Diario las Américas Newspaper, December 2, 1956, Page 23

a aan } i saat oa scat eanseineeateetl nt tiatiaeencre:-nnapterateenisnet espana tea cuepecieeeta attics socetesinicenntllin America. In the first, “Alocucién a la Poesia (Address te Poetry,”) he proclaimed: wiemy es que dejes ya la culta po q jes y pte ropa que tu nativa rustiquez desama, y¥ dirijas el vuelo a donde te abre el mundo de Colén su grande escena. it is time you left cultured Europe, Which your native i es, And directed your flight where Columbus’ world opens its great vista (to you. Never had American nature and American heroes — “Where can you look without seeing monu- ments to heroims?” — been exalt- ed in language so polished and so masterly. The theme bears out what the eminent Dominican scho- Jar Pedro Henmriquez Urea has said about Belle: that he was the first writer te make explicit the desire for intellectual indepen- denée. Even more imspired is the se- cond silva, “La Agricultura de la Zona Torrida,” in which Bello de- scribed the beauty and richness of the American tropics. This -is clas- sical verse, recalling Fray Luis de Leon, with a touch of baroque in the metaphors: Ta tejes al verano su guirnalda de granadas espigas; ta la uva das a la hirviente cuba; no de purpurea fruta, o roja, o gualda, a tus florestas bellas falta matiz algumo, y bebe en ellas aromas mil el viento y greyes van sim euento paciendo tu verdura, desde el llano que tiene por limdero el horizonte, hasta el erguide monte _ de inaccesible nieve siempre cano. You weave summer’s garland Of sheaves of wheat; you give the (grape To the boiling vat; No hue of purple, red, or golden fruit Is missing in yeur beautiful forests, And the wind Drinks a thousand aromas in them, And countless floeks Nibble your grass, from the plain Whose border is the horizon To the tall mountain Ever white with inaccessible snow. He praised the tranquil and crea- tive life of the countryside, source of progress and peace. Aware that work provides the strongest guar- antee of the prosperity of nations, he wisely advised the new. Ameri- ean republics te concentrate their eneigies on working the soil: Honrad el campo, honrad la aiaiple. vi del labrador, y sw frugal laneza. Asi tendran em vos perpetuamente la libertad morada y freno la ambiciém y la ley templo. Honor the country, honor the sim be e Of the farmer, and his frugal Thus you will be eign us you w erpetua A haven for ieaedont rf * A brake for ambition, and a temple for law. At last came an opportunity to return to America. In 1829 just at a time when Belle was in anxious straits, the Chilean Government of- fered him a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moving to Chile provided him with the stimuli and the environment he needed for his cultural mission. Besides carrying on his official duties at the Ministry, he taught and wrote, and soon established a reputation as the most eminent scholar in Chile. The country’s in- tellectual aristoeracy studied with him. Unlike most contemporary teachers, he did not believe in memorization. He addressed the in- telligence, made his pupils think, and inspired them with a passion for learning. His library was a meeting place for intense young people. In 1842 he was invited to organize the University of Chile, and he served as its first rector till his death in 1865. Bello’s ‘intellectual activities aroused muck controversy. Argen- tine refugees from the Rosas dic- tatorship, influenced by Romantic- ism, considered his purism a hin- drance to the revolutionary im- pulse.They accused him of being a conservative, addicted to establish- ed forms. Bello defended himself superbly in his address at the open- ing of the University of Chile. He emphasized the necessity of maintaining the unity of the language — not that this should prohibit neologisms when they are appropriate to the nature of Span- ish. As for arguments between Classicists and Romanticists, Bello did not take sides, though he had always been considered a Classic- ist. It was good for young people, he thought, to study all literatures and styles of expression. He him- self set an example by making a free translation of Victor Hugo’s poem “La Priére pour Tous” (pro- nounced by some to be finer than the original), with which he de- monstrated his knowledge of Ro- mantic authors and, to a certain extent, his identification with them. This interest in the language, in write their common language pro- perly as a means of cultural unifi- cation, was one of the central pre- occupations of Bello’s life. He,was Fesponsible for the creation of a chair in grammar at the. National Institute, and in 1847 the first edi- tion of his