Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The President of Uruguay is not the boss and he most certainly is not a dictator ruling by decree; the system resembles the Swiss system in that he is chairman of an executive council. I do not recall the name of the incumbent, as his name was not plastered all around in public places as in Argentina.

  The third impression was the usual one in South America of parks and plazas and monuments and outdoor statuary. I had assumed up until then that the superior beauty of South American cities was a result of age. But Montevideo is a mere youngster, founded in 1726, more than a hundred years after the founding of New York. Where are New York's statues and monuments? Not that thing over the pond at Radio City, surely? And don't mention Grant's Tomb; I've seen Grant's Tomb. They shouldn't do it to a dead man.

  My passion for statuary almost got me into difficulty. We were driving through one of the many parks and passed their monument to the Covered Wagon; I insisted on stopping for a good look. It was a fine academic bronze, a life-size group consisting of covered wagon, pioneers on horseback, triple span of oxen, relief oxen following behind, all executed in detailed realism which nevertheless achieved satisfying composition from any approach. It was an opus suited to crown the career of a great master and it made much "modern" sculpture look like the kindergarten blobs so many of them are.

  I was interested in it from three points of view: as a work of art, in the strong parallel to our own pioneer history portrayed by the group, and in the mechanical and engineering problems which in a thing of that size are as difficult as the artistic problems. I stepped up onto the base of the group to take a closer look at one of the figures.

  A park attendant sprang up out of nowhere and informed me emphatically that it was prohibido to molest the statues. I tried to explain most humbly that I had not meant any harm and that I had not touched anything but my frail Spanish broke down completely and Mr. Roitman had to intervene. He made himself personally responsible for my good behavior and I left sheepishly, under parole.

  I suppose the park attendant could be classed as a policeman but he was armed with a rake instead of a gun.

  We drove for many miles through the old city and through the new city which spreads downstream along Playa de Carrasco. Much of old town was rococo in style, even baroque, but in Carrasco we found miles of the light-hearted, imaginative modern architecture which we had first noticed in Lima, then had encountered repeatedly in Chile and Argentina-and were to encounter again in Brazil. I again asked to see slums, sticking to my theory that a worm's-eye view of a culture is the only one with a true perspective.

  Mr. Roitman did his best to oblige. Presently I said to him, "When do we get to where the poor people live?" He stopped the car. "This is it."

  I looked around and said, "No, no, I mean the really poor people," then explained what we had seen elsewhere.

  "But these are the poor people. These are the poorest people in Montevideo."

  I looked around me again and was tempted to call him a liar. These were not tenements nor the hovels of the poverty-stricken; these were small and simple single-family houses, each with its flower garden, quite evidently the homes of self-respecting lower-middle class. I already knew that Mr. Roitman was proudly patriotic and I suspected that his national pride had caused him not to show me the seamy side of his city. My own home town of Colorado Springs has little poverty and its slums are not slums at all in the sense in which the word applies to New York, Chicago, Rio, or Sydney, but I knew and was graveled by the knowledge that the worst of Colorado Springs was depressingly worse than this by many stages.

  Unsatisfied, I checked on him later. Señor Roitman was right; these were their "poor." Uruguay has no poor. It is a welfare state that works, without, so far as we could see, the dreary drawbacks of other welfare states. How they have managed this I do not know, for I have seen other welfare states which appeared to have much the same sort of legislation and the results I did not like at all-repressive laws, endless bureaucracy, chain gang regulations. Uruguay is not that sort of a place, yet it has cradle-to-grave social security, free education through college, free medicine for the lower incomes, and retirement at fifty without loss of comforts for anyone who wants to retire that young.

  Maybe there is a catch in it; if so, we did not find it. Our investigation was as quick and superficial as a congressional junket to Europe; nevertheless I am for the present convinced that they have somehow managed to work a miracle. Someday I plan to go back and dig in deeply; if there is a secret to be learned, we must learn it. Just now I feel strong sympathy for the farmer who said on seeing the giraffe, "There ain't no sech animal!"

