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 Please do not quote or circulate.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.
6
1. Liberal ideas and values in México
In order to assess the legacy of liberalism in México we need a non controversial
definition of the core values of liberalism as a political doctrine. At the core of liberalism
lies the conception of the individual as the fundamental source of normative claims (as
opposed to groups or communities, political or otherwise). On a liberal view, the
individual is the subject of the most fundamental rights and liberties, and it is the main
function of political power to protect them (the basic civil and political rights: freedom of
thought and conscience, freedom of movement and association, the right to hold private
property as well as to vote in open public elections and to run for public office).
Individuals, regarded as citizens, are equal in this respect (they stand in a relation of civil
equality). In liberal doctrine, the normative priority of the individual leads to the moral
necessity of representative government, though the reasons for this transition can differ
significantly.14
Liberal ideas of individual freedom and civil equality began to influence
intellectuals and political life in the New Spain in the nineteenth century in the aftermath
of the French and American Revolutions. In 1808 Napoleon invaded imperial Spain,
which led to an expansion of liberal political activism and intense debates in the center of the empire, and eventually precipitated the loss of most of Spain's colonies in the
Americas. In 1812, the Spanish empire drafted its first liberal constitution, which had important repercussions in the American colonies.15 Civil war broke out in México in
1810, lead by Creoles (descendants of Europeans born in the Americas) seeking
13 I thank Lionel McPherson for pressing me on this point. 14 The arguments that lead to representative government differ significantly in Locke and Kant. 7 independence. Though the revolt was crushed, independence was proclaimed in 1821 by a counterinsurgent movement that sought to stop the spreading of Spanish liberal ideas in the New Spain. Mexico became independent in the name of "religion, independence, and union". Shortly after, armed revolts became the staple of political life during most of the century. Wars were fought among the partisans of the old colonial hierarchical and catholic order, on the one hand, and the defenders of the newly arrived liberal values, on the other, until the liberal side managed to gain control in 1867. Liberals also resorted to violent means to settle the disputes among themselves about how to shape the political institutions of the new nation.
The liberal values that most appealed to Mexican intellectuals and politicians in the nineteenth century were those central in the first Spanish liberal movement from the early nineteenth century. These values were, in turn, importantly influenced by the
French Revolution: national sovereignty, representation, civil liberty and equality, separation of powers, private property, freedom of the press, the attack against the corporations –in particular, the Catholic church-, and a commitment to transform rural economic relations in the direction of a market oriented capitalist economy.16 Different values were emphasized at different moments during the nineteenth century according to changing political situations. The ideas of popular sovereignty, freedom, and legal equality resonated early in the century during the struggle of emancipation from Spain and the revolt against forms of serfdom and race based political subordination.17 How to
15 Breña (2006). 16 Breña (2006), capítulo 3. Hamnett in Doyle (1989). 17 On the uses of some of these ideas, Hamnett writes: “The elites adopted the doctrine of sovereignty of the nation or people, in order to legitimize the break with the metropolis. They adopted constitutionalism as a reaction to ministerial absolutism. Yet they had no intention of creating either open political systems or functioning democracies. Hamnett (1977), p. 326. 8
understand popular sovereignty in relation to representation was the subject of agitated
debates and conflicts.18 The supremacy of civil power, private property, universal male
suffrage, and social reform became more prominent towards the mid century. The first
liberal Mexican constitution dates from 1857, and the current political constitution from
1917 is recognizably liberal according to the characterization of the core concepts of liberalism that I just offered. Liberalism was the official doctrine of the emerging
Mexican state during most of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth. It is therefore indeed remarkable to claim that liberal doctrine has failed to shape Mexican basic political institutions. So, one should ask what motivates, what I
have called "the failure view".
An important assumption behind the failure view is that there is a single right
model of what liberalism is and ought to be, such that if Mexican political practices and
institutions deviate from the model, they turn out to be deficient or a flat failure.19 The
"failure view" assumes a static conception of liberal doctrine as a fixed “model” that was
established by Anglo-North American liberal authors, political institutions, and
practices.20 My objection to this “single model” view of liberalism, as I will call it, is that
it fails to take into account the fact that political ideas get articulated in response to
specific political circumstances. Liberal doctrine in Europe and North America was first
articulated in response to specific political circumstances and has very much changed
18 Hamnett (1993), p. 109. On representation see Guerra (1994), Hamnett (1996). 19 Escalante (1992), p. 32 y sigs., y "A manera de conclusión". 20 Breña (2006) points to the difficulties in offering a definition of liberalism (p. 535). Aguilar Rivera (2000) describe el orden liberal como sigue: "gobierno limitado, la separación de poderes, el estado de derecho, la tolerancia, el federalismo"; "garantizar los derechos individuales y las libertades asociadas a la democracia liberal" (p. 17). Y más adelante: "la tolerancia religiosa, la libertad de discutir los asuntos públicos, las restricciones al comportamiento de los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado, elecciones libres, un gobierno constitucional basado en la separación de poderes, presupuestos estatales sujetos a inspección 9
over three hundred years in order to address both conceptual challenges and changing
political scenarios. The content of liberalism has been very much contested both by
critics and liberal authors themselves. Similarly, I think, in order to assess the legacy of
liberalism in México, we should see liberalism as a political doctrine that has evolved in
response both to its critics and political social changes. The content of this doctrine is far
from being fixed conceptually once and for all ahead of actual political practice. On the
contrary, such a content remains yet to be articulated.
