The Catholic Revival and the Cristero Rebellion

1
The Catholic Revival and the Cristero Rebellion

• Modern Mexico,
• Lecture, Week 4, spring Term

2
La Cristiada

• Cristero Family

• Cristero Leader

3
Church-State Conflict

• Given the strength of Catholicism in Mexico, why
  did President Calles take on the Church in 1926
  and lead Mexico into civil war ?
• The Cristero War La Cristiada
• -lasted for three years 1926-29
• -claimed lives of some 90,000 people 56,882 on
  the federal side, 30,000 Cristeros, plus numerous
  civilians and Cristeros who were killed in
  anticlerical raids after the war's end
• -resulted in a stalemate and peace accord
  brokered by US Ambassador Dwight Morrow

4

• Armed conflict broke out again in 1934 in
  response to Narciso Bassols programme of
  Socialist Education
• By the 1930s Mexico was infamous in the Catholic
  world for state persecution of the clergy and
  Catholic religious belief
• Graham Greene, The Lawless Road and The Power
  and the Glory)

5
Catholic Rebels

• 19th C Spanish Carlist

• Mexican Cristero, 1934

6
Cristeros-Sinarquismo-PAN

• Later 1930s Catholic movement morphed into the
  proto-fascist Sinarquista movement that
  influenced the Revolutions move to the Right,
  and relaxation of the more stringent
  anti-clerical laws after 1938.
• Yet, until the PANs defeat of PRI in 2000 , RC
  clergy and religion were invisible beyond church
  buildings and atria, a measure of Jacobin
  Mexicos fear of the Church in a Catholic
  Nation

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Sinarquismo
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Religion and Revolution

• - Revolutions especially in the 20th C
  aspire to replace established religion with a
  secular political religion. Cultural
  caudillos sought to De-sacralise traditional
  spaces and de-fanaticise citizens, before
  sacralising the secular in revolutionary
  festivals, parades, etc..
• - Liberal and Catholic Mexico had clashed in the
  mid 19th C .
• - Jacobin Bolshevik - Mexico would
  surely therefore clash with resurgent Catholic
  Mexico during the 20th ?

9
Ruiz, Mexican Patriotic School Children, c.1930
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Lecture

• - the Revolution, anti-clericalism and Catholic
  identity
• - Church-State conflict and precipitants of war
• - Cristero insurgency

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Revolutionary anti-clericalism

• Sonoran Dynasty
• - Church much less powerful in the North
  Obregon and Calles saw their mission as bringing
  Centre and South into the modern, secular world,
  like the US
• - Sense of social exclusion Obregon, Calles
  and Adolfo de la Huerta all from lower-middle
  class, sons of schoolteachers, bar and pool hall
  owners....

12
Revolutionary anti-clericalism

• - resented hold of R Catholicism over minds of
  most Mexicans, especially the "common people",
  over whom they craved more direct control.
• Catholic ritual...(is)...a seductive trick
  designed to exploit ignorant peasants
  hallucinated by floats, adorned with clouds,
  little angles, chalices and all the artifices the
  clergy uses to cheat them out of their last
  penny. Guanajuato petition, December 1934,
• in Adrian Bantjes, Adrian, Idolatry and
  Iconoclasm, Mexican Studies Vol.13, 1997.

13
Revolutionary anti-clericalism

• - Revolutionaries not necessarily atheistic
  or anti-religious. Many were Spiritualists or
  had converted to Protestantism, a cause which
  they aspired to promote as a counterpoise to the
  Catholics. And many were practicing
  Catholics.....
• Letter from General Vargas, signed Free man of
  the North, to Cristero leader, Pedro Quintanar
  , Zacatecas, 1927,
• I should be very much in favour of the
  Catholic sect if it were national, that is to
  say, if you appointed your own pope, a Mexican,
  and got rid of that immoral institution,
  confession, and of the celibacy of the clergy.
  Im from the frontier, and in my village the
  Catholic Church is hardly known.

14
Revolutionary anti-clericalism

• - Some revolutionaries, however, such as
  Governors Rodolfo Calles in Sonora and Tomás
  Garrido Canabal of Tabasco, were aggressively
  antireligious and iconoclastic
• - saint burning and the destruction of altars
  and confessionals, were necessary first acts in
  freeing the minds of the poor and ignorant from
  the clergys superstitious hold.
• See Adrian Bantjes, Burning Saints, Moulding
  Minds Iconoclasm, Civic Ritual, and the Failed
  Cultural Revolution, in William Beezley ed.
  Rituals of Rule Rituals of Resistance

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Revolutionary anti-clericalism

• Tomás Garrido Canabal, Governor of Tabasco,
  referred in 1925 to the clergy
• ...the cassocked vultures have seized their
  prey, digging their talons into the heart of the
  Indian, who is less prepared than any other race
  to resist the seduction of the whole ritual
  farce.

