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Race, Nation, and Market: Economic Culture in Porfirian Mexico

2007; Duke University Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2006-151

1527-1900

Susan M. Gauss,

Politics and Society in Latin America

With the recent turn to neoliberalism in Latin America, efforts to understand the power of the market have preoccupied intellectuals and politicians alike. Through a careful examination of periodicals, official publications, and published sources written by prominent liberals, social Catholics, and radicals from late Porfirian Mexico, Richard Weiner demonstrates how elites in that period were equally preoccupied with defining the impact of the market on politics and society. As with current debates, Porfirian elites conceived the market in broad, ambiguous terms. To understand these terms, Weiner draws on anthropologist James Carrier’s concept of market “models” (e.g., land or labor) to traverse the labyrinthine world of Porfirianera economic thought (pp. 7 – 8).Citing the works of Albert Hirschman and Ricardo Salvatore, Weiner “treat[s] dialogues about the market as a form of sociopolitical discourse that played a pivotal role in the construction of Mexican identity” (p. ix). According to Weiner, Porfirian liberals (which he distinguishes from earlier generations using Alan Knight’s concept of developmentalist liberals) portrayed market-driven material progress as integral to political stability. Beyond politics, however, the market’s power waned. Liberals maintained that due to their racial heritage, Indians and hacendados were largely immune to the modernizing pressures of the market and resisted the advance of capitalism. They concluded that the state needed to intervene (via education and coercion) to ensure the creation of a modern wage-labor workforce and capitalist land relations. Liberals also departed from the market-oriented theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo when considering the international market. Specifically, Weiner takes aim at “conventional wisdom” that holds that liberals championed laissez-faire growth (p. 4). Instead, he shows that they advocated state economic intervention to defend Mexican sovereignty.In examining the cultural facets of economic policy, Weiner’s book is a fitting complement to recent work by economic historians that has established the Porfiriato’s “statist tendencies” in the economy (p. 13). Weiner identifies liberals as “social engineers” who drew on corporatism, racial determinism, positivism, and social Darwinism to shape policy (p. 26). These conclusions are not surprising, which Weiner acknowledges, for example when citing previous works by Charles Hale. What is notable, however, is the way Weiner reconciles the seeming inconsistencies in liberal ideology by tracing the domestic conditions that led developmentalist liberals to stray from the individualism and universalism of classical liberalism. Indeed, Weiner is attentive to the influence of Western thought on all three groups, yet he reveals the narrow appeal of many ideas emanating from Europe. He demonstrates how critiques of capitalism were rooted in Mexico’s distinct social, economic, cultural, and political milieu. In doing so, he convincingly disputes past scholarship that, according to Weiner, overstates the Porfirian embrace of European ideas.Weiner uncovers some remarkable common ground between the discourse of social Catholics and developmentalist liberals, most importantly in their emphasis on the power of the market, as well as on order and the collective. In fact, Mexican social Catholics, embodied in Weiner’s study by Trinidad Sánchez Santos, ostensibly spent more time attacking the individualist, egalitarian tenets of classical liberalism that captivated European social Catholics at that time than in going after developmentalist liberals at home. Where Sánchez Santos did find his domestic opponent was in liberal support for market-driven progress, which he asserted provoked individualist materialism at the expense of the greater social good. In its place, Sánchez Santos promoted a neo-Thomist corporate order wherein Christian ethics would rein in the excesses of the market and ensure wealth redistribution.Weiner divides the evolution of economic thought within the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) into two admittedly arbitrary but nonetheless analytically useful phases: 1900 – 6 and 1907 – 11. For the first phase, Weiner argues that the PLM saw the market as a weak, ambiguous force and urged the state to amend capitalism in order to redress class injustice. By 1907, now firmly under the influence of Ricardo Flores Magón, the PLM became more radical. Inspired by U.S. anarchists, Flores Magón defined the market as a symbol of oppression that, impervious to the influence of the weak state, could only be destroyed by the concerted, conscious action of an international brotherhood of workers. Challenging scholars who contend that PLM radicals played a key role at the outset of the revolution, Weiner concludes that the party’s radicalism vis-à-vis capitalism marginalized it from mainstream discourse and restricted its appeal, ultimately limiting the PLM’s influence on the revolution.Weiner excels at deciphering the complex meanings of the market internal to each of these groups. Less clear is how the groups engaged in dialogue with each other and used ideas about the market to negotiate material interests, whether they were progress, the Catholic Church, or workers. Moreover, scholars seeking discourse analysis will instead find a study that views discourse as a “lengthy discussion on a particular subject” (p. 7). Nevertheless, this timely monograph contributes significantly to the literature on economic ideas and political culture. It is an essential read not only for specialists but also for any teacher who has tried to sort out Porfirianera ideology. Weiner draws out the rich complexities of late Porfirian economic thought in lucid, lively terms that persuasively demonstrate its implications for political identities and ideas about the nation.