The Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Politics in Spanish America: A Case for the History of Ideas Author(s): Charles A.

Hale Reviewed work(s): Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 53-73 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2502709 . Accessed: 13/11/2012 10:13
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OF NINETEENTHTHE RECONSTRUCTION CENTURY POLITICS IN SPANISH AMERICA: A CASE FOR THE HISTORY OF IDEAS*
CharlesA. Hale, Universityof Iowa
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY POLITICAL PROCESS IN LATIN

America is in trouble.With the burgeoningof Latin Americanhistory as a professional activity, historians are increasingly"moving beyond" past politics to study social and economic themes. The traditionaltreatmentsof the nineteenth century, old dedicatedto glorifying or debunkingheroic leaders,to perpetuating partisanand ideological struggles, or even to presenting in a more detached way a minutelyhave lost their allure. It is true, to the obvious consternadetailedpolitical narrative, tion of the editorsof the Handbookof LatinAmericanStudies,that items in the traditional mold still abound.In Mexico, for example,the celebrationof the centennial and sesquicentennial the two heroic ages of liberalism,the Revolutionfor Indeof pendence and the Reforma,gave great impetus to political writing. Analogous historiographical stimulantscan be found in other countries,sometimeswhere the heroism of the anniversaries less clear. Yet the value of even the best of such work is is increasingly called into questionby professionalhistorians. One can identify, for example,in Mexico, Argentina,and Chile, historiographical traditionsbuilt fundamentallyon the argumentsand policies of nineteenth-century partisans.Significantthematicdifferencesexist from countryto countrybut in each appearsthe idea of national progresstoward individual liberty, representative democracy, and the secularstate.Whereas the storm centerof Mexicanpolitical historiography been the church,in Argentinait has been the dictatorJuanManuel has of de Rosas.Jose Luis Romero (1963), in depictingRosasas the representative "insome of the sympathyfor organicdemocracy" Argentina,may have incorporated in the dictatorshown by ErnestoV. Quesada( 1950) and otherrevisionists,but basically when and he perpetuates categoriesof Domingo F. Sarmiento EstebanEcheverria the he assertsthat Argentinehistoryis a conflictbetweenauthoritarianism liberalism. and In fact, Argentine political historiography more complex than Mexican beis causeof a problemwhich appearedin Sarmiento's Facundoand which has continued to plague interpreters. Was the principalobstacleto liberal progressthe clericalism and colonial mentalityepitomizedby the interiorcity of Cordoba,or was it the barbarismof the interiorgenerally,which found its championin the BuenosAires regime
* This article is a substantially revised version of a paper first given at the 1970 meeting of the Southern Historical Association, in Louisville. I am grateful to several colleagues for their helpful criticisms, especially Charles Gibson, Peter H. Smith, and Alan B. Spitzer.

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LatinAmericanResearch Review
of Rosas? In other words, did "civilizationversus barbarism" mean modern liberal ideals versuscolonial obscurantism without referenceto region as it might in Mexico, or did it meanthe city versusthe countryside?'. In Chile, where the regionalismof Argentina and the ideological polarity of Mexico have been muted, traditionalhistoriographical controversyhas centeredon the issue of authoritarianism, identified varyinglyas the regime of Diego Portales, the Santiagoaristocracy, the church.RicardoDonoso and Luis Galdames,for exor ample, in their much-read syntheses,essentiallyrestatethe liberalthemesof the nineteenth centuryhistories of Amunategui,VicuniaMackenna,and BarrosArana, and the essays of Lastarria. The political developmentof Chile, writes Donoso (1946: 113-114), has entailed the effort to establishcongressionalindependenceby limiting the powers which made the president a monarchin republicandress, and also to establishdemocracy dismantlingobstaclesimposedby the "juridical spiritual by and legacy of Spain." The dissenters,such as Alberto Edwards,Jaime Eyzaguirre,and FranciscoEncina,have praisedthe Hispanicand Catholicheritagewhich the Portales and Montt regimes upheld, thus providing Chile with its unique nineteenth-century stability.Edwards (1966: 62) refers to this era as the "republic'in form'," a time when elements of authority (president), hierarchy (aristocracy), and "hereditary sentiments" (race and religion) were blended together as a vital organicwhole under the Constitution 1833.2 of When an avowedliberalinterpreter such as Domingo AmunateguiSolar (1946: that Chile needed strong oligarchicalgovernmentin 57) could admit inadvertently the 1830s to counteranarchy,it is clear that "liberal"and "conservative" positions cannotbe sharplydifferentiated.3 is TraditionalChileanpoliticalhistoriography more vulnerablethan would be Mexican or Argentinianto the stricturesof such a critic as the MarxistJulio CesarJobet,who condemnedit (1955: 1-28) as the eruditeand irrelevantexpressionof a narrowoligarchyunconcerned with the social and economic realitiesof the country.In Chile therewas lackingthe kind of sympathysome Mexican historianshad for the social upheavalsof Hidalgo and Morelosor Argentinehistorianshad for the populismof Rosas. The disinterestin and even the reactionagainsttraditionalpolitical history by present-dayprofessionals is unquestionablya healthy development, but it is not without its difficulties.The problem is that there is no new political history to replace the old. In fact, the nineteenthcenturyis in dangerof becomingthe stepchild of historicalinterpretation it loses its integrityin comparison with the monumental as Spanishperiod or the more relevanttwentieth century.Even the significantnew departuresin the socioeconomicbases of politics may prove insufficientby themselves to rescuethe nineteenthcenturyfrom the threatof oblivion. I. We can grasp the problem more readily by examining some recent significant efforts to reinterpret Latin Americanhistoricaltradition.In these interpretations the 54

