The Path of Dictatorship
Capitalism and Democracy's Erosion
By the 1870s, ruling Liberals in both Mexico and Colombia, having defeated Conservatives on the battlefield and at the ballot box, began to question their own project to promote democratic republicanism as the best path to creating modern societies (and their alliances with popular liberal voters and soldiers). They had long expected their political program would lead to economic success - freeing people politically would also free them economically. However, in the 1870s, Liberals in both Mexico and Colombia began to have severe doubts; democracy, especially popular democracy, did not seem to be leading to the same type of industrial capitalist success as was becoming increasingly evident in the United States. In fact, many began to suspect that not only was democracy not engendering capitalism, it was actually hindering it. Disorderly, demanding plebeians, civil wars, and general uncertainty prevented internal investment, but, more critically, given the relative paucity of liquid capital in both Mexico and Colombia, deterred foreign capital. (Indeed, while I want to stress commonalities across the Americas, the need for foreign capital, rather than an ability to rely on domestic capital as in the United States, made the restriction of democracy and the assurance of order even more critical in Mexico and Colombia). Independent or moderate Liberals in both societies now turned to new projects, called the Regeneration in Colombia and the Porfiriato in Mexico (although also called the Regeneration in the latter too), which would seek to rein in democracy and promote capitalist economic growth.
As with democracy earlier, we need definitions. Seth Rockman has noted that, in the new histories of capitalism, "Few works in the field begin with an explicit statement of what the author means by capitalism" (2014, 442). Since capitalism is such a slippery concept, this is a tempting approach; however, I will use "capitalism" as a system in which capital has the ability, perhaps predominant, to transform society. The culture of capitalism is essential to understanding its evolution, as Appelby argues that "…people think that because economies are about material things, only material forces operate in it when in fact economies involve human beings who don't do anything without an idea in their heads" (2010, 89). In the case of Mexico and Colombia, it is perhaps this desire for this transformation, the effort to attract capital, that is most important, rather than the effects of capital proper. I will therefore focus on the decisions (to restrict democratic culture and institutions) made by political actors, and how these actors, and the broader culture in which they lived, understood the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
As with studies of world democracy, late nineteenth-century Latin America is often left out of histories of capitalism, in spite of how capital was remaking those societies (Appleby 2010, 248). Indeed, this was not Mexico's first capitalist moment. The Bajío region, especially in the late eighteenth century, was the most economically dynamic part of the Americas, with capital transforming relations of production in the silver mines and haciendas there (Tutino 2011). Yet Hidalgo's rebellion (1810-1811) destroyed much of these changes, and it is hard to find much evidence that capital, which, while not unimportant, was transmogrifying society between the 1820s and the 1870s. Instead, great contests of politics and religion were by far more important. This changed beginning in the 1870s, as political and cultural elites began a program to reshape their societies in the hope of promoting capitalism.
Political elites in both Colombia and Mexico engaged in a titanic effort to redefine democracy, sovereignty, state power, and order in the public sphere. Democracy, once celebrated as a marker of Mexico and Colombia's success in crafting modern societies, now became associated with the disorder, chaos, and rowdy plebeians that impeded economic development. Mexico's La República stated succinctly, "If we want to progress, we must avoid anything that could disturb the public order. Peace is necessary and indispensable for the fomenting of material improvements of a nation". In Colombia, the problem of "public order" was equally central; only with order could Colombia develop "its industries," foment "railroads and every type of material improvements," and thus obtain "true civilization". This point seems obvious: without peace and order, who would risk capital in railroads, mines, plantations or factories? Yet, disorder had become strongly linked with democracy by the 1870s and 1880s. Securing order was not simply a matter of strengthening the state (although this was critical), but of redefining the political culture from one of popular sovereignty and democratic contestation, to one of order and authority.
