582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTH AMERICANS 
OF TO-DAY 
By Proressor HIRAM BINGHAM 
YALE UNIVERSITY 
NTIL very recently, the average newspaper article and the talk 
of the average person, so far as it went, took it for granted that 
South America was a region devoted to revolutions and fevers, where 
individuals called South Americans spent their time in a cheerful state 
of anarchy. There are novels and plays that still maintain this pleas- 
ing fiction, although, thanks to a recent enlightened secretary of state 
and an energetic director of the Bureau of American Republics, we 
know much more about South America than we did. In fact, we are 
beginning to distinguish to a certain extent between the stable re- 
publics of Argentina and Chile and the troublesome ones like Vene- 
zuela, but we still like to speak of the people as “ South Americans ” 
and it is fair to do so. 
A race is rising in South America that is different from anything 
that the world has yet seen. It is a hybrid product composed for the 
most part of the blood of Spaniards and South American aborigines, 
such as Quichuas, Araucanians and Abipones. There is also an in- 
filtration of various European stocks. It is true that there are differ- 
ences between the peoples of the several South American republics, 
just as there were great differences between the aboriginal Indian 
tribes. At the same time, there is so much of the blood that came from 
the Hispanic peninsula and this has been for so many generations the 
dominant factor, that it is possible to consider the people of South 
America more or less as a whole. 
It must also be admitted at the beginning that there are many 
South Americans who can not be included in any general criticism. 
There are many families of pure Castilian ancestry who rightfully re- 
sent any implication that they are hybrids because they are South 
Americans. And they would also prefer not to have the pure-blooded 
Indians counted as South Americans, although the latter constitute a 
majority of the population in several republics, notably Bolivia and 
Peru. We ought easily to be able to appreciate the fact that such a 
broad term as “South American” must include many diametrically 
opposite types, for foreigners are finding it increasingly difficult, nay 
almost impossible, to define and fix the limit of our own characteristics 
as “ Americans.” A hundred years ago it was simple enough. People 
of English descent dominated things everywhere. To-day we are a 
