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. . . . . . . . .

THE ILLUSION

AMERICAN

Eduardo Prado

Editions of
federal Senate

Volume 11
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THE AMERICAN ILLUSION

The Forbidden Book

N On December 4, 1893, this book was

put on sale in bookstores in São Paulo. After all
the finished copies were sold that day, the chief
of police went to the bookstores and banned the
sale. The following morning, the printing house
where the book was printed woke up surrounded
by a force of cavalry, and a police chief
accompanied by a donkey pulling a cart appeared
at the door of the workshop. The deputy entered
the workshop and ordered all the copies of the
book to be collected, ordering them to be piled on
the cart. The donkey and the police chief took the
book to the police office. On the same day, Platéa
published the following:

An interview with Dr. Eduardo Prado. –

As our readers know, Dr. Eduardo Prado's new
book, The American Illusion, has appeared on
sale in the last issue of this page.

All copies offered for sale on Saturday were sold.

We learned that day that the police banned the
sale of the book.
Our colleague Gomes Cardim, for
reading the prohibited work on a tram, was taken
to the police. The same happened to a gentleman,
from whose hands, in Paulicéia, a copy was
snatched by a police officer.
secret.

A writer of this sheet went to look for

the author to hear his impressions regarding the
success of his book and his opinion on the ban.

Dr. Eduardo Prado received our

companion very graciously, and did not seem to
attach much importance to either the book or its
ban.
This is, more or less, what he
he said:

– When I was growing up, there was a

shoemaker on Rua de São Bento who had a sign
with a painted lion that, in anger, put its teeth in a
boot.

(continues on front cover)

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Underneath it read: Tearing is possible – unsewing is not.

Give me permission to plagiarize the shoemaker and to
say: You can prohibit it, answer no.
As for the honorable chief of police, I think
that His Excellency flattered me extremely by judging my
prose capable of defeating institutions as strong and
consolidated as the republican institutions in Brazil.

Furthermore, Your Excellency can be said to

have banned the book, just on a hunch. The volume
came out at four o'clock and, at five o'clock, it was banned
before the authorities had time to read it.
I confess that the publication was an act of
naivety on my part. I don't want to say that I trusted, and
that's why I say that I relied on art. 1st of Decree No.
1,565, of October 13th, regulating the state of siege. The

Vice President of the Republic and your Minister of the

Interior said in this article:

“Art. 1º The expression of thought through

the press is free, and the propaganda of any political
doctrine is guaranteed.”
And with their signatures they pledged their word to this
guarantee. I write a book supporting the political doctrine
that Brazil must be free and autonomous before
foreigners, and I adopt Montes-quieu's aphorism, that
republics must have virtue as their foundation.

The government is against these opinions,

and is within its rights. However, order the book to be
banned! Where is the government's word, solemnly given
in a decree, which says it guarantees the propaganda of
any political doctrine?

Popular wisdom says: A king's word does not go back.

– The people will have to invent another

proverb for the words of the Vice President of the Republic.

EDUARDO PRADO
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Eduardo Prado
(1860 – 1901)
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THE AMERICAN ILLUSION

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Board of Directors
Biennium 2009/2010

Senator José Sarney

President

Senator Marconi Perillo 1st Senator Serys Slhessarenko 2nd

Vice President Vice-President

Senator Heráclito Fortes 1st Senator João Vicente Claudino 2nd

Secretary Secretary

Senator Mão Santa 3rd Senator Patrícia Saboia 4th

Secretary Secretary

Secretary Substitutes

Senator Cesar Borges Senator Adelmir Santana

Senator Cícero Lucena Senator Gerson Camata

editorial board

Senator José Sarney Joaquim Campelo Marques

President Vice president

Advisors

Carlos Henrique Cardim Carlyle Coutinho Madruga

Raimundo Pontes Cunha Neto
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Editions of the Federal Senate – Vol. 11

THE AMERICAN ILLUSION

Eduardo Prado

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Brasilia – 2010
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EDITIONS OF
FEDERAL SENATE
Vol. 11

The Editorial Board of the Federal Senate, created by the Board of Directors
on January 31, 1997, will always seek to edit works of historical and cultural
value and of relevant importance for understanding the political, economic and
social history of Brazil and reflection on the destinations from the country.

Graphic design: Achilles Milan Neto ©

Senado Federal, 2010
National Congress
Praça dos Três Poderes s/nº – CEP 70165-900 – Brasília – DF
CEDIT@senado.gov.br
Http://www.senado.gov.br/web/ council/conselho.htm

ISBN: 978-85-7018-270-8

........................................
Prado, Eduardo, 1860-1901.
The American illusion / Eduardo Prado. – 2. reprint. – Brasília: Federal
Senate, Editorial Board, 2010.
120 p. – (Editions of the Federal Senate; v. 11)

1. Foreign relations, United States, Brazil. 2. Monroe Doctrine. I.

Title. II. Series.

CDD 327.730981

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To American Friendship Enthusiasts

AND WHEN Ulysses Grant, later, coming to Europe,

coveted the honor of visiting him (Victor Hugo), the republican poet
refused to receive a tel goujat in his home.
Our accounts with North American fraternity dealers are even
more serious. However, there are, among us, natives, who project statues
to Monroe, they believe they are committing a republican act, raising the
protectorate of the United States for Brazil's protection.
If these enthusiasts wanted to reflect, I would order them the
precious pamphlet with which Mr. Eduardo Prado has just enriched
Brazilian literature: The American Illusion (2nd edition). This book had a
singular fate: in Brazil it was banned an hour after it was put on sale, that
is, banned before it was read; in Portugal, after being composed by the
National Press, it could not be edited by them. Its publication in São Paulo
compromised the good relations between Marshal Peixoto and President
Cleveland; its circulation in Lisbon embarrassed the reconciliation between
the Hintze Ministry and Marshal Peixoto. Let us be grateful to the
Florianista police and Portuguese politics. The first made the book pass
through the crucible of new studies, enabling the author to rectify, by
examining the sources in the British Museum, the elements of his narrative; the second
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8 Eduardo Prado

come to light in the middle of Paris. One and the other conspired to give the greatest
notoriety to this booklet, absolutely new on the subject, in which,
as a repository of ignored truths, it is the most opportune service to Brazil. If, he
read, there are still founders of monuments left in this country
monroinos and minters of Benhamite medals, will, in this case, be
The words in which the famous Admiral, in his speech
to the United States Service Club, referred to the official demonstrations of
Brazilian sympathy, which sealed our humiliation as recognition
of the humiliated. The egregious Benham publicly attributed these parties to
a feeling, which he was kind enough not to define, but whose flattering nature to
our honor the laughter from the military auditorium in New York leaves no reasonable
doubt: “This friendship is based on respect, and
maybe something more. That friendship is founded on respect with perhaps a little
tinge of something else.”

RUI BARBOSA

(Complete works, vol. XXIII, 1896, Volume 1 – Letters from

England, edition of the Ministry of Education and Health – 1946, pages 42 and 43.)
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Preface to the 2nd Edition

THIS ONE
work, already published in Brazil and now reprinted
abroad, deserves to come to light again, even in the absence of self-interest.

This unpretentious writing was confiscated and banned by the republican

government of Brazil. Possessing this book was a crime, reading it a conspiracy, a
crime, having written it.1

Before the painful ordeal that under the name of republic has so embittered
the Brazilian homeland, no government considered itself weak and guilty to the point of
not being able to tolerate contradictions or truths, not even those of an impersonal and
elevated criticism.
Our great-grandparents were young when the Holy Office was extinguished.
Since then, in our country, power has never again dared to come between our rare
writers and their scarce public. Everyone thought this liberal conquest was definitive, but
the republican government of Brazil, sadly predestined to always act against civilization,
disappointed everyone. In the Republic, the book had no more freedom than the
newspaper, than the tribune, nor more guarantees than the citizen.

1 See Appendix.
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10 Eduardo Prado

A Roman said that books have their destiny. This one was not
the worst, honored, as it was, with the wrath of the enemies of freedom.
Has not the truth itself proclaimed happy those who suffer persecution
for justice?
London, November 7, 1894.

EDUARDO PRADO
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The American Illusion

I
WE THINK

that it is time to react against the insanity of absolute

fraternization that is intended to be imposed between Brazil and the
great Anglo-Saxon republic, from which we find ourselves separated not
only by great distance, but also by race, religion, nature, language,
history and traditions of our people.
The fact that Brazil and the United States are at the same
The continent is a geographical accident to which it would be childish to attribute
exaggerated importance.
Where did we discover in history that all nations
from the same continent should have the same government? And where does the
Has history shown us that these nations are forced to be brothers? In
In full monarchical Europe, are there not republican France and Switzerland?
What fraternity is there between France and Germany, between Russia and
Austria, between Denmark and Prussia? These nations do not belong to the
same continent, are not close neighbors, and perhaps cease to
be bitter enemies? Intending to identify Brazil with the United States,
because they are from the same continent, is the same as wanting
give Portugal the institutions of Switzerland, because both countries are in
Europe.
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12 Eduardo Prado

The American brotherhood is a lie. Let's take America's Iberian

actions. There is more hatred, more enmity between them than between
the nations of Europe. Mexico depresses, oppresses and has, at times,
invaded Guatemala, which is fighting very bloody wars with the Republic
of El Salvador, a bitter enemy of Nicaragua, a fierce adversary of
Honduras, which never dies in love with the Republic of Costa Rica. The
tangled and horrible history of all these nations is a river of blood, it is a
continuous slaughter. And where is American solidarity, where is the
fraternization of the republics?
Colombia and Venezuela hate each other to death. Ecuador
is a victim, never resigned, sometimes of Colombian violence, sometimes
of Peru's claims. And Peru? Didn't he already assault Bolivia, didn't he
later join her in a very unfair war on Chile? And didn't Chile already
invade Bolivia and Peru twice, didn't they carry out a horrific slaughter of
Bolivians and Peruvians in the last war, perhaps the bloodiest of this
century? And Chile doesn't just have these enemies: its great adversary
is the Argentine Republic. This country, which has usurped territories
from Bolivia, forces Chile to maintain a large army, and no one is
unaware that a conflict between those countries is a catastrophe that,
from one moment to the next, could break out. The dictator Francia, the
taciturn executioner of Paraguay, whom Augusto Comte places among
the saints of humanity venerated in the positivist calendar,2 out of hatred
for Argentines and other American peoples, cloistered his country for dozens of years.
The Argentine Republic is Paraguay's natural opponent. López attacked
her, and she sided with Brazil in its war against Paraguay. And what
feelings does the Argentine Republic have towards Uruguay? There is not
a single Argentine statesman who does not confess that his country's
supreme ambition is the reconstitution of the former viceroyalty of Buenos
Aires, through the conquest of Paraguay and Uruguay.
This is the American fraternity.

***

Returning to the rising sun, having, due to the ease of

travel, its populous centers closer to Europe than most

2 As we can see, the positivist predilection for South American despots is ancient.
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The American Illusion 13

from other American countries; separated from them by diversity of origin and
language; Neither physical Brazil nor moral Brazil form a system with those
nations. Geologists say that the Prata and the Amazon were once two long
inland seas that communicated with each other. Brazil, an immense island, was
a continent in itself. The alluvium and the rising of the bottom of that ancient
Mediterranean welded Brazil to the eastern slopes of the Andes. This junction is,
however, superficial; The deep roots and eternal foundations of the Brazilian
massif are truly their own and independent. That's why volcanic convulsions
from the other system don't come to Brazilian beaches. At most, distant, tenuous
and subtle vibrations arrive that the instruments register, but that the senses do
not perceive. The Jesuit missionary Samuel Fritz says that, in 1698, a terrible
Andean eruption transformed the Solimões, the Brazilian river, into a “river of
mud”, and that, terrified, the Indians saw in it the wrath of the gods. It seems
that, in the political order, such were the revolutionary Spanish eruptions that,
after all, they disturbed Brazilian waters. The torrent, however, is not just mud,
because it is mud and blood.

Study, one by one, all the Iberian American countries.

The characteristic feature of all of them, in addition to the continuous tragicomedy
of dictatorship, constituents and seditions, which is the life of these countries, is
the ruin of finances.
And in the ruin of finances the main point is the systematic default,
the blatant theft carried out in good faith by its European creditors. The finance
ministers of the Spanish republics, through loans that are not repaid, have
extorted more money from European pockets than Europe ever took from the
gold and silver mines of America.
Take the fantastic budgets of these countries; and, in the midst of appalling deficits and
the most indecent falsifications, in the irregular public accounting that these countries
maintain, where state money is spent and appropriated by presidents with a lack of
ceremony that the Tsar of Russia is incapable of, which is what do we see? There is the
famous war budget devouring everything. There are dozens of generals, hundreds of
colonels and thousands of officers.

It's proof that there is no American fraternity.

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14 Eduardo Prado

If the American nations lived or could even live as

brothers, they would not need to crush taxpayers with taxes or
blow up their respective treasuries, defrauding creditors with the
purchase of these weapons and warlike devices that are so
destructive of national prosperity.
Let us now speak of the great North American republic, and see what
feelings of fraternity it has demonstrated towards Latin America, and what moral influence
it has had on the civilization of the entire continent.

***

In the last quarter of the last century, extraordinary men,

of the old Saxon stock, reinvigorated by Puritanism, and some of
them inspired by philosophism, appeared in the thirteen English
colonies of North America. They decided to establish their
homeland as an independent nation, and it never entered their
minds to proselytize independence or republicanism in America.
Nor was this typical of his race.
The end they had in view was an immediate, restricted and
practical end. Making their homeland independent, they had the kings of
France and Spain as allies. How could they want the latter, to whom they
were grateful for his intervention in favor of independence, to lose their
rich American colonies? If there was any sympathy among them for the
emancipation of other American countries, this sympathy appeared
thirty or forty years later when the whole of Latin America, at the cost of
sacrifices, was finalizing its independence without North American aid.
The ignorant pretension with which superficial French writers try to link
the American Revolution to the French Revolution is highly comical,
wanting by force that French revolutionary ideas had influenced America,
when, if there was any influence, it was first of America on France. The
person of Franklin, with his black breeches, without a sword at his side,
nor embroidery, nor feathers, with his thick lace-up shoes, with his
prestige as a sage and a liberator, strolling through the galleries of
Versailles; the reputation that he was a simple worker in his youth, that
was a real influence in France.
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The American Illusion 15

When he, in his skepticism full of bonhomie, laughed at the pompous

motto that Turgot, the famous, gave him: Eripuit coelo fulmen
sceptrumque tyrannis, he gave proof that his terrible common sense
could not escape the suicidal folly of the aristocracy French. When the
revolution broke out, when it began to kill and burn, there was great
sympathy throughout America for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the
former allies, the generous protectors of American independence.
Shortly afterwards, the Washington government broke diplomatic
relations with the French republic. Where the republican solidarity, where the frater
Let's look at history: What assistance has the American
government provided to the independence of the Iberian colonies of America
- What has been the attitude of the United States when these countries have
been attacked by European governments - How has the Washington
government treated them - What has been the role of the United States in
international and civil struggles in Latin America – What is its political, moral
and economic influence on these countries.
Everything you will read in this work refers to these points,
which will all be discussed, although not always in the order of their
enumeration.
***

To England, mainly, and not to the United States, Latin

America owes the moral strength that allowed it to gain independence.
It was William Burke who was the first voice in Europe to declare himself in
his favor, writing a vibrant pamphlet, advocating the independence of South
America,3 the Abbé de Pradt and later Canning, who were the ones who
practically made it possible, that is, made effective This independence is
certain, already officially advised by Lord Wellington at the Verona congress.4
The independence of the Latin nations of America was in no
way protected by the United
States. The nations that fought for their political emancipation
then owed considerable services to England.

3 William Burke, South American independence, or the emancipation of South America, the
glory and interest of England, London, 1807.
4 Chateaubriand. Le congrés de Vérone, chap. XVI.
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16 Eduardo Prado

Mr. Carlos Calvo says that the attitude of the United States and the
proclamation of the Monroe doctrine weighed in a decisive way
in the spirit of the English government when it, in August 1822, through the authority
of Lord Wellington, took up the defense of the
Spanish-American countries, against whom the Holy Alliance intended to intervene
in favor of Spain.
This statement is erroneous. Firstly, the so-called Monroe Doctrine was
only proclaimed by the United States fifteen months
later, that is, in December 1823. And what was the attitude of the States
United in relation to the revolted colonies? A Spanish-American author,
Mr. Samper, from Colombia, says: “While in the United States, it is curious to
observe that this power is most interested in favoring our independence,
Lower the political point of view and not lower the commercial one, it was shown without embargo a lot
less favorable than England, indifferent to the community of our revolution and much
late in their official manifestations, as parsimonious in seeking us the assistance of
armament that we requested, with our money, from the traders shipowners.”5

and Long before Monroe's message, the American ambassador Rush

had received from Canning the confidence that the Holy Alliance
he thought of intervening in America on behalf of Spain, and Canning added that
he was willing to directly oppose this plan if he had the cooperation of the United
States. Rush sent Canning's statements
to his government, which received them with great satisfaction because until that
occasion, as Calhoun, who was part of the cabinet, later recounted,
the United States had not deemed it prudent to intervene, in view of the
great power of the Holy Alliance. Monroe treated his secretaries with
different consideration than that used by the semi-barbarous presidents of other
republics of America with the irresponsible people who lend themselves to be their
ministers; communicated the news from London to the cabinet, and consulted the
Jefferson should accept the proposed assistance from England.6 Until then, the
United States' attitude had been entirely one of reserve, of abstention, and, for a
nation that wants to present itself as the protector

5 JM Samper, Essay on political revolutions and the social condition of Hispano-American

republics, p. 195. Paris, 1861.
6 Von Holst, Constitutional History of the US of America, vol. 1, pg. 420; Jefferson's,
Werks; vol. VII, pages. 315 and 316.
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The American Illusion 17

of Latin Americans, it is necessary to confess that this policy was not

fraternity, but rather selfishness. Still in 1819 the American government
had refused to receive the consuls appointed by Venezuela and the government
of Buenos Aires, alleging various pretexts,7 and only on March 9, 1823
is that it recognized the independence of the Spanish republics.
Strengthened and encouraged by the initiative of England, on 2
December 1823, President Monroe said in his message:
“We must declare, for the sake of frankness and
friendships that exist between the United States and those powers
(European) countries, that we will consider any attempt on your part to
extend your system to any part of this hemisphere as a
as dangerous for our peace of mind as it is for our security.
With the existing colonies and dependencies of the same powers,
We have not intervened and we will not intervene. In relation, however, to the
governments that declared their independence and have maintained it, an
independence that, after great reflection and on fair principles, we
We recognize all interference, on the part of any European power, with the aim of
oppressing them and in any way dominating their
destinations, cannot be seen by us other than as an unfriendly manifestation
towards the United States.”
Here is the famous doctrine!

The never quite deceived and mocked South American naivety saw
in this declaration a formal, solemn and definitive commitment, to
alliance with the United States, an alliance as sensible as the one with the
iron with the clay pot. For seventy-one years, the American government
has accumulated declarations upon declarations, which almost amount to
retractions; For seventy-one years, American writers, speakers and politicians
have explained that this is neither a commitment nor an alliance; For seventy-one
years, through words, acts and omissions, the Washington government has
practically demonstrated the restricted and, so to speak, platonic meaning of
Monroe's words, and, even today, there are those who have the superstition of
take that literally. Stupidity seems invincible.

7 Annual register of the year 1819. 1820; p. 233, London.

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We could fill pages and pages with extracts from books,

newspapers and speeches by Americans interpreting the so-called doctrine
in a very different sense from the Jacobin interpretation that is believed today
in Brazil. We prefer, however, to simply report the facts.
Who knows the official American documents of that
time knows that the entire domestic and foreign policy of the United States was
subordinated to the interests of the peculiar institution, a euphemism with which
used to be called slavery. The United States, since it knew
that any American country was willing to abolish slavery, they were
immediately hostile to the independence of that country. Poor Haiti was the
object of American hatred. Hamilton of South Carolina declared in
House of Representatives that the independence of Haiti, in
some should be tolerated; Hayne, accompanied by his entire party,
I wanted the simple fact that any country recognized independence
of Haiti was a reason for the rupture of diplomatic relations with the
U.S. In 1825, the Washington government asked the Czar of
Russia's intervention with the Spanish court, so that it would cease
to antagonize its former colonies, already in fact independent, especially
Colombia and Mexico. And this, said Secretary of State Henry
Clay to Middleton, American minister in St. Petersburg, because Mexico and Colombia,
continuing their hostility against Spain, could eventually take over Cuba and put an end
to slavery there.

Henry Clay also asked Mexico and Colombia to postpone

his expedition to liberate Cuba, and Middleton was ordered to insist to the Czar,
head of the Holy Alliance, because the United States was keen to prevent
Cuba's independence. At that time it was thought that France, then at war
against Spain, was going to send a
expedition to Cuba. Mexico and Colombia reminded the United States of
fulfilling its promise contained in the famous message of
Monroe. Henry Clay responded that the message contained in effect
a promise, but that the United States had made it to itself
and not to another country, and that therefore no country had the right to
demand fulfillment of the same promise.8

8 Von Holst, vol. I, pages. 422-428.

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The American Illusion 19

The Spanish-American countries wanted, it seems, more than

an practical lesson in the Monroe doctrine. They convened the famous congress
of Panama, an assembly destined for the alliance of all the Americas,
to mutual fraternity, etc., etc. Only representatives of
four countries. The United States, after much hesitation, appointed
two representatives who never arrived in Panama. The instructions given to them
(1826) are perhaps the best commentary on Mon-roe's doctrine. It follows mainly
that the United States was not
in no way willing to make Latin America's fights with the
European powers. And never, ever, did America change
the way of thinking and acting.
Let's see the many facts in which that government, for
In his actions, he gave an authentic interpretation of the doctrine that the South
Americans have falsified. First, however, we will give you a valuable opinion, and
which destroys at its base the belief that wants to spread in Brazil that
The United States does not allow any government in America other than the
Republican one.
The South Americans who say this are stating a falsehood and the
Those who rejoice in this well deserve the contempt that Americans
vote for them. Is there anything less dignified than a citizen wanting the
his homeland does not have the free disposition of its destinies and is, when
it is about choosing or changing its form of government, depending on
of the foreigner's will?
Fortunately for the American nation, although great the
faults of the politicians who have dishonored it so many times, tells the world
of thought men of the highest value, legitimate heirs of the
heroes of independence.
Here is how one of these men judges Mon-roe's doctrine, in the
forced and unworthy interpretation that the Jacobins want to give it.
Brazilians, who put the republic above the homeland:
“Want to establish the principle that the United States cannot accept
in America any political system different from its own, or
that cannot tolerate any political change with the aim of replacing the republican
form with the monarchical form, would be going beyond the pretensions of the
congress of Laybach and Verona which, at least, had
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20 Eduardo Prado

fear of the destruction of their political work, while the States

United States cannot have this fear.”9
In 1786, a young Brazilian, Maia, a student at Mont-pelier, disguising
himself with the pseudonym Wandek and surrounding himself
of a thousand mysteries, he tried to get closer to Jefferson, then United States
ambassador in Versailles. Taking advantage of Jefferson's trip to the south of
France, he met him in Nimes, and there he spoke to him about Brazil's
independence, which he dreamed of, and
asked for assistance from the United States. Jefferson discouraged him,
as is evident from the letters that the ambassador wrote to Jay, Secretary of
State, informing him of the interview he had had with the
young Brazilian man. In 1817, an emissary from Pernambuco went to the
United States ask for help; was duped, and the Washington government
hurried to report everything to the Portuguese minister Correia da
Mountain range. On the occasion of Brazil's independence, we did not receive proof
some goodwill on the part of the Americans, and only after
other countries recognize Brazil's emancipation is that the United States
recognized our autonomy. It should be noted that Monroe's famous doctrine
dates back to 1823; it was in the presidential message
of that year that president established the non-intervention of the
Europe in things from America. Now, two years later, in 1825, it is
that our independence was recognized by Portugal, through English intervention,
represented in the person of Sir Charles Stuart, later Lord de Rothesay. Later,
the United States celebrated with the
Brazil a treaty of friendship, trade and navigation. The American minister in Rio,
Raguet, placed great embarrassments on our nascent nationality,
embarrassments that were only partially removed by his successor, William
Tudor.
To get an idea of what Raguet's mission was, just
quickly go through his correspondence.10 Raguet accuses our squadron on
the River Plate of cowardice (page 20); says that with the people
Brazilian it is useless to appeal to reason and justice (page 32); Raguet
in crude terms threatens the Foreign Minister of a

9 Wo!sey, Introduction to the Study of International Law, § 74.

10 US House of R. Docs. 20th Congress, Session 1st., vol. 7, Doc. 281.
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The American Illusion 21

war with the United States (page 27): “This is not a civilized people” (page 54).

Such was Raguet's behavior and such were his rudeness, that Henry
Clay, Secretary of State, sent him a dispatch (page 108), finding his manners
strange, and telling him that he was
I must not forget that, after all, Brazil was a Christian country.
At this time, the American government became fully involved
to governments that put pressure on Brazil due to issues
of marine prey in the River Plate.