For these Regenerations to work, the pueblo had to be forced to understand that their visions of and faith in democracy were no longer valid. In Colombia, Juan Ulloa argued "there is much work to be done in order to make the masses understand what real and true liberty and democracy are". Needless to say, what Ulloa thought democracy meant was quite different from what the pueblo believed. In Mexico, the most sophisticated public proponents of the new Díaz system were the editors of La Libertad (including Justo Sierra, Mexico's premiere late-century public intellectual). They argued that Mexico had to forget its democratic past, and face a future defined by the hard realities of capitalist development instead of "an unrealizable democracy". The poor should no longer place their hopes in a "promised land" of politics, but only in labor and work. In Colombia, President Miguel Antonio Caro argued in 1892 that constant "political activity" had left society in a state of "permanent upheaval," "robbing minds and arms from industry and work" (Caro 1932, 56). Cali's aptly named El Ferrocarril vociferously complained about "these too frequent elections" that "totally impede the progress of the country". By ending the practice of constant elections, "citizens can dedicate themselves to their professions, without being distracted". Indeed, "Epidemics, locusts, droughts, floods, hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, and famine; all these calamities...since they are transitory, pale in comparison to that great calamity of our elections". Democracy, once a source of pride, was now simply a disaster or utopian dream. Economics, not politics, was the way forward.
A central factor that elites blamed for economic stagnation were the constant civil wars and upheavals that disturbed the peace in both Mexico and Colombia and deterred investment, both domestic and foreign. These civil wars were seen as tightly linked to, and perhaps the inevitable outcome of, the democratic politics of the previous decades. Bogotá's El Conservador complained about Colombians' pride in their democratic republic: "Talking incessantly about liberty, and with the presumption of being the freest nation in the world," had reduced Colombia "almost to the level of barbarians". Colombia was a "pueblo whose industry" was not advanced enough to break the bad habits of "anarchy" and "disorder" that plebeians had learned during civil wars. Colombian elites complained about plebeians' unwillingness to labor and the "demoralization of the masses accustomed to life in the army camps". Democratic politics simply lead to civil wars and disorders - an "abominable anarchy" or the spread of "the virus of anarchy".
29Capital and industry could correct such evils. Politicians in both Colombia and Mexico hoped that a focus on labor would civilize the poor, "distracting them from sterile political discussions". El Ferrocarril argued that railroads created peace and prosperity, since by demanding cargo, they expanded agriculture and mining. Instead of being involved in politics, citizens "will try to become rich" and "being property holders and educated, will come to constitute one of the best elements of order". Mexico's El Siglo Diez y Nueve echoed this sentiment, declaring that with the spread of commerce following the steam engine's tracks, "the agitated spirit of political contests will direct and apply its activity to other enterprises and labors". Democracy impeded capitalism; but, as El Conservador suggested and Díaz explicitly stated in an interview, perhaps one day, capitalist development might allow for more democracy (Creelman 1908).
As with the passage from La Gaceta Comercial that opened this essay, more and more politicians and intellectuals began to declare that it really did not matter if a society's form of government was democratic or republican or even monarchial, but that it kept order and promoted economic growth. While Liberals had formerly celebrated revolutions that installed democratic governments, El Ferrocarril vociferously objected: "We declare ourselves against all revolutions, because we are convinced that the worst government is better than the most perfect revolution". What mattered in a government was for rights and property to be respected, regardless of its form. Bogotá's El Deber argued that the world did not admire Colombia for its republicanism, but instead saw its disorder as a "scandal" that threatened property rights; thus, securing such rights was the most important aspect of government, not whether its form was that of a monarchy or republic.
Others went even further, openly advocating for a dictatorship that would emerge in all but name under the Porfiriato in Mexico. In Colombia, the Independent Liberal (a faction of Liberals aligning themselves with Conservatives) Foción Mantilla wanted a government that would "only attend to the salvation of order, even at the cost of a dictatorship". Eliseo Payán, once a fervent democrat but later President of Colombia under the Regeneration, in 1880 declared that due to chronic instability and "the violent attack on property" that Colombia had suffered, "capital had fled or is hidden," while "industry is annihilated;" therefore, to correct these evils, "the path of dictatorship is considered justifiable as the way to obtain order and peace". The needs of capital could justify a dictatorship.
