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The Calles Government and Catholic Dissidents: Mexico'sTransnational Projects of Repression, 1926-1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Julia G. Young
Julia G. Young*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

During the late 1920s, the Mexican government under President Plutarco ElíasCalles (1924-1928) confronted multiple challenges to state consolidation.These included plots by political rivals, foreign relations crises, andseveral popular revolts. The longest-lasting and most destabilizing of thesewas the Cristero War, which persisted from 1926 until 1929, with sporadicuprisings into the early 1930s. Despite these challenges, Calles and hishandpicked successors not only remained in power at the beginning of the1930s, but also launched the single-party political system that would endurein Mexico until the end of the twentieth century.

Type
2013 Clah Luncheon Address
Information
The Americas , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , July 2013 , pp. 63 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2013

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References

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of The Americas for their valuable comments and recommendations. The author is also grateful to the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program for funding research relevant to this study.

1. Historians debate the degree to which this process of state consolidation succeeded, but are largely in agreement about when it occurred. Three events-the foundation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario in early 1929, the defeat of the escobarista rebellion in March 1929, and the end of the Cristero War in July 1929-collectively comprise the historical moment in which the process of state consolidation gained the necessary momentum. For a brief discussion of this debate, see Stout, Joseph A. Jr., “El poder y la autoridad en México: el Departamento Confidencial, 1922–1945,” paper presented at the XIII Reunión de Historiadores de México, Estados Unidos y Canadá, Querétaro, October 29, 2010.Google Scholar

2. The literature on cultural politics and state formation in Mexico is very rich and includes many fascinating case studies, as well as broader theoretical analyses. Of particular interest for this paper are Vaughan, Mary K. and Lewis, Stephen E., The Eagle and, the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006);Google Scholar Purnell, Jennie, Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999);Google Scholar Boyer, Christopher, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolution-ary Michoacán, 1920–1935 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Becker, Marjorie, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);Google Scholar Vaughan, Mary K., Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Becker, Marjorie, “Torching La Purísima, Dancing at the Altar: The Construction of Revolutionary Hegemony in Michoacán, 1934–1940,” in Everyday Forms of State Michoacán (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999);Google Scholar Boyer, Christopher, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolution-ary Michoacán, 1920–1935 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Becker, Marjorie, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modem Mexico, Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugent, Daniel, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994);Google Scholar and Mallon, Florencia E., Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a particularly enlightening discussion of the variations in Revolutionary anticlericalisms, see the special issue “Personal Enemies of God: Anticlericals and Anticlericalism in Revolutionary Mexico, 1915–1940,” The Americas 65:4 (April 2009). See also Butler, Matthew, ed., Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico, Studies of the Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Buchenau’s, Jürgen excellent biography Plutarco Elias Calles and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006)Google Scholar devotes less than one page to the work of the Confidential Department. For an astute analysis of political forms of state consolidation, see Osten, Sarah, “Peace by Institutions: The Rise of Political Parties and the Making of the Modern Mexican State” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Chicago, 2010).Google Scholar Earlier works on political institutionalization include Meyer, Lorenzo, Segovia, Rafael, and Lajous, Alejandra, Los inicios de la institucionalización: la política del Maximato, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, vol. 12, Período 1928–1934 (Mexico: Colegio de México, 1978).Google Scholar See also Valenzuela, René, “Chihuahua, Calles, and the Escobar Revolt of 1929” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at El Paso, 1975).Google Scholar

4. Jean Meyer’s classic monograph on the War, Cristero, La crtstiada (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1974–1976),Google Scholar provides a detailed analysis of military engagements on both sides.

