LITMIR.BIZ

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of time.

      It is not my intention here to strike a comparative parallel of the merits of the two parties into which the Argentine Republic is divided. Halves of my country, equally loved, one and the other, I want the heroism that lies in both of them to be seen. In both can be observed the characters of a great political party. South America has not seen in the

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      history of its civil wars two parties more tenacious in their action, more committed to their dominant idea, better organized, more loyal to their flag, clearer in their aims, more logical and consistent in their progress.

      These qualities do not hold as much importance in the Unitario Party¹⁶ because it has not been embodied in a single man. It has not had that man because oppositions never have him, for they declare and organize themselves into militias in the heart of the popular masses: it has had infinite heads instead of one, and that is why its action has been divided and disturbed, which has made its results sterile.

      But is not the consistency of Rosas and his men as admirable as the consistency of those men who at home and abroad and everywhere have fought for the past twenty years, braving with the fortitude of heroes all the setbacks and sufferings of foreign life, never yielding, never deserting their flag, never changing sides under cover of those weak amalgams celebrated in the name of parliamentary law?

      There have been mutual reproaches, sometimes deserved, though usually unfair. The antagonist having to fight with undisciplined masses, with makeshift soldiers, chiefs, arrangements, and resources, has been the object of unpleasant accusations. But what opposition has not included excesses of this kind? Did not the holy war of independence from Spain have innumerable such traits that the glow of success and justice have left in silence? Can one not hear even today secret murmurings against the great names of San Martín and Bolívar, Carrera and O’Higgins,¹⁷ Monteagudo¹⁸ and La Mar,¹⁹ for unnoticed acts which in the labyrinth of a great war were practiced by the masses under their command?

      Reveal, let us see, justly or not, some act of cowardice, some behavior of dissolute indignity that stains the life of Rivadavia, Agüero, Pico, Alsina,

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      Varela, Lavalle, Las Heras, Olavarria, Suárez,²⁰ and so many others enrolled as chiefs in the noble ranks of the Unitario Party!

      This praise is not a feature of that routine declamation of the parties. It is the just vindication of one-half of the Argentine Republic.

      Both sides accuse each other of faults and offenses. Perhaps they have these faults, perhaps they committed such offenses, and the first of them is having taken up arms to tear each other apart. But once they have gone to war—the last aberration of passion and fervor—should it seem strange that they should then incur other offenses? To what else could the fever of a bloody contest lead, in which are at stake honor, political faith, and the interest for a cause considered that of the homeland itself?

      The Federal Party made use of tyranny: the Unitario Party made use of alliances with foreign powers. Both did wrong. But why have those who have looked on this alliance as a crime of treason forgotten that the crime of tyranny is no less a crime? There are, then, two offenses that account for each other. I say offenses, and not crimes, because it is absurd to claim that the Argentine parties have been criminal in the abuse of their means.

      Rosas has people who understand his perspective because he is the victor. The Unitarios have not, because they have been defeated. Thus is the world in its judgment. They call Lavalle a traitor because he died defeated in Jujuy. If he had entered Buenos Aires victorious, they would have called him libertador. If O’Higgins or San Martín had been defeated at Maypo, captured and hanged the next day in the square in Santiago; if the same had happened to the September revolutionaries and the domination of the Spanish had subsisted until today, those great men of the highest rank would be forgotten as obscure rebels worthy of the gallows, where they would atone for their treason.

      Passion, in its language of lies and hyperbole, has been able to give the name of treason only to the simple military alliance that the Unitarios made with the forces of England and France.

      Treason is a crime, but there is no crime when there is no intention to do evil. It is, then, something more than hasty procedure; it is an act of imbecility to presume that men of sincerity, of fervor, of patriotism such as Lavalle, Suárez, Olavarría, etc., could have harbored the intention of dishonoring the colors that they had defended since childhood

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      in a hundred glorious, honorable combats, risking their lives to foreign bullets! If other men had done it, without the precedents of those men, the sophism would be less manifest. But to accuse of treason to their country those who created and founded the homeland with their swords and their blood! Lavalle, Paz, Rodríguez, who had no fortune but their glorious trophies obtained in the war of South American independence, must have had the intention to fight so that after their triumph they would hand over to a foreign power the homeland, its independence, its insignia, and even their personal honor and freedom! The tyrants have worn out the meaning of the word treason in their abuse of it, to the extent that it is rare that anytime, especially in young and warring countries, it is applied justly. But when it is used against the Unitarios of the Argentine Republic, one commits something more than a common error: one commits, as I have said, an act of inexcusable imbecility. Tiberius, the dark and bloody Tiberius, once saw the crime of treason even in a poem, in an indiscreet and confidential word, in a tear, in a smile, in the most insignificant things.²¹ Dionysius the tyrant condemned to death a man who dreamed he had murdered him. Alter a little the meaning of the word treason, said Montesquieu, and a legal government will become an arbitrary one.

      “A grave reproach,” says Chateaubriand, “will be tied to the memory of Bonaparte. Toward the end of his reign his yoke became so heavy that the hostile feelings toward the foreigner softened; and an invasion, today a painful memory, took on at the time it occurred, the air of a campaign of freedom. … The Lafayettes, the Lanjuinais, the Camilo Jordans, the Ducis, the Lemerciers, the Cheniers, the Benjamin Constants, standing erect among the impetuous crowd, dared to spurn the victory and protest against the tyranny” … “Let us abstain, then, from saying that those who are led by fate to fight against a power that belongs to their country must be villains: in all times and countries, from the Greeks to our day, all opinions have backed the forces that could ensure them victory. One day it will be read in our Memoirs the ideas of M. de Malesherbes on the emigration. We do not know in France a single party that has not had men on foreign soil, merging with enemies and marching against France. Benjamin Constant, Bernadotte’s aide-de-camp, served

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      in the allied army that entered Paris, and Carrel was caught, arms in hand, in the Spanish ranks.”²²

      It is needless to say that Lafayette, Chénier, Constant,²³ Carrel are names that all the parties in France take pride in counting among their celebrated men. From where does this way of seeing them arise, in spite of those actions, which a sophist would dub treason? From the universal conviction that their intentions in executing them were entirely French and patriotic; and that only a totally exceptional situation could have placed them in the position of seeking the good of the country by means of such a course.

      The Unitarios of Buenos Aires have done less than Constant, Carrel,²⁴ and Lafayette in France: they have never marched against anything that could be said to be their country. They have marched with their flag, with their cockade, with their chiefs, along their path, toward their separate and particular ends; after demanding and obtaining solemn written statements, protecting the honor and integrity of the Republic, against all pernicious eyes of the foreigner. It was impossible to use this delicate means of reaction with more discretion, reserve, and prudence than they did. The documents that prove it are well known, as is the justification born from its results.

      Other high and noble intentions also explain the conduct of the Argentines who in 1840 joined the French forces to attack the power of General Rosas. That coalition had more farsighted

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