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“Nosotros somos ahora los verdaderos españoles”: La transición de la Nueva España de un reino de la monarquía española a la República Federal Mexicana, 1808–1824

2013; Duke University Press; Volume: 93; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1902823

1527-1900

Michael T. Ducey,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

This important study is preeminently a description of the political transformation of the Kingdom of New Spain, part of the global Spanish monarchy, into the Mexican Republic. Jaime Rodríguez seeks to reorient our understanding of Mexican independence: “[It] was not the result of an anticolonial struggle. Rather it was the product of a great political revolution that culminated in the dissolution of a worldwide political system” (p. 633). He begins with a meticulous recounting of the events between 1808 and the outbreak of the armed insurrection, making clear that the insurrection reflected the rise of an auton-omist movement that emerged as reaction to events in Spain and the viceregal capital. By placing independence in the broader context of the empire and highlighting transatlantic processes, Rodríguez ably demonstrates the powerful influence that events in Europe, especially Cádiz, had on Mexican politics, yet he does not slight the critical role of Novo-hispanos, and americanos in general, on constitutional developments in Spain.These volumes make significant contributions to understanding the period, offering a detailed discussion of how constitutional debates played out in Mexico, challenging the kingdom’s political traditions. The author’s meticulous descriptions of elections are at the center of his argument that the independence process was essentially a political one, where elections, held frequently and throughout all of Spanish North America, served to disrupt the antiguo régimen. To demonstrate his claim Rodríguez provides us with blow-by-blow readings of electoral legislation and the debates over voting rights and representation in both Spain and Mexico, along with descriptions of the balloting at the provincial level for every one of the surprisingly numerous electoral processes held between 1808 and 1824. This book restores constitutional questions to the fore and demonstrates their value in understanding the motives of prominent actors as they responded to the unfolding crisis.Rodríguez delivers valuable perspectives on the origins of the great issues of the nineteenth century: the rise of provincial identities fueling federalist-centralist divisions, the emergence of electoral politicking, disputes over the nature of representation, and the struggles between the legislative and executive branches in the new Mexican state. He sees both insurgents and more moderate reformers as pursuing autonomy, local self-rule within the Spanish Empire, stressing that contemporaries used the term “independence” as a synonym for autonomy. He argues, for example, that the Guadalupes, the famous “fifth column” of insurgent sympathizers active in Mexico City throughout the critical years of the insurgency, followed a dual strategy in their quest for autonomy: embracing the constitutionalism of Cádiz while simultaneously supporting the armed rebellion. Even the insurgents’ claim of loyalty to Fernando VII was not a “mask” of their true intentions: he sees them as monarchists who sought independence from Spain in order to preserve the king and the church.The author provides lively descriptions of politics, but these are politics of a very elite sort. Rodríguez excels at discussing the disputes between Morelos and Rayón and describing the efforts of insurgents to create their own state, but he dedicates little space to popular politics or to understanding the motives of the war’s foot soldiers, or even the new voters, participating in transforming the antiguo régimen. Nor is he interested in asking whether the Hispanophobia he documents rose to the level of nationalism. The study is devoid of social history. The only treatment of the popular facets of the insurrection centers on the Bajío uprising and stresses its multiclass, nonindigenous character. His reading of the social origins of the region’s revolt does not go beyond rising prices and subsistence crisis. In his view, Mexico experienced two revolutions — that of Cádiz and another initiated by Hidalgo — but he largely slights the latter: less than two chapters detail the events of the armed insurrection. He implies that the “other rebellion” contributed little to the political transformation compared to the constitutional debates and legislative wrangling that began in the ayuntamiento de México in 1808 and continued on both sides of the Atlantic for the next 17 years.Changes in political culture are difficult to pin down. Rodríguez establishes that the mechanisms of exercising power (constitution) and claiming legitimacy (elections) suffered tremendous transformations during this period of experimentation (p. 375). But then why was it so easy for the restored Fernando VII to abrogate the popular constitution? Why did the Apatzingan alternative fail to win more adherents, given that it was firmly rooted in Hispanic law and the experience of political change he describes so well? If orderly autonomy within a kind of nineteenth-century Spanish commonwealth was the preferred position of the kingdom’s political class, why did they fail so spectacularly at attaining it?