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the nineteenth-century political processhas become the victim of two determinisms, the firstculturaland the secondeconomic. has The culturalinterpretation been presentedmost forcefully by RichardM. uniqueset of institutional social and Morse (1964) who arguesthatSpanishAmerica's of arrangements stems from the establishment the Spanishimperialor "patrimonial" state in the sixteenth century.This state was still largely medieval in structureand had not yet become, as it was to evolve in the eighteenthcentury,"a unitaryand raby compartmented tionalizedwhole." Its medievalismwas characterized "pluralistic, In representation. paternalism," by parliamentary not privilege" and "administrative the absenceof a strong feudal traditionof limitationson royal authority,the monarch and his officialsin America dispensed justice and createdsocioeconomicprivand ilege freely.Morse speaksof a "cultural institutionalfix" takenby SpanishAmerica, buttressedby the neo-Thomismof FranciscoSuarez,the latter a philosophy ofi individualconscienceto infallible NaturalLaw and put ultilaw which subordinated mate limitationson the sovereignin the name of this law. Moreover,the system of Suarezembodied organicism,patriarchicalism, a pervasivesense of social hierand terms,and they archy.Suarezreformulatedmedieval principlesin post-Reformation becamethe basis of Catholicculturein the New World. By using the terms "mindof set" and "fix," Morse implies the permanenceof these characteristics the "formative" or Hapsburgperiod. Brief but suggestive essays by Ronald N. Newton (1970) and Claudio V4liz (1967; 1968) come to conclusionsanalogousto those of Morse, though their conof SpanishAmerican cernis morespecifically explain the peculiarities contemporary to socialstructure politics. Veliz (1967), aided by the substantive studiesof his coland laborators, notes the failure of autonomouspressuregroups, middle sectors,the miland itary,peasants,industrialists, students,to influencepolicy. He concludesthatthese in groupsultimatelypursuethe "politicsof conformity"and find their sustenance the centraliststate.Newton points to the anomalouspersistenceof both the RomanLaw traditionand the medieval fuero or intere'screadoas explaining the lack of "crosspluralism among functional groups in cutting loyalties" or North-American-type Spanish America. While continuing to create privilege, the state remains supreme in the face of politicalchallengefrom "intermediary" bodies. For these interpreters twentiethcenturybecomesan era of gradualrecoveryof the traditionalpatterns, or as Vd1izputs it, a returnto Latin America's "own cultural mainstream." Veliz differs from Morse in that he locates this culturalmainstream in the eighteenth century,whereas Morse locates it in the previous two centuries. Morse sees the Hapsburgpatrimonialstaterevealedin the MexicanInstitutionalRevoperatingin the new nationalolution, while Veliz (1968) findsBourboncentralism ism of the right and in state-directed economicdevelopmentwithout social change. in Kalman Silvert (1963:360-361, 371-372) has depicted traditionalcorporatism or Peron'sArgentinaand has arguedthe existenceof a "Romance" "Mediterranean" politics in Iberoamerica. For What is the place of the nineteenthcenturyin these culturalinterpretations? 55

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LatinAmericanResearch Review
Morseit represents aberration an from morepermanent patterns.Morse (1964: 165) terms 1760 to 1920 the "Colonial"period "when the creole, Catholic culture and institutionsof SpanishAmericalay open to influencesand pressuresof the Western World which were on the whole ineffectually mediatedto the ethos of the formative SpanishPeriod."Thus the "National"period does not begin till 1920. The Western "influences and pressures"that Morse is referringto constituteprincipallythe heritage of the Enlightenment: Anglo-French constitutionalism,bourgeois liberalism, and even the unitary,rationalized, technocratic and stateof the Bourbons.Both Morse and Newton, and by suggestion Lyle N. McAlister (1963: 370), argue that the collapseat independenceof imperialbureaucracy the legal basis of the corporate and societyled to the reemergence autonomous of extendedfamily systems,tribes,haciendas, municipalities,and armed bands ("telluric creole social structures"[Morse, 1964: 1623 or "primarycomponents"[Newton, 1970: 273) that competed in a naked contest of power to capturethe remains of the state. The now decapitated patrimonialstate had developed neither an underpinningof feudal contractual relationshipsnor a rationalizedlegal orderwhich could serve to legitimize post-independencegovernments. Let us turn to the economicinterpretation, presentedprimarilyin the remarkable short book byStanleyJ. and BarbaraH. Stein (1970), but also in the work of other historians such as Tulio Halperin Donghi (1969) and Arnold J. Bauer (1971). The Steins see the centralfact of Latin Americanhistoryas its colonial relation to, or dependenceon, the more economicallyadvancednations of Western Europe. Spain and Portugal served as mere intermediaries the relationship.Ecoin nomic dependenceproduceda rigid class society;it inhibited modernization; preit vented the developmentof liberalpolitical institutions;and it perpetuateda pattern of economicand racialexploitationnot effectivelychallengedby the massesuntil the twentieth century,and then only sporadically. The silver flow from America freed the Spanish monarchyfrom limitation by representative bodies and allowed it to who had little preside over a commercialsystemcontrolledby privileged merchants interestin economicmodernization eitherside of the Atlantic. on When the Bourbon monarchs attempted "defensive modernization"in the eighteenth centuryto counterthe threat from increasedBritish trade, policy adjustand ments servedonly to divide creolesand Spanishmerchants to preparethe way for the disruptionof the empire during the internationalcrisis of 1793 to 1815. The creoles saw in disruptiona chance to trade directlywith northernEurope. At the same time, the smolderingdiscontentof the masseshad led in the eighteenthcentury to conflictsover occupationof and accessto property.By 1810, the creoleelite "provided the leadershipthat the castas and the lower, even more oppressed strata of colonial society had long awaited,and the result was revolution" (Stein and Stein, 1970: 114). of In the economicinterpretation LatinAmericanhistorythe nineteenthcenturyis designated"neo-colonial,"a term which is certainto enjoy increasinglywide use by historians.Halperin'simpressivesynthesisfocuses on the modernera; thus he treats