5. The two most significant monographs on the topic, while offering exhaustively researched analysis of the Confidential Department in later years, focus primarily on Mexican political intelligence after 1930. Nor has the literature on the Confidential Department presented a detailed examination of political intelligence activities in the United States. See Navarro, Aaron W., Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938–1954 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010);Google Scholar Quezada, Sergio Aguayo, La charola: una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México (Mexico: Raya en el Agua/Grijalbo, 2001);Google Scholar and Joseph A. Stout Jr., “El poder y la autoridad en México.” Likewise, several historical studies have examined how the Mexican government has monitored and surveilled the population of Mexican emigrants in the United States—“el México de afuera”—but these studies have focused either on administrations prior to the Calles government, or on the clandestine operations of other Mexican government agencies, like the Mexican consulates. The studies include Smith, Michael, “The Mexican Secret Service in the United States, 1910–1920,” The Americas 59:1 (July 2002), p. 68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Raat, W. Dirk, “The Diplomacy of Suppression: Los Revoltosos, Mexico, and the United States, 1906–1911,” Hispanic American Historical Review 56:4 (November 1976), p. 548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. For a useful discussion of the term “repression,” see Davenport’s definition: “the actual or threatened use of physical sanctions against an individual or organization . . . for the purpose of imposing a cost on the target as well as deterring specific activities and/or beliefs.” Further, repression “relies on threats and intimidation to compel targets.” Davenport adds that repression generally violates “First Amendment-type rights, due process in the enforcement and adjudication of law, and personal integrity or security.” Davenport, Christian, “State Repression and Political Order,” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007), p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. As Adrian Bantjes states, “Mexico is today not dramatically less religious than it was in the past; it has averted the marked secularizing trend seen in some Catholic nations and instead experienced a shift towards greater religious pluralism. As of 2003, 98% of Mexicans declared belief in God, while 90% indicated that God played an important role in their lives . . . Mexico was and still is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation.” Bantjes, , “Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Concepts and Typologies,” The Americas 65:4 (April 2009), p. 472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Such men included Benito Juárez in 1848; Catarino Garza in the 1890s; the anarchist brothers Flores Magón in the 1900s; Porfirio Díaz in 1876 and again in 1911; Francisco Madero in 1910; Pancho Villa and countless other Mexican Revolutionary characters between 1910 and 1920; and Félix Díaz and Alfonso de la Huerta in the 1920s; and, during the Calles years, Enrique Estrada in 1926; José Vasconcelos and General José Gonzalez Escobar in 1929, and, of course, the Catholic political exiles during the Cristero War. These exiles have attracted various full-length studies, although a comprehensive study of exile as a continuous institution does not yet exist. See for example Young, Elliot, Catarina Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Katz, Friedrich, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, The United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984);Google Scholar MacLach-lan, Colin M., Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Mogón in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991);Google Scholar Henderson, Peter V., Mexican Exiles in the Borderlands, 1910–1913 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1979);Google Scholar and Lerner, Victoria, “Los exiliados de la Revolución Mexicana en Estados Unidos, 1910–1940,” La comunidad mexicana en Estados Unidos. Aspectos de stt historia, Enciso, Fernando Saúl Alanis, ed. (Mexico: CONACULTA, 2004), pp. 71, 83.Google Scholar

9. Navarro, Aaron W., Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, pp. 153–157.Google Scholar

10. Smith, Michael, “The Mexican Secret Service in the United States,” p. 68;Google Scholar Raat, , “The Diplomacy of Suppression,” p. 548.Google Scholar

11. Gilbert Gonzalez has deftly explained the role of the Mexican consulates in promoting revolutionary nationalism among emigrants in California. Gonzalez, , Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American Southwest (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 37–43.Google Scholar See also Valdés, Dennis Nodín, “Mexican Revolutionary Nationalism and Repatriation during the Great Depression,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 4:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 1–23;10.2307/1052051CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Balderrama, Francisco, In Defense of La Raza: The Los Angeles Mexican Consulate and the Mexican Community, 1929–1936 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982).Google Scholar

12. Carlos Fernández to Guillermo Prieto-Yeme in San Antonio, June 25, 1928, Archivo Histórico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Fondo Manuel Palomar y Vizcarra, Serie Liga Nacional Defen-sora de la Libertad Religiosa [hereafter UNAM-LNDLR], Does. 4291-4304, Inv. #5448.

