Charles a Hale Emilio Rabasa biography sku-10148475

Charles a Hale's Emilio Rabasa and the Survival of Porfirian Liberalism is a hardcover in Latin American History Books, sku-10148475. It is an intellectual and career biography of Emilio Rabasa (1856-1930), a Mexican jurist, politician, novelist, diplomat, journalist and historian. Rabasa opposed the Revolution of 1910-20, lived in exile from 1914 to 1920, then returned to Mexican life.

He kept no personal archive and maintained a low public profile, although Mexico City's juridical community continues to regard him highly. Hale draws on Rabasa's correspondence with Jos Yves Limantour, finance minister from 1893 to 1911, and William F. Buckley, Sr., an American lawyer and petroleum entrepreneur.

Hale argues that Rabasa's political, juridical and social ideas show the survival of a transformed late nineteenth-century liberalism through the revolutionary years. Drawing on European positivism and historical constitutionalism, Rabasa favored centralized but constitutionally limited authority and empirically based economic development over natural-rights doctrines and egalitarian democracy.