Cristero War Research Articles

Corrigendum to “Martyrdom in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Photograph as Testimony and Trace in Mexico’s Cristero War (1926–29)”

Corrigendum to “Martyrdom in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Photograph as Testimony and Trace in Mexico’s Cristero War (1926–29)”

Unpublished Saints: Making Mexican Martyrs in American Archives

Abstract In the early 1940s US–Mexico borderlands, two siblings named Carlos and María de la Torre dedicated years of their lives to drafting, revising, and completing, but not publishing, a 32-page biographical profile of their close friend Fidel Muro, who had been executed by the Mexican government for his participation in the Cristero War (1926–1929). The completed semblanza, which the De la Torres titled “Fidel Muro, Mexican Martyr,” follows Muro from his childhood to his days as a Cristero fighter and, ultimately, to his death as a Cristero martyr. In telling Muro’s story, the De la Torres also memorialize the broader Cristero movement, which sought to overthrow the postrevolutionary Mexican government and replace its secularizing policies with a religious nationalism that insisted on the synonymity of Catholicism and Mexican identity. Though the Cristeros were unsuccessful, exiles like the De la Torres kept the ideals of the movement alive through writing, much of it produced in the US. Cristero writing has garnered far less attention within Mexican and Latinx literary criticism than writing depicting the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), yet I argue that both early twentieth-century conflicts have played a fundamental role in shaping the uneven terrain of US and Mexican modernities.Placing the [De la Torres’] unpublished semblanza at the center of Latina/o/x literary history begins to reveal the multiplicity of conceptualizations of Latina/o/x identity, from the fully realized to the barely imagined.

Martyrdom in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

A tradition of martyr photography flourished during Mexico’s religiously motivated Cristero War (1926–29). Graphic photographic prints and postcards depicting executed Catholic activists and priests circulated widely during the conflict as a form of antigovernment propaganda, justifying comparisons of the Cristeros to the earliest persecuted Christians. Taking into account the iconographic and material features of these photographs as well as the medium’s particular ontological qualities, I explore how Cristero martyr images fulfilled comparable functions to early martyr narratives and relics by providing a compelling visual testimony and material trace of the martyr’s sacrifice. In these photographic images, the testimonial value and heightened verisimilitude of the early martyr text finds a parallel in a graphic documentary visual language that emerged with the increased mediatization of violence during the Revolution (1910–17). At the same time, these visual mementos sought to appeal to viewers on an affective level by drawing from long-standing iconographic vocabularies and material modes of devotional experience, most notably the tactile intimacy of the portable relic. Approaching the Cristero conflict from the analytical perspectives of visual culture and material religion, my research sheds new light on how Catholic activists conceptualized and justified violent sacrifice in their struggle for religious freedom while also making novel contributions to the history of Mexican photography. These complex visual artifacts reveal how Cristero propagandists utilized familiar religious images and concepts to provide a meaningful religious framework for their activism while also adapting strategies of martyr memorialization to the age of mechanical reproduction.

Popular violence and ‘lay religion’ in centre-west Mexico during Mexico’s Cristero war (1926-29)

This article suggests that the Cristero insurgency of 1926-29 was a form of lay religious violence inimical not only to the Mexican Revolution but also to the interests of the Catholic civilians and hierarchy the rebels claimed to represent. By the same token, Cristeros shared with their Revolutionary enemies a habit of plebeian vigilantism which was informed by economic and politico-religious mobilisation underway since 1910. Focusing on the mestizo and indigenous populations in the states of Zacatecas, Durango and Jalisco, this article shows how the external conflict presented by the Church-state crisis of 1926 was used as a pretext for localised disputes concerning land and pillage. The Cristiada of 1926-29 thus deserves to be understood as part of the pattern of popular protest over land, property and autonomy which had been unleashed by the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. This article concludes with an explanation of the military and political relevance of the Cristero conflict today.