  Uruguay has the Latin fondness for designating famous events simply by their dates. (Was it Mark Twain who said that a French politician could make an impassioned and effective patriotic speech simply by rattling off a list of dates?) In driving around I noticed the following street names: 14 July, 18 July, 25 May, 26 March, 4 July, 31 December, and 24 September. This is a random sampling, not a complete tally; they may have the calendar (and their streets) as loaded up as we are with Mother's Day and Chew-More-Gum Week.

  Note that they complimented us with a street named for the Fourth of July, our only holiday that fits into the date system. This sort of gracious gesture is to be found throughout South America; one is always coming across Woodrow Wilson Boulevard, Roosevelt Highway, George Washington Plaza-nor is it a matter of toadying to Tío, for they have not neglected the national figures of other nations besides ours. I wonder to what extent, if at all, we return these courtesies? I have never run across at home Bolivar Boulevard or San Martín Road. Perhaps I did not look in the right places.

  While all of our neighbors to the south follow this gentle custom Uruguay really goes whole hog. Here are a few samples: Avenida Simon Bolivar, Rambla República de Argentina, R.R. de Peru, Rambla Presidente Wilson, Calle George Washington, Parque Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the biggest one in the city), Rambla Presidente Bernardo O'Higgins, more ramblas named for Mexico, Chile, France, and Great Britain (a rambla is a fancy boulevard, one with trees and flowers and a view), Avenida Italia, Avenida General San Martín, and even Calle Missouri and Calle Mississippi. After that comes heroes, heroes, and more heroes; they rarely waste a street by naming it something like Chestnut, Pine, or Fifth.

  A man can get into their street guide without being a general, a politician, or a Uruguayan celebrity. Emile Zola and Herbert Spencer both made it; you can too. So did Darwin, Cervantes, Clemenceau, Magellan, and somebody named Samuel Blixen. Go climb a mountain or write an epic poem; eventually the city council of Montevideo will award you a few miles of paved immortality.

  I think that the only word for this custom is "gracious."

  The following morning we drove out to the cattle market, which differs from that in Buenos Aires in that it is some miles outside the city and affords thereby more opportunity to see gauchos at work. It still is not real cattle country, which is farther to the north in the great plains; the countryside around Montevideo is more like Iowa farms, except that some of the vegetation is subtropical. It never frosts in Uruguay, but there are not many really hot days and there is enough rain, around thirty inches a year over all.

  I could not see much difference between the gauchos of Uruguay and the ones of Argentina, but their horses here seemed to be finer boned with more Arabian strain and so far as I could see they were not taught to breast the cattle. Representatives of the major North American meat packers are stationed permanently at this cattle market and buy a large portion of the supply, this being their major export to us. We "took maté" with them and the gauchos in the gauchos' clubhouse at the market-"tomar maté" is the idiom, literally "to take the pot" but it means to drink yerba herb tea through a silver pipe from a gourd pot called a "maté." Socially it means still more; it is the Uruguayan symbol of hospitality.

  Custom requires that all in the same circle of friendliness drink from the same pot and the same silver pipe. The English lady with us was offer
ed it first, then Ticky, and then myself, after which it made the rest of the rounds. There is a belief that germs cannot live on the hot silver pipe, that it is self sterilizing. I hope that the belief is true, for the rite is as unavoidable as kissing the bride.

  Maté is not unpleasant, being much like green tea, but it is an acquired taste. Uruguayans and Argentinos set much store by it and believe that it is food, drink, and vitamins all wrapped in the same package. There is a story of a besieged garrison that lived for weeks on maté alone. The story is almost certainly true but I would find it a thin diet.

