Creole Nationalism and Mexican Liberalism

Abstract

Absolute monarchy, military dictatorship, domination by the privileged orders, union with the United States, communism, the preponderance of the Aztecs: all these aberrations have their apostles, their writers and their conspirators. Meanwhile the government, without a policy, power or political support, survives by the general inertia and is reduced to preserving the status quo.-Mariano Otero to Dr. MoraAlthough one recent influential textbook on Latin America has characterized the decades immediately following the achievement of independence as “the long wait,” in Mexico at least, these years were marked by an intense political and ideological conflict which defined the direction of its future (Halperín Donghi, 1969: 134-206). The most perceptive student of the epoch, Edmundo O'Gorman (1960) traces within the confused welter of pronunciamientos and manifestos two great forces: the search for a providential leader and the desire for some form of democratic populism. An analysis of ideology cannot be separated from a consideration of society. The presidential power created by Benito Juárez and perpetuated by Porfirio Díaz operated outside the strict legal confines of the Constitution. At the same time, the failure of classic liberalism to express popular aspirations retarded social reform for over half a century. Without the sanction of theory, few such demands could be translated into law.