Religion, Violence, and the Secular State in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920s–40s

Despite the formal end of the Cristero War (1926-1929), the relationship between the Mexican state and the Catholic Church was far from peaceful. Catholics continued to experience assaults over the symbolic, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of their faith. The arrest and expulsion of Catholic priests, the closing down of churches, the burning of religious images, were all part of an official campaign that sought to forge a rational, secular, and modern model of citizenry, free from the “backward” influence of Catholic religion. Just as they did during the Cristero War, Catholics decided to defend their right to exercise religion through both pacific and belligerent means during the 1930s and 1940s. Comprised of less organized and more spontaneous forms of militancy than those articulated during the armed conflict, Catholics’ forms of resistance included riots, lynchings against anticlerical and iconoclast individuals, and the formation of armed groups of vigilantes.

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the complex and contentious relationship between religion and violence in post-revolutionary Mexico. Starting with the tensions generated by the anticlerical and antireligious policies promoted by the Mexican state during the 1920s, and continuing with the 1930s and 1940s decades, a period that allegedly saw a détente between state and Church in Mexico, the paper seeks to examine three interrelated questions: 1) What were the theological, political, and cultural bases that contributed shaping Catholics’ understanding of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of violence as a means to defend religion? 2) How was “religious violence” construed by the Mexican secular state and what were the implications of an official discourse that rendered religion as inherently prone to violence? 3) What were the conflicts and divisions that emerged between the clergy and lay groups and organizations, as well as within the clergy, regarding the legitimacy of violence?