#258 La calidad de ciudadano. Past and Present. The Nature of Citizenship in Mexico and the United States: 1776-1912

By Erika Pani

From the Preface

Mexico’s transition to democratic rule has triggered much debate about the legacies of the past under which Mexicans must labor. Mexico is seen as emerging from a monolithic, murky and only rarely interrupted authoritarian past, from the Aztec tlatoanis to the PRI. Mexican “political culture” is seen as both the underlying principle and the creature of this historical experience. Some characterize Mexicans as lacking democratic values, with no electoral culture and with their families structured along patriarchic and authoritarian lines. Ironically, this approach, which tries to explain the present by understanding the past, is blatantly unhistorical. It speaks of static, eternal core values, of an unchanging México Profundo that has supposedly lurked inside every Mexican through the ages regardless of class or regional origin. Thus, writes one scholar, “behind an image of modernity and values, lies hidden the arithmetic relationship of dominion and subordination.” The trappings of a modern society barely cover one that is deeply traditional, whose real values and practices are rooted in “the ancient Mesoamerican civilizations.”

This allegedly historical vision does not fit the diversity of actual experience, either of the present or the past. Nevertheless, political culture is not a useless category as long as we recognize its historicity. Although postmodernists might disagree, I would argue that the political cultures of Mexico today are inscribed in the assumptions and parameters of the modern nation-state that, in Max Weber’s words, was to “monopolize all usable political resources,” to govern a society of individuals who are members of the sovereign nation. Because political ideas and practices are inscribed in this long process of ruptures and continuities, it is valuable to understand the ways in which men have thought about political power in the past, the ways in which they have interpreted and given meaning to its symbols, the tools with which they have mediated their relationship to it and the discourses that have emerged during these complex processes. This essay traces the way in which, as the modern nation-state was being constructed, Mexicans thought about, interpreted and acted upon one of the crucial concepts of modern politics: citizenship. I have focused on this historical development, not only in Mexico, but also in the United States, because a comparative analysis of two processes, which are both similar and distant, helps highlight the pivotal intricacies that too often are overlooked in the midst of factual reconstructions of the past.