Prawo Callesa jako przyczynek do powstania Cristeros

On June 19, 1926, President Plutarco Elias Calles published a document that went down in history as the Calles Law (Ley Calles) and consisted of 33 articles. The document came into force on July 31, 1926 and in practice it sanctioned the anti-clerical constitutional provisions of 1917. It is recognized that this document was the ignite spark and the reason for the Cristero War. The presidential decree was to be nailed to the door of all Mexican temples. Between the release of the Calles Law and the beginning of Cristero War was only six months - very restless. Hence the thesis that the normative act issued by Mexican President Calles was the direct cause of the Cristero War.  

A Visual History of a Sacrifice: Cristero Photography and the José de León Toral Commemorative Album

This paper sets out to examine the interpretative differenda arising over photographs promoted by the Mexican government and those distributed by the rebels after the conflict known as the Guerra cristera [Cristero War] (1926–1929). While Federal photography was characterised by its dissemination of punitive acts, the Cristeros (as the anti-government Catholic rebels were known) lent their photographs an emotive aura out of a desire to imbue them with a devotional meaning. This analysis focuses accordingly on a photograph album dedicated to José de León Toral, who assassinated General Álvaro Obregón in July 1928. The album reframes the figure of José de León Toral to establish images of a model life by emphasising the supposed sacrifice implied in the Potosino assassin’s execution by firing squad. Through its emphasis on emotivity, the album sets up an interpretation of José de León Toral as a kind of sacred figure.

Catholic Mobilizations in Twentieth-Century Mexico: From Pious Lynchings and Fascist Salutes to a “Catholic 1968,” Maoist Priests, and the Post-Cristero Apocalypse

This special issue, fruit of an American Historical Association panel on the entanglements of Catholicism and nationhood after Mexico's Cristero War (1926-29), offers five new histories that cumulatively give the lie to anything so monolithic as a twentieth-century “Catholic history.” As is well known, the Cristero War was a major armed confrontation between the Church and the postrevolutionary state and their respective bases, followed, as the story goes, by an uneasy truce and an enduring coexistence lasting for decades, to the 1950s and perhaps to the 1970s.

Martyrs, Fanatics, and Pious Militants: Religious Violence and the Secular State in 1930s Mexico

AbstractThis article examines the cultural and political repertoire that contributed to Catholics’ understanding of violence as a legitimate means to resist the secular state in 1930s Mexico. Following the end of the Cristero War (1926-29), the Church officially and overtly rejected the use of violence by Catholics as a means to defend religious freedom. However, many Catholic militants and organizations continued to support violence as a last but necessary recourse to resist the country's so-called tyrannical government and to build a Catholic nation that would recognize the kingship of Christ on earth. Informed by noncanonical understandings of martyrdom, sacrifice, and redemptive violence, as well as by an intransigent view of politics, these Catholics regarded violence as a moral response against the injustices and dangers posed by what they considered an oppressive and blasphemous state. The article is based on the examination of a series of violent events perpetrated by Catholic militants during the 1930s, as well as on the analysis of several newspapers, official documents, and Catholic publications. Contrary to government portrayals of Catholicism as a top-down, monolithic, and unchanging set of institutions and practices that promoted recalcitrant forms of religious militancy, Catholics were in fact deeply divided regarding the legitimacy of violence along theological, moral, and practical grounds.

Las Falsas Derechas: Conflict and Convergence in Mexico's Post-Cristero Right after the Second Vatican Council

AbstractIn the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Mexican traditionalist Catholics mobilized in apparent unity against Catholic “progressivism” and the Left. Yet, they succumbed to their own internecine fights. This article examines the conflicts within Mexico's post-Cristero Right during the 1960s and 70s by tackling the ruptures and realignments surrounding the excommunication of Fr. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, a traditionalist Jesuit famed for attacking conciliar reforms and the legitimacy of Paul VI's papacy. I argue that the ensuing debates put into question the apparent coherence of conservatives in the face of social unrest after 1968, highlighting the long-standing entropy of right-wing Catholicism, as traditionalists clashed over matters of orthodoxy, Catholics’ historical relationship with the postrevolutionary state, and the contested memory of the Cristero War, which they used to legitimize their positions and define the terms of their traditionalism. Using anticommunism and anti-Semitism to wage their battles, these traditionalists occupied important spaces in the public sphere, contributed to Mexico's Cold War polarizations, and shaped the Mexican Right's international outlook. Their conflicts attest to the contentious plurality of the Mexican Right during this period, which invites further study to better understand how these actors situated themselves in a rapidly changing world.