  Returning from the cattle market we drove to the top of the Cerro. This is the mountain from which the city got its name: Montevideo-"I see a mountain." There is an old fort there which once dominated the harbor; now it is an historical museum and Uruguay, very sensibly for a country of three million people, simply has given up competing in the military arms race. Mr. Roitman pointed out an island to us in the harbor spread before us and referred to it as the "political prison."

  I jumped on the remark. "I thought this was a land of freedom? No political prisoners?"

  "Oh," he said, "that is what it used to be, more than a century ago, when the Spaniards ran things. It is empty now, just a landmark."

  I thought of the anti-Peronista refugees in Uruguay and looked out across the water at Argentina, invisible but close over the horizon. "Aren't you a little afraid that 'Papá' may come over someday and change all that?"

  He smiled grimly. " 'Papá' would like to-but he knows we have an 'Uncle.' "

  Later on that day Ticky and I were walking alone down Avenida 18 de Julio, the major shopping street. We were much surprised to hear a cheerful voice say, "Hello! You're Mr. and Mrs. Heinlein."

  Facing us was a handsome young chap with a wide smile on his face. He was not one of our fellow passengers, I was fairly sure, and we knew no one in Uruguay-but his face was familiar. I shook hands while saying, "I know we've met you, but I can't for the life of me remember where or when."

  "Don't you remember? The little dog?"

  On the day before, Ticky and I had been seated in a sidewalk cafe in Plaza Independencia. Near us was a party of people and with them was a little butterfly spaniel bitch. Ticky offered the spaniel peanuts and a potato chip or two. The international amity established with the dog soon extended to the dog's people and we chatted between tables with them. They were a family party, father, mother, and grown son; the two men could speak English.

  The encounter was most casual, hardly more than mutual agreement that Primavera was a fine doggie, yes indeed! We did exchange names with them but the chat lasted no more than five minutes; there was no intention nor expectation of following up the brief encounter. We had simply patted their dog.

  I had hardly noticed the son. His mother was a woman of extraordinary beauty; my choice in such circumstances is not a choice but a reflex. I had looked at the men in the party just enough to be polite-I hope I was polite.

  But when the young man who stopped us on the street said, "Don't you remember? The little dog?" the wheels clicked and the numbers popped up. I said, "Oh! Of course!"

  Maurice Nayberg took us home with him and we stayed all afternoon, being treated in the fashion expressed by the Latin saying: "This house is yours." The hospitality of the Naybergs was the more appreciated in that it was utterly unexpected; they were under no slightest obligation to be kind to us.

  We had been treated with similar open-handed friendliness by the Quirogas in Chile, again under circumstances "over and above the call of duty." Was this warmth characteristic of South America as a whole? I don't know; one certainly should not attempt to fair a curve on the evidence of two data. To do so is not scientific evaluating but mere wishful thinking. Yet a thousand other lesser data all pointed in the same direction. My horseback opinion, admittedly gathered too quickly, is and remains that the vast majority of South Americans have their hands extended in welcome to all gringos who have the gumption to see it.

  A more soul-searching matter is the question as to whether our own beloved country is equally open-handed? It is difficult to give a fair opinion; I am inside it, a part of it, and it is hard for a fish to see water. Would strangers and foreigners without any sort of contact or introduction be equally likely to encounter such treatment in New York? Or in Colorado Springs?

  I have pondered this and tried to be fair, turning over in my mind cases in point. We as a people are lavishly hospitable to those who come with any faint sort of introduction, granted-but do we make welcome the stranger who has none of any sort?

  Yes, I think we do, provided the stranger and foreigner himself is open to it-a proviso which applies just as firmly to South America. Possibly we are a shade more shy about it but not much, not enough to matter. Certainly we are more provincial, less cosmopolitan, than they are, for the same reasons that New Yorkers are so much more provincial than are people in the rest of our country.

  But the willingness and friendliness is present everywhere among us. Any foreigner who finds America "cold" had better look for the coldness in his own heart.

