“A Dangerous Social Cancer, No Other Medicine Exists”: Depravity, Disease, and Dirt in Revolutionary Depictions of Catholicism, 1914–35

From the Constitutionalist revolution until Cárdenas’ presidency, Mexican revolutionaries defined themselves in no small part through opposition to the Catholic Church.  Anticlericalism has been attributed to economic developmentalism, liberal nationalism, the “foreign” influence of Protestantism and freemasonry.   I examine iconoclastic performance and anticlerical discourse to demonstrate how again and again key revolutionary anticlericals singled out relatively few parts of the Church to condemn Catholicism as “fanatical.”  In particular, revolutionaries targeted priestly celibacy, auricular confession, baptismal and burial practices, and the blessing of animals for their most vehement attacks.   These Catholic beliefs and practices offended because they contradicted nature, defied science, and spread disease. Many influential revolutionaries agreed with General Cristobal Rodríguez that when it came to the Catholic Church, the only cure was “the ‘radiation’ that destroys it–the radicalism of the liberals.”