Photographic Postcard Commemorating Antonio Verástegui

A postcard commemorating a young “martyr” of Mexico’s Cristero War named Antonio Verástegu engages the spectator in an act of witnessing that entails both religious and political consequences. By creating an audience for Veràstegui’s suffering, the image looks to consolidate and legitimize this unofficial martyr cult but also to foster community bonds and perhaps even inspire imitation of his exemplary sacrifice.

The Lynching of the Impious

AbstractThis article analyzes the impact that religion had on the act of lynching and its legitimation in postrevolutionary Mexico. Basing its argument on the examination of several cases of lynching that took place after the religiously motivated Cristero War had ended, the article argues that the profanation of religious objects and precincts revered by Catholics, the propagation of conservative and reactionary ideologies among Catholic believers, and parish priests’ implicit or explicit endorsement of belligerent forms of Catholic activism all contributed to the perpetuation of lynching from the 1930s through the 1950s. Taking together, these three factors point at the relationship between violence and the material, symbolic, and political dimensions of Catholics’ religious experience in postrevolutionary Mexico. The fact that lynching continued well into the 1940s and 1950s, when Mexican authorities and the Catholic hierarchy reached a closer, even collaborative relationship, shows the modus vivendi between state and Church did not bring an end to religious violence in Mexico. This continuity in lynching also illuminates the centrality that popular – as opposed to official or institutional - strands of Catholicism had in construing the use of violence as a legitimate means to defend religious beliefs and symbols, and protect the social and political orders associated with Catholic religion at the local level. Victims of religiously motivated lynchings included blasphemous and anticlerical individuals, people that endorsed socialist and communist ideas, as well as people that professed Protestant beliefs and practices.

Del enfrentamiento histórico entre Estado e Iglesia en México, al aprovechamiento económico del conflicto cristero a través del turismo religioso

Este artículo analiza el conflicto armado entre diversos grupos sociales y el Estado de México (La Guerra Cristera, 1926-1929, cuyo origen fue la aprobación de un decreto nacional que limitaba la actividad y posesión de bienes por parte de la Iglesia Católica) asi como, el aprovechamiento económico de dicho conflicto a traves de la creación de un producto turistico “La Ruta Cristera” explotando el movimiento de peregrinación para visitar lugares relacionados con los 25 santos cristeros (personas canonizadas por la Iglesia Católica que fallecieron en dicha guerra) y que cada día tiene mas auge principalmente en el pueblo mexicano.

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

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

Father, Where Art Thou? Catholic Priests and Mexico's 1929 Relación de Sacerdotes

Abstract This article studies an ecclesiastical census, the Relación de sacerdotes, that was compiled by the Secretariat of the Interior during Mexico's Cristero War in 1929. We propose that this statistical device ultimately helped the Catholic Church and the Portes Gil government to plot a way out of the religious crisis. It did so by providing a mutually acceptable means for priests to register with the postrevolutionary state and by providing a discursive mechanism for the Catholic clergy to present itself to the regime as a national, less Rome-oriented body. The Relación can therefore give historians insights into the contingent and bureaucratic ways that revolutionary and ecclesiastical elites renegotiated the contours of Mexico's secular order. The second half of the article contains an analysis of the Relación. There we argue that the Relación offers a kind of prosopographical and political snapshot of the Mexican clergy during the Cristero Rebellion.

