Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development

Between Hope and Despair

Ignacio Walker, Scott Mainwaring

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780268096663
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Comparative Law
• Index: Law

In 2009, Ignacio Walker—scholar, politician, and one of Latin America's leading public intellectuals—published La Democracia en América Latina. Now available in English, with a new prologue, and significantly revised and updated for an English-speaking audience, Democracy in Latin America: Between Hope and Despair contributes to the necessary and urgent task of exploring both the possibilities and difficulties of establishing a stable democracy in Latin America.

Walker argues that, throughout the past century, Latin American history has been marked by the search for responses or alternatives to the crisis of oligarchic rule and the struggle to replace the oligarchic order with a democratic one. After reviewing some of the principal theories of democracy based on an analysis of the interactions of political, economic, and social factors, Walker maintains that it is primarily the actors, institutions, and public policies—not structural determinants—that create progress or regression in Latin American democracy.

CHAPTER 1

THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES TO OLIGARCHIC RULE

At different times and in various forms, liberalism, positivism, revolution, corporatism, clientelism, patrimonialism, socialism, and populism have been some of the ideologies and institutional arrangements attempted in the search for a new social and political order to replace oligarchic rule. Among these, populism has been Latin America’s most paradigmatic response to the oligarchic crisis and the emergence of the “social question” in the early twentieth century. All of these ideologies and institutional arrangements have included an understanding of democracy that is full of tensions and contradictions. Yet despite these tensions, seeds of democratic development existed in liberal and republican ideology of the nineteenth century (and even in positivist ideology, especially following its search for the idea of modernity).

LIBERALISM

Beginning with the struggles for independence, ruling elites envisioned a representative and constitutional government. The political processes then taking place in Europe and the United States of America and the republicanism and constitutionalism already present in the Hispanic world strongly influenced this republican concept. Republicanism—and, by the same token, liberalism—was not simply imported from Europe. Although this is not the place to discuss the theoretical and historiographical differences and disputes between republicanism and liberalism (see Aguilar and Rojas 2002), the latter was one of the most influential ideologies of the nineteenth century, especially among the ruling elites. The actually existing liberalism seen in Latin America in the second half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth was more connected to economic freedom and authoritarianism than to political freedom and democracy. As a political philosophy, liberalism did not take root in social and political processes beyond some vague references to the idea of freedom found in constitutional texts. Struggles for universal suffrage came belatedly and in a partial and contradictory manner (with few exceptions) following the search for an authentically democratic and representative government. In the history of liberalism in Latin America, democracy was the exception and not the general rule.

The republican and liberal ideas that the forgers of independence heard about and defended had their origins in the North American and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789, respectively. Their reception by the Latin American elites was often disconnected from the cultural, social, and political reality of the region. By the end of the colonial era, the monarchies of Spain and Portugal exhibited a type of enlightened despotism with the first liberalizing reforms in the economic sphere, breaking with the rigid, monopolistic control of trade between the Iberian Peninsula and the overseas colonies. The other effect of the Bourbon reforms in Spain and the Pombaline reforms in Portugal, with their rationalist, reformist, modernizing and liberalizing components, was a strong administrative recentralization, which conservative forces in the newly formed American republics reinforced time and again during the nineteenth century. The Latin American reception of Spain’s Cádiz Constitution of 1812 varied, while at the same time the restoration of Ferdinand VII to the throne in 1814 reinforced efforts to secure the precarious constitutional democracy forged since 1810. The outcome of the wars for independence was not necessarily the ideology of freedom and democracy (despite the various essays that displayed such sentiment), but rather anarchy, caudillismo, militarism and civil wars, accompanied more often by conservative and authoritarian solutions than by liberal and democratic ones.

The forerunners of Latin American independence (such as Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar in Venezuela; Antonio Nariño in Colombia; Manuel Belgrano and José de San Martín in Argentina; and Bernardo O’Higgins in Chile) worked diligently for independence and separation from Spain, but were less concerned with freedom and democracy. Most of these men defended republican notions, understood as a form of government contrary to monarchy and based on a representative, elective, and constitutional system of government (Aguilar and Rojas 2002, 82). Some, however, ended up advocating the monarchic cause, while others openly opted for dictatorial rule. After Napoleonic forces invaded the Iberian Peninsula, the monarchy was literally transferred to Brazil. It wasn’t until 1889 that Brazil established a republic. All of this occurred in clear contrast to the case of the United States, which embraced liberty and the republican cause without ambiguities (notwithstanding its own internal contradictions), with democratic elements that deepened and developed throughout the nineteenth century. From the beginning, the Declaration of Independence advanced the principle of equality, and the Founding Fathers passionately debated the Constitution and institutions in order to make them more consistent with the common ideology of liberty and the republic.

