Playing the Man, Not the Ball: Ramón Ceruti and Transatlantic Careerism in Mexico's First Federal Republic and Spain's Liberal Revolution

Abstract

This article studies Mexico's First Federal Republic from a transnational, biographical perspective. Using the example of the Spanish émigré, Ramón Ceruti, it argues that transatlantic links between Spanish and Mexican liberalism should be understood not just in conceptual but also careerist terms. It revisits the image of the traitor in Mexican historiography and Spain's liberal revolution, by showing how the personalism and opportunism rife in early Mexican and Spanish liberalism shaped not only political ideology but also tactics to a remarkable degree. It shows that the popular memory of individual political actions influenced liberal discourse to a larger degree than is usually acknowledged. It does this by tracing the transatlantic radical, nativist and then conservative career of Ramón Ceruti over the fifteen years between the fall of Spain's trienio constitucional, Mexico's First Federal Republic and his betrayal of radicalism during the First Carlist War.