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Anticlericalism, Politics, and Freemasonry in Mexico, 1920–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Benjamin Smith
Benjamin Smith*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
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Extract

On 16 April 1938, the school teacher of the Mixtec village of San Andrés Dinicuiti reported that the Easter week procession had taken place, despite government regulations prohibiting public displays of worship. During the event, the faithful had marched through the streets shouting “Long live religion, death to bad government, death to the state governor, death to the president of the republic.” When they arrived at the local school, they yelled “Death to the masons, long live religion” before denigrating the teacher's parentage. During the 1920s and 1930s, devout Catholic peasants throughout Mexico repeatedly denounced the presumed link between government, school teachers, anticlericalism, and the masons. The popular condemnation obviously emanated in part from the ecclesiastical hierarchy's frequent anti-masonic pronouncements. The Apostolic Delegate's charge that masons were “the cause of our persecution and almost all our national misfortunes” was reiterated in countless bulletins, manifestos, and pastoral letters throughout the country. In 1934, the Bishop of Huajuapam de León, which controlled the parish of San Andrés Dinicuiti, reminded local priests that they were to refuse to accept masons and members of the government party as godparents for baptisms, confirmations, or marriages. A year later, Mexican Catholic Action argued that government policies of socialist education and agrarismo were the “impious work of anti-Christian masons.” However, despite this popular cross-class conviction, there is little historical work on the actual role of the masons in modern Mexico. By examining the archives of the Grand Lodge of Oaxaca, this article posits that Masonic lodges were key to the process of post-revolutionary state formation. As the state sought to assert control over a divided country, freemasonry's anticlericalism not only offered a model for cultural practice, masons also formed a vanguard of willing political emissaries. However, the institution's influence should not be overstressed. It was often curtailed by internecine disputes, political infighting, and an essentially conservative leadership.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , April 2009 , pp. 559 - 588
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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16 The names of Masonic lodges seem to fit into four categories. First, many lodges, reflecting their basis in certain aspects of Christian mythology, took their names from the lexicon of orthodox Christianity, e.g. Redención, Cristo. Second, other lodges relied on names derived from more esoteric myths surrounding the construction of Solomon's temple. For example, Booz, which literally means “the moving fire” was the name of one of the pillars of the temple and represented the sun. Third, many of the central lodges took formulaic names, which reflected masons’ desire for unity or progress, e.g. Unidad Mexicana or Porvenir del Istmo. Fourth, lodges were called by the names of famous masons. Most obviously the grand Lodge of Oaxaca was later called the Grand Lodge Benito Juárez. Other names are more difficult to trace and probably either related to local masons or forgotten practitioners of the rites, e.g. Frank Lampaban.

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90 Ibid., 66, Miguel Rincon to Samuel P. Oropeza, 18 February 1936.

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