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Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Concepts and Typologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Adrian A. Bantjes
Adrian A. Bantjes*
Affiliation:
University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming
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Extract

In recent years, an impressive effort has been made to supersede established interpretations of religious conflict in revolutionary Mexico that dismissed religious motivations as superstructural derivatives of “true” socio-economic and political factors. This has been accomplished by— pardon the cliché—“bringing religion back in” to the study of the Mexican Revolution. Yet while our post-secular understanding of Mexican religions and their impact has been vastly enhanced, the same cannot be said of revolutionary anticlericalism and irreligiosity, which have similarly been dismissed as mere tools in the hands of a cynical, Machiavellian revolutionary leadership intent on mystifying a credulous people.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , April 2009 , pp. 467 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2009

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References

1 For an overview of the recent historiography, see my “Religion and the Mexican Revolution: Toward a New Historiography,” in Martin Austin Nesvig, ed., Religious Culture in Modern Mexico (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), pp. 223–254. First and foremost, we should mention the pioneering work of Meyer, Jean, La Cristiada, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Siglo 21, 1973–Google Scholar1974); Bastian, Jean-Pierre, Los disidentes. Sociedades Protestantes y Revolución Social en México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1989);Google Scholar and Blancarte, Roberto, Historia de la Iglesia Católica en México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992).Google Scholar Recent examples of such work include the essays in Nesvig, ed., Religious Culture; Butler, Matthew, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927–29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Wright-Rios, Edward, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887–1934 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For an important exception, see the essays in Butler, Matthew, ed., Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 21–56,Google Scholar especially Knight, Alan, “The Mentality and Modus Operandi of Revolutionary Anticlericalism.” An early culturalist interpretation is my “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in RevolutionaryMexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929–1940,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13:1 (1997), pp. 87–120 Google Scholar; For a revisionist interpretation that largely dismisses revolutionary anticlericalism, see Reich, Peter Lester, Mexico’s Hidden Revolution: The Catholic Church in Law and Politics since 1929 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).Google Scholar

3 See Voekel, Pamela, Alone before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 Neither term appears in the OED with this meaning.

9 Grande Larousse de la langue française (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1975), vol. 4, p. 2928.

10 Rémond, , Religion, p. 11.Google Scholar

11 Le Grand Dictionnaire Hachette-Oxford (Paris: Hachette Livres; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 479.

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13 , accessed August 10, 2008.

14 (Mexico City: UNAM, 2008). See for his recent statements: , accessed August 10, 2008.

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17 Ibid., pp. 41–43.

18 Ibid., p. 57.

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23 See the excellent essays in Butler, Faith.

24 Knight, , “The Mentality,” pp. 29–31.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 41–42.

26 Butler, Matthew, “Introduction: A Revolution in Spirit? Mexico, 1910–40,” in Butler, , ed., Faith, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

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31 Bastian, Los disidentes.

32 Smith, Benjamin, “Politics and Freemasonry in Mexico, 1920–1940,”Google Scholar in this issue.

33 Butler, Matthew, Sotanas Rojinegras:Google Scholar Catholic Anticlericalism and Mexico’s Revolutionary Schism,” in this issue.

34 Robert Curley, “Anticlericalism and the Public Sphere in the Mexican Revolution: Considerations from Jalisco,” in this issue.

35 Ben Fallaw “Varieties of Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Radicalism, Iconoclasm, and Otherwise, 1914–1935,” in this issue.

36 Reich, Mexico’s Hidden Revolution.

37 See my “Saints, Sinners, and State Formation: Local Religion and Cultural Revolution,” in Vaughan, Mary Kay and Lewis, Stephen, eds., The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 137–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 See, for example, La lucha entre el poder civil y el clero. Estudio histórico y jurídico del señor licenciado don Emilio Portes Gil, Procurador General de la República (Mexico City, 1934).

39 . “Laicidad” does not appear in the most recent edition of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española.

40 Blancarte, , “Laicidad,” p. 140.Google Scholar The original reads “un régimen de convivencia diseñado para el respeto a la libertad de conciencia, en el marco de una sociedad crecientemente plural o que reconoce una diversidad existente.”

41 Ibid., p. 143. The original reads “un régimen de convivencia social cuyas instituciones políticas ya no están legitimadas por lo sagrado o las instituciones religiosas, sino por la soberanía popular.”

42 Ibid., p. 145. The original reads “un marco institucional necesario para el desarrollo de las libertades religiosas, particularmente la libertad de creencias y la de culto.”

43 Ibid., p. 145.

44 Monsiváis, , El Estado, p. 15.Google Scholar The original reads, “a grosso modo como lo que se implanta y desarrolla con la separación de la Iglesia…y el Estado”.

45 Monsiváis, , El Estado, p. 15.Google Scholar The original reads “el rechazo de las pretensiones hegemónicas del clericalismo, y como el enfrentamiento al pensamiento conservador ya en franca retirada, sustituido por la emisión de acciones y consignas autocráticas y por las falsas profecías que hacen las veces de dictámenes ‘de la moral.’”

46 Blancarte, , “Laicidad,” pp. 139–140,Google Scholar 143.

47 Ibid., pp. 158–60.

48 De la superstición al ateísmo (Meditaciones antropológicas) (Madrid: Taurus, 1974), pp. 252–253.

49 Monsiváis, , El estado, pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

50 Camp, , Crossing Swords, pp. 4,Google Scholar 124.