Three Hispanoamerican Right Wing Intellectuals:
Alberto María Carreño, Nemesio García Naranjo, Jesús Guisa y Azevedo
By Doctor Felicitas López Portillo Tostado
Francisco
Alejandro García Naranjo
Universidad
Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo-México
The book “Tres intelectuales
de la derecha hispanoamericana:
Alberto María Carreño, Nemesio
García Naranjo, Jesús Guisa y Azevedo (Three Hispanoamerican Right Wing Intellectuals: Alberto María Carreño, Nemesio García Naranjo,
Jesús Guisa y Azevedo) by Dr.
Felícitas adds to the historiography on conservatism
and right-wing politics in México, which has recently been renewed by a new group
of certainties and approaches. It is a known fact that this historiography was
belittled for ages by the sacred truths of Mexican historiography in general,
as well as the insult in the official discourse of the Governments of the PRI (acronym
in Spanish of “Partido Revolucionario
Institucional” - Institutional Revolutionary Party) of
the 20th Century. Mexican historiography was largely influenced by the
progressive idea of history that, in the case of Mexico and during the Independence
(1810), Reform (1857), The Mexican Revolution (1810) and during periods of Lázaro Cárdenas’s Government (1934-1940), had four
constituent milestones, which determined the disdain and lack of interest in the
history’s losers: the Realists, Conservatives, Monarchists, supporters of Porfirio
Díaz, Reactionaries, Catholics, Hispanists, Fascists,
Synarchist, Anti-communists and the PAN supporters (as
the “heirs” to all the above mentioned ideas). It was not until the Presidential
triumph of PAN (acronym in Spanish of “Partido Acción Nacional”- National Action Party) in the year 2000, that
a new wave of essays, history and literature books interested in the PAN and
Mexican Right Wing emerged with the aim of knowing and understanding the new government’s
ideology, which came to power, paradoxically, waving a flag of change.
For its part,
the government’s official discourse in the era of the governments originating from
the Mexican Revolution (PNR, PRM, PRI) privileged throughout
decades of the 20th century an approach that
considers Jacobinism to be rhetoric – in the words of Soledad Loaeza-[1], it
articulated an idea of the nation in which precisely those losers above mentioned
were excluded. Consequently, a consensus was generated about the fact that Iturbide,
Alamán, Santa Anna, Miramón,
Maximiliano de Habsburgo, Porfirio Díaz, the Catholic
Party, Huerta, García Naranjo, Abascal and the
Catholic Church itself (among others) not only had not contributed to the
national construction but were traitors to the motherland.
In this way,
with a new initiative, nowadays we have more recent approaches that
conceptualize the ninetieth-century conservatives as part of the liberal cycle,
not just as defenders of a traditional world destined to die. Similarly, the
investigations of the 20th century right-wing have advanced in a
significant way, not only in terms of a perverse group opposed to change, but
they have also been studied closely under new interpretations that overcome the
determinism of Liberalism, Marxism and the Left. Therefore, their doctrines and
their role in the construction of the nation or their relationship with
democracy have been established following new approaches.
Although, certainly,
social and political conservatism and the liberal right or neoliberals of today
continue to be considered as expressions that, in public life, distrust the
people and the left, or are afraid of the overwhelming power of the masses. Likewise,
they have also been intolerant critics of the new cultural patterns that the
current liberal democracy has recognized in the name of plurality, tolerance
and respect for otherness. Meanwhile their other manifestations, in the
political sector, have been able to emerge in an unequal and conflicting way with
liberal democratic institutions and the Republic. Such manifestations are, according
to some, the right wing of the future, provided that they are modernized. In today’s
language, according to the new civility, this means that they become
democratic, republican and tolerant (and the left wing in México
have the same challenge). However, a few days ago we were able to read
in the newspapers and watch on TV how the right was practicing cannibalism and how
it was dividing into tribes, all signals of their distortion inside and outside
of political power.
The Dr. Felicitas’s work is inserted in this historiographical
context and there lies its opportunity and pertinence. Professor Felícitas López Portillo Tostado
holds a Bachelor’s Degree, Master Degree and PhD in Latin American Studies from
the School of Philosophy and Humanities of the UNAM (acronym in Spanish of
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – National
Autonomous University of Mexico). She is currently working as a Researcher at
the UNAM’s Latin American and Caribbean Research Centre and giving courses on Caudillismo and dictatorships in Latin America and
also on Latin America History and Historiography. Latin American Contemporary
History is the focus of her research field, with publications referring to Cuba
from the diplomatic gaze of México between 1933 and 1953, relations between Mexico-Venezuela
from 1910 to 1960 and Perez Jimenez’ government: the genesis of the
developmental dictatorships.
