is complex, especially in its nomenclature: there are so many shades and many names for each of them!
In addition, Spanish-Indian half breeds, Spanish-blacks or Spanish-Indian-black, give other special qualities, characteristics of their hybridism itself ... What could be more complicated than this psychological chemistry! And especially since, with it, I want to do here alchemy: transforming tin, copper or silver, gold, pure flowing gold... See, then, swiftly running my melted metals, and forgive me! Oh forgive me!  -! - If a burning drop is splashed over your skin... Do you not see the corroded and charred alchemist? More than a crucible exploded in his laboratory.

IX Psychology of Indians, mulattos and mestizos.

            Impulsive, false, petulant, the mulatto is a complicated amalgam of Spanish and African genius. They have their Polymorphic arrogance, also, the cacique infatuation. Because traditional prejudice exists against him,  he takes revenge in hating and despising tradition and prejudice.  Mulattos are essentially innovative: in politics, in arts, in letters. Because their resentment to the past, they are the natural enemies of whites...  they are the instrument of posthumous revenge of black men ... It is the revenge of the black men!
            See the mulatto strut around with his classic stretched trunk which holds an smoking cigar, his pudgy fingers full of rings, leaning back as if he challenged the world,  see him stiff and conceited.  See him and think that in his mind is harassed by the desire to dazzle us and his heart beats with sinister envy ... Beware of him! Ingratiating and servile when your confidence wants to capture, and if captured, is to betray and humiliate. He is irritable and fickle as a woman and as a woman, as degenerate as the devil himself , He knows how to make himself small and ductile, and then stand up and challenge you better, He knows how to bend his elastic g spine, to straighten it latter with the  pride of Lucifer. Because, as the new Lucifer, is the eternal rebel.
            He is worthless. In dangerous trances he will hardly overcome fear, but full of tricks and folds, he will escape from enemies with waves of reptile. It is to hide his innate cowardice that he acquires terrible bully airs; equally, to disguise his weak reproductive prowess, he adopts a posture of Don Juan ... Remember the fearful child who feels afraid when walking in the dark, he whistles to comfort himself.
            Although he is wildly ambitious, he is a real social climber, with no esprit de suite. He is a hungry dyspeptic, with an appetite to devour an ox, but with no stomach to digest a steak. Happily! If his stomach were to answer his hunger, if his impetus were related to his perseverance, who else would be the great Ruler and the great Destroyer, the apocalyptic monster that is to devours either outdated or  modern societies?

II Collective sloth, base of Creole caudillismo.

In collective laziness I find the base of base of caudillismo or Hispanic chieftaincy, institutional curious phenomenon. Among insolent ones, it is easier for the more active ones to excel. Then the mob, composed of citizens too apathetic to think and move on their own, take the heavy burden of responsibility for their actions off their shoulders, and delegate sovereignty gladly ... To Whom? To the one that is best known and that has captured the sympathy of all. Is he the most capable? It is presumed, but not enough to be the most capable one: one must be the most feared and loved...
            Although it is in the interest of everybody to delegate the symbolic power pike on the most suitable leader, it is also the interest of everybody to thrive in the shadow of power. This is what makes the chieftaincy sometimes a shameful regime of complacency. Rather of meritorious collaborators, the Chief precise friends, and more friends to remain in power.. This, at the cost of laws, national wealth, progress? ...Who cares if the pushback of social injustice has no penalty! ...
Societies with strong local bosses society will not be in favor of the best, but in favor of the one that have been able to impose himself, without finding out why the is in power, sometimes because of  kinship and complicity.  In the rise of a political chief, there is always a initial time  when he is able to deceive the mob with shallow or alleged virtues ... Once his power is cemented, he usually get rid of such appearances as an uncomfortable costume that hinders his movements.  The public no longer take the time to review the record ...Why to investigate, why to condemn? That would give a lot of work, more comfortable is to remain silent: and more comfortable yet, to serve and flatter the boss, especially in difficult moments, because, in time, the boss will reward his tribe man by man ... No independence or individual struggle ! This involves individual effort, often painful, applied to trade, industry, science and the arts. The purpose of life is to rest, gods have created men to see them rest elegantly.  The flock rests more than the shepherd, let´s be a flock and not the shepherds!

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