Catholic Republics, Spiritual Powers, Original Peoples: Theories of Popular Rule from 19th-century Mexico

This is the second chapter of my dissertation project, Moving Heaven and Earth: Theology and Popular Rule in Modern Latin America. 

This chapter belongs to a dissertation project in which I uncover a distinctive Spanish/Latin American tradition of theorizing popular rule, beginning in the early 19th century through the early 20th century. I argue that within this tradition, Catholic social philosophy, theology, and institutions shaped and constrained the ways that theorists and actors made the case for and imagined popular rule. These past visions of popular rule bring to light rival accounts of peoplehood to those of social contract theorists, early experimentation with mass suffrage, radical and insurgent democratic politics, and theories of pluralistic corporatism. 

This chapter falls in the following order: 

1. the Constitution of Cádiz – the birth of Hispanic Constitutionalism (1812),
2. Catholic Republics, Spiritual Powers, Original Peoples
3. Enchanted Democracy: expanding the electorate
4. Infinite Persons and Mass Politics: the defense of democracy and the rise of Christian Democratic parties in the early twentieth century