The name is absent

Its Culture and Its Ideals 169
fight against tremendous difficulties, which explain of them-
selves our backwardness and our revolutions. I maintain
that, in the second place, in spite of them, there exists in
Spanish America a very high degree of social and intellec-
tual attainment.

The slow economic development and the political unrest
of the early history of Spanish America can be understood
by bearing in mind the historical and geographical factors,
and, especially, by comparing them with those of the his-
tory of the United States. For us, independence was a
sudden change, a tremendous leap forward, because, during
the colonial period, Spain and Spanish America were sub-
jected to a régime of absolute monarchy; the institutions
that represented the liberty of the Middle Ages had become
vitiated.

Our forefathers were not prepared for freedom. The
great institution of the Cabildos itself, which was the organ
of local government in Spain, lost in Spanish America many
of its essential features. The colonial life of the English
colonies in America was quite different. You had had ex-
perience with the institutions of free government; your inde-
pendence arose as the assertion of your rights as citizens of
the British monarchy, and the development of your insti-
tutions, after the establishment of the republic, was a con-
tinuation, enriched by new ideals, of institutions that came
down from the past. Liberty in English America may be
likened to a venerable tree well rooted in tradition.

The system of labor has more to do with training for
freedom than political organization. In the colonial times,
Spain and England cherished the same purpose, that of ex-
ploiting the precious metals, but these metals could only
be come at in Peru and Mexico, and the Spaniards found in
these countries aboriginal races easy to master, whom they

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