Religion and Anticlericalism in Revolutionary-Era Mexico, 1910-40

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel brings together junior and senior scholars from Mexico, the UK, and the US to examine overlooked aspects of Church-state conflicts during Mexico’s “long revolution.” The revolutionary state targeted “fanatical” (backwards, superstitious, unpatriotic) religious beliefs and practices during three waves of anticlericalism: 1914-17, 1925-28, and 1931-38. Catholic ideology, organizations and at times leaders (both lay and clerical) resisted state formation- not just cultural reforms but also unionization, agrarian reform, and mobilization of women and youth. Tamayo reveals how an apparently secular business lobby allowed Catholics to frustrate revolutionary schooling in Monterrey. Similarly, O’Brien explores how revolutionary eugenicist policies triggered strong Catholic responses in Veracruz. Conflicts such as these profoundly remade Mexico’s spiritual landscape, transforming Catholicism in a number of ways, for instance the creation of the Misioneros del Espíritu Santo analyzed here by Gómez Villanueva. Revolutionary-era struggles over the “religious question” also encouraged alternative belief systems: Matthew Butler’s paper explores the success of separatist Catholics in exploiting opportunities offered by the Church-state conflict to create a national Catholic church. Fallaw’s presentation explains why such aperturas were few and far between by parsing the Constitutionalist “revolutionary laboratories” general inability to reach out to intellectuals, workers, women and separatist Catholics.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Session Organizer

• Ben W Fallaw, Colby College

Chair

• Margaret Chowning, University of California/Berkeley

Discussant

• Margaret Chowning, University of California/Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• “La Labor de Atracción”: Intellectuals, Workers, Women, and Separatist Catholics in Regional Revolutionary Laboratories, 1914-1917 - Ben W Fallaw, Colby College

• Un combate a la secularización en México: el proyecto religioso de los misioneros del Espíritu Santo (1914-1940) - Mariana Gómez Villanueva, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)

• All the Patriarch's Men: Revolutionary Priests in Mexico, 1920-1940 - Matthew Butler, University of Texas at Austin

• “The spiritual campaign for Mexico’s [unborn] children”: Eugenic Sterilization and the Catholic Response in Veracruz, Mexico (1932-1934) - Elizabeth A OBrien, University of Texas/Austin

• "El hombre que siembra colabora con la obra de Dios" : Catholic Businessmen and Civic Associations in Anticlerical Mexico, 1930-1960 - David Tamayo, Santa Clara University