My second objection to the failure view is against its conception of how to
understand the relation between political ideals and actual political practice. This view
assumes what I regard as a "mechanical" conception of what it is to apply political ideas
to transform reality. This view assumes that, once the content of a political model has been fixed, one may “apply” it to novel circumstances for which the model was not originally conceived –such as independent Mexico in the nineteenth century. The question therefore arises about the reasonableness, legitimacy, and viability of this kind of extension. The crucial assumption, on the failure view, however, is that the assessment
as to whether the efforts at application succeed or fail must proceed from the point of
view of the right model which was the starting point.21 On this conception, if in the
process of applying the model, new political institutions and practices emerge that were
not contained in the original right model, they must be considered as “deviant” or as
evidences of a failed application. Thus, adherents to this view often point out that the
attempt to apply the liberal model in México generated new institutions and practices that
pública y una política económica comprometida con el crecimiento económico estable basada en la propiedad privada" (p. 127). 21 Escalante (1992), p. 18, 32 10
resulted from the combination of liberal ideas and local practices. But they regard this as an unwelcome result.22
It is, of course, true, that nineteenth century Mexican liberals "imported" liberal
values from Europe and North America. The question about the legitimacy and
workability of “importing” political ideas to significantly different social contexts is often pressing in post-colonial societies, such as those of Latin America. This question is commonly posed in terms of a tension between, on the one hand, what is “foreign” and, therefore, in principle, questionable; and what is “authentic” and, consequently, in principle, acceptable, on the other. This tension is usually run together with the debate whether moral and political values can be universally valid, or whether they must be necessarily local.23 The two oppositions tend to be conflated because the presumption is
that European and North American moral and political values are claimed to be universal,
whereas those that originate in Latin America are taken to be local and contextual. My
own view is that these two sets of oppositions are completely unhelpful, and even
harmful, for practical purposes. Ideas and values travel all the time everywhere, and
people appropriate them in novel ways no matter what scholars say about it. The fact that
liberal values were imported in México does not imply that they could not be good and
useful, nor does it imply that they could not be appropriated in fruitful and original ways.
It is simply false that for values to be good and useful they have to be homegrown, which
is what contextualism holds.24 Whether a given political idea can be good and useful
22 Escalante (1992), "A manera de conclusion". For a positive view on the local appropriation of liberal ideas and practices see Annino en Annino y Guerra (2003) and Thompson (1991). 23 Díaz Polanco. 24 This is the view implied in Escalante (1992). Various forms of contextualism became prominent in recent decades in the “communitarist” critique of liberalism in the work of Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, Alasdair McIntyre, and Charles Taylor. See the discussion in Bell (1993); Kymlicka (2002), capítulo 6. For a criticism see Kelly (2001). 11
beyond the context in which it originated will have to be assessed on its merits. The fact
that a political idea may be “foreign” and “imported” is, by itself, irrelevant. Homegrown ideas and values can be wrong and extremely harmful.
By contrast with the assumption that nineteenth century Mexican liberals were
trying to apply a political model to a recalcitrant reality, I wish to defend the view that we
should see them using liberal ideas and values because they found them attractive and
useful in order to respond to their own political problems and circumstances.25 It is a
mistake to suppose that they were applying a model that they found attractive without
much regard to the social and political circumstances in which they found themselves. It
is far more fruitful to understand what Mexican liberals were doing as using liberal ideas
in order to address their own political problems. The crucial difference between
“applying” and “using” a political idea, in this context, is the following. The idea of
“application” suggests that both the content and the justification of a political idea are
fixed and established ahead of actual practice. The idea of "use", by contrast, is meant to
capture that the content cannot be fully determined prior to practice since it is subject to
change as one responds to an also changing political environment. Thus, the political
justification of a political idea cannot be established ahead of political practice either:
whether such an idea can be deemed justified or not will depend on whether it can
function as a good or poor response to a political problem.
