Adrián Bantjes - Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico The De-Christianization Campaigns 1929-1940 PDF

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States
Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929-

1940
Author(s): Adrian A. Bantjes
Source: Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 87-120
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for Mexico
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Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico:
The De-Christianltation Campaigns, 1929-1940*
Adrian A. Bantjes
University of Wyoming
Este ensayo analiza la llamadacampania desfanatizante de los aiios

trienta desde la perspectiva del Estado revolucionario. Su objetivo
era la creaci6n de "gente nueva" y de una religion civil revolu-
cionaria. Sin embargo, este intento violento fracas6 por la resisten-
cia tenaz de los cat6licos mexicanos.
Uno, dos, no hay Dios

-Mexican school chant, 1930s'
Nuestro populacho... cree mds a unfraile en el pulpito, aunque diga
herefias, que al patriota mds elocuente
-Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi, 18272
On June 30, 1929, church bells pealed throughout Mexico to

celebrate the resumption of Catholic services. President Emilio
Portes Gil and Archbishop Ruiz y Flores had reached an agreement
*Iwould like to thankthe studentsin my seminar,"Cultureand Revolution,"at
the Universityof Wyomingfor their enlightenment,and the University'sCollege of
Artsand Sciences and HistoryDepartmentfor theirgenerousresearchsupport.Com-
mentatorsand panel membersat the 1992 LASAmeeting and the 1995 meeting of
the CanadianHistoricalAssociationprovidedhelpfulcommentson earlierversions.
1. Quoted in J. LloydMecham,Churchand State in LatinAmerica:A History
of Politico-EcclestasticalRelations (ChapelHill:Universityof NorthCarolinaPress,
1966), 409.2. Quoted in FernandoEscalanteGonzalbo,Cludadanos imaginarios.
Memorial de los afanesy desventurasde la virtudy apologfa del vitco trtunfante
en la repabltca mexicana: Tratadode moralpublica (Mexico:El Colegio de Mex-
ico, 1992), 142.
2. Quoted in FernandoEscalanteGonzalbo,Ciudadanos imaginarios. Memo-
rial de los afanesy desventuras de la virtudy apologia del viclo triunfante en la
repablica mexicana: Tratado de moral piblica (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico,
1992), 142.
Mexican Studies/EstudiosMexicanos 13(1), Winter 1997. ? 1997 Regentsof the Universityof California.
87
88 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
which put an end to the bloody Cristero rebellion. Mexicans were

optimistic about the chances for permanent peace. The national
daily Excelsior stated that a "new era of tolerance" had dawned in
Mexico: "The past, with all its misfortunes, is finally over... What
was known as 'the religious conflict' doesn't exist anymore."3These
optimistic reactions were, however, rather premature. True, the
worst of the Cristiada (1926-29), a savage guerilla war waged by
Catholic peasants against the Federal Army, had come to an end.
But the government crusade against the Roman Catholic Church
continued. Although generally less violent than in the past, at times
it was manifested in extremist fashion.
Between 1930 and 1936 the Mexican revolutionary elite initi-
ated a veritable cultural revolution, which formed an integral part
of the wider social revolution. In the wake of the armed phase of
the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) it sought to destroy tradi-
tional culture and create a modern society. Backwardness and reli-
gious "fanaticism"were to be eradicated by the use of cultural tools
such as iconoclasm, the substitution of revolutionary festivals for
Catholic rites, and the molding of the revolutionary youth and citi-
zenry through education, popular theater, and art. The ultimate goal
was to forge "new men" and a new, revolutionary, civil religion.4
This conflictive episode in Mexican history is another chapter
in the history of Western secularization-part of the persistent
3. Excelsior 22 June 1929.

4. Forculturalaspects of the revolutionsee AlanKnight,"PopularCultureand
the RevolutionaryState in Mexico, 1910-1940,"Hispanic American Historical Re-
view 74,3 (August1994): 393-444; Ilene V.O'Malley,The Myth of the Revolution.
Hero Cults and the Institutionalization of the Mexican State, 1920-1940 (New
York:GreenwoodPress, 1986);Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance:Public Cele-
brations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. WilliamH. Beezley,Cheryl English
Martin,and WilliamE. French(Wllmington,DE:ScholarlyResourcesBooks, 1994);
Everyday Forms of State Formation. Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in
ModernMexico,ed. GilbertM.Josephand DanielNugent(Durham:DukeUniversity
Press, 1994); Regionalstudies includethe pathbreakingwork of CarlosMartinezAs-
sad, El laboratorio de la revoluci6n. El Tabascogarridista (Mexico: Siglo XXI,
1979); MarjorieBecker,"IazaroCardenasand the MexicanCounter-Revolution: The
Struggleover Culturein Michoacan,1934-1940; (Ph.D.diss., YaleUniversity,1988)
and her Setting the Virginon Fire:L4zaro C4rdenas,Michoac4nPeasants,and the
Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress,
1995), which assumes a more moderateposition; MaryKayVaughan,"Actuacl6n
politica del magisteriosocialistaen Pueblay Sonora(1934-1939); Crfttca.Revista
Trimestral de la Universidad Aut6noma de Puebla (Julio-Diciembre 1987):
90-100, and her CulturalPoliticsin Revolution:Teachers,Peasants,and Schoolsin
Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson:Universityof ArizonaPress,forthcoming);AdrianA.
Bantjes,"Politics,Classand Culturein Post-Revolutionary Mexico. Cardenismoand
Sonora, 1929-1940;' (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Texas,Austin,1991) and As If Jesus
Walkedon Earth:Cardenismoand the PoliticalCultureof the Mexican Revolution
in Sonora, 1929-1940 (Wllmington,DE:ScholarlyResourcesBooks, 1997).
Bantjes: The De-Christianization Campaigns 89
effort to establish a new religion of humanity, a cult of man and so-

ciety, not God. Rooted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolu-
tion, this process has been an essential component of most modern
revolutions: Impatient elites, eager to quicken the pace of history,
have used violence to impose modernist utopian blueprints and to
forge a civil religion of humanity. Catholic historian Christopher
Dawson writes that the French Revolution gave rise to
a realreligion... which aspiredto take the place of Christianityas the creed
of a new age. [This]was a religionof humansalvation,the salvationof the
world by the power of man set free by Reason. The Cross had been re-
placed by the Tree of Liberty,the Graceof God by the Reasonof Man,and
Redemptionby Revolution.5
Modernity in this context can be defined, following Daniel Bell,
as "the inchoate Promothean [sic] aspiration, now made flesh, of
men to transform nature and transform themselves: to make man
the master of change and the redesigner of the world to conscious
plan and purpose."6 Or, as Jean Baudrillardputs it, modernity
is a characteristic mode of civilization, which opposes itself to tradi-
tion, that is to say, to all other anterior or traditional cultures: con-
fronting the geographic and symbolic diversity of the latter, modernity
imposes itself throughout the world as a homogeneous unity, irradiating
from the Occident.7
The Enlightenment project of modernity and reason has come
under attack by postmodernists like Michel Foucault, who have
strongly criticized utopian efforts to homogenize and "normalize"
individuals through discourse, ritual, and the construction of new
identities. Instead of liberating man, humanism resulted in state
projects to control and dominate the masses.8 This critique of
modernity lends a useful perspective from which to approach the
problem of religion during the Mexican Revolution. Traditional ap-
proaches to the study of modern revolutions, including the Mexi-
can Revolution, have emphasized structural factors. I believe it is
time to bring back culture and ideology into our analysis and to
broaden existing definitions of revolution.9
5. ChristopherDawson, Th7eGods of Revolution (New York:New YorkUni-
versity Press, 1972), 58, 74-5.
6. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in
the Fifties, 2d ed. (Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1988), 436.
7. Jean Baudrillard, ForgetFoucault (New York:Semiotext(e), 1987), 63.
8. See, for example, MichelFoucault,Discipline and Punish: TheBirth of the
Prison (New York:VintageBooks, 1979).
9. The classic structuralistapproachis ThedaSkocpol'sStates and Social Rev-
olutions. A ComparativeAnalysis of France,Russia, and China (Cambridge:Cam-
bridge UniversityPress, 1979). Foran overview see MichaelS. Kimmel,Revolution:
A Sociological Interpretation(Philadelphia:TempleUniversityPress, 1990).
90 MexicanStudies/EstudiosMexicanos
William H. Sewell Jr., in a critique of structuralist approaches to

revolution, has argued that modern revolutionaries sought
to restructuresociety from top to bottom and across the board.Indeed, I
would insist that this totalityof revolutionaryambitionbe includedas part
of any meaningfuldefinitionof "socialrevolution." The French,Russian,and
Chinese Revolutionswere "social"[I would argue, "cultural"]not only be-
cause they included revolts from below and resultedin majorchanges in
the class structure,but because they attemptedto transformthe entiretyof
people's social lives-their work, their religiousbeliefs and practice, their
families,their legal systems, their patternsof sociability,even their experi-
ences of space and time.10
Theda Skocpol has agreed that there is a "metaphysical" aspect
to modern revolutions. However, she qualifies the Mexican Revolu-
tion as a "nonmetaphysical" revolution, and argues that Mexico
never witnessed the type of "moralistic efforts to remake all of so-
cial life" which, she concedes, were more evident in Russia and
France.1 However, a new spate of cultural histories demonstrates
that the Mexican Revolution did have a strong metaphysical or, bet-
ter, cultural, component. A comparative approach may be useful in
placing Mexican history within the broader context of modern his-
tory, and so I will venture some limited comparisons between the
Mexican and the French and Russian revolutions. I conclude that
De-Christianization in Mexico was related ultimately to the revolu-
tionary attempt to forge a new culture.
This study examines one essential component of the Mexican
revolutionary cultural project, the so-called de-fanaticization cam-
paigns of the 1930s. Why did Mexico's revolutionary elite embark
on a violent anti-religious campaign that put the entire revolution-
ary project at risk? There was more to it than an effort to under-
mine the political and economic power of the Catholic Church. A
revolutionary creed and ritual could not be established without the
elimination of competing belief systems, symbols, and rites and the
subsequent "transfer of sacrality,"as Mona Ozouf calls it, to a new,
revolutionary civil religion.12
Below I discuss the ideology of anticlericalism, as well as the
cultural tools employed to win the hearts and minds of the Mexican
masses. De-Christianization was ultimately a miserable failure: The
10. William H. Sewell Jr., "Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on

the French Case, The Journal of Modern History 57,1 (1985): 76-77.
11. Theda Skocpol, "CulturalIdioms and Political Ideologies in the Revolution-
ary Reconstruction of State Power: A Rejoinder to Sewell, The Journal of Modern
History 57,1 (1985): 94-5.
12. Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1988).
campaign forged no new de-fanaticized Mexican citizen.13 This

