Liberal Thought in Argentina, 1837–1940. Группа авторов
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order to be able to exercise certain rights over its members, society owes them all justice, equal protection, and laws that guarantee their
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person, their property, and their freedom. It is obliged to shield them from every injustice or violence: to keep their reciprocal passions at bay, so that they will not harm themselves; to provide them with the means to work without any hindrance whatsoever, for their own well-being, without damaging that of others; to place each man under the safeguard of all so that he may peacefully enjoy what he possesses or has acquired through his labor, his industry, or his talents.
The social power that does not do this; that divides instead of fraternizing; that sows distrust and ill will; that stokes the partisan spirit, the spirit of vengeance; that fosters perfidy, espionage, and betrayal, and seeks to convert society into a swarm of informers, executioners, and victims, is an iniquitous, immoral, and abominable power.
The institution of government is useful, moral, and necessary only if it seeks to ensure for each citizen his essential rights and above all his freedom.
The perfection of the association is proportionate to the freedom of each and every person. To achieve this it is necessary to preach fraternity, generosity, mutual sacrifice among the members of the same family. It is necessary to work so that individual forces, instead of isolating themselves and concentrating on their own selfishness, come together simultaneously and collectively for a single goal: the progress and growth of the nation.
The predominance of the individual has led us to perdition. Selfish passions have sown anarchy in the soil of freedom and sterilized its fruits: this has led to the loosening of social ties; here selfishness is contained in all hearts and shows its deformed and menacing face everywhere; these hearts do not beat to the sound of the same words or at the sight of the same symbols; minds are not linked by a common belief in the homeland, in equality, in fraternity and liberty.
How to revive this disintegrating society?
How to make the sociable element of the human heart predominate and save the country and civilization? The remedy exists only in the spirit of association.
Association, progress, liberty, equality, fraternity, correlative terms of the great social and humanitarian synthesis; divine symbols of the successful future of all peoples and of humanity.
Freedom can be realized only by means of equality, and equality
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without the assistance of association or coming together of all individual forces toward a single, undefined object; continuous progress, a fundamental formula of nineteenth-century philosophy.
That social organization offering greater guarantees for the development of equality and liberty and giving more scope to the free and harmonious exercise of human faculties would be the more perfect; that government more analogous with our customs and our social condition would be the better one.
The road to freedom is equality; equality and freedom are the principles that engender democracy.
Democracy is therefore the regime that suits us and the only one that is feasible for us.
It is our mission to prepare the elements to organize and form the seed of democracy that exists in our society.
The Association of the Young Argentine Generation represents the future of the Argentine nation in its provisional organization: its mission is essentially organic. It seeks to spread its spirit and doctrine; to extend the circle of its progressive tendencies; to foster enthusiasm for the great national association by unifying opinion and concentrating it in the homeland and in the principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity of all men.
It will work to reconcile and harmonize the citizen and the homeland, the individual and the association; and in preparing the elements of the organization of the Argentine nationality based on the democratic principle.
In its final form it will seek to bring together the two fundamental ideas of the period: homeland and humanity, and make the progressive movement of the nation march alongside the progressive movement of the great humanitarian association.
II
2. PROGRESS
“Humanity is like a man who lives forever in constant progress.”1 With one foot in the present and another reaching out into the future,
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humanity marches indefatigably, as if impelled by God’s spirit, in search of the Eden promised to her hopes.
The heavens, the Earth, the animals, mankind, the whole universe has a life that is developed and manifests itself in time through a series of continuous generations: this law of development is called the law of progress.
Just like man, organic beings, and nature, peoples are also in possession of a life of their own, whose continuous development constitutes their progress, because life is nothing more in all creation than the incessant exercise of activity.
All human associations exist because of progress and for progress, and civilization itself is nothing more than the indelible testimony of humanitarian progress.
All of man’s and society’s endeavors are directed toward procuring the well-being they crave.
The well-being of a people is related to and is born from their progress.
“To live by the law of one’s being is well-being. Only through the free and harmonious exercise of all their faculties can men and peoples attain the most extensive application of this law.”2
A people that does not work to improve its condition is a people that does not obey the law of its being.
The revolution for us is progress. America, believing that it could improve its condition, emancipated itself from Spain; since then it has entered the path of progress.
To progress is to become civilized, or to guide the action of all one’s strength to achieving well-being, or in other words, the realization of the law of one’s being.
Europe is the center of the civilization of centuries and of humanitarian progress.
America must therefore study the progressive movement of European intelligence; but without being blindly tied to its influences. Free
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inquiry and choice are the right and criteria of an enlightened reason. It must appropriate all that can contribute to the fulfillment of its needs; it must walk with the torch of the human spirit if it is to know itself and light up its path.
Every people has its own life and intelligence. “From the development and exercise of this its special mission is born, which participates fully in the general mission of humanity. This mission builds nationality. Nationality is sacred.”3
A people that enslaves its intelligence to the intelligence of another people is stupid and sacrilegious.
A people that stands still and does not progress has no mission whatsoever, and will never manage to form its nationality.
When American intelligence has reached the level of European intelligence, the sun of its complete emancipation shall shine.
III
3. FRATERNITY—4. EQUALITY—5. LIBERTY
“Human fraternity is mutual love, or that generous disposition that makes man inclined to do unto others what he would have done unto him.”4
Christ made it divine with his blood, and the prophets sanctified it with their martyrdom.
But man then was weak because he lived for himself and only with himself. Humanity or the concord of the human family, coming together for the same end, did not exist.
The tyrants and the selfish easily snuffed out the divine light of the word of the Redeemer with their