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the nineteenthcenturyin greaterdetail than do the Steins, who emphasizethe preindependencecenturies.Halperin like Bauer (1971: 78-80, 98), dates the "rise of the neo-colonialorder"from the 1860s, whereasthe Steins see it as beginning with independence;but the three agree on the general characteristics the entire era. of The creoles, primarily a resurgentlanded upper class, struggled to reimpose the structureof political elitism and social stratification that had been challenged momentarilyby popular upheaval during the Revolution for Independence.By midcenturyan agriculturaland mining oligarchybecametied in a new relationshipof direct dependenceto European,particularly British, commerceand capital. Despite political instability,factionalcontention,and experimentation with republicanforms, Latin Americangovernments,arguethe Steins, continuedunder the sway of a small elite which at first cooptedupcomingmulattosand mestizos,and later in the century returnedto unmitigatedracism.Economicand social exploitationwas not challenged until 1910 in Mexicoandperhapsnot until 1930 elsewhere. These interpretations serve as fresh and welcome antidotesto the liberal or developmentalview which has seen progresstowardmiddle class democracy toward or economic modernizationalong North American or Western Europeanlines as an inevitableprocessin LatinAmerica.The region can now be studiedon its own terms, culturallyor economically,and its peculiaritiesrecognized for what they are. Yet from the vantage point of nineteenth-century politics these interpretations inare adequate.Newton openly admitsthat the post-independence processesare a "conundrum."Morse appearsto regardthe searchfor liberal patternsof political organization as aberrant, while the rubrics"neo-colonial" and "colonial"hardlydo justice to the fact of politicalindependence. In effect,our understanding the nineteenthcenturyhas sufferedfrom this wideof spreadthough varieduse of the derogatory label "colonial."One use of the word is derived from traditionalliberal discourse and stresses the "colonial survivals"or "colonialmentality"which persisteddespite reform efforts after independence.4 In this sense the termreallymeans "Hispanic"or "traditional" ratherthan "colonial"in the strict legal or political sense. Another use appearsin Morse's novel "Colonial Period," the era from 1760 to 1920 when Latin America was under the cultural sway of the Anglo-FrenchEnlightenment.Finally, the economicinterpretation construes "colonial"to mean economicallydependent,whether in its traditionalform before independenceor in its new and revisedform after independence. A discussionof the term "colonial"would be incompletewithout recallingwhat Latin Americanistsknow to be a commonplace,namely that Latin America, as a historical,cultural,and perhapseven as an economicentity,is unique.As a "developing" area Latin America is distinct from other regions with which it is often compared.The fact that it is Western, that it is a culture"fragmented" from Europe,to use Louis Hartz'term, sets it apartfrom the older autonomous civilizationsof Japan, China, and perhapsIndia, which felt the impactof Europeanideas, institutions,and technologyas alien elements.5On the other hand, becauseof its early attainmentof political independence,Latin America cannot be directly comparedwith the new 57

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Latin Americdn Research Review nations of Africa and Asia, which until recentlywere Europeancolonies. Moreover, betweenLatinAmericaand the United States,as two former the obviouscomparison With the failure of the Alliance colonial areasof Europe,is no longer satisfactory. for Progress,we have perhapsfinally given up the effort to posit a common history of the two Americasand to draw deceptiveparallelsbetween a developed (or overdeveloped) Anglo-Saxon cultureand one that is Iberian and underdeveloped.Perhaps one key to this peculiarityof Latin America among developing regions is its liberal experience;that is, the ideas and institutionsthat becameestablishedin this outpost of Atlantic civilization during what R. R. Palmer calls the "Age of the Revolution." Democratic of Imbeddedin the culturaland economicinterpretations Latin Americanhistory is the assumptionthat the nineteenth was the century of imitation. The adjectives "mimetic,""imitative,"or "exotic" pervadethe referencesby observersof or to diverseinterestsand orientations liberalpoliticalorganizations economicpolicy.6 even beyondthe nineteenth A few scholarslike Silvertand V6liz carrytheir strictures Veliz (1968: 68) assertsthat "for the last centuryand a half Latin America century. has been a faithful echoing chamberfor every political noise uttered in the more civilized regionsof the northernhemisphere."Silvert (1966: 331) speaksin general of "the role of the Latin Americanleader as the importerand adapterof ideas from abroad." The criticalview of liberal forms and organizationas alien imports has deep political tradition,whetherin its Burkeanform as espoused roots in the conservative or the Mexican LucasAlaman and the Chilean MarianoEgaina, in its later posiby tivist or organicistform by Emilio Rabasain Mexico or Alberto EdwardsVives in Chile. More recently,the theme of imitationhas been an integralpart of the philosophicaland literary"questfor identity."Are not historiansand social scientistsinfluencedmore than they realize by the Mexican search for lo mexicano, as in the classic assertionmade as early as 1934 by Samuel Ramos, that imitation of Europe and a resultinginferioritycomplex were fundamentalfeaturesof Mexicanculturein the nineteenthcentury?It is significantthat Morse and Hirschman(1961) cite the Labyrinthof Solitude by Octavio Paz at crucial points in their argumentand that from a suggestionby Paz. Morsedrawshis new periodization for identity also containsan anomalousquasi-Marxist The philosophicalsearch strainwhich may even have made it congenialto the recenteconomicinterpretations of nineteenthcenturypolitics. Leopoldo Zea views liberalismand positivism as expressionsof the bourgeoisiein two stagesof its evolution,that of combatand that of order. While rejecting Spanish colonialism, the Latin American bourgeoisie ultimately became the prisoner of the great Western bourgeoisie.7Is not Zea's argument analogous to the Steins' emphasis on neo-colonialism,that is-the dependand mining oligarchyupon Europeancapital as the central ence of an agricultural fact of life in the nineteenth century.8It should be noted, however, that behind the Steins' severe and scholarlyanalysis of the roots of economic dependencemay lurk an activist zeal, not unlike that which Bourricaud(1972: 130-132) identi58

