The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-04-30
GOVERNMENT by JUNTA.

Inc American redulng PUBIC mas nedfu
more of juntas during the last year or two
than in all our previous history. 1t will be
we'll when we cease to hear OF them The
word as we'll as the thing is foreign to
American ideas, both being Spanish. To
L.atin-Americans it represents a legitimate
political method, but to Engish-speaking
peoples II carries an opprobrious meaning.
The Spaniards, the Cubans, the Central and
South Americans and the Filipinos manage
everything by junta. In the English lam
guage It represents a cabal, faction, an
intrigue or conspiracy. The word has
never been used in English or American his
tory except IN a condemnatory or odious
sense. In the reigns of William III and
Queen Anne, of England. it was applied to
group of leading Wing politicians who ruled
by arbitrary methods. and of whom an
English poet wrote:
The puzzling sons of party next appeared.
In dark cabals and mighty Juntos met.
AT that time, by the way, the word had
recently been borrowed from the Spanish
language and was enormously spelled junto
instead of jupta. So it was in early Amer
lean history, when the term Essex junto
was applied, about 17s1, to a group of ex-
treme Federalist leaders mostly connected
with Essex county, Massachusetts,. Later
the name was applied to the Federalists in
general and it helped to bring that party
into popular disrepute.
For long time the American people
heard nothing of juntas, but since the be-
ginning of the Cuban war they have been
much in evidence. For months before the
war between the United States and Spain
began the so-called Cuban government was
run by a junta in Cuba and another in the
United States. The principal business of
both was to foment trouble, misrepresent
facts and disseminate lies. incidentally the
Cuban junta in the United States made con-
slant appeals for money and raised consd-
cradle sums which were spent in some mys-
ferrous way without ever being accounted
for. If the Cuban junta in the United States
was of any use to the Cuban cause the fact
has never appeared. yet when the Spaniards
were driven out of Cuba by the United
States army and navy, the junta claimed
the lions share of credit. The Cuban AS
sembly which obstructed the pacification of
Cuba for several months was a branch of
the junta. In the Philippines Aguinaldo
and his followers represent junta govern
ment which has one branch in Hong-Kong
and another in Europe, dividing its time be-
tween London and Paris. A popularity of
the junta is that ii does not need to have
any local habitation, and when one junta
is destroyed or retires from business an
other takes its place, as the limbs of a
lobster replace themselves by new growth.
From political point of view the peculiar
feature of junta government as it exists in
Latin-American nations is that it is spon-
taneous, self-created, self-appointed, self
elected, above the people, yet not of the
people, exercising large authority without
power, government of the many by few
and for few, arbitrary, whimsical, ire
sponsible, untrustworthy, powerless for good
and potent for mischief The only single
word that can describe that kind of gov
eminent is the word transplanted from the
Spanish TO the English language. 1t is to
be hoped that with the passing of the pres
ent transition and reconstruction period we
may have heard the last of juntas and junta
government.