Emilio Rabasa and the Survival of Porfirian Liberalism

The Man, His Career, and His Ideas, 1856-1930

Charles A. Hale

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780804758765
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780804786836
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

This is an intellectual and career biography of Emilio Rabasa, the eminent Mexican jurist, politician, novelist, diplomat, journalist, and historian who opposed the Revolution of 1910-20, spent the years 1914 to 1920 in exile, but returned and was reintegrated into Mexican life until his death in 1930. Though he is still idolized by the juridical community of Mexico City, little is known about Rabasa beyond his principal publications. He was a reserved, enigmatic man who kept no personal archive and sought a low public profile. Hale reveals unknown aspects of his life, career, and personality from two extensive bodies of correspondence—with Jos Yves Limantour, finance minister from 1893 to 1911, and William F. Buckley, Sr., American lawyer and petroleum entrepreneur. He also analyzes Rabasa's political, juridical, and social ideas, arguing that they demonstrate continuity and even survival of late nineteenth-century liberalism through the revolutionary years and beyond. Rabasa's was a transformed liberalism, based on scientific politics drawn from European positivism and historical constitutionalism—an elitist rejection of abstract doctrines of natural rights and egalitarian democracy, emphasizing strong centralized yet constitutionally limited authority and empirically based economic development.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Abbreviations in Text, Notes, and Bibliography
• 1. Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Heritage
• 2. Forming a Porfirian Career: Oaxaca, Mexico City, and Chiapas (1856–1894)
• 3. Senator, Juridical Theorist, and Constitutional Historian (1894–1912)
• 4. Confronting the Revolution (1911–1914)
• 5. The Exile Years: Politics, Journalism, and History (1914–1920)
• 6. Europe and the Return to Mexico: Economic Development and the Social Agenda of the Revolution (1919–1930)
• 7. The Constitution of 1917, the Supreme Court, and the Conflict of Legal Traditions (1912–1930)
• 8. Conclusion: The Survival of Porfirian Liberalism
• Appendix A: A Castelar
• Appendix B: Emilio Rabasa’s Immediate Family
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index