In Latin America, the nineteenth century was marked by constant struggles between liberals and conservatives. While liberals opened the way for federalism, with the United States exerting some influence, conservatives defended centralism. Liberals pushed to limit or even eliminated ecclesiastical privileges and advocated the separation of church and state. In contrast, conservatives allied themselves with the Catholic Church and its prerogatives. And while liberals introduced the idea of individual rights based around a vague idea of economic progress and free trade, conservatives defended many of the institutions of the old regime, especially within the social order.

Liberal ideas emerged during the struggles for independence and in the years immediately following, influenced by writer José María Luis Mora in Mexico; President Bernardino Rivadavia (1826–1827) in Argentina (principally in the province of Buenos Aires in connection with the Constitution of 1826); in Honduras with the Constitution of 1824 and the newly formed (and ultimately unsuccessful) United Provinces of Central America; and by the irruption of the pipiolos, or liberals, in the constitutional experiments of the 1820s in Chile. The liberal impulse was driven forward under the Colombian president Francisco de Paula Santander (1832–1836), a pragmatic liberal who promoted political, constitutional, and religious reforms associated within a model of constitutional government and rule of law. Experiments linked to liberal ideology were few and far between, ending in failure and the reinstatement of conservatism.

After a series of constitutional experiments in the 1810s and 1820s, political stability became a necessity to fend off disorder and anarchy. This stability was most often achieved under authoritarian rule. Among these authoritarian leaders were Juan Manuel de Rosas, who commanded Argentina from 1829 to 1852 and in 1835 demanded unlimited power to exercise dictatorial control over the provinces; Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1812–1840) in Paraguay; José Antonio Páez, who governed until the 1840s in Venezuela, more a military caudillo than a dictator in the style of Rosas; General Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico, who suspended the Federalist Constitution in 1824 to open the way for his authoritarian exercise of power; José Rafael Carrera, who defeated the liberalizing attempts of Francisco Morazán between 1823 and 1837 in Central America, instituted a conservative order, restored ecclesiastical privileges and jurisdictions, and dominated the political scene in his authoritarian manner until his death in 1865; and finally, the presidential authoritarianism created by Diego Portales in Chile, even under a political format of impersonal authority and the legal and orderly transfer of power.

In the 1850s, a new political generation emerged to counter the conservative and authoritarian onslaught, with the objective of promoting liberal reforms in the region. Historians call the period between 1850 and 1880 the peak of liberal reforms in Latin America (Bushnell and Macaulay 1988).1 This new political generation, the first to authentically represent liberal ideals, sought profound political and constitutional reforms and laid the foundation for a liberal order. Such was the case of Benito Juárez (president of Mexico from 1858 to 1872), a Zapotec Indian who barely spoke Spanish until age twelve and who carried out what historians call “the Reform” (1855–1861) in Mexico, primarily based on the Constitution of 1857. The Law of Juárez (1855) put an end to ecclesiastical and military privileges and jurisdictions, generating heated disputes with the conservative sectors that resulted in political and social upheaval (Halperin 1993). Contrary to the corporate system and conservative centralism that commanded the country until the 1850s, the Constitution of 1857 set up a regime based on individual liberties and a federal system. It introduced universal suffrage (despite various limitations) for the first time. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church excommunicated any person who swore to respect and defend the Constitution. General Porfirio Díaz (president of Mexico from 1876 to 1911) headed the regime that served as a model for further Latin American political development, based on a combination of political authoritarianism and economic liberalism. Ironically, the very motto that Porfirio Díaz had used against the attempted reelection of Lerdo y Tejada in 1876 (“No reelection, effective suffrage”) was used again a quarter century later to remove Díaz from power, culminating in the Revolution of 1910. The short-lived attempts of Francisco Madero’s government to take up the liberal ideology of José María Luis Mora and Benito Juárez (lasting fifteen months between 1911 and 1913) confirmed the ongoing difficulties of consolidating the ideals of constitutional government and a democratic and liberal order in Latin America.