13. Buchenau, Jurgen, Plutarco Elias Calles, p. 148.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 96

15. Navarro, Aaron W., p. 158. See also Guía del Fondo de la Secretaria de Gobernación, Sección: Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2006) . Accessed November 15, 2011.Google Scholar

16. Stout, Joseph A. Jr., “El poder y la autoridad en México,” p. 5;Google Scholar Buchenau, Jürgen, Plutarco Elias Calles, p. 231.Google Scholar

17. Guía del Fondo de la Secretaria de Gobernación, introduction.

18. See the website of the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional at www.cisen.gob.mx. List of Confidential Agents, 1924, in the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, Colección Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales [hereafter AGN-IPS], Vol. 43, Exp. 30, Doc. 23; List of Confidential Agents, December 5, 1925, AGN-IPS, Vol. 43, Exp. 30, Doc. 9.

19. Guía del Fondo de la Secretaria de Gobernación, introduction; Navarro, Aaron W., Political Intelligence, pp. 153, 159.Google Scholar

20. Memorandum from Francisco Delgado to the Ministry of the Interior, December 14, 1925, AGN-IPS, Vol. 43, Exp. 30.

21. National Catholic Welfare Conference press release, “Truce for Return of Bishops Denied by Archbishop Ruiz,” June 3, 1929, in the American Catholic History Research Center at the Catholic University of America, National Catholic Welfare Conference Collection [hereafter ACUA-NCWC], Mexican Files, Folder 7, Box 148.

22. Report from Agent 47 in San Antonio to the head of the Confidential Department, February 28, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 54, Exp. 10.

23. National Catholic Welfare Conference, “Truce for Return of Bishops Denied by Archbishop Ruiz.” In San Luis Potosí in July of that year, the U.S. consular office reported that it had received (and would later grant) 360 visa requests from “alien priests and nuns,” most of whom were in imminent danger of arrest and expulsion. Henry Krause, U.S. Vice Consul of San Luis Potosí, to Alexander W. Weddel, U.S. Consul General of Mexico City, July 21, 1926, U.S. National Archives at College Park [NACP], State Department Foreign Service Post Files, Record Group 84 [hereafter Foreign Service RG 84], Consular Correspondence from San Luis Potosí, Subject Group 811.11. Sec also “Churches Looted in Mexican Drive, Refugees Charge,” Washington Post, March 5, 1926.

24. See Kanstroom, Dan, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Caldwell, Robert G., “Exile as an Institution,” Political Science Quarterly 58:2 (June 1943), p. 258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Yankelevich, Pablo, “Extranjeros indeseables en Mexico (1911–1940). Una aproximación cuantitativa a la aplicación del Articulo 33 Constitutional,” Revista Historia Mexicana 53:3 (January-March 2004), pp. 693–744.Google Scholar

26. See the folloiwng documents related to deportations to Islas Marías: AGN-IPS, Vol. 237, Exp. 28; Butler, Matthew, “Mexican Nicodemus: The Apostleship of Refugio Padilla, Cristero, on the Islas Marías,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 25:2 (Summer 2009), p. 284;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Andrews, Gregg, “Robert Habcrman, Socialist Ideology, and the Politics of National Reconstruction in Mexico, 1920-25,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6:2 (Summer 1990), pp. 189–211.10.2307/1051832CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Available at the home page of the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas: http://www.juridicas.imam.mx/infjur/leg/legmexfe.htm. Accessed November 15, 2011. Although this was probably not the first time that a Mexican government deported its own citizens in this manner, there is very little information about pre–1920s politics of deportation in either the archival records or the historiography. Interestingly, one of the few studies that discusses the deportation of citizens— albeit briefly—focuses on priests in the state of Sonora, who were deported while Calles was governor. Thus it may be that Calles, coming himself from a border state with a long history of exile (Spaniards, Jesuits, American filibusters, Chinese), was more willing than previous presidents to employ or approve of policies of deportation. Licón, Dora Elvia Enriquez, “Confrontación de poderes y expulsiones de sacerdotes en Sonora,” Seis expulsiones y un adiós: despojos y exclusiones en Sonora, Bustamante, Aarón Grageda, ed. (Mexico: Plaza y Valdés; Universidad de Sonora, 2003).Google Scholar