does not mean that the entire cultural project was a failure, how-
ever. Certain aspects had a lasting legacy. A new patriotism and cul-
tural nationalism, propagated by the revolutionary state, took root
in the Mexican consciousness. (They have begun to wane only in
the neo-liberal Mexico of the 1980s and 1990s.)14 However, largely
in response to widespread popular opposition in the form of peti-
tions, civil disobedience, school boycotts, riots and armed resis-
tance, the revolutionary civic cult was purged during the 1930s and
1940s of its strongly anticlerical and anti-religious content. Mexi-
cans were quite selective in their acceptance of the revolutionary
cultural project, and they changed its agenda profoundly.
This article addresses questions raised in the debate on post-
revolutionary hegemony and the relationship between 'popular'
culture (or, better, local cultures) and 'official' state culture.15 Obvi-
ously, the relationship between a relatively weak state and a "recal-
citrant people," which resulted in the emergence of a new Mexican
political culture, was interactive. 6 However, portrayal of this histori-
cal process as negotiation or bargaining between an inclusionary,
flexible and malleable state and local cultures underestimates the
violence and intrusiveness of the revolutionary cultural project.17
13. On church and state relations,religion,and anticlericalismsee JeanMeyer,
La Cristiada, 6th ed., 3 vols. (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980); Lyle Brown, "Mexican
Church-StateRelations,1933-1940,"A Journal of Churchand State vol. 7 (1964):
202-22; JesuisTapiaSantamaria,Campo religiosoy evoluci6n polftica en el Bajfo
zamorano (Zamora:El Coleglo de Mlchoacan,1986); MartaelenaNegrete, Rela-
clones entre la iglesia y el estado en Mexico 1930-1940 (Mexico:El Colegio de
Mexlco, 1988); SalvadorCamachoSandoval,Controverstaeducativa entre la ide-
ologfa y la fe: La educaci6n socialista en la historia de Aguascalientes,
1876-1940 (Mexico: Consejo Nacionalparala Culturay las Artes, 1991); Roberto
Blancarte, Historia de la iglesia cat6lica en Mextco (Mexico: El Colegio Mex-
iquense, Fondode CulturaEcon6mica,1992);AdrianA. BantjesAr6stegui,"Religi6n
y revoluci6nen Mexico, 1929-1940, Boletfn.FideicomisoArchivosPlutarco Elfas
Callesy Fernando Torreblanca15 (1994).
14. MaryKayVaughan,"TheConstructionof the PatrioticFestivalin Central
Mexico:Tecamachalco,Puebla, 1900-1946" in Rituals of Rule, ed. Beezley,Martin,
and French,213-45.
15. See GilbertM.Joseph and DanielNugent, "PopularCultureand StateFor-
mationin RevolutionaryMexico,"in EverydayForms,ed. Joseph and Nugent,3-23;
On the nineteenth-century,see FlorenciaMallon,Peasant and Nation: TheMaking
of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1995).
16. Alan Knight, "RevolutionaryProject,RecalcitrantPeople: Mexico, 1910-
1940;' in The Revolutionary Process in Mexico:Essays on Political and Social
Change 1880-1940, JaimeE. RodriguezO. (LosAngeles,Irvine:UCLALatinAmeri-
can CenterPublications,Universityof California,LosAngeles,Mexico/ChicanoPro-
gram,Universityof California,Irvine, 1990), 227-64.
17. Vaughan,"TheConstruction,"228, 233; Becker,Settingthe Virginon Fire,
116, 132, 160. Becker'searlierwork, on the other hand,tends to overemphasizethe
culturalauthoritarianismof the revolutionarystate. See her "LazaroCardenas."
One must not forget that the state's resources were significant and
that the pervasive de-fanaticization campaign of the 1930s consti-
tuted a serious threat to the ontological security of millions of
Mexicans.
This article seeks to demonstrate that the orgy of saint burning
in Tabasco (well described by Carlos Martinez Assad), for example,
was hardly an exceptional case of Jacobinism gone out-of-control
but part of a carefully orchestrated national project. "Quiet"regions
like Puebla and San Luis Potosi-Puebla saw its outbursts of Cris-
tero violence, too-where a sensitive cultural dialogue is said to
have taken place, were the exception.18 Although other aspects of
Mexico's cultural revolution may be interpreted correctly as part of
an interactive process, one should describe the de-fanaticization
campaign of the 1930s as a "top-down imposition."19
As Alan Knight points out, we need to understand, not merely
criticize, the positions of both anticlericals and their Catholic oppo-
nents.20 Why did the revolutionary elite initiate a fierce, nationwide
de-Christianization campaign? Did the religious conflict merely
mask socioeconomic interests, representing yet another aspect of
Mexico's rural class warfare? Was it an attempt to break the culture
of "piety and property" that, according to Marjorie Becker, enabled
landowners and the clergy to dominate a submissive peasantry?21
Did it primarily reflect political motivations-an effort by the revo-
lutionary state to impose its will on resistant local communities, an
attack on political enemies, or a Machiavellian ploy by Callista
diehards to destabilize the youthful Cardenas administration?22
Obviously, such factors were often closely intertwined with de-
fanaticization. But Becker's portrayal of Cardenismo as an attempt
to reconstruct everyday campesino habits, customs, and beliefs
seems a more convincing explanation.23 Why else launch a crusade
that would penetrate into the remotest regions of Mexico and into
millions of Mexican households? The de-Christianization campaigns
18. Vaughan, "The Construction." On violence in Puebla see, for example,

David L. Raby, Educaci6n y revoluci6n social en Mexico (1921-1940) (Mexico:
Secretaria de Educaci6n Pfiblica, 1974) 158-159.
19. The term is from Knight, "Popular Culture,"401.
20. Ibid., 416.
21. Raby, Educact6n y revoluci6n social en Mexico, 149, 158, 164, 196-7;
Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire, 9, 39.
22. Ram6n Jrade, "Counterrevolution in Mexico: The Cristero Movement in
Sociological and Historical Perspective," (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1980);
Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 13; Meyer, La Cristiada, vol. 1, 362.
23. Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire. Meyer's classic La Cristiada places reli-
giosity at the center of the conflict.
must be interpreted as an integral part of the revolutionary elite's

utopian drive to create gente nueva and a new civil religion. In this
brave new Mexico there would be no place for fanaticism and
superstition.
The Ideology of De-Fanatici7ation

By the 1930s revolutionary anticlericalism consisted of an amal-
gam of distinct but interrelated discourses. The ideology of de-
fanaticization sprang from various sources: radical nineteenth-
century liberalism, scientific positivism, Marxism, and even protes-
tantism.24 Revolutionary ideologues attacked Catholicism with
political, socioeconomic, scientific, and historical arguments. The
political elite of the 1930s believed that the Mexican Revolution
was a struggle for both the economic or material emancipation and
the spiritual liberation of the Mexican masses: "The task of eco-
nomic emancipation will not be completed until spiritual emanci-
pation has been attained."25The goal of the armed struggle was not
only to break the political power of the Porfirian elite and to end
the economic exploitation of the masses, but also to create the rev-
olutionary "new man," free of superstition, fanaticism, prejudice,
and idolatry.
This argument's underlying assumption was that the Mexican
masses-the vulgo as they frequently were called-were ignorant:
"our people lack intelligence and thus believe that they are doing
their duty by frequenting a Roman Catholic shrine to pray."26This
24. On church and state relations see Mecham, Church and State, and
SoledadLoaeza-Lajous, "Continuityand Changein the MexicanCatholicChurch,"in
Churchand Politics in LatinAmerica, ed. DermotKeough(New York:St. Martin's
Press, 1990), 272-98. On anticlericalism,see CharlesA. Hale,Mexican Liberalism
in the Age of Mora, 1821-1853 (New Haven:Yale UniversityPress, 1968), 35-7,
125-41, 160-75; Jean Meyer,"Elanticlericalrevolucionario,1910-1940. Un ensayo
de empatia historica, in Lasformas y las polfticas del dominio agrario. Home-
naje a Franfois Chevalier,ed. RicardoAvilaPalafox,CarlosMartinezAssad, and
Jean Meyer (Guadalajara:Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara,1992), 286-8;
Franqois-Xavier Guerra,Mexico:del antiguo regimen a la revoluct6n,vol. 2 (Mex-
ico: Fondo de CulturaEcon6mica, 1988), 339; MartinezAssad, El laboratorio,
15-28, Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire, 45-8, 64-6; On Protestantism see:
Jean-PierreBastian,Los disidentes: sociedades protestantesy revoluci6n en Mex-
ico, 1872-1912 (Mexico:El Colegio de Mexico, 1989).
25. AnatolloG. Bautista,"Lasmujeresrojasde Michoacan," El Maestro Rural
5, 12 (15 December 1934): 22.
26. Cartel "MedallonesRepublicanos,"Agua Prieta,Sonora,28 August 1934,
Fondo Lazaro Cardenas, exp. 533.3/48, Archivo General de la Naci6n (AGN);
Knight, "PopularCulture,"404; For Cardenas'sopinion, see Becker,"LazaroCarde-
nas,"296.
condescension towards popular culture, already evident in the

works of nineteenth-century writers like Jose Joaquin Fernandez de
Lizardi and Jose Maria Luis Mora, was also common among revolu-
tionary elites in France and Russia. "The people" were often com-
pared to children who needed to be educated and to grow up.27
Women, Indians, and children were considered particularly vul-
nerable to the "intoxication of fanaticism."28This is an ancient no-
tion that dates as far back as early Christendom. According to David
Freedberg, male intellectuals, whether Christian or not, have al-
ways considered women, children, and the illiterate peasantry
more susceptible to the sensuous seduction of idolatry:
[M]admen,women, children, and less educated people generally (espe-
ciallythe primitiveand illiterate)... areall more susceptibleto the base and
easy charms of images, to their power and seductiveness... Only women
and ordinaryfolk are seduced by cheap beauty(vulgarcolors, adornments,
fripperies,and the overly emotional aspects of representationin general),
not mature male beholders... It is only these groups who use images as
books and who are more likelyto lingerlongerbecause they cannot readat
all, or because they trust more to the susceptible sense of the eyes-the
one faculty... that providesthe straightestchannelto the lower senses and
rouses them.29
Many revolutionary educators regarded the indigenous popula-

tion of Mexico as fanatic, melancholic, and alcoholic, and in need
of "reinvention."30Tabasco cacique Tomas Garrido Canabal stated
that "the cassocked vultures have seized their prey, digging their
talons into the heart of the Indian, who is less prepared than any
other race to resist the seduction of the whole ritual farse."31How-
27. Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos tmaginarios, 142; Ozouf, Festivals,

222.
28. Resp. Log.'Simb.'"Independencia"No. 250. -Or.Guanajuato.Ponencia
parael XIICongresoMasonicoque se celebraraen el Or.'de Torre6n,Coaj.[sic], 10
December 1936, Fondo Direcci6n General de Gobierno (DGG) 2.347, exp. 10,
AGN.
29. David Freedberg,The Power of Images:Studies in the History and The-
ory of Response(Chicago:Universityof ChicagoPress, 1989), 424.
30. Inspector FederalGuillermo Castillo,Tezuitlan,Puebla, to Director de
Educaci6n Federal,21 January1936, Fondo Direcci6n Generalde Educaci6nPri-
maria(FDGEP),316.9, ArchivoHist6rico,Secretariade Educaci6nPiblica (AHSEP);
InformeInspectorFederalQuintanaRoo, 11 January1936, FDGEP,316.12, AHSEP;
See Alan Knight, "Racism,Revolution,and Indtgenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940" in
The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, ed. RichardGraham(Austin:Uni-
versity of Texas Press, 1990), 71-113. On Cardenista efforts to restructurethe
Tarascans,see Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire,75, ch. 6.
31. Tomas Garrido Canabal,Manifiesto a los obreros organizados de la
repablicay al elemento revolucionario (Villahermosa,Tabasco,1925), 9-10.
ever, the revolutionary elite was often reluctant to inflame the reli-
gious sensibilities of indigenous peoples, like Michoacan's Taras-
cans or Sonora's Yaquis.32 Women in particular were depicted as
victims of the clergy. Francisco J. Muigica,one of the foremost ideo-
logues of the Revolution, considered that the "weight of religious
ideas" had converted the Mexican woman into "a being of almost
no economic or social importance."33 Revolutionary attitudes also
reflected primordial male sexual fears that women might be seduced
by priests in the confessional: Confession "is a corrupting ploy...
that benefits the wicked clandestine pleasures" of the priests.34
This disdain for the culture of the lower classes and women is a
common trait of many revolutionaries, however proletarian their
ideals might be. For example, in 1921 the Central Committee of the
Russian Communist Party opined that women were more easily in-
fluenced by religious ritual, clerical propaganda, and, of course,
confessors, due to their "political backwardness."35Religion did, in-
deed, have a strong hold on Mexican women, and this important
phenomenon requires more study. A possible explanation may be
offered by research on the French case. Suzanne Desan's work on
popular religion during the French Revolution concludes that reli-
gion "legitimated and even acclaimed the potential spiritual value
of those without earthly power" and "simultaneously provided
women with an earthly arena for collective activism, initiative, and
voice in the community at large."36Becker offers an analysis of the
Mexican revolutionary process as a "male-dominated enclave." Male
campesinos benefitted from revolutionary land reform. Women, on
the other hand, banned from the public arena and relegated to the
role of childbearers, "clung to their rosaries" and to a culture of
"purity and redemption" propagated by landed and clerical elites.
Anticlericalism, thus, was primarily a masculine endeavor.37
32. Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire, 110; Bantjes,"Politics,Classand Cul-

