Cristero War

Resumen: Este ensayo traza las tensiones ideológicas que subyacen al relato " Luvina " de Juan Rulfo y que muestran el legado secularizante de la Revolución mexicana enfrentado a las ruinas del proyecto colonial hispano: la iglesia católica. Proveniente del ambiente cristero de Jalisco, Rulfo marcó distancias con el legado de destrucción de la cristiada y " Luvina " esboza su capacidad para escenificar el cinismo postrevolucionario de ambos bandos del conflicto: el maestro derrotado y los (des)creyentes abandonados. Abstract: This essay traces the ideological tensions underlying the short story " Luvina " by Juan Rulfo, which portrays the secularizing legacy of the Mexican Revolution at loggerheads with the ruined landscape of the Hispanic colonial project symbolized by the Catholic church. Originally from a Cristero family in Jalisco, Rulfo dennounced the legacy of destruction of the Cristero rebellion and the story " Luvina " demonstrates his ability to stage the resulting political

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and first thirty years of the twentieth, the Catholic laity was encouraged to pray and meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary to remedy perceived evils caused by the ideology of modernity, understood by devout Catholics as a threat to the well-being of humanity due to its attacks on the Catholic Church in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Though the physical rosary is associated with the meditation on the events of Mary’s life and their connection to the earthly life of Christ, her son, Catholics also consider it a spiritual weapon to implore God’s intercession in worldly affairs, in favor of the mystical body of the Catholic Church. Beginning in 1883, when Leo XIII issued the first of a series of Encyclicals that encouraged Catholics to pray and meditate on the beads to 1929, when the Mexican movement of the Cristeros ended, the papacy asked its constituents to use the Rosary to defend the Church from the onslaught of the state in a series of civil movements that were vindicated as Just Wars against a secular state that acted as an enemy of its citizenry. Among Catholics who heeded the call were Mexicans, who used the Rosary to petition the Virgin and God to help them overthrow the Mexican government led by Plutarco Elías Calles.

In the summer of 1926, an army of Mexican Catholics launched a war against their government. Bearing aloft the banners of Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe, they equipped themselves not only with guns, but also with scapulars, rosaries, prayers, and religious visions. These soldiers were called cristeros, and the war they fought, which would continue until the mid-1930s, is known as la Cristiada, or the Cristero war. The most intense fighting occurred in Mexico's west-central states, especially Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacán. For this reason, scholars have generally regarded the war as a regional event, albeit one with national implications. Yet in fact, the Cristero war crossed the border into the United States, along with thousands of Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees.

In Mexican Exodus, Julia Young reframes the Cristero war as a transnational conflict, using previously unexamined archival materials from both Mexico and the United States to investigate the intersections between Mexico's Cristero War and Mexican migration to the United States during the late 1920s. She traces the formation, actions, and ideologies of the Cristero diaspora--a network of Mexicans across the United States who supported the Catholic uprising from beyond the border. These Cristero supporters participated in the conflict in a variety of ways: they took part in religious ceremonies and spectacles, organized political demonstrations and marches, formed associations and organizations, and collaborated with religious and political leaders on both sides of the border. Some of them even launched militant efforts that included arms smuggling, military recruitment, espionage, and armed border revolts. Ultimately, the Cristero diaspora aimed to overturn Mexico's anticlerical government and reform the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Although the group was unable to achieve its political goals, Young argues that these emigrants--and the war itself--would have a profound and enduring resonance for Mexican emigrants, impacting community formation, political affiliations, and religious devotion throughout subsequent decades and up to the present day.

Between the decades of 1910-1940, a number of Catholic priests were executed by Mexican revolutionary troops. Quite often, these characters were reminded in the following decades as martyrs of the "religious persecution". The best known of this martyrs was the Jesuit priest Miguel Agustín Pro (padre Pro), killed in front of a firing squad in Mexico City in 1927. Catholics wrote the history/story of padre Pro in different contexts as a way of defining the place of Catholicism in the formation of Mexico as a country. However, this place was not taken for granted among those who defined themselves as Catholics. This dissertation examines the history of the texts about the Catholic martyrs - especially padre Pro - aiming to discuss how they provided a Catholic vision for the revolutionary period that contrasted to the narrative built to praise the revolution. The development, between 1927 and 1960, of a narrative of the Church as a martyr in the Mexican revolutionary period served as an antidote to the narrative produced by liberal and revolutionary authors that marginalized the importance of the Catholic Church in the national formation, or that even presented themselves as openly anti-clerical.