If we see political ideas as “models” or “theories” to be “applied” in reality, the
relation between theory and practice may become obscure in the sense that it may not be
at all clear why anyone would want to apply this theory in this context. This kind of 12
puzzlement is characteristic in the “failure view”.26 Its adherents assume that liberal ideas
are already morally justified in some sense, but they ask why nineteenth century Mexican
politicians wanted to apply them in a society that was so inadequate to realize them. From
this perspective, the task of application looks like a problem of social engineering. Since
the content and moral justification of liberal ideas have already been established, the only
relevant question that remains is whether the social and political context could, in fact, be
transformed according to them. It is worth noticing how foreign this sort of view results
to contemporary liberalism, according to which political justification is addressed to the
citizenry and can only be established from this perspective.27
If, alternatively, we see political ideas as guides to action, we need to take the
point of view of the political actors themselves in order to articulate why they find these
ideas relevant in their own political practice and the purposes for which they employ
them. On this approach, both the content and the justification of political ideas cannot be
taken as already established. To be sure, in the case of the fundamental political ideas of
individual freedom and civil equality, there is a strong moral presumption in their favor,
at least in the sense that the arguments that opposed them are unconvincing.28 In using a
political idea in order to solve specific political problems, one may be pushed to develop
it in various ways or to generate new related political concepts, practices, and institutions
25 Here I am following the account on the practical role of moral concepts offered in Korsgaard (1996), Lecture 1; (1995) and (2003). See also John Rawls’s understanding of moral theories as answers to moral problems and questions in Rawls (2000), Introduction. 26 Thomson (1991) who does not adhere to the “failure view” points out, nonetheless, that it is “remarkable that Liberalism, a secular and individualistic doctrine, took such a hold in a country with such a profound Hispanic and Catholic legacy” (p. 265). As regards secularism, the reason why it took hold in México is precisely because of the profound Hispanic and Catholic legacy, which, as we will see, became an obstacle in the process of state building. 27 See Rawls's account of the liberal principle of political legitimacy, in Rawls (1993), p. 137. 28 I cannot develop this point here, but I think that, in the case of these two fundamental ideas, the most promising strategy is to resort to a conception of justification as "defense" inspired in Kant's negative 13 that were not contained in the “original.” The particular content of the idea gets determined through actual practice as well as further conceptual reflection on such practice. The complete justification of a political idea thus developed will depend on whether it can be regarded as an appropriate response or solution to the problems it is meant to address. Thus, I think that we should see liberalism in Mexico as a set of political concepts, values, practices, and institutions that, though “imported” from Europe and North America, also developed in response to the specific political circumstances of a society emerging from three centuries of colonial rule. Mid nineteenth century Mexican liberals were pushed by their own political problems and circumstances to understand
European and North American liberal ideas in ways that were responsive to such problems and circumstances.
The content of liberalism in México, far from being fixed by an antecedently given model developed elsewhere, still remains to be articulated. The political ideas and institutions that emerged during the process of using liberal ideas and values to solve local problems will give us the content of liberal doctrine in México. It also remains to be examined whether such ideas and institutions can withstand scrutiny today. We must be prepared to find concepts and practices that we may not find in Europe or North America, which may be no less liberal for this reason, though this is, of course, an open question.
We must also be prepared to articulate new political concepts in order to capture what political actors were trying to accomplish, or even perhaps to articulate what they were seeking. Such new concepts could orient political action in also novel ways. It is central to this articulation, however, to determine whether the uses of liberal ideas by Mexican
arguments for freedom and morality. On this point see Kant's (Critique of Practical Reason), Rawls (Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy). 14 political actors issued in what can be recognized as a liberal position.29 The primary reason why I call them “liberals” is because this is how they called themselves. As is well known, the word “liberal” first emerged as a political term in Spain in the early nineteenth century, in the context of the first liberal debates that led to the 1812 constitution. The term was then naturally used in the colonies as well. I want to make clear that I have no stake in the term itself. It is the conceptual content that matters to my argument.
The assumption of a single and antecedently given model of what liberalism is and ought to be is deeply misleading in two ways. First, this assumption leads one to overlook those features of liberalism in Mexico that may deviate from, or may not be central to, the allegedly "right" model, but that happen to be of central importance to the development of liberalism in México. This is exactly the case with the two central projects of liberal reformers in the mid nineteenth century, which were: first, to establish the supremacy of civil power and to secularize politics and civil relations; and second, the project of transforming the ex-colony into a market oriented capitalist economy. These two projects have been central to liberalism in Mexico, have had a lasting influence in politics and society at large, and, at least the first one, is arguably also the project at which liberals turned out to be most successful.30 However, they are rarely if ever mentioned by the partisans of the "failure view." The reason for this, I believe, is that on the preferred antecedently fixed model, secularization does not figure as a distinctively liberal project. Economic "modernization" does figure, but not always. As I mentioned,
29 I thank Michael Bratman for pressing me on this point. 30 Córdova (1989), capítulo 1. 15
on a purely constitutional conception, social and economic issues are left out of the
picture.
The second way in which the single model view turns out to be misleading is that
the important question is not how political ideas, institutions, and practices developed in
México compare with an antecedently given model, but whether such political ideas,
institutions, and practices were good or poor responses to the realities of Mexican
politics. It would be far more fruitful, I think, to discuss the transformations of liberalism
in México in light of our own political circumstances and problems. It is sterile and
damaging to keep assessing liberal institutions from the point of view of a supposedly
fixed right model. In what follows, I will focus on the Mexican liberal project of coerced
secularization, and contrast it with the emphasis on toleration in contemporary North
American liberalism.