ture,"146.
33. El Nacional, 20 February1935.
34. Meyer,"Elanticlerical,"292-3; Discursodel gral.J. B. Vargasen Valparaiso,
volante, sin fecha, 1927 o 1928, Anexo I in: Meyer,"Elanticlerical,"
297.
35. Central Committee, RKP,"On Anti-religiousAgitation and Propaganda
AmongWomenWorkersand Peasants,"in Bolshevik Visions:FirstPhase of the Cul-
tural Revolution in Soviet Russia, ed. WilliamG. Rosenberg,part 1, (Ann Arbor:
Universityof MichiganPress, 1990), 244-5.
36. SuzanneDesan,Reclaimingthe Sacred LayReligionand PopularPoliticsin
RevolutonaryFrance(Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,1990),208;Fora genderedanaly-
and women'sreligionsee Marjorie
sis of anticlericalism Becker,"Torching LaPurisima,
Dancing at the Altar:The Constructionof RevolutionaryHegemonyin Michoacan,
1934-1940, in EverydayForms,ed. GilbertM.JosephandDanielNugent,247-64.
37. Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire, 19, 29, 48, 78, 114-5.
This is a plausible, but only partial explanation. It tends to

neglect the male, communal, and even ontological aspects of lo-
cal religion. It underemphasizes the importance for women of
religiosity and ritual as an alternative realm of spiritual, political,
and economic power.38 Instead, it perpetuates notions of "false
consciousness."
Most important was the battle for control of the mind of the
Mexican child, the citizen of the future. Revolutionaries com-
plained that the clergy had taken advantage of the youth's inno-
cence to control their minds.39 Plutarco Elias Calles, in his famous
1934 "Grito de Guadalajara,"called for the Mexican state to "take
control of the consciousness of the youth."40
How did the revolutionary elite explain this "fanaticism?"The
Mexican masses were obviously the victims of intoxication, conta-
gion or delusion. Revolutionaries considered religion a drug, "the
opium of the people," or a mental illness.41 The clergy had used re-
ligion to "deceive and submit the people for three centuries by
telling them to suffer for the love of God."42Catholic ritual was a se-
ductive trick designed to exploit ignorant peasants "hallucinated by
floats adorned with clouds, little angels, chalices and all the artifice
the clergy uses to cheat them out of their last penny."43
Radical liberalism, propagated by new sociWt6sde pens6e, the
carriers of modernity, constituted one of the roots of revolutionary
anticlericalism.44 Liberals turned to history in their attacks on the
38. See Luis E. Murillo, "Women and the Politics of Local Religious Practices in
Porfirian Mexico," (paper presented at the Joint Conference of the Rocky Mountain
Council for Latin American Studies and the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American
Studies, Santa Fe, NM, March 1996).
39. Ortega to Secretaria de Gobernaci6n (Sec. Gob.), 7 February 1935, Fondo
Secretaria General del Gobierno (FSGG), Secci6n Primera, Instrucci6n Publica,
Gobierno y Guerra, exp. 1.40(57)2, Archivo General del Gobierno del Estado de
Guanajuato (AGGEG).
40. Quoted in Adrian A. Banties, "Burning Saints, Molding Minds: Iconoclasm,
Civic Ritual and the Failed Cultural Revolution," in Rituals of Rule, ed. Beezley, Mar-
tin, and French, 265.
41. El Faro. Peri6dico Doctrinario, de Combate en Informaci6n. Organo de
la Liga Anticlerical y Antireligiosa Guzmanense (Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco), Afio 1,
no. 13, 30July 1933; Resp.' Log.' Simb.' "Independencia" Nim. 250. -Or. Guanajuato.
Ponencia para el XII Congreso Mas6nico que se celebrara en el Or.' de Torre6n,
Coaj. [sic], 10 December 1936, DGG 2.347, exp. 10, AGN.
42. El Tribunal del Pueblo (Los Angeles, CA), 14 September 1935.
43. Vecinos Morole6n, Guanajuato, to Sec. Gob., 31 December 1934, DGG
2.347, exp. 2.347(8)15257, AGN.
44. Jean-Pierre Bastian, "Introducci6n, in Protestantes, liberales y francma-
sones. Sociedades de ideas y modernidad en Amrtica Latina, siglo XIX, ed. Jean-
Pierre Bastian (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1990), 11.
Roman Catholic Church. They evoked the long struggle after the
Enlightenment between church and state in Mexico and elsewhere,
tracing it as far back as the the Bourbon reforms and the liberal
Reforma of the nineteenth-century, which had sought to ban the
clergy from nonspiritual affairs.45Throughout Mexican history the
clergy had supported "la reacci6n," whether in the form of the
Inquisition, Augustin de Iturbide's empire, or Victoriano Huerta's
infamous regime.46 This age-old battle against the forces of clerical-
ism had yet to be won. Morelos Governor J. Refugio Bustamante,
writing in 1934, lamented that
The clergy flourishesas well as ever... The spectacle that the fertileland of
EmilianoZapataoffers the revolutionaryconscience of the nation is truly
deplorable... It is time that we rid ourselvesof the men who have system-
aticallyretardedthe evolution of humanityby maintainingit submergedin
obscurantism.47
Traditional liberal anticlericalism meshed neatly with Marxist
theory, particularly fashionable among Mexican intellectuals and
politicians during the 1930s. Unfortunately, little is known of the in-
fluence of the Bolshevik Revolution on the Mexican revolutionary
elite. One may assume that it was significant. The architects of Mex-
ico's cultural policies were aware of the utopian experimentation of
Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoli Lunacharsky.Intellectu-
als and artists like Diego Rivera traveled to Russia to witness the
progress of the Bolshevik Revolution. No one less than Alexandra
Kollontai became Soviet ambassador to Mexico.48 Civics textbooks
published by the Education Ministry offered reading lists including
works by Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Bogdanov, Nikolai Bukharin,
Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels.49
Celso Flores Zamora, head of the Department of Rural Educa-
tion, saw the religious conflict as part of the larger problem of
social oppression and believed it could be solved only by class
struggle: "In the modern capitalist nations the foundation of reli-
gion is primarily social. Modern religion is firmly rooted in the
45. Emilio Portes Gil, "Lalucha secular de la iglesia contra el estado en Me-
xico, El MaestroRural 5, 12 (15 December 1934):6-7.
46. ComisariadoEjidalLomade Rodriguera,Culiacan,to Goberador Sinaloa,
24 October 1935, DGG 2.340, exp. 75.4, AGN;Interviewwith GilbertoEscobosa
Gimez, 21 May1992, Hermosillo.
47. GobemadorMorelos,J. RefugioBustamante,to DiputadosSecretariosdel
H. Congresodel Estado,13 August1934, DGG2.340, Caja20, exp. 9, AGN.
48. EnriqueKrauze,Reformar desde el origen. Plutarco E. Calles (Mexico:
Fondode CulturaEconomica,1987), 62.
49. Ctvismo.Lecturasde orientaci6n social (Mexico:ElNacional,1940).
social oppression of the working masses."50Revolutionary intellec-

tuals often compared the economic exploitation of the proletariat
by the bourgeoisie to the spiritual exploitation by the clergy. They
called the clergy a "class" or a "caste,"that "had always made a liv-
ing exploiting human stupidity,"exacting the tithe and high fees for
religious rites.51 Governor Adalberto Tejeda of Veracruz considered
the Roman Catholic Church "the most powerful capitalist enter-
prise in the world."52 In addition, Catholic peasants, deluded by
priests, wasted huge sums on frivolous fiestas and extravagant reli-
gious paraphernalia.53
Others used the discourse of science to decry Mexico's fanati-
cism. Only by exposing the ignorant masses to scientific knowledge
would religion be defeated. As Minister of Education Ignacio Garcia
Tellez stated,
the lack of confidence in human resourcefulness leads the oppressed
being. Theirstate of ig-
masses to expect everythingfroma supraterrestrial
norance keeps them from understanding the physical or chemical
processes that determinethe formationof the earth, the manifestationsof
flora and fauna, the naturalphenomena and social processes... and be-
cause they don't find any logical explanations because they ignore scientific
truths, as these have never been taught to them, they attribute occurrences
to the mysterious faculties of material or animated objects that they com-
prehend, thus falling into primitive states of idolatrous superstition.54
Thus revolutionary anticlericalism drew from a variety of sources.
But all agreed on the task ahead:
50. Celso Flores Zamora,Jefe Departamentode EnseiianzaRuraly Primaria

Forinea to Directorde Educaci6nFederal,Hermosillo,16 April1935, FondoDepar-
tamento de EnseiianzaRuraly PrimariaForanea(FDERPF), 249.7, AHSEP.
51. "Lastendencias de la candidatura"in Plutarco Elfas Calles.Pensamiento
polftico y social. Antologia (1913-1936), ed. CarlosMacias(Mexico: Fondo de
CulturaEcon6mica,1988), 122;El Faro.Peri6dicoDoctrinario, de Combateen In-
formaci6n. Organo de la Liga Anticlericaly Antireligiosa Guzmanense (Ciudad
Guzman,Jalisco),Aiio 1, no. 13, 30 July 1933;VecinosSanJer6nimoXayacatlanto
GobernadorPuebla, 20 March1943; Visitadorde Admininstraci6nEnriqueCastro
Ray6n,Pucbla, to SecretarioGeneralde Gobierno,8 June 1943, DGG 2.347, exp.
2.347(18)15884, AGN.
52. John B. Williman,La Iglesia y el Estado en Veracruz,1840-1940 (Mex-
ico: Secretariade Educaci6nPublica,1974), 92.
53. AlfonsoTerronesBenitez,Jefe Zona Ejidal,Tehuacan,to Agente Delegado
del DepartamentoAgrario,Puebla,LuisC. Rodriguez,31 January1934, DGG2.347,
exp. 2.347(18)15884, AGN;Resp. Log.'Simb' "Independencia" Nuim.250. -Or.Gua-
najuato.Ponenciaparael XIICongresoMas6nicoque se celebraraen el Or.'de Tor-
re6n, Coaj.[sic], 10 December 1936, DGG2.347, exp. 10, AGN.
54. Ignacio GarciaTellez, Socializact6n de la cultura. Seis meses de acci6n
educativa (Mexico:LaImpresora,1935), 237.
We will topple from their thrones not only the gods, but also the philoso-
phy and the trappingsof dogmas and lies that support them... Our first
task consists of sweeping fromthe mindof the people the piles of gods and
saints that so obstructthe awakeningof their spirit.55
Iconoclasm
The demise of fanaticism would be attained by a three step
process. First, a broad program of revolutionary iconoclasm aimed
at destroying religious beliefs, symbols, rituals and institutions
would be initiated. Then Catholicism would be replaced by a new,
revolutionary, civil religion via a "transfer of sacrality."Finally, the
tenets of this civil religion would be instilled in the young by means
of socialist education, and in adults by propaganda and civic ritual.
Revolutionary iconoclasm, the purging of society of all signs
and symbols related to the ancien regime, is an integral part of all
modern revolutions, during which symbols of royalty and religion
like fleurs-de-lis, coats of arms, statues, saints' images, crucifixes,
and church bells were purged from public space.56 As Freedberg
writes, "To pull down the images of a rejected order or an authori-
tarian and hated one is to wipe the slate clean and inaugurate the
promise of utopia."57However, more motivates iconoclasts than so-
ciopolitical and theological considerations. Freedberg stresses that
for both iconoclasts and iconodules, the image is fused with the
prototype, or at least infused with power by a sacred contagion.
The sign is assumed to be the signified. "The people who assail im-
ages do so in order to make clear that they are not afraid of them,
and thereby prove their fear." [The iconoclast] "feels he can some-
how diminish the power of the represented by destroying the rep-
resentation or by mutilating it."58As Ozouf argues, there is "fear
behind all the bravado."59
Iconoclasm took many forms in Mexico. The revolutionary elite
envisaged a new, secularized topography and, as in the French Rev-
olution, names of towns and barrios with religious connotations
were changed, often to the name of a revolutionary hero. San
Carlos, Tabasco, for example, became Epigmenio Antonio. San
55. Santiago Arias Navarro, Las misiones culturales. Reflexiones de un ml-

sionero (Mexico, 1934), 9.
56. Ozouf, Festivals, 225; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vi-
sion and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989), 64.
57. Freedberg, The Power of Images, 390.
58. Ibid., 392, 402, 406, 418.
59. Ozouf, Festivals, 93-4.
Jeronimo, Oaxaca became Ixtepec.60 In composite religious/secular