The conflict between the secular Mexican state and the Catholic Church, which reached its heights with the Cristero war of 1926-1929, remains one of the least known chapters of Achille Ratti’s pontificate. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Cristero leaders sought to obtain an official endorsement from the Holy See, in order to overcome the resistance of those Catholics unwilling to take up arms against the government. Even after the end of the Cristiada, Pope Pius XI and his Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli had to mediate between the unwillingness to compromise of many Mexican Catholics and the necessity to preserve religious freedom by means of Vatican Diplomacy. As a result of this confrontation, Pius XI’ Encyclicals on Mexico permit to identify certain underlying tendencies of Vatican politics at the time, with particular reference to the “Just War Theory” and the Holy See’s concrete actions in defending the libertas Ecclesiae.

La recente riforma dell’art. 24 della Costituzione messicana, approvata dal Senato federale il 28 marzo 2012, rappresenta l'ultimo capitolo della storia dei rapporti tra lo Stato e la Chiesa cattolica nel Paese, più volte segnati nel corso del XX secolo da momenti di tensione o di aperto conflitto. Con l’ultima modifica dell’art. 24 non si chiude tuttavia il periodo delle riforme costituzionali relative a tale ambito: a questo riguardo un documento licenziato dalla Commissione parlamentare competente afferma esplicitamente che il riconoscimento del diritto alla libertà di culto, che costituisce l’oggetto precipuo dell’art. 24, potrà aprire la strada verso un’ulteriore revisione degli artt. 3, 5, 27 e 130 della Costituzione, oltre che della Ley de Asociaciones Religiosas y culto Público del 1992.

La promulgación de la nueva Constitución mexicana, ocurrida el 5 de febrero de 1917, despertó reacciones muy negativas en el Vaticano, en el que el progreso de la situación de la Iglesia local había sido observado con creciente preocupación por lo menos desde el golpe de Estado que cuatro años antes había acabado violentamente con el gobierno revolucionario de Francisco Indalecio Madero.

The Church-State conflict in revolutionary Mexico was one of the most relevant issues in Pius XI' pontificate. The paper focused on some aspects of Vatican diplomacy in regard to this, particularly on the intervention on behalf of Mexican Catholics at the Sixth Panamerican Conference (Havana, 1928).
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Il conflitto tra Stato e Chiesa nel Messico rivoluzionario rientra a pieno titolo nei temi caratterizzanti del pontificato di Pio XI. Il presente contributo evidenzia alcuni aspetti dell'azione diplomatica della Santa Sede a favore della Chiesa cattolica messicana, concentrandosi in particolare sull'intervento vaticano in occasione della VI Conferenza panamericana dell'Avana (gennaio-febbraio 1928).

La guerra cristera (o Crìstiada) rappresenta un evento drammatico non solo per il Messico ma per il cattolicesimo universale, protagonista dal 1926 al 1929 di uno sforzo di mobilitazione senza precedenti a sostegno dei cattolici messicani perseguitati dal governo rivoluzionario laicista e anticlericale di Plutarco Elias Calles. In prima linea, sia nel contrastare la "congiura del silenzio" che sembra avvolgere la persecuzione della Chiesa in Messico sia nel favorire la soluzione diplomatica del conflitto armato, è la Santa Sede, i cui archivi permettono oggi di ricostruire le riflessioni e i dubbi che hanno attraversato la Curia di Pio XI, insieme alle decisioni prese dal pontefice e dai suoi collaboratori. Oltre al problema della legittimità del ricorso alle armi contro l'autorità costituita, affrontato dal papa all'insegna del realismo ma al tempo stesso in continuità con la dottrina tradizionale, il conflitto religioso messicano pone all'ordine del giorno altre questioni, come la difficile convivenza delle preesistenti organizzazioni del laicato cattolico con la nuova Azione Cattolica di Pio XI, o come la possibilità di introdurre in Messico il modello statunitense di separazione tra Stato e Chiesa per una effettiva libertà religiosa.

This essay aims to illustrate the role played by the Holy See in the explosion of the Cristero war in Mexico (1926-1929). Unpublished documents from the Vatican Archives (Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Apostolic Delegation in Mexico, Apostolic Delegation in the Antilles) and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu allow to shed new light on a key event that led to the outbreak of the Cristiada – i.e., the suspension of public worship in July 1926. Far from being desired by the majority of the Mexican Episcopate, this crucial decision appears to be the result of a political maneuver led by a small and uncompromising group of Jesuits who were able to work around the diplomatic network of the Holy See and obtain direct consensus from Pius XI himself.