2. The supremacy of a central civil power and coerced secularization
If we take contemporary North American liberalism as the point of reference, it is a
striking fact about liberalism in Mexico that toleration and pluralism, which are
fundamental values in the former, have never been central to the latter.31 The civil
freedoms of religion, thought, and conscience, are indeed guaranteed by the 1917
constitution, but it has only been in the past fifteen years or so that demands for toleration
and respect for diversity have been forcefully voiced in the public sphere.32 If we assess
31 I am taking John Rawls as the main the center figure in contemporary North American liberalism. On this point, see his Introduction to Political Liberalism. 32 The Catholic church has traditionally invoked religious freedom in order to argue for the inclusion of Catholic teachings at public schools. I do not take this as an instance of a demand for toleration given the 16 this phenomenon from the point of view of North American liberalism, Mexican liberal politics looks radically deficient if not incoherent, as adherents to the failure view often point out. It can appear tempting to claim that, therefore, Mexican liberals were not truly liberals or that they simply did not know what they were doing. According to the self- understanding of North American liberals, the historical origin of liberalism is "the
Reformation and its aftermath, with the long controversies over religious toleration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."33 The values of freedom conscience and of toleration were first articulated in this context.34 But if we look at the political situation in
México in the nineteenth century we find that not only there was nothing remotely like a war of religion, but that the Catholic church had a pervasive influence in political practice, institutions, and society at large. All of the population, with very few exceptions, was Catholic. This is why religious toleration and freedom of religion were not important social demands. The Catholic religion remained the official doctrine of the independent state in its first constitution of 1824. Thus, it may seem tempting to take this as evidence that Mexican liberals were simply naive in trying to apply a political model that they found attractive in a social political context that radically differed from the original political situation for which the model was first articulated. This is exactly the kind of temptation that I wish to resist. If we think, by contrast, that nineteenth century
Mexican liberals were using liberal ideas and values because they found them useful in order to address their own political problems, we need to begin by considering what these problems were.
intolerant agenda of the Catholic church in education. On this point see Blancarte (1992), capítulo 1; and (1994). 33 Rawls (1993), p. xxiv; See also Rawls (2007), Introduction, section 3. 34 Rawls (1993), p. xxiv; Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration. 17
At the time of the most radical liberal reforms of the mid nineteenth century, the
two most pressing political task were, first, the construction of a powerful central state
that could hold the nation together in the face of both internal and external threats; the
second task was to draft a new constitution. We can bring together the two tasks of
building a powerful central authority and of drafting a new constitution for the new
nation under the political task of establishing the legitimacy of the new central state. The
fall of the colonial government after independence left the new nation without a local
central authority since the colonial central power had rested in the king of Spain.35 Upon
independence, the two powers with national presence were the two most powerful
corporations of the late colonial period, namely, the Catholic Church and the army.
Independence also led to the growth of local powers exercised by state governors and local leaders (caciques) that continually challenged and contested the authority of the central government.36 A third obstacle was external. During the nineteenth century, the
new nation lost half of its territory in the course of the North American expansion and
was invaded both by North America and France. Some historians still express surprise at
the fact that México was able to hold itself together as a nation during these events.37
That this was the achievement of liberal regimes should not be lost out of sight.38
For the purposes of this presentation, the political task that concerns us here is the
establishment of the supremacy of civil power against the Catholic Church. This was the
35 Córdova en Blanco y Woldenberg (1993). 36 Hale (1972) writes: "Ante la inexistencia de un gobierno central, las provincias se dispusieron a crearlo. El resultado de esto fue la Constitución federalista de 1824.” (p. 83). 37 Hamnett (1993). 38 Hamnett (2006) señala la importante dimensión simbólica en esta lucha durante la invasión francesa: “Juárez se veía no como un hombre, sino como la República misma. En ese sentido, sentía como propias las heridas inflingidas a la República, con el fin de salvarla no sólo de sus enemigos sino también de sí misma. El carruaje negro, que hizo retroceder cada vez más a Juárez, se convirtió en el tabernáculo de la República” (p. 183). 18 problem of establishing a superior power that could claim to be the legitimate civil authority. The situation was the following. The legitimacy of the Spanish crown in the colonies rested on an authorization from the Vatican to spread the Catholic religion and to convert the American natives to the "true religion". In the late colonial period, the
Catholic Church was the main economic agent, and exercised significant political power.
It was the only financial institution, which provided loans to all sorts of economic pursuits. It run the clerical branch of the colonial bureaucracy, which, apparently, was often more efficient than the secular one. The Church also kept the registry of births and deaths, and was in charge of matrimony and of all education. The Church provided a structure that was crucial for holding the colony together in the late colonial period: a common economy, the colonial bureaucracy, and the clerical territorial organization into dioceses.39 At the same time, however, the crown maintained supremacy over the Church by a system of "royal patronage" through which the crown, by concession from the
Vatican, was entitled to fill vacancies in the clerical hierarchy and to control all communication between the colonial church authorities and the Vatican, among other prerogatives.40 The crown had the obligation to protect the Church, which, in turn, was obliged to assist the crown financially in case of need.