During our fights on the River Plate, we always found the North
American opposition obstructing the action of our squadrons, disrespecting our
blockades, colluding with the
our enemies, and then, taking advantage of the initial difficulties of
our political independence, make unreasonable demands on us and
exorbitant complaints. The first American representative who
came to Rio de Janeiro, at the end of the colonial period, gave rise to a
unpleasant diplomatic incident, disrespecting the family
real, which was an insult done to the country.

The American representative who handled the complaints of

trapped in the River Plate, after running short of negotiations, they broke off
abruptly and withdrew without there being any reason for this slight, which
was in fact repaired by the successor of that diplomat William Tudor, who
signed a treaty of friendship, trade and navigation with us.

Read President Jackson's insolent messages to

American Congress, referring to Brazil and other countries of the
South America.

That unscrupulous general, who was the patriarch of corruption in

his homeland, in his messages to Congress, expressed himself
with gross arrogance in relation to Brazil and other countries in the
South America. In 1830, there being no more war on the Prata or
in the Pacific, the Secretary of the Navy insists on increasing the force
naval forces on the coasts of South America: “It is necessary”, says the secretary
John Branch, “not to diminish our forces, which are indispensable
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22 Eduardo Prado

to defend our interests before those unstable and incapable governments.”11 The demands
of the American
government were enormous, and from Minister Tudor's own correspondence
it is clear that some of the complaints were unreasonable.

Thus, it was, for example, the schooner United States captured by our fleet
when it tried to force the blockade by taking war munitions to our enemies. Was it possible
to doubt the legitimacy of the seizure? William Tudor, in one of his dispatches to his
government, refers to exaggerations of complaints, and in another dispatch he seems to
feel that things had been arranged peacefully, and is pleased to give the plan for a possible
American naval expedition against the Brazil to block Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de
Janeiro. And while the American diplomat expressed this, from his own correspondence it
appears that, at that time, the Brazilian war schooner Ismênia saved an American trader
from pirates on the coast of Africa, saving him a large shipment of ivory.

From Raguet's correspondence we see the smuggling carried out on the

coast of Brazil by the Morning Star of Philadelphia; the insolence of Commander Biddle of
Cyane with our flotilla under the command of Admiral Pinto Guedes; we see the fraudulent
maneuver of the American ship President Adams, leaving Montevideo with a false
manifest for Boston, and trying to supply the port of Buenos Aires that the

Brazil blocked.12 Brazil

had to give in to North American impositions, and paid for the complaints the
amount of 427:259$546 réis, which at that time was worth six or seven times what it is
worth today.13 Read the American State Papers of time, and it
must be seen that, when dealing with our government, French admiral
Roussin, who appeared in the bar of Rio de Janeiro with his squadron

11 US Senate Documents: Congress, 12th Sess. 2. 1830 and 31, vol. 1, pg. 38. Doc. 1.
12 Executive documents presented to the H. of Representatives, 25th Congress. Doc. 32, p. 32.
13 Ibid.
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The American Illusion 23

to make demands, the American minister gave him his moral support, and was well
forgotten about Monroe and the doctrine.14 When England and
France intervened in the Argentine Republic against Rosas, the government
American, who lived in perfect harmony with that monster, the
who has? Anything.
Among the recommendations that the Washington government makes to
William Tudor must prepare the spirit of the Brazilian government for the
news that would soon be given to him that the American government had recognized
D. Miguel as king of Portugal. Indeed, on October 1st,
1830, the President of the United States officially received Mr. Torla-des, D. Miguel's
charge d'affaires. The American government was the
the only government that recognized the absolute king and usurper of Portugal!
By that time, the United States government had already organized its war
plan against Mexico, another proof of American solidarity and fraternity. The bad faith
of the Washington government
It started with the Texas issue. He encouraged as much as he could the revolt in that
territory, he encouraged it to separate from Mexico more quickly
absorb it and then declared war on Mexico, a true war of
conquest, humiliated that republic to the extreme, and took away
half of its territory. O brotherhood!

14 Lists of amounts (principal and interest) paid due to American claims:

Tell- Amounts
tale ........................... 37:924$850
Pioneer ship ................................. 21:134$676
Sarah Geoger...................... 42:472$199
................................ 8:081$034
Panther River.......................... 4:229$918
Hero ............................... 12:048$979
Nile................................. 3:313$178
Budget .......................... 30:939$993
Hannah ........................... 37:197$774
Sperm.......................... 92:245$803
Hussar .......................... 28:337$824
Amy ............................. 16:922$878
Ruth ............................... 29:428$440
Ontario.......................... 1:742$000
Spark .............................. 61:250$000
Total ..................... 427:259$545
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24 Eduardo Prado

And the Monroe doctrine, what happened to it? England extended its
conquests west of Canada until reaching the Pacific Ocean. Previously, he had already
snatched, against all rights, the Malvinas Islands, or
Falkland, to the Argentine Confederation.
And will it be possible to talk about the Falkland Islands without remembering one of the
greatest attacks against the rights of nations in this century, an attack
perpetrated by a United States naval force and approved and sanctioned by the
Washington government? In 1831, Argentines had a
colony on the Falkland Islands. Some American fishing vessels did not want to obey
orders from the colony's governor. Hence an administrative and diplomatic conflict
between the American consul in Buenos
Aires and the Argentine government.
The issue was at this point when the American corvette Lexington left
Buenos Aires, commanded by Captain Silas Duncan, went at
Malvinas Islands, bombed the Argentine establishment, disembarked
troops, killed many settlers, set fire to all the houses, razing the
plantations and taking the trapped survivors, some to the United States,
and abandoning others in great misery on the desert coast of Uruguay.
Once the Argentine establishment was destroyed, England took over the
Islands.

The Argentine government, in 1839, claimed satisfaction.

And what did the American government respond to, through the word of the
Secretary of State Daniel Webster?

That the American government was awaiting the final decision of the
conflict between England and the Argentine Republic regarding the sovereignty of the
Falkland Islands.

Now, in 1831, on the occasion of the American attack on the Malvinas,

Argentine sovereignty existed in law and in fact over the Malvinas.
By law, the United States itself recognized it, because in
presidential message of November 17, 1818, referring to the independence of the
former united provinces of the River Plate, was attributed to him the
sovereignty within the limits of the former viceroyalty of Buenos Aires,
which comprised the Falklands; In fact, the Malvinas were Argentine, because they
were colonized by Argentines and administered by authorities
Argentine since 1829; only two years later did England take over
of these islands.
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The American Illusion 25

How is it that the United States, which has so often been said that it will not
allow a European country to take over an inch of American territory, did not doubt, in the
present case, Argentine sovereignty in the Falklands in conflict with English usurpation?

And the Argentine Republic, in 1884, renewing its complaint received the
same response. He proposed submitting the case to arbitration; the Washington
government refused.

This is the American sincerity when talking about the Monroe doctrine and
supporting the theory of arbitration for resolving international conflicts.

Later, in Honduras, England expanded its dominions with impunity without

putting this doctrine into practice, and when Schomburgh invaded Brazilian territory in the
Piraras lagoon, on the border of British Guiana, he withdrew in the face of the energy of
diplomacy. Brazilian, which on that occasion he did not find, and proudly did not even ask
for the slightest support from Washington, despite Monroe and his doctrine.

Times are passing and Brazil, the Argentine Republic and Uruguay, in self-
defense, wage the fairest of wars against López, from Paraguay. There we found American
diplomacy creating embarrassment for us and, represented in the persons of Ministers
Washburn and General Mac-Mahon, intimates of López, mute and impassive spectators
of his cruelties, his true accomplices through silence and even praise.

How many difficulties did these men create for the allied armies? Even there,
northern Americans showed their understanding of American fraternity. Washburn and
Mac-Mahon, abusing their immunities, were López's spies and assistants, betraying the
allied army.

And Brazil's procedure had been all about correction and

loyalty in very serious emergencies for the North American republic.

That great country had given the world a very demoralizing example through
its attachment to slavery. While in Brazil there were no slaves who had the cynicism of
wanting to legitimize the iniquitous institution, in the United States, where slave owners
were much more cruel than in Brazil, books and sermons were published with scientific
support.
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26 Eduardo Prado

tific and even religious view of slavery, and the time came when half
of the country judged that, to preserve and extend slavery, it was worth
sacrifice the American homeland itself. Slavery overcame patriotism. And the
most terrible and bloody civil war broke out
the story. The Washington government immediately left the first shots
from Fort Sumter, in Charleston, to dominate part of the territory. The rebels
created a veritable squadron of privateers. The American government, which
ignorance or bad faith is now trying to present to
Brazilians as a defenseless supporter of progress and liberal and humanitarian
ideas in matters of international law, had refused to adhere to the Paris treaty
of 1856, by which privateering was abolished
as a barbaric resource abandoned by educated nations. As a providential
punishment, it was against the interests of the American government that
organized the most active and terrible race in memory. The privateers
Southerners ran all the seas of the globe. At that time, the navy
American merchant was perhaps the second in the world. With the
development of political corruption in the United States, the favor given to the
few rich national shipowners, under the pretext of protectionism, became
so expensive is naval construction that the American merchant marine,
so to speak, disappeared. The southern corsairs had, therefore, in that
time, rich and numerous prey on which to satisfy his thirst for revenge and
mainly profit.
Given the increase taken by the southern revolt, it was not
possible for foreign nations to ignore, in international relations,
the legal personality of the confederates, a name that the rebels
they took over. Indeed, lords of various points, having fortresses,
the rebels dominated a part of the territory that the government of
Washington, after a long time, had not been able to take control. To the
Foreign nations could not help but consider the Confederates
as belligerents. No other doctrine could prevail. From another
In this way, it would be enough for any government to simply declare rebels or
pirates the land or sea forces at the service of their adversaries to
deprive them of all war rights. Now, revolution is a right,
according to modern theories, and foreign nations must not hinder, in any
way, even indirect, the exercise of this right.
Grotius says that a nation where there is a revolt must be considered
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The American Illusion 27

by third parties, that is, by other countries, as two separate nations,

each with its own rights as a belligerent. The legal experts
international say that for this to happen it is necessary: 1st that the revolt has
already lasted for some time, with the government not being able to quell it; 2nd that
the resources of the revolt are important; 3rd that she dominates a part
of the territory, whether maritime or land. Now, the Confederates were in this
case, and the American government itself had created a precedent
against himself when, in 1837, he recognized the Texas rebels as belligerents,
ignoring Mexico's complaints.
The recognition of insurgents as belligerents is a
much of the trends in modern international law. It is a measure
advised by humanity's own interests. The title of belligerent confers certain
rights; However, these rights correspond to certain duties that, for the good of
all, must be fulfilled by the belligerents. If the insurgents are denied all rights,
how can they expect to impose on them the general duties of war? And it is in
the interests of humanity that these duties are respected. Now, if there is no
right to
does not correspond to a duty, there are also no duties that do not also
correspond to rights. Bluntschli, the oracle of international law,
says that, since the rebels are militarily organized,
must be recognized as belligerents, and it says, moreover, that current
international law has made progress by showing itself willing to grant the
belligerent status to a revolutionary party. The laws of humanity, he says, require
it.15
It didn't take long for southern corsairs to appear in the ports of
Brazil, and the Brazilian government maintained the greatest discretion and attitude
the most correct, only allowing the ships to make water and receive coal in just
enough quantity to, at idle speed,
transported to the nearest foreign port. The American government felt it
necessary to complain pro forma, and the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
in a bright and dignified note, a note that is now classic
in international law, defended the procedure of the imperial government,
and Washington's own secretary of state, the eminent
Mr. Seward, one of the most notable American statesmen, considered himself

15 See Le droit international codifié, § 512.

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28 Eduardo Prado

satisfied with the justification contained in the Brazilian note, signed by

the minister of foreigners, counselor Magalhães Taques. Seward said, in
response, that he surrendered to the evidence demonstrated in that
most able note.16 Brazilian self-love, at that time, could have satisfactions
like these.
After the civil war ended, there was the great dispute between
England and the United States, the famous dispute known as the
Alabama Question. The government of Brazil was chosen by the high-
ranking parties to be one of the arbitrators between the two great nations.
The loyalty and correctness of the government of Rio de Janeiro could
not be more solemnly recognized than it was then.17 Years later, a
dispute arising from the American civil war arose. The conflict was
between the two great republics of the world, between France and the United States.
The sole arbitrator chosen was the Emperor of Brazil. In the court that
operated in Washington, Mr. Baron de Arinos represented the Brazilian
sovereign. In the Alabama court , which operated in Geneva, the Brazilian
judge was the late baron, later Viscount of Itajubá. Therefore, we can
see what Brazil's prestige was not. Today, wanting the United States to
close the Behring Sea, and, strangely going back to past times,
reestablish the mare clausum, which Selden and Freytas defended in
the 17th century against Grotius, the founder of modern international
law, England has opposed The claim was made, and the two countries
resorted to arbitration. It seems that times have changed... The United
States no longer appealed to the government of Brazil, and the
government in Washington, which they now want to present as the
champion of American fraternity, did not even think of appealing to their
fellow presidents of republics. Latinas. The United States preferred the
arbitration of some anachronistic chancelleries of old and worm-eaten
European monarchies!
We would not be complete in our demonstration that the
United States, although it contains distinguished writers on international
law, is more selfish and arrogant in its practices than the European
monarchies, if we did not refer to the famous Trent incident . O

16 House of Representatives Exec. Docs. 5th session, vol. IV, 38th Congress.
17 Ibidem, 37th Congress; 2d session, vol. IV.
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The American Illusion 29

steamer of this name, English steamer, carried, as passengers, two envoys

diplomatic representatives of the Confederate States, Messrs. Sliddel and
Mason, who went as extraordinary envoys and plenipotentiary ministers, on a
special mission, one of them to London and the other to Paris. Then
well, an American warship, on the high seas, stopped the English steamer
and violently snatched the two passengers from board. This act, contrary to the
law of nations, this disrespect for the flag of a nation
neutral, this rant against the two diplomats aroused the indignation of
all governments, and the Washington government was forced to censure the
officer who perpetrated such an ugly action, but took advantage of it by keeping
the two prisoners for a long time. This act is just less
reprehensible than the villainy that Solano López committed against us,
imprisoning in complete peace the Brazilian steamship Marquês de Olinda, a steamship that
it carried Colonel Carneiro de Campos, president of Mato Grosso. It is
This feat seems to have been strongly advised to López by the Uruguayan citizen, Mr.
Varquez Sagastume, today a minister in Rio de Janeiro, and therefore one of the leaders
of the American fraternity.

With its immediate southern neighbor, Mexico, politics

of the United States was a policy of fraternity?
The most important fact of this policy, what was it?
It was a war.
And this war against Mexico is painted with truth and
eloquence by American historian HH Bancroft:
“The United States’ war against Mexico was a premeditated and
determined affair. It was the result of a robbery plan, which the strongest
deliberately organized against the strongest.
weak. Washington's high political positions were held by
unprincipled men, such as senators, members of congress, not to mention the
president and his cabinet, and there was the great horde of demagogues and
politicians, who took pleasure in satisfying
the instincts of his supporters. These were the slave owners, the
smugglers, the murderers of Indians, who, with their wicked mouths
stained with tobacco, they swore by the sacred principles of July 4th,
that they would extend American dominance from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. And these people, stripped of the notions of just and unjust, were
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30 Eduardo Prado

cynically disposed to retain whatever it could plunder, and invoking

for this the unique principle of force.
“Mexico, poor, weak, struggling to obtain a place among the
nations, will now be humiliated, trampled on, handcuffed and beaten
by the brutality of its northern neighbor. And this is a people who have the
greater pride in their Christian freedom, in their puritan antecedents!
We will see how the United States then began to employ all
his energy in discovering plausible pretexts to steal a vast expanse of land
from a weaker neighbor. And for what? To establish slavery there.”18

The war was preceded by the American intrusion into Texas, the
subsidies that the Americans gave to the revolt they themselves fomented
in that territory, whose independence they were quick to recognize,
as a preparatory measure for annexation, which was the last straw that made
overflowing the patience of Mexicans. And this patience had already been
put to the test in a thousand ways, for years and years in a long series of
embarrassments. American complaints multiplied . Extinct today, that is,
paid good money by Mexico, they were reborn within months. And the
complaints were extraordinary. Bancroft, among others, cites the complaint of
an American who for fifty-six dozen bottles of beer
received 8:260 dollars.19

Once the American Commissioner Voss received the money, and

this did not appear (Bancroft, p. 320).
In 1818, with the United States at peace with Spain,
General Jackson invaded the Florida border, captured and garrisoned
a Spanish fort, seizing Pensacola and Barrancas.
Later, also without declaring war, General Gai-nes made
incursions into Mexico. It was, therefore, in the traditions of the government of
Washington began war against Mexico, without a prior declaration, to
suddenly break off hostilities and invade the territory. AND
so it was.

18 HH Bancroft, Works, San Francisco, 1885, vol. XIII, chap. 13.

19 Ibidem, p. 318, note.
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The American Illusion 31

Let us now see how the war was fought. The Americans did it in a
barbaric way. “The bombing of Vera Cruz lasted four days; it was horrible and
entirely unnecessary” (Bancroft, p. 547).
“The looting, the killing of the wounded on the battlefield, the prisoners
burned alive, are facts confirmed by the highest authorities
officers.”20 “The illegitimate barbarities committed almost always with impunity
by an undisciplined mass such as the American army
are, unfortunately, too verified (Bancroft, p. 547). This is it
was in line with public opinion.
Let’s read the expressions in American newspapers:
One said: “We must destroy Mexico City, leveling it to the ground.
Let's do the same with Puebla Perote, Jalapa,
Saltillo and Monterey, and, having done this, we must still increase our demands.”

Another said: “Let us annihilate the Mexicans: let us bring destruction

and death to all families, let us make them feel an iron yoke, and
this way we will be respected.”21
And Mexico lost almost half of its territory.
Much is made of the fact that the United States has more
later ordered France to withdraw its troops from Mexico. It was a
service, but how come Mexico hasn't paid dearly for this service? Maximilian's
government could not be maintained, although it was the government
more honest than Mexico has had since independence. Maximilia was a
foreigner. If there were a Mexican prince, that monarchical population would
unanimously accept the monarchy. Too much,
Maximilian did not want to sanction the great abuses of the clergy, especially
in relation to the assets of the Church. Let us not forget that the decree abolishing
peones ' agricultural contracts , repeal of an old law by which
hacienda workers became true slaves, subject to
to the lashings, he attracted, against the liberal prince, the hatred of the so-called
conservative classes, which we know what they are, throughout Latin America.
It seems that there is a fatality for the heads of liberating states:

20 Livermore, War with Mexico, p. 263.

21 Jay, Reviev of the Mexican War, p. 259.
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32 Eduardo Prado

Alexander II of Russia, torn to pieces by nihilist bombs, Maximilian shot, Lincoln

assassinated, and D. Isabel of Brazil exiled. Martyrdom is the consecration of
great deeds for humanity! In Mexico, the monarchical feeling is irresistible. It
cannot restore the monarchy but it has made the republic impossible. Because
in Mexico not
There is, there was not, nor will there be a republic. The notable American writer
Gronlund says that, if the United States, at the time of its independence, had
found an English prince, as Brazil found
a Portuguese prince, the monarchy would have been established in the
Unidos.22 And time would have made this monarchy a regime very different
from the regime of oppressive monopoly and cruel plutocracy that is
today the very essence of the North American government. If it can be said
this about the United States, with much more reason the same will be said about
Mexico. The republic, in Mexico, as in other Latin American countries
it will never be an impersonal thing; the republic there will always be a man.
It was Juárez, a representative man, a man who represented the hatred of
foreigner. Now, hate can destroy; hate may be the true expression of national
feeling at a given moment, but hate cannot
create something. Auguste Comte has one of his genius intuitions,
whenever human societies have love as their basis. Only the
love is creative. That's why Juárez created nothing. Don Sebastian Lerdo de
Te-jada, minister and successor of Juárez, was a transition between the politics of
indigenous hatred and the legal conception of society. Man of law, juris-
consultant, he tried for everything, in code articles. Militarism was spying on
him, a common and inevitable fate throughout Iberian America. Deposed and
After Lerdo was expelled by General Díaz, Mexico returned to systematic
militarism. General Dízeogeneral González has been in power for twenty years,
and their power is practically absolute. The Constitution, copied from the
American Constitution, gives the President almost all
the powers. Congress is nothing, elections are a sham.
America's imitative fury has been the undoing of
America. Pericles, in his famous Ceramic speech, said: “I gave you,
Oh, Athenians, a Constitution that was not copied from the Constitution of

22 Gronlund, Co-operative Commonwealth. London, 1891. Swan & Sonnenschein. Page

157.
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The American Illusion 33

no other people. I have not done you the injury of making, for your use, laws copied from
other nations.” There is much greatness in the exclamation of the Greek genius. There
is a prescience to everything that modern social science has discovered that, after all,
can be summed up in this: Societies must be governed by laws arising from their race,
their history, their character, their natural development. The Latin American legislators
have a vanity entirely inverse to the noble pride of the Athenian. They boast of copying
the laws of other countries.

All Spanish countries in America, declaring their independence, adopted

North American formulas, that is, they denied the traditions of their race and history,
sacrificing the senseless principle of political artificialism and legislative exoticism.

What they gathered from this absurdity tells the sad Spanish-American
story of this century. Brazil, happier, instinctively obeyed the great law that nations must
reform themselves within themselves-but, like all living organisms, with their own
substance, after already being slowly assimilated and incorporated into its life the
external elements that it has naturally absorbed. In Brazil we had independence, a
logical fact of the development of colonial society; the monarchy maintained was the
respect for tradition and the conservation of the country in its historical nature that no
one can change. The constitutionalism and parliamentary system adopted were, to a
certain extent, a revival of the past, a reproduction of the Portuguese courts, and
something that was very much in harmony with the almost spontaneous organization,
but always representative and more powerful than what is thought of governments.
municipal and local areas of the colony.

The liberal ideas of the century, enshrined in the coeval institutions of

independence, found a historical basis on which they were established. And this gave
Brazil seventy years of freedom.

Later, in 1889, the same big mistake was made in Brazil that the Spanish-
Americans had fallen into in the first quarter of the century, that is, when they artificially
wanted to impose the North American formula on Brazil.

