Differences between pro-clerical and anti-clerical Mexican Catholics was one of the most profound lines of social cleavage during and after the revolutionary era.
Diane Bush and Stephen Mumme, 19 9 4267
At the 1917 Constitutional Convention, the Church siding with Huerta remained a vivid memory for delegates. Assuming the role of modernizers, delegates felt it their duty to lead the Mexican people away from the conservatism, ignorance, intolerance, superstition, and fanaticism they associated with the Church. Delegates also felt that if they did not defeat clerical forces at the Convention, Church-backed conservatives would launch other revolutions that would put the country in danger.268
While there was consensus on opposing the Church, the moderate faction at the Convention claimed that denying the Church access to various roles—such as education—denied the people freedom and democracy. Mugica expressed the radical view:
If we allow absolute freedom of education so that the clergy can participate in it with their
Antiquated and backward ideas, we will not create new generations of thinking, sensible people;
Rather our posterity will receive from us the inheritance of fanaticism, of insane principles.269
The radical views triumphed on religious matters, resulting in a constitution laden with anticlerical provisions. Article 3 prohibited the Church from imparting primary education. Article 5 prohibited any pacts or contracts that irreversibly deprived one of liberty. Since monastic orders were seen as irrevocably committing one to remain in the order, such orders were specifically prohibited. Article 24 outlawed outdoor religious services. Article 27 prohibited the Church from owning any property, even if it was dedicated to worship. The state claimed everything that had been considered Church property. Article 130 provided for extensive regulation of the Church. It declared marriage a civil contact and denied the Church standing as a legal entity. Priests and ministers were declared to be professionals subject to regulation, just as physicians and lawyers were. State legislatures were granted the power to limit the number of priests in their respective states. Article 130 also required priests and ministers to be Mexicans by birth. Priests were denied the right to vote, hold office, or criticize laws or government officials. Religious publications were forbidden to comment on national politics or national political figures. Finally, religious-based political parties were prohibited.
Both Carranza and Obregon, intent on consolidating their regimes, looked the other way as the Church hierarchy ignored the restrictions the 1917 constitution had placed on religious activities. By 1925, five new dioceses had been created, missionary activities had expanded, and religious orders—particularly congregations of women—were growing rapidly. Since there was no feasible alternative to religious education, the Church continued to administer a fifth of Mexico’s schools.270
While the federal government adopted a live-and-let-live attitude toward the Church, some state governments, operating with a great deal of independence from the federal government, set limits on the number of priests. In 1918, Jalisco limited the number of priests to one for every
5,000 residents of the state. In Veracruz, Governor Adalberto Tejeda systematically changed the names of towns named after saints and closed and expropriated Church property.271
State autonomy on religious matters was most conspicuous in Tabasco. The state remained under the control of Tomas Garrido Canabal from 1920 to 1935. The virulent anti-clericalism of Garrido Canabal, the son of a hacendado, has never been explained, although it was presumably in part due to the influence of Mugica, who served as governor of Tabasco in 1915 and 1916. Garrido Canabal, who served two terms as governor, closed all churches in the state, required all priests to be married, and prohibited the display of religious images. Not content with merely closing churches, he ordered some church buildings demolished and converted others into schools. Garrido Canabal introduced anti-clericalism into schools through the use of slogans such as “The priests and the capitalists take bread from our mouths.” Garrido Canabal even banned the use of the word “adios,” since it contained the word “dios (god).” It was to be replaced with “salud.” Garrido Canabal’s efforts were so extreme, even in the context of Mexican anti-clericalism, that they inspired Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory.272
In contrast to Carranza and Obregon, Calles came to the presidency with a well-deserved reputation for being militantly anti-clerical. In 1916, while governor of Sonora, Calles referred to priests as “inciters of illiterates and fanatics.” Calles had the simplistic notion that Church-state conflict resulted from the “great chiefs” of the Catholic Church ignoring Mexican law.273
By the beginning of 1926, Church and state were engaged in low-intensity conflict. The Church prohibited its members from joining the CROM. Early in 1926, the state of Hidalgo limited the number of priests in the state to sixty. Some of the Catholic hierarchy publicly (and according to the 1917 constitution, illegally) criticized this limit. In January, the bishops stated, “We must collectively declare that these measures and any others that violate religious freedom cannot be respected by the prelates and the clergy.”274
