Speech at the Politeama (1888)

by Manuel Gonzalez Prada

This speech was read by a schoolboy in July 29, 1888, when Prada campaigned for funding to rescue the southern captive provinces of Tacna and Arica taken by Chile during the Pacific War (1879-1883).

Gentlemen:

            Those who tread on the threshold of life come together today to give a lesson to those who approaches to the doors of the tomb come to the door of the sepulcher. The party that we witness has lot of patriotism and also some irony: the child wants to rescue with gold that no man could defend with iron.

The older should tremble before children because new generations rise always to accuse and judge the generation that descends. Hence, from these happy and bustling groups, bustling, the austere and taciturn thinker will emerge; also the poet who will produce stanzas made of tempered steel; also the historian who will mark the guilty front head with the indelible stamp of ignominy.

            Children, be courageous, rise early to life, because no  generation received saddest inheritance , because no other generation has  more sacred duties to fulfill, more serious errors  to mend or no graver  offenses to avenge. In the orgy or our independent history, your ancestors drank the generous wine and they left us with feces By being superior to your parents, you will have the right to write the embarrassing epitaph of generation that bid us farewell. It is one stained with a half a century civil war, with the fraudulent bankruptcy, and with the mutilation of the national territory. If at this time we should recall shame and renew pains, we would not charge against some nor forgive others.  Who can throw the first stone?

            The brutal hand of Chile tore our flesh up and crushed our bones, but the real winners, the enemy's weapons, was our ignorance, our spirit of servitude.  

I

            With No specialists, or rather, with enthusiasts who presumed omniscient. We lived from essay to essay: essays by Diplomacy amateurs,   essays by   Political Economy amateurs, essays by Law amateurs, even essays by amateurs in tactics and strategies. Peru was a living body, exposed on the amphitheater   marble, to suffer the amputation of surgeons, who had senile eyes and paralyzed hands   with tremors. We saw a lawyer direct public finances, the medical doctor start engineering tasks, the theologian fantasize about domestic politics, the sailor decree on judicial matters, the merchant direct entire military units..[…] in that continuous and inconsistent changing of roles, in that Babel, finally, blatant and vain ignorance imposed itself over humble and silent knowledge!

            With the free though undisciplined crowds of the Revolution, France marched to victory;  with disciplined armies of Indians but without freedom, Peru will always march to defeat. If the made Indians to be servants, what country will they defend? As the servant of the Middle Ages, they will only fight for their feudal lord.

II

            Although it is hard and even cruel repeat it here, don´t you think you, gentlemen, that the spirit of servitude is peculiar to the high plateau Indian only Indian: also we, half-breeds from the cost, remember to have mixed blood: the blood of Felipe II subjects, and the blood of Huayna Capa subjects. Our spine tends to bow.

            The Spanish nobility left their wasteful and degenerate progeny; the winners of Independence left us with their share of military and office men. Rather than sowing wheat or extracting metals, the youth of the past generation preferred to atrophy its brain in the barracks blocks, pale its skins in government offices. Those men fit for the rough work of the mine or the fields, instead sought the feast of governments, insatiably sucking in the juices of the national treasury, so they erected their chief to distribute bread and honors. Because of that, although there were always liberals and conservatives in Peru, there was never a real liberal or conservative party.   Instead of that, there were three major divisions: the government enthusiasts, the conspirators and the indifferent by selfishness, stupidity or disappointment. Therefore, in the supreme moment of the fight, we were against the enemy, not as a bronze colossus, but a group of scrap led soldiers; not a strong and united country, but a number of individuals attracted by a particular interest and repelled to each other by the spirit of our own faction. So when the darkest invading army soldier had no other name on his lips than Chile, we, from the first recruit to the last General repeated the name of a leader. We were serfs of the Middle Ages that invoked our feudal lord.

            Indians from the highlands, half-breeds (mestizos) from the coast, we were all ignorant servants. We could win and we didn´t.

III

            If ignorance of the rulers and servitude of the governed were our defeaters, let us turn to Science, that redeemer who teaches us to soften the tyranny of nature, let us worship Freedom, that mother that gives birth strong men.

            I do not speak, gentlemen, about mummified science that is reduced to dust in our retrograde universities:  I talk about Science strengthened with the blood of the century, about Science that transcends youth and the honey Greek combs, about positive Science that in only a century of industrial applications has produced more goods than thousands of years of human theology and metaphysics have.