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lies in the thought of the new engaged tecnicos (such as Orlando Fals Borda) who This radical changein the face of a pervasiveneo-colonialism.9 call for revolutionary stance makes the position of Zea in the Forties and Fifties and even that of Veliz by todayseemconservative contrast. II In order to escape the determinisminherent in these nonetheless refreshing of we and persuasiveinterpretations, must turn directlyto the reconstruction nineteenth centurypolitics. This can be done most effectivelythroughthe systematicand critical study of ideas. One problem that plagues this enterpriseis the lack of a traditionto which to appeal.Whereas the study of ideas in strong historiographical the colonialperiod has the work of suchscholarsas Zavala,Phelan,Bataillon,Ricard, Hanke, Leonard,Lanning, and Whitaker to commendit, such study for the nineteenth centuryhas been dominatedeither by political apologists or historicistphiIn losophers.10 order to surmountthis obstaclelet me suggest four specificways in studiedthroughideas. which politicalhistorycan be profitably First, we need to define political terms,principallythose proteanand universal The most common pitfalls in using these categories, "liberal"and "conservative." partisans termsare: one, falling preyto the definitionsimposedby nineteenth-century in our own day; two, dissolving the political content of themselvesand perpetuated analysis.The firstpitfall applies principallyto the trathese termsby socioeconomic plagues recent referredto above, but it occasionally ditional political historiography to studiesas well. For example,it is necessary raisesome questions more sophisticated when such astute analystsas Frank Saffordand Peter H. Smith explicitly use poparticipantsthemselves. Is it not litical categoriesas defined by the contemporary possible that the very confusion Saffordfinds in applying conventionalclass, occupational, or regional explanationsto political alignmentsin Colombiafrom 1830 to as 1850 comes in part from a confusion on the part of the participants to just what meant? Safford (1972: 367 fn.) the self-designations"liberal"and "conservative" implies that these termshad little ideological content. This may be true, but if so it in must be demonstrated part by directanalysisof the ideas involved. In determining the social basis of political alignments,is it not necessaryto establishalso what the political positions, programs,and issues were, and how they varied from situation ?11 to situation Smith (1972) has done exactly this in a somewhatdifferentkind of inquiry, Conventionof 1916a quantitativestudy of roll calls in the Mexican Constitutional 17. Smith uses factor analysisto isolate the issues which separated"jacobins"and the "moderates," self-designatedfactions in the convention.To complementhis inthe ,genious discussionof "centralization," principal "factor"which captureddivithe delegates,it would be valuableto probe the term "jacobin"itself: sions among to what was its ideologicalcontentin 1917 compared 1893 or 1857? One might find, over centralizationin 1917 could be unfor example, that part of the disagreement

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LatinAmericanResearch Review
derstoodas a kind of reenactment conflictsthat existed within nineteenthcentury of political liberalism.12 The second pitfall, namely the tendency to dissolve the political content of "liberal"and "conservative" socioeconomic by analysis,can be demonstrated first by recallinga point of our earlierdiscussion.We have seen that LatinAmerica'suniqueness amongdevelopingand formercolonialregionsin having had a liberalexperience under political independencehas only strengthenedthe general view that ideas were "imitative" even "unreal." or The corollary the absenceof a strongcriticalhistorioto graphicaltraditionfor the nineteenthcenturyrootedin the studyof ideas is the dominance in much historical writing of assumptionsderived from Marxism and the sociology of knowledge, the basic theme of which, accordingto RobertK. Merton (1949: 458), is "the unwittingdetermination ideas by the substrata; emphasis of the on the distinction between the real and the illusory, between reality and appearance in the sphere of humanthought, belief, and conduct."Merton goes on to note the "acridquality"of such sociologicalanalyses,which tend to indict, satirize,ironicize, and devalue "the intrinsiccontent of the avowed belief or point of view." The key term in this negative and criticalapproachto ideas is "ideology,"which cameto mean the interest-bound thinking of ruling groups,whetherspecificclassesin Marx's view of broader groupingswithin the totalsocialstructure Mannheim's. in The widespreadtendency exists in currentwriting on Latin America to give "liberal"an exclusively socioeconomicmeaning, or at least to confuse its political and economiccontent.How often do we find "liberal"as tantamount laissez-faire to economics,though sometimesincluding as well constitutionalist opposition to state power. This searchfor a simple working definitionof "liberal"often neglects (for examples see Veliz, 1967, and Morse, 1964) the significanceof anticlericalism,a statistpolicy inspiredby the SpanishBourbonsor the FrenchJacobins.Liberalssuch as the 1833 reformersin Mexico or the Rivadaviangroup in Argentina,who were antistatistin the economic realm, often pursuedthe solidificationof state power to combatclerical privilege. The problem here is analogousto the use of "capitalism" as a political term by such contemporary theoristsas HerbertMarcuseor Barrington
Moore.'3

Oversimplifyingthe definitionof "liberal"leads to real difficultyin seeking out who, in social terms, the nineteenth centuryliberals were. For example, when the Steins discussthe "economicbasis of neo-colonialism," they refer to a "Liberal middle class"which sought the liquidationof colonial legaciesin Mexico and which ultimatelyturned to PorfirioDiaz as an "honesttyrant"to preside over economicdevelopment.Yet in a subsequent chapteron "politicsand society,"they identify liberal political programsas those of a "creoleelite," and the "Liberal middle dass" recedes from the forefrontof theirdiscussion.'4 The only antidotefor this kind of confusion is rigorousinternalanalysisof political ideas, constantlymodified by behavioralevidence of the kind Smith (1972) and RichardN. Sinkin (1973) present,and by empiricalfindingson the sociologyof the intellectualand political elite. In this way what RobertF. Berkhofer(1969: 73) 60