place names, the religious component often was dropped.61 Some
zealots proposed changing names of streets, shops and even buses
related to religion, such as La Guadalupana or La Fe.62 Even per-
sonal greetings with a religious meaning, such as adios, were out-
lawed in Tabasco.63
The sacred space of the Mexican village was to be secularized
as well. The village shrine was not just a space for religious gather-
ings but symbolized village pride, history, and identity.64 Now its
position was to be replaced by the rural school. Church buildings,
nationalized in 1935, generally were closed for organized worship
and often converted into school buildings, union headquarters, cul-
tural centers, government offices, or ejidal granaries.65Some either
were taken over by juntas vecinales of lay individuals, and left
open to private devotion, or were sealed altogether.66 In Sonora,
Sinaloa, Chiapas, Tabasco, and other states, no churches were per-
mitted to remain open.67 Many were destroyed. In Tabasco, Tomas
60. Horacio Lastra,Villahermosa,to President,30 August 1929, DGG 2.347.
exp. 65, 2.347(23)3; GobernadorTabascoto OficialMayorSec. Gob., 9 November
1928, DGG 2.347. exp. 66, 2.347(23)4, AGN;Redenci6n (Villahermosa),23 April
1935; MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 38; Williman,La Iglesia, 144-6; Stephen E.
Lewis, "NegotiatingStateand Nation:LocalResponsesto FederalSchoolingin Chia-
pas, Mexico, since 1921"(Ph.D.diss., Universityof California,SanDiego, forthcom-
ing), ch. 2.; EmmetKennedy,A CulturalHistory of the FrenchRevolution (New
Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1989), 339.
61. AdolfoMaldonado,SecretarioGeneralde GobiernoGuanajuatoto Inspec-
tores de Culto, 2 November 1934, exp. 1.40(57)43, FSGG,ler Departamento,Serie
Gobernaci6n,AGGEG.
62. EdmundoPeimbert,D.F, to Sec. Gob., 15 January1935, DGG2.340, Caja
114, exp. 9, AGN.
63. MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 198.
64. CompareWilliamA. ChristianJr., Person and God in a Spanish Valley
(Revisededition, Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1989).
65. See for example:DGG2.347, exp. 66, 2.347(23)4, AGN;DGG2.340, Caja
77, exps. 23, 31, AGN;Bautista,"Lasmujeresrojas,"22; "Temploscat6licos retira-
dos...en el estado de Sonora,"DGG 2.340, Caja 118, exp. 8, AGN; Mecham,
Churchand State, 408; Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire,81.
66. Informebimestral,agosto-septiembre1935, Inspector5a zona Queretaro,
AlvaroJ. Bass6A., FDERPF, 211.12, AHSEP; SubdirectorDireccl6nGeneralde Blenes
Nacionalizadosto Sec. Gob., 26 September1935, DGG2.340, Caja55, exp. 8, A(N;
LauraPatriciaRomero,"Dela religi6njacobinaal socialismo.Jalisco,todo un caso,"
in Religtosidady polfttca en Mexico ed. CarlosMartinezAssad(Mexico:Universi-
dad Iberoamericana,1992), 247; CamachoSandoval,Controversiaeducativa, 91.
67. SecretarioGeneral LigaAnti-Fanatica de Sinaloa,J. CarlosRuiz to Presi-
dent, 26 October 1934, DGG 2.340, exp. 75.1, AGN; Legislaci6n social y
econ6mica de Sonora durante elperfodo de gobierno del C RodolfoElfas Calles,
comprendi6ndose hasta noviembre de 1934 (Hermosillo:ImprentaCruz Galvez,
1934), 139-154; Lewis, "Negotiating;ch. 2.
Bantjes: The DeChristianization Campaigns 101
Garrido Canabal and his "savage hordes" torched the church of

Santa Cruz in Villahermosa, tore down several churches in Villa-
hermosa, including the cathedral, and demolished the towers of the
church of Cundacan.68 The school director of Teapa, obeying supe-
rior orders, set about to smash the baptismal fonts and altars of the
village churches of his district.69 In Sonora, the rural police burned
most of the Mayo Valley indigenous churches to the ground.70 In
Veracruz twenty churches were torched or dynamited.71
The sacred space was filled with religious symbols, in particular
crosses and saints' images, which needed to be purged as well.
Prior to the 1930s, acts of revolutionary iconoclasm were relatively
random. Now they were carried out in a systematic fashion by
many state governments, such as those of Sonora, Michoacan, Chia-
pas, and Tabasco.72 The Tabasco government outlawed crosses and
tombstones in cemetaries.73 The so-called Cruz del Perd6n on the
road from San Miguel de Allende to Atotonilco, Guanajuato, was
toppled from its pedestal and hacked to pieces by the local teacher,
causing "a real avalanche of cristeros and reactionaries."74Agraris-
tas in San Carlos de la Llave, Veracruz, called for the destruction of
several trees in which it was said the Virgin had miraculously ap-
peared, causing day and night vigils, "so that the deluded may grasp
the deception to which they have been subjected and don't allow
themselves to be fooled again."75
The predominant form of iconoclasm was the burning of saints'
images from churches, seminaries, Catholic schools, and private
homes. The dreaded quemasantos (saint burners) were active in
Sonora, Tabasco, Michoacan, Chiapas, the Federal District, Vera-
cruz, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, and elsewhere. Schoolteachers or
policemen conducted raids and collected and burned images pub-
licly on village plazas, often to the accompaniment of revolutionary
68. See DGG 2.347, exps. 64, 2.347(23)2; 66, 2.347(23)4, AGN;MartinezAs-
sad, El laboratorio, 45.
69. ArzobispoPascualDiaz to Subsec. Gob., 14 December 1929, DGG2.347,
exp. 66, 2.347(23)4.
70. Bantjes,"BurningSaints,"1-2.
71. Williman,La Iglesia, 131.
72. Raby,Educaci6n,162.
73. Fondo Conflicto Religioso 1927-1967, Carpeta 1/1. Memo. Senado,
Repfiblicade Chile, 1944? by Miguel CruchagaT, ArchivoHist6rico Condumex;
MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 38; Becker,"LazaroCardenas," 103-4; Lewis,"Nego-
tiating,"ch. 2.
74. Uni6n de MaestrosFederales,SanMiguelde Allende,to SecretarioGeneral
CMM,Guadalajara, 4 July 1932, DGG2.347, exp. 2.347(8)15244, AGN.
75. Comite ParticularAdministrativo,SanCarlosde la Llave,Veracruz,to Sec.
Gob., 26 March1927, DGG2.347, exp. 17, AGN.
hymns. On December 12, 1931, more than two thousand "fetishes"

were burnt in Jalpa, Tabasco alone. Widely venerated saints were
targeted, such as San Francisco Xavier in Sonora, Santa Teodora in
Veracruz, and La Purisima in Michoacan.76 Becker says that in
Michoacan, the images of saints sometimes were replaced with
those of revolutionary heroes like Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano
Carranza, and Alvaro Obreg6n.77
There existed considerable confusion over whether or not the
circulation of religious literature should be prohibited. Customs
officers and postal officials bombarded the Interior Ministry with
queries: Were they to allow works such as the Catecismo a la
Doctrina Cristiana and the Explicacion Literal del Catecismo de
Ripaldi to enter the country or to circulate by mail? They even
considered "holy cards" suspect.78 Lawyers consulted by the Inte-
rior Ministry agreed that the reformed Article 541 of the Ley de
Vias Generales de Comunicaci6n (Communications Law) only for-
bade the circulation of works considered immoral or fraudulent,
or offensive and denigrating to the nation, and recommended per-
mitting the circulation of religiously oriented publications.79 But
while Mexican law allowed for the free circulation of religious lit-
erature, in practice overzealous customs and postal officials were
responsible for a considerable degree of random anticlerical
censorship. Even though the Interior Ministry acknowledged the
legality of the circulation of religious pamphlets, it still found it
"opportune" to suppress certain cards relating to the execution of
the Padre Pro and Luis Segura Vilchis.80 This tendency was also
apparent in private and public schools and in the public libraries.
The Education Ministry forbade the use in schools of specified
76. For example: Grafica bimestral del aspecto social. Noviembre-Diciembre

de 1934, 7a zona Escolar Federal, Caborca, Sonora, FDERPF,Secci6n Inspecci6n Es-
colar Federal, 249.7, AHSEP; DGG 2.347, exps. 2.347(5)15175; 2.347(5)15180;
2.347(5)15171, AGN; Plan de Trabajos, Inspector la zona, Villahermosa, Tabasco,
Alvaro J. Basso A., 27 January 1935, FDERPF,211.8, AHSEP;Martinez Assad, El labo-
ratorio, 45, 49, 53; Williman, La Iglesia, 131-6; Lewis, "Negotiating," ch. 2; Cama-
cho Sandoval,Controversia educativa, 273; Becker,Setting the Virgin on Fire,
77-8; Bantjes, "Burning Saints,"268; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 48.
77. Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire,82.
78. Francisco Diaz Leal to Sec. Gob., 13 September 1933; Report Abogado
Consultor, 2 November 1933, DGG 2.347, exp. 2.347(22)16146; Director General
Oficina Tecnica Postal Internacional to Sec. Gob., 17 April 1935, DGG 2.340, Caja
114, exp. 17, AGN.
79. Subdirector Correos to Sec. Gob., 20 June 1935, DGG 2.340, exp. 17; Re-
port Abogado Consultor, 2 November 1933, DGG 2.347, exp. 2.347(22)16146,
AGN.
80. Esteban Garcia de Alba, Oficial Mayor Gobernaci6n to Secretario de I-la-
cienda y Credito Publico, 20 June 1936, DGG 2.340, Caja 114, exp. 17, AGN.
works, and warned teachers only to use authorized textbooks.81

Devotional literature often was removed from public libraries, as
it was considered a "revolutionary measure to take these works
away from the peasant and proletarian classes."82
From Catholic Rite to Civic Ritual:

Cultural Festivals and De-Fanaticitatlon
Cultural anthropologists and historians recently have given con-
siderable attention to rituals and the role they play in the creation
of social solidarity and political legitimacy, the conveyance of sa-
cred meanings concerning power relations, and the construction of
new political realities. In the realm of ritual, the Mexican revolu-
tionary elite, like its counterparts in France and Russia, sought to
suppress religious festivals and replace them with civic rituals,
whether "cultural Sundays" or "patriotic festivals."83These fulfilled
a function similar to the Festival of Reason, the fte d&cadaire, or
May Day. The revolutionary state undertook an "intelligent, dis-
creet, and well-conceived campaign to substitute the so-called reli-
gious festivals, according to the 'Nationalist Calendar' [compare
France's Republican Calendar] with festivals, celebrations, and cere-
monies of a Mexican social type."84 President Cardenas specified
that official holidays were not to coincide with religious festivals,
especially the "so-called Holy Week."85In Tabasco secular festivals,
such as the Fiesta of the Banana Flower, were celebrated in small
towns with the explicit purpose of replacing the festivals of patron
saints, thus "wounding the sentiments of the people."86 Similarly,in
81. Jefe Departamentode Ensenianza Primariay Normal,EfrenE. Mata,Circu-
lar No. II-37-105,23 June 1934, Fondo Departamentode Ensefanza Secundaria,
147.42, AHSEP;CircularII-109-222,24 August 1935, by Jefe Departamentode En-
seiianzaPrimariay Normal,FondoOficinade Publicacionesy Prensa(FOPP),264.6,
AHSEP.
82. Jefe Departamentode Bibliotecas,LuisChavezOrozco,to Directoresy En-
cargadosde las Bibliotecas,CircularNfim.VI-7-50,12 February1935, FOPP,264.12,
AHSEP;Document Dario Maiion hijo, Fondo AbelardoL. Rodriguez(FALR),exp.
514/4, AGN.
83. Compare Ozouf, Festivals, 95, 106; and Stites, Revolutionary Dreams,
110-11.
84. Circular Num. IV-17-124, Flores Zamora, 19 April 1935, FOPP,264.8,
AHSER
85. Flores Zamora to Director Educaci6n FederalTabasco, 9 March 1935,
FDERPF, Secci6n Inspecci6n EscolarFederal,249.42, AHSEP.
86. Vecinos San Carlos,Tabasco,to Sec. Gob., 30 August 1929; and to Presi-
dent, 5 September 1930; Presidentto Subsec. Gob., 2 September 1929; Horacio
Lastra,Villahermosa,to President,30 August 1929, CartelGranFeriade la Yuca,
DGG 2.347, exp. 65, 2.347(23)3; EugenioGonzalez,Teapa,to President, 10 Sep-
tember 1930, DGG2.347, exp. 66, 2.347(23)4, AGN.
Aguascalientes the domingos rojos (red Sundays) were designed to

compete with Sunday mass and saints' fiestas, while the school
calendar was to pay no attention to important religious holidays.87
In Michoacan the Confederaci6n Revolucionaria Michoacana del
Trabajo organized an agrarian congress on Holy Thursday and
staged sports events on Sundays, while a regional fair was held in
Villahermosa, Tabasco, during Holy Week.88
Religious processions, dances, pilgrimages, bell ringing, offer-
ings to the dead, and other forms of "external worship" were out-
lawed and stopped when possible. In Batuc, Sonora, rural teachers
even tried to halt funeral processions.89 Private assemblies of a reli-
gious nature also were forbidden. In Mexico City agents of the Inte-
rior Ministry were responsible for monitoring compliance with the
Ley de Cultos (Law of Public Worship).90 In the high sierra of
Sonora military officers checked whether illegal masses were being
held or saints' images worshipped in private homes.91 Throughout
the country policemen arrested individuals for holding private reli-
gious gatherings in their homes.92 The Mexican state, like all revo-
lutionary states, also tried to enhance its control over rites of pas-
sage. Attempts were made to instate socialist weddings and
baptisms, which might be compared with the Bolshevik "october-
ing" (christening), and "red weddings."93
Revolutionaries often have tried to replace existing religious
cults with state-dominated ones. In an effort to compete with the
Catholic Church, President Calles initially tried to create a schis-
matic, state-controlled Mexican Church, the Iglesia Catolica Apos-
t6lica Mexicana, similar, perhaps, in its symbolic value, to Robes-
pierre's Cult of the Supreme Being or, to a lesser extent, to
87. Camacho,Controversiaeducativa, 212-3, 246.