            I speak, gentlemen, about freedom for all, mainly for the destitute. They real Peru is not formed by the pool of Creoles and foreigners living in the strip of land located between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, the nation is formed by crowds of Indians scattered on the eastern side of the ridge. Three hundred years that the Indian dwells in the lower layers of civilization, being a hybrid with the barbarian vices without the virtues of the European:  teach them to read and write, and, in a quarter of century, you will see whether they get up or not the dignity of men. To you, schoolteachers, is the task to galvanize a race that slumbers under the tyranny of the magistrate, the governor and the priest, that trinity that brutalize Indians.

            When we have a people without a spirit of servitude, military and politicians up to the nature of the century, we will recover Tacna and Arica, and only then, we will march onto Tarapacá and, to give the decisive blow, first and last.

            For that big day, that will arrive at last, because future owns us a victory, let us trust only in the light of our brain and the strength of our arms. Gone are the days when only the bravery decided the fighting: war is today, a matter of science. Let us abandon international romanticism and faith in superhuman aids: Earth mocks on the losers, Heaven has no rays for the executioners.

            In this work of reconstruction and revenge, let us not count on men of the past:  those decayed trunks already produced their flowers, their bitter fruits. Bring new trees to produce new fruits and flowers.  The old to the grave, the young to work!

IV

            Why to despair? We did not come here to shed tears over the ruins of a second Jerusalem, but to strengthen ourselves with hope. Let Boabdil cry as a woman, we will wait like men.

            Why to get discouraged? Our climate, our soil, are they perhaps the last of the Universe? On Earth there is not enough gold to purchase the riches that a single Peruvian Spring produce. Does our brain have the rudimentary brain of Hottentots, or our flesh was mixed with the mud of Sodom? Our mountain villages are full of drowsy men, but not of petrified statues.

            Our race doesn´t lack neither electricity in the nerves nor phosphorus in the brain. We need, yes, consistency in the muscles and iron in the blood. Anemic and nervous, we do not know how to love or hate strongly. Versatile in politics, we love a leader even to sacrifice our rights for the sake of the dictatorship. We hate him tomorrow to plunge him down under a barrage of mud and blood.  With no patience to wait for goodness, we demand improvisation on what is the work of late incubation, we want a man in one day to repair the faults of four generations. The history of many governments of Peru fits into three words: stupidity in action, but the whole life of the people is summarized in two: moving versatility.

If we are versatile in love, we are not less in hatred: the knife is penetrating in our guts, and we already forgive the murderer. Someone has cut our fields, burnt our towns […], gentlemen, that someone whom we swore eternal hatred implacable vengeance, begins t soon to be counted in among our friends. He is not abhorred by us with all the fire of the blood, with all the anger of the heart.

            Hypocrisy is at the poles of Diplomacy, let governments lye hypocritically, swearing friendship and forgiveness. We freemen gathered here to hear words of loyalty […], we raise our voice to straighten the bent skeleton of these crowds, to oxygenate the stale atmosphere by many loathsome organisms. Let us find the spark that ignites the hearts of people, to love all that one must love, to hate everything that must be hated.  

            I wish, gentlemen, that the lesson given by High Schools today in Lima, find example in the humblest villages of the Republic! Hopefully all phrases repeated in similar gatherings, won´t be honeyed speeches destined to die within the walls of a theater, but tough enough to hammer and reverberate through all areas of the country! I wish each of my words become thunders to affect the heart of all Peruvians, so I wake up the two feelings able to save us: the love to our country, hatred towards Chile!

            If unfair hatred loses to individuals, just hatred always saves the nations. Because its hate to Prussia, now France is powerful as ever. When vanquished Paris shakes, the victor Berlin stands. Every day, every moment, we admire the exploits of men who triumphed in the plains of Marathon or were killed in the defiles of Thermopylae, and the moral grandeur of the ancient Greeks was the constant love of their friends and the immutable hate or their enemies immutable. Let us not to promote, then, in ourselves feelings of bland keepers of women, but the formidable passions of men born to become the future avengers. World should tell that insult was erased from our memory before the marks or the Chilean whips disappeared off our backs.

            Truth is, today nothing we can do, we are powerless, but let us fire our rancor, let us feed our fierce defiance as the beasts wallows in the thorns, and if we do not have claws to tear or teeth to bite, that even the muted rumblings of our virile anger go occasionally to disturb the sleep of our proud defeater.

                                                                                                                                             Manuel Gonzalez Prada.