Gramatica de la Lengua Castellana, designed for use by Americans, was published. This book was to establish a new basis for the study and teaching of the Spanish language. No higher praise could be given it than that of the eminent Spanish philologist Ama- do Alonso: “Andrés Bello’s Span- ish Grammar written more than a century ago, remains even today the best Spanish-language gram- mar we have.” Bello. examined the language with the utmost logie and simplici- ty. Philosophically, aceording te Alonso, he appears to have follow- ed the authors of the Port-Royal Grammar. But he did not believe in absolute general principles. “Every language,” he said, “has its particular theory, its grammar. Therefore, we should not apply in- discriminately to one language the principles, the terms, the analogies that sum up, for better or for worse, the practices of another.” Hence he stripped Spanish gram- mar of the strait jacket of Latinity and sought out its own true nature. Instead of imprisoning himself in rigid classifications, he attended to the different functions of words; he corrected erroneous definitions such as that of gender; he present- ed a masterly exposition of verb theory — in short, he grounded grammar on science. The noted Colombian writer Marco Fidel Sua rez has said with justice that Be- llo’s Grammar is “the most pro- found and original _ philological work that has been written in the Spanish American republics.” He also turned his attention to spelling. In Bello’s time, Spanish orthography was anarchic. Every writer had a system of his own, and the Royal Academy of the Lan- guage had not yet become the sup- reme authority. In these circumstances, Bello * proposed a spelling reform based on phonetics, ignoring etymology and custom. He wanted people to write as they pronounced — a criterion also favored by other famous grammarians, including An- tonio de Nebrija, author of the first Spanish grammar, published in 1492. Bello eliminated the silent h, as in Italian; separated the functions of the j and the g, re- serving the latter for the hard sound and the former for the gut- tural; discontinued the use of y as a vowel; replaced the soft e with q. These innovations were accept- q. These innovations were accept- ed in Chile and several other Ame- rican countries, and, for some time Bello’s spelling was used in newspapers, textbooks, and public and private documents. Eventual- ly, however, the American repub- lies elected to follow the Avademy rules. But Bello’s influence has been so strong that the Academy itself has gradually adopted some of his simplifications. The most recent changes, approved in 1952, authorize the suppression of such generally unpronounced letters as initial p preceding s (as psico- logia) and m preceding nm )mne- motecnia). Bello’s activity as a lawmaker was based onvhis conviction ‘that: without. a legal order embodying justice and stability America could never make creative use of its free- dom. From the days of his first post. at the Foreign Ministry, he was noted as an authority on inter- national Jaw, which he. taught and on which he later wrote a valuable treatise that was used as a text- book at the University of Chile. He continued to advise the Minis- try after he left. In the Senate — where his prestige was so enor- mous that the chamber once re- versed itself after hearing his views — he collaborated on a number of juridical projects. He helped to write the Constitution of 1833. In 1864 he was asked by the United States and Ecuador to arbitrate a dispute between them. But his most important contribution to law was unquestionably the Civil Code, which he undertook at the request of the Senate, He began work on it in 1831. During the nine years it took him to prepare the draft, he con- sulted the most diverse sources. His inspiration was drawn from liberal- ism, but, as a pragmatist, he adopt- SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1956, seemed best to him. The major principles of his Code were family organization based on paternal au- thority, freedom of contract, and an eclectic rule of imheritanee fav- oring the legitimate heirs. Bello studied Spanish legislation — par- ticularly the thirteenth-century compilation called the Siete Parti- das, which, according to his own testimony, he used to read after meals as a digestive. From the French Code he took his provisions on contract; from Anglo Saxon law imeluding U. S. authors, his ideas on property and on freedom of testament (under Spanish law, four fifths of a man’s estate must go to his widow and children), though the congressional committees that revised the draft did not fully ac- cept his opinion