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calls the "actors'and the observer'slevels of analysis"can be combined"into a uniof histofied representation past reality."The principalrisk is not that present-day ideas from viewpoint," or that they will abstract rianswill focus only on the "actors' their social and economiccontext.15 As John Higham (1951: 470-471) has pointed out in tracingthe courseof intellectualhistoryin the United States,the dangerslie at the other extreme. Only by startingwith the system of ideas itself, by regarding "ideology"as a neutralterm, can we properlyunderstandthe political terminology of the nineteenthcentury. of The study of ideas can, secondly,increaseour understanding the assumptions that underlieor guide policy. One postulateof suchan inquiryis that it is still valuable for the political historianto study governance,emphasizingthe formal institutions of power and not, as Womack (1971: 480, 485) has urged, focus his attention the on informalinstitutions,such as the family, the businesscorporation, church,and politicalhistory the hacienda.However valuableit is to studythe informalstructures, need not be turned exclusively into social history, though the distinctionsbetween the two are and necessarilyshould be vague.16 Smith (1970: 4-5), in apparentcontrastto Womack, justifiesa definitionof "politicalelite" in twentieth centuryMexico that omits informal leadershipas not constitutinga numericallysignificantsegment of "that group of people which holds the most decisive portion of political power." Probably the most significant conclusion of Veliz and his collaborators LatinAmerica,far from be(1967) is that the centralgovernmentin contemporary interestgroups,is itself the principalforce for ing the mere playthingof autonomous change. The centralgovernmentmay also be far more importantin the nineteenth thanVeliz and otherswould haveus believe. century We approachpolitics through ideas with the presuppositionthat the rationale or logic of centralgovernmentpolicy and the assumptionsof the governing elite are still so insufficiently understoodas to warrantsearchingexamination.In contrastto what Lockhart (1972: 8) suggests for colonial social history, we begin by using sourcesthat are conventionaland traditional.For nineteenthcenturyLatin America printedmaterials:the writingsof leading intellectualswho often this meansprimarily in utterances pamphlets had close relationswith government;officialand semiofficial debates.Manuscriptmaterials,espeand newspapers;legislation; and parliamentary and cially privatecorrespondence unprintedministryreports,should alwaysbe used where available,but they are not intrinsicallysuperioras sourcesin the searchfor assumptions.The range of materialsthat are potentiallyvaluableis very wide. Moreover, as one moves from the early to the late nineteenth century, the increasein is quantityof documentation staggering. The firstchallengefor the historianis not to find unique materials,but to grasp the intractableand often elusive nature of the assumptions.In part his method is analogousto that suggestedby A. 0. Lovejoy (1936: 3-24) in a somewhatdifferent kind of inquiry.The scholarmust cut through the deceptiveand often contradictory rhetoric of a political program and isolate the "component"or "unit" ideas. This mental effortmay also lead him to what Lovejoycalls the "moreor less unconscious"

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Latin American Research Review habits of an individual or group. These mental habits may constituteformally expressed but subordinateor contradictory ideas within a political program.Or they may be group-derivedideas and part of the implicit culture an intellectual or a political spokesmanshareswith a larger group. It may be that the emphasison assumptions undercuts my own argument, since reference to "unconsciousmental habits" or "implicit culture" evokes questions of value systems, ethos components, and even myth. The risk is that of falling backon the very sort of culturaldeterminism I have been criticizing in others when applied to nineteenth centurypolitics. I admit to an unresolved ambivalenceor even an inconsistencyon this matter. For example,I would nevermaintainthat liberalismas a value systembasedon utilitarian ethics made much headwayin nineteenthcenturyLatin America.Yet liberalismas a set of rationallyformed political and economicpreceptsdid, so long as one defines liberalismproperlyin its peculiarHispanicmanifestation.17 Fromanothervantagepoint it might be said that what I am reallyreferringto is the study of ideology, and in part I would agree. Inasmuchas the propositionsand the rhetoricof a political programare directedin defense of or in opposition to an institutionalor social order, they are ideological. It is the political objectiveand the polemical function of ideas that make them ideological. Ideology, then, presupposes conflictin societyor the existenceof conflictinginterpretations the social order.'8 of The assumptionsof a political programor policy may also be based on traditionor myth, that is-beliefs or values which tend to bind together the groupings within society ratherthan divide them. Again, my objectionsarenot to the term "ideology,"t but to the way it is construedin the traditionof Marxismand the sociologyof knowledge, that is, the tendencyto discountthe internalstructureor the componentsof an ideology in favor of regardingit only as a director indirectreflectionor rationaleof classor group interests.'9 To pursue the example mentioned above, it might be demonstratedby the method I am suggesting that SpanishAmericanliberalswere much more tied to Hispanic precedentthan their bombasticanti-Hispanicwriting would suggest. This is certainlytrue of the Mexican liberalsbefore 1867, who drew much inspirationfrom the Bourbonor Cadiz reformers,and true also of the "new liberal,"Justo Sierra,in the late 1870s, for whom the Spanish conservativerepublicanEmilio Castelarassumed a heroic stature.The tie to Hispanic precedentmay also have been strong in Chile, even throughthe cry of desespaniolizacion Jose VictorinoLastarria Franby or cisco Bilbao was far more shrill than it was in Mexico. And as Barager (1959: 591 fn.) remindsus, "for all his admirationof the United States,Sarmiento's roots were in the Spanishliberaltradition-more deeply,probably,than even he realized." An assumptionsuch as this may be revealedinadvertently the formal rhetoricof a in thinker or political spokesman,or it may come to light or be confirmedonly by an analysisof the formation of policy or legislation of governmentswith which they were akin.20 One model that could be followed in the searchfor assumptionsappearsin the work of the French historian Elie Halevy. In his massive study of utilitarianism (1928) and in his exceptionalessayson earlysocialism (1965) he successfullyiso62

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lated centralconceptionsor unit ideas which made up ideologies or doctrines.Moreover, he was able to identify contradictory elements or the dialecticexisting within a body of thought. A good example might be his discussionof the conflictbetween the naturaland the artificialidentificationof interestswithin utilitarianism,the one a rationalefor laissez-fairepolicy, the other for statist antico;rporate reform.Halevy was remarkable a historianin that he maintaineda balancebetween ideas and soas cial analysis, between his attachmentto the schematizingand stylizing usefulness of ideas in historical understandingand his realizationthat their formulationmay be largely a result of particulareconomicand social circumstances.2' This ambiguity toward the relation between ideas and social structureis a trait Halevy sharedwith Max Weber,with whom he is often compared. Third, and akin to the search for assumptions,the study of ideas can illuminate politicalhistoryby providinga way to comparenineteenth-century politicalstructures. By comparison, mean more the way that questionsare posed, ratherthan the necesI sarily blanced treatmentof a topic in two or more countries.There are only a few who have done monographicresearchwith equal depth on more than one Latin American country,and it is not essential that we do so. "Comparison works best when specificphenomenain one context are used to stimulatenew questionsabout similarphenomenain another"(Grew, 1969: 364). Moreover,the comparative study of political ideas in LatinAmericamust begin with Europe,and indeed comparisons betweencountriesmust alwaysbe done with referenceto Europe.Without a thorough studyof the European manifestationand contextof the ideas in question,comparison is groundless. For example,to studycomparatively transformation liberalismin Spanish the of America,we must begin with the Europeancritique of French Revolutionarydoctrines. One strandof this critiquebegan with Burkein England and Bonald and De Maistrein France,and it resultedin the formulationof conservatism a consciously as expressedpolitical ideology. However, more pertinent for studying the transformation of liberalismare the writings of Saint Simon and of Comte in his early years. Saint Simon's"influence" se is not the primaryconcernhere, but ratherthe terms per of his argument,the political context in which he wrote, and why his argumentmay or may not have been relevantto Latin Americans.Saint Simon's search (carriedon by Comte) for the bases of social unity, for a new order and even hierarchyin the aftermathof the Revolution, meant that he directedhis tracts at the "productive" classes in society,the industriels,while condemningthe non-productive remnantsof nobility and dergy, but even more the doctrinaire"metaphysicians" "legists."22 and He held these latter groups to be responsiblefor the chaos Francehad experienced since 1789. Saint Simon's argumentsare particularly pertinent to an understanding of the concept of "scientificpolitics" as espoused by the "new liberals"of 1878 in Mexico, men like Justo Sierra,Telesforo Garcia, and FranciscoCosmes,who combined their formulationwith an attackupon the "old liberalism"or the "metaphysical politics of 1857. We mustbroadenour inquiryinto the variedEuropean responses to the French Revolution and to incipient industrialism,but Saint Simon and the earlyComteprovidea convenientplaceto start.23 63

