Roberto Blancarte

América Latina: Entre pluri-confesionalidad y laicidad

In Latin America, as in many countries with a Catholic religious hegemony, the building of a lay (secular) regime required of a militant laicism to generate a space for freedoms, in a context of clash between the principles of political liberalism and the doctrinal intransigence of the Catholic hierarchy. The new independent countries of Latin America would be caught almost since the beginning of their lives in a tendency of confrontation additionally rooted in royalist and jurisdictionalist traditions. Two Centuries later, although this trend has not completely disappeared, it is been replaced by a regulation of the religious, more inclined to the recognition of a plurality of beliefs, the need to respect human rights, freedom of conscience, and a more democratic political life. Nevertheless, this transition does not necessarily goes from confesionalism, jurisdictionalism or laicism to a secular regime of laicity. In fact, the old tendencies and the new trends appear now as a crossroad for political regimes in Latin America: laicity or pluri-confessionality. Or, it is not clear which one of this contradictory regime proposals will prevail.

Closing Comment: "Personal Enemies of God: Anticlericals and Anticlericalism in Revolutionary Mexico, 1915-1940"

In a contribution made some time ago, I stressed the diversity of factors which came together in the anticlerical constitutional articles and paragraphs that were approved during the Constituent Congress at Querétaro of 1916-17. The first of these factors—I argued—was the not unreasonable belief held by many Mexican revolutionaries that the Catholic Church had collaborated with the government of the military usurper, Victoriano Huerta, in 1913-14. In this regard, the political participation of the National Catholic Party had also been decisive in influencing anticlerical opinion.