260 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
Figure 7.4 Justo Rufino
Barrios, the Liberal strongman
of Guatemala. Source
unknown.diminished legal and economic power for the Catholic Church. So great was the an-
tipathy of the Mexican conservative elite for the liberal reforms that they looked in
desperation for help from abroad, which led France, for reasons of its own, to help
install a short-lived and ill-fated monarchy in Mexico (1867–1872) under the Arch-
duke Maximilian of Austria.
The oscillation between federalist and centralist models was the great leitmotif
of nineteenth-century political life in all of the region from Mexico to Costa Rica, and
was one of the dominant features of neocolonial Mesoamerica. The pattern of os-
cillation yielded periods of liberal “reform,” such as the eras of Juárez and Barrios,
in which liberal, federalist models encouraged diffusion of economic and political
authority from central to regional governments. The oscillating pattern of central-
ism and federalism also tended, during centralist periods, to emphasize develop-
ment of urban centers and their access to port cities. This lack of interest in the
hinterland, beyond its economic utility, had an obvious result: The hinterland was
never fully incorporated into national cultural and political life.