The loss of freedom was the immediate, fatal consequence of the unfortunate
idea. And we, belatedly, took part in the tedious and disheartening task in which, for
ninety years, the Spanish-Americans have been living.
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34 Eduardo Prado

pipes, this in the long, vain, stormy, bloody and already degrading and useless
an almost secular attempt to establish in Latin America the institutions of a
strange race.
The great American orator Henry Clay once spoke in
1818, in the American Congress in favor of the Spanish colonies revolting
against the metropolis: “It is generally believed in our country that
South Americans are too backward and superstitious to become free nations. It's
an injustice. And proof that they are not
so late that they are adopting our institutions and our
laws.”23 The renowned historian Von Holst says that Clay claims nonsense;
because this servile imitation is proof of incapacity.24
Mexico therefore copied the North American Constitution. One
constitutional provision said more that the President was ineligible to
the presidential period immediately following his presidency. Hence the hybrid and
extremely immoral pact between Díaz and González. Díaz elects González on the
condition that González elects Díaz again. And this has been going on for more than twenty
years. Now, it seems that Díaz doesn't want to let go, and has already reformed
the Constitution, repealing the incompatibility, he will be re-elected, and Gonzá-
lez will be defeated. There is already talk of a Gonzalist revolution, and the state of
The site operates in Mexico with the most enviable regularity.
This is the service that the United States provided to Mexico
freeing him from a government that, although accused of being foreign, was
the mildest, the most civilized, in a word, that ever had that
disgraced country. And the good offices of our sister republic were not limited to
this. After having carved up Mexican territory in 1848, and especially after the
definitive victory of the republic in Mexico, the States
States constituted a true protectorate over that country, which
improvident Mexicans accepted, without seeing that it was ruin and
discredit of his homeland. The Díaz–González duumvirate attracted to the
Mexico a cloud of adventurers who, sponsored by the American legation,
presented themselves, wanting concessions and privileges, which
they were given in exchange for personal favors, beneficial actions and a
thousand other forms of financial fraud. Mexico, under the pretext of armed

23 Henry Clay, Speeches, vol. 1, pp. 89 and 90.

24 Von Holst, Constitutional history of the US, vol. 1, pg. 415.
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The American Illusion 35

rem him with all the modern instruments of progress, he was the prey
submissive and opportune of Americans. Everything was an object of privilege there, everything
reason for concessions with guaranteed interest and other costly benefits for
the treasury. Dealers rushed to New York, and
on the Wall Street exchange they obtained the money they wanted from the
unwary. Whether Díaz reigned or González reigned, the method was always the
same. Often, members of the Washington government were partners
of these Alicantinas, and if the Mexican government had any slight difficulty in
handing over the money, diplomatic pressure soon came to bear on it. Díaz
and González accumulated great fortunes, and Washington rejoiced. American
newspapers enthusiastically announced the progress of the American
initiative, saying that the financial conquest of Mexico was only the prelude to
the political conquest that would later come. At that time, the illustrious Lerdo
de Tejada, who lived in exile in New York,
He told those who wrote these lines: “Mexican generals, in my time, stole on
the roads; now they steal from companies. It’s progress.” The main figure of
this robbery, an unsympathetic figure,
but it appears that somewhat innocent in these crimes, was General Grant.
That happy soldier was a man of short intelligence, ignorant of
business matter and, in any case, an individual without great delicacies. As
soon as it was about any assault on the Mexican piastres, the initiator of the
idea went to General Grant, and he immediately gave him
its name, its prestige and its influence. It then reached its peak
gambling and immorality. Mexico, under the pretext of application on its soil
of Yankee capital, it was practically governed by the American legation.
Mexico is no longer for the Mexicans. Some patriots protested;
but Generals Díaz or González immediately had the option of arresting the
patriots and proclaiming a state of siege. The illustrious orator, the notable
poet of Mexico, Mr. Altamirano, in the midst of the general abasement, raised
his most eloquent voice against the American alliance: “No!”, he shouted in
Congress, “ a thousand times our ancient poverty than the ignominy we
witnessed. The Mexican lion was free in wide freedom
of our mountains. The disloyal and corrupt foreigner has him in chains, and
he still considers himself his benefactor, saying that the chains are made of gold.
with which he subdues him! No! “Vincula quamvis aurea tamen liga sunt!”
While this illustrious voice rose in Mexico, in New York,
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36 Eduardo Prado

in a great banquet of fraternity (financial already seen) between

American bigwigs and Mexican notables, a banquet presided over by the general
Grant, Mr. Evarts, one of the best-known American statesmen, former
Secretary of State, used language that well justified Altamirano's patriotic
indignation. Mr. Evarts passed for being the man
wittiest in the United States, but, often, despite being a literate man, he
bordered on vulgarity. This is very common in
U.S. There are a lot of people there with a reputation for being witty, but
in that country which, having had the honor of being the homeland of Edgard Poe, the
left him to die in misery and general contempt, denying him to this day a
monument; The antics of professional wits are often received with
enthusiasm. Here's what Mr.
Evarts, amid the laughter of the Yankees and the yellow smiles of the
Mexicans: “The Monroe doctrine is certainly a good thing, but, as
all good old-fashioned things need to be reformed. This doctrine
can be summed up in this sentence: America for Americans. Now, I would propose
with pleasure an addition: For the Americans, yes sir, but, let's
understand, for the North Americans (applause). Let's start with our
dear neighbor, Mexico, of which we already ate a lot in 1848. We
remember it (hilarity). Central America will come later, whetting our
appetite for when South America's turn comes. Looking at the map
we see that that continent is shaped like a ham. Uncle Sam is
good fork; he will devour the ham (applause and prolonged hilarity). This
It's fatal, it's just a matter of time. The Star-Spangled Banner is quite
great to spread its glorious shadow from one ocean to another. One
One day it will float single and forward from the north pole to the south pole.”

Comments are these of the general feeling of the American people.

In 1836, in the American Congress, the senator exclaimed
Preston:
“The star-spangled banner will soon float above the towers
Mexico, and from there it will continue to Cape Horn, whose rough waves are the
the only limit the Yankee recognizes to his ambition.”
***

However, the orgy of improvements continued in Mexico. A

Mexican statistical office began to be a fantasy and
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The American Illusion 37

an amazing imagination. A railway concession that was the subject of an

Executive decree was immediately included in reports and other official
documents, not as a simple legislative act, but as an effective reality. There
were so many thousands of kilometers of lines that were considered to be
made, and that the government maps, destined for abroad, proudly traced in
long multicolored lines. Any attempt at a new industry, from a strange culture,
was immediately classified as an already created and abundant source of
immense riches. It was then that in Brazil there were naive people who began
to worry about the great coffee nonsense in Mexico, and it was, after reading
some of those ultra-fantasistic statistics, that Mr. Quintino Bocaiúva made
republican propaganda in articles with this title: Let's look to Mexico. Many
other people wanted, more or less at that time, for Brazilians to also look at
the Argentine Republic, and stupid travelers who came from there, after a
short walk, came as Republicans. They had seen the luxurious restaurants of
Buenos Aires, admired the carriages of cocottes and prevaricating public
servants, they had contemplated the rich architecture of the banks without
seeing the fraud and ruin that lay within. They returned to Brazil, and seeing
our ministers and parliamentarians riding the tram, seeing the modest
buildings of our banks (then still accredited), they concluded that Brazil was a
backward country and that the monarchy was to blame.

However, the force of things is very great. Before the fraudulent

bankruptcy broke out, not of the Argentine Republic, but of the bad
governments of that beautiful country, the financial consortium of Mexico and
the United States ended scandalously. The first complaints came from the
poor defrauded shareholders; The unfortunate people who contributed to the
extraordinary enterprises, pompously sponsored by the generals of one
republic and another, began to realize, albeit belatedly, that they had been
atrociously fleeced. The mines yielded nothing, the lands granted were barren
lagoons, inaccessible mountains or pestilent swamps and mangroves on the
inhospitable coasts of the Gulf or the Pacific. And in these fantastic creations,
in the salaries of the directors, in the stipends for the press, in the
remunerations for Mexican officials and diplomats from the United States, the
millions of dollars subscribed were drained and volatilized. The scream of the
victims was hideous. At first, General Grant's great prestige was a dike that
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38 Eduardo Prado

for some time he contained the wave of indignation that finally broke out
everywhere, in meetings, in the press and in the courts of New York. The
famous Tehuantepec railway company was declared bankrupt; the banks
suspended payments, there were suicides among compromised bigwigs,
a son of Grant was dragged to court, and the poor general suffered
greatly in his popularity, when his name found itself involved in so many
scandalous disputes. Most of the much-declared improvements in
Mexico were postponed indefinitely, the treasury of that republic was
destroyed in the fight, but, continuing under the rule of Díaz and
González, Mexico is still today a victim, depleted, of friendship and
fraternity. North-American.

***

This quick exposition demonstrates what the fraternity of the United States is
for Latin countries. We saw Mexico; Let's now go to Central America.

“It is in the destiny of our race”, said President Buchanan in his message of
January 7, 1857, “to extend throughout North America, and this will happen within a short
time if events follow their natural course . Emigration will continue to the south, nothing
will be able to stop it. Central America, within a short time, will contain an American
population, who will work for the good of the indigenous people.” Senator G. Brocon in
1858: “We are interested in possessing Nicaragua. We have a clear need to take care of
Central America, and if we have that need, it is best to go as masters to those lands. If its
inhabitants want to have a good government, well done and so much the better. If they
don't want to, go somewhere else. They're going to tell me that there are treaties, but
what do treaties matter if we need Central America? Let us know how to take hold of it,
and if France and England want to intervene, go ahead with Monroe’s doctrine!”

The extraordinary story of the filibuster Walker is one that

best portrays North American bad faith and the profound contempt
that the United States governments have for the sovereignty, dignity
and rights of the Latin nations of America. There was a moment when
the Americans thought the opportunity had come to conquer Central America.
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The American Illusion 39

Having already conquered half of Mexico, the conquest of Central America would
leave what is now independent of Mexico, squeezed between
two American territories, that is, doomed to rapid absorption. One
adventurer, William Walker, left S. Francisco in 1853, at the head of
a small army of bandits, formed under the protective eyes of the American authorities.
This armed band invaded the territory
Mexican Sonora, and Walker proclaimed himself president of the new territory,
annexing it by his own authority to the United States. He had,
however, to give up his purpose and surrender to the federal authorities
Americans from San Diogo, who had to judge him for the crime he committed and
for breaking neutrality, but, as expected, they acquitted him. At that time, in the
unhappy republic of Nicaragua it was about
a presidential election, which in the Spanish-American republics is
synonymous with civil war. There were two candidates on the field, generals,
You can already see, by the way, a Castellon and a Chamarro. More or
less elected Chamarro, was half deposed by his rival Castellon who,
To strengthen his situation, he had the clumsy idea of inviting Walker
to come to Nicaragua to help him defend the Constitution and the principle of
authority. Walker formed a new army and left San Francisco in
May 1855.

Immediately, the Nicaraguan minister in Washington, the

Mr. Marcoleta, complained vigorously, but the Secretary of State
Marcy pretended to ignore the case and did not assist the complainant. Soon there was
place the first battle. Walker's Nicaraguan allies appear to have
fled at the first shots, but the 56 Americans he commanded
They won everything, giving Walker immense prestige.
Soon after, there were other victories of the same nature in the Bay
of the Virgins, San Juan del Sur and Rivas, and without resistance, Walker
entered Granada. The city was sacked for three days, and Walker having made a
proclamation guaranteeing the lives of the residents, the main ones returned to
their homes and were shot without delay or trial. American Minister Wheeler,
who was with Walker, committed
especially so that an important citizen named Mayorga would appear,
to whom he gave every guarantee, telling him that he was under the protection
of the star-spangled flag of the United States. Mayorga fell into the trap, and the
American minister handed him over to Walker, who immediately shot him with
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40 Eduardo Prado

many other citizens of Nicaragua.25 Walker soon arranged a kind of peace treaty with a
general Corral, and made D. Patrício Rivas nominal president of the republic who, under
the pressure of fear, fled from Walker's hands as soon as he could. , in which he walked
with prudence, because days later General Corral (another protégé of the American
legation) was shot. Walker became absolute master of the country, and on July 12, 1856,
he proclaimed himself dictator, and his ambassador Vigil was solemnly received by the
Washington government on May 12 of the same year. On September 22, Walker issued
a decree reestablishing slavery in Nicaragua. Slavery had been abolished there thirty-two
years ago. A large part of the American press and the majority of Congress welcomed
this slavery decree with joy. The other Central American nations recognized the danger
and declared war on Walker, who began to receive large resources from the United
States. The war continued with varying degrees of success. Walker completely burned
the city of Granada and retreated to Rivas, a place that surrendered to General Mora on
May 1, 1857; and thanks to the intervention of Captain Davis, commander of the American
warship Saint Mary's, Walker was able to escape, taking refuge with his staff and 260
soldiers aboard the same warship, which transported them to New Orleans, where they
were received amid popular applause.26 In New York there was a meeting in honor and
favor of Walker.

The President of the United States, Buchanan, sent a telegram

25 Walker on Nicaragua, p. 6. Cojutepec, 1856.

26 Haydn's, Dictionary of Dates, 1889, p. 635.
The report of Marine Minister Toucey in 1857 talks about the asylum granted to
William Walker in the following terms: “The
government judged it necessary, as a measure of humanity and policy, to give
instructions to Commodore Mervine (chief of the naval division ), in order to make it
easier for General Walker and his companions, in case they requested to withdraw
from Nicaragua. The action of Commander Davis, facilitating the withdrawal of
General Walker and his soldiers from Nicaragua by means of the ship Saint Mary's ,
was therefore approved by this ministry.”
English: “It was deemend necessary, as a measure of humanity and politics, to
direct Commodore Mervine to give General Walker and such of his men, as were
willing to embrace it, an opportunity to retreat from Nicaragua. And the action of
com-mander Davis, so for as he aided general Walker and his men, by the use of
the Saint Mary's to retreat from Nicaragua, was approved by this Department.”
Congressional Globe, part. I, 1st session, 35th congress, 1857-1858, p. 356.
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The American Illusion 41

He was encomiastic about Walker, saying that “Walker's heroic efforts

excited his admiration and solicitude”.27 In New
Orleans, always with the benevolence of the Washington
government, the adventurer began to organize another expedition.
Denounced by Central American diplomatic agents, he was arrested,
but was soon released on a small bond. Equipping the ship Fashion,
he left on November 11th for Punta Arenas, where he disembarked
with 400 men, without the Saratoga, an American warship, opposing
him . Captain Paulding of the American Navy, arriving later, forced
Walker to surrender and brought him to New York. Walker was
handed over to the courts, but they did not prosecute him, however,
Captain Paulding was prosecuted and reprimanded for having
exceeded his instructions and contravening the Washington
government, declared Walker's protector. In August 1860, Walker
landed in Truxillo (Honduras), seized the fortress and sacked the city.
Captain Salmon, commander of the Icarus, an English warship,
intimidated Walker into returning the stolen property. Walker refused
and fled. He was chased, caught, and the Honduran government had
him tried and shot.28 Walker's final disaster produced outrage in the
United States. They wanted to make him a sublime hero. The poet Joaquim Miller p
A piercing eye, a princely
air A presence like a
chevalier Half angel, half Lucifer.
** *

Who is there, versed in Latin American history, who does

not remember the barbaric bombardment of St. John of Nicaragua
(Greytown) in 1854? The commander of an American steamer
cruelly killed the owner of a fishing boat with a rifle shot, at the
entrance to that port. The authorities demanded the criminal's surrender.
The American minister objected; there were expressions of displeasure
towards the minister, and it was enough for the United States to send
the corvette Cyane to Nicaragua, which demanded all repairs, payment

27 Von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, 1856-1859, p. 160.

28 Haydn's, Dictionary of dates, 1889, ibid.
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42 Eduardo Prado

of a long list of alleged harms suffered by Americans and

30,000 dollars in compensation to the minister for his mistakes. This is under penalty
of bombing in twenty-four hours. The population, believing that the
If it was limited to a few bombs thrown at the small town, which only had
about five hundred houses, he retreated inland.
The commander of the English warship Bermuda solemnly protested,
declaring that only the weakness of his ship prevented him from opposing the
force to bombing. The next day, after throwing some bombs,
the commander carried out a landing, and his troops set fire to
all houses. The city was entirely destroyed, and the damage caused to
foreigners by the destruction of goods rose to more than
2,000,000 dollars.29

This crime had no other punishment than the fair stigma of

history.

When England began to take over the territories

surrounding Belise and the Honduran islands that today constitute English
Honduras, the poor republic of Honduras in vain appealed for the protection
of the Washington government, pleading against the violence that
the Monroe doctrine was made.

In this issue of Central America, far from opposing European

intervention, the American government even requested interference from the
England in the matter, by the treaty of April 19, 1850, known
by the name of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Through this treaty, the United
States joined the European monarchy to regulate the construction and
the neutrality of the projected Nicaragua canal. And, remarkably, a
One of the consequences of this treaty was the United States recognizing
solemnly the English rule in Honduras to the detriment of the republics

29 Calvo, Traité theorique et pratique de droit international.

Von Hoist, vol. IV, pg. 11.
In Mr. Calvo's great work, the date of the bombing is given as 1834, and in another of his
works, as 1835. Errors in revising this order are numerous in the
precious and very useful compilations by Mr. Calvo. That's why a certain
Be careful with the information they provide us, and it is always a good idea to check the
sources cited which, being very numerous, not all of them could be conveniently
summarized by the author. Thus, Mr. Calvo does not speak of the protest, very important
indeed, from the commander of the Bermuda, and it is surprising that episodes of the
importance of the Walker expeditions are not even dealt with by the Argentine writer.
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The American Illusion 43

Spanish women from Central America. In the first clause of this treaty, the
two governments agreed that neither one nor the other could occupy, fortify,
colonize, assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the
Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America.
On June 29, 1850, the English minister in Washington Sir
Henry Lytton Bulwer declared that the English government excluded English
establishments in Honduras from that clause, and on July 4th the Secretary
of State agreed in a note admitting that they were outside the
treated English establishments in Honduras.30
Only in 1855 did the American minister in London, Buchanan,
request that England abandon the island of Ruatan and others that England
had seized off the coast of Honduras, as well as the territory between the
Sibun and Sarstoon rivers, and that the English possession of Beli was
limited to that part of the Anglo-Spanish treaties of 1783 and 1786, and that
England abandoned the Mosquito Coast. Lord Clarendon, England's foreign
minister, responded with a resounding negative. And Monroe?31

When the unsuccessful interoceanic canal company was formed

in Europe, with headquarters in France, which obtained a concession from
the Colombian Congress, the Washington government immediately got away
with the Monroe doctrine, making a terrible fuss. Old Lesseps,

30 Hertslet, A complete collection of treaties, etc., vol. VIII, p. 969, and vol. X, pg. 645.
31 Elisée Réclus, Geographie universel, volume XVII, p. 484, says: “La cóte dite de Mos-quitia ou des
Mosquitos fut revendiquée par le gouvernement anglais, et si les E'tats Unis n'étaient intervenus,
tout l'espace compris entre la reviére de Nicaragua et la baie de Honduras serait Devenu territoire
britannique comme l'est actuellement le pays de Belize. In vertu de la doctrine de Monroe, l'Amérique
reste aux Américains et le littoral de la mer des Caraibes est restitué à la Republique du Nicaragua.”

This statement by the illustrious geographer is entirely false. The United States' intervention was
followed by Lord Clarendon's refusal. In 1860, through the treaties of January 28 and February 11,
signed in Managua, the Republic of Nicaragua made many concessions to England regarding transit
across the isthmus; England guaranteed the neutrality of the isthmus and ceded the protectorate of
the Mosquito Coast to the Republic of Nicaragua.

In exchange for similar concessions made by Honduras, England recognized, with several
restrictions, that republic's dominion over the islands of Honduras by the treaty of November 28,
1859.
In the United States, these treaties were considered victories for English diplomacy and were
heavily attacked, proof that they were not celebrated, thanks to the United States, as Mr. Réclus
says.
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44 Eduardo Prado

however, he went from Panama to New York, went to Washington and, as

if by magic, all opposition ceased, on the part of the Secretary of State. Years
Later, all this was explained during the famous Panama trial, and it was
known why American influences and Washington's government men
left Monroe and his doctrine aside. At the
Panama process it was found that millions of francs were mysteriously
spent to calm scruples and soften the Monroe doctrine.
This is what the role of the United States has been in relation to the great
idea of the interoceanic canal. That country has used all its influence to
delay and embarrass in every way the great company, promising
benefits for humanity, and this in order not to
harm transcontinental railroad companies. AND
yet another service owed to him by Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia
and Chile, countries whose prosperity so needs the Panama Canal.
When in 1888 the Italian fleet threatened the ports of
Colombia and Ecuador, violently demanding satisfaction and compensation, what protection
did the North American republic give to its raped sisters?

None.
We want to present the American government to Brazilians as
the great friend of the nations of this continent, as their natural protector.
There are Brazilian newspapers, with such atrophied patriotism, that they even put
Brazil as if under the American protectorate, making Rio
de Janeiro the vassal and Washington the suzerain. Is against this false
idea, against this forgetfulness of national dignity, that we want
react, reminding our compatriots what politics has been
American.
For Mexico, it has been a tormentor, and for Central America,
an enemy.
***

Let us now continue to see what the United States has done
against other countries, without forgetting the poor republic of Haiti, to whom
the United States has tormented so much, under the pretext of compensation
for losses suffered by Americans in the many Haitian revolutions.
Haiti and S. Domingos have already been threatened several times by shipping
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The American Illusion 45

war of the American union, always under the pretext of compensation claims.
And those poor countries thought themselves exempt from these complaints; all
their governments had certainly, cautiously, issued decrees saying in advance
that they were not responsible for the losses caused to
their revolts caused, both on land and at sea!
The commitment that
The United States is convinced that Europe does not have territories in America.

Denmark has already wanted to cede the island of S. Tomás to

them; The inhabitants accepted the idea, but the United States refused. At the time
A policy of withdrawal dominated in that country, a reaction of the period
of the invasions of Mexico and Central America. The president
Grant showed his willingness to acquire Cuba, and today, the United States is
preparing itself with a new fleet to carry out foreign policy,32
the American views are of another Antillean port, of the port
of Haiti, Molhe S. Nicolas, whose possession is demanded by the American
navy as the center of the naval station in the gulf and to dominate
completely the passage of the Antillean straits. The American government, in
recent times, has already had the necessary complications with the
Haiti, preparatory disagreements for the conquest, which in documents
officials have recently been advised and complained about.
We should, with regard to Cuba, mention in passing the
expedition that failed at Round Island in 1849, the one that was beaten in
Cardenas in 1850, in 1851, commanded by the caudillo López, who,
beaten, he was executed, along with fifty of his companions.33
Cuban patriots who have dreamed of independence
of the pearl of the Antilles placed, at first, great hopes in Monroe's doctrine.
They thought that the United States could not help but
protect them against the metropolis. How could the American eagle allow, in
the shadow of its powerful wings, a part of the world to remain?

32 The construction of this police station was the occasion for major administrative scandals
between the Ministry of the Navy and the builders. It was proven that the builders and
senior navy employees shamelessly stole the treasure.
Suffice it to say that the government paid for ships that are not battleships.
33 About this expedition read: America y España, by D. José Ferrer de Couto. Cadiz, 1859.
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46 Eduardo Prado

free American soil under Spanish yoke? New York for many
It has sometimes become the headquarters of Cuban conspirators. A
legation of Spain, in Washington, has protested several times
against the breaking of neutrality laws by the American government, which
has allowed real armed expeditions to be organized
against this government, not to mention the famous López expedition? At first,
let the conspiracy spend money in New York, freight ships,
buy weapons, and at the last minute turn against her, the American police
it agrees with the surveillance service maintained by the Spanish legation,
and the poor patriots are deceived in their hopes. More of
Once, expeditions have even left American ports, they have
arrived in Cuba and have been invariably attacked by the Spanish. You
Cuban patriots, perhaps unfairly, always accuse their assistants, American
mercenaries, of treason. Once, the entire crew
of a ship, made up of Americans, was inexorably shot in
Cuba and, despite the emotion that this fact produced in the United States, the
Washington's government did not even defend the cause of Cuban
independence. He has always abandoned this cause, selling to
Spain's indefinite possession of Cuba, the exchange of commercial favors,
exemptions from duties on American products, etc. Cold selfishness and
refined Machiavellianism are, therefore, not the exclusive privilege of the
black diplomacy of the European courts.
No one ignores that the republic, then called the New
Granada (today Columbia), concluded a treaty with the United States
regarding the construction of a railway on the Isthmus of Panama,
the same railway that Mr. de Lesseps later bought for
dizzying amount of millions, due to the poor shareholders of the
Canal company.
The railway was built, and Panama became a place of
amazing traffic. Transit of gold coming from California and
Americans heading to California. Nothing remained of the gold in Panama,
but some of the Americans remained, and they exercised their daily
brutality against the poor inhabitants, wretched South Americans destined to
succumb to the contact of the Yankee. On April 15, 1856, the
American provocations tired the patience of Panamanians.
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The American Illusion 47

The Americans began to fire revolvers at passers-by; these

reacted to the stone, then to the shot. In short, there was a huge riot and
many deaths left and right. Result: American intervention, order for the
isthmus government to be independent of Bogotá (that is, handed over to the
Yankees) and 400:000 dollars in compensation.
Who, however, should pay for the lives of the New Granadans,
taken by the Americans, and their houses burned by them? The usual
ultimatum came and the government of Bogotá was very happy to only have
to pay the exorbitant amount that was demanded of it by force and against all
rights.34
The United States has many relationships with Peru, and these
relations have not brought great benefits to this Latin republic.
The republic of Peru also suffered American violence.
During one of the many revolutions in that country, several
American ships, among others the Lizzie Thompson and the Georgiana,
taking advantage of the fact that Peruvian warships were with the rebels,
were actively used to smuggle guano against the express instructions of the
Peruvian laws. The rebellious warships surrendered to the government, a
fact that gave great prestige to the principle of authority and consolidation of
the republic in Peru, which after that (1860) has enjoyed unalterable happiness
of wealth and power, as we know.
One of these rebellious ships, the Tumbes, as soon as it returned to legal
service, imprisoned, as was the right and duty of the Peruvian government,
the smuggling ships. What did the Washington government do? He complained
more and more insolently, he broke off diplomatic relations, he searched the
archives to see what kind of complaints there were, he put everything
together, he issued an ultimatum, and poor Peru had to pay.35
The history of Peru, after the great tragic and heroic period of
conquest and after the end of colonial rule, it is quite simple. It has been
seventy years of misfortune, which have turned the richest possession

34 See Nueva Granada and the United States of America, Final diplomatic contestation.
Bogotá, 1857; Manifesto addressed to the nation by some representatives regarding the
Herran – Cass agreement. Bogotá, 1858.
35 Peru's right is fully demonstrated in the official correspondence exchanged on this subject
between the governments of Washington and Lima. See Question between the United
States and Peru. Diplomatic correspondence. Lima, 1861.
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48 Eduardo Prado

of the Spanish crown in one of the poorest and most unhappy countries in the world.
Fourteen lustres of republican regime! There was, however, a period of
illusory prosperity, and it is surprising that then someone does not
told us: Let's look at Peru! The great period of neurosis and financial megalomania
in Argentina was the period of great import
of European gold; the corresponding period, in Brazil, was the founding of republican
finances, it was the era of paper. In Peru, the time
It can be called the guano season.
For hundreds if not thousands of years, according to the calculations of
the wise Raymondi, the pelicans of the sea, the birds of the rocks, the
seagulls from the beaches, covered the edges of the cliffs, the plains and
slopes of the islets and rocky coves, with a large and deep
covered in waste that constituted an enormous mass of alkaline and phosphate
material with which the industry began, some thirty years ago, to reinvigorate the
lands exhausted by centuries-old cultures. To the valleys of Virginia depleted by
exhausting tobacco cultivation, to the fields of
From England and Germany, the saving fertilizer was brought in large shipments,
bought for its weight in gold in Peru. What should have been the wealth of the
unfortunate nation was a cause of misfortune. The manure, which went to the
far from fertilizing the barren lands, it served to activate the putrefaction of the
government and the entire country. The guano was declared national property and the
its extraction was subject to concessions made to private individuals. Private
individuals were, as a rule, relatives or friends of the government men, and became,
in any case, their partners. The treasury received large profits from guano, in
exchange for concessions, in the form of rights
of export. It was at this time that the Peruvian government found itself the victim of
a singular good reason for uneasiness or fright, a fright that seems
be appropriate for financial statesmen, on the eve of great disasters.
Also in Peru, people were asked in the press, at congress, in private conversations:
What to do with the treasury balances? Nonsense question!
There is an oriental tale – of the man to whom fate gave a
million a day with the condition that man spends it all in time
between two auroras.
Failure to comply with this condition would result in the death of the unfortunate person.
Pleasures, enjoyments, lavishness, all this was enough, in the first days,
to consume the daily million. Soon fatigue sets in, exhaustion
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The American Illusion 49

man's imagination worked in vain to find the

means of emptying the last bags of gold that were still full
when the dawn of the new day was already dawning. The Angel of Death appeared and
announced his end to the unfortunate man. The man lamented: I couldn't
spend my million! And the Angel of Death answered him: – It's just that you
forgot the only way there was to do that! - Which was? - Do good!
Now, countries, victimized by an overabundance of money,
They only have one way to escape this evil, which is extremely unique. It is to do
good. And there are so many ways for a government to be good! We don't talk about
public aid, large collective handouts, money distributed
for the poor or for the soldiers, these are sure signs of the crumbling of the
national character, facts typical of expiring tyrannies and insatiable praetorianisms.
Political science has walked since antiquity. Today,
public money, which comes from taxes, is more than is necessary
for public services, what needs to be done is to pay the state's debts,
whether the state has debts. If you don't have them or if you don't want to liquidate them
For whatever reason, there is no other honest option other than reducing taxes.

