Federalism

Federalism, a constitutional system in post-Independence Latin America and, often, still a hotly debated political issue. Formally, it denoted a type of government in which power was explicitly divided between central (national) and regional (state or provincial) authorities. As such it bore resemblance to the system incorporated in the United States Constitution and, to a lesser extent, certain ancient and modern European models. It was first adopted by several Latin American countries during the independence movement, for example, in Venezuela in 1811 in the constitution of the so-called First Republic.

Critics of federalism, of whom the most prominent was Simón Bolívar, condemned it as a dangerously weak system and as a foreign construct ill suited to the historical traditions and circumstances of Latin America. In its most common guise, it took provinces that in the colonial regime had enjoyed no administrative autonomy and suddenly equipped them with their own executive, legislative, and judicial branches that shared power with organs of the national government; sometimes these provinces, improvised as "sovereign" entities, did not even have enough qualified individuals to fill the offices created. However, federalism was a response to genuine regional loyalties and interests repressed or at least denied institutional expression during the colonial period. Moreover, federalism as a technique for dividing and thus curbing the power of government was compatible with the liberal ideology of individual rights that most Latin American leaders following independence professed to one degree or another.

The identification of federalism with political liberalism was perhaps clearest in Mexico, where it became a central dogma of the Liberal Party and of its twentieth-century revolutionary heirs. Thus the three constitutions under which Mexico has been governed for most of its national history—those of 1824, 1857, and 1917—all gave the country a federalist organization. This did not prevent the eventual emergence of a national presidency stronger than that in the U.S. model of federalism; yet the states have retained a distinct role in Mexican politics and government.

Federalism has been equally characteristic of the system of government in Argentina, where initially it was associated not with liberals but with traditionalist forces, especially in the interior provinces. These provincials distrusted the reforming tendencies of the liberal Unitarios, whose greatest strength was in the national capital, Buenos Aires. In the end, however, all factions came to accept the federalist Constitution of 1853. It was the country's first truly effective constitution and, though briefly replaced by the Peronista Constitution of 1949, is today the oldest Latin American constitution anywhere in force. Brazil, too, has been formally a federation most of the time since the adoption in 1891 of its first republican constitution, which closely followed the U.S. model even in the use of the name Estados Unidos do Brasil (United States of Brazil).

The countries mentioned, Latin America's three largest, are the only ones that still have a strictly federal constitution. The smaller countries, such as the individual Central American republics, Paraguay in South America, and the Dominican Republic in the West Indies, have never adopted anything other than a unitary organization. The other Latin American nations commonly experimented with federal or quasi-federal forms of government at different times in the nineteenth century. Colombia, under its Constitution of 1863, adopted the most extreme version of federalism ever known in Latin America, whereby the various states even had their own armies and postage stamps. Colombia turned to strict centralism with its Constitution of 1886, but in its current charter (that of 1991) included such measures of partial decentralization as the popular election of departmental governors. Still other countries that have opted for constitutional centralism have likewise retained particular features typical of federalism, and in the same way federalist charters (among them the Argentine constitution) commonly have included centrist provisions allowing the national president or congress to "intervene" in the government of the provinces or states when specified conditions arise.

See alsoArgentina, Constitutions; Colombia, Constitutions: Constitution of 1863; Mexico, Constitutions: Constitutions Prior to 1917; Venezuela, Constitutions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. S. Rowe, The Federal System of the Argentine Republic (1921).

Miron Burgin, Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, 1820–1852 (1946).

Charles A. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853 (1968).

Jorge Carpizo, Federalismo en Latinoamérica (1973).

Helen Delpar, Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 (1981), esp. chap. 5.

Frank Safford, "Politics, Ideology, and Society in Post-Independence Spanish America," in Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, vol. 3 (1985).

Nettie Lee Benson, The Provincial Deputation in Mexico: Harbinger of Provincial Autonomy, Independence, and Federalism (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Gibson, Edward L. Federalism and Democracy in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Koth, Karl B. Waking the Dictator: Veracruz, the Struggle for Federalism and the Mexican Revolution, 1870–1927. Calgary, Alta: University of Calgary Press, 2002.

Segreti, Carlos S. A. Federalismo rioplatense y federalismo argentino: (El federalismo de Córdoba en los comienzos de la época independiente, 1810–1829). Córdoba: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1995.

                                         David Bushnell