Los centralismos mexicanos, 1835–1846

The message of this hefty edited collection is that nineteenth-century centralism in Mexico did not have a promising beginning or a happy ending. Each contributor addresses a specific Mexican state in 1835–46, the period of the central republic. This is one of the chapters of Mexico's national history most in need of further research. It was a period of varied attempts by myriad actors to overcome deficiencies in the structural and constitutional makeup of the federal republic of 1824, all of which failed. The primary problem with the 1824 constitution was that it did not get the right balance between federal and state authority, creating a weak, inadequately financed national government and overly strong states that were defined as sovereign. It would take decades for political leaders to recognize that their objective should be to create not so much a perfect union as a workable one.The 20 essays in this volume, by 18 authors, cover the individual stories of 13 states during these years, as well as broader topics such as the church, the central treasury, territorial organization, and the centralist congresses. Two of the essays are a general introduction and an epilogue provided by the volume editor. Chapters are based on extensive use of primary and secondary sources. It makes for a very complex volume; do not expect a unified narrative or set of conclusions. In the end, it is the story of various political experiments involving two centralist constitutions and two ephemeral dictatorships that convoked constitutional congresses, each of which created unsuccessful and very short-lived systems of government. In spite of this tinkering on a grand scale, the fundamental problem remained the fiscal weakness of the national government, which could not finance the republic. Although government debt was nothing new, the magnitude and harmful effect of that debt during the centralist period were unprecedented. There did not exist a national government capable of controlling the many factors of disintegration.Yet, the argument seems to be that although Mexico lost half its national territory in this period, the more significant fact is that the original New Spain did not fragment into various nations, as occurred in South America. The authors assert that centralism, although of short duration, can be appreciated as an attempt to avoid extremism and to maintain the union of the nation. As one author puts it, in terms of the political-territorial organization “centralism formed part of a process not of rupture but of continuity” (p. 69). The authors repeat this argument in several ways, but by avoiding delving into linkages of economics, culture, identity, or ideology, they fail to substantiate it convincingly. The focus instead is on administrative and jurisdictional issues. In addition, several authors assert that the centralist experiment was essentially liberal, although it is not clear how that term is defined.Roughly two-thirds of the volume consists of chapters on individual states during the centralist period. These individual treatments are of value, but it is not clear what we can summarize from them. The general interpretive thrust is that the centralist sentiment was a response to the inadequacies of the first federal system, but the solutions were no more successful than the original. This is very much a presentation of details; the reader waits in vain for some alternative explanations employing social, economic, or even cultural analysis. Readers will naturally be tempted to speculate why there were no statesmen capable of overcoming the limitations of prevailing institutions and traditions, but these chapters provide no guidance. At any rate, elites in individual states and regions became disenchanted with centralist institutions as soon as it became clear that they could not guarantee their own local dominance, and especially when financial demands from the national government impinged on maintaining local revenues close to home.Every state had complaints about federalism in practice, but every one also found centralism weak and unstable. The attempt of the central republic to exert tighter control of trade and taxes also caused loss of support in regions used to freer trade under federalism. Loss of local control was everywhere a major issue—as ayuntamientos were replaced by justices of the peace. Some of the authors appear to suggest that jurisdictional disputes at the local and state level outweighed the states’ loss of political autonomy as factors in provoking opposition, but that does not seem logical. Under both federal and centralized systems, elite cohesion prevailed. Everywhere the lack of valid statistical data retarded implementation of the new centralist systems. Collection of taxes and duties was always a problem, as was payment of salaries to functionaries at all levels.The centralist system failed not because of political or ideological opposition but because it did not succeed any better than federalism did in meeting the needs of the country. Pragmatism was paramount. It is a circular story: it begins with the repudiation of the 1824 constitution but ends by 1844 with public voices clamoring to return to federalism while promising to avoid its excesses. It is clear what Mexicans wanted to achieve—peace, order, and good government—but it is not so clear why or how they thought all the tinkering would accomplish that. While these chapters are unblinking and critical, taken together they are perhaps as unsatisfactory as centralism itself was—they just do not answer the most pressing questions.

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