The United States, not long ago, had a balance

embarrassing, a large metallic reserve that caused a lot of talk. Per
For some years, the honest and sensible policy of applying this balance to the
amortization of the debt prevailed, to a certain extent. Protectionists did not want
to consent to the reduction of entry taxes,
which were the ones that increased the balance the most. The temptation was, however, very
great and very small were the scruples of politicians. In pensions
scandalous, with unjustifiable subsidies the balance was wasted.
The budget deficit appeared. The treasure, to favor
the wealthy mine owners, continued to allow free coinage
of silver, it was transforming a devalued metal into a currency also
depreciated and, by virtue of the famous Gresham law – that the currency
depreciation causes the currency of value to emigrate -, gold emigrated to
Europe, and the whole country fell into the dreadful economic crisis in which it is
currently being fought, leaving the great capitalists and men in the shipwreck.
monopoly, but the poor class, the workers, immersed in
in the blackest misery.
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50 Eduardo Prado

Peru, we said, found itself in serious difficulties faced with so

much money. The idea of doing good did not come to mind, which would
be, in his case, paying off national debts or reducing taxes. At that time,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a circular to the Peruvian legations,
ordering them, by summoning the main economists of the countries where
they were accredited, to explain to them the financial situation of Peru
and to ask those scientific luminaries for advice and opinions for that
serious case. Peru was suffering, Peru was perhaps going to die and in
desperation he turned to science, asking what the remedies were for his
illness, for the terrible disease: the plethora of money. The advice may
have varied, but the disease disappeared on its own, before the prescription
of the learned faculty was applied to the patient. Two generals of good
will, Generals Pardo and Prado, supported by other colleagues, by many
colonels and by an army completely involved in politics, ended the balance,
and Peru was no longer an exception in Spanish America, it became as
bankrupt as any other country. another republic, giving rise to the
integration of the Spanish-American breakaway.
At this time of administrative demoralization that reached even
the party, the harmful influence of the United States was great in Peru.
American adventurers filled Lima. As in Mexico, these adventurers were
presented by the American legation, sponsored by it, and the post of
American minister in Peru became very lucrative.
From time to time, good sums of compensation were paid to Yankee
concessionaires of guanos or any other thing and who claimed to have
been harmed by the government. Now, these capital movements do not
occur without leaving some shavings in the hands of Washington's
diplomacy. There was also sometimes talk of the Monroe Doctrine, which
did not prevent Spain from attacking Peru and Chile and bombing
Valparaíso without even a single voice coming from the United States in
favor of the countries that were victims of that violence. European nation.
In this regard, an illustrious Argentine wrote:
“Monroe’s doctrine is not suitable for South America, and the
most curious example I cited is the bombing of Valparaíso. The North
American fleet in the South Seas watched the bombing of Valparaíso
impassively, because, by virtue of the Monroe doctrine, European powers
were excluded from any intervention in America.
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The American Illusion 51

By virtue of this doctrine, that squadron should oppose the bombing, but to effectively
oppose it, it would need the support of the French and English squadrons present in
the port, and these squadrons, still by virtue of that doctrine, abstained and the
bombing took place. From this example we can see how useful the Monroe Doctrine
can be for South America.”36

Let us return, however, to Peru.

The guano decreased little by little.

The Peruvian government used the labor of the Chinese, reduced to

veritable galleys in the guaneiras and in reality enslaved on the ranches and sugar
farms. This yellow slave trade was carried out by some American houses, and almost
always under the star-spangled flag that protected Asian slavery, in Peru and Cuba.
The port of departure for these bastards was Macau. The Portuguese government
began to be impressed by the scandal, and the report that Eça de Queiroz, Portuguese
consul in Havana, presented to the government demonstrating the monstrosities
committed against the Chinese perhaps hastened the closure of the port of Macau to
Chinese emigration. There were Americans settled in Peru and linked to Peruvian
farmers who were angered by the suppression of yellow trafficking, and it was then
that one of the most heinous piracy companies in the world was organized. A large
ship was armed, which went out to sea and demanded the small group of islands lost
in the Pacific Ocean known as Easter Island, and which today was annexed by Chile.

36 Alberdi, translated by Th. Mannequin, Paris, 1866. Antogonisme et solidarité des états
orientales et des états occidentaux de l'Amérique du Sud, p. 155 – While the United
States showed this indifference towards Spain's assault on the Pacific republics,
monarchical Brazil, although faced with the difficulties of the war in Paraguay,
responded to Chile's appeal in the following way:
“Corresponding to the honorable appeal of the government Chilean government, the
government of His Majesty the Emperor authorizes the undersigned to assure Your
Excellency that, in perfect accordance with the considerations set out by Your
Excellency, the imperial government will not hesitate in providing with the greatest
pleasure the assistance of its good offices and their moral support so that principles
that offend the autonomy and legitimate interests of the states of the South American continent do not
These words are from a note addressed on June 7, 1864 to D. Manuel A.
Tocornal, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile by advisor João Pedro Dias Vieira,
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Empire.
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52 Eduardo Prado

These islands, famous for their strange granite monuments

who left a missing race there, by the colossal figures of stone
carved trees planted on the sides of mountains, by a civilization
unknown, they were populated by Polynesians, a gentle and harmless race, of a
paradisiacal innocence, which the exterminating contagion of civilized man
had not yet been victimized. The filibusters disembarked on the island, killed the
children, the old and almost all the women, and they chained and handcuffed
the able-bodied men who, thrown into the hold of the ship, were brought
to Peru as slaves. When the news of this horrible attack
echoed in Europe, the English government was moved and ordered the minister
of England in Lima to report on the matter. After verifying the accuracy of the
news, the English government inexorably demanded that the unfortunate slaves
be handed over to it by the republican citizens of
America.

Collected aboard an English warship, the unfortunate people who

had escaped American ferocity were returned to their homes.
its islands, owing its salvation to the Christian spirit of England, to the
humanitarian societies made up of bourgeoisie, religious women and
of village cures, which in that country, which is the most powerful and free in the
world, have enough influence to move the press, opinion and
government in favor of a few miserable savages, persecuted by thousands of
leagues away.
This was, and gave rise to facts of this order, the political and
Peru's financial situation when there was a war with Chile. After the use of the
guaneiras that were almost exhausted, in the extreme south of the
country and on the Bolivian coast, the so-called soda nitrate fields were
discovered, or rather began to be used, that is, large and thick
layers of this substance apparently coming from feldspars decomposed by the
action of thermal waters and buried today in the sands of the
Atacama desert. These nitrates are, like guano, fertilizers of great
value for the land. Thus, that region of absolute aridity began to
give distant lands the fertility that she herself did not have. They flocked
to Atacama the great capital and great energy of the Chileans. A
Competition was fatal to Peruvians and Bolivians. Chile was soon master
of the nitrate industry. The Bolivian authorities began to shame
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The American Illusion 53

by all fiscal and administrative forms the Chileans. Hence diplomatic incidents,
conflicts, issues and, finally, war.
In this war there was, on the one hand, the small Chilean army tripled
by the number of volunteers; on the other, there were two armies demoralized by
long years of interventions in politics, disorganized
by pronouncements, discredited by fraternizations, degraded
by the betrayals and falsehoods that are the common fate of the lives of all
army that gets involved in politics. The victory, arduous, glorious in its difficulties,
terrible in its effects, crowned the energy of the Chilean administration. The war
was ending when the famous North American intervention took place, a very
curious episode in the history of South America.
American Minister Hurlbuth was the legitimate representative
of the merged interests of American houses and Peruvian politicians
in the scandals of guano exploitation and the thousand deals that, under the
shadow of North American diplomacy, had already ruined Peru. The Chilean victory
was the disorganization of that entire federation of interests and
of corruption. General Garfield was President of the United States and
chief of staff or secretary of state, the famous James C. Blaine.
A singular and strange personality was that of this almost great man!
There was in him, as it were, a last breath of the heroic breath of the times of
independence and the intellectual greatness of American statesmen.
He was a kind of Hamilton, Clay, Webster or Seward, but
it was incomplete, it was uneven and unbalanced. He lacked moral greatness
of those figures or perhaps simply their star. In the audacity, in the vastness of his
projects, he was almost brilliantly bold. During execution, your
means were weak, his hesitations were long, his resources seemed few, his allies
were ignoble, his motives seemed
personal and petty, perhaps immoral; his policy was tortuous and
mise-en-scène, although spectacular, never gave him, in the eyes of his
compatriots, anything other than that incomplete prestige that was always enough for him to
give it the audacity of great intentions without, however, guaranteeing their success.
The reason for all this was, who knows, if simply the difference there is
between the time of the great men whom Blaine succeeded in politics and the
degeneration of the ancient tradition of American elder statesmen.
The fathers of the American homeland, the founders of the Constitution,
lived in a historical period of moral purity, in times of patriotic
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54 Eduardo Prado

ism and selflessness. Blaine flourished in the empire of industrialism and

of finance, in the expansion of all the despotisms of monopoly and all the
corruptions of plutocracy. It is not a simple banality the old
Montesquieu's proposition that republics need to have as
foundation of virtue. This was the foundation of the North American republic.
Any other republic that does not have its cradle bathed in the atmosphere of
civic virtue will be unviable and a perennial source of evil. To the
political societies and forms of government must be born pure to
have a long and prosperous life. Political organisms are like animal and
vegetable organisms; the more perfect they are born and the more
The more robust its childhood is, the more guarantees it will last.
We have never seen a republic born deformed to the life of the
violence, crime, discord, corruption and error to advance to virtue, peace and
truth.
Can anyone imagine the Roman Republic being born?
with Sylla and Catilina and ending with Fabrício and Cincinato? Universal
belief has always attributed to humanity at its appearance the freshness of
all living forces.
Rot belongs to tombs and not to cradles. What's
to expect from a human existence whose childhood was not innocent?
Wanting to justify corruption and crime when they appear, for
so to speak, identified and substantiated with a republic that
begins by saying that all this is characteristic of new institutions, it is falsifying
the historical truth. No; the birth of republics, if it is not surrounded by
perfume of self-denial, if the pure incense and incorruptible myrrh of sacrifice
and patriotism do not smoke around its cradle,
promises and will never give in the future anything but crimes and misfortunes.
The North American republic did not have its childhood corroded
corruption, nor did his childishness take place in the bloody games of
civil wars. She was already almost secular when her soil was fratricidally
watered by the blood of her children; and the addictions they fight against
patriots today, the faults that thinkers point out to them, are vices of
today, current faults, which cannot be justified in the example of the ancestors.
The lesson of the history of independence and the examples of generations
extinct are mirrors of virtue.
Blaine was and had to be the statesman of his time.
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The American Illusion 55

He had a beautiful presence, his voice was insinuating, his gaze was
very sharp, his smile was full of finesse. He was called the magnetic man. He
was a great speaker and a great writer. His illustration was
vast in matters of national politics, deficient in the rest of human knowledge,
but his talent made up for everything. He became big and rose on his own.
His opponents attributed to him a large number of capitulations of conscience
with the interests of big financiers, and his well-known poverty was
a little contradictory to the luxury of his life, with his beautiful palace
Washington, with its vast halls, full of art objects and portraits,
busts, statues, medals, paintings, engravings and a thousand other souvenirs of
Napoleon, hero of Blaine's special admiration. The republican statesman
He had domineering ideas and a Caesarian temperament. From every wall
From Blaine's house, Bonaparte's deep gaze is fixed on the visitors.
Napoleon had not finished the conquest of Europe and the abysses of his
thoughts was the ambition to dominate the East and Asia. Blaine saw
politics more than the art of winning elections; his talent as a speaker required
perhaps a theater like the one in which the Gladstones and Sa-lisburys play.
Beneath the warheads of Westminster, the word of eloquence can
decide the fate of a people. In the narrow confines of the presidential system,
the president can be incapable, a stubborn incompetent, armed with immense
power against which all the efforts of talent are useless. Blaine felt drowned in
that environment, and all his imagination turned to foreign policy. In foreign
policy he was the flatterer par excellence of the spirit
of American domination over the entire continent. He imagined the eagle
americana hovering, from pole to pole, with powerful wings expanded. A
symbolic eagle he did not see it protecting the weak with its shadow,
as the naivety of some South Americans believes. He wanted her
dominated, let his gaze scan the icy solitudes of the pole, the deep valleys of
the Andes, the plains of the Amazon, the vastness of the
pampas and the infinity of the seas. He wanted the hooked beak of that
apocalyptic bird to tear apart his enemies, and for the colossal claws to take
over the entire continent of Columbus. Blaine in power was a threat
for all of America.
When the Pacific War was coming to an end, Blaine was
Garfield's secretary, and had an opportunity to try to prevail
policy that he himself called the imperial policy of the United States.
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56 Eduardo Prado

President Hayes, although he had been defeated by voters, had just

exercised his usurped mandate, illegally occupying
the president's chair in which a fraudulent vote from the
Supreme Court in charge of electoral counting. The patriotism of
his competitor, President-elect Tilden, preferred to let the usurper
in the supreme magistracy to open a conflict that would certainly lead to the
country into a new civil war. General Garfield, just elected, entrusted the
direction of international policy to Blaine, and his attention turned
then to the fight between Chile, Peru and Bolivia.
The first of these nations was on the eve of harvesting the fruit
of their arduous victories, imposing on the defeated a peace that guarantees the
interests, tranquility and security of Chile at present and in the future
future. Interested parties began to stir in Peru and New York
Americans, partners of Peruvians and Bolivians in guano concessions and in
extraction of nitrates. The consecration of the Chilean victory was the definitive end
of the regime of concessions, privileges and a thousand abuses, so useful to
Americans, in the financial disorder of Peru and Bolivia. American Minister Hurlbuth,
in Lima, his colleagues General Adams, in La Paz, and
Kilpatrik, in Santiago, joined the combination. It was necessary for the United
States to intervene in favor of the defeated, and against Chile, and in
direct benefit to American speculators and their partners.
We have already said that, on the occasion of the Paraguayan war, the
American ministers Washburn and General Mac-Mahon constituted themselves the
staunch defenders of López, they were his guests, witnesses, and,
by silence, accomplices in their horrible atrocities. Deceived by the news from its
diplomats, the Washington government considered López,
for a long time, as the sympathetic victim of the barbaric allied army.
It was necessary for the illustrious Colonel Von Versen, who recently died general
of the German army and aide-de-camp to Emperor Wilhelm
II, it was necessary for this European, one of López's most
suffered under his tyranny, was released after Lomas Valentinas by
Marquis of Caxias and, going to the United States, wrote the truth about López, to
undo in the spirit of the Washington government the indisposition that, against
Brazil, had created false diplomatic information. The American government was
even in terms of sending a
squadron to South America to protect López.
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The American Illusion 57

In relation to Chile, the same thing happened. The American government

wanted to extract the results of its victories from Chile. The informations
of American ministers in the Pacific quickly improved the mood of
Blaine, always willing to adopt a policy of intervention, arrogance and almost
despotism in relation to other countries in America. The speculators of
guano and nitrates told him of great profits for American commerce and, between the
American administration and the speculators, there were agreements,
very suspicious combinations and arrangements. As a result of all this, Blaine
dispatched to Chile, as mediator of peace, Mr. Trescott, who was carrying
as his secretary Mr. Walker Blaine, son of the Secretary of State. O
extraordinary envoy, on a special mission, carried instructions to protect the
the whole trance the interests of men of guanos and nitrates and order
for, having exhausted the means of conciliation and conciliation intended to hasten the
peace, give Chile an ultimatum , imposing on it within a certain period the
withdrawal of its troops from the territory of Peru and Bolivia. It was the most
brutal intervention, the most unjustifiable of arrogance.
Mr. Trescott, in Lima and Santiago, had agreed
with the French minister, and his action against Chile should be joint
with that of French diplomacy. I was interested in this issue of guanos
a large Jewish house, the Dreyfus, from Paris, whose lawyer was the then president
of the French Republic, which the republican newspapers, in that
time, they still called the righteous Grévy, a few years before the process
in which it was proven that his son-in-law Wilson had, in the president's palace, an
agency set up to sell jobs and decorations.
Where were you, Monroe's doctrine!? The two great republics of the
world were united in a common effort due to
the personal interests of their bosses. The United States, which is
against European interference in American business, they joined forces with
a European nation against a noble South American republic in a
true extortion enterprise.
Meanwhile, at a railroad station in Washington, next to Blaine, the
president was murdered by the fanatic Guiteau.
of the United States, General Garfield. In less than twenty years, two presidents of the
United States were slaughtered: Lincoln and Garfield.

The assassinated president was replaced by the vice president

Arthur. It is said that crown princes are generally the heads of the opposition.
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58 Eduardo Prado

sition. In republics, the vice president is the natural enemy of the president
effective. Whoever is second is always against whoever is first. In the South
American republics, the vice president almost always ends up conspiring
against the president, often deposing him, unless, more promptly, the acting
president does not suppress in any way his
rival. In the United States things don't reach this point, but
vice-presidents who have taken over the government have always done the
opposite of their predecessors. Arthur's rise was a great blow to
Blaine and for his politics. While the diplomat Trescott was in
Chile, were little by little transpired in the liberal American press, a press that went
through more than a century without the slightest coercion, a press that, even
during the tremendous civil war, did not suffer major consequences.
no restrictions on news that is vague at first and then affirmative and
positive results of the collusion of Garfield, Blaine, and the New York dealers.
York against Chile. Congress was assembled, and in the States
United, the government does not dare withhold documents or clarifications
certain order to the Legislative Branch. The foreign affairs commission,
of the House of Representatives, took care of the Trescott mission and, in a
meeting, the Democratic representative Perry Belmont stood up who, with evidence
hands, demonstrated the iniquity and shame of the American government going
to be the proxy for Peruvian and American speculators in Chile.
The impression was immense in the United States. The Chilean government, with
With extraordinary audacity, he ordered his battleships to be equipped, engaged
in the war against Peru, awaiting Mr. Trescott's ultimatum .
If this ultimatum came, the Chilean warships would leave for S.
Francisco to avenge the affront. President Arthur, however, put an end to the
great scandal. He fired Blaine from power and replaced him with Mr.
Frelinghuysen. He immediately telegraphed Trescott telling him to leave
of Chile, and had the frankness to give the Chilean minister in Washington
a copy of Blaine's instructions to Mr. Trescott. Then a singularly comical incident
occurred. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Chile asked Mr. Trescott if it was true that he had an order to
present you with an ultimatum. Trescott denied the feet together. Then the minister
Chilean showed him a copy of the instructions given to Trescott.
Everything fell apart, and thus ended, in opprobrium and shame, the
proud embassy that the United States sent to the Pacific!
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The American Illusion 59

Blaine, however, and the spirit of intrusion and diplomatic arrogance that
exists in certain American circles, had, years later, their
revenge. Civil war had broken out in Chile, and Blaine found himself once again in
Secretary of State, serving this time with President Harrison, who
later he also fired him. Men of great intellectual superiority are, in republics, little
compatible with the mediocrity of
government circles. Since the beginning of the Chilean civil war, American minister
Patrick Egan, an Irish anarchist with a bad name, declared himself
in favor of the insurgents, protecting them in every way with a clear breach of their
duties. As is known, the main heads of
revolution were the richest men in Chile, great capitalists, industrialists and opulent
bankers. This circumstance perhaps explains the unique attitude of the American
legation. After Balmaceda's party was defeated and annihilated, there were American
complaints, already for losses suffered, already for
insults made to American sailors. The new Chilean government, still
struggling with a thousand difficulties, he asked for a deadline. The answer he gave you
American government ordered the fleet to send some battleships to Valparaíso and a
very insolent ultimatum. The Chilean government had
to give in. Blaine got his revenge, and once again the government of
Washington humiliated a South American republic.

We have seen that there is no Latin American country that does not have
suffered the insolence and sometimes the rapine of the United States. For
To finish, we will remember two facts that happened with Paraguay and with
Venezuela.

In 1853, Paraguay signed a general trade and navigation treaty with the
United States. The American Senate did not ratify the treaty,
but despite this the Washington government appointed Mr. Hopkins as its consul in
Paraguay. This gentleman, despite his consular duties, immediately intended, in the
American fashion, to make a lot of money in a thousand speculations. Embalde tried
to raise capital in London and Paris. Then there was the
genius idea of buying a ship in terrible condition in New York
(It's not today that damaged ships are sold there!) and made him hold it for
60:000 dollars.

This ship naturally sank on the journey, and with the

Hopkins insurance money found itself at the expense of the capital needed to
founding the “Paraguayan Commerce and Navigation Company”.
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60 Eduardo Prado

This consul soon became very demanding of the government

Paraguayan, and was so insolent that the Asunción government revoked his
exequatur. To free himself from embarrassment, Hopkins declared that his personal
safety was threatened, as well as that of his compatriots, and
claimed assistance from the American warship Water Witch, and this
assistance was given to him. Mr. Hopkins, at the head of armed sailors,
He disembarked and went to the consulate to get the company's documents.

Things were at this point when the situation worsened even further
worsened. The commander of the Water Witch wanted to pass through a canal, whose
transit was prohibited for ships. The Itapiru fort fired some shots at
dry powder to prevent the American. He, however, ignored the warning,
and responded with a general discharge of bullets against the fort, which in turn
once he fired live and accurate fire at it, which caused serious damage to the Water Witch,
where many sailors died, but, and only then, the American ship
he capsized, giving up his purpose.

The Washington government sent a squadron of twenty ships and two

thousand landing men against Paraguay, to extort from the poor republic one million
dollars that Mr. Hopkins was demanding. This squadron cost the government close to
seven million dollars in
expenses, and returned from Montevideo thanks to the mediation of the Argentine government,
a treaty being concluded by virtue of which Hopkins' claims
were subjected to some arbitrators, and they declared, as they could not let
I must declare that the complaints of the American consul are entirely fantastic.

Paraguay, however, did not obtain any reparation for the violation
of its territory committed by the agent The American.37

fact with Venezuela is also characteristic. The government

American had a number of complaints against Venezuela, regarding losses suffered
by American citizens during the Venezuelan civil wars. By the convention of April 25,
1866, a mixed commission was appointed which, in 1868, ruled against Venezuela,
obliging it to pay 1,253:310 dollars.

It was later found that American Commissioner David

M. Talmage, and that the American minister in Caracas, helped by the

37 Calvo, Droit internationaI théorique et pratique, § 1.268.

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The American Illusion 61

American William P. Murray, formed a company to make money from the

business, already defrauding the American claimants themselves, demanding
40 and 60 percent of the compensation granted, already harming the
government of Venezuela, admitting complaints fraudulent, even increasing
these complaints so that claimants can more easily pay the percentages.
This was proven before the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in 1878.38

Recently, a Venezuelan general arrived in New York who, as

governor of a state, was accused of having caused certain harm, in
Venezuela, to an American citizen.
Against all laws, this general was arrested at the request of the
American and subjected to prosecution for government acts carried out in his homeland!
There is no Latin American nation that has not suffered in its
relations with the United States.
Having demonstrated this, let's go back to talking about relations
between Brazil and the United States.

