Book Reviews Ausentes Del Uni

Book Reviews 
J. Lat. Amer. Stud.  (). doi:./SX

José Antonio Aguilar Rivera, Ausentes del universo: reflexiones sobre el
pensamiento político hispanoamericano en la era de la construcción nacional,
– (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica and Centro de
Investigación y Docencia Económicas, ), pp. .
‘Absent from the universe’ was the phrase Simón Bolívar used, with typical
exaggeration, in the ‘Jamaica Letter’ of . He meant that evil Spain had kept
Spanish America in complete darkness regarding knowledge of the science of
government and the administration of the state. This is an odd assertion, given that
the Libertador had read his Montesquieu, and his Rousseau, well before the
achievement of independence, and that many of his friends, including the polymath
Andrés Bello, had served in important positions in the colonial administration. Be
that as it may, the dictum invites the author of the book under review to assess exactly
how absent from the universe Spanish Americans really were, posing other pertinent
questions as well. Did those responsible for the building of new republics actually
contribute anything to political theory or were they simply imitators of foreign
models? Did they simply copy constitutional models from the United States and
Europe, or did they engage the central premises of liberal constitutionalism intensely
enough so as to advance both the theory and practice of representative government?
The answer is mixed: they did copy constitutional models and often applied them
uncritically, but they also made original contributions and anticipated much of the
course of Western political thought as they confronted the rising tide of democracy in
the nineteenth century. And yet, these thinkers are stuck in a limbo of theoretical
nothingness, in no small measure due to the self-deprecating statements of Bolívar,
and to a larger extent due to the haughty lack of regard for ideas that still dominates
much of the scholarship on Latin America. Aguilar sets out to correct both views, and
in the opinion of this reviewer, he succeeds admirably.
Aguilar examines the ideas of such thinkers and statesmen as Vicente
Rocafuerte, Manuel Lorenzo de Vidaurre and Simón Bolívar, who each receive
attention in an individual chapter. In addition, the author considers larger themes in
Mexico, such as the reception of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; Lucas
Alamán’s critique of the  federal constitution; the  proposals to transform
the composition and functioning of the legislature; and the critique of popular
sovereignty as reflected in the flurry of press debates taking place in –. Alamán
features quite prominently in the final three chapters, as well he might, for he was
indeed a central, albeit highly misunderstood and misrepresented, figure in Mexican
history.
As is evident from Aguilar’s selection of individuals, he has chosen to concentrate
not on liberals who subscribed to liberal tenets lock, stock and barrel, but rather those
thinkers who questioned the premises of constitutional liberalism itself. One might
assume, then, that they were recalcitrant conservatives, and monarchists to boot, but
this was not necessarily the case. When it was the case, as with Lucas Alamán, it
was due to specific circumstances that do not reflect on the individuals’ larger
intellectual trajectories. After all, republics did not deliver many examples of stable
government in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the failures had at least
something to do with institutional designs. Beyond Latin America, the best examples
of representative government were the constitutional monarchies of Europe. The great
exception was the republic to the north, the United States, from which many
countries sought guidance and inspiration.
 Book Reviews
The thread that runs through these chapters is the author’s view that what
characterised these pensadores was their identification of a central ambiguity in the
very premises of liberal constitutional thought, especially in the French and Spanish
varieties. Whereas the US version put in place a system of checks and balances to
address the fundamental question of the separation of powers, the French-Spanish
variety, which dominated the Spanish American experiments, did not establish clear
limits in the functions of each of the branches of government. As a result, they tended
to collide, often with disastrous consequences. The legislature, in many cases, could
and did paralyse the government, inviting the retaliation or collapse of the executive.
In the case of Mexico, not only was the legislature too strong, and yet not particularly
representative of the people, but the executive also lacked the emergency powers to
deal with situations of crisis (a legacy of the Mexican adherence to the thought of
Benjamin Constant, as Aguilar has demonstrated in a previous book). That is indeed
the context for the  reforms, whereby the legislature redefined its ranks to include
different ‘classes’, or interest groups that were supposed to ensure political stability.
The sad reality of Mexico and other Spanish American nations was that
representative government, which rests on the sovereignty of the people, did not
deliver the desired political stability. The sovereignty of the people, by definition, is
expressed through elections, but in Mexico in particular, these contests failed to
provide for stable governments: only two presidents finished their terms in the entire
period covered by the book. It is not surprising, then, that there would be such strong
and eloquent critiques against the very notion of popular sovereignty. Can these
critiques be dismissed as the ranting and raving of delirious conservatives? Perhaps, but
Aguilar reminds us that this very question was at the heart of the concerns of French
doctrinaire liberals like Guizot, Barante and Royer-Collard, who had similar
reservations about popular sovereignty.
The author is well versed in political theory and also in full command of the
literature on ideas and politics in Latin American history. The book is well written,
incisive and uniformly judicious. Aguilar’s work stands as a compelling example of the
value of intellectual and political history, and as a corrective to the work of those
scholars who do not see much purpose in studying the ramblings of elite intellectuals.
He is assertive and convincing in demonstrating that political ideas matter a great deal,
especially at a time when the building of viable political systems was at stake. Aguilar
has done the field a great service by delving into the motivations and the creativity of
those thinkers who have been absent from the universe for far too long, to the
detriment of a full understanding not only of the history of Latin American ideas, but
of political theory at large.
Stanford University, Santiago Programme IVÁN JAKSIC
J. Lat. Amer. Stud.  (). doi:./SX

Anna H. More, Baroque Sovereignty: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Creole
Archive of Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
), pp. , $.; £., hb.
Anna More illuminates the wide range of Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora’s intellectual
production, from his designs for an arch to his scientific research. Best remembered for
his florid writing, Sigüenza y Góngora emerges from these pages as a man of wide-
ranging talent in both science and literature.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.

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Book Reviews 

J. Lat. Amer. Stud.  (). doi:./SX

J. Lat. Amer. Stud.  (). doi:./SX

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