Publications

Since their origins, congresses played significant roles in the emerging states of Latin America following independence from Spain. Yet their protagonism has been overshadowed by the so-called caudillos, the strongmen who seem to have dominated the politics of the region during most of the nineteenth century. This article argues that congresses were central political actors in Latin America during the century and it does so by examining their various functions. Congresses served to form governments, to define the legislative agenda and to limit the power of the executive. Congress was the institution around which political parties and their leaders were formed, while the practices of representative government developed.

Dossier coordinated by: Jorge Luengo Pompeu (Fabra University, Barcelona), Eduardo Posada-Carbó (University of Oxford), Victor M. Uribe-Uran (Florida International University)

The six essays in this dossier examine a topic that, despite some significant progress, remains understudied in the literature: the history of congresses in Latin America during the first century of independence. The historical role of legislatures in this region has often been portrayed in the literature as limited to serving as mere appendages of all-powerful executives, especially the notorious caudillos. Specifically, we propose to analyze some—only some—aspects of how congresses engaged with the public through two mechanisms that, almost from their inception, served to “democratize” their activities: the galleries within the congresses themselves, and satirical criticism in the press.

With the adoption of the principle of popular sovereignty and the establishment of republican forms of government, political organization based on the concept of representation and the separation of powers emerged early in Latin America. Latin American and Argentine political historiography of recent decades has addressed a variety of issues related to the modalities of political citizenship, the question of suffrage, the circulation of political ideas, and forms of political participation (Botana, 2012; Sabato, 2018). It has devoted less attention to the role of parliamentary institutions in political engineering from a perspective that considers the relevance of specific historical configurations. Similarly, the historiography dedicated to studying the modulations of Catholic participation in the political sphere has focused primarily on the local and national specificities of the secularization of politics and the involvement of Catholics in party systems, giving only tangential attention to their connection with Congress and other legislative bodies. The contributions in this dossier propose to discuss the relationships of Catholic militants, intellectuals, and leaders with representative government, the legislative scene, and the configuration of “parliamentary cultures” in the 19th and 20th centuries in Argentina.

Brazil registered its lowest records of post-independence electoral participation thus far, for nearly half a century, between the years of 1881 and 1930. This article highlights the fact that such low records were not the consequence of constitutional clauses alone, which impeded the vote of women and illiterates. Throughout the period under consideration, the Brazilian parliament enacted electoral reforms that hampered voter registration for citizens who were eligible to vote anteriorly. The enactment of the three reforms happened during a time of electorate expansion and so led to the stagnation of small cycles of eligibility growth. The hindrances to access political rights exacerbated by these mechanisms affected mainly the poor and former slaves. The impact of such reforms on the electorate will be argued throughout the text.

During the First Republic, electoral participation rates were low. However, this did not imply the absence of a dispute for votes. This article seeks to show that organized workers played a fundamental role in structuring electoral competition in urban centers. The analysis of the cases of Pernambuco and Bahia shows that: workers formed the majority of the electorate in the capitals; class associations organized different stages of the voting process; the labor movement created original forms of political participation and representation through collectivized mandates.

This volume examines the lives of more than thirty-five key personalities in Latin American law with a focus on how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law in their countries and the region.

The book is a significant contribution to our ability to understand the work and perspectives of jurists and their effect on legal development in Latin America. The individuals selected for study exhibit wide-ranging areas of expertise from private law and codification, through national public law and constitutional law, to international developments that left their mark on the region and the world. The chapters discuss the jurists within their historical, intellectual, and political context. The editors selected jurists after extensive consultation with legal historians in various countries of the region looking at the jurist’s particular merits, contributions to law in general, religious perspective, and importance within the specific country and period under consideration. Giving the work a diversity of international and methodological perspectives, the chapters have been written by distinguished legal scholars and historians from Latin America and around the world.

The collection will appeal to scholars, lawyers, and students interested in the interplay between law and religion. Political, social, legal, and religious historians among other readers will find, for the first time in English, authoritative treatments of the region’s essential legal thinkers and authors. Students and other who may not read Spanish will appreciate these clear, accessible, and engaging English studies of the region’s great jurists.

The last three decades in anlglosaxon historiography. Reflections on some European legal history manuals 

This collection of essays is an invaluable companion for understanding the composition, reception, and contemporary legacy of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic work Democracy in America. Chapters by political theorists, intellectual historians, economists, political scientists, and community organizers explore the major intellectual influences on Tocqueville's thought, the book's reception in its own day and by subsequent political thinkers, and its enduring relevance for some of today's most pressing issues. Chapters tackle Tocqueville's insights into liberal democracy, civil society and civic engagement, social reform, religion and politics, free markets, constitutional interpretation, the history of slavery and race relations, gender, literature, and foreign policy. The many ways in which Tocqueville's ideas have been taken up – sometimes at cross-purposes – by subsequent thinkers and political actors around the world are also examined. This volume demonstrates the enduring global significance of one of the most perceptive accounts ever written about American democracy and the future prospects for self-government.

Considered the first constitutional roadmap of our republican life, the Constitution of Cúcuta of 1821 was the first of the legal pillars that structured the nascent life of what would later be known as the Republic of Colombia, an independent nation. Its promulgation came after months of deliberations and discussions at the First General Congress of Colombia, held in Villa del Rosario—a small town near Cúcuta. The author dissects the vicissitudes of this assembly, also intended to mobilize a novel notion of sovereignty, legitimacy, and citizenship, and describes its progress and its members, representatives of what was already being called “the people” and “the nation,” even though they belonged to a certain political, social, and economic elite.

The author emphasizes that, despite its troubled constitution and brief duration, this Congress and the subsequent Constitution largely shaped the ideas of participation and nationhood that we still embrace today. This vision included, as it still does, respect for electoral practices and regulations, the proliferation of laws and their publication in print, and the establishment of institutions designed to organize these mechanisms of participation and representation.