Following in the footsteps of Francisco de Paula Santander (president of Gran Colombia from 1819 to 1826; president of the Republic of New Granada from 1832 to 1837), General José Hilario López’s liberal Reform (1849–1853) was another attempt to install a liberal order in Latin America. Implemented after the election that ended the conservative rule of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera (1849), it initiated a period of great upheaval and violent confrontation between liberals and conservatives. The liberal Constitution of 1853 established the right to vote, (nominal) federalism, the abolition of slavery, and the separation of church and state (with a strong anticlerical sentiment that included the expulsion of the Jesuits from Colombia). After the conservative reaction against these reforms and the civil war of 1858 to 1861, the liberal triumph of 1863 led to a new constitution, which lasted for twenty-two years. Its regulations included the confiscation of church properties, the confirmation of federalism, and the guarantee of individual rights and universal suffrage. In 1870, a system of free and universal primary education was established. Nevertheless, the tone was set for constant confrontations between liberals and conservatives in the form of the civil wars and violence that have been characteristic of Colombia even until our era. Finally, after the civil war of 1876, a crisis of exports and foreign trade marked the end of the “liberal era” in Colombia and led to the dictatorship of Rafael Núñez (1880–1888). Written during this centralist and conservative administration, the Constitution of 1886 made the achievements and reforms of the liberal era disappear. Almost half a century of conservatism (including the Thousand Days’ War from 1899 to 1903) followed after Núñez decreed a process of conservative “Regeneration” in the 1880s, continuing until a liberal, Enrique Olaya Herrera, was finally elected in 1930. Social structures, however, remained virtually untouched, driving a strong radicalization of one faction of Colombian liberalism. The assassination of one representative of this radicalization, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, on April 9, 1948, triggered a new period of violence, culminating in the dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953–1957).

Something similar to Juárez’s liberal regime (although in a more moderate form) occurred in Argentina after the end of the Rosas dictatorship in 1852. A new political era and generation came into being, adopting a liberal, progressive, and federalist nature. It was formed in the context of the struggles between Buenos Aires and the rest of the provinces, and one of its most evident and lasting achievements was the Constitution of 1853. These liberal reforms included the establishment of a federal system, the guarantee of individual rights, the separation of powers, religious freedom, and the abolition of slavery and of military and ecclesiastical privileges, among others. Not included, however, was the true extension of the right to vote—which was already implied in the law of universal suffrage of 1821—an issue that would not be resolved until 1912 under President Roque Sáenz Peña (1910–1914). Among the precursors of liberal reform in Argentina, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, president of the republic from 1868 to 1874, and intellectual leaders such as Juan Bautista Alberdi and Bartolomé Mitre stand out. Still, the liberal reforms carried out in Argentina, especially those between 1850 and 1870, ended like so many other attempts to bring about similar reforms in Latin America, with the emergence of a dictatorship—in this case the dictatorship of General Julio Roca in the early 1880s. The presidencies of Roca (1880–1886 and 1898–1904) concluded the turbulent process of forming a national state, including the “federalization” of Buenos Aires. Roca’s command, first as a military man and later as a politician, spanned almost two decades of Argentine politics, from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Indeed, Natalio Botana has pondered labeling this period a “hidden porfiriato” (2005, 34).

A similar political generation appeared in Chile in the 1850s and, under the influence of Francisco Bilbao, adopted the radical Society of Equality, a combination of political liberalism and utopian socialism. The emergence of liberal ideology took on different forms from the 1850s to the 1880s—some doctrinaire, some more pragmatic. These forms included a tendency toward religious tolerance (clerical-anticlerical struggles marked the period and gave rise to the party system in the 1850s) and the necessity of limiting the enormous political power of the executive branch established by the Constitution of 1833 and the presidential authoritarianism of the ten-year periods of José Joaquín Prieto, Manuel Bulnes, and Manuel Montt (1830–1860). This last aspect led to the formation of the curious Liberal-Conservative Fusion, destined to strengthen the power of parliament and the parties, and a regime of freedoms backed by both liberals and conservatives. It culminated in the political reforms of 1874, including the establishment of universal suffrage. Liberal president José Manuel Balmaceda (1889–1891) attempted to undo these reforms, strengthening the power of the executive branch. This, among other factors, led to civil war in 1891 which, unlike in the rest of Latin America, did not result in a dictatorship but rather in a distorted presidentialism—the badly labeled “parliamentary regime” (1891–1920)—in the midst of a comprehensive regime of public liberties.

