By Manuel González Prada,

Hours of Struggle

I

     Liberalism is abused in such a way; it serves to disguise such vulgar contraband, that people will eventually make some restrictions when hearing themselves called liberals. If Liberalism does not exclude the revolutionary who respects good law, if it admits into its breast Kropotkin, Reclus, Pi and Margall, Faure, let us treat each other as liberals.¹ If it only accepts reformers in the parliamentary orbit, guardians of the Church and State, defenders of the archaic social and economic regime, let us reject the name. Let us reject that bourgeois liberalism, that beautified, fragrant and even chic liberalism, where there is space for William II and Rothschild, Menelik and Leo XIII, the King of England, and the Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

     According to Spencer, “most of those who now call themselves liberals are just conservatives of a new kind.” The English sociologist is referencing the members of parliament from his nation who reveal their conservatism by overwhelming the individual with laws and contributions to increase the power and wealth of the State. If someone wished to inquire how many liberals of Catholic nations reveal their conservative spirit, they would find the touchstone of religious affairs. Those who, based on tolerance, erect intangible dividing barriers between politics and religion; who, claiming freedom of education, leave public education in the hands of congregations; who, based on the “premature and risky nature of certain reforms,” do not even dare to consider the possible secularization of the law, are liberals of a suspicious hue. These liberals aim toward the Curia Romana. They are liberals with ecumenical visions, liberals who might be ordained in sacris if with the sacred orders they could acquire a ministry, deputation, committee, plenipotentiary, and even a good curate. Men of that kind dislike Liberalism and contribute to extending the ranks of conservatives.

     If it is understood that many philosophers or freethinkers distance themselves from political conflict and live consecrated to enforce a serene propaganda in the region of theories, it is inconceivable that a political and militant reformer would want to evolve or revolutionize without hurting the interests of the Catholic Religion, forgetting that all liberty won by the individual implies a slice of power taken from the Church. French republicans from 1870 incurred in a similar forgetfulness; but today, after many years of vacillations and palliatives, they are convinced of their mistake and have opened a formidable campaign against Catholicism. Spanish republicans, battle-hardened by the pitiful trial of 1873, do not separate the divine from the human and, with Salmeron as their head, uphold the belief that to rip the monarchy from its roots they must remove the moral influence of Rome from the people. A notable Colombian publicist, J. M. Rojas Garrido, wrote a long and prudent essay to demonstrate the following, “He who is Catholic cannot be a republican.”² Based on the rationalization of Rojas Garrido, it would not be hard for the man of less cunning to deduce that a liberal cannot be Catholic, neither can a Catholic be a liberal.

     Those who segregate social or religious issues and exclusively devote themselves to political business transmit a very sad idea of their Liberalism, imagining that by merely changing presidents, overthrowing ministries, or renewing legislative chambers, people will regenerate. These segregationists are plentiful in South America, many follow a liberty sprinkled with holy water and wish to win over the Earth without renouncing the hope of reaching heaven. Reconciling the irreconcilable, they would sing the Syllabus to the rhythm of “La Marseillaise” or apply a Gregorian chant to The Declaration of the Rights of Man. These true opportunists (or moderates as they call themselves) walk a fine line between the progressive and the degenerate, following a very reprehensible but efficient tactic. If they wish to lean towards the conservatives, they reject violent transformations and advocate conciliatory means; if approximation to the radicals suits them, they condemn accommodations or prudent measures proclaiming themselves revolutionaries. Benjamin Constant would call them bats, once they hide their wings they are sometimes mistaken for a mouse, other times, they are equal to the bird in flight.

     “Let us distinguish,” the sophists say when they want to muddle up discussions; “let us not separate,” must repeat the men who wish to shed light on obscure controversies. And we cannot separate the social from the religious nor the political from the moral. As has been very well said (and we will rejoice in writing it often), “every political question is resolved with a moral question and every moral question involves a religious question.” Individuals are only halfway emancipated upon liberating themselves from praetorians, subjecting themselves to the priest or upon leaving the sacristy to get locked up in the barracks. A slave does not become free simply by converting to atheism, neither does a fanatic, politically free, stop living enslaved to Rome. Emancipatory action must simultaneously come in both religious and political orders. True liberals throw as many blows at the walls of the Church as they do at the foundation of the State.

