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The Cristero War: The History and Legacy of the Major Religious Uprising in Mexico
“Men divided over whether Mexico should reject (its) past or build upon it. And no institution bequeathed by Spain was more firmly embedded in the new nation's life than the Catholic Church, which quickly found itself inextricably involved in nearly every contention that separated Mexicans into hostile factions.” - David Bailey, The Cristero Rebellion
The Cristero War in Mexico is the last great armed movement in a country that for a hundred years suffered revolution after revolution, in an apparently endless cycle. Ignored for decades, the war was long seen simply as an unwanted corollary of the Mexican Revolution, a kind of anomaly in the official narrative.
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 produced an admirable social and agrarian reform, but created an authoritarian state. With no counterweights, the victorious revolutionary class fell into excesses and tried to put religious institutions under totalitarian control, and probably to actually suppress religion. In order to do that, the controversial president Plutarco Elías Calles confiscated church property, had monasteries, temples and confessional schools shut down, deported archbishops, had priests killed, nuns arrested, and declared that the next stage of the Revolution would be the revolution of the minds.
This persecution produced one of the most little-known episodes in the history of Mexico, one that, for many years, the state tried to slide under the rug: the Cristero War, also known as the Cristiada, which for several years ravaged the central plateau of the country.
The Cristiada began in 1927, and officially it ended two years later, though it boiled beneath the surface for ten more years. It was a rebellion of the poorest who were willing to take up arms to defend their spiritual freedom and fight a government that had declared, in practical terms, religion illegal. Unlike the revolutionary armies of a decade earlier, these armies of the poor were never funded by world powers.
The temptation to suppress religious freedom was a constant in triumphant revolutionary governments throughout the 20th century. In Russia the Bolsheviks, in China the hosts of Mao, to mention two examples, believed that religion was a factor of social backwardness that prevented the arrival of the light that was economic and social progress. In Mexico, the triumphant generals were ideologically radicalized and by the 1920s, with the closure of temples, the confiscation of church property, and violence against the clergy, the Catholic religion was under attack. The state tried to bring it to its knees, and if possible, annihilate it. This was said, publicly and privately, by many of the men in power during the 1920s.
When the Mexican Church decided to suspend worship in protest, the rebellion of the peasants -for whom the sacraments, pilgrimages, and the comfort of their spiritual mentors were an indispensable part of their lives- did not take long. The guerrillas took a name: Cristeros. As if it were an eschatological battle, they said they were fighting and willing to die in the name of Christ the King.
Ignored for decades, many historians did not pay attention to the Cristiada and dismissed it as a fanatical and limited movement, a very unfair characterization. Now it is increasingly seen as a genuine popular uprising deserving serious study. The Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged the justice of the struggle too: the Cristero War has produced the largest number of Mexican saints recognized by the Vatican. In the 21st century, increasing secularization has been relegating the Cristiada to history books, but in the deepest Mexico, people remember, and in many places, the wounds remain open.
The Cristero War in Mexico is the last great armed movement in a country that for a hundred years suffered revolution after revolution, in an apparently endless cycle. Ignored for decades, the war was long seen simply as an unwanted corollary of the Mexican Revolution, a kind of anomaly in the official narrative.
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 produced an admirable social and agrarian reform, but created an authoritarian state. With no counterweights, the victorious revolutionary class fell into excesses and tried to put religious institutions under totalitarian control, and probably to actually suppress religion. In order to do that, the controversial president Plutarco Elías Calles confiscated church property, had monasteries, temples and confessional schools shut down, deported archbishops, had priests killed, nuns arrested, and declared that the next stage of the Revolution would be the revolution of the minds.
This persecution produced one of the most little-known episodes in the history of Mexico, one that, for many years, the state tried to slide under the rug: the Cristero War, also known as the Cristiada, which for several years ravaged the central plateau of the country.
The Cristiada began in 1927, and officially it ended two years later, though it boiled beneath the surface for ten more years. It was a rebellion of the poorest who were willing to take up arms to defend their spiritual freedom and fight a government that had declared, in practical terms, religion illegal. Unlike the revolutionary armies of a decade earlier, these armies of the poor were never funded by world powers.
The temptation to suppress religious freedom was a constant in triumphant revolutionary governments throughout the 20th century. In Russia the Bolsheviks, in China the hosts of Mao, to mention two examples, believed that religion was a factor of social backwardness that prevented the arrival of the light that was economic and social progress. In Mexico, the triumphant generals were ideologically radicalized and by the 1920s, with the closure of temples, the confiscation of church property, and violence against the clergy, the Catholic religion was under attack. The state tried to bring it to its knees, and if possible, annihilate it. This was said, publicly and privately, by many of the men in power during the 1920s.
When the Mexican Church decided to suspend worship in protest, the rebellion of the peasants -for whom the sacraments, pilgrimages, and the comfort of their spiritual mentors were an indispensable part of their lives- did not take long. The guerrillas took a name: Cristeros. As if it were an eschatological battle, they said they were fighting and willing to die in the name of Christ the King.
Ignored for decades, many historians did not pay attention to the Cristiada and dismissed it as a fanatical and limited movement, a very unfair characterization. Now it is increasingly seen as a genuine popular uprising deserving serious study. The Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged the justice of the struggle too: the Cristero War has produced the largest number of Mexican saints recognized by the Vatican. In the 21st century, increasing secularization has been relegating the Cristiada to history books, but in the deepest Mexico, people remember, and in many places, the wounds remain open.
