Abstract
In Mexico, as in France, religion and revolution have long been considered antithetical. “When the Revolution of 1910 broke out,” John Mecham wrote in 1934, “the clergy in all the pulpits of the land combated it,” while revolutionaries steeled themselves for “the inevitable clerical reaction.”1 This view of the Revolution’s sacred history as an institutional clash lives long in the literature. Likewise, the idea that Catholicism was incompatible with the Revolution’s secular, patriotic ethos: Eyler Simpson praised the road that reached Ocotlán in 1934, transforming the Otomí into “Ford-conscious” citizens and ending centuries of parochial piety in a dazzling epiphany.2 “Roads and schools, Fords and books,” Simpson praised, invoking Jericho, “these are the trumpet blasts which fell the walls of ignorance and isolation.”3 Here, then, was an enduring cultural characterization: the Revolution as the triumph of “modern” over “traditional,” religious values.
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Notes
John Lloyd Mecham, Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-Ecclesiastical Relations (1934, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 380–1.
Eyler Simpson, The Ejido: Mexico’s Way Out (1934, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 245–6.
Ernest Gruening, Mexico and its Heritage (New York: Century, 1928), 217–25.
Jean Meyer, La Cristiada (3 vols. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1973–74), 2:273.
Francis Clement Kelley, Blood-Drenched Altars: Mexican Study and Comment (London: Geo Coldwell, 1935), 317.
Gastón García Cantû, El Pensamiento de la Reacciôn Mexicana (1860–1926) (Mexico City: UNAM, 1987), 245–67.
Salvador Sotelo Arévalo, Historia de Mi Vida: Autobiografía y Memorias de un Maestro Rural en México, 1904–1965 (Mexico City: INEHRM, 1996).
Cf. Glennys Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 3.
Adrian Bantjes, “Iglesia, Estado, y Religión en el México Revolucionario: Una Visión Historiográfica de Conjunto,” Prohistoria 6 (2002): 203–24.
Patrick Collinson, “Religion, Society, and the Historian,” Journal of Religious History 23, no. 2 (1999): 151–67.
José Antonio Martínez Alvarez, Los Padres de la Guerra Cristera: Estudio Historiogrkfico (Guanajuato: Universidad de Guanajuato, 2001), 135, 158–9.
Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985);
William Christian Jr., Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (Berkeley: University of California, 1996).
E.g., William Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996);
Local Religion in Colonial Mexico, ed. Martin Austin Nesvig (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).
Luis Barrón, Historias de la Revoluciôn Mexicana (Mexico City: FCE, 2004), 127–31.
Peter Reich, Mexico’s Hidden Revolution: The Catholic Church in Law and Politics since 1929 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1995).
Jennie Purnell, Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Cristeros and Agraristas of Michoackn (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).
For a critique of overly secular readings of modern Church history in Mexico, see Roberto Blancarte, Historia de la Iglesia Catôlica en México (Mexico City: FCE, 1992), esp. 11–15.
Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence and Ideology in Mexico, 1800–1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
Paul Vanderwood, The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
Rubén Osorio, Tomochic en Llamas (Mexico City: Conaculta, 1995).
Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoackn, 1927–29 (Oxford: OUP, 2004).
Cf. Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994).
Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lkzaro Ckrdenas, Michoackn Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: Unversity of California Press, 1995).
Ramón Del Llano, Lucha por el Cielo: Religiôn y Política en el Estado de Querétaro, 1910–1929 (Mexico City: Porrûa, 2006), 117–18.
Moisés González Navarro, Cristeros y Agrarias en Jalisco (5 vols. Mexico City: Colmex, 2000–3), 1:188.
Wilfrid Parsons, Mexican Martyrdom (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 8.
David Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), 668–74.
Luis L. León, Crônica del Poder en los Recuerdos de un Político en el México Revolucionario (Mexico: FCE, 1987), 142–3, 256.
Vicente Lombardo Toledano, El Reparto de Tierras a los Pobres No Se Opone a las Enseñanzas de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo y de la Santa Madre Iglesia (Mexico City: Grupo Solidario del Movimiento Obrero, 1923).
Moisés González Navarro, Masones y Cristeros en Jalisco (Mexico City: Colmex, 2000), 21.
Guillermo de la Peña, “El Campo Religioso, la Diversidad Regional, y la Identidad Nacional en México,” Relaciones 100 (2004): 22–71.
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London: Penguin, 1991).
See also Religion in Revolutionary England, ed. Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Jürgen Buchenau, Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 196–7.
Pedro Salmerón Sanginés, Aarôn Sáenz Garza: Militar, Diplomático, Político, Empresario (Mexico City: Porrûa, 2001). Education subsecretary Moisés Sáenz was also a Protestant.
Plutarco Elías Calles, Correspondencia Personal (1919–1945) (Mexico City: FCE, 1996), 420–1.
Cecilia Adriana Bautista García, “Maestros y Masones: La Contienda por la Reforma Educativa en México, 1930–1940,” Relaciones 104 (2005): 219–76.
Renée de la Torre, Los Hijos de la Luz: Discurso, Identidad, y Poder en la Luz del Mundo (Guadalajara: CIESAS, 2000), 69–81.
James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 34.
Jean Meyer, Anacleto González Flores: El Hombre que Quiso Ser el Gandhi Mexicano (Mexico City: IMDSC, 2004), 56.
Luis González y González, Pueblo en Vilo: Microhistoria de San José de Gracia (Mexico City: Clío, 1999), 152.
Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).
Manuel Lozcana Ochoa, Una Vida en la Vida Sinaloense (Culiacán: Universidad de Occidente, 1992).
Anita Brenner, Idols behind Altars (New York: Payson and Clark, 1929), ch. 1.
Paul Vanderwood, Juan Soldado: Soldier, Rapist, Martyr, Saint (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), ch. 1.
Carlos Navarrete, San Pascualito Rey y el Culto a la Muerte en Chiapas (Mexico City: UNAM, 1982). Butler, Fathers of Revolution.
William H. Beezley, “Home Altars: Private Reflections of Public Life,” in Home Altars of Mexico, ed. Dana Salvo (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 91–107.
Enrique Guerra Manzo, “El Fuego Sagrado: La Segunda Cristiada y el Caso de Michoacán (1931–1938),” Historia Mexicana 55, no. 2 (2005): 513–75.
Adrian Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution (Wilmington: SR, 1988), 7.
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© 2007 Matthew Butler
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Butler, M. (2007). A Revolution in Spirit? Mexico, 1910–40. In: Butler, M. (eds) Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230608801_1
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