This chapter presents empirical and theoretical challenges to the theory that secularization begets toleration while society’s movement away from secularity leads to intolerance. Contradicting that theory, Soviet secularization ended the era of imperial toleration, aborted nascent religious freedom, and entailed relentless religious persecution. Yet, after the demise of communism, Russia’s desecularization brought about a combination of neo-imperial toleration with neo-Soviet repression. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s desecularization has generated a pluralistic and tolerant regime of interfaith and church-state relations. I argue that the Soviet case epitomizes revolutionary secularizations that have affected much of the world outside of the North Atlantic region. Secularization theory has marginalized the revolutionary cases. It thus has obscured the revolutionary, violent, and persecuting modality of secularization in the West itself and elsewhere.

A fronte dell'ampia letteratura esistente sul rapporto tra “Chiesa” e “guerra” - in particolare per quanto riguarda la c.d. dottrina della “guerra giusta” - la guerra cristera (o Cristiada), che ha insanguinato il Messico dal 1926 al 1929, non sembra ad oggi avere ancora ricevuto l'attenzione che merita dalla storiografia italiana ed europea. Per quasi tre anni decine di migliaia di cattolici reagirono con le armi alla persecuzione legalizzata della Chiesa portata avanti dal governo laicista figlio della Rivoluzione degli anni Dieci, rendendo inevitabile una mediazione politica tra l'episcopato messicano e il governo che coinvolse anche il Vaticano e la diplomazia statunitense. Fin dai primordi del conflitto, la necessità di assicurare alla causa dei cristeros l'appoggio della gerarchia ecclesiastica spinse i leader del movimento armato a sollecitare a più riprese una presa di posizione ufficiale della Santa Sede, al fine di vincere le resistenze di quanti nell'episcopato e più in generale nel mondo cattolico messicano si mostravano riluttanti ad appoggiare l'insurrezione. Anche dopo la conclusione della Cristiada il problema si ripropose periodicamente Oltretevere, dove Pio XI e il cardinale segretario di Stato Eugenio Pacelli (succeduto al cardinale Pietro Gasparri all'inizio del 1930) si trovarono a dover conciliare le istanze dei messicani più intransigenti – convinti che il ricorso alle armi fosse ancora l'unica opzione possibile per difendere i diritti della Chiesa e dei cattolici – con la necessità di garantire la sopravvivenza della Chiesa in Messico attraverso gli strumenti tradizionali della diplomazia.
Esito della composizione di queste opposte esigenze furono alcune importanti encicliche e altri documenti pontifici, la cui lettura – unitamente all'analisi dei rispettivi processi redazionali – permette di individuare le linee di fondo della riflessione magisteriale sulla legittimazione della violenza e la sua evoluzione lungo tutto il pontificato rattiano.

Abstract: With the release of the films Padre Pro/Father Pro (Miguel Rico Tavera, 2007) and Desierto Adentro/Desert Within (Rodrigo Plá, 2008), and the debates regarding the traditional dress for the Miss Mexico beauty pageant in 2007, the representation of the Cristero Wars has surfaced in Mexican cinema and television as an indicator of the current symbolic struggles for the construction of a new national narrative.

The establishment of the Feast of Christ the King on New Year’s Eve, 1925, can be understood as a political
statement aimed at censuring political changes in Europe and the Western hemisphere wrought by World War I (1914–
1918). The disorder brought on by the collapse of the German empire, the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Empires, along with the establishment of communist USSR and republican governments in several European
countries, forced the Papacy to look at itself and the message of the Church as a model of leadership in a world that
appeared anarchic. To counter political regimes antagonistic toward Catholicism and institute a new political program,
Pius XI enunciated, in Quas Primas, that Christ should be recognized as the king of this world and sovereign over all
nations. Christ the King was to be the symbol that negated political regimes hostile to Catholicism. Mexico was one
such country attempting to curb Catholicism’s political influence. Under the slogan “Long Live Christ, the King!” the
laity developed a political message and rallying point to fight the anticlerical government of Mexico. This article
explores the meanings of the phrase and its link to the beliefs of the detractors of Plutarco Elías Calles during the
Cristero War. Analyzing the words and their various meanings, this article intends to explain the importance of
Catholicism and the laity’s particular brand of faith in Christ in the fight against the Mexican government.

Spanish (Article in Spanish. For English, see below):

Este ensayo explora la forma en que las mujeres de la Juventud Católica Femenina Mexicana (JCFM), utilizaron los medios de comunicación – en específico la prensa – para producir y difundir ideologías conservadoras hechas para combatir los proyectos izquierdistas del Estado posrevolucionario. De esta manera, coloco a las mujeres mexicanas como protagonistas de una historia de oposición y transformación que une el conflicto social de la Guerra Cristera en México con los enfrentamientos político-culturales de la Guerra Fría. Por una parte, hago énfasis en las revistas de la JCFM y las campañas pedagógicas y sociales de esta organización : diseñadas para movilizar a las maestras, estudiantes, campesinas, obreras y empleadas domésticas. En específico, exploro el tema del feminismo católico, al igual que el de las divisiones en base a raza y nivel socioeconómico que surgieron entre las mujeres de la JCFM. Sin embargo, termino por cuestionar, de forma crítica, la eficacia de las revistas y las campañas de la JCFM como herramientas de unificación ideológica y movilización política.

English:

This essay explores the ways in which Catholic Mexican women of the Juventud Católica Femenina Mexicana (JCFM) employed press mechanisms as a means to produce and disseminate conservative ideologies to combat the nascent state’s left-leaning agenda. I place Mexican women at a nexus point between the social and ideological standoffs of Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, on the one hand, and the cultural and political battles of the early Cold War. Specifically, I grant special focus to JCFM magazines and pedagogical campaigns as vehicles of social mobilization among female teachers, students, farmworkers, laborers, and domestic employees. On the one hand, I critically examine notions of Catholic feminism, as developed by members of the JCFM. On the other, I analyze social divisions among JCFM members, particularly as these emerged along racial and class lines. Ultimately, I question the effectiveness of JCFM magazines and social campaigns as tools for ideological unification and social mobilization.

Resumo: Entre 1916 e 1917, revolucionários mexicanos se reuniram em Querétaro para decidir os rumos do novo regime criado a partir da Revolução Mexicana. Um dos aspectos mais importantes emanados do texto constitucional foi a limitação da atuação do clero católico na sociedade mexicana. Os deputados defenderam as proposições anticlericais utilizando diferentes justificativas: da aliança do clero com as classes poderosas à sua difusa influência na sociedade mexicana por meio da educação e da confissão. Eu argumento que, ao longo dos debates constituintes, a confrontação aos membros da Igreja católica se configurou como um dos elementos de distinção revolucionária. Assim, atacar o clero no momento da constituinte fez parte da construção da legitimidade do orador como um homem revolucionário e da Revolução como um movimento anticlerical. Palavras-chave: Constituição de 1917; Anticlericalismo; Revolução mexicana Anticlericalism, a revolutionary and masculine distinction: the debates in the Constitutional Convention in Querétaro (1916-1917) Abstract: Between 1916 and 1917, Mexican revolutionaries gathered in Querétaro to decide the directions of the new regime created after the Mexican Revolution. One of the most important aspects emanating from the constitutional text was the limitation of the Catholic clergy action in Mexican society. Deputies justified the anticlerical provisions resorting to different arguments: from the clergy alliance to the powerful classes, to their diffuse influence in Mexican society through education and confession. I argue that, in the course of the constituent debates, confrontation with churchmen has become one of the elements of revolutionary distinction. Thus, attacking the clergy was part of the building of speaker's legitimacy as a revolutionary man and of the revolution as an anticlerical movement.

Who was the “Mysterious Sofía,” whose letter in November 1934 was sent from Washington DC to Mexico City and intercepted by the Mexican Secret Service? In The Mysterious Sofía Stephen J. C. Andes uses the remarkable story of Sofía del Valle to tell the history of Catholicism’s global shift from north to south and the importance of women to Catholic survival and change over the course of the twentieth century. As a devout Catholic single woman, neither nun nor mother, del Valle resisted religious persecution in an era of Mexican revolutionary upheaval, became a labor activist in a time of class conflict, founded an educational movement, toured the United States as a public lecturer, and raised money for Catholic ministries—all in an age dominated by economic depression, gender prejudice, and racial discrimination. The rise of the Global South marked a new power dynamic within the Church as Latin America moved from the margins of activism to the vanguard.

Del Valle’s life and the stories of those she met along the way illustrate the shared pious practices, gender norms, and organizational networks that linked activists across national borders. Told through the eyes of a little-known laywoman from Mexico, Andes shows how women journeyed from the pews into the heart of the modern world.