The erosion of the economic power of the church started under the Bourbon rule in the second half of the eighteenth century.41 During this period of absolutism, the
Bourbon rulers sought to tighten its political control over the colony in order to extract higher economic revenue from and through the Church, which saw its wealth significantly undermined. But the struggle of the emerging independent state with the
39 Hamnett (1993), p. 104. 40 On ecclesiastical patronage see Costeloe (1978). 19
Church during the mid nineteenth century took place at various levels.42 The first one
was also economic and fiscal. The new state, just as the colonial rulers before, saw the
Church as the main source of revenue. A second level of confrontation with the Church
was political. As a corporation, the Church enjoyed legal immunities (fueros) and had its
own system of law and tribunals, which placed it as a political and legal power parallel to
the civil authorities. The third level of struggle was ideological: liberals saw the Church
as a bastion of obscurantism. Nineteenth century Mexico was a deeply Catholic society in
which everyday life was organized around Catholic rituals. The inquisition, had been
restored as recent as 1815, to be abolished after independence. In addition to replacing
the Church as the most powerful economic and political agent, the new state faced also
the task of replacing the pervasive presence of Catholic rituals in politics and public life.
The economic, political, and social reforms that undermined the power of the
Church at these three levels were carried out in the name of public peace, freedom,
progress, civil equality, reason, and enlightenment.43 The most radical liberal reforms
from 1859 were issued in the context of a three year civil war fought against the central
government by those who defended the Church against the liberal attack. Undermining
the power of the Church was manifestly necessary in order to establish a public peace based on the absolute supremacy of a central civil government.44 As regards economic
reform, the confiscation of church's owned land and other possessions was carried out in
41 Hamnett (1969). 42 Hale (1972), capítulo 4. Hamnett (2006), capítulo 5. 43 Sobre estos puntos véase el "Manifiesto del gobierno constitucional a la nación, del 7 de julio de 1859, en la parte relativa al programa de la reforma". Tena (2005), pp. 634-637. See Hamnett (2006), cap 5. 44 En la "Ley de nacionalización de los bienes eclesiásticos" se lee: "Que si en otras veces podía dudarse por alguno que el clero ha sido una de las rémoras constantes para establecer la paz pública, hoy todos reconocen que está en abierta rebelión contra el soberano". Tena (2005), p. 638. 20
the name of public peace and progress.45 This served the purposes of helping to solve the
fiscal problem, eroding the power of the Church, and of pushing the transformation of
rural economic relations in the direction of a market oriented capitalist economy.
At the political and legal levels, liberal reformers had to establish the supremacy
of a civil power that could appear legitimate in a society where the Catholic religion had
traditionally been the source of legitimacy. Which liberal ideas were used and the way in
which they were interpreted was importantly determined by the confrontation with the
Church. The idea of national sovereignty was used as a substitute for the religious based
conception of legitimacy.46 It is an idea that was naturally appealing since the war of
independence, and has remained in the three political constitutions of independent
Mexico (1824, 1857, and 1917). It was very much open, however, how to interpret the
most fundamental political values. Before 1859, liberals saw no contradiction between
the rejection of a religious based conception of political legitimacy and upholding the
Catholic religion as official in a largely Catholic society.47 There was much discussion about how to conceive the relation between the state in the making and the old colonial corporation, but it was more or less assumed that the relation between the independent state and the Church had to be modeled on the colonial arrangement of royal patronage.48
It took a civil war with the Church to make manifest the need for the elimination of the
legal privileges of this corporation as well as for a radical separation of Church and state.
The attack against the Church's legal immunities was carried out in the name of civil
45 En el citado "Manifiesto del gobierno constitucional" se lee: "La nación se encuentra hoy en un momento solemne, porque el resultado de la encarnizada lucha que los partidarios del oscurantismo y de los abusos han provocado esta vez contra los más claros principios de la libertad y del progreso social, depende todo de su porvenir". Tena (2005), p. 634-5. 46 Constitución de 1857, artículos 39, 40, y 41. 47 The Catholic religion remained official in the 1824 constitution. Freedom of religion was not granted by the 1857 constitution, but was instituted until the liberal reforms from 1859. 21
equality.49 Though the idea of equality before the law was important in the struggle
against all privilege, its use in the attack against the Church was central. And liberals
pushed for the secularization of politics and of all civil relations. The liberal reforms from
1859 established the separation of Church and state, created a civil registry, instituted
civil matrimony, secularized cementeries and hospitals, and prohibited the assistance of
public officials on duty to religious services. Thus began the notorious anti-clerical character that the liberal Mexican state maintained through the end of the nineteenth
century, and which was deepened even further after the 1910 Revolution and through
most of the twentieth century.