Mexico followed the "path of dictatorship" most successfully. José Ramón Leal, in a series of letters published in México's influential El Siglo Diez y Nueve, praised the Díaz regime as "the future". He argued that Mexico had to turn away from internecine politics to instead focus on trade and industry: "the time has arrived to leave behind all other concerns in order to unite in a reciprocal and common interest, through relations of industry, contract, and commerce, that is the urgent necessity of modern life". Instead of the old republican hostility to Spain, Mexico should imitate its "moderate monarchy". Mexico's past of democratic politics mattered not. Today "civilization" was defined as a "workshop;" those nations not active and working would soon be passed by in the race to progress. Key to this progress was that Mexico adopt technologies like the telegraph and railways, but also take advantage of "the marvels of credit". Credit was essential: it was "the motor force of modern life". But to do so, it would have to abandon its old democratic concerns: "Political science knows nothing more lamentable than those Republics where everyone leads and no one obeys…" Leal closed his argument by noting that if necessary, to secure order and develop the economy, "a healthy dictatorship" would be the most propitious path. Leal's essays show the tight connection between dismissing democracy and the promotion of capital as the main "motor force" in society.
Justo Sierra was not as blunt as Leal in his promotion of dictatorship, but he associated the Porfiriato even more closely with capitalism. In his survey of Mexican history, Sierra contrasted the great political gains made under the liberal President Benito Juárez and the Reform in the 1850s and 1860s, with the poor state of Mexico's economy and society. Sierra argued that the Reform's promotion of "democracy," and its handmaidens of liberty and equality, had not magically produced "wealth and credit and material progress" (1948a, 173). He approvingly noted that under Díaz, "Mexico's political evolution has been sacrificed to other phases of its social evolution" (Sierra 1977, 396). While too suave to call Díaz a dictator, Sierra dismissed voting irregularities and Díaz' multiple terms in office (1977, 393). In order to secure the "order and peace" necessary for industrial development (and Sierra was explicitly comparing Mexico to the United States), Díaz often had to turn to "fear, the ultimate resort of government" (1977, 386, 389). Díaz had to be re-elected constantly and assume "the maximum amount of authority in his hands," in order to protect Mexico's foreign credit, "without which it would not have been possible to find the necessary funds in order to complete the great works of the future" - the railroads and infrastructure necessary for capitalist development (Sierra 1977, 393). Sierra plainly stated that Díaz' project represented "the Mexican bourgeoisie" (1977, 388).
By the 1880s, politicians and letrados had succeeded in both Colombia and Mexico in redefining, in the public sphere, the importance and meaning of democracy. Yet as important as this discursive assault was, it was accompanied (if more slowly and often less successfully) by a change in the institutions of political life. In Colombia, this was marked by a new constitution in 1886, which rolled back many of the rights of previous constitutions. Independent Liberals had long sought to restrict access to politics, as "every political man should be wise;" they claimed that only Radical Liberals still believed in "popular sovereignty".
Independents and Conservatives urged for the new constitution to restrict citizenship and suffrage. La Nación, in an article probably written by the former progressive Liberal, José María Samper, argued that a "democratic republic" was only possible in a well-educated people with a "unity of race," conditions that "Hispanic America" lacked. "That which we have in Colombia is a social mass (nine tenths of the total population) that does not know nor understand a single word of republic, of democracy, of principles, of rights or duties, of what civilization and progress is, because it is generally ignorant, coarse, half-savage". Colombia's mistake was to insist on democracy, when in reality only a small group of men should be involved in politics, men of "intelligence, enlightenment, wealth, and temperament". He proposed that voting was not a "right" because if it were, then women, children, criminals, drunkards, foreigners, and the insane could vote. Therefore, it was "the state, and only the state, that can grant the suffrage". Colombia had adopted "universal suffrage" in the 1853 Constitution, an "error" that did not take into account "that we did not have a people able to exercise that supposed right with diligence, with independence, and with morality". Samper argued that "to vote well" men must be intelligent, informed, and have an "independent" life, in other words, they must be propertied.
The 1886 Constitution hewed to these arguments. Most notably, it established literacy and property requirements for citizenship, reduced the frequency of elections (as El Ferrocarril had implored), reinstated the death penalty, and outlawed popular political organizations. Colombia's Regenerators had struck hard at the vibrant democratic life of the mid-century. More laws followed. In 1888, Colombia's press law forbade any "subversive publications," which included printing anything attacking the Church, offending civil or ecclesiastical authority, insulting the military, information that might depreciate money, obscenity, "attacking the legitimate organization of property," "inciting some social classes against others," and "taking the name and representation of the pueblo". A public order law, enacted later that year, gave the president the power to imprison or exile anyone who was a threat to order or had committed "attempts against public or private property". The laws made clear the link between restricting popular democracy, increasing state power, and protecting property and capital. Capital had to be sacrosanct and the poor had to be quiescent.