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Tomás Garrido Canabal, Agrarian cacique of Tabasco
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Tomás Garrido Canabal, Agrarian cacique of Tabasco

• Feria Municipal de Tenosique, Tabasco, 1935

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Competing Nationalisms Catholics

• Catholics claimed to be more Mexican than the
  Revolutionaries
• revered Virgin of Guadalupe, Iturbide and Hidalgo
  (who was anti-French Revolution)
• pointed to invasion of US Protestant missionaries
  (and to Prots and Masons in Calless Cabinet)
• government agraristas carried the Black and Red
  Anarchist flag, Cristeros carried National colors
  (Green, White and Red) Virgin of Guadalupe
• Church made more rapid headway in the symbolic
  representation of a national culture and in the
  occupation of public space flags,monuments,
  union and lay associations, demonstrations
  (purposeful processions/pilgrimages)

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Cristero Flag
20
Pilgrimage from Cocota to San Martin Hidalgo,
Jalisco
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Reading on Catholic lay associations and
pilgrimages

• For modern Catholic lay associations see
  chapters/article on reading list by Robert Curley
  and Kristina Boylan on the seminar reading list
  for week 5
• For modern and traditional Catholic
  associational life in Oaxaca see
• Edward Wright-Rios, Revolutions in Mexican
  Catholicism Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca,
  18871934 2009

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Anti-clericalism and gender

• The Revolution - and the future - were male
  creations by Freemasons, military leaders,
  agraristas, workers.....
• Heroic males were aided by women teachers and
  ligas feminas.... (see Rivera mural of rural
  teacher)
• Clergy feminised priests lambasted as skirted,
  laden with lace, surrounded by women and
  children...

23
Anti-clericalism and gender

• Church capitalised on the popular perception of
  the Revolution as male, violent, corrupt and
  opposed to the teachings of Christ
• Wright-Rios writes
• Churchmen and laywomen frequently gendered
  modern error as male p.33
• Catholicism spoke to women at a time when
  secular elite at best talked about how to control
  them. p.34
• Massive growth of Catholic womens lay
  associations suggest womens empowerment or at
  least growing presence in the public sphere.

24
Reading on anti-clericalism

• The articles in the 2009 issue of The Americas
  are all dedicated to anti-clericalism in Mexico
• For example Robert Curley, Anticlericalism and
  public space in revolutionary Jalisco, The
  Americas 65, 4, 2009, 511-33.

25
Timing of conflict

• Heightened Church-State conflict coincided in
  late 20s and early 30s with decline in radical
  programmes of the Revolution.
• Improved relations coincided with phases of
  radicalism late 1910s, early 1920s, mid to late
  1930s.
• Hence, was religion targeted as a substitute for
  social reform ? ... Church scape-goated as the
  Governments chief political rival ?

26
Timing of conflict

• 1919-1925 Sonorans were busy elsewhere beating
  Constitutionalists, pacifying Zapatistas,
  Villistas and agraristas, developing close ties
  with labour, holding radicals at bay, gaining
  recognition from the US
• 1925-26, mounting confrontation with the Church

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Church provocation or insecure government ?

• In 1920s govt. felt politically weak in the
  face of
• Catholic revival had been going on since the
  1870s following Leo XIIIs 1890 Rerum Novarum
  Diazs conciliation policy.
• Maderos revolution provided improved conditions
  for Catholic action and politics National
  Catholic Party (PNC), approved by Madero, does
  well in 1912 election. Church coping with
  modern politics more successfully than the
  state (see Robert Curleys chapter/article on
  Jalisco)
• Catholic revival continues during the later 1910s
  and 20s Catholics support National Democratic
  Party (PND), 353 Catholic Unions representing
  80,000 workers by 1925.

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Church provocation or insecure government ?

• In 1920s govt. also felt politically weak in
  the face of
• - strength of radical regional agrarian
  cacicazgos Carrillo Puerto Yucatan), Saturnino
  Cedillo (San Luis Potosi), Adalberto Tejeda
  (Veracruz) , Francisco Mujica (Michoacan), Emilio
  Portes Gil (Tamaulipas), Jose Guadalupe Zuno
  (Jalisco)
• - politics becoming more polarised revolutionary
  ligas campesinas ligas femininas faced
  their Catholic counterparts daily, in the streets
  and fields.
• Calles sought order and central control

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(No Transcript)
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Church provocation ?