I call the third level of confrontation with the Church "ideological" because it
consisted in a struggle to replace the pervasive influence of the Church in society at large
by articulating and disseminating through social institutions a set of secular moral values
and practices that could serve as an alternative to religious ones. The same liberal reforms
from 1859 established official public holidays, which overlapped with some of the
religious celebrations but largely replaced and limited them. In the name of protecting
freedom, liberal reforms prohibited convents, which means that they declared void the
authority of the Church to coerce nuns to devote themselves to a lifelong religious
commitment. The exclusion of the Church from education, however, was, by far, the
liberal reform that had the deepest and most lasting influence.50
The conceptual point that I aim to establish is that the interpretation of the
fundamental ideas of freedom and equality was shaped by this context. Both ideas were
employed in the struggle against despotic colonial rule, race based civil inequality,
48 Costeloe (1978). 49 Constitución de 1857, artículo 13. 22
hereditary legal privileges, and slavery. But the confrontation with the Church was central. As regards the interpretation of freedom, it is important to notice that freedom of religion was not granted by the 1857 Constitution. The civil freedoms that were granted were freedom of education, of occupation, from coerced confinement on religious grounds (in convents), of expression, of the press, association, movement, and the rights
to carry weapons, to due process, and to petition.51 While freedom of the press was a strongly felt social demand, freedom of religion was not. The fact that freedom of religion was granted by the 1859 liberal reforms means that liberals employed this basic right as part of their ideological struggle against the Church. Granting freedom of religion was part of a conception of freedom as independence from the dominance of the Catholic church.
Mid nineteenth and early twentieth century Mexican liberals were far more
concerned with freedom of education than with religious freedom as a means for
emancipating the citizenry from Catholic fanaticism. "Freedom of education", which was
the third article of the Constitution (only second to the prohibition of slavery), and
remained so in the 1917 Constitution, meant "freedom from religious influence" as the
Mexican Liberal Party made it clear in its Manifest from 1900. In this Manifest, the
demands for public secular education and the prohibition of all religious instruction had a
central place. The 1917 Constitution, which is still in force, indeed prohibited all
religious education at the basic level (through ninth grade), as well as in teacher's
schools. It also established that all public education should be secular. The project of
secularizing politics and society through a strict separation of Church and state as well as
50 On this point see Hale (1973), p. 65; (1972), p. 7. 51 These are granted in the 1857 Constitution, articles 2 through 11. 23
a system of public and mandatory secular basic education was forcefully pursued from the 1930’s through the 1970’s. Despite this, the Church managed to obtain some
exceptions to the constitutional mandate, which were granted in the name of stability.
The Catholic religion has since been taught at private schools at all levels. Nevertheless,
secularization through public education is, arguably, the most successful implementation
of liberal values in Mexican institutions and society at large.52
By “secularization” I mean, specifically, the secularization of public and political
life through the coercive power of the state.53 In Mexico, this involved the separation of
Church and state, the prohibition to members of the clergy to participate in politics, and
the prohibition of religious education. But it did not involve the loss of religious belief
among the citizenry. Mexican liberals conceived of coerced secularization as a project of political and social reform in which the creation of citizens loyal to the republic was part of the establishment of the supremacy of civil power over the Catholic Church within a context in which most of the population was Catholic. In the confrontation with the powerful authority of institutionalized religion, it became necessary to produce citizens who could develop an allegiance to republican institutions and values that could stand above their commitment to institutionalized religion in cases of conflict over political matters. The enforcement of public secular schooling was central to this secularizing project. Public secular education aims to instill in the future citizen moral secular values, which include primarily patriotism, solidarity, justice, the dignity of the person, a concern
52 According to relatively recent surveys, 80% of Mexican citizens are opposed to the political participation of ecclesiastical authorities. Blancarte (1992), p. 18. 53 This is close the first sense of “secularity” as understood by Charles Taylor, except that he does not make reference to the coercive power of the state. The second sense is the loss or religious belief; the third sense is the consideration of belief in God as one option among others. Taylor (2007), Introduction. 24
for the public interest, fraternity, civil equality, and the unity of the family.54 It is a secular morality that can function as an alternative to the Catholic religion.
It is important to emphasize that the right to public secular education is a basic
right. It is an elaboration of the basic freedom of education, which, as I mentioned, means
independence from religious influence. According to the 1917 Constitution, secular
education is committed to the results of scientific progress in the fight against
"ignorance", "servitude", "fanaticism" and "prejudice".55 The conclusion I want to
motivate is that on the conception of citizen's freedom that emerges here, the individual is
not conceived of as free in the sense of a free chooser of his or her own religious allegiances or conception of the good. Instead, the citizen is conceived of as free in the sense of emancipated from religious fanaticism and prejudice. On the one hand, this is the interpretation of freedom that results from the fight against the dominance of the Church.
On the other hand, it is only this kind of citizen that can be loyal to the institutions of the
Republic in a largely Catholic society. The process of establishing the supremacy of civil
authority against the Church provided the context for this conception of citizenship as
well as the motivation for this political project of secularization.
