Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru (review)

This impressive work of both research and theory deserves to be read widely by scholars of political culture in various disciplines. Like the best historical sociology, Forment's book combines a synthesis of historiography on nineteenth-century Latin America with a provocative interpretation. But Forment does not rely solely on the existing secondary literature; his compilation of a database of voluntary associations and analysis of the discourse of their members are significant original contributions. Strikingly, while most social historians of the period (including this reviewer) have focused on political society through the use of documents generated and archived by nation-states (even when reading these against the grain for glimpses into popular actions and mentalities), Forment has uncovered a rich associational life in civil society. Based on this evidence, he argues that scholars have overlooked how Latin Americans constructed and nurtured democracy outside of and often in opposition to political institutions.

To cover such a large theme, Forment has divided this book into several parts. (A second volume promises to extend the analysis to Cuba and Argentina.) The opening and concluding sections engage the theoretical literature on democratization and state formation. Forment's approach is primarily Toquevillian, defining popular sovereignty as "the type of power citizens generate whenever they organize themselves into stable and cohesive groups and find ways of resolving their differences among themselves in a civic manner" (p. 21). But he is also critical of scholars in this tradition who see democratic habits as relatively static. Part Two provides context on late colonial society and the anticolonial movements for independence in Mexico and Peru, which faithfully renders the prevalent historical consensus. Readers who are not specialists in Latin America will find this helpful background, but should keep in mind that this brief overview is necessarily painted in broad strokes without the nuances that Forment brings to his detailed examination of the nineteenth century. The heart of the book is the empirical study of democratic practices across four arenas of public terrain: associations within civil and within economic society (which Forment analyses together), political society (including rebellions as well as political clubs and elections), and the public sphere (newspapers and other forms of public discourse). Chapters on each of these themes alternate between Mexico and Peru, and are divided into two parts corresponding chronologically to the early and late nineteenth century.

The chapters on civic associations are the most original and the primary evidence for Forment's thesis that Latin Americans were able to break with authoritarian habits of the colonial period. Through an extensive review of newspapers, pamphlets, memoirs and travelers' accounts, he has uncovered information on 7056 voluntary associations, such as mutual aid, educational, professional, charitable, religious, recreational and economic. He groups these into various sub-categories, which are not always clear or consistent, but this does not detract from his larger argument that the vast majority fall within civil society. In general, Forment finds that the number of new associations created increased steadily over the century, with temporary declines during periods of civil warfare or foreign invasions, and that they provided a space within which members developed habits of self-governance and civil deliberation. But the contrasts that emerge between Mexico and Peru are striking, if not surprising. Not only were such associations more numerous in Mexico, they tended to be more open in their membership, more widespread throughout the country, and more democratic in their governance. Forment attributes the relative weakness in Peruvian associational life to its colonial heritage and political instability, although Mexico was in a similar situation in this regard. More specifically, it seems that rigid racial divisions, military conflicts fought by conscripted armies rather than civic militias, and centralized as compared to federalist forms of government slowed the growth of democratic practices in Peru. The more open political system at the local level...