28. “Mexican Survivors Tell of Train Horrors,” New York Times, April 22, 1927. G-2 [Military Intelligence Division] report from the military attaché of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, April 24, 1927, NACP, Military Intelligence Division, RG 165 [hereafter MID RG 165], 2657-G-616, Doc. 7.

29. Among the members of Mexico’s Catholic hierarchy arriving in Laredo, Texas, in the days after the attack were the powerful archbishops Mora y del Río, Valdespina y Díaz, and Ruiz y Flores; and bishops Vera y Zuria, Echeverría,Uranga y Saez, Anaya, and Manríquez y Zarate. G-2 report from the military attaché of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, April 24, 1927, in NACP, MID RG 165, 2657-G-616, Doc. 7. See also “Testimony to the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, D.C., from six bishops regarding deportation to San Antonio Texas,” April 26, 1927, ACUA-NCWC, Mexican Files, Box 147, Folder 14.

30. Bailey, David, .¡½’)»« Cristo Rey! The Cristero Rebellion and the Church-State Conflict in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), p. 143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. “Los sacerdotes rebeldes van a ser deportados: una circular de la Secretaria de Guerra a los jefes de las operaciones militares,” Excelsior, February 14, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 209, Exp. 6. Consular official Gray in Guadalajara to the Secretary of State in Washington, D.C., February 3, 1927, NACP, State Department Central File, Record Group 59 [hereafter State RG 59], decimal file 812.404/757.

32. Unnamed employee of the consulate of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, to the Ministry of the Interior, June 1, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 230, Exp. 21.

33. Booklet entitled “Bishop Anthony Schuler, S.J.,” in the archives of the Catholic diocese of El Paso, Texas.

34. Office memorandum and news clippings, February 23, 1928, ACUA-NCWC, Mexican Files, Box 146, Folder 20. Other accounts of expulsions of priests and nuns can be found scattered throughout the Confidential Department archives. See “Expulsión de sacerdote sinaloense,” Vol. 229, Exp. 16; and “Aprehensión de sacerdotes, algunos son expulsados del país,” Vol. 58, Exp. 15.

35. Memorandum and news clippings, February 14, 1929, in NCWC-ACUA, Mexican Files, Box 146, folder 21.

36. Delegate of the Migration Office in Ciudad Juárez to the Ministry of the Interior, April 19, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 228, Exp. 3.

37. Memorandum from the head of the Confidential Department to the Delegate of the Oficina de Migración (Migration Office) in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, October 16, 1928, AGN-IPS, Vol. 295, Exp. 30.

38. Report from Confidential agent 45 to the chief of the Migration Office concerning the deportation of Bishops Luis Altamirano y Francisco Campos, May 18, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 225, Exp. 15; Parsons, Wilfred, Mexican Martyrdom (New York: MacMillan, 1936), p. 64.Google Scholar