Proponents of the failure view rarely mention coerced secularization through
public education as an integral part of the liberal model.56 The reason for this, I believe,
is that the right to basic secular education is not considered a basic right in contemporary
North American liberalism, which, as I explained above, is taken as the "right" model of
liberalism by adherents to the failure view. On this view, the right to basic education is
54 Constitución de 1917, artículo 3º. 55 Constitución de 1917, artículo 3º. 56 An exception is Córdova (1989), capítulo1. On the neglect of anti-clericalism in the search for a working definition of liberalism, see Hale (1973), p. 60. 25
considered a social right, not a basic constitutional guarantee.57 Proponents of the failure
view appear to assume that the list of basic constitutional individual rights has already
been fixed, presumably on conceptual grounds alone, and independently from the
particularities of a given social and political context. But this cannot be true. The
interpretation of the highly formal values of individual freedom and equality cannot be
carried out in abstraction from the wider social and economic context. The interpretation
of basic formal political values is not a purely conceptual matter, but necessarily depends
on the social and political situation, which provides the content for interpretation.58 In the
Anglo North American context, the interpretation of individual freedom was strongly influenced by the social context of the Reformation and the wars of religion. The exercise of freedom in this particular regard has been understood as the freedom to choose one's religion or, more broadly, one's conception of the good. But in the Mexican context, individual freedom was interpreted as the emancipation from fanaticism and prejudice, as the exercise of reason and the access to scientific findings, and as the acquisition of the moral secular values that supported republican institutions.
As we all know, the enforcement of a secular world view through the coercive power of the state, as in public secular schooling, cannot possibly be accommodated within North American liberalism. The reason is not merely Rawls’s shift to political liberalism, according to which a political conception of justice cannot be based on any
“comprehensive doctrine” be it religious or secular.59 Instead, the reason is to be found in
57 In Rawls's political conception of justice, public education would be a means for promoting fair equality of opportunity, which is contained in the second principle of justice. According to him, public education is a matter of basic justice, but not a "constitutional essential". Only the basic rights contained in the first principle of justice count as constitutional essentials. 58 I develop this claim by considering Kant’s concept of equality in my “Social equality and the highest political good of peace.” Forthcoming in Jarbüch für Recht und Ethik, 2008. 59 Rawls (1993), conferencia 1, sección, y conferencia 6. 26
the social and political context within which the ideas of freedom and equality were
articulated. If, as Rawls maintains, what we now regard as liberal doctrine was first
articulated as a response to the wars of religion in sixteenth and seventeenth century
Europe, the reason for freeing the political space from religious views is to create a space
that could accommodate a plurality of religious doctrines. But if this is the reason, there
is no need to engage in an ideological struggle against the influence of religion in society
and to create a counterweight to the opposition of institutionalized religion to the political
authority. On the contrary, when a plurality of institutionalized religions oppose each
other, a powerful political authority should perhaps be welcomed as an arbiter that could
help to strike a balance and secure stability. In this context, there is no need to engage in
a project of coerced secularization of public life and of society at large through public
secular education. But this does not imply that coerced secularization could not become
part of a liberal project. Whether the coerced secularization through public secular
education may become part of a liberal view cannot be established on purely conceptual grounds alone, for it depends on the social and political context in which liberal ideas are being and interpreted.
In the remainder of this presentation, I will briefly address two points. The first
one is the question whether the nineteenth century Mexican project of state building
should called "republican" instead of "liberal". The second point is to draw a conclusion
about how to address the most recent attempt by the Catholic Church in México to turn
the clock back and to reintroduce the Catholic religion in public schooling.
27
3. Liberalism, republicanism, and religion at the public school
An important objection to the perspective on nineteenth century Mexican liberalism that I am trying to articulate is that this political position could be better captured within a republican framework, instead of a liberal one.60 According to this objection, it is within the republican tradition that the unity of the republic has had more importance than the liberal protection of individual basic liberties; it is also the republican tradition that has emphasized the importance of producing citizens loyal to the republic against the liberal commitment to the toleration of the plurality of conceptions of the good that individuals may endorse. While liberals place the emphasis on the exercise of civil freedoms and the limitations on government, republicans emphasize the freedom exercised in political participation as well as civic virtues. The central figure in this “republican tradition” may be either Machiavelli or Rousseau, depending on one’s own favored reconstruction.61
My answer to this objection is twofold. From the point of view of the reconstruction of liberalism in México, the important point is not whether the project of coerced secularization through public schooling falls under liberalism or republicanism.
The important theoretical point is whether public and mandatory secular basic education can be construed as a basic right or whether it should be considered a social right that has been central for the promotion of the values of freedom and equality in the context of the struggle against the Catholic church. In either case, the grounds for the right to public and secular basic education will differ from those for other social rights, such as to healthcare and housing. As I have argued, in the process of construction of a powerful central authority, individual freedom was partly interpreted as independence from the dominance
60 This is suggested in Brading (1988). 61 Pocock (1975), Skinner (1978) and (1998), Pettit, Wood. 28
of the Catholic religion. This interpretation of freedom was developed as part of a
conception of citizenship that emphasizes the capacity of citizens to be loyal to the
republic over the claims of institutionalized religion in cases of conflict over political
matters.62 Equality, on the other hand, has been interpreted as social and economic
equality since the 1910 revolution due to the influence of socialist ideas. Public education
has been an important means for upward social mobility and, to this extent, a central
means for the correction of large inequalities in the social and economic starting places
where individuals are born.