The work is divided
into three chapters (one for each character studied), an introduction and an
epilogue. In the introductory section, it is explained that these three
intellectuals were selected for their roles in Mexican and Hispano-American History
and for being representatives of each of the factions into which the opposition
conservative party divided, critical of the Mexican Revolution and the governments
originating from it; the "reaction", as it was called in
post-revolutionary times, as the author notes. Another criterion of selection
was based on the fact that “they had to have maintained congruence between
their life and their work, and also have demonstrated to be hard workers and vastly
erudite persons".
In this manner,
the author explains to us that Alberto María Carreño
(1875-1962) and Nemesio García Naranjo (1883-1962)
were born in the last third of the 19th century and Jesus Guisa y Azevedo (1900-1986) at the beginning of the last
decade of the Porfiriato (the period of Porfirio
Diaz’s government). Carreño was distinguished for
being a prominent member of the Academies of Language and History and for being
a prodigious writer. Garcia Naranjo was an important member of the cabinet of
the government of Victoriano Huerta and an influential
journalist in the public opinion of his time. Even though he had to live the exile
and political ostracism, "he never renounced his critical positions and of
liberalism, whose core came from the century of his birth.” Both Garcia and Carreño maintained nostalgia for the Porfirian past. Both
were followers of the ideas originating from scholasticism, Catholic
fundamentalism and the postulates of the French right. By using the magazine which
he started, he was dedicated to lamenting the moral decadence of the country,
while exercising a "careful scrutiny" of the course of Mexico during
the post-revolutionary governments.
Chapter I is titled: "Alberto María Carreño,
el académico” (the academic). He was born in Mexico
City in 1875 and died in 1963. He studied at the Conciliar Seminary of Mexico
and at the Escuela Superior de Comercio (school of commerce). He occupied
diplomatic positions at the end of the Porfiriato and as Secretary of the Archbishopric he acted as
intermediary between the Church and the state in order to negotiate the end of
the Cristero conflict. He was a professor of the Escuela
Nacional Preparatoria (The National Preparatory High
school) and the UNAM granted him a Doctorate Honoris Causa in 1953. Carreño was in
charge of the classification and publication of the archives and memories of
Porfirio Diaz. He was a member of numerous scientific and cultural institutions
in Mexico and abroad, Director of the Mexican Academy of History, Secretary of
the Mexican Academy of Language and President of the Mexican Society of
Geography and Statistics. In 1949, he discovered the remains of Hernán Cortés, a fact that generated enormous controversy
between Hispanists and Indigenists,
but, however, he reclaimed his greatness. Carreño always
professed a deep admiration for Spain.
Carreño, as a Hispanist and Conservative, reclaimed the colonial past and
the times of Porfirian in regard to the violence, the disruption of public
order, demagogy and "coarseness" of the revolution. That is why he
dedicated his time to the history of the colonial periods and the diplomatic
history between Mexico and the United States in the 19th century. He
vindicated the role of Iturbide and revered Porfirio Diaz as the greatest leader
of Mexico. He asserted that the state should not take charge of education because
it was a right of the parents and saw the promulgation of Cardenas’s socialist
education as an attack on religion. He criticized the religious persecution
practiced in Mexico in the 19th century and by the Revolution.
Chapter II, titled:
"Nemesio García Naranjo, The Porfirist",
begins by describing the character as a conservative liberal and a Porfirist deputy in 1910 and 1912. He was born in Lampazos, Nuevo León. A contributor to the founding of the Mexican
Youth Athenaeum and the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts in the period
of Victoriano Huerta. Due to his relations with Huerta
and his strong connexion to the Porfirism, he was
expulsed from the country in 1914 and 1926, and in his long pilgrimage through the
United States, Europe and Latin America, he never stopped criticizing the post-revolutionary
governments compared to the greatness of Porfiriato and
using the different newspapers and magazines in which he collaborated and the several
books he wrote throughout the first half of the 20th century.
According to the author, the intellectual
work of Garcia Naranjo was considered to be positioned between
Hispanic-Americanism and national history. In this way, he defended the Spanish
language as a link between all of the Hispanic-American Republics and Spain, as
opposed to the Pan-Americanism promoted by the United States. In this regard, during
his numerous speeches in Spain and the United States he had the chance to show
the mood of his Hispanic-Americanism by giving recognition to the greatness of
Spain as well as the indigenous past, exalting Cortés and Cuauhtémoc alike. In
regard to the history of the country, for Nemesio, Cuauhtémoc,
Vicente Guerrero, Hidalgo, Morelos and Zaragoza all occupied a special place, and
his admiration for Simón Bolívar and José Martí was well-known.