     One of the most enlightened minds of contemporary France —Georges Clémenceau— is of the opinion that the French Revolution is not to be accepted nor rejected in fragments or in pieces, rather comprehensively, that is, en bloque. Applying and extending Clémenceau’s idea, one must attack all iniquities and errors as a whole.

     State, Church, and Capital teach how to fight because when one of the three is seriously threatened by popular attacks, the other two come to its rescue to build a defensive block. Human and divine powers hold such narrow solidarity that if one of them were to yield, all the rest run the risk of suffering the same fate. It is unsurprising that the soulless State and Godless Capital fight for the spiritual and deistic Church. By defending it, they defend themselves. A political revolution will not always be followed by a social upheaval nor a religious schism, but with every profound religious renovation comes a political and social transformation. Emancipation does not uproot Protestantism in the United States nor Catholicism in South America, but Christianity changes the social and political life of the West. The Reform first leads to the communist uprising of the German farmers, then to the republican revolution of the English people.

     There are not two distinct kingdoms —the kingdom of God and the one of men— there is only the kingdom of justice.³ For the old theory of render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's, today we have the principle of to man what is of man. And what is of man? The Earth. To what is he entitled to? To happiness. Every human being has the right not only to water and bread, air and shelter, but also to love, comfort, joy, knowledge, in short, to the most intense and extensive life. The goods that were monopolized by one class should be enjoyed by the whole species. The Planet belongs to Humanity, everything belongs to everyone. Based on divine justice, many are those called, and few the chosen; based on human justice, everyone is called, everyone is chosen.

II

     The preceding ramblings are timely when talking about our liberals, especially, about those who gather today under this name.

     The Liberal Party, founded in 1900, seems to be the composition and reorganization of the Liberal Democratic Party that in 1897 was created, their agenda states, for the purpose of “respectfully evolving within the sphere of the constitution and law.”⁴ The respectful evolutionist did not live in a bed of roses despite the fact that he could depend on some deputies, possessed enough money to do good work, and had what was most desired by nascent groups, a newspaper in his own workshop. The newspaper, called the Republic, lasted some months, days, or hours, no one is sure. He died of cerebral anemia.

     The Liberal Party, although it encompasses some virgin elements, proceeds from an incision in the Democratic one. Wounded by their ambitions and scorned by the government’s unbridled protection of Romaña’s candidacy, some democrats temporarily distance themselves from their old fetish. Unable to title themselves new democrats and not wanting to call themselves democratic liberals again, they baptize themselves as simply Liberals. They would have called themselves Constitutionalists and Civilists if groups with these names had not existed in the country.

     But if the democratic liberals of 1897 were born with certain moderation and humility, the simple Liberals of 1900 come with the air of intimidators and arrogant urges, aggravating their predecessors, and presuming to come and declare the “let there be light” of Peruvian liberalism. Before them, the chaos of utopians and dreamers; from them, the organized creation of the practical and positivists.⁵ They come from sociological innovators and the police or moral coppers. They prepare a succulent and fragrant agenda, more radical and daring in the financial order than the one formulated by more advanced groups, rambling through streets and squares, boasting of having organized the true liberal party and proclaiming to be the voice of the redeeming word. ”The so-called political parties among us (it is said in a notice from the Organizing Committee) are not and have never been, in truth, anything more than bands of heterogeneous and egotistical kin who raised their banner of simple names and not ideas, and sought the elevation of the people, never of healthy doctrines.” Not even radicals are spared from the blow.