The second part of my answer to the objection above is to contest the alleged
dichotomy between liberalism and republicanism. Though I cannot develop it here, I
believe that the opposition is overstated.63 The important point is not to choose between
the liberal concern with the protection of individual basic rights and liberties, on the one
hand, and the republican interest with the production of loyal citizens, on the other. The
important task is to see how these two political desiderata can be combined. In Rawls’s liberalism, for example, we can find a combination of these two concerns. As is well known, his theory of justice give priority to the protection of individual basic rights and liberties over the promotion of fair social and economic equality, which makes the theory distinctively liberal. It is also the case, however, that in his account of the stability of a society well-ordered by the political conception of justice as fairness, it is crucial that citizens can develop a sense of justice on the basis of the principles of this conception of justice.64 Unless the political conception of justice can generate its own support, as he
62 The subordination of the claims of institutionalized religion to one’s allegiance to the republic need not amount to the subordination of one’s religious convictions. 63 On this point see Rawls (1993), p. 205. 64 Rawls (1993), Lecture 4. 29
puts it, it could not be stable for the right reasons. By “generating its own support”, he means that it can order society in such a way that citizens can affirm the conception of justice for the right reasons and can, consequently, acquire the corresponding political virtues. He tells us that the basic political institutions that incorporate these principles
"tend to encourage the cooperative virtues of political life: the virtue of reasonableness and a sense of fairness, a spirit of compromise and a readiness to meet others halfway, all of which are connected with the willingness to cooperate with others on political terms that everyone can publicly accept."65 No system of political institutions, however liberal
it may be, can give up the task of providing the institutional conditions for the production
of loyal citizens if it is to maintain itself over time as stable and legitimate. Indeed, Rawls
also indicates that a society well ordered by the political conception of justice as fairness
must ensure that children's education "include such things as knowledge of their
constitutional and civic rights"; education should also "prepare them to be fully
cooperating members of society" and "encourage the political virtues."66
The important point here, though, is that in order to assess the legacy of liberalism in México, we need a broader picture of liberalism, that is, one in which the liberal concern with the protection of basic liberties intertwines with the need to produce loyal citizens. It should not come as a surprise that the political virtues that are emphasized will differ in different political cultures. While Rawls includes being "self-supporting" as a political virtue, the Mexican constitution mentions solidarity, for example.
To conclude, I want to bring all this discussion to bear on the current debate in
Mexico around the most recent attempt by the Catholic church to reintroduce the Catholic
65 Rawls (1993), p. 163. See also p. 194. 66 Rawls (1993), p. 199. 30
religion in public schooling. As part of the accommodation between the state and the
Catholic church since the 1930’s, the state has tolerated the teaching of the Catholic
religion in private schooling, basic and otherwise. But the Church wants more. Despite its
traditional conservatism and anti-liberalism the Catholic political right is ready to appeal
to the liberal value of freedom of religion in order to undermine the legitimacy of public
secular schooling.67 The claim is that parents should be allowed to have their children
taught the religion of their choice at public school. If we assess this demand from the point of view of contemporary North American liberalism, it could appear to be a reasonable liberal demand. Indeed, the liberal response in North America to the demands raised by religious groups with regard to education has been basically to acknowledge that, in the name of toleration and respect for the pluralism of ways of life, such a right should perhaps be granted. Rawlsian liberalism allows for the accommodation of religion in education and, what is most important, it is opposed to the use of the coercive power of the state in imposing a secular world view through public and mandatory secular basic schooling. I am not certain whether Rawlsian liberalism would be opposed to the teaching of religion in public schooling as long as the values of citizenship are also taught. But I want to contest the force and relevance of this North American liberal approach in the Mexican context. As liberalism developed in México, public secular schooling has been central to state building in the struggle with the Catholic church. As we have seen, the importance of public secular schooling has been grounded in an interpretation of the value of freedom and in the conception of citizenship that I have outlined. Thus, in México, the demand to allow the teaching of the Catholic religion at the public school is an attack against a fundamental constitutional value; it is also an
67 Blancarte (2004), p. 30. 31
attack against the supremacy of civil power and the very project of constructing citizens.
If contemporary Mexican liberals buy the “liberal” argument by the Catholic political right they will have been fooled. They will have failed to understand liberalism as it developed in their own soil. I do not mean to deny, however, that the demand by the
Catholic right to reintroduce the Catholic religion in public education should be taken seriously. It should. My point, though, is that the appropriate conceptual framework for addressing this challenge is not Rawlsian liberalism, but a conceptual articulation of liberalism as it developed in México. It is within this theoretical framework, which is responsive to the particularities of Mexican political problems, practices, and basic institutions that we ought both to develop an account of how to interpret the value of religious freedom and to address demands that appeal to it. There is nothing fixed about this conceptual framework: it can be challenged and revised, a process in which concepts from contemporary North American liberalism may be quite useful. But challenges and revisions, I think, must take place from within.
32
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