The provinces desired autonomy; the capitals, monopoly and unity; the metropolis was liberal, the Sierra conservative. The political conflict might know a change of names, but this antagonism was universal. The leaders disguised their deep-seated ambitions under a cloak of general ideas; they supported unity or federation, the military or the civil _régime_, Catholicism or radicalism. In Argentina the provinces fought against the capital; in Venezuela the coloured middle class against the oligarchies; in Chili the liberals against the _pelucones_, the proprietors of the soil; in Mexico the federals fought the monarchists; in Ecuador the radicals opposed the conservatives; in Peru the conflict was between the "civilists" and military _caudillos_. In the diversity of these quarrels we see one essential principle: two classes were in conflict--the proprietors of the _latifundia_ and the poverty-stricken people, the Spaniards and the half-breeds, or the oligarchs and generals of a barbarous democracy.
In each republic the soil and the traditions of the country gave a different colour to the universal warfare. In the Argentine the provinces, under viceroys and intendants, enjoyed a partial autonomy; there federalism had remote antecedents. Unity seemed an imposition on the part of Buenos-Ayres, which possessed the treasury and the custom-houses of the nation, and monopolised the national credit and revenue. In Chili, the long, narrow country, with the Cordillera at the back, like a granite wall, naturally evoked a Unitarian republic. The disputes between centralisation and federalism were soon over. { 93} Unity was possible in Peru, a brilliant sub-kingdom, the centre of a long-established and powerful authority. But some aspects of these violent struggles remain obscure. In Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico there was enmity between the coast and the Sierra. Lima and Caracas were capitals near the seaboard; Mexico and Quito were far removed from it. Yet in Peru the struggle was civil and military; in Ecuador, conservative and liberal; and in Mexico, federal and central. Why do we not find the religious struggles, which lasted so long in Colombia, in Bolivia and the Argentine? To explain this diversity we must study the psychology of the different _conquistadors_--Castilian, Biscayan, Andalusian, Portuguese--and of the different subjected races: the Quechuas, Araucanians, Chibchas, Aztecs, and the proportion in which they were mingled; for the action of the territory itself upon the various admixtures of blood would vary as it was tropical or temperate, coast or Sierra.