The end of the nineteenth century saw a renewed push for the liberal ideology in Central America. Such was the case of the presidency of José Santos Zelaya in Nicaragua, beginning in 1893. Once again, however, the liberalizing reforms in Central America were most often accompanied by authoritarian politics. One such case is Justo Rufino Barrios, who, following Guatemala’s Liberal Revolution of 1871, later became president of the republic (1873–1885). The “republican dictatorships” (Skidmore and Smith 2005) of Central America confirmed the widespread presence of economic liberalism and political authoritarianism in the region, bolstered by the alliance of the oligarchs and the military. External control increasingly accompanied this internal control, chiefly on the part of the United States, which in turn was becoming a world superpower (especially after World War I). Strategic and economic ideas surrounding manifest destiny (introduced under the Monroe Doctrine in 1823) were transforming the Central American republics into veritable protectorates of the United States under the premise of “civilizing” the newly formed (and chaotic) Latin American republics. Gunboat diplomacy and “big-stick ideology,” utilized since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), transformed Central America and the Caribbean into a sphere of influence for the United States by way of interventions and constant occupations. In the economic realm, the famed United Fruit Company came to refer to the “banana republics” in the region. Meanwhile, the Batistas (Cuba), Somozas (Nicaragua), and Trujillos (Dominican Republic) gained power, along with all those promoters of republics that boldly proclaimed economic freedom alongside authoritarian politics.

In the nineteenth century, as we will see in following chapters, the story of Latin America was that of “slow adaptation to the global economy” (Skidmore and Smith 2005, 38). Along the way, the doctrine of liberalism came to mean economic freedom more than political freedom. The peak of liberal ideology between 1850 and 1880 corresponds to what one historian has called the construction of a “neocolonial” economic order, marked by trade, economic freedom, exportation of raw materials, and the triumph of economic liberalism (Halperin 1993, 128). During this slow and irregular incorporation into the global economy, rather than sustaining a liberal and democratic political regime, liberalism fed progress, free trade, and exporting efforts within a social order that maintained basic continuity in the years before and after independence. From the Científicos under Porfirio Díaz in Mexico to the Chicago Boys under Pinochet in Chile (1973–1990), liberal authoritarianism, rather than liberal democracy, has been the trend in the region. Even if liberalism was the “dominant ideology” (Bushnell and Macaulay 1988, 12 and 287) throughout the nineteenth century (even more so than in the twentieth), and even if this developing and doctrinaire liberalism later gave rise to processes of democratization, these trials were marked by unresolved tensions and contradictions that often resulted in authoritarian politics. The more recent experience of bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in the Southern Cone is really just a more refined (and relentless) present-day version of liberalism that protects economic freedom at the expense of political freedom. Indeed, the constitutions dictated by the Batista, Somoza, and Trujillo families were among the most liberal of their time periods, but nonetheless preserved social structures and oligarchic order by way of authoritarian politics.

None of this should lead us to believe that liberalism in Latin America has been simply a façade or a thinly veiled form of authoritarianism. The ideology of liberalism and the attempts to establish a representative and constitutional government within a republic have had to coexist with the need for a new political order—a veritable “state in form,” as Alberto Edwards (1959) has labeled the case of Chile—in the wake of collapsed monarchies. As Daniel Negretto wrote, “There were not many viable options for a political order in the Hobbesian world that the republican project faced in Latin America in the nineteenth century” (in Aguilar and Rojas 2002, 34). The various attempts and struggles to establish a liberal ideology and a representative democracy occurred within this context of tensions and contradictions that were never resolved. Yet, in spite of its limitations, liberalism prevailed as the dominant ideology of the nineteenth century.

POSITIVISM

Positivism was one of the first systematic attempts to address the question of modernity in the region, as opposed to the premodern ways of the old oligarchic regime. Positivism was championed in various Latin American countries from the 1880s until the 1920s, but its greatest influence was in Mexico and Brazil. It was not, however, a result of liberalism—rather, it critiqued liberalism. Neither did it stem from political democracy, as it promoted an elitist and hierarchical view, making use of authoritarian structures and concepts more than democratic ones.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, there were various attempts to modernize the economic, social, and political structures. Along with this modernization came efforts to achieve a greater level of order and political stability in a century marked by civil war, caudillismo, and all sorts of dictatorships, as well as the interminable disputes between liberals and conservatives, federalists and centralists, clericalists and anticlericalists. Immigration from Europe, the presence of foreign capital (mainly British), th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Search for Alternatives to Oligarchic Rule
• Chapter 2. Toward a New Model of Development
• Chapter 3. Democratic Breakdown, Transition, and Consolidation
• Chapter 4. Toward a New Strategy of Development
• Chapter 5. Democracy, Governability, and Neopopulism
• Chapter 6. Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
• Chapter 7. The New Social Question
• Chapter 8. Democracy of Institutions
• Works Cited