II

We have already shown, in passing, the coldness with which in

the last century Jefferson welcomed the idea of Brazil's independence, and
the undignified procedure of the Washington government denouncing to the
Portuguese government the overtures of the Pernambuco rebels in 1817.
We saw the delay in the recognition of our independence, we saw the
American minister in Rio making common cause with the violence of the
Carlos X government against Brazil and, in passing, we alluded to the
American intrigues in favor of López and against Brazil, the Argentine Republic and Urugua
In these conflicts, however, Brazilian self-love always came out
victorious, because on one side was the integrity of our statesmen, and on
the other the flibustious and greedy diplomacy of the United States. The
American minister Washburn, who intrigued so much against Brazil in the
Paraguayan camp, finally betrayed his friends López and Madame Lynch,
who accused him of having misappropriated values that had been entrusted
to him as a deposit.

38 Defense of the rights of Venezuela, Caracas, 1878.

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62 Eduardo Prado

Washburn wrote a book, which is his condemnation,39 and, at the same time,
proof that that American diplomat, like all those we met in this work, had a special aversion
to Brazil. From Washburn's own narrative (vol. II, p. 180) proof of the veracity of the
accusation of espionage made against him is taken.

Later (page 558) he confesses that the valuables were actually given
to him by Madame Lynch, that they were stored in her house, but that he,
Washburn, is unaware of their whereabouts, assuming that they were buried
somewhere (!).
The Brazilian army and armada are covered in ridicule and
slander by the American minister.
The battle of Riachuelo is described as a shameful thing for us (page
10, vol. II), and Caxias is vilified.
Washburn's rudeness, inaccuracies, and mistakes were so serious
that the American naval officers, who were in Paraguay, broke with him. Washburn
attacks them violently, calling the attitude of the senior officers, his compatriots,
“perverse and unpatriotic” (page 467, vol. II).

After Washburn came Mac-Mahon, whose friendship for the López-

Lynch ménage was always firm. Mac-Mahon and Washburn say some pretty nasty
things to each other in their later writings. They only agree on insults against
Brazilians.
This controversy caused a scandal in the United States, and the government
opened an inquiry involving Washburn, Mac-Mahon, officers Davis, Kirkland, Ramsey and
two adventurers Bliss and Masterman. Everyone was insulted during the investigation,
serious accusations were made against each other, and that official washing of dirty linen,
that fight between ministers and admirals, of admirals and ministers, was a real shame.

etc.40

During the Paraguayan war, the American minister, General

Mac-Mahon, in contempt of all international customs, wrote to

39 Washburn, History of Paraguay, 2 vols.

40 Paraguayan Investigation. Report of Committee of Foreign Affairs.
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The American Illusion 63

American newspapers defamatory articles about the allies. He said that López
was innocent of the cruelties slanderously attributed to him by his allies, that the
hundreds of deaths attributed to López had been perpetrated by Brazilians, while the
Paraguayans worked in the trenches, that the Brazilian people were weak and
41 ras; effeminate;42 that his army

(to whose cowardice the American diplomat constantly alludes) was made up of
slaves and galleys;43 that “national honor” as we understand it in the torrid zone is a
very different thing from American national honor,
etc.

41 See Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. XL, pg. 423.

42 Ibidem, p. 428.
43 Ibid.
According to a correspondent from New York Country , this old enemy of ours has now
returned to the scene in humiliating circumstances for Brazil.
“The United States Service Club solemnly received Admiral Benham. The congratulatory speech
was given by General Mr. T. Mac-Mahon, well known in Brazil as a particular friend of Solano López
and our relentless defamer during the Paraguayan war.

“Here's the speech: 'Admiral. I would prefer to say nothing so as not to put you in the
position of making a speech, which will be a terrible prospect for you; However, it is
necessary for me to express my satisfaction at seeing you among us, and to express
to you how much you fill us with just pride, not only as an American citizen but also as a
as an officer in our navy. Your procedure in Brazil was inspired by duty in honor of the
nation and its flag. That he was indispensable,
I can confirm this from personal experience over a quarter of a century. Was necessary
to convince those friends of ours (if they are truly friends) that the nation
America has still lost nothing of its prestige, which will always be kept in the face
Worldwide. Your actions demonstrated that the international law of our country's
relations cannot be disrespected with impunity. The republics
South American women should be grateful to us for what we have done and are doing
for them, or rather for humanity, with the example we give it.'
“The admiral replied: 'From the bottom of my heart I thank you for your cordial welcome.
you make me. As for my procedure in Brazil and the effects it has produced, I think
that, without question, it contributed to making us good friends.
of that country. This friendship is founded on respect with perharps a little tinge of
something else).'
“These words”, says the country’s correspondent, “caused a storm of
applause and laughter.”
“Followed by the style cocktails and a great brodium, in which it was the dominant note
of Yankee humor, the admiral's joke, considered a genuine and rude expression of
true."
Here's what an American admiral says Brazil's friendship with its nations should be like
U.S. Respect and... something else, that is, fear and subservience!
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64 Eduardo Prado

However, the facts were the facts, and, as Brazilian victories were
undeniable, the American enemy, our enemy, explained the success of Brazilian
weapons in the following way:
“D. Pedro, in the way he has directed the war, gives the best proof
of his extraordinary ability; He is a wise and perfect king. And furthermore, he
is surrounded by counselors who, if they had the common honesty that only
our Saxon race gives to individuals as well as to governments (!), could be
placed on a par with the first statesmen of our time.
This gives great strength to Brazil's diplomacy, while the skill of its financiers
has allowed it to maintain its credit unscathed.”
Washburn had several conferences with the general in chief of the
allied army, the Marquis of Caxias, and cynically says that, in exchange for a
large sum, López should accept peace under the conditions that Brazil wanted.
In the archives of the Ministry of War, in Rio de Janeiro, there are Washburn.44
the Marquis of Caxias that are quite unhonorable for letters from
It was not just because of corruption that North American diplomacy
distinguished itself. We have already talked about the violation of Brazil's
maritime territory by an American warship. Let's look at the particularities of the fact.
In October 1864, the Confederate steamship Florida and the federal ship
Wachusset were anchored in the port of Bahia. The first of these ships, which had
entered the port to repair its damages and to take on supplies, received the order, which
it carried out, to place itself alongside the Brazilian corvette Dona Januária. On the
morning of October 7th, the American federal ship left its anchorage and approached
Florida. As he passed the bow of the Brazilian corvette, he was ordered to return to his
anchorage. This order was disobeyed and, moments later, shots were heard exchanged
between the two American ships. The Brazilian commander sent an officer aboard the
Wachus-set, and the commander of this warship promised the officer not to attempt
against the Florida. Ungraciously breaking his promise, the American commander
suddenly took the Florida in tow and left the port with her without giving the Brazilian ship
time, which had trusted the word of a soldier to oppose the attack. Which further increases
the revolting

44 Letters from Caxias to the Brazilian minister in Buenos Aires, dated March 13, 1867;
ditto on the 15th of the same month and year to the Minister of War.
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The American Illusion 65

disloyalty is that the American consul in Bahia had given his word
of honor to the Brazilian authorities that the Wachusset would respect the
neutrality of the Brazilian territory and, at the time the attack was committed, the
consul was on board the Wachusset. The commander of the Florida,
trusting in the neutrality of Brazil's territory and in the word of the American
commander, he had let almost his entire navy disembark, and, taking advantage
of this, the treacherous Wachusset attacked him.
The Washington government gave every possible satisfaction to the
Brazil, but committed the final impoliteness of ordering Florida to be wrecked in the
port of Hampton Roads, so as not to deliver it to Brazil, and then said
officially that an unforeseen incident had caused the loss of the Florida.
Another fact:

In 1842 the Peruvian barque Carolina, as a result of heavy

damaged, arrived at the port of Santa Catarina. There was no Peruvian consul
there, and the authorities appointed an examination commission that condemned
the ship, which was therefore sold in accordance with the laws
Brazilian commercials.

The ship was safe in New York and Philadelphia, and the
companies sued the American captain,
accusing him of having obtained the conviction by fraud. The conviction was
overturned and the sale annulled, but the captain had disappeared with the money.
A certain Wells, a former American consul dismissed for rudeness in
the performance of his job, bought the rights of the insurance companies and
brought an action against the Brazilian government. O
American government transmitted the complaint to the Minister of the States
United in Rio de Janeiro, but the Brazilian government, quite rightly,
refused to pay, and the American government, which was then struggling with
difficulties of the civil war, he even recommended to his minister that he not
take things forward. Mr. Webb was an American minister in Rio,
who on that occasion recognized the injustice of the complaint.
Now, in 1867 Mr. Webb changed his opinion and, after
having met Wells in the United States, the minister began to
make demands, and just as a packet was about to leave for the
Europe, Mr. Webb threatened to sever his diplomatic relations with
the Brazilian government if it did not pay. The government then bore the
great difficulties of the Paraguayan war and feared the bad effect that
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66 Eduardo Prado

would produce news in Europe of a break with the United States. He paid,
but under protest, the sum of £14:252 at the exchange rate of 16, a rate
that at that time was considered disastrous, because they had not yet seen
the exchange rates of 10, 9 and 8¾ that today make the glory of republican
finances.
In 1872, Brazil's minister in Washington, Mr. Carvalho Borges,
requested a new examination of the matter from the Secretary of State,
and the American government's lawyer opined that Brazil had been the
victim of extortion, and that the amount should be refunded with the
respective interest.
In accordance with this opinion, the American government
ordered the sum of £5,000 to be delivered to the Brazilian legation. There
was therefore £9:252 missing which the legation claimed, as Webb had
received £14:252, as shown by Webb's own receipt; This diplomat had
therefore embezzled £9:252, the whereabouts of which he could not
account for. It was only in 1874 that the Washington government finally
reimbursed
Brazil for the full amount.45 This was not the only demand for
money that, with more violence than reason, the Americans made to us, in
addition to the complaints of Raguet and Tudor.
In 1849, the Brazilian government found itself forced to give in
to a new and important complaint made by the American minister David
Tod. We will see the justice and morality of this complaint later.
The fact, however, is that on January 20, 1850, an American-Brazilian convention was
ratified by which Brazil paid the United States five hundred and thirty contos (530:000$000
réis) that the American government would distribute among the claimants.

David Tod exulted. On August 23, 1840, he wrote to his

government: “The more I examine this matter and reflect on it, the more I
am convinced that this deal was very satisfactory, and the sum received
very sufficient to pay all the claimants.” However, the body of the
complaining American traders in Rio insisted

45 Calvo, Droit international theory et pratique, § 1.269.

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The American Illusion 67

so that the distribution would be made in Rio and not in Washington under
from the government's American.46
perspective Minister Tod and the Americans in Rio were unable,
however, to get the commissioner in charge of distributing this money to come
and do this work in Rio de Janeiro. The American government appointed
This commission is Mr. Geo P. Fisher, and this official's report is very curious.
From this report it is clear that American claimants, as a rule,
could not present any proof of their rights, which were
most of them fantastic.
After listening to all the complaints for two years, the
Commissioner Geo P. Fisher said:
“The amount paid by the government of Brazil, under the 1849
convention, was 500:000$000 réis, which amounted to 300:000 dollars.
“Now, have you paid the amounts that have already been allocated and the amounts
claimed, there will be a balance of 130:000 to 150:000 dollars, that is, more
or less, half of what Brazil paid.
“I think our government will stay on the left in
relation to the government of Brazil, which will have reason to complain about the injustice
what suffered.”47

This document, better than any other demonstration,

proves the conscious bad faith with which the North American complaints were made.

** *

In South American countries, and there are some where, despite

revolutions, minister positions are occupied by educated men who know
diplomatic history; there is a great prevention against politics
absorbing, invasive and tyrannical of American diplomacy. The last time
who was Brazil's minister of foreign affairs, Viscount of Abaeté,
This statesman learned that an expedition of filibusters was being planned in
New York against Pará and Amazonas and, if the Brazilian legation in
If Washington did not actively counter the conspiracy, it might even
repeat a new attack in the Amazon valley, similar to that of the expedition
of the pirate Walker against Central America.

46 US House of Representatives docs. 31 st. Congress, vol. 7, doc. 19.

47 US House of Representatives docs. Congress, 32nd Sess. I. 1851-52.
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68 Eduardo Prado

These American pretensions over the Amazon became

then threatening. Following the exploration carried out on the great river by Lieutenant
Herndon, of the American Navy (who had advised the Brazilians to
use of force against the Indians, instead of catechesis),48 unrest began
American regarding Amazonas.
Diplomatic agents were dispatched to Peru and
Bolivia, with the aim of raising the governments of those countries against the
Brazil and advise them to ask for assistance from the United States.
The famous American geographer and meteorologist Maury wrote a
violent pamphlet against Brazil,49 which was victoriously responded to by De
Angelis.50 Maury spoke, not with the convenience that the
Brazil would have opened the Amazon to navigation, but in the right
of the United States from forcing us to do this.
American intrigues were not well received in Peru,
but Bolivia hesitated a little, and that was enough to start the filibuster conspiracy to
which we alluded to in the United States.
An armed invasion of the Amazon was evidently being prepared
when Brazil's minister in Washington spoke on a positive note
the American government, asking if such piracy would be permitted.
The Secretary of State, responding to the minister51 who so
timely and energetically demanded the interests of Brazil, he responded twice52 that
“Union officials, with knowledge of the facts, would not facilitate the departure of any
ship that was
violate the laws of Brazil”, and that “the company that aimed to force the
entry into the river would be illegal and would imply a violation of Brazil's rights, and
that, if any citizen of the Union had the temerity to attempt it,
the severity of the law would fall upon him.”
Equally categorical statements had already been made by the government
American to Mexico in relation to Texas, and should later make them to
Central America, and these statements did not prevent the attacks that
We know.

48 See Herndon. The Valley of the Amazon.

49 The Amazon and the Atlantic slopes of South America. Washington, 1853.
50 From the navigation of the Amazon. Montevideo. 1854.
51 Mr. Baron of Penedo.
52 Notes from April 20th and September 23rd, 1853.
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The American Illusion 69

The Brazilian government did not reduce its vigilance, denouncing

more than one conspiracy planned by Maury, an American naval officer and
public servant, and his companions. Once an expedition was equipped, and
only at the last minute was it stopped at Sandy Hook just outside New York
harbor.
All these Americans, in their writings, spoke a lot about the
commercial interests of the United States in their immense capitals that were
eager for a job in the Amazon. The time had come for political circumstances
to allow the decree of freedom of navigation, and such American capitals did
not appear. The magnificent steamships that ply the Amazon today are those
of an English company, which has been the greatest driver of progress and
enrichment in the Amazon region. This, however, does not mean that
Americans no longer have views over the great South American river.

General Grant, in a speech given in 1883, at a reception for

Mexican general Porfirio Díaz, went so far as to say that the United States
needed only three things, because they had everything else in their country.
The three things were: coffee, sugar and rubber. And the general said: In any
case, we will have coffee, sugar and rubber.
The general emphasized the phrase , by any means, and in
Mexico this phrase was taken almost as a threat. The sugar problem was to
some extent resolved by the absorption of the Hawaiian Islands, which,
although not admitted into the American Union, are, for all practical purposes,
as if annexed to the United States; Coffee, thought
General Grant who would come with Mexico.
Rubber, to have it, you need to have Amazonas.
In Hawaii the American usurpation was simple and quick. The
indigenous race, that is, close to a million inhabitants, a race that has the
mildness of nature typical of all Polynesians, had been educated for nearly a
century by missionaries from various nations, and had already reached a
degree of civilization that allowed it to establish a regular government. There
are around five hundred Americans and around six or eight thousand
Portuguese in the archipelago. Well, the Americans, aided by a warship from
their country, expelled the indigenous people from the government, and,
disembarking troops, took over the entire country, completely excluding the
Hawaiians from all administration of their land. The American rulers, imposed
by bayonets, decreed federation with the United States, as perhaps the
foolish Brazilians who in 1834 presented themselves
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70 Eduardo Prado

ram a similar project in the Chamber of Deputies. The Congress of

Washington did not want the annexation of Hawaii, but that country always remained
governed by Americans. This great and blatant iniquity, this
abuse of force cannot be justified.
Public employees and official and unofficial journalists who
writing in Brazil say they are very enthusiastic about the friendship of
United States, and will perhaps easily be able to deceive the good faith of Brazilians.

The international policy of the United States is selfish, arrogant at

times, at other times submissive, depending on the interests of the occasion.
And, in any case, she never lets herself be guided by sentimentality.
form of government.
During the Franco-Prussian War, after September 4th,
that is, after the proclamation of the republic, when France continued
facing the German enemy, the United States expressed, in every way, its
sympathies for the Teutonic empire against the Latin republic. European royalty
and aristocracy have immense prestige
in the United States. All the ambition of the enormous American colony in
Europe is to get closer to the courts. There is no American family whatsoever
fortune that does not have, on its plates or spoons, any coat of arms, a noble
motto, a helmet or any other heraldic item.
It is with fading that they want, by force, to link their nicknames
obscure to the noble names of the United Kingdom, always intending to
descend from the nobility. The book of English nobility Burke's Peerage and
Baronetage is known by heart by American ladies, whose greatest ambition is
always marry European noblemen, go and live in Europe, leaving the
old Uncle Sam from across the Atlantic.

This admiring tendency toward all the tinsel in

royalty comes, of course, from the fact that, in many respects, the United States
they are still a colony. Civilization comes from Europe, and that is why
American, from the rudest to the most eminent man, asks
always abroad: So what do you think of this country? Just like the
enriched parvenu likes to show off his house, his cars, the
man of good society and, giving the elegant gentleman his
precious wines, asks him insistently: So, what do you think?
Now, American women understand that the nobleman is more competent
in terms of elegance and social status than any other individual
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The American Illusion 71

duo. Hence the preference of Americans for the aristocratic nations of

Europe. This is about individuals. As for the government, neither
There is no doubt that the United States is more friendly to England and
Germany, despite France being a republic.
And this preference for Germany, on the part of the American
government, reached brutality during the Franco-Prussian war.
The American minister in Berlin, Bancroft, a man illustrious for his
know, which is extremely rare among American diplomacy, which is ordinarily
the scum of politicking, deprived with Emperor William and
with Bismarck, and his attitude was without generosity and without tact. He
accompanied the King of Prussia on campaign, and his dispatches to
Washington, published shortly afterwards, were insulting to France.
Revolving around armistice and peace negotiations, it was always
a zealous servant of Germany. The American General Sheridan perhaps felt
very honored to be admitted as an aide-de-camp.
of Prince Frederico Carlos, and took part in the entire campaign, providing
good service to the German army. Sheridan was an American
notable, an illustrious general, and with him a large number of North American
officers served against the French Republic. And General Grant?
He was president of the United States, and in a message to the American
Congress in 1870, he congratulated Germany on its victories, and
he was jubilant with France's defeat.
It was on February 7, 1871, that is, six months after the fall
of Napoleon III, against whom the American government might have
resentment due to the Mexican war, it was six months after the proclamation
of the republic in France that President Grant issued his
famous message to Congress, insulting message to France, and
in which he praised the free government of Germany and approved the war of
1870, and the consequent annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Days later,
Grant, receiving the minister from Germany, told him that the government
American could not help but sympathize with Germany in the struggle that
she had just supported, and at that time Bancroft was writing to Bismarck
congratulating him on his work “destined”, the American said, “to rejuvenate
Europe”. All these base things that had a petty electoral purpose, that is, to
win the votes of the Germans in the United States, remained
immortalized by Victor Hugo, who asked:
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72 Eduardo Prado

Est-ce donc pour cella que vint sur sa frégate

54
Lafayette donnant la main à Rochambeau?

54 Of course, let Peau Rouge admire le Borusse.

It's tout simple; il le voit aux brigandages prêt Fauve
atroce; et ce bois comprend cette Forêt; Mais que
l'homme incarnant le droit devant' l'Europe.
L'homme que de rayons Colombie enveloppe L'homme
en qui tout un monde héroïque est vivant, Que cet homme se
jette a plat ventre devant L'affreux sceptre de fer des
vieux âges funèbres Qu'il te donne, O Paris, le soufflet
of these tenèbres,
.................................................... .................................
Qu'il montre à l'univers sur un immonde char L'
Amérique baisant le talon de César, Oh! cell
fait trembler toutes les grandes tombes!
Cela remue, au fond des pâles catacombes, Les
os des fiers vainqueurs et des puissants vaincus!
Kosciusko frémissant réveille Spartacus; Et
Madison se dresse et Jefferson se lève; Jackson
met ses deux mains devant ce hideux rêve; “Dishonour!”
create Adams; et Lincoln étonné Saigne, et c'est
aujourd'hui qu'il est assassiné.
.................................................... .................................
Bancroft, he will be forever immortalized by the extraordinary ode that the poet dedicated to him:

BANCROFT

What is this cell made in this great France?

Son tragique dédain va jusqu'à l'ignorance, Elle
exist te ne sait ce que dit d'elle un tas D'inconnus,
chez les rois ou dans les galetas.
Sayez un va nu pieds ou soyez un ministre, Vous
n'avez point du mal la majesté sinistre; Vous
bourdonnez eu vain sur son éternité.
Vous l'insultez. Qui donc avez-vous insulté?
ElIe n'aperçoit pas dans ses deuils ou ses fêtes,
L'espèce d'ombre obscure et vague que vous êtes.
Tâchez d'être quelqu'un. Tibère, Gengiskan Soyez
l'homme fléau, soyez l'homme volcan, Or examinera
si vous valez la peine Qu'on vous méprise.
Sinon, allez-vous en. Un nain Peut à sa petitesse ajouter son
venin Sans ceaser d'être un nain et
qu'importe l'atome?
How important is the vile confrontation that falls to this man?
How important are those things that passent et s'en vont?
Sans faire remuer la tete énorme, au fond, Du
désert où l'on voit rôder le lynx féroce, Le stercoraire
peut prendre avec le colosse Immobile à Nunca
sous le ciel étoilé, Des familiarités d'oiseau
vite envolé.

Vid. Aron, Les républiques soeurs.

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The American Illusion 73

This unspeakable rudeness, this breach of the practices of the

simplest urbanity among nations, this lack of generosity, would certainly
shame the shadow of the great men who founded the United States,
who achieved their independence with the help of France, and who, at
the walls of Yorktown were the companions of Lafayette and Rochambeau.
When, years later, General Grant made a trip around the world, he
wanted to deviate a little from the advice of Baedeker, the traveler's
guide, in Paris and wanted to see Victor Hugo. No doubt the name of the
Eastern poet had reached Grant's ears , although, ignorant as the
general was, he had certainly never read a single verse of the immortal
poet. He ordered a hearing.
Old Hugo's anger was terrible. In violent terms, he told Grant's envoy
that he would never receive such a miserable alarve (un tel goujat).
This episode in the life of Victor Hugo is very different from the relationship
between the Emperor of Brazil and the author of Notre Dame de Paris.
Another fact:

In 1891 (the case was published and discussed), Captain

Borup, United States naval attaché in Paris, was caught in flagrant
espionage carried out on behalf of Germany. It turned out that documents
that this American diplomat requested for his government from the
French Ministry of War, he treacherously communicated to Germany.
***

In 1883, when the German socialist leader, Lasker, died in the

United States, the Washington Congress, in the same year that the
Chicago socialists were arrested and hanged, sent a message of
condolence on Lasker's death to the German Reichstag, and In this
message, the socialist's ideas and services were praised. Congress
thought the same principles that the American government pursued in
its territory were very good in Germany.
The German government returned the message with surprise,
which did not fail to embarrass its authors. At that time, there was the
famous conflict between the United States and Germany, because the
latter refused to receive the trichina-infected pork that came from
America, and Bismarck declared that he would no longer deal with a certain Mr.
Sargent, American minister in Berlin, who had been shown to be incorrect
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74 Eduardo Prado

and inconvenient. The morality of all this is that the American government's
subservience to Germany in 1870-1871 did not win the esteem of the
government of Emperor William.
It was not only at that time that there were Americans enthusiastic about
the winner and the strongest. In the war in China, in 1859, an American squadron,
neutral, as the expedition against China was Anglo-French, was anchored in Peiho,
when, on June 25th of that year, there was
combat between the belligerents. Unexpectedly, without reason or warning, the
American neutral ships, under the command of Commodore Tattnal, broke through
fire against the Chinese. This disloyalty had no other reason than the desire to appear,
it was a sport. It's true that Americans don't do much ceremony with Chinese people.
Poor Chinese people are lynched in the United States without any form of prosecution,
and are sometimes even burned alive.
Not even with them is there respect for the international faith. The United States
obtained a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation from China, by virtue of the
which was free entry and exit of Chinese and Americans, reciprocally,
in both countries. Because, despite the solemnity of this national commitment, the
American Congress passed a law prohibiting the entry of Chinese
in the United States. I would no longer have the audacity to break the nation's word,
the most Machiavellian chancellery of decrepit Europe.
American policy, in relation to the Indians, which it has not yet
just exterminated, it is a policy of unbelievable ferocity in this
end of the 19th century. The official documents that refer to the administration of the
Indians are tragic.55
Successive investigations have demonstrated that theft is the
rule, almost without exception, in the American government's dealings with the Indians.
The government cynically lacks faith in the treaties, starves the Indians and
with gunfire, he robs them of the land where they settle. Those employed in the
administration of the Indians are proverbial dishonest in the States.
United. There is no voice that disputes this, and there are many American books
in which the particularities of this long campaign of blood, slaughter,
of robbery and fire are narrated in detail.56

55 Official Reports of the war department or the department of the interior.

56 It summarizes this issue very well and confirms with a thousand cases what we say the
following book: A century of Dishonour by H. X. London, 1881.
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The American Illusion 75

The history of the United States' treaties with the countries of

Far East is full of violent impositions, cheating and
acts of bad faith. The Americans have been the biggest smugglers in China.
far away from opium, and its reputation is terrible.57 In 1828 the Chinese government
issued a special decree against North American fraud. That
decree was the response given to a plea from American traders
from Canton. Let us see the tone in which those proud Republicans
addressed to the viceroy of Canton:

“Prostrate”, they said, “prostrate at the feet of Your Excellency, we beg

you to deign to cast your sights on us and extend to us
your compassion..."

