So much has been written about Mexico’s Constitution of 1917 that there would seem to be little left to say. And indeed this study presents few new facts and no startling interpretations. The author has consulted the private albums of several delegates to the constitutional convention, but otherwise his sources are well known to specialists. The novelty of the book Res in its approach, which produces insights that other historians have missed. Instead of analyzing the Constitution or attempting to use it to measure the Revolution’s successes or failures, Niemeyer concentrates on the eight weeks of ferment at Querétaro in December 1916 and January 1917 when the convention delegates wrote their remarkable charter. The process, Niemeyer suggests, tells more about the nature of the Mexican Revolution than does the finished document.
The study begins with an unexceptional scan of Mexican history from the Reform of the 1850s through the porfiriato and the epic years of the Revolution. There follows a chapter on the selection of delegates, and on the preliminary sessions where it became clear that the convention meant to frame a fundamental law “with teeth in it” rather than merely refurbish old liberal dogmas. The hammering out of the constitution’s innovative articles is described in three excellent chapters, “The Apogee of Anticlericalism,” “The Evolution of a Labor Program,” and “Article 27: The Attack on Vested Interests.” Another chapter, “The Prevailing Winds of Reform,” traces attempts to prohibit bullfights, cockfights, and alcohol; to abolish the death penalty; to give the vote to women; and to guarantee municipal autonomy. With the partial exception of municipal reform, these efforts failed because a majority of the convention thought that such drastic breaks with the past would be unenforceable or unacceptable to most Mexicans. (Evidently the men at Querétaro did believe that Mexico was ready for sweeping changes regarding land, labor, and the Church.) Two short concluding chapters discuss the influence on the convention of leaders like Venustiano Carranza and Álvaro Obregón, divisions among the delegates, and estimates of some of the constituyentes on what they had accomplished. The Appendices include a comparison of the Constitution’s key articles with Carranza’s draft proposals, and bibliographical information on the delegates.
Niemeyer stresses the attitudes and biases of the delegates; they were nationalistic and humanitarian, and also chauvinistic and earthy. Bullfighting was defended on patriotic grounds, as something distinctively Mexican. The convention excluded rape from its list of capital offenses, after hearing arguments that women were seldom innocent victims, and that in cases of genuine assault virile Mexican men would deal with assailants in their own way. The delegates scorned abstractions and worked in an atmosphere of urgency. They intended to solve immediate problems, not to draw a blueprint for some evolutionary process. They would leave nothing to chance or to the politicians to come, and they left Querétaro believing that the revolution was over. Apparently the notion of an “institutional revolution” was not in their minds. The implications of this for students of contemporary Mexico are obvious.
Scholars familiar with recent research in Mexican history will be disturbed by the author’s adherence to a few outdated conclusions. The Church did not avidly support Porfirio Díaz, and the extent of its wealth and power during the dictatorship remains conjectural. Niemeyer also goes too far in attributing purely political motives to Constitutionalist chieftains who initiated social reforms between 1914 and 1916; much of the human passion and prejudice exhibited at Querétaro was clearly evident in earlier years.
The book’s merits are substantial. Niemeyer could have exploited some of his data more boldly, but still he has given us a learned and lively account of a major event in modern Mexican history. It is a good example of the value of looking at an old problem from a new focus.
