Jaime E. Rodríguez O. and Understanding the Independence Era

Abstract

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. was an important historian of the independence era in Mexico. He argued in various well-researched works that Hispanic political culture contained the seeds of liberalism and that during the independence era many groups became politicized. His passionate and sometimes provocative arguments were driven by his rejection of the widely held notions that Spanish American political culture was oriented toward authoritarianism and that representative democracy was an alien import from Western Europe and the United States. Rodríguez made crucial contributions, but we should build on those contributions by exploring the social influence of Hispanic liberalism. How did the new egalitarianism play out on the streets and in the fields? How did legal equality and the abolition of racial classification in Mexico coexist with the continuation of racial prejudice?