Who was the “Mysterious Sofía,” whose letter in November 1934 was sent from Washington DC to Mexico City and intercepted by the Mexican Secret Service? In The Mysterious Sofía Stephen J. C. Andes uses the remarkable story of Sofía del Valle to tell the history of Catholicism’s global shift from north to south and the importance of women to Catholic survival and change over the course of the twentieth century. As a devout Catholic single woman, neither nun nor mother, del Valle resisted religious persecution in an era of Mexican revolutionary upheaval, became a labor activist in a time of class conflict, founded an educational movement, toured the United States as a public lecturer, and raised money for Catholic ministries—all in an age dominated by economic depression, gender prejudice, and racial discrimination. The rise of the Global South marked a new power dynamic within the Church as Latin America moved from the margins of activism to the vanguard. Del Valle’s life and the stories of those she met along the way illustrate the shared pious practices, gender norms, and organizational networks that linked activists across national borders. Told through the eyes of a little-known laywoman from Mexico, Andes shows how women journeyed from the pews into the heart of the modern world.

"The conflict between the secular Mexican state and the Catholic Church, which reached its heights with the Cristero war of 1926-1929, remains one of the least known chapters of Achille Ratti’s pontificate. Nevertheless, the conflict is of particular interest in an effort to identify certain underlying tendencies of Vatican politics at the time, with particular reference to the magisterium of the Pope and the Holy See’s concrete actions in defending the libertas Ecclesiae. The opening, in september 2006, of the Roman archival sources relative to the pontificate of Pius XI offered an exclusive opportunity to shed light on some unknown elements of the religious conflict in Revolutionary Mexico; newly consultable sources such as those contained in the Archive of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu allow for a precise and detailed reconstruction of the events surrounding the turning points of the conflict – i.e., the suspension of public worship in July 1926 and the peace agreement in June 1929 (known as the arreglos).

Le conflit entre Etat et Eglise dans le Mexique révolutionnaire – notamment pendant les années de la guerre des Cristeros, le dramatique conflit qui a vu l'armée mexicaine s'opposer à plusieurs milliers de catholiques – a été objet d'un grand nombre d'études à partir de la fin des années 1950. Parmi cette ample production historiographique, le rôle de premier plan joué par le Saint-Siège dans les événements de l'Eglise mexicaine a été initialement reconstruit à partir des sources diplomatiques mexicaines et américaines. Cela a sans doute permis de jeter une lumière sur quelques-uns des choix adoptés à Rome afin de trouver une résolution au conflit. Mais, en même temps, il n'a pas permis d'investiguer à fond les mécanismes à la base de leur adoption. L'ouverture des fonds d'archives vaticanes relatifs au pontificat d'Achille Ratti (Pie IX, 1922-1939) permet aujourd'hui de combler cette lacune et de fournir une reconstruction plus détaillée de ce tournant historique.

Der Kampf zwischen der kirchenfeindlichen Mexikanischen Regierung und der Katholischen Kirche, der seinen Höhepunkt während des Cristero Kriegs (1926-1929) erreichte, stellt eine der wichtigsten-, aber auch weniger bekannten Kapitel der Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Heute erlauben die das Pontifikat von Pius XI. betreffenden vatikanischen Quellen, das Verhalten der in diese Frage verwickelten Figuren – in Mexiko sowie in der römischen Kurie – aufzuklären. Insbesondere erweisen sich die im Archiv von Außerordentlichen Kirchlichen Angelegenheiten aufbewahrten Akte als erschöpfend in Bezug auf die vom Papst und seinem Staatssekretär getroffenen Entscheidungen und auf die schwierigen Beziehungen zwischen dem Heiligen Stuhl und dem Mexikanischen Episkopat.

Il conflitto tra Stato e Chiesa nel Messico rivoluzionario, in particolare negli anni della cosiddetta guerra cristera o Cristiada – il drammatico scontro armato che dal 1926 al 1929 ha visto opporsi all’esercito federale messicano alcune decine di migliaia di cattolici – è diventato a partire dalla fine degli anni Cinquanta oggetto di una significativa letteratura scientifica. All’interno di questa produzione storiografica il decisivo ruolo giocato dalla Santa Sede nelle complesse vicende della Chiesa messicana è stato inizialmente ricostruito sulla base delle fonti diplomatiche ed ecclesiastiche messicane e statunitensi, che se da una parte hanno permesso di fare luce su alcune decisioni prese a Roma per risolvere il conflitto messicano, dall'altra non hanno consentito di indagare il complesso iter che le ha precedute. L'apertura dei fondi archivistici vaticani sul pontificato di Achille Ratti (Pio XI, 1922-1939) rende ora possibile colmare quella che rimane ancora forse la principale lacuna negli studi sull’argomento."

En el apartado siguiente, analizo brevemente su figura, representada por cuatro historiadores norteamericanos. Luego la contrasto con mi recuento de las acciones de Burke y su papel durante el conflicto cristero. Para concluir, presento varias reflexiones historiográficas.