HIST362: Modern Revolutions

Ferguson is wrong about both democracy and capitalism in Latin America. However, he is in good company, at least until recently. As noted above, few scholars interested in the question of the world history of capitalism and democracy have included nineteenth-century Spanish America in their studies, casually dismissing the region's nineteenth-century history as enjoying no democracy. Samuel Huntington asserts Latin America "has had a corporatist, authoritarian culture" (1996, 46) which was "opposed to the capitalism and democracy of the West" (1996, 149). Deborah Yashar is succinct: "Until recently, democracy has appeared elusive in Latin America" (2003, 302). Paul Cartledge (2016), in his comparison of ancient and modern democracy, does not even mention Spanish America (with the standard focus on Britain, the United States, and France). John Mueller also assumes that democracy has no long history in Latin America; historically, he sees the United States promoting democracy in the region (largely false, of course) against a balky Latin American pupil (1999, 217). Thomas Bender contrasts U.S. political development with Latin America: "Still, the practice of politics - the political culture - was friendlier to democratization in North America than in South America. Social and political developments in the United States - driven in part by competing elites and a two-party system - were within decades opening opportunities for white males, but such was not the case in the newly independent South American countries" (2006, 100). As we will discuss below, this is incorrect.

Even the careful Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens do not largely study the nineteenth century, as they see no effective democracy there, due to a limit of state consolidation; "initial democratization" in the region took place in the twentieth century (1992, 197). Indeed, their assertion that contestation had to be institutional, and not armed resistance, seems logical. However, they do examine the nineteenth-century United States and Europe (and twentieth-century Latin America), when states faced much armed resistance (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992, 83-132). As I will argue below, Mexico and Colombia seem to fit their definitions of democracy (at least as well as, if not better than, many European states for which they do consider nineteenth-century developments). While Smith criticizes scholars for their "shortsightedness" of only looking at the past few decades when studying Latin American democracy, he begins his own in-depth study, his first cycle of democracy, in 1900 (2005, 12 [quote], 20-22).

Perhaps this is not surprising, for until the late 1990s, the scholarly consensus among Latin Americanists themselves was that the nineteenth century was decidedly undemocratic. Howard Wiarda sees democracy as essentially alien to Latin America's founding principles, which were feudal, statist, and corporatist (2001, 8). Ronald Schneider also understands democratic practices as essentially "alien" to the nineteenth-century Latin American character and experience, in which patron-client politics and violence ruled (2007, 6). Lawrence Harrison simply dismisses any history of democratic republicanism in the region until the late twentieth century (1997, 2). Miguel Centeno sees Latin American states as basically "despotic," if very weak (2002, 10). Even scholars who reject simplistic notions that Latin American culture was anathema to democracy, only see democracy arriving late to the scene. The popular idea of three waves of democracy in Latin America (beginning in early twentieth century from above, then populist movements, then post-military coup re-establishments) dominated. Most of the critical studies of democracy, capitalism, labor, and the state that appeared before the late 1990s take their starting point as 1900 or later (Collier and Collier 1991). Thus, any examination of the relationship between capitalism and democracy in Latin America would have to start in the twentieth century, since Latin America was not democratic in the nineteenth.

However, in the last twenty years there has been a major re-examination of the power, efficacy, and importance of democracy and republicanism in nineteenth-century Spanish America. These new political cultures emerged during the Independence era, strengthening around mid-century, for example, in Colombia with the Liberal Party's election in 1848. In Mexico, the same culture was more disrupted by foreign and domestic warfare, but began (in earnest) in 1854 with the period known as La Reforma and accelerated in the battle against Maximilian's invading French army (who allied with Mexican conservatives [1861-1867]). The epoch of greatest democratic experimentation (after many radical experiments during the Independence Era) was thus a period of Liberal rule; Liberals in both Mexico and Colombia sought to increase individual freedom - politically (expanding citizenship, enacting a broad array of rights), economically (abolishing slavery in Colombia, terminating monopolies), and culturally (embracing a vision of American democratic republicanism against European despotism). As we will see below, popular groups, both urban and rural, embraced their own visions of these reforms; indeed, it was popular groups who often created and promoted this democratic culture, prodding along their elite Liberal allies, who accepted democratic changes as the price necessary to secure popular allies as voters and soldiers (in the numerous civil wars against Conservatives). Conservatives, however, were much more suspicious about changes they dubbed "savage democracy". Exploring how democratic Latin America was in the nineteenth century is an on-going project, involving scholars in Latin America, North America, and Europe (Sanders 2104b; Sabato 2006 and 2018; López-Alves 2011; Cárdenas Ayala 2010; Aguilar Rivera 2019; Thomson 2007; Sala de Touron 2005; Vanegas Useche 2010). I will quickly argue that in the mid-nineteenth century, Latin America was as democratic as the United States and far more democratic than Europe, which are the regions regularly considered as the heartlands of democracy (and capitalism).