39. David Bailey describes the tension between Cristero leaders in Mexico in !Viva Cristo Rey! These divisions were echoed on the U.S. side of the border, particularly in the disagreements between exiled Liga leader René Capistrán Garza and the Mexican Catholic hierarchy in exile. Capistrán Garza was replaced as Liga leader by Luis Bustos in 1927 while both men were still in exile in the United States. Other Mexican exiles undertook efforts independent of the direction of these two Catholic leaders; these included exiled archbishop José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, who sent money and arms to Cristero rebels from Los Angeles, and Carlos Fernández, a Mexican emigrant in Chicago who worked with Manríquez y Zárate to establish the Unión Nacionalista Mexicana, an umbrella organization for Mexican emigrants and exiles who supported the Cristero cause, in 1928. Carlos Fernández to the National Catholic Welfare Conference, May 7, 1928, UNAM-LNDLR, Doc. 4050, Inv. 5050; Fernández to Salvador Chavez Hayhoe, May 7, 1928, UNAM-LNDLR, Doc. 4071, Inv. 5051; and Fernández and associates to Rev. D. Zaldivar, Chicago, May 11, 1928, UNAM-LNDLR, Doc. 4089, Inv. 5089.

40. For a more detailed account of the origins, migration, and activities of Catholic dissidents in the United States, see Young, Julia G., “Mexican Emigration to the United States During the Cristero War, 1926–1929” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009).Google Scholar

41. See Young, Julia G., “Cristero Diaspora: Mexican Emigrants, the U.S. Catholic Church, and Mexico’s Cristero War, 1926–1929,” Catholic Historical Review 98:2 (April 2012).Google Scholar

42. Report from Agent 2 to the head of the Confidential Department, July 12, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 230, Exp. 64; Informe 394 [no author], August 14, 1927, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores [hereafter SRE], Legajos Encuadernados [hereafter LE] 822-8; “Simón Tenorio et al.,” report by Department of Justice Agent J. J. Lawrence, August 18, 1927, NACP, State RG 59, decimal file 812.00/28745.

43. G-2 report from A. S. Balsam, Major, 25th Infantry, Nogales, Arizona, to Assistant Chief of Staff, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, March 31, 1928, NACP, Military Intelligence Division, Record Group 165, File Number 2657-G-605, Doc. 127-3.

44. Immigration Law of the United States of Mexico, 1926. Published May 13, 1926, as a supplement to Diario Oficial 35:12, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85 [hereafter INS RG 85], Subject Correspondence Files, Part 2: Mexican Immigration, 1906–1930. See also Landa, Andres y Pina, , El Servicio de Migración en Mexico (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1930).Google Scholar

45. U.S. officials had wrestled with the problem of arms smuggling since before the Mexican Revolution. A presidential proclamation on January 7, 1924, explicitly forbade the exportation of arms and munitions of war to Mexico by anyone, with the exception of exports that “are approved by the Government of the United States for shipment to the Government of Mexico.” U.S. Department of State Record Group 59 [hereafter State RG 59], decimal file 812.24/596.

46. There arc few if any published studies about Mexican citizens being blacklisted from returning to Mexico. American citizens living in Mexico helped to create blacklists of German sympathizers in Mexico during World War I, according to de la Parra, Yolanda, “La Primera Guerra Mundial y la prensa mexicana,” in Estudios de Historia Modernay Contemporánea de México, Matute, Alvaro, ed., (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1986), Vol 10, pp. 155–176, , accessed November 15, 2011.Google Scholar

47. Blacklists were created during the delahuertista rebellion and again between 1926 and 1930. See AGN-IPS, Vol. 206, Exp. 09; and AGN-IPS, Vol. 207, Exps. 2–4.

48. Report from Agent 47 to the head of the Confidential Department, February 12, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 54, Exp. 10.

49. Noč Garza to Adalberto Tcjeda, Interior Secretary, July 31, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 49, Exp. 3.

50. “Report concerning Mrs. Carlota Lauderò de Algara,” Nuevo Laredo, August 1, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 49, Exp. 3.

51. For specific names on the lists, see AGN-IPS, Vol. 33, Exp. 21, and Vol. 208, Exp. 17.

52. Telegram from Gonzalo Vázquez, senior officer in the Ministry of the Interior, to the Migration Service, August 20, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 2053-A, Exp. 4.