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Latin American Research Review liberalism(emfrom doctrinaire In SpanishAmerica,we find that the departure and constitutionalist concepts) came much earlier bracingutilitarian,anticorporate, in Argentina and even in Chile than in Mexico. By comparisonto Jose Maria Luis Mora, Echeverriashows extreme sensitivity to the most recent currentsof thought -Saint-Simonianism in a general way, Mazzini'sYoung Europemovement (1940: 460ff), and the Religion of Humanityof Leroux (1940: 195ff). By the late 1830s Alberdi and Lastarria had forsakenBentham and were turning instead to the comLerminier-an imparative philosophy of law as espoused by Jean-Louis-Eugene mensely popular figure during the July monarchy.Edgar Quinet looms large in the writings of Lastarria and Bilbao in Chile.24These figures appearto have had little or no impactin Mexico, at least not before 1854 and most probablynot before 1867. The terminologyused by the Argentinianand Chileanpensadoreshardlyappearsin Mexico, with the possible exception of Mariano Otero's pamphlets of the 1840s. call An examplemight be sociabilidad,a key word in Echeverria's for the reconciliation of political parties and for social unity in Argentina, and a word that figures in the title of Bilbao'smost famous polemic, Sociabilidadchilena.25 To explain these differencesin the orientationof thought and in the timing and character Europeaninfluences,we must compareinstitutionaland social strucof tures. One hypothesismight be that Mexicanliberal thought and policy remainedin an earlierBenthamite, Jacobin,and even SpanishBourbonmold throughthe Reforma becauseof the prolongedideologicalstruggleagainstthe church,a conflictwhich was markedlyless intense in Argentinaand Chile. To use anotherexample, by studying comparatively significanceof a concept such as "federalism,"one would be led the into regional conflict and organizationalimperativesin the three countries.Or we might probe Bilbao or Alberdi's ambivalencebetween their obvious attachmentto Europeancivilization,and their rejectionof decadentEurope in the name of a rejuvenated "America."This emphasis on "America,"except among some political conservatives, seems to have vanishedfrom Mexicanthought after the mid 1820s. political historythrough ideas should The reconstruction nineteenth-century of by no means end with the thought of prominent thinkers, but in many cases this and convenientstartingpoint. Such study of the pensathought providesa necessary dores may seem to some historiansto be passe or to have "been done" by earliergenerationsof Latin Americanscholars.We simply cannotrely, however, on the traditional partisanand nationalistic interpretations these figures,that make up most of of the literatureon the subject. Moreover, without a critical and even a comparative the of understanding the intellectualbases of policy assumptions, socioeconomicapon proachesto nineteenthcenturypolitics risk being constructed sand. In additionto the pitfalls mentioned above, it is all too easy for otherwisewary historiansto be that trapped by what Womack (1971: 489-490) calls "precursorism," is, tendenthought justificatious interpretations which would extractfrom nineteenth-century tions of or antecedents laterpolicies.26 for Fourth and finally, the study of ideas can aid in the search for political conessaydiscussedin Part One tinuities in modern SpanishAmerica.The interpretative are impressivebecauseof their centralconcernwith continuityand their experimental 64

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attitude toward periodization.Substantively,however, these authorsraise a fundamental question: Was there any significantcontinuityof nineteenth-century patterns into the twentiethcentury?Much of the skepticismabout the liberal experiencehas focused on constitutionalism-the effort to guarantee individual liberty and limit central authorityby the legal preceptsof a writtencode. The strivingsof liberallegislatorsto establishseparationof powers, federalism,municipalautonomy,and even at times parliamentary supremacy a plural executivetypify the divergencebetween or ideals and realityand betweenliberal institutionalforms and political practicethat is the hallmarkof Latin Americanpolitics. Is there an effectiveresponseto such skepticism? In the absenceof a full reply let me cite one case, the careerof liberal constitutionalismin Mexico from 1867 to 1910, a period when constitutional preceptsand adherenceto them appear to have been smotheredby civil war, de facto dictatorship, and open intellectualhostility. In searchingfor a definitionof "scientificpolitics," or positivistphilosophyin its politicalmanifestaton, that cameto prevailduring the regime of PorfirioDiaz, I found that I was forced to considerthe heritage of liberal constitutionalism. The major political controversies the period and several of minor ones all focused on the constitution.Examplesare the debatearisingfrom the "dictatorial" convocatoria Benito Juarezin 1867, the contention between "old" of on and "new"liberalsin 1878, and the conflictbetweencientificosand "jacobins" the issue of irremovability judges in 1893. Why did the Constitutiongenerate such of controversy duringan erawhen it is generallyregardedto have been a dead letter? I would suggest that the Constitutionof 1857 had unique symbolicpower in Mexico. Becausethe republican,reformist,and patrioticcauseof 1857-67 had been fought in the name of the constitution,the documentacquiredan auraof sanctityto which its post-1867 defenderscould successfullyappeal, despite changesin the general intellectual climate. The "old liberal" party, particularly through its organ El Monitor Republicano,hung on tenaciouslyuntil the hardeningof the Diaz dictatorwent ship that followed the great debate of 1893. At that point constitutionalism underground,but it served to inspire the pre-1910 political clubs and it ultimately reemergedin the "effectivesuffrage,no reelection" movementof Francisco Madero. I. Do we not havehere a possible explanationfor the strengthof the "Constitutionalist" cause during the revolutionaryupheaval from 1910 to 1917 ?27 This hypothesis could be tested by comparingthe continuityof constitutionalism Mexico with its in late nineteenth-century course in Argentina or Chile, countriesthat experiencedno mid-century Reform,civil war,or foreign intervention. By comparison with Chile and Argentina,the sharplydefinedpoliticalperiodsin Mexico have inhibitedthe searchfor continuities,but these inhibitionsmay be breaking down. Womack (1971: 488-489) has noted that the men who were politically active during the 1920s matured in the Porfiriatoand that perhaps they revived "manyold habits of thought and action."Anderson (1963: 114) has demonstrated that Alvaro Obregon'sfinancialadvisorsare old porfiristas. The methods I have outlined might serve well to probe the implicationsof these suggestionsof continuity. 65