El asalto al tren de La Barca y otros cuentos

<p align="justify">Entre los hechos que se dieron en los años 1926-1929, durante la llamada guerra cristera, existe uno que, sin haber tenido una importancia capital en el desarrollo de los acontecimientos, sí tuvo gran relevancia por la versión que se difundió a través de los periódicos: el asalto al tren de La Barca. La manera en que se presentó este suceso en la prensa constituyó, al final, una gran derrota para quienes supuestamente habían vencido al gobierno. En este estudio, se analizarán las distintas versiones que se tienen de los hechos y se buscará mostrar cómo influyó el manejo mediático en la percepción de los acontecimientos.</p>

Volunteering for a Cause: Gender, Faith, and Charity in Mexico from the Reform to the Revolution by Silvia Marina Arrom

Reviewed by: Volunteering for a Cause: Gender, Faith, and Charity in Mexico from the Reform to the Revolution by Silvia Marina Arrom Jason H. Dormady Volunteering for a Cause: Gender, Faith, and Charity in Mexico from the Reform to the Revolution. By Silvia Marina Arrom. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2016. Pp. xiii, 279. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-8263-4188-4.) Catholic charity in nineteenth-century Mexico flourished (instead of shrinking) in the presence of state-sponsored anticlerical liberalism. This success came as male and female lay members of the St. Vincent De Paul charitable organization functioned in complimentary roles to improve the lives of poor Mexicans. So argues historian Silvia Arrom in this readable and well-organized volume on the overlooked history of charitable programs in Mexico between Independence (1821) and the 1910 Revolution. Having done research in Paris and Mexico City as well as regional archives, Arrom uses a clear, concise style in this work, which shores up weaknesses on the topic of charity. The introduction and chapter one counter the francocentric history of St. Vincenet De Paul in Mexico, showing how the organization adapted to local conditions and used organizational strategies better suited to Mexico than to France. Arrom also demonstrates that women were key to the establishment of the charity from the start, contrary to chronicles generated by the male laity and Catholic clergy associated with St. Vincent De Paul in Mexico. Chapters two, three, and four continue chronologically with an eye toward gendered variations that occurred in the organization over time. The author counters the narrative created by Mexico's nineteenth-century liberal scholars, demonstrating that St. Vincent De Paul was not feminized in the late 1800s, but instead developed complimentary branches of service that allowed the organization to extend its tendrils deeper into the world of Mexico's poor. Certainly, members of St. Vincent De Paul supported the struggle against secularization, but their work among people not reached by state institutions allowed the group to avoid state persecution and thrive during a time scholars traditionally see as hostile to Catholicism. In chapter five, Arrom uses the case study of the state of Jalisco to confirm her argument about Mexico as a whole. However, her look at the local archives brings insights she would have missed using sources from Mexico City alone. The Jalisco case study enriches existing work on the National Catholic Party and clarifies why Catholic networks during the Cristero War (1926–29) functioned so well. She caps off the work with a discussion in chapter six of how Catholicism served as a modernizing force in Mexico by modeling public welfare and encouraging public health, not the backwards opponent to progress as painted by the ruling elite of [End Page 565] Mexico at the time. In this regard, Arrom shores up recent research by other scholars who, over the last two decades, have deepened our understanding of the multi-faceted work of the Catholic Church in Mexico, particularly its link to public policy and modernization. It also has implications for scholarship that examines why women felt empowered by conservative movements that otherwise restricted their role in society. Volunteering for a Cause is a well-researched, clearly written book that—while not path-making—is a solid contribution to the historical understanding of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Mexico. Scholars of religion, conservatism, women, and liberalism in Mexico should consult this work as should graduate students with specialties in modern Mexico. While the book is situated in a larger historiographic conversation that might make it difficult to include in undergraduate courses on Modern Mexico, courses on Latin American religion would benefit from its inclusion, particularly in discussions on the role of Catholicism in debates on women in society, state power, or modernization. [End Page 566] Jason H. Dormady Central Washington University Copyright © 2018 The Catholic University of America Press

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

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

El espectáculo de la violencia en el cine mexicano del siglo XXI by Guadalupe Pérez-Anzaldo

