Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young Anne M. Martínez Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War. By Julia G. Young. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. Pp. xii, 271. $82.00. ISBN 978-0-19-020500-3.) My nonagenarian father has vivid memories of going to a “bootleg” Catholic kindergarten in the early 1930s, trying to avoid soldiers in Pénjamo, Guanajuato on his way to the house of the week, where Catholic nuns offered elicit lessons on the faith to young Mexicans in the aftermath of the Cristero War. My American-born father, whose family fled to Chicago during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, grew up in his mother’s hometown in the Catholic heartland of Mexico. His story, like those recounted in Julia Young’s Mexico Exodus, reveals the transnational nature of Mexican communities, and the ways Catholicism permeated the journeys abroad and returns home for many Mexicans across multiple generations. Dr. Young writes that her primary argument is that the Cristero War had a much wider geographic impact than previously understood. Indeed, this is her [End Page 179] intervention in Mexican historiography. For American Catholic historians, “the transnational forms of popular activism and resistance that occurred within the Mexican emigrant diaspora” (13) are much more significant. The book describes countless failed attempts by Cristeros in exile in the United States to overthrow their government. These failures do not reduce the impact of Cristero exiles; rather they illustrate the abiding commitment to the Cristero cause despite the overwhelming odds when two governments and many of their own emigrant countrymen were against them. Chapter 1 details the long history of Church-State conflict in Mexico. Chapter 2 brings Cristero migrants—both lay and clerical—into focus, highlighting their journeys to cities across the U.S. Southwest and Midwest. Young centers the work among Cristeros in the United States to keep pressure on the Mexican government to repeal the Calles Law in the third chapter, creating tensions within local communities and building networks of Cristero exiles across the United States. In the fourth chapter, Young considers largely unsuccessful efforts to mobilize the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and lay communities in support of the Cristero resistance. Chapter 5 outlines the lasting influence of the Cristeros in the Catholic patriotism of Mexicans like my father in the decade following the 1929 settlement between Church and state. The final chapter features the lasting resonance of the Cristero era and its martyrs for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. In the epilogue, Young displays contemporary commemorations of the Cristero era by American Catholic groups and Mexican American Catholics. The strength of Mexican Exodus is the unearthing of countless stories of Mexicans in exile rallying around their faith and against their government from the United States. Though occasional glimpses of Catholic practice among early twentieth-century Mexican American communities have been captured in previous texts, they rarely mention Cristeros or political dissension around issues of religion. Young describes the tensions the Cristero War brought to these communities in vivid detail and shows that Cristeros in the United States did not just bide their time until they could return to Mexico, or settle in to established Mexican communities in the United States. They continued the fight for their faith within local communities and kept their focus—emotional, political, and financial—on removing the Calles regime from power. The book would benefit from a thorough copy edit. In addition to wording issues here and there, for example, Francis Kelley’s surname is misspelled twice in a paragraph in which it appears three times (48). These kinds of errors detract from the narrative and make the reader wonder what other oversights there might be. Mexican Exodus is a significant contribution to the growing historical literature on Mexican American Catholicism. Julia Young’s vital history illustrates the lived religion of Cristeros and their descendants in the United States. [End Page 180] Anne M. Martínez University of Groningen Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press