     Given the conditions of the country and the vivacity of the spirit due to the official imposition of a mandatory future, we will not be fooled again by the Liberal Party’s reorganization. As elections approach, or on the eve of some national crisis, groups that stigmatize personalism and talk of regenerating ourselves through honesty, truth and justice emerge. But when it comes to agendas, committees, circulars and praise, such groups degenerate into secret conspiratorial meetings, if not into electoral clubs that will disappear in the great pot of official candidates.

     Yes, we are again caught by the audacity and bellicosity of the blossoming regenerators. Where do we get our Cincinnatus from? On which planet does it rain Catons? It would seem that eleven-thousand virgins have descended in male form to save Peru. However, some young men would remain quiet if we called them to demand their records of service. If they worked, let them show us their results; if they were on the right path, let them show us their tracks; if they battled, let them show us their wounds. After being in degenerate military ranks and contributing to the perpetuation of iniquities and crimes, some come out today to make a show of Liberalism, throwing aspersions on the heads of the whole political world and signing threatening agendas of gruesomeness. Suddenly we will have syndicates of nuns and brothers of the Third Order who conspire to nationalize ecclesiastical property or separate the Church from the State. And there would be no reason to be astonished, since we have liberals who were never liberals, and since we have witnessed such an incredible phenomenon as the transformation of the nickel into gold or the metamorphosis of the goose into peacock. We live in the land of irony: the Liberal Party here is the group that bursts of pure conservatives, as Tierra del Fuego is the country where the inhabitants die of the cold.

     But let us say with the generous souls who know how to forgive the lapses of human weakness because they neither judge themselves implacable nor free from temptation: “to every sin, mercy.” And let us settle old scores with the new catechumens of Liberalism since their conversion seems as sincere and gratuitous as Saint Paul's, since repentance shows signs of not being any less fervent than Saint Jerome and Magdalene.

     The Liberal Party lauds its origin by announcing that it is born of the enthusiasm felt by a group of young university students. We do not generally believe in the spontaneous generation of youth enthusiasm, and it seems to us that if any movement starts in the University, it comes by the action of external forces. Our public men, and those desirous to bear that name, love the young and working class with an intermittent love that becomes more intense, taking on feverish temperatures as elections approach. From senate and deputy candidates to candidates for municipal office, they all look for the brains of thinking youth and the arms of working citizens. After access to love, what do youth and workers gain? The black heads should distrust the white heads, the blouse should fear the frock coat. The young with the young, the worker with the worker.

     Happily, the arm that works and the brain that thinks do not answer the call, and the Liberals operate within family or petit comité. If in the provinces there is no lack of innocents that take the agenda seriously and imagine themselves assisting the gestations of a great party, something different happens in the Capital, where one sees with the necessary perspective that people’s stature is well measured, and the reality of the facts is tangible. It is understood in Lima that the name Liberal Party is simply a flag that covers the burden, that Liberals, at odds with the traditional leader by accident, are insipient democrats.

     Because certain liberals who were democrats in their youth could be like men that for many years cohabitated with an old non sancta: they usually return to their ugly sin, even though they are united in matrimony to a beautiful and young woman.

III

SIX YEARS LATER

     The Liberal Party lived consecrated to a march in zig zag, ostensibly approaching the Radicals, but sneakily approaching the Democrats. It is enough to review The Evolution, The Liberal Alliance and The Liberal, or read some of the documents issued by the Committee, to make sure that all the work of the Liberals was reduced to a series of stratagems, manipulations, or evolutions, with a tendency to conceal connivances with the man of Saint John and the Dreyfus contract.

     And we say The Liberal Party lived because by tossing away the mask and publicly allying with the Democrats, it disappeared as an entity, being absorbed and annulled. It was a creek that turned away from a muddy river and immediately became confused with it again. On June 26, 1904, we witnessed the street show of the reconciled friends. We remembered the Student of Salamanca: like Don Félix of Montemar, the Liberals believed themselves alive and were attending their own funeral.⁶ They did not lack even the liturgical chants, since their co-manifesters —the members of the Catholic Union— were there to chant de profundis.

