Have the 10 Amendments Inspired Freedom? Six Foreign Prespectives : MEXICO : The French Taught Us About Liberty

The ideas and principles of the U.S. Bill of Rights have played no role in the evolution of the Mexican legal and political frameworks. The reason is simple: Our system is Spanish and French in origin.

In Mexico, most of the ideas embodied in the 10 amendments have been around since the Mexican War of Independence, in 1810, and the first Mexican constitution, 1824. They were incorporated, in full, into the second Mexican constitution of 1857. Mexico’s third--and current--constitution, adopted in 1917, contains all the rights laid out in the U.S. document.

It was the French Revolution that most directly influenced the development of rights and liberties in Mexico. True, America was also moving to put ideals of freedom into practice. But, at the time, Mexico and the United States did not enjoy friendly relations. As a result, American influences were slight.

Nevertheless, the 200th anniversary of America’s Bill of Rights reminds me of the time I was called upon to defend the principles undergirding our constitution, our bill of rights. I was a student in Tuxpan Veracruz, a tiny tropical town on the Gulf of Mexico. I was 13 years old. One day, one of my father’s assistants showed up for work looking as if he had been beaten. I was very fond of this man, so I asked him what had happened.

“Did you have an accident?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I was put in jail after a ‘fiesta’ quarrel.”

“Did you get into a fight while in jail?”

“No,” he said. “It was the police who hit me on the way to jail.”

Proud of my recently acquired knowledge of citizen rights, I told him that the Mexican constitution clearly prohibited this kind of physical abuse--even in jail. And that he should have asserted his rights.

He just raised his arms and said: “That is only on paper, not in the real life.”

I didn’t agree with him, and I tried to persuade him to fight for “justice.” I didn’t succeed.

I think every person’s childhood is full of such Don Quixote stories. But were not the creators of the U.S. Bill of Rights, in some sense, Don Quixotes? Or were they simply realists who knew all too well the vicissitudes of human nature?