Ironically, Colombia's Regeneration, in spite of its sharp institutional delineation between the old order and the new, never succeeded in maintaining order (the brutal civil War of the Thousand Days would convulse the country from 1899-1902) or fomenting as much capitalist development as in Mexico. Only after the War of the Thousand Days was a program as coherent as Mexico's Porfiriato initiated (and much foreign capital invested) (Bergquist 1986, 195-246).
In Mexico, Díaz had not come to power with an anti-democratic or pro-capitalist plan. His Plan de la Noria (issued in 1871 in a first, failed attempt to oust the Juaristas) was, in fact, largely a promise to reinvigorate and respect a popular liberalism that had flourished in Mexico over the previous two decades, especially during the war against Maximilian and the French (Mallon 1995, 129-133). Even years later, this is how poor farmers and ex-soldiers understood Díaz' program (Sanders 2014b; McNamara 2007). However, once in power, Díaz not only pursue distinct policies (that were anti-democratic and pro-capitalist), he and his supporters created a whole new justification for state power and the relation between the pueblo and the state. Mexico's Regenerators did not create a new constitution, in spite of Sierra's urge to abandon "universal suffrage" in favor of literacy tests to exclude the "ignorant multitude" (Sierra 1948b, 147-148). Elections continued apace. But Díaz would rule Mexico from 1876 until 1911, with one brief interregnum when his handpicked successor was President. After this interregnum, as Díaz took office again in 1884, it became clear where true power lay and elections became more and more of a sham. Indeed, as late as 1910, the massively influential científico José Yves Limantour was still convinced that forty years of the Porfiriato had not prepared the people for democracy; it had not succeeded in educating the "masses from their ignorance about the most elemental rights of citizenship…[and] the manner to exercise those rights" (1965 [1921], 155). There was often not even the pretension of a democracy or a republic. Thus, while the official institutions changed slowly (centrally appointed jefes políticos gained much more power over local life, the country lawyers who helped the poor craft petitions and make demands of the state were banned in 1891 [Schaefer 2017]), the change in political culture was more rapid and stark. While the politics of political alliances and local power may have taken decades to evolve under the Porfiriato (Mallon 1995, 319), the anti-democratic and pro-capitalist rhetoric emerged impressively quickly.
In both Mexico and Colombia, these institutional and discursive shifts away from democracy also involved an embrace of state power in order to foment change (especially the ability to attract capital) and to act independently of popular (or even elite) groups. Regenerators had long chafed over plebeians' assumption they should be able to influence the state. El Ferrocarril argued that the state must be strong enough to prevent anarchy and to guarantee the right of property above all else. Regenerators asserted that property rights were the basis of all "social order," and that the state had to ensure that "property is inviolable". In both Colombia and Mexico, elites were greatly concerned about popular groups' demands for land, to the point that in Colombia some worried that popular politics "had sowed in the poor populations the seed of communism". The state's assurance of property rights against democratic pressure would be central to attracting capital to agriculture. Independent Liberals and Conservatives were particularly horrified by democratic efforts to redistribute land in Cauca; they argued "the necessity to maintain the idea of the right of property, above all of landed property, as sacred and inviolable. This is the cornerstone on which the progress of modern societies is built". Only with secure property could Colombia "inspire confidence in order to attract…the support of foreign industry and capital".
Strong states could protect property and resist the democratic influence of popular pressures, with a focus on repressing democratic plebeians in order to attract capital. Francisco de la Fuente Ruiz praised Díaz' newly potent state; he marveled at how the "popular masses" were no longer interested in politics; indeed, "they seem to have spontaneously renounced" the political life. La Libertad argued, "The State is not a servant of the nation to whom it owes services in exchange for taxes. The State does not offer services, but, rather, exercises its own functions, since it is a special body with society and superior to society". Thus sovereignty was defined as residing in the state itself, not in the pueblo, whose democratic demands the state could now ignore. And under Díaz, if less so in Colombia, the state did become much more powerful: using railroads, the telegraphs, and a stronger army, as well as Foucaultian knowledge of Mexico's peoples and landscapes, to crush popular rebellions if needed (Craib 2004). Furthermore, if capitalist markets failed to transform Indians and campesinos into hard-working proletarians, the state would use its power to do so (Weiner 2004, 33-42). Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens argue, "Consolidation of state power was an essential prerequisite for democratization" (1992, 9). However, in Mexico and Colombia, the consolidation of state power destroyed or eroded existing democratic culture, especially the accountability of officials and popular sovereignty.
