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Varieties of Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Radicalism, Iconoclasm, and Otherwise, 1914–1935

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Ben Fallaw
Ben Fallaw*
Affiliation:
Colby College, Waterville, Maine
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Extract

Two days before Easter 1916, a teacher in the Mérida ferrocarrilleros’ school demolished a pine statue of Saint Joseph with an axe to show “it was simply a monkey on a stick (un tucho de palo)”; students then hacked up smaller icons before approving parents. During the Cristiada, General Eulogio Ortíz ate consecrated hosts with carnitas de puerco in a public market in Zacatecas. Constitutionalist military proconsuls in 1914-15, leftist regional caudillos of the 1920s, and federal educators and some provincial strongmen during the Maximato (1931-35) all believed anticlericalism would build a new nation; these three waves of attacks against the Catholic clergy proved to be decisive moments in revolutionary state formation. At no point, however, did revolutionaries agree on either means or ends. Radicals favored the destruction of the Church (if not organized religion entirely). Their reliance on iconoclasm—literal as well as metaphorical—also distinguished them. Some iconoclastic radicals hoped their attacks would help create a humanistic, post-Christian belief system. More moderate anticlericals advocated less destructive and more persuasive measures, including using education and the law to weaken and/or reform Catholicism. Some moderates promoted alternative creeds; others hoped to remake the Catholic Church in Mexico. Certainly iconoclasts and reformers did collaborate at times, but they also clashed, as in the rancorous debates over the “religious question” at the Querétaro Constitutional Convention and again when anticlerical Reds and moderate Whites battled during the early 1930s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , April 2009 , pp. 481 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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Lugo’s Socialist Ten Commandments are:

  • 1.

    1. Amarás a tu prójimo.

  • 2.

    2. Santificarás el hogar con tus buenas acciones.

  • 3.

    3. Honrarás a tu raza, luchando por su emancipación.

  • 4.

    4. No jurarás ante nadie ni por nada.

  • 5.

    5. No matarás el tiempo con los vicios y los placeres.

  • 6.

    6. No adultarás a nadie ni prevaricarás de tus ideas.

  • 7.

    7. No permitarás que disfrute del trabajo tuyo el que nada ha producido.

  • 8.

    8. No levantarás ídolos en tu. conciencia.

  • 9.

    9. No desearás en el taller, fábrica o el campo, ser el amo, para convertirte en explotador y tirano.

  • 10.

    10. No codiarás las riquezas, para no te corrompas.

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100 Isidro López Ortíz, 5 January 1932 and 5 June 1932, AHSEP DEF Zacatecas caja 79 exp. 47.

101 My understanding of the SEP has been greatly shaped by Vaughan, Mary Kay, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1997).Google Scholar

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106 José Reyes Castro to DEF, 4 January 1935, AHSEP DEF Coahuila (COA) caja 6039 exp. 39.

107 Fallaw, “‘Anti-Priests,’” and Fallaw, Ben, “ Kulturkampf or Collusion: Catholics and the Postrev-olutionary Mexican State, 1929–1940” (presented at the New England Council for Latin American Studies conference, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 18 October 2003).Google Scholar

108 AHSEP Serie de Escuelas Rural Serie Personal caja 4 exp. 26.

[Date]

Yo, [blank] ante de esa Dir. de Educación Federal, declaro solamente aceptar sin taxativa de ninguna clase el programa de la Escuela Socialista y ser su propagandista y defensor.

Declaro ser ateo, enemigo irrencoliable de la religión católica y romano, y que haré esfuerzos para destruirla desarraigando de las conciencias todo culto religioso y estar dispuesto a luchar contra el clero en el terreno y donde sea necesario.

Declaro estar dispuesto a tomar parte principal en las campañas de desfanatización y atacar a la religión católica, apostólica y romana, en donde quiera que se manifiesto.