“There is no better proof of the exaggeration of American complaints

against China, says the American James A. Whitney,58 than the
fact that the sum that China paid us exceeded the demands of the claimants to the
point that a large balance is still in the American treasury
without anyone claiming it. And it is necessary to remember”, continues the same
author, “that the complaints originated from real or supposed losses
which the Americans said they had suffered in 1856, during the bombing of Canton
by the English forces or during the defense work then
carried out by the Chinese government. And it must also be remembered that our
own government virtually sympathized with the bombing. Two years
then an officer from our squadron, although we were at peace with
China supported the British action against the fortifications at the Peiho mouth. Five
years later, with us linked to China by
a treaty of peace and friendship, two American ships and four speedboats
They wanted, by force, to get a letter from a channel. The Americans were already
prepared for a refusal by the Chinese, which was very fair and
Natural. The Chinese were opposed, but American cannons imposed
silence to the land batteries, and, a few days later, five of the Chinese forts were
devastated by American ships, with 250 Chinese killed.

“As for the danger our forces were in, let it be done
easily an idea of him saying we lost three men.”

57 Quarterly Review, vol. LXII, p. 150.

58 James A. Whitney, The Chinese and the Chinese Question, New York, 1880, p. 41.
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76 Eduardo Prado

The United States extorted a treaty from Japan, and thus

it was in the Samoa Islands where Americans not only accepted a species
joint protectorate or condominium with Germany and England,
how they took part of the island of Tutuila from the indigenous people, as a deposit of
coal. This was the case in Siam and Madagascar, countries where industry
American company wants to introduce its fake products, falsifying the
brands, and, despite international conventions, labeling, as English, their inferior
cottons and other fraudulently disguised manufactured products.

Trade treaties! This is the great North American ambition, an ambition

that does not exactly belong to the people, but rather to the plutocratic class, to the
world of monopolizers who, not content with the market,
domestic that they have a monopoly against foreigners, by virtue of
prohibitive tariffs at customs, to the detriment of the poor who find themselves
deprived of the great benefit that universal competition would bring them with the
forced price reduction. This plutocratic class rules the people
American with much more rigor and tyranny than the Czar of Russia employs in the
supreme direction of his people. It sucks the American lifeblood, and, practically,
through the power of gold, it has real and positive privileges much greater than
those of the nobility and clergy in Europe, in past times. A
millionocracy dominates the railways, the docks, the factories and, of course,
leftovers from their earnings, they use to govern, subsidize and convert
in your obedient servants all the politicians of the United States, country
unique in the history of the world in which the simple designation of the politician
(politician) became, quite rightly, a true insult.

American plutocrats are no longer satisfied with the market

national status that protectionism handed to them. In their industries they have
already employed enormous capital that demands remuneration. On an equal footing
conditions, they cannot compete in the world's markets with
manufactured products from Europe. The protectionism that allowed us to
United States, the creation of immense industrial fortunes also brought
life is becoming more expensive and, with it, the rise in wages, which already
would be higher than in Europe due to the relative rarity of
skilled and technical labor (killed labor). As salaries are higher,
the cost of production is higher than in Europe, and therefore, in competition
universal, the United States is outperformed by European producers.
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The American Illusion 77

Therefore, American industry succumbs under the weight of its

exaggerated production. Hence the industrial crisis, aggravated by the devaluation of part
of the coin, the silver coin, because, as we have already said, even in matters of
coinage, American legislators have wanted and succeeded in protecting millionaires to
the detriment of the people. How could they
the owners of large silver mines sell their silver at a good price
metal, if its value was not maintained by the continuous purchases of the American
treasury that acquired silver bars to transform them into coins? So much silver coin was
minted by the American treasury that it broke the
balance of value between the silver coin and the gold coin. The overabundance lowered
silver, made gold more expensive and gold emigrated abroad. Unequal and partly
depreciated currency, this is what protectionism
produced in the states' monetary circulation system. The stagnation of
industry, arising from excess production and its inability to
compete abroad with European products, gets worse from day to day
day. Fifteen years ago, Americans said that there were no social issues in their country,
that worker riots, fights and crises arising from
difficulties of the proletariat were evils of old European societies,
that in free America there was space, light and food for all the poor, under
the work regime. Today, what do we see? The worker issue is more
terrible and more threatening in the United States than in Europe.
The American proletarian has an organization of attack and defense against
society that has not yet been equaled in Europe. Looks like,
in Europe, the so-called armed peace, with the awareness of the danger that
national existence itself in view of the hostility of powerful neighbors,
It also raises awareness that unity is necessary to guarantee the existence
of one's own country. In the United States, the social issue is serious
only. A large part of the working mass is foreign, and is still in the first phase of the
immigrant existence, an intermediate phase, in which, having separated from the old
homeland, they have not yet adopted the new homeland. The mass of immigrants is
made up of a true selection of workers from the
respective countries of origin. Selection of strong, energetic, resolute,
therefore, the simple act of emigrating is proof of an audacious spirit. Who
did not hesitate to abandon the homeland of his birth, has no qualms about
disturb the adopted homeland. Therefore, in the difficulties of the social struggle, the
workers' army in the United States is more to be feared than in Europe.
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78 Eduardo Prado

The financial and economic policy of the United States produced,

after a notable industrial expansion, an extraordinary reaction. The worker
today does not have work, or, when he does, the boss does not
can pay for this work as in other times, although the worker
always need the same money, because the price of life has not gone down.
Undoubtedly, the workers' issue concerns all countries, and the
problem of wealth and poverty is as old as the world. All solutions to this
problem are very relative and always provisional solutions.
Antiquity had slavery, which is a way of giving
certain stability and organization to the proletariat, coercing it to work and
to obey. Christianity calmed the revolts of human misery when
exacerbated by poverty, promising heaven and future happiness and making
suffering itself a title to eternal happiness. The society
pagan appealed to material force materially dominating the proletariat;
Christian society bound him by the even stronger chains of hope and faith.
The modern spirit suppressed slavery and stopped
speak in heaven. The worker was abandoned, and science has not yet found
a formula that would replace the slavery of antiquity or the belief in
another life that Christianity instilled.
In the United States, labor unrest is more serious than
in Europe, because the worker has none of the material and
does not have the moral incentives that partly dominate it in Europe and
that he finds himself free in America.
European monarchies are seriously concerned with improving the
lot of workers. Monarchies have every interest in postponing and
avoid the great crisis of the proletariat, because the dynasties know that, in a
great social catastrophe, the thrones would disappear.59 In the republics
there is this interest in conservation that leads governments to want good
govern in one's own interest. In the republic everything is transitory; men
know that, whether they fill their country with benefits, or accumulate

59 Even recently, at a congress in Milan, we saw the representatives of Caesarist

Germany and monarchical Italy speak out in favor of pensions for
invalids from work, while the envoys of the French republic Yves Guyot
and Léon Say, republicans, ardently opposed this humanitarian measure, already
adopted in Germany.
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The American Illusion 79

mistakes after mistakes and even go as far as crime, they will, at a certain period,
have to leave power, and, if the republic commits serious mistakes, men change,
always continuing the republic, even if it is to repeat the mistakes that
one tries, in vain, to repress it with the frequency of revolutions. The republic,
although very personal in terms of the influence of officials,
She benefits from a kind of impersonality that makes her irresponsible.
In managing business and public money, the monarchy risks
its own existence; is like a solidary firm that responds with
his person and all his assets. The republic is an anonymous company with limited
liability. And we know countries where
A simple company name is almost synonymous with dishonesty.
History demonstrates that republics, once falsified,
they never regenerate. Each form of government has its own tendency, and has
his peculiar way of solving the successive problems of history
national. Take, for example, the United States and Brazil, both
facing the same problem: the abolition of slavery.
The United States had its genuinely re-publican and North-American
solution, that is, the solution through violence, force,
by the great noise of fratricidal war. Brazil had a genuinely Brazilian and
monarchical solution, the solution we all saw, a solution
which exceeded the dreams of the most humanitarian optimists. Perhaps
we should be ashamed of the solution we knew and could give
to the problem and feel that we have not imitated the United States as well
in this point? We said that in Brazil the slave problem had a monarchical solution,
not only because the Brazilian monarchy had the glory of
be punished for its liberating action, as because, since the world
is the world, no major social reform has been carried out without being under
of the action of a monarchical government. Let's listen to one of the most profound
thinkers of the century, Dollinger: “The testimony of history shows us that the
solution of social issues, the reform of institutions, the abolition of traditional
abuses, are carried out with more ease and security
in a monarchical government than in a republic. When corruption
of the Roman republic reached its extreme limits, all intelligent Romans admitted
the impossibility of the republic reforming itself
itself and the inevitable necessity of monarchy. The same happened
with the Polish republic and the French republic at the time of the directory.
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80 Eduardo Prado

“If the United States, in 1862, had had a monarch instead of a

president elected for a few years, it would certainly have been possible
for them to direct the servile problem towards a peaceful solution,
avoiding a bloody civil war, the effects of which still persist.”60 This said
the illustrious thinker in 1880, and eight years later the facts proved him
right, because the only monarchical country in America was also the only
country that peacefully extinguished slavery.
Their manifest destiny, their natural instinct for conservation,
leads monarchies to seek to solve social problems, while republican
oligarchies fear these problems and postpone their solutions indefinitely.

And that is why we see European monarchies, understanding

the danger and burden of their responsibility, facing head-on the problem
of the proletariat which, in the United States, is neglected by public
authorities. In Europe, in the old monarchical tradition, there is a remote
memory of the ancient alliance between royalty and the bourgeoisie
against the feudal lords, who were the oppressors of the weak. Today,
the oppressors are the bourgeoisie who confiscated for their benefit all
the so-called achievements of the 1789 revolution. Semitic or non-Semitic
capitalism today enjoys real and effective privileges that are much more
vexatious than the ancient privileges of the nobility and clergy. Under the
old regime, the nobility gradually weakened, and the third estate grew stronger.
In modern life, capital grows by itself, becomes more and more abundant,
and there is no doubt that fate makes the rich become richer and the
poor become poorer. The bourgeois republican form, as it exists in
France and the United States, is the one that most protects the abuses
of capitalism. There is, as it were, a repercussion of ancient eras, in
today's times, when we see on one side the bourgeois ferocity against
the proletarian, resorting to protectionist laws, industrial monopolies, and
talking all the time about the principle of authority, in law of legality, in
61
obedience.

60 JI von Dollinger, English translation under the title: Studies in European History, trans-
lated by Margaret Warre. London, 1890, p. 24.
61 Stendhal said that when you start talking a lot about the beginning of something it is because
that thing no longer exists. There is a lot of talk today in Brazil about the principle of
authority. It is because authority no longer exists, which has been replaced by oppression.
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The American Illusion 81

On the other side we see the representative of the old traditions of

Holy Roman Empire and the Pope, seeking to extend a hand to the workers, who
after all are the strength, are the number, are the justice and will be the power
tomorrow. The Pope and the Emperor, with the superior understanding that
gives them faith in their destinies, they are seeing that new times of social renewal
are approaching, and that it is necessary, in the immense Bastille where the
revolutionary bourgeoisie imprisoned the proletariat, tearing out a window
to blue. The alliance of the Church and the Empire, with the unhappy crowd
against the mocking bourgeoisie that calls itself republican or at least
democratic, is the great fact of the end of this century. Germany is concerned about
the fate of its workers; Bismarck voted for the famous law guaranteeing old age and
disability for workers; socialism penetrated the
high levels of the English government, and it already exists in fact in the great
Russian democracy enshrined in secular usages and institutions. There is still a lot
to be done, but the great monarchies gave the signal, and this was mainly the
European congress that Emperor William II forced to convene.
meet in Berlin to study ways of improving the lot of the proletarians. The movement
is started; where he encounters the most resistance is in the
France, stronghold of the republican bourgeoisie, and in the Latin countries that most
or less are inspired by the French spirit. The Church sponsors socialism
Christian, and he doesn't do it just through words. By an admirable instinct, the
English proletariat understood that it could expect nothing from its Church
official, and, in the great crisis of 1890, its herald, its chief, the judge of
its cause, its champion, was old Cardinal Manning, who reconciled
bosses and workers, a feat worthy of the heroic times of the Church. Us
In the United States and Australia there is a tacit alliance between the Church and
the proletariat. Consider the efforts of Cardinal Gibbons and Monsignor Ireland, and
admire how the labor movement in the United States gained
greatness with the influence of the Church.
The class of railway owners, monopolists and
of industrialists whom the ferocity of protectionism has enriched to the detriment of
the comfort and well-being of the poor, arm themselves, in the
United, with great resources for the supreme battle they have to fight,
more day less day, with the American people. The government and politicians of
Washington are the directly interested or indirectly subsidized representatives who
will seek by all means to protect the
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82 Eduardo Prado

rich and the satisfied against the hungry. American financiers and monopolists hate
Europe because gold has flown there
American, and because in Europe governments are setting an example of
defense of the working classes. The defender of these monopolists, more
known, is Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a Scot who became prodigiously rich in the United
States, and who, at the end of his life, appears in all
anti-European or rather anti-liberal demonstrations that take place in
U.S. Mr. Carnegie owns some gigantic foundries and
author of books in which he exalts capitalism, the happiness of wealth and
the superiority of the United States, a country that he presents as the first in the
world. The best-known of Mr. Carnegie's books is called Democracy Triumphant, a
richly printed book that on the first page features an inverted royal crown and a
broken scepter to indicate the victory of democracy. The book is poorly written,
insolent and, to give a
idea of his way of arguing, we will just say that, wanting to prove the
artistic superiority of the United States over Europe, he says that the
concert halls are larger in Denver and Cincinnati than in
Paris and London. Furthermore, Mr. Carnegie sings an enthusiastic hymn to the
happiness of the American people, whose existence, according to the author, is an idyll
without end. Mr. Carnegie speaks of the well-being of the American worker, of
his little smiling house on the edge of evergreen fields and babbling waters and, in
biblical abductions, he almost says that the rivers are of milk and of
honey. Now, if that were true, what paradise must Mr. Carnegie's industrial
establishment, the famous Homestead foundries, have been?
Well done! In 1891, a terrible strike broke out in Homestead , provoked, as the
official inquiry later demonstrated, by the harshness of the owner who, from the
unfortunate worker, demanded a horrible maximum amount of work per day.
in exchange for a ridiculous minimum wage. The patriarchal and idyllic didn’t stop there
Mr. Carnegie. In the United States, the police accept that there are large and
powerful agencies that are responsible for carrying out the police on their own behalf.
of individuals, and are often used in works of revenge and
of obvious criminality. The best known of these agencies, the
Pinkerton, organized on behalf of Carnegie a veritable army of detectives, armed
with revolvers and rifles, destined to repress the revolting workers, true braves like
those of medieval Italy or before
henchmen, as we would say in Brazil. The Pinkertons went to war
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The American Illusion 83

with the workers, there were big shootings, many deaths, attacks by
land and water, sieges, a real war. The press was outraged and demanded
explanations from the government, as to how it allowed
territory a real war without the intervention of the authority, and issued the
scandal of allowing a millionaire to have troops like this
organized at your service. Where would it end up, the newspapers asked, this
abuse? The Pinkertons were sometimes beaten and other times they mercilessly
slaughtered the workers who had the happiness of living in free
America, with the intransigent Republican Mr. Carnegie as its boss.
Despite the immense scandal it produced in American public opinion,
the Homestead carnage, federal and state troops respective
remained inert. As for Carnegie, right from the first signs of
turmoil, took refuge in the old, tyrannical Europe, because, targeted by the just
hatred of the workers and incursion into criminal laws, remaining in the so-
called Triumphant Democracy could be unpleasant for him. With the government and
the courts, Carnegie, in his capacity as a millionaire, very easily
would be arranged. Hadn't he been the president's great electoral protector?
Harrison? With the workers, things were more difficult, and the apologist for
plutocratic democracy remained calm in Europe.
We mention this episode of Homestead because it is typical and full of
revelations for the future of Republican America. The power of the millionaire finds no
corrective in the United States
effective in laws or in the action of public authority. Everything is lawful for you, everything
it is possible for you. This entered the national consciousness so much that men
most cultured people in the country, its writers, its wise men, its poets, its
their philanthropists, avoid all contact with politics, because they know
that political positions are given to subservient men, by financial magnates. In
other countries on the continent, men of valor disdain to be politicians, because
they do not want to be irresponsible puppets in
hands of militarism. In any case, the result is the same, because,
Whether he has to be a servant of financiers or an instrument of the military,
the public man loses, with his dignity, the
its independence. This is the situation of the politician in America.
Until now, the millionaire will use the very powerful weapon of
corruption. Mr. Carnegie was an innovator; with the money he organized a
force and with it he beat those who disturbed his industry. This was perhaps
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84 Eduardo Prado

a rehearsal. Before long, American millionaires and billionaires will

organize armies. If there is money, there are means to defend any
individual, and who knows if, in the future, there won't be individual wars
like those of the Middle Ages in the United States? The institution of
mercenaries can no longer be a privilege of governments that, feeling
weak at home, look abroad for arms to defend them and courage and
ambitions to support them. Soon there will be open markets for
armaments and war inventions; Brave captains and determined soldiers
will be hired through agencies, who will renew the feats of the mercenary
troops of Carthage or the Swiss and Lansknets of the Renaissance. How
much does a general cost? How much for an admiral? Themistocles will
be rented by the month, Nelsons by contract and Napoleons by so much per day, with
Governments that have called in mercenaries will sooner or
later have to repent. The mercenary's loyalty is zero, and the country
they are responsible for defending is often their first victim. The foreigner
called to, in any capacity, take part in the national struggles, becomes,
after the struggle, a calamity. The same will perhaps happen with
capitalism; the arms he has armed against the proletariat will one day
turn against him. The imaginative novelist Edmund Boisgilbert, writing
with the intention of guessing what the lives of future generations will be
like, in his novel Coesar's Column describes the great armed struggle
that thinkers see as inevitable in the North American future.62 In this
book, we see omnipotent capital dominating armies and conquering
everything with the power of gold, which puts at its service all the
progress of applied science, all the refinements of enjoyment and all the
material means of destroying and subjugating the multitudes. There is
an immense revolt against this long tyranny; capital defends itself, the
mortality is horrible and American society collapses with a bang, in an
absolute catastrophe. The writer's imagination is great, but the writer's
invention corresponds to a secret instinct in everyone. Today, industrialism
still has some hope of saving itself and the people are not yet clearly
aware of its strength. The difficulties of the present are, therefore, already
quite serious for capitalism, and the American plutocracy seeks, at all costs, to

62 These lines were written at the end of 1893. In 1894, the amazing walls of
Chicago proved the author right.
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The American Illusion 85

get out of his difficulties and to do so he turns abroad. It is abroad that North
American politicians want to open a valve for excess production.

It is not just the aim of immediate monetary profit that drives these
men, it is an absolute necessity for national security. Once foreign markets
are closed, as we have already explained, American production will have to
retract, and, once it is retracted, the number of unemployed workers will grow
enormously, which will increase the already very dangerous army of the
discontented. In this commitment to public salvation, it was a special mission
of representatives of the American Treasury to Europe to ask European
governments to adopt bimetallism to release the quantity of silver that is
creating so many embarrassments for the United States. Europe, at the
Brussels conference, refused to respond to the request. It was with the same
intention, of making its products available and creating special advantages in
foreign markets, that the United States wanted to impose commercial
reciprocity treaties on all countries in America.
This enterprise, of extorting treaties from Latin American countries
in exchange for illusory advantages, was entrusted to Blaine when he was
Secretary of State for the second time.

III

When the ambitious statesman returned to power in 1889, with

the election of President Harrison, he returned ready to seek revenge for the
discredit he had fallen into in 1881, when the indelicacy of his processes and
intentions in intervening in the struggle between the Chile, Peru and Bolivia.
In 1884 he had already dared to be a candidate for president of the Republic,
and this was enough for a large number of votes, from his own party, to
converge on his opponent, the candidate Cleve-land, who was then elected
for the first time. In 1888, Blaine was not a candidate, but he had used all his
influence in favor of Harrison on the condition that he handed over the
Secretary of State to him, from where Blaine, with his extraordinary talent,
would easily find the way to lead the entire country. So it was. The presidential
regime leads to absurdities of this order; a man positively repelled by the
polls, by the express will of the electorate, it is enough for him to have the will
of the president for that man to take charge of the government and
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86 Eduardo Prado

exercise it without there being any way to make him leave for the duration of the
president, except through a revolution. Blaine, therefore, took over the
State Secretary. In 1881, one of the points of the great plan of
Blaine had been to the meeting of a Pan-American congress where, under the
aegis and protection of the United States, should representatives
of all countries in America to discuss matters of mutual interest. The revelations
resulting from the frustrated intervention in the Pacific
completely discredited Blaine's designs, and the first
The act of his successor consisted of issuing notice to the invited nations
to the congress, telling them that the great meeting of representatives from all over
America was postponed indefinitely.

Blaine, returning to power in 1889, brought a double plan

revenge: he wanted to humiliate Chile and reunite Congress. Got the
two things. He had the opportunity to issue, as we have shown, an ultimatum to the
Chilean government, demanding satisfaction and compensation within a given period, and
saw gathered at a congress in Washington, under his presidency,
representatives from all countries in America.
The first part of the congress consisted of banquets, parades,
receptions and parties. The envoys from Latin America, due to the language of
the press and the general attitude of the government, were soon convinced that
only the interests of the United States would benefit from what was being done.
intended for them in that Congress. The American government discussed three
points: 1st, the adoption of mandatory arbitration for the solution
international conflicts; 2nd, the conclusion of treaties with the government
of Washington establishing a partial or total and reciprocal exemption
of import duties between the contracting country and the United States;
3rd (this one just to fill time), the study of a railway from
United States to Patagonia, linking the American republics together.
The issue of arbitration did not pose any major difficulties.
In terms of promises, treaties and international commitments,
the republics of America are not difficult. The Corpus Diplomaticum
South American, that is, the collection of its treaties, agreements and
its conventions, is huge. They are made, they are undone, they are forgotten and
Treaties are violated very easily. Almost all republics
They agreed that, in the future, they would decide their issues by arbitration. It
was a platonic agreement, with a beautiful effect, which seemed to give pleasure
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The American Illusion 87

to Blaine and that, in short, obliges him to do nothing. The Chilean government, however,
was more correct and sincere, and did not sign the arbitration clause. O
President of Chile justified this refusal before his Congress
country, pronouncing the following words:
“It was also proposed and accepted by some representatives
of the Washington Congress to international arbitration in the form
more compressive and mandatory. We do not consent to this
project, because Chile does not need, to exercise its sovereignty in the civilized
world, any law other than the general law of nations. People, like ours, who live
off their work, and who
faithfully fulfill their international obligations and commitments,
will have to resort to arbitration in special and concrete cases in which
that public justice, prudence and respect
reciprocal of sovereign states; I believe, however, that it will not be permissible
for us to limit the actions of future generations to arbitration in order to avenge the
right. It is only up to them to assess and decide on the means that the law
international law provides them with the opportunity to defend their rights. The restriction of
State rights through the mandatory adoption of a process
exceptional situation, such as arbitration, is not consistent with freedom, which,
in any eventuality, I wish to reserve for the public authorities of my country and
for my fellow citizens.”
This is the language of a true statesman, explaining a most patriotic
resolution based on the truest
understanding of international rights and duties.
Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and S. Domingos signed the obligation
to resort to arbitration, but a few months later there was
a deadly war between Salvador and Guatemala and the troops of S.
Domingos and Haiti. O fraternity, oh American and republican loyalty!
On the commercial side, the Spanish-American republics, although they signed
some of the conclusions imposed by the United States, did not
They hurried to conclude the treaties that the United States so desired. The
Chilean minister in the United States, at a banquet that
offered to him in Chicago, he had the frankness to declare that, in view of
of the North American government's demands, Chile had to continue to
have only Europe in mind, and work to increasingly strengthen
his relations with the old world.
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88 Eduardo Prado

The Brazilian republic, then still in the first of its several successive
dictatorships, was the first country that gave in to the wishes of its
United States, signing the commercial reciprocity treaty, which
will be known in history as the Blaine–Salvador treaty, because its signatories
are that American statesman and the minister
Brazilian in Washington, Mr. Salvador de Mendonça.
This treaty was a reason for Brazil to be harmed without the
minimal advantage, and gave rise to great disloyalty on the part of the
North American government.
What did the United States grant to Brazil through this treaty?
Exemption from import duties on Brazilian coffee and some types of sugar.
Now, coffee no longer paid duties in
United States since 1873. And why at that time did they suppress the
United States that tax? It was not to favor Brazil; he was
because it was in the interests of the American people. The tariff
American customs is protectionist; their high rates have no
ultimately increase Treasury income, but simply protect national industries and
cultures. The United States has
force to import coffee, which they do not produce. A tax on
The entry of coffee would actually fall on the American consumer.
A major producer of coffee, due to geographical conditions and its monopoly
on this production in the West, Brazil inevitably had to supply the American
market. It is not a real fraud to try to make us believe that the exemption from
duties on Brazilian coffee is a
favor done to Brazil? If the United States were to impose itself again
rights over coffee, Brazil would not lose the American market where we have no
competition. Only the American consumer

he would pay more for that drink that is essential to him. About the
sugar, the duty exemption would actually be useful to the sugar industry
of Brazil, if this exemption were granted only to Brazilian products.
Now, a previous treaty in force already gave free entry into the territory
American sugars from Hawaii, but despite this, Brazil would profit
much if it had no other competitor than those islands, enjoying the
free entry.

