Liberty in Mexico: Writings on Liberalism from the Early Republican Period to the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Introduction: Liberty and Liberalism in Mexico

ix Introduction Liberty and Liberalism in Mexico by José Antonio Aguilar Rivera1 After their independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, all of the new nations of Spanish America (except for the brief and ill-fated Mexican Empire) adopted the same model of political organization: the liberal republic. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century all of these countries remain republics. Yet, at the same time, the Latin American dictator became a hallmark of despotism and brutality during the past century. This contradiction between ideal and real has produced a vast body of literature. Historians, political scientists , and sociologists have tried to explain the pervasive authoritarianism of Spanish America. One key peculiarity of Latin America among developing and former colonial regions is its liberal experience, the “ideas and institutions that became established in this outpost of Atlantic civilization.”2 Yet, the failure of written constitutions to bring about the rule of law in that part of the world is well documented. This skepticism has a long history. Indeed , on December 6, 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend Baron Alexander von Humboldt: I think it most fortunate that your travels in those countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their European dependence I have no doubt; but in what kind of government their revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintain1 . The author wishes to thank Fabiola Ramírez and Roberto Mostajo for their assistance with suggestions for research. 2. Charles A. Hale, “The Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Politics in Spanish America: A Case for the History of Ideas,” Latin American Research Review 8 (summer 1973): 53–73. x : joSé antonio aGuilar rivera ing a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance , of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. The vicinity of New Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of their citizens. And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of science are not wanting, may revolutionize itself under better auspices than the Southern provinces.3 These last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The different casts of their inhabitants, their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument of enslaving others.4 Likewise, an elderly John Adams wrote to James Lloyd in 1815: The people of South America are the most ignorant, the most bigoted , the most superstitious of all the Roman Catholics in Christendom . . . . No Catholics on earth were so abjectly devoted to their priests, as blindly superstitious as themselves, and these priests had the powers and apparatus of the Inquisition to seize every suspected person and suppress every rising motion. Was it probable, was it possible, that such a plan as [Francisco] Miranda’s, of a free government, and a confederation of free governments, should be introduced and established among such a people, over that vast continent , or any part of it? It appeared to me more extravagant than the schemes of Condorcet and Brissot to establish a democracy in France, schemes which had always appeared to me as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes.5 3. Alexander von Humboldt traveled in South and North America at the beginning of the nineteenth century and wrote important books on the geography and society of the nations he visited. Jefferson refers in this letter to his political essay on New Spain. See Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). 4. Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 1311. 5. Letter to James Lloyd, March 27, 1815, in John Adams, The Works of John Adams, introduCtion : xi The independence of Spanish America did not make Jefferson more optimistic regarding the future of those nations. On May 14, 1817, he wrote to the marquis de Lafayette: I wish I could give better hopes of our southern brethren. The achievement of their independence of Spain is no longer...