The (Mexican) Liberal Republic
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 Please do not quote or circulate.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.
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