Some writers have deplored the separate autonomy or absence of "unification" of the Latin American States. They would like to see a "United States of South America" or a Federation of Central America.
But this largely arises, perhaps, from the peculiar ideas of hegemony which the last and present century brought to being. We were to have vast empires. Weaker nations were to be controlled by stronger. There were to be great commercial units. Is this advisable, or will it be possible? The condition of the world after the Great War would seem to indicate the negative. It would seem to show that small nations have their own destiny to work out.
As regards Spanish America, its different States are, in general, better in being separated. Both geographical conditions and those of temperament support this. These States, or their capitals and centres of population, are generally divided by Nature from each other, often by tremendous barriers of mountain chains, rivers or impenetrable forests. How could a single or centralized government be set up to control either their home or foreign policy? Where would it be, and how would it operate?
It might be said that similar topographical conditions obtain in the case of the United States, Canada, or Australia, which prefer to live as federations. But the natural geographical barriers of Spanish America are, in reality, much more formidable. Again, the present multiplicity of states, each with its complement of president and state officers, gives opportunity for more intensive political training, more pleasing social life and a greater general opportunity for partaking in government by the people than does a centralized government.
Let us thus refrain from judging too hastily or too harshly the Spanish American people. Their temperament, their environment is different from ours. They have not chosen or been able to follow the more prosaic, more useful life of England or North America in the commercial age. They had not our inventive, our mechanical gifts. Under their warmer skies idealism played a stronger part. They could not agree to live together unless idealistic conditions were to dominate them--conditions which were impossible of course, and they never were able to oil the wheels of life with that spirit of compromise which providence--if it be a providential gift--gave to us. Moreover, they have a dreadful history of oppression behind them, and the dead-weight of a great Indian bulk of folk who were ruined by the arrogant Spaniards, who despised them without a cause.