What is meant by democracy, however? There is some, if incomplete, consensus. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens define democracy as the state responding to representative rule, regular free and fair elections, freedom of expression and association, and the extent of the suffrage (1992, 10, 43). In a much-cited essay, Schmitter and Karl define democracy as involving accountability in the public realm of government to citizens, who elect representatives, in a competitive and cooperative environment (1991, 76). Peter Smith defines democracy by three principles: participation (no large part of society is excluded from politics), competition (fair elections), and accountability (rulers must justify their actions to their citizens) (2005, 7). Democracy had a much more catholic and expansive meaning in nineteenth-century Spanish America itself, focusing on popular sovereignty and mass participation (the importance of popular pressure was critical), but also suggesting broad enjoyment of numerous rights (by all adult men, regardless of race and class), citizenship, and notions of liberty, equality and fraternity. Let us quickly see how nineteenth-century Mexico and Colombia fit these definitions, which involve institutions, daily political practice, and political culture.

Institutionally, Colombia and Mexico's constitutions of the period granted citizenship and voting rights to a wide swath, even universal at times, of the adult male population. Colombia eliminated all property and literacy rights for the suffrage in 1853, enacting unrestricted adult male suffrage (Pombo and Guerra 1986, 8-10). Mexico came close to doing so in 1857, only demanding "an honest way of making a living" (Constitución Federal 1857, 37; Arroyo García 2011). Voting is but one aspect of democracy, but it does allow easy comparisons to the deep restrictions on suffrage in the United States (due to racial restrictions) and to Europe (due to class restrictions). Indeed, the vast majority of European states only adopted universal manhood suffrage after World War I (Tilly 2004, 214). Historians have at times justified ignoring such impressive suffrage rights in Latin America due to the high levels of fraud in nineteenth-century elections. However, fraud was hardly only endemic to Latin America. As Boss Tweed himself declared, "The ballots made no result; the counters made the result" (Brands 2010, 348). Yet, few historians dismiss the United States as undemocratic, even with fraud determining the outcomes of national elections, such as in 1876. Even with fraud, these institutional advances were not sterile, but reflected vibrant popular political activity. Popular groups vociferously defended their right to vote, protesting fraudulent maneuvering. Indigenous people from small villages near Popayán, Colombia complained that local politicians illegally denied them the "right to vote that the law allows Granadan [Colombia was then known as Nueva Granada] citizens;" by doing so, these politicians "cheat the republic, rip apart our principles, [and] undermine republican truth".

Yet the right to vote is distinct from actual voting. As discussed above, the standard assumption is that mass participation in electoral politics (and thus democracy) did not begin until the 1940s. However, this is mostly just an assumption, as we still lack many local studies of voting patterns (Sabato 2018, 68). Yet, in Colombia, we have some evidence that belies this notion of limited participation. In the 1856 Colombian presidential elections, for which solid election data exists, 40 percent of eligible voters (all adult males, Colombia had enacted universal adult male suffrage) cast their ballots (Bushnell 1971, 242). In 1865, in Cali, Colombia, elections for the national congress enjoyed a voter participation rate of over 57 percent (Sanders 2004, 127). While rates were generally significantly lower, one can no longer argue that elections were only of interest to the elite few. More important, however, is that studies of popular republicanism and democracy have shown that elections alone did not define nineteenth-century democracy, but that democratic culture was tightly linked to a broader popular republicanism (Vanegas Useche 2010, 11-46; Malamud 2007, 19-30).

