And all that was called in San Martin a revolution! No! Let us not disgrace the Spanish language nor human progress. It is indeed time for some one of the learned correspondents of the Royal Academy to send for its dictionary, this fruit harvested from the rich soil of American lands. We, the inventors of the thing itself, have given it a name without having recourse to Greek or Latin roots, and we have called it bola. We hold the copyright; because, while revolution, as an inexorable law, is known in all the world, the bola can only be developed, like the yellow fever, in certain latitudes. Revolution grows out of an idea, it moves nations, modifies institutions, demands citizens; the bola requires no principles, and has none, it is born and dies within short space, and demands ignorant persons. In a word, the revolution is a daughter of the world’s progress and of an inexorable law of humanity; the bola is daughter of ignorance and the inevitable scourge of backward populations.
We know revolutions well, and there are many who stigmatize and calumniate them; but, to them we owe the rapid transformation of society and of institutions. They would be veritable baptisms of regeneration and advancement, if within them did not grow the weed of the miserable bola. Miserable bola? Yes! There operate in it as many passions as there are men and leaders engaged; in the one it is avenging ruin; in the other a mean ambition; in this one the desire to figure; in that one to gain a victory over an enemy. And there is not a single common thought, not a principle which gives strength to consciences. Its theatre is the corner of some outlying district; its heroes, men who perhaps at first accepting it in good faith, permit that which they had to be torn to tatters on the briers of the forest. Honorable labor is suspended, the fields are laid waste, the groves are set on fire, homes are despoiled, at the mere dictate of some brutal petty leader; tears, despair, and famine are the final harvest. And yet the population, when this favorite monster, to which it has given birth, appears, rushes after it, crying enthusiastically and insanely, bola! bola!