Richard N. Sinkin’s analytical study of the Reform, well written, based on extensive archival research, and presented with careful attention to the theoretical literature on modernization, should give the coup de grace to the legendary versions of Mexican liberalism that continue to flourish in certain sectors of academe. His study begins by establishing the general similarity in background of the Liberal leaders; they were mainly young, upwardly mobile professionals (frustrated, then exiled during General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s last dictatorship); they tended to come from outlying regions, to have a secular education, and to have had unpleasant experiences with the clergy. In regard to the Church, most Liberals considered it a major obstacle to their own personal economic and social ambitions. According to the author, the Mexican Liberals thus constituted a classic example of a nation-building elite.
Sinkin convincingly demonstrates that the men who made the Reform had an elitist mentality and that much of their political behavior was based on a “profound distrust of popular instincts” (p. 63). This prejudice, along with the social and political turbulence touched off by the Reform program, led the Liberals steadily away not only from libertarianism, but from their original commitment to political liberty itself. Here, Sinkin makes a refreshing departure from so many wearisome interpretations of the Reform, which depict Mexican liberalism as a popular if not populist movement.
Like nation-builders elsewhere, the Mexicans were obsessed with power and legitimacy, and this preoccupation led to their peculiar solution to the country’s crisis: the constitutional dictatorship. Indeed, Sinkin concludes that by 1870 Mexico under the Liberals had become “a perfect police state” (pp. 89–90). Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship, therefore, can be seen as a logical extension of the Liberals’ political restructuring of the nation. Long before Díaz came to power in 1876, Mexican modernizers were dealing ruthlessly with their opponents, be they fractious regional bosses or groups of rebellious peasants. Sinkin puts it bluntly: “The Ley Fuga solved many a political problem” (p. 112).
In other sections of the book, the author effectively argues that in the Liberals’ response to their identity crisis one can find the beginnings of modern Mexican nationalism. He sees as the most important legacy of the Reform “the political solution it constructed for the crisis of national survival” (pp. 175–176). He also notes, however, that Liberal policy was largely responsible for fixing Mexico’s economic dependency on the United States.
Despite their ultimate success in organizing a modern nation-state, the Liberals’ social legacy represented a failure, for they left the masses vulnerable, and the result was “uncontrolled exploitation and an ever-increasing gulf between rich and poor” (p. 175). In sum, Sinkin has refused to romanticize Benito Juárez and the Liberals. He paints them from life, and their portraits turn out to resemble those of Díaz and his followers, most of whom, of course, in the early decades of the Porfiriato, were also Liberal veterans of the Reform. Sinkin’s splendid book, therefore, clearly represents a major contribution to our understanding of modern Mexico.