53. Memorandum from the head of the Confidential Department to the head of the Migration Office, December 11, 1928, AGN-IPS, Vol. 295, Exp. 28.

54. The archives of the Confidential Department contain a full box of blacklists filed between October 1928 and December 1928. See AGN-IPS, Vol. 295, Exps. 11 and 20.

55. Confidential Agent in Ciudad Reynosa, Tamaulipas, to the Ministry of the Interior, November 28, 1928, AGN-IPS, Vol. 295, Exp. 33.

56. Gil, E. Portes, Interior Secretary, to the head of the Confidential Department, February 20, 1930, AGN-IPS, Vol. 295, Exp. 42.Google Scholar

57. Letter from the Club Latino de Tucson to the editor of the Tucson Citizen, August 7, 1926, SRE, LE 710, Doc. 485.

58. Santiago A. Martinez, Migration Office Delegate in Nogales, to the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, August 13, 1926, in SRE, LE 710, Doc. 537.

59. List of the members of the Club Latino de Tucson, n.d. [prob. September 1926], SRE, LE 710, Doc. 483.

60. Memorandum from Juan A. Veites, department head, Ministry of the Interior, to the head of the Confidential Department, July 12, 1929, AGN-IPS, Vol. 241, Exp. 20.

61. See blacklists in AGN-IPS, Vol. 236, Exps. 1-4.

62. Telegram from the Migration Delegate in Nogales to the Ministry of the Interior, November 2, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 246, Exp. 14.

63. Memorandum from the American Consulate in Piedras Negras, Coah. to the U.S. Secretary of State, June 2, 1927, in NACP, State Department Central File, State RG 59, decimal file 812.404/803.

64. Fortunato Mazón to the Interior Minister, November 14, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 230, Exp. 47; Santiago Martinez, Migration Delegate in Nogales, Sonora, to the Ministry of the Interior, June 14,1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 230, Exp. 47.

65. Caldwell, Robert G., “Exile as an Institution,” p. 258.Google Scholar

66. Guillermo Prieto-Yeme to Judge Alfred Β. Tally, October 13, 1925, Georgetown University Library Special Collections, America magazine archives [hereafter GU-America].

67. Report by Special Agent 2 to the head of the Confidential Department about various issues related to his mission along the border, Ciudad Juárez, Chih., December 3, J926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 48, Exp. 2.

68. Circular from Francisco Delgado, January 22, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 43, Exp. 30.

69. “Guía del Fondo de la Secretaría de Gobernación” Navarro, Aaron W., Political Intelligence, pp. 153, 159.Google Scholar

70. Stout, Joseph A. Jr., “El poder y la autoridad en Mexico,” p. 5.Google Scholar

71. Report from Fernando de la Garza to the head of the Confidential Department, November 8,1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 266, Exp. 39.

72. Report by Manuel Tello and Ignacio González G. to the head of the Confidential Department, April 3, 1925, AGN-IPS, Vol. 15, Exp. 30.

73. Report by Agent C. I. Flores to the head of the Confidential Department, March 27, 1925, AGN-IPS, Vol. 50, Exp. 1.

74. See blacklists in AGN-IPS, Vol. 208, Exp. 18.

75. Parsons, Wilfred, Mexican Martyrdom, p. 60.Google Scholar

76. Report from F. de la Garza to Francisco Delgado, June 17, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 54, Exp. 9.

77. Report from F. de la Garza to the Confidential Department, June 28, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 54, Exp. 9.

78. J. M. Chavez to the President of Mexico, August 19, 1926, AGN, O-C, Vol. 104-L-23, Exp. 4, Anexo 1.

79. Confidential letter from an informant in Los Angeles to Genaro Estrada, Secretary of Foreign Relations, March 8, 1928, AGN-IPS, Vol. 232, Exp. 48.