• Activities of Church activists, even if not
  directly related to politics, appeared
  threatening
• - 1922, Cubilete monument to Christ the King!
  in Guanajuato attracted thousands of pilgrims
• -1924, flamboyant Eucharistic conference
  organised by the Conference of Mexican Bishops
• - 1924, Church support for the De La Huerta
  military revolt against Calles.

31
Cubilete shrine to Cristo Rey, Guanajuato, 1922
32
State provocation ? Schismatic Church

• February 1925, supported by Luis Morones and the
  CROM, ten Catholic priests established the
  Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church, a schismatic
  Church, receiving Calless approval.
• A Morones construction, or something deeper ?
• Matthew Butler, Sotanas Rojinegras Catholic
  Anticlericalism and Mexicos revolutionary
  Schism, The Americas 65,4, 2009, 535-58.
• Mathew Butler, ,Gods Campesinos ? Mexicos
  Revolutionary Church in the Countryside,
  Bulletin of Latin American Research 28, 2, 2009,
  165-184.

33
Showdown the Calles Law

• June 1926 Calles decides to reform Article 130
  of the Constitution of 1917.
• Article 130
• - required "churches and religious groupings" to
  register with the state
• - placed restrictions on priests and ministers of
  all religions cannot hold public office, canvas
  on behalf of political parties or candidates,
  inherit property from persons other than close
  blood relatives.
• In June 1926 Calles signed the "Law for Reforming
  the Penal Code providing specific penalties for
  priests and individuals who violated Article 130

34
The Calles Law

• - wearing clerical garb in public was punishable
  by a fine of 500 pesos (250 U.S. dollars)
• - a priest who criticized the government could be
  imprisoned for five years.
• - some states enacted further measures
  Chihuahua enacted a law permitting only a single
  priest to serve the entire Catholic congregation
  of the state.
• - using 19th C laws, Calles appropriated
  church property, expelled all foreign priests,
  and closed monasteries, convents, and religious
  schools.

35
Plutarco Elias Calles, 1924-28 (Maximato-1934)
36
Suspension of public worship, July 31 1926

• 31 July 1926 Church suspends public worship in
  an attempt to put the sacraments and the clergy
  beyond the reach of the law (Butler)
• Government replies by commandeering many churches
  for secular use
• Mathew Butler, The Church in Red Mexico
  Michoacán Catholics and the Mexican Revolution,
  1920-1929, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
  55(3), July 2004, 531.

37
Catholic economic boycott

• Catholics boycott government schools, stores,
  newspapers...
• Particularly effective in west-central Mexico
  (Jalisco, Guanajuato, Aguscalientes and
  Zacatecas) where Catholics stopped attending
  movies and plays, using public transportation,
  while Catholic teachers stopped teaching in
  secular schools.
• Boycott collapsed in October when Catholic elite,
  feeling the punch, withdrew support.

38
Church boycott LNDLR banners
39
LNDLR (National League for the Defence of
Religious Liberty)

• 1925 LNDLR established (in absence of a party) to
  coordinate Catholic Youth, Women and Social
  Catholic associations.
• 1 million members by Sept 1926, 200,000 in
  Mexico City
• Mobilised Catholics in the US Europe
• Attracted politicians, journalists, intellectuals
• middle class made up rank and file, appealed
  especially to the young.

40
René Capistrán Garza, Mexican Association of
Catholic Youth
41
Unión Popular (UP)

• -Unión Popular (UP) established in 1923 by
  Anacleto González Flores of Tepatitlán, Los Altos
  de Jalisco.
• - led campaign of peaceful civil disobedience
  against the anti-clerical laws led by lay
  organization
• inspired by Gandhi and the German Volksbund that
  opposed Bismarks campaign against the RC Church
  in Germany
• Much more popular and rural than LNRLR

42
Anacleto González Flores
43
Union Popular Catholic Employers Union of
Guadalajara

• Luis Flores, founder, 1922

• First Womens Brigade, 1922

44
Escalation of Violence

• August 3 1926, 400 armed Catholics shut
  themselves up in the Church of Our Lady of
  Guadalupe in Guadalajara
• involved in a shootout with federal troops
• surrendered only when they ran out of ammunition,
• resulted in 18 dead and 40 injured.
• August 4, 240 government soldiers stormed the
  parish church of Sahuayo Michoacan, priest and
  his vicar killed in the ensuing violence.