Indeed, the repertoire of politics went far beyond voting; more important than looking at constitutions or elite opinion on democracy were the daily actions and regular discourse of the subaltern majority. Scholars have examined popular groups' wide-ranging appropriation of democratic and republican politics, via voting, petitioning, marching in demonstrations, serving in citizen militias, pressuring legislators from galleries, participating in local councils, attending political clubs, and generally debating the political issues of the day through the public reading of newspapers, listening to political oratory, and conversing among themselves, creating a democratic public sphere in town squares, village markets, churches, cockfighting pits, and taverns. While Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens see capitalist development as helping to foment civil society (a key support of democracy), Mexico and Colombia had relatively thriving civil societies before large-scale capitalist activity (1992, 6, 274); instead, later in the century, Mexico's Porfiriato (1876-1911) and Colombia's Regeneration (1870s-1890s) both worked to erode and debilitate civil society (especially any that had direct political ends). Before these restrictions, popular actors engaged in quotidian politics in support of Liberal and Conservative Parties, both at the ballot box, in the town square to sway public opinion, and, during civil war, on the battlefield (the citizen-soldier was seen as key to republican citizenship). Bender argues that Latin America differed from North America since the American Revolution empowered popular groups, while in the south, "Strong military force was maintained with armies that were able and willing to return these groups to a condition of powerlessness" (2006, 99). This was not the case in the slightest, as popular groups wielded great influence in the face of weak Latin American states. Indeed, it would be popular groups' power and influence, and the state's weakness, that would turn many elites towards projects of national Regeneration (which entailed restricting democracy). But before this moment, whether measured by participation or by competition, Mexico and Colombia were demonstrably democratic.

Furthermore, popular groups clearly expected their participation to matter (accountability). Two petitions from indigenous peoples reveal how popular groups embraced the idea that in a democratic republic they were sovereign and the state had to respond to them. Indians from Huimilpan in central Mexico wrote to the state officials in 1856 to reclaim some land unjustly taken from them. Their strongest argument was that the Governor or President was beholden to them as a servant of the nation: a "republican magistrate" should dedicate himself "to serve the Pueblo who elevated him". Similarly, Indians from Mocondino, in the Cauca region of Colombia, expressed confidence that an "essentially democratic government," in defense of which "we have shed so much blood," would accede to their wishes not to have their communal lands divided. These indigenous villagers assumed the state would listen to them and act on their wishes, that they were citizens (which they legally were and which stands in stark contrast to the supposedly more democratic nineteenth-century United States), and that their citizenship mattered.

Culturally, and perhaps as important as this institutional and practiced democracy, mid-nineteenth-century Spanish Americans thought of themselves as leading the world in democratic and republican practices. Indeed, they thought such practices defined their societies as modern, in contrast to a backward, monarchical Europe and a United States struggling with slavery and racism. In 1868, Mexico City's La Opinión Nacional argued that "our triumphant democracy" in Mexico had far surpassed Old World accomplishments. Similarly, the capital's La Chinaca declared that the future of democracy lay in the Americas: "today we sustain the banner of the democratic idea" against European tyrants. El Globo posited that while Europe and the United States measured progress through industrial and military might, Mexico insisted that its "republican virtue," and democratic constitution best defined nineteenth-century civilization. In Colombia, President José María Obando celebrated the 1853 Constitution as "the most democratic code that has governed any pueblo". If celebrating democracy and its values is an important part of actually having a democracy, in the 1860s, Mexico and Colombia, along with other American societies, were the most democratic countries in the world.

Therefore, using Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens's, Schmitter and Karl's, and Smith's definitions (participation, competition, accountability), Mexico and Colombia were certainly democracies from the 1850s to 1870s (with the only caveat being regular elections, as elections were often interrupted by foreign and domestic war). Indeed, in regard to the extent of the suffrage (participation), Colombia and Mexico were two of the most democratic nations in the world, surpassing the United State (due to its racial restrictions) and most of Europe (due to class restrictions). Indeed, in a world where democracy and republicanism were tightly linked (but, of course, not synonymous), the vast majority of the nineteenth-century world's republics were in Latin America - in 1847, Europe only counted one (Hobsbawm 1996, 312). Yes, these were messy democracies, often weakened by fraud, and with active plebeian voters and citizen soldiers, over whom fragile states struggled to keep order. The weakness of the national state actually made governments more accountable, which perhaps reflected popular groups' critical criteria for democracy. Competition is more complex, as the party in power tended to dominate elections; however, there was intense electoral competition - indeed, competition was so intense that it regularly spilled over into civil wars. Colombia and Mexico fit or surpass the standard definitions of democracy - it is simply a lack of order that often marks them as non-democratic. However, order itself is not inherently democratic - indeed, authoritarian regimes pride themselves on securing order. Yet conceptions of order were vitally important. My argument will hinge on how disorder came to define democracy in elite minds; therefore, to secure order and capitalist development, popular democracy had to be undone.