The Logic of Liberalism: Lorenzo de Zavala's Transcultural Politics

Abstract

In 1830 a Mexican aristocrat and politician who helped draft the Mexican Constitution of 1824 and would later go on to assist in the creation of the 1836 Texas Constitution traveled to the United States, a full year before Alexis de Tocqueville's now-famous journey. Lorenzo de Zavala's voyage began in New Orleans and led him north through Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, reaching its longitudinal apex in Quebec before returning south from New York to Philadelphia and Washington, DC. His published account of the journey Viage a los Estados-Unidos del Norte de America (Journey to the United States of North America) (1834), has two purposes, his preface tells us. First, the narrative is intended to serve as a biography of sorts, as he had previously offered to publish [his] memoirs (1). Second, and more importantly, the text is intended to give useful in politics to the citizens of Mexico, instructing them in the manners, customs, habits and government of the United States, a country whose social and political institutions Mexicans have heretofore copied so servilely (1). The tension between Zavala's desire to impart useful lessons yet not have those learned too well, too servilely, implies a search for a foundational politics: a liberal praxis that emerges not from the US, but also not necessarily (as we will see) from Mexico. And while Zavala's text does engage political topics and explore the possibility of a transamerican liberalism, it does so in a very specific context. Despite its stated goal of conferring useful in politics, the work is first and foremost a travel narra-