LIBERTY AND LIBERALISM IN MEXICO
As political practice strayed from ideal, Mexican historians and politicians sought to reaffirm the country’s liberal past. Many books and articles have attempted to show that liberalism was at the core of the founding of the republic in spite of authoritarian practices.39 Liberal theories had to contend with traditional ideas and practices, such as the common negotiation among actors over the enforcement of laws, as well as long-established patron-client relations. For years, historians debated
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whether modernity had lost to tradition or vice versa. Daniel Cosío Villegas, in his well-known Historia moderna de México (1955), claimed that political practice after the Reforma and the República Restaurada (the era of liberal dominance in the nineteenth century) had “betrayed” the political constitution of the country.40 Jesús Reyes Heroles, on the contrary, proposed that liberalism had been successful in establishing an alliance between the middle classes and the lower strata of the population. Whereas Cosío Villegas focused on the second half of the nineteenth century, Reyes Heroles’s optimism was grounded in an analysis of the first decades after independence.
In contemporary Mexico, nineteenth-century liberalism is not just a historical phenomenon. It is, as Charles Hale states, an ideological landmark. The political relevance of liberalism has often obstructed sound historical research.41 National histories, as Appleby recognizes, rest on a volatile mixture of the moral and the instrumental. Because they “aim to establish order through shared sentiments, they seek consensus, but because they partake in scholarly traditions inimicable to propaganda, they encourage critical reasoning.”42 Until the late 1960s, the historiography on liberalism reflected more the first trait than the second. Reyes Heroles, a statesman, was far from a detached scholar.43 His interpretation of liberalism was inevitably partisan.
The debate on liberalism in Mexico centers on the potency ascribed to inherited intellectual traditions. Liberal historians, following the lead of Cosío Villegas, have constructed an ideal picture of late-nineteenth-century Mexico (1867–76). Under liberal rule, they contend, the country enjoyed unparalleled liberty, and individual rights flourished as they had never before—or since. In order to establish the rule of law, the country must look back to its liberal past, these historians claim. This use of history by liberal intellectuals has been challenged. François-Xavier
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Guerra, Laurens Ballard Perry, and Fernando Escalante assert that the historical record does not support the rosy picture portrayed by Cosío Villegas and other sympathetic historians of the Restored Republic.44 Echoing Morse, these three scholars claim that liberal institutions presupposed the existence of a body of citizens. In Mexico these were absent from the political scene: the relevant actors were not individuals but the corporations, the army, and the Church as well as the Indian communities. Traditional practices superimposed liberal forms. Escalante characterized liberal citizens in Mexico as “imaginary citizens,”45 but other scholars have not given up the effort to establish historically the roots of limited and constitutional government in Mexico.46
Against the nationalistic “official” history Charles Hale provides a more objective overall view of liberalism in Mexico. His work still is
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the best and most authoritative account on the subject.47 Prior to Hale’s work, little comparative research had been undertaken.48 Hale argued that
constitutionalism in Mexico took two forms, the doctrinaire and the historical or traditional. The doctrinaire tendency reflected a belief that rigid adherence to or imposition of the precepts of the written document, however general or abstract, could guarantee the realization of constitutional order. Doctrinaire constitutionalists often took a radical and democratic political stand, believing it was necessary to change society to conform to the constitution. Historical or traditional constitutionalists, arguing that a constitution should reflect social and historical reality, tried to change precepts they found abstract and unrealizable in Mexico. They tended to be politically moderate or conservative and socially elitist; historical constitutionalists called for “strong government,” at the same time resisting personal presidential power. Historical constitutionalism in Mexico drew its inspiration from a current of French political thought that had its origins in Montesquieu and was put forth in the nineteenth century by Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Edouard de Laboulaye. French constitutionalists idealized Anglo-American institutions and made their point of departure a critique of the French Revolution and the egalitarian revolutionary tradition.49
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After 1857, the principal debates between doctrinaire and historical constitutionalists in Mexico
focused on the democratic and egalitarian provisions of the Constitution of 1857—the rights of man, universal male suffrage, a single chamber legislature, parliamentary government, a weakened executive, and popular election of judges. The debates emerged first in 1878 when historical constitutionalists, led by Justo Sierra and his colleagues in the newspaper La Libertad, attacked the “dogma of equality” that permeated the Constitution and called for conservative reforms. They did so in the name of “scientific politics,” since by the 1870s the new scientific philosophy of positivism had melded with historical constitutionalism. They called themselves “new” or “conservative” liberals as opposed to “old” liberals, such as José María Vigil and Ignacio M. Altamirano, doctrinaire constitutionalists who defended the democratic and egalitarian provisions of the 1857 document. The debate resurfaced in 1893 over an effort by the historical constitutionalists, again led by Justo Sierra, to reform the Constitution to make judges irremovable, instead of being popularly and periodically elected, and thus subject to political manipulation. The measure was designed to limit the increasingly personal power of President Porfirio Díaz. They were again opposed by doctrinaire defenders of the pure Constitution (who did not necessarily support the personal power of Díaz). In the course of the debate the historical constitutionalists, or advocates of scientific politics, came to be labeled “científicos” and the doctrinaire constitutionalists “Jacobins,” labels that became embedded in the political rhetoric of the next thirty years.50
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As Hale asserts, the major enterprise of political liberalism in Mexico during the first ten years after independence was the construction of a constitutional system. Mexico experienced in the 1820s what Reyes Heroles termed a “constitutional euphoria.” The constitution became a fetish, a magical object that would solve all the social and political ills of the country. In a way, this faith in written constitutions was new. The constitution was not considered as the safeguard of an ancient form of government (as the mixed constitution that preserved liberty by securing a proper equilibrium among the one, the few, and the many). It reflected not the ancient constitution but a whole new set of maxims and principles that would create a free civil state. The constitution was thus an instrument of the future, not of the past. In the midst of this “euphoria” some writers recommended “prudence” and argued that reformers should consider the “character” and the particular “needs” of the people. One pamphleteer argued that “it is undeniable that the safety of the people is the first law of societies, even prior to the best meditated constitution and even older than society itself.”51
Mexican liberals followed the French model regarding a strict separation of powers. The American system of checks and balances was little known in Mexico when the first charters were drawn. The Federalist Papers was not translated or published until 1829.52 It is thus not surprising that Mora, the leading liberal figure of the time, discovered that the “law” did not provide for adequate boundaries to the legislative branch. That “defect” was responsible, in his eyes, for all the “woes suffered by the peoples of Europe” who had adopted a representative system. In support of his ideas Mora cited the examples of Rome as well as those of the French and Spanish revolutions. Yet, when assessing the lack of effective restraints on legislative invasion,