Early in 1926, the government seized on the incident to unleash an anti-clerical offensive. On February 10, many Spanish-born priests were rounded up and sent to Veracruz for deportation. During the last week of February 1926, Calles urged state governors to take immediate steps to enforce the constitutional articles relating to religion that had remained largely a dead letter. By September, 183 clergymen had been expelled, and seventy-three convents, 129 schools attached to convents, and 118 orphan asylums under religious control had been closed.275
On June 14, Calles signed a decree known as the “Calles Law,” which prohibited foreign priests, monasteries, convents, religious instruction in primary schools, priests criticizing existing laws, and the wearing of religious garb outside church buildings. Article 19 of the Law was the most inflammatory of the provisions, since it required that priests register with officials before they could exercise their ministry. Both the hierarchy and lay Catholics felt registration was an attempt to take effective appointment of priests out of the Episcopate’s hands.276
Calles’s obtuse anti-clericalism soon led the nation to civil war. Historian Jean Meyer suggests that Calles rejected his predecessors’ peaceful co-existence with the Church because he felt the Church posed a threat to his power. Meyer himself admits puzzlement, noting: “It is difficult to understand how the president, with all his qualities, could allow himself to become bogged down [in religious strife].”277
On July 25, the Mexican Episcopate, with Papal authority, ordered that all Catholic churches be closed and public worship suspended to protest Calles’s anti-clerical measures. Calles remained unmoved and referred to his dispute with the Church as “the struggle of darkness against light.” In fact, Calles welcomed the suspension of religious services, which began on July 31, since he assumed that if religious practice was suspended, people would gradually forget about the Church and become non-religious.278
The response of Mexico’s devoutly Catholic peasantry caught the government, the army, and the Church completely off guard. By the end of February 1927, U. S. Consul Dudley Dwyre reported that the entire population of the state of Jalisco supported rural uprisings except for the “federal and state governments, police, and radical labor and agrarian groups.” By the spring of 1927, sustained rebellion was occurring not only in Jalisco but also in Michoacan, Colima, Guanajuato, and southern Zacatecas. Since the rebels used the battle cry of “iViva Cristo Key!” (“Long Live Christ the King!”), they became known as Cristeros, and the uprising as the Cristiada.279
Although Mexican peasants were Catholic throughout the nation, the Cristiada was strongest in west-central Mexico where villages: 1) had survived the liberal reforms with a relatively intact land base, 2) had a dense network of Catholic organizations at the local level, and 3) associated the centralized power of the state with land reform and state-sponsored anti-clericalism. Rather than viewing land reform as a measure aimed at social justice, the Cristeros were predominantly small landholders for whom the reform was either irrelevant or an active threat to their holdings.280
The composition of Cristero forces varied widely from place to place due to differing local histories and interests. In general, though, they included the landless, smallholders, sharecroppers, tenants, and members of corporate Indian communities. Some former Zapatistas participated in the Cristiada, viewing themselves as simply continuing their struggle for justice and religious liberty. Generally, priests did not participate in, or even actively support, the Cristiada. There were some exceptions, such as Father Vega, who became such an effective rebel leader that he was known as “Pancho Villa in a cassock.” Cristeros were united in wanting to overthrow the government and eliminate any semblance of official anti-clericalism and socialism.281 In 1969, Francisco Campos, a former Cristero from Durango, eloquently commented on Cristero motivations:
On July 31, 1926, some men forced God Our Lord away from His churches and out of Catholic homes. However, some other men did what they could to bring Him back. These men did not think about the innumerable troops and incalculable amounts of money and arms the government had. They ignored all that. What they did think about was the defense of their God, of their religion, and of the Holy Church. This is what they thought about. These men were willing to leave their parents, their children, their wives, and all their worldly goods. They marched off to the battlefield to seek God Our Lord.282
The Cristiada lasted for three years as mounted guerrilla forces dodged more than 70,000 federal troops. The federal army adopted tactics resembling those of the Spanish during the war for independence. It established concentration camps and declared that anyone found outside them would be subject to summary execution. Rather than reducing support for the Cristeros, the brutality of this policy generated yet further resistance to the state, and rebel ranks swelled accordingly. After three years, federal forces had made little progress at suppressing the rebellion. They would leave their barracks, travel down rail lines and highways, and launch futile attacks against an enemy whose high degree of mobility allowed him to avoid superior federal forces.283