45
Escalation of Violence

• August 14, government agents purged Chalchihuites
  (Zacatecas) chapter of the Association of
  Catholic Youth, executing their spiritual
  adviser, Father Luis Bátiz Sainz.
• action prompts band of ranchers behind Pedro
  Quintanar to seize the local treasury and declare
  themselves in rebellion. At the height of Brigada
  Quintanar held a region including the entire
  northern part of Jalisco.

46
Escalation of Violence

• September other armed movements launched in
  Guanajuato, Durango and northern Jalisco.
• Meanwhile, rebels in Jalisco (particularly the
  region northeast of Guadalajara) gathered forces
  behind 27-year-old Capistrán Garza, leader of the
  Mexican Association of Catholic Youth.
• This region became the main focal point of the
  rebellion.
• 1 January 1927 official startt of hostilities
  with Capistrán Garzas manifesto A la Nación.

47
Extension of Cristero fighting.
48
Outbreak of War

• Cristero battle cry Viva Cristo Rey! Viva la
  Virgen de Guadalupe!
• Church hierarchy opposed the war, although
  supported boycott and strike
• Parish clergy also, according to Jean Meyer,
  opposed the war, preaching peaceful resistance.
  3,600 priests withdrew from villages to cities
• Only 5 priests took up arms although over 40 died
  in conflict.

49
Cristero War conflict between Church and State ?

• Who then were the Cristeros ?
• Was the Cristero War a struggle between Church
  and State ?
• Or was this a religious crusade of the ordinary
  Mexican people ?
• The view favoured by influential French
  historian Jean Meyer

50
Jean Meyer, La Cristiada (1975)
51
Jean Meyer

• The oral historical research of Jean Meyer during
  the early 1970s revolutionised the historiography
  of the Cristero War, confined until then to a
  closed world of heroic biographies of forgotten
  Cristero martyrs.
• The official view of the Cristero rebellion was
  that it was a reactionary, Church and great
  landowner based, counter-revolutionary movement.
• Meyer showed it to have been far more popular and
  rural peasants and rancheros fighting to defend
  their religion and way of life..
• Jean Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion. The Mexican
  People between Church and State 19260-1929 (1975)
  
• Meyer was inspired by the famous local study,
  Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, San Jose de Gracia,
  published in 1968, who reaches a similar
  conclusion.

52
Just a religious movement ?

• But were other factors were at play ?
• Recent scholarship suggests that for many
  Cristeros, religious motivations for rebellion
  were reinforced by other political and material
  concerns.
• Participants in the uprising often came from
  rural communities that had suffered from the
  government's land reform policies since 1920, or
  otherwise felt threatened by recent political and
  economic changes.
• Many agraristas and other government supporters
  were also fervent Catholics

53
Just a religious movement ?

• See Seminar Sheet for local studies revealing
  complex motivations
• - Robert Curley focuses on competing political
  modernities in Guadalajara and Jalisco
• - Mathew Butler focuses on local factors and
  political factionalism as decisive in Michoacan
  (see The Liberal Cristero, Ladislao Molina
  JLAS, 1999)
• - Enrique Guerra-Manzo (JLAS, 2008) considers
  local power conflicts between caciques (bosses)
  as a prime consideration

54
Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, San José de Gracia,

• Story of a Catholic town formed in the 19th C on
  a sub-divided hacienda in the Altos de Jalisco
  region (Cristero stronghold)
• Are settled by a Catholic Hispanic peasantry in
  18th C
• By early 20th C wealthier peasants could sent
  sons to seminaries to train for priesthood
• Priests were local men, factotums of community
• This area was remote from the epicentres of the
  Revolution when it remained organised
• Proprietary peasants and rancheros resented land
  being given by the Govt. to landless agraristas
  to create political clientele.
• Large numbers of rancheros in this region joined
  the rebellion. Women also took an active part

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Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, San José de Gracia
56
The War

• Unusual rebel army no logistical supplies,
  relied on raiding towns, trains and ranches for
  supplies of money, horses, ammunition and food.
  Fast moving cavalry in guerrilla units.
• At first Government did not take threat
  seriously.
• In 1927 Federal army numbered 79,759 men. When
  Jalisco federal commander General Jesús Ferreira
  moved on the rebels announced that "it will be
  less a campaign than a hunt.
• Rebels did well against the agraristas (rural
  militia recruited throughout Mexico) and the
  Social Defense forces (local militia), but could
  not defeated federal troops who guarded the
  important cities.

