The Anti-Cristero Politics of Mexican Catholic Action, 1930–45

“The Anti-Cristero Politics of Mexican Catholic Action, 1930-1945."

This paper examines how, between 1930-1945, upper-class Catholics' opposition to the peasant insurrections of the Cristero War (1926-29) enabled the development of cultures of surveillance, censorship, and repression among the members of Mexico's Catholic Action organization (ACM; est. 1930), thus enabling greater convergence between church and state institutions. Specifically, it examines the role of anti-Indigenous racism in shaping anti-Cristero sentiment among upper-class women and youth. As a result, this paper speaks to research on Mexico's one-party rule by exploring how Catholics' distrust of Indigenous populations--as amplified by the Cristero War--ultimately provided the Mexican state with what historian Gilbert M. Joseph calls “the racialized discourses and rationales to buttress the legitimation of [an] authoritarian regime.” It also calls on historians of Cold War Catholicism to reconsider ACM’s consolidation as an important lens from which to understand social conservatism beyond masculine expressions of right-wing politics, reconsidering ACM’s moralization campaigns as women’s entry point into the very projects of surveillance, censorship, and control that characterized Mexico’s Cold War proper.