“Save the World from the Cataclysm”: Discourse and Spirituality of the Mexican Mystic Concepcion Cabrera Arias, 1926–36

In 1937, the Mexican mystic and laywoman Concepcion Cabrera Arias died “surrounded by an aura of holiness”. The life of this woman passed in her home, taking care of her family, but there was an angle of her that very few knew. Cabrera lived mystical ecstasies that, together with her penances and bodily expiations, led her to write spiritual and theological texts. Beatified by the Church in 2019, Concepción found a path in which she could go beyond the limits imposed on women within the Catholic Church. One of her most significant writings was her spiritual diary. Cabrera created a complex speech expressing her concerns about the secular world's threat to the Catholic Church; furthermore, she created a symbolic universe in which the practice of corporal penance and expiations helped her fight the battle against the new secular social order. In the context of post-revolutionary Mexico, the danger faced by the Catholic Church in Mexico was framed in two main events: the Cristero War and the implementation of socialist education.

This paper aims to examine the female spiritual discourse created by Concepcion, to understand how she managed to link her concerns about the danger that the Church in Mexico was experiencing with the Cristero War and socialist education and, on the other hand, how these speeches took life in a personal struggle, that is, in her corporality. I address the volumes of her spiritual diary written between 1926 and 1936, years in which a contesting discourse against government authorities and the secularized world matured, which she refers to as a "cataclysm." Hence, this paper contributes to the complexity of the discourses and the agency of Catholic women in the 20th century in Mexico, understanding that they were central actors in the conflicts and resistance.