The Marriage Factor: Anticlericalism and Social Repugnance in Revolutionary Mexico

This paper will analyze gendered aspects of the anticlerical indoctrination efforts undertaken in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1920s and 1930s.  Tabasco became one of the most memorable theaters of the Mexican Revolution because of the strident anticlericalism of Tomás Garrido Canabal, the revolutionary strongman who dominated the state’s politics between 1922 and 1935.  Undertaken with missionary-like zeal, the Garrido government’s secularization campaign involved knocking down churches, removing crosses from cemeteries, and producing and screening films about lascivious priests.  The sexualization of priests was a common trope in Mexican anticlericalism, but anticlerical messages had a number of gendered valences.  Particularly interesting are the highly judgmental and contradictory discourses surrounding marriage status and religiosity that appeared in the popular press.  This paper will explore this theme by examining how anticlerical ideologues identified religion as the culprit of such “revolutionarily repugnant” categories as “spinsterhood” and “effete” upper-class bachelorhood.