  Is this ready hospitality, then, a characteristic of all peoples everywhere? Need the frightened boy only go through the gates of the Great City to find inside the same "kind hearts and gentle people" that he left behind him in his own village? I was ready once to assert that it was so, but I was wrong. While the trait may be potential in all humans, it is a cultural trait and some cultures do not have it. Just to nail this down see Ruth Benedict's frightening description of Dobu culture in her Patterns of Culture. If a Dobu offered a drink to a stranger it would be only for the purpose of poisoning him. Yet the Dobus are genetically precisely the same sort of humans as are those of certain other warm and friendly cultures around them.

  But I did not change my mind through reading scientific anthropology; I had it changed for me, through visiting a country later where we were not treated with ordinary civility, much less open-handed hospitality. The experience cured me of the romantic nonsense that people everywhere are just like the folks back home. Some are not.

  The delightful visit with the Naybergs ended our stay in Uruguay as the ship sailed later that day. We left bearing presents and numerous cards of introduction to persons in half a dozen other countries, for Maurice himself was in the Uruguayan diplomatic service and his father was in the import-export business; the family was well acquainted abroad. Maurice walked us down to our ship.

  Perhaps, having penetrated a Uruguayan home, I should describe it; actually there is no need to do so. It was a large city flat of an upper class family and would have looked equally at home in any large city in the world. I will mention Clarita instead. She was a little pigeon hen who had had the misfortune to break her wing; Mrs. Robert Nayberg found her and nursed her back to health, then set her free. But Clarita declined to leave. Oh, she joined the other pigeons that flutter around the many monuments of the city but she roosted on the Nayberg balcony at night and spent a good deal of each day inside the Nayberg flat, visiting and making occasional messes on the floor; it was her home by her own choice.

  Which showed amazing good sense for a bird brain and showed still more about the sort of people the Naybergs are.

  No description should be entirely flattering; there should be some criticism at the very least, for contrast and to lend conviction to favorable statements. But it is very hard to find anything to criticize in Uruguay.

  This will have to suffice: sometimes it is not possible to find a taxi down where the ships dock, in which case the visitor must walk almost half a mile to the nearest tram. Obviously this could be improved. Of course the weather will not be cold for walking and it is unlikely to be unpleasantly hot.

  But it might be raining.

  VI

  Wakening Giant

  Brazil is larger than the United States by more than 300,000 square miles, by an area equal to Texas plus the State of New York. It is the largest country outside the Iron Curtain.
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  This chapter should be served with a side dish of superlatives, to which you could help yourself when you pleased without risking surfeit. Almost everything about Brazil is biggest, largest, longest, or greatest. In addition, after four hundred years of progress moderate to slow, the joint is jumpin' in all directions. Steel mills, factories, hydroelectric plants, oil refineries, office buildings, superhighways, airports, railways, all are going forward everywhere despite the oppressive tropical heat which prevails in so much of the country most of the time.

  Although bigger than we are in area Brazil has only about a third the population we have, around 54,000,000. Nobody knows how many people the country can support. Although discovered in 1500 the country is to a considerable extent still unexplored; some of those 54,000,000 are naked Indians who have never seen a white man. The only thing we can be sure of about Brazil is that we haven't seen anything yet; it is entirely conceivable that the Brazilians may be the New Romans of the next century, just as the British were of the nineteenth century, and as we seem to find ourselves elected in this century (if the Russians do not take from us that uncomfortable honor, of course). Brazil has enormous resources of thorium ore, the world's second largest betatron, and an extremely active nuclear research program; she does not lack any potentiality for greatness and dominance.

  Brazil has been successively an unknown territory awarded by the Pope to Portugal, a colony, a kingdom, an empire, and a republic. She has suffered and still suffers from political growing pains but has been fairly stable politically for some years now; it may well be that her future will be relatively free of the internal upsets that interfere with economic and social progress. Brazil was late in getting rid of human slavery (1889) yet this is a country where no color bar can be seen and black and white mix socially without tension-or so it looks to an outsider.