Democracy in Latin America, 1760-1900

This work provides a Tocquevillian account of democracy in Latin America. Drawing on a wealth of archival research, Carlos A. Forment demonstrates how citizens of Latin America established strong democratic traditions in their countries through the practice of democracy in their everyday lives. This volume compares and contrasts the development of democratic life in Mexico and Peru from independence to the late 1890s. Forment traces the emergence of hundreds of political, economic and civic associations run by citizens in both nations and shows how these organizations became models of democracy in the face of dictatorship and immense economic hardship. This democratic tradition was stronger in Mexico than in Peru, but its basic outlines were similar in both nations and included a unique form of what Forment calls civic Catholicism in order to distinguish itself from civic republicanism, the dominant political model throughout the rest of the Western world. Highly innovative and extensively researched, this study should rewrite the history of democracy in Latin America.