Paper short abstract:

What did nineteenth-century Mexicans understand by republicanism and federalism that they held up as ideals? Why did they consider democracy with caution? This paper analyses how attitudes to and understandings of these political concepts changed over time and according to region.

Paper long abstract:

Recent historiography of early independent Mexico suggests that all the actors in the political class until mid-century were liberals. However liberalism was not a term that was frequently used to describe the many political projects forwarded during the first decades after independence. Ideal forms of government were forwarded in the myriad constitutional proposals, political tracts and petition-like documents or plans that accompanied the frequent armed rebellions or 'controlled revolutions' known as pronunciamientos. In these documents republicanism and federalism particularly became political ideals and the basic principles of the constitutions that, in the first decades at least, the Mexican political class believed would help solve the problems and relieve the political strife of their troubled country. The term democracy was referred to much less frequently and not until the late 1830s. Democracy was much less an ideal and was viewed either as a form of government that would exacerbate social unrest and economic problems or one for which the Mexican people were ill-prepared. This paper explores what nineteenth-century Mexicans understood by republicanism and federalism that they held up as ideals and why they considered democracy and democratic government with caution. It analyses how attitudes to and understandings of these political concepts changed over time and how they varied according to region and locality.