Mesmo quem não aprecia o pensamento de Hegel, é obrigado a concordar que a pintura da América do Sul, feita por ele, no plano empírico e também no político e jurídico, apresenta impressionante veracidade. No caso atual da Venezuela, o ditador proclama que a eleição sem limites é uma nova idéia da Constituição. ( Na Folha on line: "Chávez repetiu que, com o referendo, a Venezuela está 'criando uma nova doutrina constitucional' e assumindo a 'vanguarda da América Latina'. Na sua visão, a limitação da eleição a um ou dois mandatos é uma imposição de fora: 'Estamos rompendo paradigmas que nos impuseram como se fossem imutáveis. Estamos num processo revolucionário'"). Vejam o que diz Hegel no final (grifado) do trecho que escolhi : "...only force and voluntary subservience are the principles of action; and the forms which are called Constitutions are in this case only a resort of necessity, and are no protection against mistrust". Na mosca, não acham? Aliás, grand ironia, Hegel encerra as considerações sobre a sociedade americana (a do Norte e a do Sul), com as seguintes palavras, velhas conhecidas nossas: "Amerika ist somit das Land der Zukunft" (America é, assim, a terra do futuro"... ) o futuro promete novidades, o que leva Hegel a citar Napoleão (inspirador de todas as ditaduras sul americanas, em especial a do Simon Bolivar) : "Cette vieille Europe m'ennuie". Sim, aborrece muito, sobretudo quando exporta tiranias que pretendem colocar o caudilho (ou Füher) como "protetor da Constituição". Triste e napoleônica America do Sul!
RR
E agora, fiquem com Hegel:
"America as is well known, is divided into two parts, connected indeed by an isthmus, but which has not been the means of establishing intercourse between them. Rather, these two divisions are most decidedly distinct from each other. North America shows us on approaching it, along its eastern shore a wide border of level coast, behind which is stretched a chain of mountains—the blue mountains or Appalachians; further north the Alleghanies. Streams issuing from them water the country towards the coast, which affords advantages of the most desirable kind to the United States, whose origin belongs to this region. Behind that mountain-chain the St. Lawrence river flows (in connection with huge lakes), from south to north, and on this river lie the northern colonies of Canada. Farther west we meet the basin of the vast Mississippi, and the basins of the Missouri and Ohio, which it receives, and then debouches into the Gulf of Mexico. On the western side of this region we have in like manner a long mountain chain, running through Mexico and the Isthmus of Panama, and under the names of the Andes or Cordillera, cutting off an edge of coast along the whole west side of South America. The border formed by this is narrower and offers fewer advantages than that of North America . There lie Peru and Chili. On the east side flow eastward the monstrous streams of the Orinoco and Amazons; they form great valleys, not adapted however for cultivation, since they are only wide desert steppes. Towards the south flows the Rio de la Plata, whose tributaries have their origin partly in the Cordilleras, partly in the northern chain of mountains which separates the basin of the Amazon from its own. To the district of the Rio de la Plata belong Brazil, and the Spanish Republics. Colombia is the northern coast-land of South America at the west of which, flowing along the Andes, the Magdalena debouches into the Caribbean Sea.
With the exception of Brazil, republics have come to occupy South as well as North America. In comparing South America (reckoning Mexico as part of it) with North America, we observe an astonishing contrast.
In North America we witness a prosperous state of things: an increase of industry and population civil order and firm freedom (eine fest Freiheit) ; the whole federation constitutes but a single state, and has its political centres. In South America, on the contrary, the republics depend only on military force (nur auf militärischer Gewalt) ; their whole history is a continued revolution; federated states become disunited; others previously separated become united; and all these changes originate in military revolutions. The more special differences between the two parts of America show us two opposite directions, the one in political respects, the other in regard to religion. South America, where the Spaniards settled and asserted supremacy, is Catholic; North America, although a land of sects of every name, is yet fundamentally, Protestant. A wider distinction is presented in the fact, that South America was conquered, but North America colonized. The Spaniards took possession of South America to govern it, and to become rich through occupying political offices, and by exactions. Depending on a very distant mother country, their desires found a larger scope, and by force, address and confidence they gained a great predominance over the Indians. The North American States were, on the other hand, entirely colonized, by Europeans. Since in England Puritans, Episcopalians, and Catholics were engaged in perpetual conflict, and now one party, now the other, had the upper hand, many emigrated to seek religious freedom on a foreign shore. These were industrious Europeans, who betook themselves to agriculture, tobacco and cotton planting, etc. Soon the whole attention of the inhabitants was given to labor, and the basis of their existence as a united body lay in the necessities that bind man to man, the desire of repose, the establishment of civil rights, security and freedom, and a community arising from the aggregation of individuals as atomic constituents; so that the state was merely something external for the protection of property. From the Protestant religion sprang the principle of the mutual confidence of individuals—trust in the honorable dispositions of other men; for in the Protestant Church the entire life—its activity generally—is the field for what it deems religious works. Among Catholics, on the contrary, the basis of such a confidence cannot exist; for in secular matters only force and voluntary subservience are the principles of action; and the forms which are called Constitutions are in this case only a resort of necessity, and are no protection against mistrust.(...denn in weltlichen Angelegenheiten herrscht nur die Gewalt und freiwillige Unterworfernheit, und die Formen, die man Konstitutionen nennt, sind nur eine Not-hilfe und schützen gegen Misstrauen nicht ".
As frases do original alemão foram extraídas das "Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte" (Werke in zwanzig Bänden, 12, p. 113 ss). Para o texto em inglês acima, Cf. The Philosophy of History, by Georg W. F. Hegel, trad. J. Sibree (Colonial Press, 1900)