     They probably remember Don Rodrigo de Vivar today and are inspired by repeating: if El Cid won battles after death, why won’t we win them? But they do not think themselves dead, instead believe to be very much alive, imagining that their alliance is a lawful and usual evolution in the field of political maneuvers: the Cincinnati and the Catons rise as opportunists, and like the first Loyola, they tacitly confess that the end justifies the means. No one forces us to declare ourselves liberals or conservatives, nor monarchists or republicans (we can remain neutral, believing that fermenting a political consciousness does not seem as necessary as dressing up and eating), but when we adhere to a group and we call ourselves persons of doctrine, we impose on ourselves the obligation to act consistently and we grant other people the right to demand loyalty and good faith from us. The liberal who joins the clericals is entangled in erroneous management, in a dangerous game, in a vulgar and cheap Machiavellianism. Clémenceau, already quoted by us, says: “Unity of action presupposes unity of thought”; and the great poet of sorrows states: “When men of the public are not a principle, they are nothing.”

     What principle and unity of thought do we find in the fusion of Liberals and Democrats? Principle, none; in thought, the conquest of command. Naturally, both sides deny that the parties should be intransigent and irreconcilable in their hours of formation and struggle as in the period of triumph and exercise of power. An absurd denial, because those who want to implement reform need to govern with the men who enunciate them or embody them. The budding president and the revolutionary in action, who promise to govern with the heterogeneous collaboration of friends and enemies, demanding nothing more than honesty, are liars or swindlers. Since unity of convictions is never realized, on the contrary, in the most civilized nations there is greater divergence in how to solve social and political problems, no leader rises to power with the unanimous will of his citizens. All ascend with the vote of a majority, if not by the imposition of their predecessors, as has happened and still happens in Peru. To say that the head of a state has to govern with the good elements of the parties is to proclaim the reign of defectors and renegades. The good element of a party ceases to be good when it serves the interests of the opposing party. The man of conviction does not yield or compromise: he breaks but does not bend. Thus, we do not believe in the good faith of Catholics affiliated with the Liberal Party, as we do not recognize the sincerity of Liberals enrolled in the ranks of the Democratic Party.

     It is not admirable when we think on the fact that two words —hybridity and confusion— can summarize the history of our political parties. Instead of establishing organisms with their own functions or at least becoming solids that at some points grace the surface, they were something like liquids of different colors in cups with communicating pipes. The liquids gradually took on the same color and acquired the same level. Today, Liberals and Democrats offer the same political hue and can be found on the same moral ground.

     No one could pinpoint the number of prevarications that enter the last conviction of a Peruvian politician. Many of our great men carry in their brains more rogue than the mantle of Harlequin, more patches and stains than the cassock of Dómine Cabra. They go up to the evangelical mountain to hear the sermon and to see which way the provisions come from. Given the raw material, we can explain the organization, disorganization, and reorganization of national parties. To organize a new one, the same simple recipe is used: you take a few scattered from Cacerism, Civilism, the Democratic Party and the National Union, and you convene, stir, and baptize them with some Byzantine name. In the Art of Cooking, this kind of manipulation is included in the chapter “Ways to make use of leftovers.” Therefore, we should not be surprised if in Peru there is a Democratic Party without democrats and a Liberal Party without liberals, as in certain restaurants in Paris there is cod soup without cod and milk rice without milk and rice.

     In the end, the Liberal Party has died; and we are saddened we cannot give it a panegyric in following the custom of burying cadavers between a chorus of praises and a shower of flowers. Its death has led to something good and something evil: it is good an entity that under pretense of Liberalism tempted an act of reaction and regression finally vanishes, it is bad because it leaves with the people a memory of political mystification, making them distrust a word that greatly resonated within the heart of many. People will be wary of hearing themselves called liberals for many years to come.

     Every dead body wants an epitaph, and the Liberal Party deserves the following one:

     Here lies a party that did not follow the straight line nor keep much gray substance in the brain.

1908