| Summary: | The "imaginary", as seen in this work, is a symbolic construction within collective memory, that seeks to shape the awareness of identity, and thus organize society. The shape it acquired through practice received several names: public spirit, popular will and public opinion. These images worked both as a mirror of society and as a legitimating device. The pamphlets printed in México during 1856-1861 reflect well the work carried out by the intellectual elites of Constitutionalism -"societies of thought" (sociedades de pensamiento), according to Augustin Cochin- in order to materialize an abstract republican ideology. The national "imaginary" contained in this kind of printed matter refers not only to discourse, but also to the issue of cross-points between history and fiction. The fact that Comonfort, after vowing before Congress, declared it impossible to rule with the 1857 Constitution, ocurred so because that law and its corresponding political rethoric -the "constitutional imaginary"- had imposed a barely-feasible democratic and representational model. This work gathers some issues of constitutional rethoric, in order to analyze, under a new light, the tensions between a formal constitution that legislates to obtain a strong Congress, and Mexico's historical constitution, that claimed gradual changes, considering the long tradition of democratic power renewed by Santa Ann's dictatorship.
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