[print edition page ix]
| Introduction: Liberty and Liberalism in Mexico by José Antonio Aguilar Rivera1 |
After their independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, all of the new nations of Spanish America (except for the brief and ill-fated Mexican Empire) adopted the same model of political organization: the liberal republic. At the beginning of the twenty-first century all of these countries remain republics. Yet, at the same time, the Latin American dictator became a hallmark of despotism and brutality during the past century. This contradiction between ideal and real has produced a vast body of literature. Historians, political scientists, and sociologists have tried to explain the pervasive authoritarianism of Spanish America.
One key peculiarity of Latin America among developing and former colonial regions is its liberal experience, the “ideas and institutions that became established in this outpost of Atlantic civilization.”2 Yet, the failure of written constitutions to bring about the rule of law in that part of the world is well documented. This skepticism has a long history. Indeed, on December 6, 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend Baron Alexander von Humboldt:
I think it most fortunate that your travels in those countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their European dependence I have no doubt; but in what kind of government their revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining
[print edition page x]
a free civil government.