Chapter III is
titled “Jesús Guisa y Azevedo, el cruzado (the
crusader)”. Jesús Guisa was born in Salvatierra Guanajuato, studied in the Seminary of Morelia and
obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Leuven in Belgium. He was a
professor of the UNAM, founder and core of the magazine “Lectura” and the Editorial Polis,
collaborator in the newspapers “Excelsior”
and “Novedades” and author of numerous books, among them,
those dedicated to the political doctrine of the reaction, Hispanidad
and Germanism, the PAN party, Vasconcelos and
Catholicism stand out. Through the different topics covered by the magazine “Lectura”, in
circulation between 1937 and 1973, Dr. Lopez Portillo
leads us to an understanding of the mentality of this traditionalist and
reactionary man who left his mark on his publication and who declared himself
as a "real anti-revolutionary (sic)." He also explains to us that the
magazine was the expression of an enlightened middle-class sector that was in
opposition to the post-revolutionary governments, who they accused of being the
cause of the loss of spiritual values. This magazine was also based on
anti-Yankeeism and anticommunism and was dedicated to the recovery of the Mexican
Hispanic past and the "sense of a Christian community that was once
imprinted on its political life."
Lazaro Cardenas'
government represented an important chapter in this struggle, as the magazine “Lectura”, in
the hands of its main promoter, took part in controversies around the official indigenism, socialist education in 1935, the strengthening
of the system, and the hegemony of the state in the social life and economy.
His weapons were Hispanism and anti-communism and the
Cardenist indigenism was
conceptualized as a Yankee mechanism to eradicate civilization from Mexico, which
was composed of the Spanish tradition and Catholicism. This extreme right-wing
approach of Guisa and Azevedo showed that
Independence and the Mexican Revolution were real catastrophes for the country,
due to a powerful conspiracy of Jews, Masons, Marxists, Liberals and
Communists. In this theory, the United States plays an important role, as
"a devilish power" bound and determined to destroy Catholicism.
In the
epilogue, as is necessary, Professor López Portillo recounts the objectives put
forward and verifies their fulfilment. She also reflects on the cultural
importance of the key figures of the Mexican right-wing studied throughout the
text and evaluates their public activity as writers, journalists and
promoters of publishing companies, highlighting the importance of knowing their
approaches as a means of completing the outlook of the political and
ideological imaginary of the time in which they lived. In this retelling, she reminds
us of their rhetorical battles in defence of the colonial past, the importance
of Catholicism, their profound Hispanic-Americanism, and their distrust of public
education, agrarianism, unionism, and state interventionism. One important finding
in this section is the fact that these three characters, with their different
backgrounds, were veracious in their criticism regarding the corruption and
impunity prevailing in the country's political and economic circles. In view of
that, the author dedicates the last pages of the book to outlining the scenery
of the second half of the 20th century, the Mexican "sexennial
monarchy", the influence of the foundation myths,
the rising social inequality and the economic crisis.
This revision
throughout the pages of the book was not intended to be exhaustive, but only aimed
to show a very general overview of some of the topics present in each of the characters
studied by Professor Felicitas. The work in question have
had clear successes, beginning with the characters chosen, which require
extensive research. The prose of the author is respectful of the reader, who is
successfully guided through the planned scheme, without doctrinal bias, conceptual
obscurities or parochial straightforwardness. Likewise, the enormous knowledge
and mastery of the study period is evident, as well as of the careers paths and
backgrounds of the historical characters studied.
How does the
book contribute to the historiography of the right-wing in Mexico? First, it
provides a valid historical reconstruction of each of the character’s intellectual
career paths, presenting their perceptions on the Mexico that they had to live
in, and how, based on Hispanism, fundamentalist
Catholicism and nostalgia for the Porfirian past, their criticism of the times,
understood as a growing decadence, was made. The reader can also perceive the
anger and regret of these right-wingers – for some more, for others less – in
regard to the ways and procedures of the rulers of the state, mainly of state
interventionism and the authoritarianism of the revolutionary governments. As well as the moral indignation due to the revolutionary, popular,
secular, and socializing values that were being modelled on the society,
degrading it by their judgment.
By using these
characters in particular as the subjects of study, avoiding the great matters as
a whole, such as Hispanisim, Catholic fundamentalism,
the Church, Christians, secular, clandestine or conspiratory
catholic associations, synarchism or Panism, Professor Felicitas successfully shows us the men,
their ideas and their most basic motivations. This is undoubtedly a valid way
to verify the well-known hypothesis that the right-wing - in Mexico and in the
western world - has always tried to oppose or "steer" socio-political
changes.