When in February 1891 the text was published in Brazil

of the Blaine–Salvador treaty, everyone understood that only Brazil
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The American Illusion 89

would benefit from duty exemption on sugar. Immediately afterwards, Jornal

do Comércio announced, in a telegram from Madrid, that the American
government had made overtures to the Spanish court, requesting the
conclusion of a treaty under which sugar from Cuba and Puerto Rico would
enter the United States free of charge. of rights. The only advantage expected
from the treaty for Brazil thus disappeared. Placing Brazil's products on an
equal footing with those of the Spanish colonies, treating the young republic
in the same way as the old monarchy that maintains a very rich part of free
America under a firm colonial yoke, where the advantages for Brazil were,
Where was the fraternal preference that the great republic also owed to the
other republic, which, although smaller, is still great? How was it possible for
the Washington government to equate in fiscal treatment the rotten and
unfriendly monarchy of decrepit Europe with the virtuous and fraternal brand
new republic of South America? No! It was impossible. This is what the
government of the Brazilian republic certainly thought, which was quick to
deny the newspaper in the Official Gazette, saying that it was false that it was
dealing with any commercial agreement between the United States and
Spain. The Brazilian minister in Washington, when advising Rio on the
commercial treaty with the United States, stated that the United States would
not give free entry to sugar from any other country. That was the promise that
the government in Washington had made to it, and it was only the trust in that
promise that made the government in Rio so affirmative. Jornal do Comércio
insisted, gave clarifications, announced that Mr. Foster was going to Spain
for treatment – everything was in vain. The government maintained its denial.
Weeks later the treaty was signed! Sugar from Puerto Rico and Cuba had
free entry into the United States, and the only advantage that the Blaine–
Salvador treaty could bring to Brazil disappeared. And the Washington
government didn’t stop there; He soon made other treaties with Central
America, Germany and the Netherlands. Venezuela also made a treaty, but
the Venezuelan Congress rejected it.

The Brazilian Government was thus deceived by American

cunning. In exchange for a fictitious and illusory favor, following a negotiation
in which North American bad faith became evident, Brazil granted exemption
from duties to wheat flour from the United States, and gave the same
exemption to several other American articles , and for all listeners
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90 Eduardo Prado

tros introduced a 25 percent reduction in customs fees.

This concession brought considerable damage to the Treasury's
income,63 which was no longer in a time for so much generosity. And
more than that, it caused great damage to industries already established
in Brazil and on the way to prosperity. There is a great advantage for
bread-importing countries in preferably transporting wheat to reduce it to
flour in markets or close to consumer markets. The consumer benefits
doubly in this way, because the freight is much lower (because in a
reduced volume a greater quantity of food substance is transported), and
because the quality is superior, as transport by sea and time easily alter
the flour, which even runs the risk of major damage, a risk that, together
with increased shipping, is all calculated by the seller to the detriment of
the consumer. There were many wheat grinding mills in Brazil where
important capital and a large number of workers were employed. These
companies were ruined, the workers were out of work and the consumer
was harmed, since American flour, by treaty, was admitted free of duties.
No one has forgotten the extremely important statements in which the
vast majority of traders, industrialists and financiers in Brazil, in letters
written to Jornal do Comércio, spoke out, almost unanimously, against
the disastrous treaty.

These demonstrations and complaints were of no use. He sent

whoever he could, and the damage was done, the Brazilian people
suffered even though our industries groaned.
Here is another benefit we received from the United States.64

63 The Budget Committee of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, in 1894, assessed the treasury's loss at
3:000 per quarter, or 12:000 contos de réis per year. Now, the treaty lasted four years, thus giving
Brazil a loss of 48:000 contos de réis!

64 The last American elections went against the ultra-protectionist and reciprocity policy. With a breach of
international faith that stipulated a three-month notice period for the other contracting party to terminate
the treaty, the United States reestablished the old rights, causing great harm to sugar producers in
northern Brazil and to Brazilian trade, which had three months notice. At the time of writing, Germany
is vigorously complaining against the same fact regarding its products. The Brazilian government
denounced the Blaine-Salvador treaty, and from January 1895 onwards American products paid the
same customs duties as those from other nations.
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The American Illusion 91

IV

It would be a colossal mistake to believe that in the United States

there is sympathy for South America, Brazil and especially for the form of
government that was applied to it four years ago.
In a thousand ways, the American contempt for our brothers from
the south of the continent is revealed. In front of the Washington capitol there
is a statue of the founder of American independence. The sculptor Gree-
nough made symbolic bas-reliefs taken from the story of Hercules. Hercules
and his brother Iphicles, infants, were resting in the same cradle and were
attacked by two serpents. Iphicles, a mere mortal, son of Amphitryon and
Alcmene, burst into clamor; Hercules, the fruit of the Olympic adultery of
Alcmene and Jove, strangled the serpents with his hands, thus showing his
divine origin. This is the scene that the sculptor placed on the pedestal of
Washington's statue. What did the artist want to symbolize? The descriptive
guides of the greatness of the city of Washington clarify the thinking of the
statuary. After detailing us in detail (as befits an art critic in the American
style) the price of the statue, its volume, its weight, the quality of the marble,
the intricacies of its transport from Florence to the banks of the Potomac,
Finally, the guides tell us that the two marble boys, the two twins in the fable,
represent South America and North America. That is the cowardice, the
weakness of Iphicles, and this is the divine majesty of Hercules.65 In the
United States, the word America means the part of the new continent that
obeys the government
of Washington. The Americans respect the sovereignty of England
in Canada and, among all other nations, there is, in the benevolent, a great
indifference and in the others, a feeling of marked superiority that is made up
of self-love and contempt for the South Americans. Suffice it to say that,
among North Americans, it is a source of ridicule that countries like Mexico,
Venezuela, Colombia and another that we know of, which have the
impudence to call themselves the United States... This seems comical to
them. irresistible.

When talking about these United States, there is the same on American lips

65 Ed. Winslow Martin, Behind the scenes in Washington, p. 140.

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92 Eduardo Prado

smile that the Duke of Wellington would have, hearing the name of one of
presidents of Haiti, General Salomon, who called himself Duke of
Crique-Mouillée.
Emperor D. Pedro II had great prestige in the States
United. His love of freedom, his open spirit to all new things
century, his activity, the simplicity of his person, impressed
always the Americans, who only had the idea of a king as a man
surrounded by pomp, a defender of the past against the innovative spirit.
The speeches given in the American Senate, when the
recognition of the Brazilian Republic, consisted, almost exclusively, not in praising
the winners, but in extolling the virtues
of the great loser. The American government was the last, of all the governments
on the new continent, to recognize the Republic in Brazil, and was certainly
inspired by this delay, in the coldness, in the almost hostility, with
that the press received the revolution. Not long ago, the country 's correspondent
in New York recalled these facts, insisting on the little sympathy that Americans
showed for the new order.
of things in Brazil. Just remember what the American newspapers said
when, in 1890, a Brazilian squadron arrived in New York which,
According to the newspapers in Rio, he was going to join the American government
proclamation of the Republic and congratulate the new
government to the President of the United States.
With the haste with which the squadron was organized,
they forgot in Rio that the ships were going to arrive in New York in
midwinter. The cold in 1890–91 was intense, and the poor sailors, dressed lightly,
suffered immensely. The American government
provided them with thick clothing and coverings. It was clear how the newspapers
New York reported these facts. Some described black Brazilians crying from the
cold, hiding in the hold, the abandoned ships, the decks not swept, the officers
with chilblains on their feet, in short, a
complete wreck. All this accompanied by spicy sayings and
enormous insistence on the favors with which the American government
I was helping the misery and misfortune of those ragtag people. In the same
year, an American squadron came to Rio, saying it was coming
expressly congratulate the government. Generalissimo Deodoro invited them to
a ball; The squadron commander asked him to present
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The American Illusion 93

the ball was going on, and, as there was some delay, the squadron left
without even waiting for the ball.
Two years later, another Brazilian squadron goes to New York on
the pretext of the Chicago exhibition and the centenary of Columbus.
Brazilian officials were embarrassed by the press' language about them and
the disregard with which they were treated. Always placed in last place,
always overlooked for all the attention, their disgust, if the country's
correspondent was not missing the truth, was very great and was not hidden.

When the official was invited to go to Chicago, the Brazilian officials all refused,
declaring to a press representative that they did so because they felt justly resentful. They
were not given any satisfaction, and, back in Brazil, they were certainly very disinclined to
believe in the joke of the American fraternity.

Brazil's minister in Washington, Mr. Salvador de Mendonça, has

often experienced, to his own cost, that, in the United States, his position as
minister of the United States of Brazil does not deserve any respect from the
press. Your Excellency has had unpleasant incidents in your career, which
the American press has long and maliciously glossed over, without taking into
account that Your Excellency, in your capacity as an intransigent republican,
historical and all, and through your title of minister of a republic, should be
treated with more respect. The Minister is an amateur of fine arts; it had a
gallery of paintings all signed by the greatest ancient and modern painters.

It was a gallery worth many millions; Your Excellency sent it to Paris to be

sold at auction. The Parisian experts, in charge of the evaluation, declared
that the paintings were all fake; His Excellency, in a telegram to Paris, said
that he was in good faith and that he had been deceived.
He removed the paintings, and later offered some of them to the Academy of
Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro, which ate all those oil cats for exquisite hares,66
because this anecdote, which is only a little comical for our minister, and that
only proves that Your Excellency does not understand painting,

66 All the details of this incident can be found in the work of Paul Eudel, L'Hotel
Drouot in 1885. Paris, 1886, p. 145.
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94 Eduardo Prado

and that he was robbed, buying that gallery for a huge sum, was covered in the New
York newspapers, and the Brazilian representative covered
ridiculous. Another fact: Mr. Salvador de Mendonça was in charge
by the government to purchase a large quantity of silver in the United States. Brazil's
finance ministers have all, after that,
It is alleged that the accounts are not correct, that there is a lack of silver or that
there is a lack of money, as has been seen in published official correspondence.
What does the American press have to do with this entirely Brazilian issue? It is a
point that must be discussed between two senior officials of the
Brazilian Republic, between the Minister of Finance and the Diplomatic Minister.
However, the American newspapers have not thought so and several times
have returned to this unpleasant silver story, publishing depressing articles for the
representative of Brazil. Without a doubt, the government of
Washington cannot protect the representative of the sister Republic against the
press, because the press is free. But ill will is evident in
all of American society. Brazil's Republican representative appears
feel this, because, following the example of diplomats from other countries who
have already been personally attacked by the press, Your Excellency could, by failing to
aside their immunities, call their detractors to court. Your Excellency
he certainly has confidence in the justice of his cause, and if he has not yet launched
This resource is because you don't really believe in American justice
when she has to decide between a compatriot and a South American.
The North American government, not long ago, gave a new
proof of the little consideration that the Brazilian Republic deserves. O
Washington government elevated its
minister in Paris and his representatives at the courts of London,
Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Madrid and St. Petersburg. Now, Brazil is the second
nation of America, by all titles; there is the very important consideration
that, by the Isthmus of Panama, we have the honor of being bound to the same
continent occupied by the United States; We have, like them, irresponsible
presidents, ministers, etc. Therefore, it is clear that Brazil
deserves much more from the United States than the rotten and decrepit European
monarchies. Despite all this, the government of
Washington maintains in Rio any diplomatic representative of
second category, not giving Brazil the confidence to treat its
government with the consideration with which it treats the Spanish government or the
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The American Illusion 95

Austrian government. It is necessary to confess that Washington uses

Brazil of fraternity in a very moderate dose.

Since we speak in the press, we must speak in another way, in which, as we

have seen, the friendship of North Americans for Brazil is also always manifested. We
talk about alarming false or true news.

Not everything is rosy in the life of the South American diplomatic corps.
Representatives of General A, appointed by General B, are ready to serve General C.
One fine day a telegram arrives: “General C attacked General A.” What will the poor
diplomat say to the reporters who assault him and ask who is right, something serious
enough, and, even more serious, who will win? The answer is very difficult. There are
some who take risks; If they get it right, great. But if they make a mistake, they are lost,
because the winner dismisses them without mercy. The smart ones keep quiet. The
reporting, however, is fierce; the report wins per news line provided; and a reporter, when
he doesn't have that news, makes it up. There are often naive people who see deep
Machiavellianism, very skillful intrigues and perfidious intentions of partisans or mysterious
conspirators in a piece of news that was arranged on a poor fifth floor, in the attic of
some reporter , who forged this news to balance his budget for the week. . There is,
however, another genre of fake news that must fall, and it falls within the scope of the
courts. It is fake news, for the purpose of speculation, for which there is a penalty in the
legislation of certain countries. Now, this fake news to increase or decrease the price of
coffee in the markets, to increase the price of Brazilian bonds, is not always news against
the Government of Brazil. Speculation is of proven impartiality; sometimes it announces
the most flattering events, other times the most terrible catastrophes. In any case, New
York is the point of concentration and dispatch of this news. American newspapers have
spent a lot of money to have news from Brazil in the different acute and periodic crises of
the Republic; but, instead of receiving this news directly, they receive it via Buenos Aires
and Montevideo, where the news is all exaggerated and peppered with the ill will of our
Argentine and Uruguayan brothers who are our enemies, despite us having followed
their example adopting the form of government of Argentina and Uruguay. The United
States is,
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96 Eduardo Prado

for the rest of the world, the vehicle for transmitting Argentine bile against Brazil; it is
American newspaper correspondents who attack Brazil; It is the American telegraph
agencies that send, to all parts of the globe, depressing news from Brazil, news that is
often false, sometimes exaggerated, and, alas! sometimes also true. And what is curious
is that the newspapers in Europe, which receive this news from the United States, which
transcribe it, are the ones who pass off as defamers of Brazil. If American newspapers
are insolent towards Brazil, which everyone can easily verify, the commercial world in the
United States is also adverse to us.

Never from the United States did the slightest aid come for our industries,
for our farming or for our railroad. There are close to four hundred thousand contos de
réis from England employed in Brazil, either in loans to the Government or in railways
and other industries. Brazil was poor when it began its existence, it was depopulated, it
had threatening enemies at its doors, it had very serious internal problems – and England
had confidence in Brazil, England entrusted us with its capital, even in critical times. And
the English people are so superior that, in 1865, with Brazil having broken relations with

England, due to an issue Christie67 (an issue in which Brazil's dignity was left unscathed),
managed to raise a loan in London, at the time we were starting a terrible war. And
English capital was at no small risk; they ventured into all the emergencies of the war
with Paraguay, and the possible and even probable disasters of abolition. And in how
many companies are these capitals, in shares or bonds, buried, so to speak? If S. Paulo
Rail-way is considered a remunerative company until recently, and Rio Claro Railway,
on all other roads built with English capital the shareholders do not receive dividends, or
receive minimal dividends. And what enormous capital is not employed in the Alagoas
Railway, Bahia and São Francisco, a branch of the

67 As we know, the issue was subject to arbitration by the King of the Belgians, who
ruled in favor of Brazil. Almost the entire English press was in our favor. In the
House of Commons, illustrious orators such as John Bright, Cobden, Lord Cecil
(now Lord Salisbury) and many others fought for us. Minister Christie presented
himself as a candidate for the House of Commons for Oxford, declaring that his
election would be considered the approval of his procedure in Brazil. Oxford
defeated him. Would we perhaps find so much love for justice in the United States?
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The American Illusion 97

Timbó, Brasil Great Southern, Imperial Bahia Company, Natal and Nova
Cruz, Campos e Carangola, Conde d'Eu, Caravelas Navigation Com-pany, Dona
Tereza Cristina, Leopoldina, Macaé e Campos, Porto Alegre
and Nova Hamburgo, Recife São Francisco, Norte do Rio, Southern Brasilian,
Bahia Central Sugar C.º, North Brazilian Sugar Factories, Rio de Janeiro Flour
Mills C.º, Gaz da Bahia, Gaz do Pará, do Ceará , Gas do Rio
(Belgian capitals), Águas de Pernambuco, etc.? All these companies, which
enumerated, represent millions of pounds sterling that yield nothing, or almost
nothing, to the capitalists. However, these capitals are bearing fruit for Brazil,
maintaining transport ease in regions that
They take advantage of it, providing light and water to the populations. And the companies that
do they give any remuneration, how many benefits do they fill Brazil with? AND
what enormous loss our European capitalists have not already caused
misfortunes? Confident in a long past of tranquility, capitalists
Europeans held Brazilian titles in the same esteem as those of the first nations
in the world. The Brazilian 4% was at 90 on November 14th
from 1889; today it is worth 54.68 The capitalists trusted in our star; They were
by our side in the prosperous days, today they lose with us in the prosperous days.
bad. And, if any European capitalist complains, it is not us, the debtors, who
should protest. Our misfortunes do not come from physical causes; if we were
ruined by some natural causes, if the
coffee had had a destructive disease, like Hemileia uvatrix of
Ceylon and Java, if earthquakes, droughts or floods had reduced us to where
we are, then the complaint would be senseless. But,
no... everything moves forward, whether it is up to Providence or chance,
admirably; now, in the part that belongs to men, we all know what
that they have had. They say, however, that there is something out there that needs to be addressed.
consolidate and that, for this consolidation to occur, it is necessary that all
Brazilians suffer. Victims have their common sense and they already say or
They think: if we have to suffer so much, it's better that this thing doesn't happen.
consolidate! This opinion is inevitably that of every man exempt from party
superstition.
Returning to the Americans, we must ask: What aid
have they been to the development of the material prosperity of Brazil-

68 October 1893.
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98 Eduardo Prado

sil? Their capital doesn't come here, their arms don't emigrate here.
The two shipping companies they organized ended up in culpable and
even fraudulent bankruptcy, with the American manager of one of them
fleeing with the money of Brazilian shareholders and the subsidy paid
to him by the government.
It is said that Americans are our biggest coffee customers.
Firstly, it is absurd to make this fact a reason for sentimental gratitude.
Americans don't buy coffee out of friendship or philanthropy. They buy
it because they want to drink it, and, not having it at home, they look
for it wherever they can find it, and the producing country that best
suits them is Brazil. Furthermore, even in relation to coffee, it is
necessary to confess that the nature of the European markets is more
favorable to Brazil than the New York market. Whatever the reason,
the constant trend in European markets is upwards, and in New York
it is downwards. Without a doubt, on both sides, what determines this
attitude is speculation, but it is undeniable that we should have more
sympathy for those who, although only out of self-interest, promote the
appreciation of a Brazilian product, an appreciation that results in benefits from Bra
There is talk that France imposes a heavy duty of entry on coffee; but
whoever pays this duty is the French consumer himself. In addition,
Havre, Antwerp and Hamburg, in their role as distributing markets,
have spread our coffee throughout Europe and greatly developed their
trade. New York, however, always weighs heavily on the world market
due to its great efforts to make coffee fall; When Brazilian farming was
almost discouraged by the drop in coffee, it was because New York
speculation was triumphant! And today, let the European markets relax
their efforts, and the farmer will see that the Americans will soon
debase his product and we will see low exchange rates and low coffee,
which is not impossible, as many people believe.
***

We have seen what the United States has been to all

Latin America.
We insist especially on what they have been for us in
diplomacy and the economic order. We will finish by seeing the influence
of that country on the moral and intellectual order.
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The American Illusion 99

The influence of the United States on Brazil was felt

in our great social issue – slavery.
We would not have maintained that iniquitous institution for so
long if the greatest nation in America had not tried to legitimize it, and if, from
the slaveholding side of the United States, the encouragement had not come
to us, if the news of what was being said had not reached us and what was
done in the United States to defend slavery.
Political and administrative corruption is the very essence of the
functioning of the American government. The United States is the richest
country in the world; rich for its natural opulence, for its enormous expanse,
for the fertility of the soil, for its ports, its bays, its lakes, its large navigable
rivers, its incomparable mines. With such a land populated by the Saxon race,
how could this country fail to be a strong and powerful nation? The richest
soil in the world, inhabited by the most energetic race of the human species
– that is what the United States is.
That country is big, but it's not because of its government. The self-esteem of
other poor nations or, on the other hand, less rich in natural advantages than
the United States and inhabited by individuals of less energetic races – is
repugnant to confess this inferiority.
Insensitively, we are led not to recognize other people's superiorities or to
attribute them to causes that are not unpleasant for our vanity.
There is no harm in saying that there are people governed more correctly
than us – but, as for confessing that these people are better than us, as for
saying that their land is richer than ours –, That is what we will never resign
ourselves to. For this reason, it is explainable that some Brazilians, with a
simplistic spirit, forcefully want to see, in the advantages that the United
States brings us in prosperity, an effect, not of natural and irremediable
causes, but one resulting from the difference between governments. The soil
cannot be changed, the race cannot be replaced, but, at any time, it is
possible to change the government. Not being able to give us the soil of the
United States, nor the ethical qualities of its people, there were those who
wanted to give us at least its government, that is, the least enviable thing the
great nation has.
And the fatal school of imitators of institutions does not respond to
the nonsense of its system, nor to the disastrous results produced by laws
arbitrarily transplanted from one country to another. When the
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100 Eduardo Prado

While the still rude Romans conquered cultured Greater Greece, Valério Messa-la
brought a sundial from Catania that he ordered to be placed in the Forum, next to the
Rostrums. Valério Messala paid no attention to the difference in length or the gnome's
orientation, and arranged it at random. It was only a century later that it was discovered
in Rome that the sundial kept the time with a large time error, and only then was it
replaced. The clock that told the right time in Catania was wrong in Rome.69 Thus,
institutions can be successful in their countries of origin, and bring confusion and disorder
in the countries to which they arbitrarily move them.

In Brazil the same thing happened with the very disastrous idea of copying

the United States in its political laws. Let's copy, let's copy, thought the foolish, let's copy
and we will be great! We should rather say: Let us be ourselves, let us be what we are,
and only then will we be something. Imagine any individual who, admiring a painting by
Velásquez, wishes to paint like him. What good will it be to have the canvas, brushes,
palette and paints perfectly equal, in raw material, size and dosage to those of the Spanish
painter? Debalde will get the paints and strive to paint like Velásquez. He will have
everything that Velásquez had, except the genius, and, even though he has genius, he
will have another genius and not Velásquez's genius. Thus, South American countries
want to be rich and prosperous like the United States, and they think they will achieve
this by copying articles from the North American Constitution. And as it is human nature
to imitate vices more easily than virtues, imitating the corrupt practices of the American
administration is a very natural thing. “In the United States, there is a lot of stealing”,
thinks the South American public employee, “and despite that they are a great country;
Well, why won’t my country be great, even though I steal and my colleagues steal?” This
reasoning forcefully presents itself to the employee's fragility, the temptation becomes
stronger and... we have seen the rest. There is no assault on property that does not find
excuse in the fact that this assault is very common in the United States. This is the
deleterious influence that the United States exerts on America. The vices of the great
corrupt the small, and the bad example of the powerful is the destruction of the humble.