88. Tapia,Campo religioso, 210; MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 46; Becker,
Setting the Virginon Fire, 90.
89. Informe Inspector Miguel Villa, Texmelucan, Puebla, to Director Edu-
caci6n Federal,20 January1936, FDGEP,316.4; Album, 6a Zona Federalde Edu-
cacion, Cullacan, Sinaloa, 12 August 1936, FDGEP,318, AHSEP;Interview with
ErnestoL6pezYescas,Bacum,Sonora,24 May,1992.
90. Sec. Gob. to Jefe Departamentodel D.E, 23 April 1935, DGG2.340, Caja
117, exp. 3, AGN.
91. MayorReyes Orozco Villa, Granados,Sonora,to Comandantede la De
fensa Rural,Dolores Fuentes Gutierrez, Nacori, 25 April 1936, Archive Ernesto
L6pezYescas(AELY),Bacum,Sonora.
92. Rodolfo Elias Calles to Sec. Gob., 21 August 1933, DGG 2.347, exp.
2.347(22)16190; CarmelaAguilar,Comalcalco,Tabasco,to President, 22 August
1935, DGG2.347, exp. 2.347(23)16199;GobernadorChiapasto Sec. Gob., 26Janu-
ary 1934, DGG2.347, exp. 2.347(5)15173, AGN.
93. Knight,"PopularCulture,"412; Stites,RevolutionaryDreams, 111-3.
Lunacharsky's Godbuilding. However, these halfhearted attempts

were largely unsuccessful and soon abandoned.94
New civic festivals had a variety of goals, in particular the cre-
ation of a new revolutionary cult, or Mexican civil religion. But a
related and important secondary goal was to "perform plays, pre-
sentations, recitations, etc., aimed at enlightening the masses to
banish fanaticism, while at the same time trying to ridicule the
clergy"95 Revolutionary festivals (domingos culturales, domingos
rojos, ferias escolares, reuniones sociales, festivales, as they were
called), usually the responsibility of teachers and school inspectors
or of state and municipal Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR)
committees, often included anticlerical satire, antireligious lectures,
and the burning of fetishes. Even the pledge to the Mexican flag in-
cluded a clear anticlerical message: "I will fight the three powerful
enemies of our Fatherland, which are: the Clergy, Ignorance, and
Capital."96
Though many festivals were short-lived, especially those with a
strong anticlerical element, some new festivals managed to estab-
lish themselves as important conduits of the new, nationalist, civil
religion, especially revolution day on November 20, and the refur-
bished Cinco de Mayo celebrations.97 These were purged, however,
of anticlerical elements.
Anticlerical Legislation
Religious persecution and iconoclasm were not merely the
result of random revolutionary vandalism or an expression of exces-
sive Jacobin zeal. They were part of a cultural masterplan that suc-
cessive Mexican governments designed and implemented. In 1930
President Emilio Portes Gil decided to enforce full compliance of
Article 130 of the 1917 Constitution, which prohibited religious ed-
ucation and public displays of worship, required the registration of
94. Williman,La Iglesia, 135; MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 32-4.

95. Inspector InstructorTirso Garcia,VillaJuarez, Puebla, to Director Edu-
cacion FederalPuebla, 10 April 1935, FDERPF, Secci6n Inspecci6n EscolarFederal,
210.1, AHSEP.
96. Programaque se desarrollaridiariamenteen la EscuelaRuralFederalde la
Congregacionde Antonio Plaza,Municipiode Minatitlan,Veracruz..., 1 May 1935,
FDERPF, 208.8, AHSEP.
97. See two papers presented at the 9th Conferenceof Mexicanand North
AmericanHistorians,Mexico City,October 1994: Thomas Benjamin,"'AVigorous
Mexico Arising': Mexico's Twentieth of November Commemorations;"David E.
Lorey,"PatrioticFestivitiesand StateFormationin Post-Revolutionary Mexico:Cele-
brationsof RevolutionDay (November 20) in the 1920s and 1930s;"and Vaughan,
"TheConstructionof the PatrioticFestival."
priests, and limited the number of priests allowed to officiate.98

Pressure from above resulted in a rush by state governments to
limit dramatically numbers of priests and to forbid masses and other
religious practices in most churches and chapels. Mexican law did
not acknowledge the legal personality of religious associations.
Church property thus was not recognized and reverted to the
state.99 Most states already had implemented such legislation after
the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and reformed it in 1926.
But religious laws were tightened in 1932. More stringent limita-
tions were set on the number of authorized priests. According to
Jean Meyer, by 1935 all priests had been expelled from seventeen
states, especially in the north and the southeast, leaving only a few
central Mexican states like Jalisco, San Luis Potosi, and Morelos
with substantial numbers of clergy. Only 305 legally registered
priests were left in all of Mexico.1??
Most state laws on public worship stipulated that authorized
clergymen had to be Mexican nationals. Nonregistered priests
could be fined up to five hundred pesos and jailed for up to thirty-
five days for officiating illegally.101 Mayors were responsible for
registering priests and enforcing laws on religion. Those who ne-
glected these duties could be fined up to one thousand pesos and
lose their positions.102 Some state laws went further. In Garrido's
Tabasco, for example, priests not only were required to be Mexican
born, of good moral fiber, and educated in government schools, but
also were expected to get married.103The 1932 Ley de Cultos of
Michoacan, proposed by Governor Cardenas, stipulated that no
minister would be registered who had previously excercised a func-
98. CircularNum. 17, 11 April 1930, Emilio Portes Gil to Gobernadores,

DGG 2.340, Caja 20, exp. 1, AGN.
99. Procuraduria General de la Repuiblica, Nacionaltzacl6n de Bienes de
Asociaciones Religiosas. Interpretaci6n del Artfculo 27 de la Constituct6n y Leyes
Complementarias (Mexico, 1934), 6.
100. Jean Meyer, "La(segunda) cristlada en Mlchoacan," in La cultura purhe.
II Coloquto de antropologfa e historia regionales. Fuentes e btstorta ed. Francisco
Miranda (Zamora: El Coleglo de Mlchoacan, FONAPASde Michoacan, 1981), 251;
Jean Meyer, La cristiada, vol. 2, El conflicto entre la iglesia y el estado 1926-1929
(Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), 331. Priests were expelled entirely from Sonora, Baja
California, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatan,
Chiapas, Guerrero, Colima, Tlaxcala, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. Between one
and five were allowed in Coahuila, Durango, Nayarit, Queretaro, Hidalgo, Oaxaca,
and Aguascalientes.
101. Michoacan de Ocampo, Ley reglamentarla de cultos, 16 May 1932, DGG
2.340, Caja 20, exp.3, AGN.
102. DGG 2.340, AGN.
103. Garrido Canabal, Manifiesto a los obreros, 10-2.
tion within the Church hierarchy, such as archbishop or bishop, or

represented that hierarchy.104
The persistent influence of the jefe mdximo, Calles, was evi-
dent in many of the extreme anticlerical measures taken at the state
level. Sonoran Governor Rudolfo Elias Calles consulted with his
father before expelling all priests from the state.105Governor Carde-
nas of Michoacan defended his legislation by stating that he had re-
ceived the blessing of the "Statesman of the Revolution, General
Plutarco Elias Calles,"during a personal interview.106
The Discrimination of Catholics
Attacking the symbols and rituals of religion, persecuting

priests, and closing churches was not sufficient to root out fanati-
cism. Those in official positions might be tainted by religious be-
liefs. Fanatics needed to be purged from government and the ruling
party. The PNR specifically excluded ministers or those belonging
to a religious corporation from membership.'07 Revolutionary
youth clubs, the Bloques Juveniles Revolucionarios, specified that
potential members had to prove to be "revolutionaries free of fa-
naticism."08 In Magdalena, Sonora, future associates of the Bloque
Revolucionario de Obreros y Campesinos de Magdalena, an organi-
zation affiliated with the PNR, had to "publicly profess their social-
ist faith and burn several of the most widely venerated fetishes in
the region."109
Anticlerical organizations, school inspectors, and Masonic
lodges all clamored for a general purge of state and federal bureau-
cracies, and, in particular, of teaching personnel.110 Numerous
civil servants were investigated. Many state governments (for ex-
104. The InteriorMinistryconsidered the law unconstitutional.Cardenasto

Sec. Gob., 14 May 1932; Jefe DepartamentoConsultivoy de Justicia to Subsec.
Gob., 16 May 1932; Subsec. Gob. to Cardenas,30 September 1932; 14 January
1933, DGG2.340, Caja55, exp. 7, AGN.
105. PlutarcoEliasCallesto President,17 May1934, FALR,exp. 514.6/5, AGN.
106. Cirdenasto Subsec.Gob., 15 September1932, DGG2.340, Caja55, exp.
7, AGN.
107. Constttuci6ndel PNR(Mexico:PNR,1934), 8.
108. "Lajuventud empieza a preocuparse seriamente por organizarse,"El
Maestro Rural 5: 9 (15 November 1934): 20.
109. Estatutos y reglamento del bloque revolucionarto de obreros y
campesinos de Magdalena, Sonora (Magdalena,1935).
110. Acci6n Civica Revolucionaria,Colima,to Presidentemunicipal, 12 De-
cember 1932, DGG 2.347, 2.347(5)15136, AGN; Inspector escolar Victoriano
GranadosBasurto, Sa zona, Macuspana,Tabasco,to Director Educaci6nFederal,
May-June1935, FDERPF, 211.5, AHSEP.
ample, those of Jalisco, Puebla, Zacatecas, Yucatan, Veracruz,