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Similarly,if we were to inquire into the political assumptionsof erstwhile liberals who collaborated with Maximilian,we might find that the empirewas less ephemeral The major theme of techand more influentialafter 1867 than we have thought.28 nocracy-the idea that socioeconomicpolicy should be guided for the public good by an elite of governmentalexpertswho are above politics and immuneto pressures of economicinterest-needs to be studiedin nineteenthcenturySpanishAmerica,and its continuityfrom the Bourbonerato the presentdayexplored.29 politics through ideas The historian who would approachnineteenth-century feels under pressureto justify the validity of his enterprise.His focus arousesimmediateskepticismbecausethe study,or betterthe exploitation,of nineteenthcentury of ideas has long been centralto the traditionalpartisaninterpretations the national experience.This is as true in Chile and Argentinaas it is in Mexico, and any focus that servespolitical and not proupon ideas becomesassociatedwith historiography fessional ends. Moreover,the internal analysis of systems of ideas or ideologies is now suspect as being the product of an earlierliberal, or as Mannheimwould say, an "idea-struck" age. And yet when thought is taken seriously,such as in the culof tural interpretations Latin Americanhistory cited earlier,the nineteenth-century liberalexperienceis judged an ephemeralor exotic "Western"overlayon more basic processes. socialandpsychological which see the twentieth century as the recoveryof tradiThe interpretations tional Hispanic patterns or as the effort to break loose from the bonds of neofor colonialismhave strong and legitimateattractions an age in which the quest for identity and the problem of economic dependencyare compelling concerns.But as historiansin searchof an integratedhistoricalanalysiswe cannotoverlookthe legacy of political ideas and formal institutionswhich men took quite seriouslyfor at least a hundredyears.Ratherwe must assessthis legacyfor what it was and is.
NOTES

Facundo(1961), chap. vii ("Sociabilidad: in 1. For example,one might compare Sarmiento's C6rdoba-BuenosAires") with chap.xv ("Presentei porvenir").This thematiccomplexity Argentinehistoriogrecognizedby Barager(1959: 588) who characterizes is insufficiently raphyas liberalversusconservative. 2. The concept"in form" (in its sportingsense) is borrowedfrom Oswald Spengler(1928:2: refersfrequently. 361-370) to whomEdwards toward Portaleswas revealedby BarrosArana (1902:16:345-346) on 3. This ambivalence Solarleansheavily. whomAmunategui 4. LeopoldoZea (1963) both describesthis use of the notion "colonial"and uses it himself. Gibson (1963:388) warnsthat "we shouldnot allow 'colonial'[like medieval] to be applied that appearsilliberalin LatinAmericaor that is vaguelyout of date." to everything on 5. R. P. Dore (1964:236-237) has some shrewdremarks this point, with specialreference in betweenmodernization Latin Americaand Japan.One finds a discusto the comparison sion like that of Matossian(1958), cited by Hirschman(1961: 4-5), on ideologiesof de-

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layed industrialization (in India and East Asia) to be rather irrelevant to Latin America because in it the "West" is assumed to be alien, and legitimately so. 6. Morse (1964: 163) writes that Chile was unique in managing "to avoid the extremes of tyranny and anarchy with a political system unencumbered by the mechanisms of a party rhetoric of an exotic liberalism." Hirschman (1961: 5-6) stresses the absence of indigenous theories of economic development. Glade (1969: 185-186) refers to the setting up of "a mimetic system of government patterned after the norms of political liberalism." See also Dealy (1968) who cites numerous examples of this assumption of political imitation. 7. Zea (1968: 40,47) cited Karl Mannheim as a guide for his formulation of Mexican positivism as the philosophy of the bourgeoisie. On this phenomena in Argentina see Zea (1963: 217-218). For further discussion of Zea's views see Hale (1971). 8. The brief though complex argument of Veliz is a good example of the way in which the economic and cultural interpretations can be mutual reinforcing. Veliz emphasizes past imitation of foreign (particularly liberal) models in contrast to the present-day more authentic return to the centralist tradition. This change has come about, argues Veliz, because of the collapse of the world economy in 1929 and with it the prosperity which "artificially sustained" the political and economic arrangements of a small elite. 9. The muted passion of the Steins is revealed, among other places, in the dedicatory note of their book. See also the excellent recent review by John Lynch (1972). 10. Symptomatic of this situation is the fact that the multi-volume Historia moderna de Mexico, directed by Daniel Cosio Villegas (1955-1972) divides its treatment into "political," "economic" and "social" categories, omitting any systematic treatment of ideas. It might be said, incidentally, that the treatment of politics by Cosio himself forms a strong exception to generalizations I have made about traditional political history. The method and presentation is traditional, but the tone is critical throughout. Cosio breaks away completely from the dictates of heroic centennial historiography. 11. Safford limits his definition of liberalism to an oblique reference to constitutionalism and mention of Santander, e.g., "Santandereanbrand of liberalism" (356) without further elucidation. His use of the term "conservative" apparently implies more than politics, e.g., "aristocratic conservatism" (360), or Antioquefio conservatism is based on "deeply rooted religious piety" (363). I think it is necessary to go further than this, even if one's principal objective is to study the social aspects of politics. 12. Smith concludes (1972: 24) that voting on centralization bore no relation to the social or status makeup of the delegates. He suggests (26) that perhaps violent upheaval after 1910 may have liberated deupties from their social backgrounds and allowed them to vote their consciences. This may be one reason why some of the divisions of the "centralization factor" can be discerned in the earlier conflict of political ideas. If delegates were not voting according to social class, ideologies and political myths from the past may have had a particularly strong impact on them. 13. See Lichtheim's (1967: 180) critique of Marcuse. Moore's (1966) tendency in this regard is subtle, but nevertheless discernable. 14. Cf. Stein and Stein (1970), 141-144 with 166-171. In an earlier essay, Stanley Stein (1964: 114) explicitly avoids political content in defining "conservatism" as the network of economic privilege which pervades traditional political and social institutions. Safford (1971), discussed above, is particularly effective in his criticism of economic class interpretations of political conflict.