Cristero control was so thoroughly established in broad areas that they could establish a civil government that operated print shops, delivered mail, managed schools, and collected taxes. Since so many men had joined Cristero forces, women assumed many traditionally masculine roles. They worked the land to ensure a food supply and directly contributed to the war effort by carrying messages, bringing food to Cristero forces, smuggling in ammunition, and caring for the wounded.284
While the Cristiada raged in west-central Mexico, urban Catholics also resisted the government. In November 1927, members of a Catholic group attempted to assassinate Obregon by throwing a bomb at his car. The assassins failed in their attempt to kill Obregon, but did provide the government with an opportunity to strike a blow at urban Catholics opposing government anti-clerical measures. Four people were shot for their supposed role in the assassination attempt, including one of the most effective urban organizers, Miguel Agustin Pro, a Jesuit priest. Those executed were never placed on trial nor was any evidence presented to demonstrate their guilt.285
The execution of the four, and especially of Father Pro, deeply troubled an introverted mystic, Jose de Leon Toral, and led him to another attempt on Obregon’s life. This time the attempt was successful. However, rather than striking a blow for the Church, as he intended, he only succeeded in prolonging strife. Unbeknown to Toral, Obregon had planned to meet with U. S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow to bring an end to the Cristiada. The cession of hostility they were to arrange had already received Papal approval as well as that of Calles. However Obregon’s assassination plunged the nation into political crisis, forcing Calles to focus his attention on more pressing matters. As historian Jean Meyer noted, by delaying the end of the Cristiada, Toral’s action led to the loss of tens of thousands of additional lives. Meyer also noted that in any case Toral’s action was misdirected since Obregon was not responsible for Calles’s anti-clericalism and had warned him not to become bogged down in a struggle with the Church.286
By mid-1929, it was obvious to the Mexican government, the Episcopate, and the Vatican that the Cristiada had turned into a hopeless stalemate. Through the good offices of U. S. Ambassador Morrow, who feared Mexico would plunge into chaos, an agreement was reached between the Episcopate and the government. On June 21, 1929, President Portes Gil announced that the government would pardon all Cristeros, return church buildings to the Church, and allow Catholics to engage in educational and social welfare activities, and that persecution of the Church would cease. In short, even though the Calles Law was to remain on the books, it would not be enforced. The Episcopate agreed to allow Church services to resume and condemned rebellion against the government in an effort to persuade Cristeros to lay down their arms.287
With churches reopened and in the face of episcopal condemnation, the Cristero movement soon dissipated. Many hard-liners who wanted to topple the government felt betrayed, and some even continued to fight. However, for the vast majority of Cristeros, the war was over. A third accepted government-issued safe-conducts, turned in their weapons, and went home. The rest, distrusting the government, kept their weapons and simply went home. The total number of deaths resulting from the Cristiada, including both civilians and the military, reached almost 200,000. In addition, since the rebellion occurred in the heart of Mexico’s granary, cereal production plummeted by almost 40 percent between 1926 and 1929. Even though the Cristiada is less well known than the Revolution, as historian Jean Meyer noted, “No other popular uprising in the twentieth century led so many from such diverse backgrounds to take up arms over such a large area.” The number of insurgents reached 50,000, spread over seventeen states.288
The Church-state cooperation that began in 1929 set the tone for the following decade. During the Cardenas administration, Church—state relations further improved, since Cardenas wanted Mexico to be undivided by religious issues so Catholics would rally around him when his reforms were challenged. With moderate leaders at the helm of both the government and the Church, an officially acknowledged modus vivendi was established.289
Cardenas’s overtures to the Church yielded results, as the hierarchy supported his land reform and the oil nationalization. After the oil nationalization, Archbishop of Mexico Luis Maria Martinez stated: “There is no reason why Catholics should not cooperate with the government effort to pay the indemnification to the oil companies. This is not a political issue, in which we would not become involved, but an issue of patriotism.” In 1940, the Episcopate dissociated itself from Almazan’s conservative presidential candidacy.290
World History