on the latter point. Codified Roman law was the found- ation of most of the Code, with adaptations based on legal exper- ience and on Chilean needs. When Bello had finished, an open hearing on it was held by a mixed commission of senators and deputies, and then it went to a series of study committees. After long discussion, it was approved in December 1855 and went into ef- fect on January 1, 1857. The final version, of course, contained cer- tain provisions and doctrines that were not Bello’s, but his orienta- tion remained and he edited the text. Im assessing Andrés Bello’s work, it is difficult to place him in a The enormvus samadn, a Venezuelan tree, was the subject of one of Bello’s youthful poems. given school. He was neither a pure Classicist nor a pure Roman- ticist. He was acquainted with the entire cultural process of his time, and disseminated those ideas, prin- ciples, and literary styles that he thought best suited to the Ameri- ean nations. Those critics who con- sider him a thorough-going con- servative and Classicist are wrong. Some of his ideas are as advanced as they could possibly be. He mere- ly expresses them without raptures. In Indice Critico de ja Literatura Hispanoamericana, the Uruguayan essayist Alberte Zum Felde com- ments that Bello is “the only great essayist and scholar representing the intelleetual generation of the independence.” He adds that the educational nature ef his work condemns him to early obsoles: cence. But te this it might be argu- ed that many of Bello’s ideas are still valid. Indeed, from the distance of a century, what is striking is his ex traordinary vision. Living at a time when two historical epochs met, Andrés Bello understeod the com- plexities of that world in transition. He foresaw thé future greatness of America. He realized that political independence required cultural liberation, and he wished to con- ciliate the best of the past with the progress that comes from law and education. No one else work- ed so hard at this task as he, or achieved so rich a return. Points of View TECHNICAL COOPERATION “THE YEAR 1941 marks the beginning of a new era of technic- al and industrial progress in Latin America; that was when the form- al programs of technical coopera- tion between the governments of those nations and that of the Unit- ed States were established”, re- marks Carlos forge in an article in La Prensa Libre, daily paper of San José, Costa Rica. He continues: “It is difficult te evaluate the benefits derived from such pro- grams. But they have certainly helped to support the Latin Ame- rican countries’ new socio-econom- ic structure and have served as a bridge for technological traffic be- tween a nation advanced along this line and others eagerly seeking better use of natural resources and manpower. “In the last fifteen years $524,- 000,000 has gone into these pro- grams — one third contributed by the United States and the rest by the Latin American governments. The amounts agreed upon for the current year indicate the interest in speeding up this cooperation: the U. S. government has allotted $29,000,000 and the Central and South American governments $73 000,000. “Though the gradually increased contributions prove the desire to introduce new and better produc- tion methods, the amount demand- ed by steadily growing populations ' and the general aim of improving living standards has not yet been reached. For example, the sum spent on agricultural extension and research is only one third of a cent per dollar of agricultural pro- duction, which comes to less than half of that spent in the United States on the same sort of activi- ties. Criticism about too much be- ing invested seems ill founded. “On the other hand, Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower’s well-known report justified the sums contributed by the United States for financing in- ter-American technical coopera- tion projects in these words: “as a market for our commercial ex- ports, Latin America is as import- ant to us as all of Europe and more important than Asia, Africa, and Oceania combined. . .As a source of United States imports, the Latin American republics have ‘even greater relative importance.’ “This opinion is sound when you consider that over the years Latin Ameriea has played a dynamic role in the growth of North American trade, proved by the fact that in the past half century exports from the U. S. A. to Latin Ameri- ca have increased twice as rapidly as the total exports to other mar- kets of the globe. “The transition of almost exclu- sively agricultural economies to technical and industrial economies demands first that we boost food production, raise agricultural out- put, develop e‘ectrie power, and improve transportation. . . “The technical assistance afford- ed by private organizations as been equally beneficial and might be called the forerunner of the formalized technical assistance between governments. . However, technical knowledge. . .is not in it- self the solution te economic prob- lems. A greater volume of capital and investments is also necessary to obtain balanced economic growth.” ‘TIPPERS ALL “THOUGH IT IS DIFFICULT to Pinpoint the origin of tipping, it undoubtedly began shortly after the appearance of Adam and Eve,” writes Berman Be:trén in Inter- medio, Bogota daily: “Along about that time, after the human race had got a start, the strongest and most powerful began to stand out from the rest. . .The serving class was formed with the help of clubs and stones. . .Those unable te.wield them had to pro- tect themselves against those who could. . .What better way than to wait on them and keep them in a good humor? Today’s tip may have had its start then too, Obviously, there were no gifts from masters to servants, but a negative sort of tip. For a job well done, they did not give them the usual beat- ing... “Subsequently there may have been patrons who bestowed ma- terial gratification on servants. Al- so, some tribal leaders may have given presents. . .when they made diplomatic visit and were well at- tended by the host’s vassals. When they went home, they would send back a piece of cloth or a dagger, or, to a maidservant, a pair of earrings or an unset jewel. . . “With the passage of time, the servant class subdivided, so that today’s society seems like a huge stairway, with each of the steps dependent on the others for sup- port. As a matter of fact, . .you might say that the stairway is form- ed by a single class: the servants. “We are all servants, but to a certain extent we are all masters too. When you deal servant to ser- vant, there is no tip. The servant status is feleting, as is that of master. But at a particular mo- ment, a tip can make one servant seem the master of another. It might have been the need to feel masterful that skyrocketed tipping to the exalted position it holds to- day. “. . 2At was in the United States that tipping became... an unwrit ten Jaw that no one disobeys — 10 per cent of the bill in restaurants, night, clubs, and so en The sum is not specified for hotel doormen, bellhops, and the rest, but is figur- ed on the basis of the length of your stay and the quality of the accommodations. Just by tipping, North Americans keep many mik lions of dollars in circulation every year... ' “In Colombia, outside of the large hotels, restaurants, and the like, where it has been an estab- lished custom for several years, . » some people always tip, others never, and some _ occasionally. There is no fixed rate, and serw ants or attendants are often in @ quandary. If they smile and are overly attentive. . ., the patron, knowing the reason for the pleas antness, might perversely refuse to leave a tip. Or if they wait on him with sober mien, he might feel offended and not tip. Or if they behave naturally, they might also be left empty-handed. . . “However, some patrons do no@ know what is expected. They are afraid of offending the attendant if they tip too little or not at all. They don’t know how to leave the coins without seeming sapercituos, All in all,. . .the situation is some times comically strained, starting with the moment the patron site down, building up to a climax when he takes out his wallet, and going out of control; when the waiter re turns the change on a small tray, From that point on, it is a job for mind readers. . . “Taxis are a different matter. Im the first place, our cab drivers are not like the good-natured N orth Americans who open the door for passengers, load and unload suit cases, and make pleasant conversa tion. . .Ours are transitory masters, They glare at riders, order them to get in quickly and not to slam the door, and before starting off give them another dirty look in the reag view mirror. . .The passenger is s@ terrified that he thinks about ne thing but arriving at his desting tion and getting out fast. He eithee forgets to tip or is affraid to. Or sometimes he le so frightened by the idea of not tipping that he does. Or maybe he is just used te tipping. Or maybe the driver hag no change. “Some employers. . .take tips im to account — a vague sum be tween the possible and the im possible — when they set salaries, so that wage-earners in this cate gory are never well paid. They work for so ttle money because they have great expectations, pa | besides, tipping makes it an exci ing gamble.” Page 11