- GenresHistory
46 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 4, 2021
12 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 31, 2025
A quick listen that made me realize I don’t know shit about Mexican history. Isn’t that a blessing though? There’s so much to explore! Plus this helped me with my grad school application, so that’s cool. I love reading about religious persecution sooooo much. This also led me to reading up on the connection between the catholic church and the labor movement in the United States. RICH stuff. I fuck with the Catholics sometimes for sure.
April 30, 2021
So what we have here is politics vs. religion, religion into fragments that work against each other, the Vatican and what goes on in Mexico, a government that is not at all afraid of closing down Catholicism in the country and people that are willing to die for their religion.
It's a rather complicated situation in Mexico with various revolutions taking place, well-equpped Mexican troops vs. very poorly equipped rebels, an atheist ruler of the country, purging of Catholic buildings and wealth, Catholic property being taken over by the government and the execution of some people who are Catholic and who have angered the government.
It's a complex series of individuals, groups and government vs. Catholicism that are involved here and it is all rather interesting and rather sad, really, in that you have two forces disagreeing and having this end up in violence and death.
Religion is supposed to be comforting, not deadly, and governments are supposed to help its people, not kill them.
It's a rather complicated situation in Mexico with various revolutions taking place, well-equpped Mexican troops vs. very poorly equipped rebels, an atheist ruler of the country, purging of Catholic buildings and wealth, Catholic property being taken over by the government and the execution of some people who are Catholic and who have angered the government.
It's a complex series of individuals, groups and government vs. Catholicism that are involved here and it is all rather interesting and rather sad, really, in that you have two forces disagreeing and having this end up in violence and death.
Religion is supposed to be comforting, not deadly, and governments are supposed to help its people, not kill them.
April 19, 2023
A very quick introduction to the timeline of the Cristero War in Mexico. I read this mainly because I am interested in how the Cristero War provided a basis for the religious mobilization of Catholics seeking to combat communism in the 50s and 60s. It was interesting to learn about how the Cristeros were mostly an unorganized group of everyday people defending what they saw as an existential attack on their religion while the government relied on its troops to subdue dispersed uprisings. However, the movement was also supported by unified and organized entities like the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty (Liga Nacional para la Defensa de las Libertades Religiosas). I found the parts about the Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church schism and Jose Camargo Melo, who the author described as the Mexican Luther, very interesting and new information to me. Overall, the book seemed to be a well-balanced introduction to this era of Mexican history.
Want to read
August 24, 2024I find it odd that this work is not listed under the author's name, Gustavo Vazquez-Lozano, and is impossible (unless I am informed otherwise) to determine when this was published originally though as the author, Vasquez-Lozano, was born in 1969 it is probably, like the majority of his work, in the last twenty years.
What causes me to hold reservations about the reliability of this work is the wide, indeed defuse, nature of the subjects the author writes about, everything from the Apocryphal books of the bible to Mexican pilots who fought in WWII. His has also written novels on the Mexican president Victoriano Huerte and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (not translated into English). My belief is that he may have an agenda which is not apparent to English readers and a greater clarity, which the actual suppression of his authorship on this book, seems to avoid.
What causes me to hold reservations about the reliability of this work is the wide, indeed defuse, nature of the subjects the author writes about, everything from the Apocryphal books of the bible to Mexican pilots who fought in WWII. His has also written novels on the Mexican president Victoriano Huerte and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (not translated into English). My belief is that he may have an agenda which is not apparent to English readers and a greater clarity, which the actual suppression of his authorship on this book, seems to avoid.
July 20, 2021
Enlightening book!
The deafening silence of the cristero war in Mexican narrative is slowly precipitating to the top.
I inherently believe that the event shamed the Mexican Government
Calles, himself admitted while in exile in San Diego, " Attacking the Catholic Church was a big mistake, even in the most modest adobe in the rural countryside, there is prominently a picture of the Virgin Mary as La Guadalupe".
No one can add to that.
The deafening silence of the cristero war in Mexican narrative is slowly precipitating to the top.
I inherently believe that the event shamed the Mexican Government
Calles, himself admitted while in exile in San Diego, " Attacking the Catholic Church was a big mistake, even in the most modest adobe in the rural countryside, there is prominently a picture of the Virgin Mary as La Guadalupe".
No one can add to that.
July 25, 2022
The Cliff Notes History
This was a nice starter kit for someone like me who knew nothing of this war until a few weeks ago. Not a deep historical dive, if that is what you seek.
This was a nice starter kit for someone like me who knew nothing of this war until a few weeks ago. Not a deep historical dive, if that is what you seek.
April 14, 2021
Es difícil comentar un libro de tan solo 40 páginas.
Cuenta una historia de la Iglesia en Méjico que consiste en la reacción de la población ante la actitud del Gobierno de prohibir el culto de la Iglesia, anular la existencia de la misma, requisar sus propiedades y declarar ilegal cualquier actuación de la misma.
El relato es claro y evidentemente se lee con facilidad dada su corta duración.
Cuenta una historia de la Iglesia en Méjico que consiste en la reacción de la población ante la actitud del Gobierno de prohibir el culto de la Iglesia, anular la existencia de la misma, requisar sus propiedades y declarar ilegal cualquier actuación de la misma.
El relato es claro y evidentemente se lee con facilidad dada su corta duración.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 9, 2022
Es una buena introducción a la guerra cristera. Tiene datos importantes y señala los principales eventos, dándole valor a un hecho histórico de gran relevancia para el pueblo mexicano.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews