Protestants, Freemasons, and Spiritists: Non-Catholic Religious Sociabilities and Mexico’s Revolutionary Movement, 1910–20

Abstract

Among recent interpretations of Mexico’s 1910 revolutionary rupture are those emphasizing the phenomenon’s above-all political nature as a “passage from being subjects to citizens,” a process through which “political initiative passed into the hands of the citizenry and ceased being the privilege of the few.”¹ This reading suggests an abandonment of the idea that the carrancismo of 1915–20 was a reversal or retreat. Indeed, it suggests that 1910 culminated in 1917, and fully valorizes two of the period’s achievements: the 1917 Constitution and the return of the rule of law. I wish here to return to the beginnings of the “citizen-making” process and examine this view. This means following trails that are relatively unexplored but fundamental, if we are to understand the emergence of a liberal-democratic project that could voice sociopolitical concerns better than nineteenth-century liberalism.

Translated by Paul Rankin and Matthew Butler.