Sonora, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Baja California, and Sinaloa)
established "purge committees" and started firing employees "due
to their clerical or conservative filiation.""' In 1932 all state em-
ployees in Veracruz were forced to join an anticlerical organiza-
tion.112 Nowhere was the purge more evident than among teach-
ers.113 Guanajuato Governor Melchor Ortega fired about 150
teachers with the aid of the Bloque de Maestros Revolucionar-
ios.1l4 In Sonora an estimated one-third of the teachers were dis-
missed due to their beliefs.115 In Aguascalientes 128 of 200 state
teachers resigned after the purges started.116
The authorities devised methods to identify and root out fanat-
ics and conservatives. In states like Veracruz, Tabasco, San Luis
Potosi, Yucatan, Hidalgo, Durango, Michoacan, Guanajuato, and
Sonora, teachers were forced to sign a federally sponsored pledge,
or fill out a questionnaire, promising to combat fanaticism.117The
pledge included this reverse credo:
I declare that I am an atheist, an irreconcilable enemy of the Catholic, Apos-
tolic, Roman religion, that I will endeavor to destroy it, detaching con-
sciences from the bonds of any religious worship, and that I am ready to
fight against the clergy anywhere and wherever it may be necessary.'18
111. Diputado RodolfoT. Loaizato Sec. Gob., 3 October 1935, DGG 2.340,
exp. 75.2, AGN;Director Educaci6n FederalJalisco to SEP,12 December 1934,
FDGEP,329.2, AHSEP;Romero,"De la religi6njacobina,"249; Bantjes,"Religiony
revoluci6n, 4.
112. Wllliman,La Iglesla, 141-2.
113. Raby,Educaci6n, 55-6, 211-2; PabloYankelevich,La educact6n social-
ista enJalisco (Guadalajara: Departamentode Educaci6n,1985); 58; Williman,La
Iglesia, 144-6; Lewis, "Negotiating,'ch. 2.
114. Informe que el ciudadano MelchorOrtega,gobernador constitucional
del estado librey soberano de Guanajuato, rindi6 ante el H. XXVLegislaturadel
mtsmo... con fecha 1? de abril de 1935 (Guanajuato:Talleresdel Gobernadordel
Estado,1935), 6.
115. El Imparcial (Hermosillo,Sonora), 14 August 1966; Document teacher
Cananea,25 August1935, AELY, Bacum,Sonora;FernandoW.Dworak,CircularNo.
71-53, Hermosillo, 23 April 1934, RecordGroup 84, ConsularPost Records, No
gales, ConfidentialCorrespondence1936, Vol. II, NationalArchives,Washington.
116. Camacho,Controversiaeducativa, 132-7.
117. RafaelBolio Yenro, DirectorEducaci6nFederal,Villahermosa,Tabasco,
to Flores Zamora,24 January1935, FDGEP,329.14; Inspector FederalEducaci6n,
SantaMariadel Rio, San LuisPotosi, Perfecto S. Rodriguezto DirectorEducaci6n
Federal, 1 February1935, FDGEP,329.15, AHSEP;Interview with Ernesto L6pez
Yescas, Bacum, Sonora, 24 May 1992; Brown, "Church-State Relations,"211, note
36; Meyer,"Elanticlerical,"295, note 19.
118. Quoted in Mecham,Churchand State, 407.
Those who refused to sign the anticlerical Ideological Declaration

were fired.119 Civic gatherings could be used for screening pur-
poses. In Jalisco, teachers who did not present themselves at a pub-
lic meeting in favor of socialist education were blacklisted as "reac-
tionary personnel" and dismissed.120
Purging was the work not only of state committees but also of
the Education Ministry. The traveling Instituto de Orientaci6n
Socialista, which visited the states in an effort to inculcate federal
teachers with revolutionary dogma, formed regional purge commit-
tees consisting of school inspectors, union leaders, and teachers. In
the summer of 1935 the institute stopped in Sonora, and the purge
committee immediately set about to examine the files of all federal
teachers. Participation in the institute was obligatory. Absenteeism
was considered a subversive act:
Absence from the Institutewithout a fully justifiedcause will be tacitly in-
terpretedas a lack of supportand solidarityfor the revolutionaryprinciples
which the Governmentof the Revolutionsustainsand consequentlywill de-
termine the definitiveeliminationof the absentee... Daily... the "ideologi-
cal hour" will be held, duringwhich in rigoroussuccession the teachers
will be submittedto oral,written, and practicaltests in which their realide-
ological sentiments and their opinion concerning religiousprejudice,the
shameful vices of the proletariatand the wicked exploitation of man by
man will be exposed. No teacher will be exempted from passing this
test.121
Thus, during the early 1930s revolutionary committees throughout

Mexico purged hundreds, if not thousands of teachers and civil ser-
vants on the basis of their religious beliefs alone.
The Persecution of Priests and Believers

During the early 1930s hundreds of Mexican priests, including
Archbishop Pascual Diaz, were fined and jailed for disobeying the
Ley de Cultos, usually for conducting masses, baptisms, and other
rites without official authorization, participating in processions,
wearing the cassock, or criticizing government policy, in particular
socialist and sex education. Some were arrested for participating in
119. Interview with Ernesto L6pez Yescas, Bacum, Sonora, 24 May 1992;
Inspector Federal Educaci6n, Santa Mariadel Rio, San Luis Potosi, Perfecto S.
Rodriguezto DirectorEducacionFederal,1 February1935, FDGEP,329.15, AHSEP.
120. Director General EducaclonJalisco, Alberto Teranto SEP,8 December
1934, FDGEP,329.2, AHSEP
121. Instituto de Orientaci6n Socialista para los Maestros Federales del Estado
de Sonora. Plan de Trabajo, 12 June 1935, FDERPF,249.7, AHSEP.
armed Cristero revolts, the burning of schools, and other subver-

sive activities.'22 State authorities expelled unregistered priests and
even sent them into foreign exile.'23 Sonoran priests fled to Arizona
and Texas. Priests often were subjected to brutal treatment: The
padre of Chilcota, Michoacan, was beaten, thrown in a sack, and
dumped along the highway.124In 1937 agrarista reserves captured
Father Pedro Maldonado, who participated in the torching of a
school at General Trias, Chihuahua, and beat him until he died.125
During the early 1930s seven Veracruz priests were kidnapped and
dumped outside of the state, while several were ambushed and
shot, or killed while officiating mass.'26
Individual believers also were persecuted and sometimes
killed. Those discovered conducting illegal religious ceremonies at
home or hiding saints' images or crucifixes received stiff fines. Har-
boring an unregistered priest was sufficient to warrant arrest.127
Random acts of harassment against Catholics were common. Near
San Juan del Rio, Queretaro, federal troops stopped a group of pil-
grims on their way to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe and
forced them to work on a road construction project without pay.128
In Atzalan, Veracruz, local freemasons discovered a group of
women who regularly met to say the rosary, and threatened that
next time they would be "disrobed and publicly paraded through
the village."29
Who Were the Jacobins?

Besides the revolutionary leadership, who were the Jacobins re-
sponsible for supporting and carrying out the de-fanaticization cam-
paigns? Thanks to the hundreds of denunciations of infractions
against the Law on Public Worship, we can at least pinpoint the
122. See DGG 2.340 and 2.347, AGN;Brown, "MexicanChurch-StateRela-

tions,"211.
123. Gobernador provisional Aureo L. Calles to Sec. Gob., 24 September
1935; Vecinos Reforma,Chiapas,to President, 10 September 1935, DGG 2.347,
exp. 2.347(23)16200, AGN.
124. Tapia, Campo religioso, 211.
125. GobernadorChihuahuaTalamantesto Sec. Gob., 11 February1937, DGG
2.347, 2.347(6)23235, AGN.
126. Williman,La Iglesia, 104-7, 112-4.
127. Vecinos Copainala to President, 6 January 1938, DGG 2.347,
2.347(5)30484, AGN.
128. Union Peregrinosa pi al Tepeyacto Sec. Gob., 3 December 1931; Ibid.
to PresidentOrtizRubio,3 December 1931, DGG2.347, 2.347(8)15239, AGN.
129. Carmen Galindo, Altotonga, Atzalan,Veracruz,to President, 29 May
1933, FALR,exp. 514.1/35, AGN.
Banties: The De-Christianization Campaigns 111
types of organizations involved. It is harder to identify the class ori-

gins of the individuals, though one gets the sense that, as during the
French Revolution, the saint burners were male and of petty bour-
geois and, to a lesser extent, bourgeois origin-teachers, union
leaders, military officers, local officials, students and policemen.130
Like France's revolutionary commissioners, some were "parachuted
into a provincial life of which they knew nothing... They neither
could nor did they wish to see traditional life; they fought relent-
lessly against popular customs ..."'31
Active anticlerical groups existed throughout the country,
though they never reached the level of organization of Russia's
League of the Militant Godless, for example.132 The Bloque Anti-
religioso Vanguardia (CROM) of Jalapa, Veracruz; the Liga Anticleri-
cal y Antireligiosa Guzmanense of Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco; the
Centro Civico Revolucionario of Colima; the Grupo Anticlerical
Mexicano of Salvatierra, Guanajuato; the Federaci6n de Grupos
Anticlericales y Antirreligiosos de Jalisco; the Liga Comunista Anti-
clerical and its successor, the Uni6n Anticlerical Revolucionaria of
Veracruz; and the Liga Anticlerical Revolucionaria of Tabasco all
busied themselves denouncing unregistered priests, illegal chapels,
processions, the Knights of Columbus, and seditious sermons.133
Many of these organizations operated under an umbrella associa-
tion, the Federaci6n Anti-Clerical Mexicana.134 Their importance
should not be underestimated. Anticlerical clubs organized lecture
series and cultural meetings, and published anticlerical magazines
such as El Faro (Ciudad Guzman) and La Sotana (Veracruz).135
They also collaborated with state and municipal authorities, de-
nouncing violations of the religious laws and drawing up blacklists
of fanatics.136
Teachers played a particularly important role as de-Christianiz-
ing agents, especially in rural areas. As Plutarco Elias Calles stated in
1934: "The rural teachers are the soldiers that the Revolution uses
130. Ozouf, Festivals, 95; Meyer, "Elanticlerical," 284.

131. Ozouf,Festivals, 217.
132. Daniel Peris, "The 1929 Congress of the Godless," Soviet Studies 43,4
(1991): 711-32.
133. DGG 2.347, AGN; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 31; Williman, La Igle-
sia, 131; Raby, Educaci6n, 213.
134. DGG, 2.347, exp. 2.347(6)15183, AGN; Bantjes, "Religi6n y revolucion,
5.
135. Invitaclon Grupo Acci6n Anti-religiosa, Guadalajara,Jalisco, 26 Decem-
ber 1932, FALR,exp. 514/4, AGN; Willlman, La Iglesia, 131.
136. Presidente municipal Colima to President ACR, 14 November 1932, DGG
2.347, 2.347(5)15136, AGN.
to conduct a de-fanaticization campaign among the peasant

masses."137Teachers denounced priests, burned fetishes, and orga-
nized anticlerical gatherings.138 In many towns and villages school-
teachers and inspectors founded "de-fanaticization committees."139
Of particular importance were the widely distributed youth
organizations, the Bloques Juveniles Revolucionarios (including
Tabasco's radical Camisas Rojas), which incorporated youths from
fourteen to twenty-one years of age. The Bloques considered them-
selves to be "enemies of any type of mysticism and of any notion of
contemplation, which only serve to fanaticize the people and de-
liver them to the clutches of the clergy."140Teachers organized
these clubs of boys and girls, which met after class to discuss revo-
lutionary topics, march in parades, attend civic gatherings, and
receive fanatically anticlerical indoctrination.141
Masonic lodges, to which most leading revolutionaries and mili-
tary officers belonged, were another important vehicle of de-Chris-
tianization. Lodges throughout Mexico, especially the Gran Logia
"Vallede Mexico," denounced acts of fanaticism, organized anticler-
ical gatherings, and petitioned for the use of nationalized churches.
Masons in Acambaro, Guanajuato, acted as confidential agents of
the mayor and were permitted to carry arms to defend themselves
against irate Catholics.l42 Other de-fanaticizing agents were the offi-
cer corps, state and local policemen, students, labor leaders, PNR
state committees and the government bureaucracy.143 In some
areas agraristas and efidatarios denounced the clergy, often as a
reaction against the anti-agrarista preachings of the village priest,
and petitioned for the right to use churches and chapels as ejidal of-
fices, schools, and granaries.144The Confederaci6n Revolucionaria
137. El Maestro Rural, 5, 10 (15 November 1934): 3.