69 Plínio, Hist., Nat. liv. VII, 60.

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The American Illusion 101

North American civilization can dazzle natures

inferiors that do not go beyond the materialistic conception of life. Civilization
is not measured by material improvement, but by moral elevation. The true
thermometer of a people's civilization is the respect they have for human life
and freedom.
Now, Americans have little respect for human life.
They do not respect the lives of others or their own. Herbert Spencer said
to the Americans that they make a fundamental error in the program of
life, spending it with fever, in which they exalt each other, and which gives
place to the early demise of the man animal, due to the appearance of
more fearful and frequent forms of neurosis. Someone else's life is
something of little consideration in the United States. Regular courts often
legally kill, criminal murders are
extremely vulgar and lynchings grow in number every day.
All of these are marked forms of contempt for human life. Lynching is collective
murder, and the fact that the victim is sometimes a criminal is in no way
diminished, by the frequent refinements of ferocity, by
due to the irresponsibility of the group that resolves and executes the intended
sentence. In Brazil, there is a small American colony; the part
of it established in the southern coffee zone came, almost all of it, at the end of
secession war and was made up of southerners who, deprived of having
slaves in their homeland, emigrated to the country where they were still allowed
this pleasure. The Brazilian population saw these new guests arrive, and
saw those who settled in agriculture exceed in ferocity the most
rude and perverse tormentors of slaves. The Americans introduced new forms
of torment and new torture devices. As
the English travel to the ends of the world using their shovels
of cricket and its lawn-tennis nets and preserve the love of exercise

physiques, which is the strength of their race, the Americans brought, to use in
slaves, improved whips and patent handcuffs, and immediately took care of
propagate lynching. In the various cases of lynchings that we have
news, there is always an American instigator and co-participant. These cases
They have even been rare and limited to the area of São Paulo where there are Americans.

The example is, however, extremely disastrous, the contagion is rapid, all the more so as
impunity is certain.
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102 Eduardo Prado

The American spirit is a spirit of violence; The Latin spirit, transmitted to

Brazilians, more or less distorted through the centuries and the different amalgams
of Iberianism, is a legal spirit that goes, it is true, to the pulchritude of baccalaureate,
but always maintains a certain respect for human life and freedom. The village
scoundrel is, without a doubt, an inferior entity, but, in any case, he is superior as a
social unit to the henchman and the boss. The period of clearing the land, cutting
down the forests, establishing the first cultures, is, in the interior and in new locations,
the age of the henchman; the clerk, the prosecutor, the judge, who comes later,
expel and eliminate the henchman. It is a law that replaces violence. The American
spirit infused in the population is more favorable to the henchman than to the locals; The

It is the foreigner, whose prestige is always great, it is the man with blond hair and
blue eyes always accepted by our Negroids, influencing in favor of violence,
ennobling it through his arrogance. The American, mixed with the lower strata of the
rural population, is not a factor of progress.

He acts on the environment and the environment reacts on him, with a reciprocal
communication of defects that drowns out the qualities of both. One or another
improved hoe that the American brings, some ingenious spring-loaded knife, that he
introduces into the national tool, are not benefits that compensate for the evils he has
already talked about how much the United
States contributed to the duration of slavery. in Brazil due to the damaging
force of his example, and also for having inspired the fear in the timid that the solution

70 We could cite several episodes of attempted American colonization in Brazil,

which show how great their failure was. Mr. Quintino Bocaiúva wrote a leaflet
in 1867 advising the Chinese people to come to Brazil. Following its publication,
Mr. Bocaiúva received a commission from the imperial government to seek out
these American settlers in the United States. The commission resulted in a
pure loss; Mr. Bocaiúva returned bringing bands of rioters and murderers who
gave the Rio police a lot to do. See the newspapers of the time.
In the report by Mr. Saldanha Marinho, president of São Paulo (1868), we
read: “Having more than one hundred American families settled in lands that
are close to the S. Lourenço river, municipality of Iguape, and intending to
opening of a road that connects this colony to the city of Santos, the current
provincial budget law authorized the government to assist in the opening of
this communication route with the amount of five contos de réis. This amount
was handed over, by order of my predecessor, to North American Colonel
Bowen. It is unknown which job had that amount.”
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The American Illusion 103

of the problem in Brazil was the same tragedy in North America.

We must not, however, forget that the Americans contributed greatly
for African trafficking in Brazil. President Taylor, in his message
of December 4, 1849, said: “It cannot be denied that this trafficking is
made by ships built in the United States owned by Americans and manned and
commanded by Americans.” And this doesn't owe us
cause greater admiration than it causes us to read, in the presidential message of
1856, that “it is undoubted that African trafficking finds itself in
United States many and powerful supporters.” Among the many
evidence of the large part that Americans in Brazil took in trafficking,
we will highlight the sworn testimony of captain WE Anderson,
American, statement given at the American legation in Rio de Janeiro on June 11,
1851. Captain Anderson says that, in 1843,
made the knowledge of Joshua M. Clapp, an American citizen, that “before
and after that time he was engaged on a large scale in the purchase and shipping of
American ships for trafficking.” Anderson also refers to another
American, Franck Smith, who was also a slave trader. The American minister, in
his order sending this statement, complains a lot about
Clapp and Smith as large slavers who, says the minister, “dishonor the flag of the
United States”. Anderson's testimony reveals
all the tricks of the Americans from Rio on the coast of Africa, their cruelties and
their great profits.71
This in terms of the popular mass is what we have observed in the South of
Brazil, where, in isolated points, there were once small centers of
American colonists. In the North of Brazil, we believe that there is no America
except as traders on the coast, in addition to the classic dentist, and perhaps the
occasional stray doctor. In the backlands of the North, we believe
that the American is known only in the nomadic form of purchasing goat hides on
behalf of traders on the coast. The Clapps and
Smith, slavers from another time, vary in profession, but retain
the same instincts.
In the intellectual order, the benefits of North America in
in relation to Brazil are nothing special. Brazil has not benefited

71 This curious document is found in the US Senate Docs., Congress 32, session I,
1851–1852, vol. 9, doc. nº 73, p. 5.
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104 Eduardo Prado

more than other nations in the world, of American inventions. He has

They were German, French, English and Danish travelers who have written the best
books about Brazil and studied our nature the best.

pray. If we except Hart, an American, whose monographs are revealing

of a very remarkable depth of observation, if we except Orvilie
Derby, whose works are of the highest value and whose services to science
Brazilian writers have been and will continue to be invaluable, where are the
American writers who have taken a serious look at our country? You
The teachers presented here have been hopelessly mediocrity, they have
done nothing, they have created nothing. And we could fill two
pages with the names of Europeans who through books, through study, through
observation and teaching, have worked on scientific recognition
of our riches and raised our intellectual level.
And of the American travelers who have written about Brazil,
which ones have been nice to our country? If not all, the vast majority of them
speak of us with unfair disfavor. If Europeans of the stature of
Martius, Auguste Saint-Hilaire, Sir Richard Burton, Bates, Elisée Ré-clus and
many others are friendly to us, Americans express themselves
even with contempt towards us. In a travel narrative, which is
an official American document, that is, the report of the American exploring
expedition in 1838–1842,72 we are vilified in such a way that
an American magazine harshly censored the Washington government
for having consented, in a national publication, to such rude and
casualties against a foreign country.73
And what will we say about the studies that Brazilians have done in
U.S? With a few exceptions, it can be said that graduates in the United States
are, in the Brazilian competition, those who know the least and have the least
preparation. They are incapable engineers,
doctors who, sometimes, do not even dare to challenge the sufficiency and
many other doctors in fancy articles such as agriculture, architecture, etc., and
who lack the rudiments of any and all general instruction.
It is true that, in certain Brazilian families, they are sent to the States

72 Narrative of the US Explorin Expedition during the years 1838–1842, by Charles Wil-
kes, USN
73 North-American Review, vol. 61, p. 57.
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The American Illusion 105

United are the incapable, those who failed in schools in Brazil, in short, the
same boys who, in the past, went to become priests or soldiers.
Be that as it may, the truth is that the US travellers, although they return a
little disheveled, generally do not bring to the competition of Brazilian
activities anything other than their disturbing, or at least useless and great
incompetence. , aggravated by presumption. This comes from the fact that,
in the United States, there are universities for all intelligences, just as there
are hotels for all budgets. There are also gradations in diplomas.
There is something for all abilities and all prices. And this youth judges American things,
compares the United States with Brazil, doesn't see our qualities, doesn't know the
antecedents of our history, the deeds of our greatest, and that's why they want to throw
everything into contempt, breaking with the past, and, if they could, they would transform
Brazilian society into a simian imitation of the United States, which they consider the first
country in the world, because there is a lot of electricity and good water closets there. Not

having the consideration that the Saxon race gives the harmony of its development, these
poor Portuguese-Indian-Negroids of ours are completely unbalanced, in the midst of the
American fever.

And the disturbing action of North American nervousness in

Latino organizations is very real. We have known many very curious
individual cases. Once we entered New York from Panama, and the
passengers on the awning contemplated the large and lively spectacle of that
immense port. We could already hear the noise of the porters and workers
on the landing bridges. In the shipyards, iron was being hammered like hell;
On the steamer there was a noisy movement of baggage taken from the hold,
pulled by the cranes.
Next to me was an old man, I don't know if he was from Nicaragua,
Guatemala or Honduras, but certainly from one of those illustrious countries
that, more civilized than Brazil at the time, already enjoyed the benefits of the
republican form. The old man contemplated the three great cities of New York
in front, Brooklyn on the right and Jersey on the left, which spread gray and
smoky before us. The old man, a crossbreed perhaps of Aztec and Spanish
conquistador, looked vaguely with atavistic instincts of prey and prey:
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106 Eduardo Prado

Who knows? He exclaimed, who knows, maybe one day we,

those from Nicaragua, will take over New York?! – Hundreds of steamships,
big, small, slow as elephants or fast as deer, crossed around us, chiming
their bronze bells and uttering their sharp whistles and hoarse, long notes
in the air. of your howls
of steam. – No one responded to the old man’s interrogative prophecy, and
The latter, smiling sadly, said: “With just their whistling, these people
would drive us crazy.” (Solo con los pitos would turn us crazy.) We don't want
say that the whistles of American machines drive Brazilians in the United
States crazy; What is certain, however, is that we did not find
In the life of the Brazilian nationality there is no luminous trace of an
American disciple. Not even, on this side, do we have anything that
thank the North American republic.
V

We must conclude from everything we have written:

That there is no reason for Brazil to want to imitate the United States,
because we would go out of our way, and, mainly, because the sad results
of our imitation are already patent and regrettable before our eyes;
That the intended ties that are said to exist between Brazil and
the American republic are fictitious, as we do not have that country
affinities of no real and lasting nature;
May the history of United States international policy
does not show, on the part of that country, any benevolence towards us
or to any Latin American republic;
That every time Brazil has been in contact with
the United States has had many other occasions to convince itself of
that American friendship (a unilateral friendship that, in fact, only we
proclaim) is null when it is not self-serving;
That the moral influence of that country, on ours, has been
pernicious.
***

If the long series of facts we have presented, if the reasons

what we expended were not enough to call the spirits to the truth,
more rebellious, it would be enough to quote the opinion of the greatest of Americans,
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The American Illusion 107

to dispel the pretense of affection and the naive sentimentality that they
want to impose on us about the United States.
No! Any attempt to, in exchange for any service, place the
free and autonomous homeland in any kind of subjection to the foreigner
is an act of ineptitude and is a crime.
George Washington, in his farewell message, true and
sublime testament, wrote the following words that American veneration
has preserved through the generations:
“... YOU MUST ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THAT IT IS CRAZY
TO EXPECT ONE NATION TO DISINTERESTED FAVORS
FROM ANOTHER, AND THAT EVERYTHING A NATION
RECEIVES AS A FAVOR IT WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR LATER
WITH A PART OF ITS INDEPENDENCE... THERE CAN BE NO
GREATER MISTAKE THAN WHAT TO EXPECT REAL FAVORS FROM A
NATION TO ANOTHER...”74

May Washington's advice not only serve his compatriots...

Brazilians must accept the lesson, and, whatever the fatalities of the
moment, they must know how to repel the foreigner who will only be
able to demean the country that accepts his services.

........................................

In the corner of Brazilian soil from where we write these lines,

the months of September and October of this year 189375 did not differ in
any way from the other years. These weeks are the weeks for the first carp
in the fields and the planting of corn. How much unconscious and practical
philosophy, how much innate wisdom in these people! And how much we
felt that civilization destroyed the serenity of these people in our souls!
The voice of cold and implacable experience cries out loud
in our spirit and, pessimistically, it tells us: The Iberian colonization of
America was a failure, it was a disgrace for the civilization of our planet. No

74 … constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested
favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for
whatever it may accept under that character. There can be no greater error
than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.
75 The first months of the naval revolt of 1893–1894.
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108 Eduardo Prado

The groupings in which groups of mixed-race populations, originating from all

human inferiorities, forcefully want to pretend to be peoples become nations...
The artificial amalgam called Brazil is undone, despite two or three generations
having come to live and die in the illusion of artifice, which will now end.

We see, however, the immense block of ferruginous rock; now

decomposed, and forming a mountain of purple earth, as if soaked in the blood,
still fresh, from recent hecatombs. That land already existed thousands of years
ago, before everything that exists and makes noise existed today. It existed
before the time when Caesar's army was against Pompey's armada. It will still
exist, when, of other ambitious ones, not even the less illustrious names remain.

November 7, 1893.
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.........................

Appendix

ON December 4, 1893, this book was released

sold in bookstores in São Paulo. After all the finished copies were sold
that day, the chief of police went to the bookstores and banned the sale.
The following morning, the printing press where the book was printed
woke up surrounded by a force of cavalry, and a police chief accompanied
by a donkey pulling a cart appeared at the door of the workshop. The
deputy entered the workshop and ordered all the copies of the book to be
collected, ordering them to be piled on the cart. The donkey and the
police chief took the book to the police office. On the same day, Platéa
published the following:
An interview with Dr. Eduardo Prado. – As our readers know, Dr. Eduardo
Prado's new book, The American Illusion, has appeared on sale in the last issue of this
page.

All copies offered for sale on Saturday were sold.

We learned that day that the police banned the sale of the book.
Our colleague Gomes Cardim, for reading the prohibited
work on a tram, was taken to the police. The same happened to a
gentleman, from whose hands, in Paulicéia, a copy was snatched by
a secret policeman.
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110 Eduardo Prado

A writer of this sheet went to look for the author to hear his
impressions regarding the success of his book and his opinion on the ban.

Dr. Eduardo Prado received our companion very graciously, and

did not seem to attach much importance to either the book or its ban.

Here is, more or less, what he told us: –

When I was a child, there was a shoemaker on Rua de São Bento
who had a sign with a painted lion that, in anger, put its teeth in a boot.
Underneath it read: Tearing is possible – unsewing is not.
Give me permission to plagiarize the shoemaker and to say: You can prohibit
it, answer no.
As for the honorable chief of police, I think that His Excellency insulted me
by judging my prose capable of defeating institutions as strong and consolidated as
republican institutions in Brazil.

Furthermore, Your Excellency can be said to have banned the book, just
on a hunch. The volume came out at four o'clock and, at five o'clock, it was banned
before the authorities had time to read it.
I confess that the publication was an act of naivety on my part. I
don't want to say that I trusted, and that's why I say that I relied on art. 1st of
Decree No. 1,565 of October 13, regulating the state of siege. The Vice
President of the Republic and your Minister of the Interior said in this article:
“Art. 1st The press is free to express thoughts,

the propaganda of any political doctrine is guaranteed.”

And with their signatures they pledged their word to this guarantee. I write
a book supporting the political doctrine that Brazil must be free and autonomous before
foreigners, and I adopt Montesquieu's aphorism, that republics must have virtue as their
foundation.

The government is against these opinions, and is within its rights.

However, order the book to be banned! Where is the government's word,
solemnly given in a decree, which says it guarantees the propaganda of any
political doctrine?
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The American Illusion 111

Popular wisdom says: A king's word does not go back.

– The people will have to invent another proverb for the word of the
Vice President of the Republic.
***

The author received a large number of

of letters asking him for a copy of the banned book. These letters came
signed by the most distinguished names in the country, and to all
these correspondents I apologize for having been unable to access their
requests. I will only mention, to prove that Brazilian republicans,
some are not enemies of freedom of thought, a letter
by Mr. Saldanha Marinho, in which this patriarch of republicanism, certainly
nostalgic for the liberal practices of the monarchy and rebellious to today's
liberticidal ideas, protested against the prohibition of this work. To everyone and
each one deserves thanks from the author.

NB This work, as written for the first edition, was written without the
author to have his books at hand, nor his notes. In the current edition all the facts mentioned
are justified by citing official sources or authors who report the same
facts.
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.............................
Onomastic Index

A BRIGHT, John – 96
BROCON, G. – 38
ABAETÉ (viscount of) – 67
BUCHANAN – 38, 40, 43
ADAMS – 56, 72
ALBERDI – 51 BULWER, Henry Lytton (sir) – 43

ALCMENE – 91 BURKE, William – 15

ALEXANDER II – 32 BURTON, Richard – 104

ALTAMIRANO – 35
W
ANDERSON, WE – 103
HOST – 91 CAHTEUBRIANT – 15
CALHOUN – 16
ARINOS (baron) – 28
ARON – 72 CALVO, Carlos – 16, 42, 60

ARTHUR – 57, 58 CAMPOS, Carneiro de – 29

CANNING – 16
B CARNEGIE, Andrew – 82, 83

BAEDEKER – 73 CARVALHO BORGES – 66

BALMACEDA – 59 CASTELLON – 39
CATYLINE – 54
BANCROFT, HH – 29, 30, 31, 71, 72
BATES – 104 CAXIAS (marquis of) – 56, 62, 64

BELMONT, Perry – 58 CECIL (lord) – 96

BISMARCK – 71, 73, 81 CAESAR – 72, 108

CHAMARRO – 39
BLAINE, James C. – 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58,
59, 85, 86, 87 CINCINATO – 54

BLAINE, Walker – 57 CLAPP, Joshua M. – 103

BLISS – 62 CLARENDON (lord) – 43
BLUNTSCHILI – 27 CLAY, Henry – 18, 21, 34, 53
BOCAIÚVA, Quintino – 37, 102 COBDEN – 96

BOISGILBERT, Edmund – 84 COMTE, Augusto – 12, 32

BONAPARTE, Napoleon – 55 CORRAL – 40
BORUP – 73 COUTO, José Ferrer de – 45
BOWEN – 102 CRIQUE – MOUILÉE (Duke of) – 92
BRANCH, John – 21 CRISTIE – 96
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114 Eduardo Prado

D GUITEAU – 57

DAVIS – 40, 62 GUYOT, Yves – 78

OF ANGELIS – 68
H
DÍAZ, Porfirio – 32, 34, 35, 38, 69 DOLLINGER,

JI von – 79, 80 DREYFUS – 57 HAMILTON – 18, 53

HARRISON – 59, 83, 85
DUNCAN, Silas – 24 HART – 104
HAYDN'S – 41
AND
HAYES – 56

EGAN, Patrick – 59 HAYNE – 18

EUDEL, Paul – 93 HERCULES – 91

EVARTS – 35 HERTSLET – 43
HOLST, von – 16, 18, 34, 41
F HOOK, Sandy – 69
FABRICIO – 54 HOPKINS – 59, 60
HORN – 36
FISHER, Geo P. – 67
FRANCE – 12 HURLBUTH – 53, 56

FREDERICO CARLOS – 71
I
FRITZ, Samuel – 13
IPHICLES – 91
G IRELAND – 81
ISABEL – 32
GAINES – 30
GARFIELD – 53, 55, 56, 57, 58
J
GENGISKAN – 72
GHUYSEN, Frelin – 58 JACKSON – 30, 72

GIBBONS (cardinal) – 81 JAY – 20, 31

GLADSTONE (os) – 55 YOUNG – 91

GOMES, Cardim – 109 JUÁREZ – 32

GONZÁLEZ – 34, 35, 38

K
GRANT – 35, 36, 37, 38, 45, 69, 71, 73
GRENOUGH – 91 KILPATRIK – 56
GRÉVY – 57 KIRKLAND – 62
GROTIO – 28 KOSCIUSKO – 72
GROLUND – 32
L
WILLIAM II (emperor) – 56, 71,
74, 81 LAFAYETTE – 72, 73
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The American Illusion 115

LASKER – 73 P

LESSEPS – 43, 46 BROWN – 50

LINCOLN – 32, 57, 72 PAULDING – 41

LIVERMORE – 31 PEDRO II (dom) – 64, 92
LOPÉZ, F. Solano – 12, 25, 29, 45, 46, 56, 61, PENEDO (baron of) – 68
63 LOUIS PERICLES – 32
XVI – 15 PINKERTONS (os) – 82, 83
LYNCH – 61, 62 PINTO GUEDES – 22
PLINY – 100
M
POE, Edgard – 36
POMPEY – 108
MAC-MAHON, T – 25, 56, 62, 63
MADISON – 72 PRADO, Eduardo – 50, 109, 110
PRADT, Abbé de – 15
MAGALHÃES TAQUES – 28
MAIA – 20
Q
MANNING – 81
MARCOLETA – 39 QUEIROZ, Eça de – 51

MARCY – 39
R
MARIE ANTONIETA – 15
MARTIUS – 104 RAGUET – 20, 21, 22, 66
RAMSEY – 62
MASON – 29
RAYMONDI – 48
MASTERMAN – 62
RÉCLUS, Elisée – 43, 104
MAURY – 68, 69
RIVAS, Patrício – 40
MAYORGA – 39
ROCHAMBEAU – 72, 73
MENDONÇA, Salvador de – 88, 93, 94 ROSES – 23
MERVINE – 40
ROTHESAY (lord) – 20
MESSALA, Valerio – 100 ROUSSIN – 22
MIGUEL (dom) – 23 RUSH – 16
MILLER, Joaquim – 41
MONROE – 16, 17, 19, 20, 24, 25 s

MONTESQUIEU – 54, 110

SAGASTUME, Varquez – 29
MORA – 40
SAINT-HILAIRE, Auguste – 104
MURRAY, William P. – 61 SALDANHA MARINHO – 102, 111
SALISBURY (lord) – 96
N
SALISBURY (os) – 55
NAPOLEON III – 71 SALMON – 41
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116 Eduardo Prado

SALOMON – 92 TUDOR, William – 20, 21, 22, 23, 66
SAMPER, JM – 16 TURGOT – 15
SERGEANT – 73
V
SAY, Léon – 78
SELDEN – 28 VALENTINAS, Lomas – 56
SEWARD – 27, 53 VELÁSQUEZ – 100
SHERIDAN – 71 VERSEN, Von – 56
SLIDDEL – 29 VICTOR HUGO – 71, 73
SMITH, Franck – 103 VIEIRA, João Pedro Dias – 51
SPARTACUS – 72 VIGIL – 40
SPENCER , Herbert – 101 VOSS – 30
STENDHAL – 80

STUART, Charles – 20 W

SYLLABUS – 54
WALKER, William – 38, 39, 40, 42, 67
WARRE, Margaret – 80
T
WASHBURN – 25, 56, 61, 62, 64
TALMAGE, David M. – 60 WASHINGTON, George – 15, 107
TATTNAL – 74 WEBB – 65, 66
TEJADA, Sebastian Lerdo de (don) – 32 WEBSTER, Daniel – 24, 53
THOMAS JEFFERSON – 16, 20, 61, 72 WELLINGTON (Duke of) – 92
TIBÉRE – 72 WELLINGTON (lord) – 15, 16
TILDEN – 56 WELLS – 65

TOCORNAL, Manuel A. (dom) – 51 TOD, WHEELER – 39

David – 66, 67 WHITNEY, James A. – 75

TRESCOTT – 57, 58 WILSON – 57
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The American Illusion, by Eduardo Prado, was

composed in Garamond, size 12/14, and printed on 85g/m2 sand laid paper, in the workshops
of the SEEP (Special Secretariat for Publishing and Publications), of the Federal Senate, in Brasília.
It was just printed in March 2010, in accordance with the editorial program and graphic
design of the Editorial Council of the Federal Senate.
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Eduardo Paulo da Silva Prado (São Paulo, February 27,

1860 — São Paulo, August 30, 1901) was a Brazilian journalist
and writer, founding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

He graduated in Law from the traditional Faculty of São Paulo.

He worked as an attaché in the Brazilian delegation in

London, during the Empire. He visited several European countries
and also Egypt. From these trips, he would make meticulous
observations in the book ia-gens, published in 1886.

With the proclamation of the Republic in Brazil, on

November 15, 1889, he began to combat, in books and
newspapers, the acts carried out by the republican government.
Eça de Queirós, director of Revista de Portugal, opened the
pages of the publication to him, for a series of articles, edited
under the pseudonym Frederico de S. and which would be
collected in a book with the title Fastos da dictatoração militar no
Brasil.
He also collaborated in “A Década Republicana”, a work in which
the most prominent Brazilian monarchists collaborated.

He is also one of the founders of the Brazilian Historical

and Geographical Institute, as corresponding partner.