Reviewed by: El espectáculo de la violencia en el cine mexicano del siglo XXI by Guadalupe Pérez-Anzaldo Gerardo Cummings Pérez-Anzaldo, Guadalupe. El espectáculo de la violencia en e l cine mexicano del siglo XXI. México: Eón, 2014. Pp. 254. ISBN 978-6-07828-978-3. Guadalupe Pérez-Anzaldo’s El espectáculo de la violencia en el cine mexicano del siglo XXI powerfully analyzes three of the most representative films from recent Mexican cinema: Conejo en la luna (dir. Jorge Ramírez Suárez, Mexico, 2004), a paranoid-filled psycho-thriller; Casi divas (dir. Issa López, Mexico, 2008), a female-empowerment romantic comedy; and El infierno (dir. Luis Estrada, Mexico, 2010), a narco-drug, violence-centered comedy. Before exploring in depth the aforementioned films, the author offers in chapter 1 an overview of violence in Mexican history, including its independence movement, the Mexican revolution, and other upheavals (the Cristero War, Tlatelolco 1968, today’s daily drug-fueled violence, etc.). Pérez-Anzaldo’s thorough research addresses, among many other things, Porfirio Díaz’s devastating violent subjugation of indigenous communities, such as the Yaquis, Mayos, and Mayas. She references John Kenneth Turner’s México bárbaro, and even Díaz’s favorite phrase: “Mátenlos en caliente.” This phrase encapsulates, in my view, one of the major takeaways of this study: that Mexico’s philosophy towards life has been, is and will be crystallized by the José Alfredo Jiménez lyric “la vida no vale nada.” In chapter 2, “Violencia y censura en el cine mexicano,” Pérez-Anzaldo journeys through the history of censorship of films depicting violence. In my opinion, this chapter should be read in university courses dealing with Mexican cinematic history or popular culture. The research reveals a conscientious collaboration between El Estado and the Mexican filmmaking industry to deliver a certain “cinematic product” to the hungry masses. At times, the product has glorified violent episodes in Mexican history. At others, it has shied away from depicting violent rhetoric for fear of inciting revolutionary ideas. A critic that found similar connections between the Mexican government and the Mexican film industry was Emilio García Riera, long considered one of the preeminent Mexican cinema experts. García Riera’s research found that, on many an occasion, the Mexican government purposely supported certain cinematic genres over others, such as the period in the 1970s when—rather than funding the work of directors and screenwriters whose films could have motivated the masses to question their own government—the Mexican presidency of José López Portillo meddled in the film industry in order to support the sexycomedia films starring (in most cases) Sasha Montenegro, the then mistress of the president (and later, his wife). Chapter 3, “Teorizaciones: La diversificación de la violencia,” demonstrates the depth and breadth of the author’s research on gender violence. One particular section stood out to me. As Pérez-Anzaldo compares feminicidio statistics, she challenges popular misconceptions. Though Ciudad Juárez has been the focus of much of the violence, the Estado de México—especially under the then governorship of Enrique Peña-Nieto—has far surpassed the numbers of the northern border town. Pérez-Anzaldo presents information that media conglomerates in Mexico—such as Televisa—are and have been in cahoots with the PRI party that was poised to nominate Peña-Nieto for president for the 2012–18 cycle. It is only now that light is being shed on the astonishing increase of women murdered in the Estado de México. The fourth chapter centers on the film Conejo en la luna, and, rather than dealing with gender violence, explores [End Page 148] a different yet important representation of violence: magnicide. Pérez-Anzaldo, in her chapter, establishes metatextual connections between Hollywood films, such as The Count of Montecristo (Dir. Kevin Reynolds, USA, 2002) and Enemy of the State (dir. Tony Scott, USA, 1998), and this Mexican film. Ramírez Suárez’s film is masterful because it submerges the viewer into a world where the plot covers ideas like political assassination and familiar contemporary Mexican crisis, yet...

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

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

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

Julia G. Young.<i>Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War</i>.