Protecting or undermining the constitution? Discussiones on the role of religion and the catholic church in guaranting constitutional order during Mexico’s firste federal republic (1824-1835)

Authors

  • Catherine Andrews Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17811/hc.v0i12.303

Keywords:

Mexico, Catholic Liberalism, 1824 Federal Constitution, Catholic Church, Constitutional Order, Church-State Relations

Abstract

This paper analyses the role of religion and the Catholic Church in Mexican constitutional thought in the first half of the nineteenth-century. Its principal hypothesis is that Independent Mexico’s political thinkers considered the promotion of the Catholic faith was necessary to ensure successful government and social order. In accordance with this idea, it argues that the debates which raged in the 1820s and 1830s over the questions of patronage and church property cannot be understood in terms of a confrontation between liberal and conservative ideas as has generally been the case in Mexican historiography. Rather, it contends that the division of opinion amongst the political elites on this matter was grounded in the debates that took place in eighteenth-century Spain in order to define the correct relationship between the Crown and the Church.

Submission Date: 28/11/2010

Acceptance Date: 17/01/2011

Author Biography

Catherine Andrews, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas

Doctora en Historia de México por la Universidad de St. Andrews, Escocia. Su línea principal de investigación es la construcción del Estado mexicano en el siglo XIX. Ha publicado varios artículos sobre este tema; el más reciente es “The Rise and Fall of a Regional Strongman: Felipe de la Garza’s pronunciamiento of 1822, en Will Fowler (ed.), Forceful Negotiations. The Origins of the Pronunciamiento in Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Su más reciente libro Del Nuevo Santander a Tamaulipas. Génesis y construcción de un estado periférico en México, 1780-1825, escrito en coautoría con Jesús Hernández Jaimes, saldrá próximamente bajo el sello de la Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas y el Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt). Actualmente se desempeña como investigadora en el Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, y como profesora en la Unidad Académica Multidisciplinaria de Ciencias, Educación y Humanidades de la misma institución.

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Issue

No. 12 (2011): Historia Constitucional N. 12 (2011)

Section

Iberoamerica

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