80. Report from Agent 2 to the head of the Confidential Department, July 12, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 230, Exp. 64; Informe Número 394 [no author], August 14, 1927, SRE LE 822-8; and “Simón Tenorio et al.,” report by Agent J. J. Lawrence, August 18, 1927, NACP, State RG 59, decimal file 812.00/28745.

81. F. F. Garcia, to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, January 14, 1927, AGN-IPS, Vol. 227, Exp. 14.

82. Report from Amalia Mendoza Díaz [hereafter AMD] to Francisco Delgado [hereafter FD], October 2, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 2053-A, Exp. 4.

83. Harry Walsh, U.S. Consul in Nuevo Laredo, to John W. Dye, U.S. Consul in Ciudad Juárez, August 26,1926, NACP, Foreign Service RG 84, Consular Correspondence from Ciudad Juárez, Subject Group 800.

84. List of banned publications, November 1, 1935, GU-Americas, Box 19, folder 18.

85. Report from Agent J. J. Lawrence, November 7, 1927, NACP, State RG 59, Decimal File 812.00/28963.

86. “Mexican Secret Police Disarmed,” clipping from San Antonio Express, February 7, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 54, Exp. 9.

87. One other female Confidential agent, Sofia Mercado, worked in Mexico City between 1927 and 1929. See AGN-IPS, Vol. 61, Exp. 15.

88. See Hershfield, Joanne, Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008);Google Scholar and “BATACLANISMO! Or, How Female Deco Bodies Transformed Postrevolutionary Mexico City,” The Americas 66:4 (April 2010), pp. 469–499.

89. AMD to FD, August 3, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 144.

90. AMD to FD, August 12, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 146.

91. AMD to FD, August 21, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 150.

92. Confidential Department to AMD, September 14, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 164.

93. AMD to FD, [n.d.], AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12.

94. AMD to FD, September 28, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 176.

95. Ibid.; AMD to FD, October 25, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol. 51, Exp. 12, Doc. 198.

96. AMD to FD, November 15, 1926, AGN-IPS, Vol 2053-A, Exp. 4.

97. Flyer, Libertad religiosa, signed by Escobar, J.G., March 1929, SRE, LE 817.Google Scholar

98. “Escobar Declared Canadian Refugee: Score of Mexican Generals, Sick or Destitute, arc in Los Angeles,” Washington Post, May 10, 1929, ACUA-NCWC, Mexican Files, Box 148, Folder 6. See also Valen-zuela, René, “Chihuahua, Calles, and the Escobar Revolt of 1929” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at El Paso, 1975).Google Scholar

99. Navarro, Aaron W., Political Intelligence, p. 151.Google Scholar

100. The struggle between the Mexican government and Catholic dissidents during the Cristero War produced its own enduring myths and symbols, the strongest of which revolved around several Mexicans who died in the conflict and were eventually canonized as martyrs. Like the war itself, the appeal of these martyrs was transnational. Indeed, in the summer of 2006, the Knights of Columbus sponsored a binational, multic-ity tour of the martyrs’ relics, which were bone fragments embedded in a large silver cross. The tour of the relics attracted thousands of Catholic pilgrims in both Mexico and in the United States; in the United States, many of the worshippers came from Mexican American communities where Catholic dissidents—and the Mexican Confidential agents who pursued them—had operated eight decades before. The existence of such enduring transnational symbols indicates that the fervent religiosity that inspired Catholic dissidents, like the anti-clericalism that inspired the Calles administration, “is not a dark relic of the past.” Bantjes, , “Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Concepts and Typologies,” The Americas 65:4 (April 2009), p. 476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Blancarte, Roberto, “Closing Comment” to the Special Issue, “Personal Enemies of God: Anticlericals and Anticlericalism in Revolutionary Mexico, 1915–1940,” Americas 65:4 (April 2009), p. 591.Google Scholar

101. See Camp, Roderic Ai, Crossing Swords: Politics and Religion in Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar