Thus it was that when the new division of territories took place,
many of those countries which Nature had provided with an almost
extraordinary degree of wealth found themselves in a state of poverty
through the mere want of labour which might develop these resources. In
some cases this disadvantage has been overcome to a greater or lesser
extent; in others the situation continues practically unaltered to the
present day.
In the north, as has been said, the era of chaos was not long in
asserting itself. New Granada had been divided into three Republics,
those of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador; while the new State of
Bolivia had been set up between the frontiers of Paraguay and Peru.
General Sucre, one of the chief military heroes of the war of liberation
in the north, was, appropriately enough, made the first President of
this new Republic of Bolivia. At the start unease and fretfulness marked
the relations of each of the new States with the others. It seemed
almost as if the Continent had become so imbued with warlike ideas that
it had forgotten how to lay down the sword.
There was, moreover, lamentably small inducement to a life of peaceful
labour. The industrial situation of the north was as gloomy as elsewhere
in the Continent.
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