It should be
noted that the mentality of these characters, Carreño
and Guisa, with all of their obsessions and demons,
was dominated by a rejection of the present that puts them with their backs to their
time, even though they knew it well, because they were defenders of order,
hierarchy, tradition, private property and the Catholic religion, which they
saw as diminished due to modern ideologies. Undoubtedly this attitude made them
into reactionaries, because they did not accept the changes or transformations
in progress, even those that had already been converted into normative
institutions of the society. But, they never showed a vocation for violence as
a means to break the current political system and the new status quo and thus recover that lost golden age.
Garcia Naranjo, on the other hand, was able to tolerate his time and
accepted the changes coming from liberalism, structuring his thinking and to
his separation from that aspect of Catholicism as a beginning and end of public
life, without distinction from the private sector; he saw impiety and anarchy
everywhere. Unlike of Guisa and Carreño,
he was not linked to the outdated Hispanism, that like blinkers prevented them from recognizing the reality
in its entirety. Nemesio was able to make the
transition to the modern political culture of the 20th century
thanks to his liberal frame of mind, which puts him close to democracy as a
norm, despite the parsimony and doctrinal dogma of the revolutionary family.
But he was also a conservative because he lived in nostalgia for Porfirian
past, even though he accepted the new reality. Although he deplored the
mediocrity of post-revolutionary times and their creators in dealing with the "greatness"
of the Porfirian times, based on peace, order and progress[2].
Neither did he
want the restoration of the old idealized regime. The discourse of Nemesio García Naranjo was a quarrel between the
civilization represented by the Porfiriato and the "barbarism" generated by the revolutionary
cycles. But it cannot be said that he was an anti-modernist like many other expressions
that in the 19th and 20th centuries combated political
modernity and social change. His discourse was neither an argument against
modernity and its implications, nor a discussion about tradition as others made
against modernity, supported on Catholic fundaments. García Naranjo simply
argued that radical change replaced order with anarchy. It means that he judged
the changes generated by the Revolution as from liberal modernity[3].
Nevertheless, the work of Dr.
Felícitas is missing a necessary historiographic
justification of each of the characters in order to clearly depict the level of
knowledge of Garcia Naranjo’s, Guisa Azevedo’s and Carreño’s life, work and thought (either shorter or longer).
The when, who and how scholars have approached these representatives of the
Mexican right-wing and what are their recurrences: the biographical style based
on public life and their most intimate depiction; the reconstruction of their
intellectual career paths through the analysis of their written works: the
history sieved through ideological hatreds or the fervour of an acolyte. All of
this would have strengthened the work. Likewise, it would have been rewarding to
return to the concepts of the comparative method, since they would give life to
the mentality of these intellectuals, showing if their discursive strategies,
the demons they combated and the goodness of the world they defended converge
or not by establishing how much anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-modernist,
anti-communist, anti-Yankee and antifascist they were; how Francoist,
traditionalist, organicist, elitist, hierarchical and Catholic were and to what
extent. What were the convergences and what were the differences of the world
they wanted to recover; which, as they said, the revolutionary vortex had
condemned to disappear, due to the moral deterioration of Mexican society, as
they called it. But not to be misunderstood, many of these insights appear throughout
the book, suggested as a literary foil between the characters. The traits of their
Hispanism and criticism of the official Indigenism of that time are clear, as well as their attacks
on the growing state power "invading" the circles of public life and pointing
at the Revolution and its governments as responsible for the erosion of the
moral values. Perhaps, if all of the information abovementioned had been gathered
and developed in a specific section of the work, these characters would have
been seen under a more powerful light or a more precise lens.
Finally, it is
necessary to mention that in some points of the work the discourse of the characters
is not easily distinguishable from the author’s discourse, and the reader can
feel somewhat perplexed on those few occasions that it occurred. This, surely,
can be attributed to the deep knowledge that the author shows in her book of her
characters and the time they lived in. Maybe there is an
identification with the characters and their times. After having said
all this, there remains nothing more than to congratulate Dr.
Felícitas Lopez Portillo Tostado
for this new historiographical commitment, because her work is original,
critical, creative and realistic.
[1] See: Soledad Loaeza, Acción Nacional. El apetito y las responsabilidades del
triunfo (México: El Colegio de México, 2010).
[2] See: Francisco García
Naranjo, “Derechas y discurso antirrevolucionario en México. El caso de
Nemesio García Naranjo”, in: García Ávila,
Sergio, Francisco A. García Naranjo, Eduardo Miranda Arrieta (coordinators), Discurso y poder en la historia de México,
siglos XVIII-XX (Morelia, Universidad Michoacana,
2013) press.
[3] Francisco
García Naranjo, “Derechas y discurso antirrevolucionario…