Mora, José María Luis (1794–1850)

José María Luis Mora (b. 1794; d. 14 July 1850), Mexican politician and political theorist. Born in Chamacuero, Guanajuato, Mora studied theology, and was ordained a priest in 1829 when he obtained a doctorate. A moderate constitutionalist, Mora became a journalist and politician after independence. Elected to the legislature of the state of Mexico, he participated in writing that state's constitution. However, he became more significant as a journalist, a publicist for the escoceses (Scottish rite Masons), and an apologist for Nicolás Bravo and the rebels against the government in 1828.

A supporter of the repressive administration of Anastasio Bustamante (1830–1832), Mora nevertheless emerged as an advocate of reform in 1834 during the vice presidency of Valentín Gómez Farías, achieving distinction when he synthesized widely published criticisms of the church and when he joined liberals in favoring education reform. When that regime fell Mora traveled to Paris and subsequently represented his country in France and in England. He remained in France until his death. There he published three volumes of his projected four-volume Méjico y sus revoluciones (1836) and his Obras sueltas (1837), in which he claims to have played a key role in his country's politics. His works which criticize the excesses of the independence era and favor moderate liberalism, exerted great influence in the late 1840s and 1850s among a new generation of liberals who sought an antidote to the powerful conservative arguments of Lucas Alamán. As a result, although a minor political figure, Mora has become known as the "liberal theorist" of early Mexico.

See alsoMexico: 1810–1910 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michael P. Costeloe, La primera república federal de México, 1824–1835 (1975).

Charles Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora (1968).

Charles W. Macune, El Estado de México y la federación mexicana, 1823–1835 (1978).

Additional Bibliography

González Oropeza, Manuel. José María Luis Mora y la creación del estado de México. Toluca, México: Instituto de Estudios Legislativos, 2000.

Lugo Plata, Eliseo. Fuera de serie: José María Luis Mora de Lamadrid 1794–1850. México: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 1995.

                                       Jaime E. RodrÍguez O.