138. Secretario General SMU to President, 28 December 1934 and to Gober-
nador Guerrero, 17 March 1935, DGG 2.347, exp. 21, 2.347(9)64, AGN; Redencl6n
(Villahermosa), 23 April 1935; Bantjes, "Burning Saints."
139. FDERPF,Secci6n Inspecci6n Escolar Federal, 1935, 208.14, AHSEP
140. "Lajuventud empieza, 20; Declaract6n de principtos de la escuela so-
cialista de Sonora (n.p., n.d.), 14.
141. Interview with Gilberto Escobosa Gamez, 21 May 1992, Hermosillo;
Fondo "Enrique Diaz" 48/14, 54/19, AGN; Bloque de J6venes Revolucionarios Ro-
jinegro, D.F to Sec. Gob., 20 December 1934, DGG 2.340, Caja 114, exp. 3, AGN.
142. Presidente municipal Acimbaro to Gobemador Guanajuato, 12 February
1932, DGG 2.347, exp. 2.347(8)15242, AGN; Meyer, "El anticlerical," 288-9;
Yankelevich,La educact6n, 36; Williman,La Iglesia, 141-2.
143. See DGG 2.347, exps. 2.347(22)22185; 2.347(8)15236; 68, 2.347(26)67;
2.347(22)16196; DGG 2.340, Caja 114, exp. 3; Caja 55, exp. 7, AGN; Redenct6n
(Villahermosa), 23 April 1935; Wllliman, La Iglesia, 102.
144. See DGG 2.347, exps. 2.347(5)15138, 2.347(3)15122; DGG 2.340, Caja
55, exps. 8, 75.4, AGN.
Michoacana del Trabajo, which consisted of agraristas, teachers,

and politicos, was responsible for much of the violent anticlerical
campaign in Michoacan.145
Popular Culture and De-Fanatici.ation: The Arts

The revolutionary elite considered the arts "an instrument of
social agitation" in service of the Revolution.146 A variety of art
forms, such as theater, poetry, corridos, murals, and posters were
seen as convenient tools for de-fanaticization, possibly more effec-
tive than blatant iconoclasm. Though Mexico never developed a
strong institution like Russia's Proletkult to propagate revolutionary
culture, a clear and unified cultural policy emanated from the Edu-
cation Ministry and the Department of Fine Arts.
Theater was an excellent means to reach both children and
adults. Young children were indoctrinated through the Teatro Guig-
nol or puppet theater: "The puppet theater is undoubtedly an ex-
tremely efficient medium with which to establish the new ideas in
the minds of both children and adults." The development of the
Teatro de Muiecos, inspired by Bolshevik examples, was stimu-
lated by the Department of Fine Arts.147Open-air theaters were a
widespread and popular cultural tool. Each rural school was sup-
posed to construct one to "enlighten the masses so as to banish
their fanatic and superstitious notions."'48 The revolutionary elite
considered theater ideal for social engineering
because in this form... one doesn't wound the sensibilityof the people,
who, ignorantand imprudent,often don't toleratean explanationof this or
that error.... but do applaudand accept a work of theater... that makes
them think and correct their errors.149
Throughout the country students and teachers performed anticleri-

cal comedies to audiences of children and adults. Touring compa-
nies like the Compaiia Fronteriza traveled from village to village, of-
fering works which featured depraved priests during confession.150
Anticlerical works were performed during cultural festivals and
school fairs, which often included the recitation of antifanatic po-
145. Becker,"LazaroCardenas," 98-9.

146. EnriqueCalder6n,Ideario de goblerno Durango,1936), 90.
147. "Elteatro de los muiiecos,"El Maestro Rural 6, 7 (1 April 1935): 36-7.
148. Plan de trabajo,Inspector FederalMiguel Angel Godinez, Matamoros,
Puebla, 1 February1936, FDGEP, 316.10, AHSEP
149. InspectorEscolarto DirectorEducaci6nFederal,Puebla,31 March1936,
FDGEP,316.6, AHSEP
150. InspectorLeonardoRamirezG. to DirectorGeneralde Educaci6n,29July
1935, FDERPF, 211.3, AHSEP
etry as well.151 In the poem "Apreg6n de la miseria," written by a

rural teacher from Jeticoac, Guerrero, the poet laments the cruelty
of God at the sight of a group of miserable beggars:
Ypens6 en la injusticia de ese Dios vengativo / que es tan cruel y tan
duro; tan austero y tan altivo / con las masas que sufren su dolencia
fatal / sin hallar en el mundo quien les cure su ma. 152
In his poem "VanCayendo"ruralteacher Abel Mendozaof Actipac, Tlax-
cala, depicted the clergy as "traitors,...octopuses who suck the blood of
the people,... treasonous idlers... sucking mosquitoes... those priests
who are so fratricidalwill pay their deceit with their lives."'53
Revolutionaries also acknowledged the power of music. So-
called vernacular music embellished official ceremonies, especially
anticlerical corridos such as the "Corrido de la Confesi6n" and the
"Corrido Cholula."'54 In Hermosillo, Sonora, a choir of 1,300
schoolchildren sang the "Iconoclast Hymn" during the 1935 Labor
Day festivities.'55
The omnipresent posters of the 1930s were another effective
tool in the de-fanaticization campaign.'56 During the Cardenas years
many street posters stressed the partnership between the bour-
geoisie and the clergy, both 'pulpos del trabajo bumano" who ex-
ploited and repressed the proletariat. "The Clergy serves Capital,"
stated one poster. Another featured a hand holding up a book enti-
tled Science, while another deposited the catechism in a garbage
bin. The clergy's exploitation of the proletariat is symbolized by
coins dropping through a piggy bank into a collection tray and
afterwards raining on the domes of the Vatican: "Comrade. Your
savings, in the hands of the Church, enrich the spongers of Rome."
One placard displays a soldier bayonetting a bloated bishop and
sweeping away crosses, churches, clergymen, rosaries, and holy
cards with a broom.157 Similar scenes were reproduced ad infini-
tum in engravings and drawings fashioned in school art classes.158
151. See for some excellent Tabascan examples Martinez Assad, El laborato-
rio, Anexo II.
152. Antonio Hernandez S., Escuela Rural Federal de Santiago, Jeticoac, Guer-
rero, 9 September 1936?, FOPP,453.48, AHSEP.
153. "Van cayendo" by Abel Mendoza, Actipac, Calpulalpam, Tlaxcala, 1936,
FOPP,453.35, AHSEP.
154. Asamblea Cultural... Escuela Rural Federal Alto, Tabasco, 22 June 1935,
FDERPF,211.5, AHSEP.
155. Programa de Festejos..., Hermosillo, Sonora, 1 May 1935, FDERPF,
249.7, AHSEP.
156. Declaraci6n de principtos de la escuela soclalista de Sonora, (n.p.,
n.d.), 103.
157. Fondo "Enrique Diaz, AGN.
158. Bantjes, "Burning Saints,"273.
Education
The rural school, federal teachers, and the Education Ministry
played a key role in the de-Christianization campaign. To what ex-
tent did Mexican teaching include an anticlerical subtext and how
was this conveyed in the classroom? Anticlericalism became a sig-
nificant issue in Mexican education after President Cardenas imple-
mented socialist education. The socialist school was seen as "a
weapon in the struggle against fanaticism."159The reformed Article
3 of the Constitution specifically stated that socialist education
would exclude "all religious doctrine [and] combat fanaticism and
prejudices by organizing its instruction and activities in a way that
shall permit the creation in youth of an exact and rational concept
of the Universe and of social life."60 The socialist school was to
forge a "new youth," free of fanaticism and prejudice. Educator
Rafael Ramirez wrote that "We shall educate the new generation in
such a manner that we shall have men without religious preju-
dices."161De-fanaticization in the schools was to be conducted by
the study of Church history, and especially of nature and science.
Teachers also founded anti-fanatic committees of children ages six
to fourteen, and encouraged them to further the anticlerical cause
both at home and during cultural festivals.162
The Mexican revolutionary elite, like the French and Russian,
considered that religious education poisoned the minds of the
youth:
The CatholicSchool is immoralbecause it spreadshypocrisyand lies, and it
is an enemy of the workersbecause it preachessubservienceto the power-
ful, resignationand docility.The CatholicSchool breeds hypocrites, "sin-
ners,"slaves.The socialistschool will formfree men and women.163
Though the Education Ministry reluctantly acknowledged the

clergy's constitutional right to teach catechism in the churches,
many governors outlawed it anyway. In 1935, Guanajuato Governor
Melchor Ortega stated that
I consider that the catechistic work by which Mexican children receive
159. Directorde EducacionFederalQueretaroTomasCuervoto Secretariode
Educaci6nPufblica,30 June 1936, FDGEP, 295.8, AHSEPSee MartinezAssad,El lab-
oratorio, ch. II.
160. Quoted in George C. Booth, Mexico's Schcol-MadeSociety (Stanford:
StanfordUniversityPress, 1941), 2.
161. Quoted in Ibid., 20.
162. Plan de Trabajos,Inspector la zona, Villahermosa,Tabasco, AlvaroJ.
BassoA., 27 January1935, FDERPF, 211.8, AHSEP;InformeDirectorEducaci6nFed-
eral Tabasco,RafaelBolio Yenroto FloresZamora,26 March1935, FDERPF, 249.34,
AHSEP
163. CartelPN.R.,n.d., DGG2.347, Caja3 Bis,exp. 28, AGN.
Catholic confessional education, during that phase of life when man lacks
the indispensable self-criticism to accept or repudiate confessional dogmas,
must, it seems, be condemned by the reform of [Article 3 of the Constitu-
tion]. [We must absolutely forbid] that religious education is offered outside
of the home, and, especially, in the churches.164
Daily practices in many schools were blatantly antireligious.

Sim6n Villanueva Villanueva, a teacher from Durango, remembered
the efforts of a couple teaching in a remote mountain village in the
Sierra Madre Occidental to convince their pupils that God does not
exist:
The female teacher asked the children to say "There is no God" when
they greeted her, and she would answer "Nor was there ever one." The
male teacher would ask the children "Where is God?" and the students
would answer "In heaven, on earth, and in all places"; then the teacher
told them "Well, then I urinate on God, because he doesn't leave me any
space to urinate."
This experiment in anticlerical education ended in tragedy:
Some time later,they were found dead, the woman teacher naked, raped,
and with her breastscut off, the male teachercastrated,with his penis cut
off, and on one of those little wooden shingles that they use for roofing
houses and with a piece of pinewood charcoalthey wrote some awkwardly
spelled words that said "Soyou don't go aroundpeeing on God."'65
Attempts at de-Christianization were most evident in the teach-
ing of Mexican and world history and the natural sciences. Accord-
ing to the revolutionary elite, history demonstrated how the clergy
had converted the masses into "abject toadies of capitalism and an
abulic and irredeemable factor"166During the conquest, the Span-
ish clergy used force and the hated Inquisition to impose a religious
culture on the inhabitants of Mexico. In colonial Mexico a corrupt,
venal clergy accumulated wealth and power. Mexican Indepen-
dence, which the Church hierarchy had strongly opposed, brought
little change. By the nineteenth century the Church owned half of
the nation's wealth; the clergy thus was closely allied with capital
and formed a state within the state. Teachers glorified Reform legis-
lation and articles of the 1917 Constitution aimed at limiting the
164. Ortega to Sec. Gob., 7 February1935, FSGG,Secci6n Primera,Instruc-

cin Pfiblica,Gobiemo y Guerra,exp. 1.40(57)2, AGGEG.
165. "Elmaestro rural en la educacion" in Los maestros y la cultura na-
cional. 1920-1952. vol. 1, Norte (Mexico:Secretariade Educaci6nPfiblica,1987),
185.
166. La escuela socialista de Sonora (Hermosillo:ImprentaCruz Galvez,
1934), 90.
Church's political, economic, and cultural stranglehold on the

nation. Recent conflicts (the Cristiada and the controversy over so-
cialist and sex education in the early 1930s) were depicted as a con-
tinuation of this prolonged struggle between church and state.'67
World history classes and readings emphasized the nefarious role of
the Church and its corruption. One popular textbook featured a
tale about the children's crusade, an example bound to have a
strong impact on youthful readers.168
As in Bolshevik Russia, the study of science, "the greatest foe of
fanaticism and superstition," was central to the de-fanaticization
campaign in the schools as a means to destroy "the erroneous no-
tions which the plebs hold concerning [naturalphenomena and] to
extirpate the erroneous ideas that Religions use to explain" [the cre-
ation of Earth].169For example, knowledge of physics would under-
mine the notion of supernatural beings and miracles.170 Educators
stressed practical laboratory work as the best means to de-fanaticize:
The best way to wrest fromyouthfulmindsnotions of the supernaturaland
extraterrestrialis to convert the children, in the laboratory,into "little
gods";to create micro-organisms,produce electrical discharges,pulverize
rocks, enlarge objects, etc. All these are experiments that make children
trulyconsider themselvesto be masterof Nature.171
Biology and chemistry, for example, would teach children that the
fruition of maize was not due to the blessings of priests or sacri-
fices to Christian or pre-Columbian gods, but the result of careful
fertilizing. 172
Some educators even spoke of a new cult, not a revolutionary
civic cult, but a cult of science:
167. Declaraci6n de prtciptos, 83; Jose MariaBonilla, Individualismo y

