The (Mexican) Liberal Republic
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Work in progress. Please do not quote or circulate. Secularization and Religion: The Legacy of Liberalism in Mexico1 Faviola Rivera-Castro Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Stanford Humanities Center/FSI, April 25, 2008 According to a common view in México today, the attempt to transform Mexican political institutions according to liberal values since the nineteenth century has been a complete failure.2 On this view, the reasons for this failure are, primarily, that liberal values and ideas were “foreign” and “imported”, such that they could hardly have taken root in a society that had recently emerged from three centuries of colonial rule and was, therefore, backwards and “traditional”. Scholars often complain that liberals failed to realize the values of freedom and equality, that there is no rule of law, no public culture of toleration, and no effective enforcement of fundamental individual rights either civil or political. The usual diagnosis is that the experiment at application failed in Mexico because the ex-colony was a “traditional” society that lacked the cultural resources that are required for the successful implementation of liberal values.3 On this view, the main difficulties were primarily that individualism is foreign to Mexican social practices, which are more community oriented, and that there was no tradition of political representation and accountability in a social culture characterized by hierarchical decision 1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Stanford Humanities Center and Tufts University. I would like to thank both audiences for their comments and encouragement. I mention specially, Erin Kelly, Chris Korsgaard, Miriam Leonard, Lionel McPherson, Ángel Oquendo, and Tim Scanlon. I also thank Jenny Mansbridge for an extremely helpful conversation on this topic. 2 Escalante (1992), Córdova (1989), Aguilar (2000). On this point see Hale (1973). 3 This is a central claim in Escalante (1992). Aguilar (2000) claims that the experiment failed because of inadequacies in the model itself. 2 making, paternalism, and corporatism.4 The basic line of thinking is that liberal ideas were imported in México by enthusiastic intellectuals and politicians, who sought to transform a backwards and "traditional" society without realizing that they were doomed to fail.5 The fact that liberal ideas were “imported”, as opposed to home grown, has played a central role in the diagnosis of why the Mexican liberal project had to fail. This complaint has been voiced since the nineteenth century by conservative critics of liberalism that echo E. Burke’s critique of the French Revolution and has continued to have adherents ever since.6 In our own time, some members of the radical political left repudiate the liberal discourse of human rights as foreign and imperialistic. This is a point where the political right and left have managed to converge, namely, in condemning liberal values as foreign and even imperialistic. Though there is some undeniable truth to this diagnosis, which I will call “the failure view”, it is also striking in light of the fact that, since the nineteenth century, liberal reforms have met with the active opposition of the two political actors that have been most affected by them, namely, the Catholic church and indigenous groups.7 From the point of view of the Catholic church, the main danger in liberalism has been its determination to secularize society, which liberal reformers mainly pursued by enforcing a radical separation of religion from politics and a system of public and mandatory basic secular education. At different moments since the nineteenth century, the Catholic 4 Escalante (1992), p. 37, 87, y 289. 5 Escalante (1992), p. 50. 6 This is the criticism by Lucas Alamán. See Hale (1972), p. 20. 7 Arnaldo Córdova distingue entre los logros del liberalismo y sus promesas incumplidas. Entre los logros menciona las reformas liberales que rompieron con el pasado: “la abolición de los fueros religioso y militar, la nacionalización de los bienes del clero, la separación de la Iglesia y el Estado y la total secularización de las relaciones civiles.” Entre las promesas incumplidas menciona “una sociedad de iguales mediante la libertad de todos ante la ley”, “un Estado independiente de los intereses particulares”, “la libertad en la democracia”, y “un estado de derecho.” Córdova (1989), p.16. 