The relationship between state power, capital, and popular political influence was made clear in the 1884 protests over payments of old Mexican debts to England. Foreign debt is often seen as forcing Latin American states into a dependent relationship with Europe and the United States, thereby determining local politics (Cardoso and Faletto 1979). While important, this is only part of the story, as the debt question was only part of a larger, internal debate in Mexico and Colombia about the nature of the state and its relation to democratic pressure. In Mexico, Francisco Cosmes supported paying the debt, in order to attract foreign capital. However, massive protests emerged in and around Congress, which was debating a deal to repay the debt. Cosmes declared that when the legislators debating the issue became influenced by the "ignorant mob" and the "tumult in the streets," then state authority will have collapsed. "The law of the riot" had replaced constitutional order. Cosmes insisted that "the passion of the masses" had to be ignored. For plebeians, the central notion of democracy was popular sovereignty, the idea that their voice mattered. For Cosmes, this democracy threatened state power and capital - it had to be muzzled. The protests were eventually crushed, with violence. La Libertad dismissed concerns that some protestors had been killed: "We lament that the merchant loses money, that the passer-by, his watch". The paper stressed it was the duty of the state to guard "the lives and interests of honorable citizens," even at the cost of the protestors' lives. The paper rebuked those who claimed the protestors had a right to march, declaring the Mexican workers were not yet ready to enjoy such rights responsibly - they would be too tempted to engage in attacks on property. These protestors were not to be allowed to "force merchants to close their shops". The question of what weighed more, democracy or capitalism, had been settled.
This new attitude of state power and popular rights applied to labor relations as well. After workers at a Puebla textile factory went on strike, La Libertad reminded the local governor that, "The supreme law is public security, and therefore you should punish the promoters of the strike". The state was not beholden to rights, but to a higher call for order, necessary for industrial progress. The workers had pleaded their case to Díaz, whom the paper advised to tell the strikers to go back to their labors, as only by working could they improve their lives. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens argue that if capitalism helps democracy, it is by strengthening the working class and weakening anti-democratic landlords (1992, 269-271). However, in late-nineteenth-century Mexico and Colombia, capitalism (or its contradictions) did neither; it weakened the political influence of nascent middle sectors and lower-class citizen-soldiers and increased the power of the landed elites, as the Porfiriato promoted agricultural exports.
In short, in Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Colombia (where some harbored hopes for a nationally led industrialization), Regenerators hoped to vitiate democracy in order to make local investors feel secure and to attract foreign capital. A writer from provincial Colombia celebrated the Regeneration as putting Colombia on the right path that would attract "capital for its development". Colombia's Regenerators urged a buttressing of state power to ensure order: "with stability, finally, we will have domestic and foreign credit" and the country will attract "foreign capital". Rafael Núñez, in a speech to the 1885-1886 Constitutional Convention, argued that Colombia's anarchic political system should be replaced by one that was more "authoritarian;" he justified this by noting how the nation's disorder has led to "the absences of foreign credit that keeps us paralyzed due to a lack of railroads".
In Mexico, Sierra argued that by establishing a utopian democracy before the Porfiriato, "democracy without limits," Mexico had not "maintained public security in order to attract foreign immigrants or capital" (1948a, 174). But under Díaz, foreign capital, order, and progress were tightly intertwined. In Mexico, capitalists noted this connection as well; they confidently adopted a language of material "paths of Progress" and "the future," as opposed to past economic stagnation, when petitioning for favors. Cotton producers on Mexico's Gulf Coast, requesting aid in adopting North American methods and machinery, claimed that by encouraging foreign immigration, attracting capital, putting fallow fields under production, and exporting cotton, they could increase production, help domestic industry and thus serve "the cause of civilization". They explicitly used a language of attracting "capital" and "foreign capital and workers". Surveying Díaz' regime at the turn of the century, La Gaceta Comercial could approvingly note that by ending "our bloody discussions," - politics in other words - Díaz had attracted the admiration of "all the world's peoples". Now, "the country is wrapped in a network of innumerable telegraphs and railways". Most importantly, with order and peace, Mexico "attracts foreign capital".