socialismo. Educaci6n cfvica, 4th ed. (Mexico: Herrero Hnos. Sucs., 1944), 29-37;
RafaelRamirez,"Laiglesia,el estado y la educaci6n,"in Rafael Ramfrezy la escuela
rural mexicana, ed. Concepcion Jimenez Alarc6n (Mexico: Secretariade Edu-
caci6n Piiblica,1986), 149-157.
168. MarcelSchwob, "Lacruzadade los nifios, in Lecturaspopulares para
escuelas primarias, superiores y especiales, 3d ed., ed. EsperanzaVelazquez
Bringas(Mexico:LaImpresora,1935), 75-82.
169. La escuela socialista de Sonora, 65; Le6n Diaz Cardenas,Cartas a los
maestros rurales (Mexico: EdicionesEncuadernables,El Nacional, 1938), 275-80.
170. Juan B. Salazar,Bases de la escuela socialtsta (Caracteristicas,finali-
dadesy organizaci6n). Proyectoenviado al Instituto de Orientaci6nSocialista de
la Secretarfa de Educaci6n Pablica (Mexico: Talleres Graficos, 1936), 27; Plan de
Trabajo... Inspector Escolar La Paz, Baja California Sur, 31 January 1935, FOPP,216,
exp. 1, legajo 35, AHSEP.
171. Diaz Cardenas, Cartas, 275-80.
172. Booth, Mexico'sSchool-MadeSociety,78.
In our times there is no place for any other cult than that of the Heroes of
Science, Laplace, Darein, Lyell, Marx, Spencer... You must teach the chil-
dren that society entrusts to you that in a thousand laboratories there are
many heroes who have dedicated their lives to the discovery of... objective
truth...; they are the priests of the future idol: Science.'73
The End
The worst of the de-fanaticization campaigns began to subside
by 1936.174 This was not the result of enlightened, tactful Car-
denista religious policy, as some have suggested, but a response to
widespread opposition to the cultural revolution in states like
Sonora, Puebla, Veracruz, and Jalisco. President Cardenas, though a
rabid anticlerical himself,175 was forced to realize that Catholic re-
sistance, combined with rising opposition from conservative
groups within the revolutionary family and broad sectors of the
population, threatened the very future of the Revolution.176 After
1935, correspondence from the Education Ministry shows consid-
erable apprehension concerning the excesses of the de-fanaticiza-
tion campaign and the reactions of many Catholics. Throughout the
country, often violent popular resistance forced teachers to scale
down the campaign. 77
Teachers were warned not to go too far in their efforts to en-
lighten the ignorant masses. Fines and "outrages to the religious
feelings of believers" were now considered counterproductive.178
173. Jose Ingenieros,"Porla humanidadfutura,"in Lecturaspopulares,110-3.
174. This conclusion is based on research in the AHSEP.Interview with
AmadeoHernandezCoronado,Hermosillo,26 May1992;Brown,"MexicanChurch-
StateRelations"214-22; Becker,"LizaroCardenas"299.
175. Bantjes,"BurningSaints,"266-7.
176. AlbertL. Michaels,"TheCrisisof Cardenismo,"Journalof Latin Ameri-
can Studies 2,1 (1970): 51-79; Bantjes,"Politics,Classand Culture,"ch. 10.
177. See for Sonora:Bantjes,"Politics,Classand Culture";Meyer,La cristiada,
vol. 1, 385; EngraciaLoyo, "PopularReactionsto the EducationalReformsof Car-
denismo,"in Rituals of Rule, 247-60; See on Puebla:MaryKayVaughan,"TheEdu-
cational Project of the Mexican Revolution: The Response of Local Societies
(1934-1940)," in Molding the Hearts and Minds. Education, Communications,
and Social Change in Latin America, ed. John A. Britton(Wilmington,DE:Schol-
arly ResourcesBooks, 1994), 105-27, and, Vaughan,"RuralWomen'sLiteracyand
EducationDuringthe MexicanRevolution:Subvertinga PatriarchalEvent?"in Cre-
ating Spaces. Shaping Transitions. Women of the Mexican Countryside,
1850-1990, ed. HeatherFowler-Salamini and MaryKayVaughan(Tucson:Univer-
sity of ArizonaPress, 1994).
178. Victor Pefia, PresidentemunicipalTexcoco to Inspector Educaci6n,27
February 1935, Fondo LazaroCardenas,exp. 533.31/13, AGN;Flores Zamorato
DirectorEducaci6nFederal,13 May1935, FDERPF, Secci6n Inspeccion EscolarFed-
eral, 249.7, AHSEP
Instead, education officials advised "careful" and "intelligent" de-

Christianization, preferably by means of scientific persuasion.179
This change of heart became increasingly evident after President
Cardenas himself entered the debate in the wake of a series of bru-
tal Catholic assaults on federal teachers. The president gave a
speech in Guadalajarain March 1936 stressing that the government
was not antireligious:
The Government will not make the error committed by previous adminis-
trations of considering the religious problem as a prime problem to which
all other aspects of the program of the Revolution must be subordinated. It
is not the Government's business to promote antireligious campaigns.'18
The Director General of Primary Education interpreted this mes-

sage for the confused teachers:
It's not that we are abandoning this important aspect of the program of the
socialist school, but that it should be implemented in an intelligent manner
so that the results may be permanent and are not translated into mere effer-
vescence that almost always produces disunity and unrest which impede
the work of the Government. It is well known that the system used until
now to combat fanaticism has been limited to demagogic procedures [that]
have done little but affirm in the conscience of believers the notion that
they are martyrs of their own convictions.181
Revolutionary de-Christianization in Mexico failed due to the

widespread resistance of Catholics, who responded to what they
perceived as a threat to their way of life. The de-fanaticization cam-
paign was ultimately a short-lived and failed experiment. But its
importance and impact should not be underestimated. De-Chris-
tianization efforts generally did not mask more profound socioeco-
nomic or political conflicts, but formed an integral part of the revo-
lutionary cultural project. The religious conflict represented, as
Jean Meyer put it, a "clash of two worlds."182The revolutionary elite
deemed it impossible to forge new Mexicans without eradicating
the nefarious influence of the Church. They targeted not merely the
clergy but religiosity itself. The seriousness of this effort is demon-
strated by the wide array of cultural techniques used, including
iconoclasm, the closure of churches, the banishment of priests, the
179. Informe 9a Zona, Veracruz, 1935 by Carlos Mercado, FDERPF,Secci6n In-

specci6n Escolar Federal, 208.5, AHSEP;Informe Inspector Federal Juan E Corzo,
Queretaro, 1936, FDGEP,316.16, AHSEP.
180. El Nactonal, 4 March 1936.
181. Circular Nim. IV-22-77, Flores Zamora, 10 March 1936, FOPP, 438.22,
AHSEP
182. Meyer, La cristtada, vol. 1, 185.
prohibition of religious practices, and the often violent persecution

of Catholics, as well as more constructive methods such as festivals,
the popular arts, and education. De-fanaticization was seldom pop-
ular, although a tradition of popular anticlericalism undoubtedly
existed. Acts of iconoclasm were carried out by members of the
revolutionary elite and those dependent on them, such as teachers,
policemen, labor and peasant leaders, and government bureaucrats.
Characterized by intrusiveness and violence, the campaign was im-
plemented on a national scale, with few states escaping its impact.
It constituted an exclusionary, top-down imposition.
Revolutionary antireligious campaigns seldom have been suc-
cessful. An excellent example is France, where revolutionary anti-
clericalism spawned a stubborn Catholic revival.183This is because
religion is not just related to spirituality. For many, it encompasses
the entirety of their experience. Clifford Geertz argues that
sacred symbols function to synthesizea people's ethos-the tone, charac-
ter, and qualityof their life, its moraland aesthetic style and mood-and
their world view-the picturethey have of the way thingsin sheer actuality
are, their most comprehensiveideasof order.84
Few cultural revolutions have been able to change a people's world
view or ethos overnight. In Mexico this attempt was definitely a
failure.
The Revolution would ultimately prosper without the de-fanati-
cization campaigns. The revolutionary elite erred in believing that a
new civil religion could not coexist with traditional Catholicism.
From the late 1930s on, Mexican leaders gradually would defuse the
religious conflict and discovered that the masses would accept the
state's nationalist cultural project as long as blatant anticlericalism
was avoided.185 Still, only today are the last vestiges of revolutionary
iconoclasm finally fading. While the Revolution's idols tremble on
their pedestals, the old fetishes persist.
183. Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred.

184. CliffordGeertz, The Interpretationof Cultures(New York:BasicBooks,
1973), 89.
185. AdrianBantjes,"The EighthSacrament:Nationalismand Revolutionary
PoliticalCulturein Mexico,"(paper presentedat the Conferenceon MexicanPoliti-
cal Culture, Universityof Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1994); Vaughan,"The Con-
structionof the PatrioticFestival."

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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States

Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929-

Este ensayo analiza la llamadacampania desfanatizante de los aiios

Uno, dos, no hay Dios

On June 30, 1929, church bells pealed throughout Mexico to

which put an end to the bloody Cristero rebellion. Mexicans were

3. Excelsior 22 June 1929.

effort to establish a new religion of humanity, a cult of man and so-

William H. Sewell Jr., in a critique of structuralist approaches to

10. William H. Sewell Jr., "Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on

campaign forged no new de-fanaticized Mexican citizen.13 This

18. Vaughan, "The Construction." On violence in Puebla see, for example,

must be interpreted as an integral part of the revolutionary elite's

The Ideology of De-Fanatici7ation

condescension towards popular culture, already evident in the

Many revolutionary educators regarded the indigenous popula-

27. Escalante Gonzalbo, Ciudadanos tmaginarios, 142; Ozouf, Festivals,

32. Becker,Setting the Virginon Fire, 110; Bantjes,"Politics,Classand Cul-

This is a plausible, but only partial explanation. It tends to

social oppression of the working masses."50Revolutionary intellec-

50. Celso Flores Zamora,Jefe Departamentode EnseiianzaRuraly Primaria

55. Santiago Arias Navarro, Las misiones culturales. Reflexiones de un ml-

Jeronimo, Oaxaca became Ixtepec.60 In composite religious/secular

Garrido Canabal and his "savage hordes" torched the church of

hymns. On December 12, 1931, more than two thousand "fetishes"

76. For example: Grafica bimestral del aspecto social. Noviembre-Diciembre

works, and warned teachers only to use authorized textbooks.81

From Catholic Rite to Civic Ritual:

Aguascalientes the domingos rojos (red Sundays) were designed to

87. Camacho,Controversiaeducativa, 212-3, 246.

Lunacharsky's Godbuilding. However, these halfhearted attempts

94. Williman,La Iglesia, 135; MartinezAssad,El laboratorio, 32-4.

priests, and limited the number of priests allowed to officiate.98

98. CircularNum. 17, 11 April 1930, Emilio Portes Gil to Gobernadores,

tion within the Church hierarchy, such as archbishop or bishop, or

The Discrimination of Catholics

Attacking the symbols and rituals of religion, persecuting

104. The InteriorMinistryconsidered the law unconstitutional.Cardenasto

ample, those of Jalisco, Puebla, Zacatecas, Yucatan, Veracruz,

Those who refused to sign the anticlerical Ideological Declaration

Thus, during the early 1930s revolutionary committees throughout

The Persecution of Priests and Believers

armed Cristero revolts, the burning of schools, and other subver-

Who Were the Jacobins?

122. See DGG 2.340 and 2.347, AGN;Brown, "MexicanChurch-StateRela-

types of organizations involved. It is harder to identify the class ori-

130. Ozouf, Festivals, 95; Meyer, "Elanticlerical," 284.

to conduct a de-fanaticization campaign among the peasant

137. El Maestro Rural, 5, 10 (15 November 1934): 3.

Michoacana del Trabajo, which consisted of agraristas, teachers,

Popular Culture and De-Fanatici.ation: The Arts

Throughout the country students and teachers performed anticleri-

145. Becker,"LazaroCardenas," 98-9.

etry as well.151 In the poem "Apreg6n de la miseria," written by a

Though the Education Ministry reluctantly acknowledged the

Daily practices in many schools were blatantly antireligious.

164. Ortega to Sec. Gob., 7 February1935, FSGG,Secci6n Primera,Instruc-

Church's political, economic, and cultural stranglehold on the

167. Declaraci6n de prtciptos, 83; Jose MariaBonilla, Individualismo y

Instead, education officials advised "careful" and "intelligent" de-

The Director General of Primary Education interpreted this mes-

Revolutionary de-Christianization in Mexico failed due to the