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Cristero banners
58
Brigadas Feminas

• On June 21, 1927, the first brigade of female
  Cristeros was formed in Zapopan Jalisco Joan of
  Arc Brigade grew soon from 17 to 135 members.
• mission of Brigadas Femininas was to obtain
  money, weapons, provisions and information for
  the combatant men they also cared for the
  wounded.
• By March 1928 10,000 women were involved.
• By the end of the war, women active supporters
  and combatants numbered some 25,000.

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Brigadas Femininas

• Women supplying ammunition

• Women supplying food

60
Brigadistas Femininas

• Imprisoned Brigadistas sowing

• Medical Brigade

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Cristeras
62
Government response Land for rifles

• To aid recruitment, Calles allowed regional
  caciques such as Saturnillo Cedillo of San Luis
  Potosi to recruit hacienda peons with promises of
  land after defeating the Cristeros.
• Cristero army was also largely ranchero and
  peasant
• Hence, often two armies faced each other across
  the lines..

63
Dudley Ankerson, Saturnino Cedillo, Agrarian
Warlord
64
Cristero Militia
65
Cristero Militia
66
General Salinas and officers in campaign against
Cristeros in Michoacan
67
Cristero rancheros
68
Cristero Family, San Jose de Gracia, Altos de
Jalisco
69
Cristero Mass
70
Cristero Leadership

• The most successful rebel leaders were Jesus
  Degollado (a pharmacist), Victoriano Ramirez
  (alias) El Catorce (a ranch hand), and the
  priests Aristeo Pedroso and Jose Reyes Vega.
• Although officially episcopate never supported
  the rebellion, it never condemned the rebels who
  knew that their cause was legitimate. Bishop Jose
  Francisco Orozco of Guadalajara remained with
  the rebels. While formally rejecting armed
  rebellion, he was unwilling to leave his flock.
  Considered by some to have been the real head of
  the movement.
• knicknamed after The Fourteen members of a
  police posse he hilled after escaping from jail

71
Best Cristero Commanders

• Aristeo Pedroso

• Victoriano Ramirez (a) El Catorce

72
Best Cristero Commanders Santos Degollado
73
Continuation of the war

• 1927-8 Cristero army professionalises,
  recruiting non-Cristero commanders known for
  their military skill, such as Enrique Gorostieta
• 1928 Assassination of Alvaro Obregon by Catholic
  fanatic , Jose de Leon Toral
• Federal generals hostile to government join
  Cristeros
• Military Rebellion in 1929
• Cristeros still had 50,000 at arms when
  Acuerdos (peace accords) were signed 21 June 21
  1929, with US mediation through Dwight Morrow.

74
Dwight Morrow
75
Peace Accords

• The arreglos allowed worship to resume in Mexico
  and granted three concessions to the Catholics
• only priests who were named by hierarchical
  superiors would be required to register,
• religious instruction in the churches (but not in
  the schools) would be permitted,
• all citizens, including the clergy, would be
  allowed to make petitions to reform the laws.
• Church would recover the right to use its
  properties, and priests recovered their rights to
  live on such property.
• Legally speaking, the Church was not allowed to
  own real estate, and its former facilities
  remained federal property. But the church
  effectively took control over these properties
  and the government never again tried to take
  these properties back.

76
Many Cristeros fight on

• With the arreglos only a minority of the rebels
  went home, those who felt their battle had been
  won. (WP)
• As the rebels themselves were not consulted in
  the talks, most of them felt betrayed and some
  continued to fight. (WP)
• The church then threatened rebels with
  excommunication, and gradually the rebellion died
  out.(WP)

77
Aftermath

• - Government broke many of the arreglos and
  state persecution of Catholics continued into the
  1930s.
• -approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000
  other Cristeros were shot, frequently in their
  homes in front of their spouses and children (WP)
• - After peace in 1929, many thousands of
  Cristeros and sympathisers migrated to the US.
• - Others received sanctuary on the estates of
  their erstwhile enemy, Saturnino Cedillo in San
  Luis Potosi (proof that Cristeros and Agraristas
  shared a common culture !)

78
Aftermath Executions of Cristeros
79
Aftermath Executions of Cristeros

• Execution wall, Zamora, Michoacan

• Cristeros colgando

80
Aftermath

• In 1926, Mexico had 4,500 Catholic priests
• By 1934 only 334 Catholic priests were licensed
  by the government to serve Mexico's 15 million
  people
• By 1935, 17 states were left with no priest at
  all.

81
Pro- Cristero Documentary

• http//video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid-9099981
  933085312554eicv1jS8_zA8rP-AaVi4HCCAqcristera
  hlen