Truth in Numbers: Shaping the Modern Mexican Nation during the Porfirian Era

The problem of authority marks one of the largest schisms that divided liberal and conservative politicians of nineteenth- century Mexico.  The moral vacuum that emerged as a consequence of the weakening of the political hold of the church during the mid-nineteenth century became the secular pulpit of Liberal writers, who sought to frame themselves as a type of new societal conscience whose task was to guide Mexican citizens through the moral and ethical labyrinths of a nation in transition.  Science and objectivity now occupied the house of authority, and were woven into political speeches, newspaper debates and commemorative events as bolsters for liberal policies and strategic efforts to build modern transportation and communication systems.  In this context, statistics emerged as both a diagnostic instrument for analyzing internal obstacles to development and a bridge to foreign investors whose capital could lead the nation toward a shared position within the ranks of the US/European economic hegemony.  In this paper, I bridge nineteenth-century statistical practices with the scientific discourse of liberal writers contemporary to the era (such as Francisco Zarco and Ignacio Ramírez) in order to illuminate the struggle for authority that shaped the social, political and aesthetic debates of the nineteenth century.