3 Church has actively opposed secular education.8 From the point of view of indigenous groups, on the other hand, their reaction has been directed against liberal economic reforms, which inevitably undermined their traditional economic practices based on communal land holding and a communal system of production oriented towards self- subsistence, which is, in turn, deeply intertwined with their social and religious practices.9 Nineteenth century liberal reformers were indeed guided by the ideal of a market oriented capitalist economy of individual property owners, which they enforced as far as they could, and which was bound to clash with what they perceived as the corporate property of land by indigenous groups.10 Indigenous peasant revolts broke since the nineteenth century in response to these economic transformations.11 This militant and often violent political opposition to liberal ideas in México has been carried over to the present time. In recent years, the Catholic church has recovered part of its lost political influence and has picked up again its struggle to introduce the catholic religion in public schooling.12 Indigenous revolts against the injustices produced by a market oriented capitalist economy are also part of the current political situation, as the Zapatista revolt from the 1990s has made manifest. In light of this strong and long lasting social and political reaction to liberal values and institutions, the main purpose of my project is to articulate an alternative to the “failure view” that can make better sense of this situation. The idea of failure suggests that all there is left to explain is why the 8 Blancarte (1992) y (1994). 9 Hale (1972), capítulo 7, p. 231 y sigs. 10 Hale (1972), capítulo 7. 11 Reina (1980). 12 Blancarte (2004), p. 30. Escribe Blancarte (1994): “La doctrina social católica no puede transigir con el Estado mexicano porque éste ha edificado su régimen sobre principios emanados del liberalismo, es decir, la soberanía popular, el individualismo, el laicismo y todas su consecuencias...Así, salvo que el catolicismo pasa a ser religión nacional o que presenciemos la constitución de un Estado confesional, la iglesia católica 4 liberal project could not have met with success. My purpose, by contrast, is to focus on what liberal reforms did accomplish in order to make sense of the strong political reaction that they have provoked. For the purposes of this presentation, however, I will focus on the questions about the legacy of liberalism motivated by the reaction of the Catholic church to liberal reforms. I will set aside the questions raised by indigenous peasant revolts regarding the relation between liberal political values and market oriented capitalist economic relations. In recent years, the Catholic church has, inadvertently, motivated the question of how to understand the legacy of liberalism in México. Despite its traditional anti- liberalism, the Church has appealed to the liberal values of religious freedom and of toleration in order to make the case for introducing religion in basic schooling. It is tempting to use the conceptual framework of contemporary North American liberalism in order to address this issue. From this point of view, it could perhaps be argued that, for the sake of religious freedom, parents should be granted the right of having their children taught the religion of their choice at the public school. My aim here is not to examine this sort of argument, but to contest the adequacy of the contemporary liberal North American conceptual framework for addressing the question about the relation between institutionalized religion and the state in the Mexican context. I believe that discussion of this issue should proceed on the basis of political concepts that are responsive to the way in which liberalism developed in México since the nineteenth century. However, the content of liberalism, as developed in Mexico, still remains to be articulated conceptually y el Estado en México podrán llegar a un acomodo, a un nuevo modus vivendi, pero jamás a la conciliación definitiva” (p. 23-4). 5 as a development of a political view that we may recognize as “liberal.” A central purpose of this paper is to begin to do precisely this. I wish to make clear that although this project must draw on historical accounts of how liberal ideas were appropriated by Mexican political actors in the nineteenth century, my purpose is not historical, but philosophical. My main concern is not to reconstruct historically the various ways in which liberal ideas were, in fact, appropriated, though I also do this to some extent. My main interest is to focus on those appropriations that became embodied in basic political institutions and were, consequently, central to political practice. I do this in order to address the normative question whether such appropriations, if any, could be justified from a political point of view.13 This project raises the question of how to understand the relation between the historical development of a political idea, as embodied in political institutions and practices, and its justification as the right or correct political idea that ought to guide political action and debate. Thus, my purpose is not merely to point to some historical facts, but to defend certain political ideas as right or correct in today's Mexican political context. As we proceed, the picture of liberalism in México that will emerge will differ in an important respect from contemporary North American liberalism regarding the relation between institutionalized religion and the coercive power of the state. In what follows, I will proceed by going back and forth between offering some historical background about the reception and implementation of liberal political values in nineteenth century México and addressing the conceptual issues central to my argument.