Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Revista de Estudios Sociales
Volume
2020
Issue
74
Publisher
Universidad de los Andes * Facultad de Ciencias Sociales,Universidad de los Andes, Social Sciences Faculty
Publication Date
10-1-2020
First Page
23
Last Page
40
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Abstract
The first erosion of democracy in Latin America did not occur in the twentieth-century, but, rather, the nineteenth. I will argue that in Mexico and Colombia a vibrant, democratic political culture had emerged by the 1850s; however, by the 1870s, a political movement that united Liberals and Conservatives began to suspect that the democratic politics they had once regarded as making them modern was instead hindering their societies’ progress. Democracy was not promoting, but, rather, hindering economic progress. This essay will explore the historic relation between capitalism (as Latin America entered into a period of export-oriented capitalist growth) and democracy (in a nineteenth century in which most of the world’s republics were in Latin America).
Recommended Citation
““The Path of Dictatorship”: The Erosion of Democracy and Capitalism in Late Nineteenth- Century Mexico and Colombia.” In “La erosión de la democracia: Variantes, mecanismos y consecuencia,” ed. José del Tronco and Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo, special issue of Revista de Estudios Sociales 74 (October 2020): 23-40.
