5 - Religion and Liberalismo y jacobinismo (1901–06)

Summary

After Ariel, and conscious of the success of his essay both locally and in the Spanish-speaking world at large, Rodó started work on his most ambitious book, Motivos de Proteo, eventually published in 1909. This is also a time of intensified personal involvement with party politics, first as he continued to campaign with other young men for the unification and galvanization of the Colorados; and then, from March 1902 to November 1904, in the first of three periods as a member of parliament for the party. A highlight of this political activity was Rodó's participation in a polemical debate following the decision of the government's Charity Commission to ban all crucifixes from public hospitals. Rodó was asked for his opinion, and he provided it in a disapproving letter to the newspaper La Razón in early July 1906; in reaction, a member of the Liberal Club, Pedro Díaz, gave a lecture refuting Rodó's position. In September, Rodó countered with a series of nine further letters to the same newspaper; these, plus his prologue to a book on religion, were published later that year as a volume entitled Liberalismo y jacobinismo.

We shall approach this work by considering, first, the wider political and religious background; second, Rodó's argument against both the original decision and the response from Díaz, a brilliant and highly committed politician who was three years younger than his opponent and would, four years later, become the only ever deputy of the short-lived Liberal Party. In the third place, and bearing in mind Rodó's own long relationship with spirituality, idealism and, especially as a child, with Catholicism, we shall seek to answer the question: how religious was he?

The Political and Religious Context

A few months after the publication of Ariel in February, on 19 June 1900, President Juan Lindolfo Cuestas appointed Rodó as interim director of the National Library while the incumbent was on sick leave. He held the post for two months; at the same time, Rodó was part of a working party of four (including Víctor Pérez Petit) charged with the revision of the institution's catalogue system and general regulations, after which he remained on the library's advisory board for two years.