Igualmente no permiteré que en mi casa habitación se hagan practicas religiosas de ningún genero, ni permiteré que asista ninguno de mis familiares que dependa de mí, a ningún acto de carácter religioso.

Protesto mi atenta consideración

Mérida, Yuc. [cita]

[nombre]

109 La Prensa, 24 February 1935, p. 3.

110 Hombre Libre, 27 February 1935, p. 2; Moya, Martínez and Castañeda, Moreno, Jalisco, p. 216.Google Scholar SEP oaths in Hidalgo also required teachers to promise to defend “scientific truth” and the proletariat against their enemies. See Hombre Libre, 27 February 1935, p. 2. The same apparently took place in Zacatecas in the fall of 1934, and in Chihuahua from 1934 to 1937. On Zacatecas, see Hombre Libre, 5 October 1934, pp. 2–3.

111 On the ways in which the SEP could become enmeshed in provincial power structures, see Gillingham, Paul, “Ambiguous Missionaries: Rural Teachers and State Facades in Guerrero, 1930–1950,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 22:2 (Summer 2006), pp. 331–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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114 On the struggle within the SEP between supporters and opponents of Garrido Canabal from the perspective of the former, see Luz Mena, José de la, La Escuela Socialista. Su desorientación y fracaso. El Verdadero Derrotero (Mexico City: n.p., 1941), pp. 287–292.Google Scholar

115 Assad, Carlos Martínez, Los sentimientos de la región (Mexico City: Oceana and INEHRM, 2001), pp. 88–89.Google Scholar

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120 Norweb, R. Henry, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim to SOS, n.d., RDSRIAM 1930–39, Roll 43.Google Scholar

121 Norweb, R. Henry, Chargé d’Affaires to SOS, 19 December 1935, RDSRIAM 1930–39, Roll 43.Google Scholar

122 Edmund Montgomery to SOS, 18 December 1935, RDSRIAM 1930-39, Roll 43.

123 Daniels, Josephus, “Memorandum of Conversation,” 21 November 1935, RDSRIAM 1930–1939, Roll 43.Google Scholar

124 On Yucatán, see Fallaw, Ben, “From Conflict to Accommodation: Modernizing Church-State Relations in Revolutionary-era Yucatan, 1915–1940,” in Yucatan’s Struggle with Modernity ed. Edward Terry, Gilbert Joseph, Eric Baklanoff, and Ben Fallaw (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar On Coahuila, see various consular reports, RDSRIAM 1930–39, Roll 42. On Hidalgo, see Federico A. Corzo, Informe, Annual 20 December 1934, AHSEP DEF Hidalgo caja 940 exp. 36. On Estado de México, see Facius, Antonio Rius, Méjico Cristero (Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1960) 38;Google Scholar Col. Gordon Johnson to SOS, 25 May 1931, RDSRIAM 1930–39, Roll 24; Archbishop of Mexico to Governor Filiberto Gómez, 25 May 1934, Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de México (hereafter AHAM) leg. Leopoldo Ruiz.

125 Bantjes, Adrian, “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929–1940,” pp. 87–120 Google Scholar in Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13:1 (Winter 1997), p. 91; Butler, , “The Church,” p. 531.Google Scholar

126 Francisco Chavez et al., 25 October 1931, AGN DGG 2.347 caja 3 bis exp. 5.

127 Felipe Medel to President, 1 October 1938, AGN DGG 2.331 caja 24a exp. 3210.

128 Harper, Kristin, “Revolutionary Tabasco in the Times of Tomás Garrido Canabal, 1922–1935: A Mexican House Divided” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 2004).Google Scholar

129 Rugeley, Terry, Of Wonders and Wisemen: Religion and Popular Cultures in Southeast Mexico, 1800–1876 (Austin: University of Texas, 2001), pp. 331–332.Google Scholar

130 On how Lombardo Toledano’s tract influenced the 1CAM, see Butler, , “God’s Campesinos?” pp. 169–170.Google Scholar