El conservadurismo mexicano en el siglo xix (review)

Although some of the twelve essays in this collection are not actually about conservatism as such, it is still a useful assortment of studies of the ideology and regional bases of the frequently demonized conservative tendency in nineteenth-century Mexico. The articles (all of which are in Spanish) considerably advance our knowledge by emphasizing that in most cases the conservative faction before 1849 and the conservative party after 1849 was not reactionary, but that Mexican conservatism was more a moderate liberalism, leaning toward centralism or corporativism, pro-Church, but not unanimously so, and capitalist-developmentalist. In all cases, even when the clergy is the object of study, conservatives appear to be regionally based and internally divided, like all other political persuasions in nineteenth-century Mexico. The closest thing to a single major ideologue of conservatism was Lucas Alamán, but after his death in 1853, no thinker took his place. When conservatives thought they had finally won control of the country, with the creation of an imported monarchy under Maximilian, they found the monarchy itself and its foreign sponsors favored liberalism. The defeat of the second empire constituted the collapse of Mexican conservatism, but triumphant liberalism incorporated more than a few conservative elements. While the articles are of varying weight and focus, they provide a lot for the reader to ponder.

After an introduction by editors Fowler and Morales, Michael T. Ducey provides a close-up study of conservative defenders of Spanish dominion in the north of Veracruz province, effectively making the point that the struggle for independence was a genuine civil war. Will Fowler's article details the idiosyncratic traditionalist-liberal thought of Carlos María de Bustamante, concluding with the intriguing question whether Bustamante represented anyone, but leaving it unanswered. Donald F. Stevens presents a case study of how the Catholic Church hierarchy's attempt to blame the 1833 cholera epidemic on liberal reforms did not persuade many Mexicans, while the message that cholera could be transmitted by promiscuity caused a substantial drop in the birth-rate. Anne Staples outlines how primary education in Mexico remained profoundly hierarchical and religious throughout the early republic. Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, in an article with a notably wide range of primary sources, offers a broad interpretation of politics from 1830 to 1853, during a period of legislative dominance, making the point that centralist liberalism failed to find a formula to replace the inoperative radical federalism of 1824. Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño looks at conservative thought in the centralist movement in the 1830s. I was not entirely convinced by his argument that the only point at which real conservatives (as opposed to traditionalists or reactionaries) came to power was 1835-1841 with the first centralist republic.

In a sweeping review of the Mexican clergy up to 1854, Brian F. Connaughton emphasizes that the clergy was too divided to launch a single unified reply to liberalism, that the Church was as regionally based as lay political movements were, and that while some dioceses (such as Puebla) were conservative, others (such as Guadalajara) were liberal. He calls this "ecclesiastical federalism." Michael P. Costeloe offers the insight that almost all Mexican presidents before 1855 came from outside Mexico City and were not incorporated into the capital's elite circles, which cost them the support of the city's commercial leaders. He uses the rather startling example of Mariano Arista, who seemed particularly determined to alienate the capital's elite.

The remaining articles study the period after 1855. Brian R. Hamnett studies the period of the French intervention and second empire, 1858-1867. He emphasises the Catholic nationalism of the conservatives and their rapid disillusion with the regime of Maximilian. Guy P.C. Thomson traces the counter-reform in the sierra of Puebla in 1854-1886, a center of conservative power, where as often as the...