This article foreshadows in very plain terms what has for some time been
suspected as to the real designs of Chili towards Peru.
It is, however, possible that it is written more for the purpose of driving
the Peruvian people into the support of the provisional government with
which Chili believes she can settle peace on her own terms. We shall soon
see.
[Inclosure in No. 286.—Cuttings from
Actualidad and translation.]
The comedy follows.
Peru continues presenting to the world the most sorrowful spectacle that
any nation ever presented in the hour of sacrifices and trial, when
passion ought to be suppressed by the realization of great national
calamity and to be concealed like a filthy leper, to give place to the
noble and elevated efforts of those who seek the salvation of the
country, inspiring all for good, for the common safety, and
happiness.
Far from this, acts of disorganized anarchy from day to day give new
confirmation and emphasis in terms which even now cannot be doubted for
a moment that their only hope is for the retirement of the Chilian
forces from Lima and Callao that they may unchain, as a final curse, a
spontaneous social cataclysm, in which there shall be seen to arise from
the lowest depths of society all the bad passions to float on the
surface and to burst forth in a dizzy and devastating career like the
“trompa marina,” which makes whirls on the surface of the ocean.
Let us see what is passing. The government of Garcia Calderon orders the
municipality of Lima to be prosecuted judicially for rebellion.
The ex-dictator, from his oriental mansion of Jauja, is issuing circulars
to the diplomatic corps, accusing it (the provisional government) of
usurping powers which belong exclusively to him as proprietor, as if the
sovereignty of a nation was but merchandise which could be bought or
seized from the country by violence, and which claims to receive a
species of consecration from divine right.
The prefect, Solar, on the other hand, without circumlocution, and not to
lose time in fabricating circulars, declares the government of Calderon
traitors and condemns them to death.
On the other side, Señor Garcia Calderon addresses to Solar a paternal
philippic to attract back to the fold this stray ewe.
Surely we have in this comedy the actors beating each other in fine
style, with or without reason.
Señor Garcia Calderon (strikes) the municipality; Piérola, Garcia
Calderon; the latter hits Solar, and Solar strikes at all the world.
Involuntarily there occurs to our memory that passage of Don Quixote—
“And as the saying runs, the cat went for the rat, the rat for the cord,
the cord for the stick; the muleteer was beating Sancho, Sancho the
girl, and the girl returned the compliment; the landlord beat the girl,
and they were going at it so freely that they really took no time for
rest. The best work came in when the landlord’s candle went out, and as
they were left in the dark the beating went on all around
indiscriminately, and without compassion, so much so that wherever they
dropped their hands nothing was left entire.”
Nothing less is passing among the men who still hold in their hands some
fragments of the extinguished power of the nation.
It appears that with them the lamp of intelligence has been extinguished,
and they give thrusts and counter-thrusts, like the blind, striking
right and left, disconcerting the few feeble elements with which they
might yet strengthen the action of the government, which seeks to
combine all the scattered elements to give them unity under [Page 899] a single hand, and to place them at
the service of the single work worthy of engaging the efforts of the
whole country at this time, the organization of an administration which
shall run no risk of being overwhelmed in the chaos of anarchy, which
would endanger safety of the little which the war has left intact.
This continual conflict between the men who have remained in a situation
to employ in the salvation of their country the few resources saved from
shipwreck, if it shall continue longer, there will remain, no doubt,
that Peru goes through a crisis in which the standard of judgment of
those who still hold the last remain of military power is lost, and the
inspirations of patriotism extinguished, goes on submitting, of its own
accord, to a system of tutelage which is gradually imposed upon them by
the very nature of coming events, and which acts foreshadow, merely, the
rapidity with which the national dissolution of Peruvian personality is
taking place.
All this comes amidst the perplexity produced by the stupefaction from
great calamities; amidst the intoxication of political passions; amidst
diplomatic circulars, judgments, philippics, excommunications, charges
of treason, and fulminating decrees of death.
In the mean time, however, aside from the efforts of Mr. Garcia Calderon,
there is not a great action, not a civic virtue which rises to the
height of the situation in order to mitigate reciprocal hatred, and to
place in a single hand, in the hand guided by common sense, the last
floating plank of the great national shipwreck.
The curtain of the comedy is still raised, and Chili, impassible, quiet,
serene, with folded arms, contemplates from her box the combat of
decrees and circulars, where projectiles are crossing each other like a
real bombardment.
At the most she says to herself, before locking up the insane and non
compotes in the asylum, the sane must name guardians for the
administration of their property.