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15. Though this is a criticism made justly by Jean Meyer (1971: 233) of Simon Collier's (1967) thoroughgoing and valuable study of ideas and politics in Chile from 1810 to 1833: "On the pretext of not giving in to the fashion of social and economic history, has one the right to treat ideas as Platonic entities floating in a sidereal void, without contact with human society ?" 16. Cf Lockhart (1972: 6): "Indeed, any branch of historical investigation can be converted into social history by turning attention from its usual main object of study, whether laws, ideas or events, to the people who produce them." Lockhart has made a zealous and persuasive case for studying "the informal, the inarticulated, the daily and ordinary manifestations of human existence," and has asserted (1969: 428-429), for example, that formal colonial institutions like church and state were far weaker and less significant than has been assumed. His arguments, though applied to the colonial period, are also highly pertinent (or even more pertinent) to the nineteenth century, where formal institutions have always been regarded as weaker. 17. A further example of my ambivalence is that I respond favorably on the level of method to Marvin Meyers' (1963: 264) criticism of Louis Hartz (1955): in a book on political thought Hartz constantly substitutes "non-intellectual categories for ideas. It is basically, I think, a study of the unconscious mind of America, conditioned by a peculiar historical and social experience." Though I am attracted to Hartz' conclusions about the United States, I question this type of method when applied to nineteenth century Latin America. 18. In formulating a definition of ideology, albeit crude, I have leaned particularly on Baechler (1972) and Halpern (1961). Also valuable, though of varying points of view, are Ashcraft (1972), Bergman (1951), Birnbaum (1960), and of course Mannheim (1936). 19. A good example of this tendency is in Cockcroft (1968). It would seem important in such a study to probe, for example, the ideology of anarchism and determine how it was or was not espoused by the "precursors." Instead, the author merely refers (48 fn., 85 fn.) to other works on European anarchism. 20. In my study (1968: 87-92, 225-234) of the debates of the Constituent Congress of the State of Mexico in the 1820s, I discovered, for example, how much the legislators, when faced with the problem of reorganizing the municipalities after independence, relied on Spanish precedent, some liberal, some pre-liberal. Yet I find unpersuasive the kind of psychocultural argument advanced by the Chilean historian Eyzaguirre (1965: 138) that beneath Lastarria's ardor for foreign doctrines lay "an Iberian atavism which weighed on his unconscious mind." In Lastarria's advocacy of Anglo-Saxon-type federalism and municipal autonomy "was reborn the never extinguished impulse of Hispanic regionalism." Similarly unpersuasive, though documented and challenging, is the recent contention by Dealy (1968) that post-independence constitution-makers in Spanish America were not following liberal (Spanish or otherwise) precepts, but rather a more traditional set of Hispanic assumptions. The implication of this view is that Latin America's liberal experience was not even exotic or imitative, as other cultural determinists argue; there simply was no liberal experience at all. 21. See Gillispie (1950: 234-235). For a defense of his method see Halevy's response (1965: 273-274) to the socialist Max Lazard in 1936. 22. Both Halevy (1965: 38-39) and Manuel (1956: 320) have noted Saint Simon and Comte's debt to the Catholic traditionalists Bonald and De Maistre for their concept of the "high administration of an organic society." 23. Lichtheim (1967: xvi) says he was drawn to nineteenth century thought because of the common effort by historians, philosophers, and politically conscious writers "to understand

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the significance of those twin upheavals, the Frenclh Revolution and the Industrial Revolution." In a sense we are studying in Latin America men who were attempting to understand the reverberations of these upheavals in their own continent, but reverberations that were often either greatly transformed or barely audible. 24. For Lerminier's influence see Alberdi (1886: 103-104) and Fuenzalida Grand6n (1893: 26-28). For Quinet, see Lastarria (1909: 20-27), where he relies on Quinet's translation of Herder, and Bilbao (1897: 207-209, 272). 25. Sociabilidad was undoubtedly drawn from the French sociabilite'. We must first establish the usage of the term in France, for example by Lerminier (1833), in order to discover its comparative significance in Latin American thought. For a pertinent discussion of "historiographic semantics," see Berkhofer (1969: 146-149). 26. See my comments (1967: 419-420) on Chevalier (1965). 27. My hypothesis bears some analogies to W. D. Raat's (1967) "anti-positivism" during the Diaz period. emphasis on philosophical

28. The Saint-Simonian and Pan-Latinist ideological context of the French intervention may have helped articulate the empire to Mexican culture. See Phelan (1968), an essay which is, incidentally, a fine example of "historiographic semantics." 29. See the interesting conceptual statement by Larson (1972) and a reference to ongoing (or until recently ongoing) research on Latin American technocrats at the University of California, Berkeley. BIBLIOGRAPHY ALBERDI, JUAN B. 1886 Fragmento preliminar al estudio (1st ed. 1837).
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