Date and Time
April 25, 2008
1:15 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
RSVP required by 5PM April 24

Participant
Faviola Rivera Castro - Visiting Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center and Philosophy at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

According to a common view in Mexico today, the attempt to transform Mexican political institutions according to liberal values since the nineteenth century has been a complete failure. On this view, the reasons for this failure are, primarily, that liberal values and ideas were “foreign” and “imported”, such that they could hardly have taken root in a society that had recently emerged from three centuries of colonial rule and was, therefore, backwards and “traditional”. Scholars often complain that liberals failed to realize the values of freedom and equality, that there is no rule of law, no public culture of toleration, and no effective enforcement of fundamental individual rights either civil or political.