When the La Plata Congress at Tucuman took the decisive action
that severed the bond with Spain, it uttered a prophecy for all
Spanish America. To quote its language: "Vast and fertile
regions, climates benign and varied, abundant means of
subsistence, treasures of gold and silver . . . and fine
productions of every sort will attract to our continent
innumerable thousands of immigrants, to whom we shall open a safe
place of refuge and extend a beneficent protection." More hopeful
still were the words of a spokesman for another independent
country: "United, neither the empire of the Assyrians, the Medes
or the Persians, the Macedonian or the Roman Empire, can ever be
compared with this colossal republic."

Very different was the vision of Bolivar. While a refugee in
Jamaica he wrote: "We are a little human species; we possess a
world apart . . . new in almost all the arts and sciences, and
yet old, after a fashion, in the uses of civil society. . . .
Neither Indians nor Europeans, we are a species that lies midway
. . . . Is it conceivable that a people recently freed of its
chains can launch itself into the sphere of liberty without
shattering its wings, like Icarus, and plunging into the abyss?
Such a prodigy is inconceivable, never beheld." Toward the close
of his career he declared: "The majority are mestizos, mulattoes,
Indians, and negroes. An ignorant people is a blunt instrument
for its own destruction. To it liberty means license, patriotism
means disloyalty, and justice means vengeance." "Independence,"
he exclaimed, "is the only good we have achieved, at the cost of
everything else."

Whether the abounding confidence of the prophecy or the anxious