Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-vt8vv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-08-26T13:18:00.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Modification of the Anti-Clerical Nationalism of the Mexican Revolution by General Lázaro Cárdenas and Its Relationship to the Church-State Detente in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Albert L. Michaels*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York

Extract

The man of the Revolution disputed the very nature of Mexico with the Roman Catholic. The revolutionary, whether Callista or Cardenista, believed that the church had had a pernicious influence on the history of Mexico. He claimed that Mexico could not become a modern nation until the government had eradicated all the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic, on the other hand, was convinced that his religion was the basis of Mexico's nationality. Above all, the Catholic believed that Mexico needed a system of order. He was convinced that his faith had brought order and peace to Mexico in the colonial period, and as the faith declined, Mexico degenerated into anarchy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 y Vizcarra, Miguel Palomar, La Acción Católica y la Acción Civica Junio de 1936 (México, D. F.: Editorial ARA, Tercera Edición, 1963), p. 25.Google Scholar

2 There are two biographies of Díaz: Correa, Eduardo J., Pascual Díaz (México, D. F.: Ediciones Minerva, 1945).Google Scholar Carreño, Alberto María, Pascual Díaz y el conflicto religioso (México, D. F.: Ediciones Victoria, 1943).Google Scholar Carreño, Díaz’s private secretary, said that attacks on Díaz for arranging the truce with the government in 1929 had shortened the Archbishop’s life. The Cristeros never forgave Díaz for ending their rebellion.

8 Gil, Joaquín Blanco, El clamor de la sangre (México, D. F.: Editorial Rex-Mex., 1947), pp. 425428.Google Scholar Casasola, Miguel V., ed., Historia gráfica de la revolución mexicana (México, D. F.: Archivo Casasola, n.d.), p. 2182.Google Scholar Hombre Libre, January 5, 1938, relates death of Cristero leader Lauro Rocha.

4 Hinojosa, Roberto, El Tabasco que yo he visto (México, D. F.: Privately printed, 1935), p. 45.Google Scholar Dromundo, Baltasar, Tomás Garrido (México, D. F.: Editorial Guaranía, 1953), p. 117.Google Scholar

5 P.N.R., La jira del gral. Lázaro Cárdenas (México, D. F.: Turanzas del Valle, 1934), p. 22, pp. 43–44. Cárdenas, Lázaro, Ideario agrario (México, D. F.: Departamento Agrario, 1935), p. 80.Google Scholar

6 El Nacional, July 21, 1934.

7 Goodspeed, Stephen S., “El papel del jefe del ejecutivo en México,” Problemas agrícolas e industriales de México, 7 (January-March, 1955), p. 118.Google Scholar The New York Times of March 18, 1935 claimed that there were only 375 churches legally open in all of Mexico.

8 El Nacional, January 26, 1935.

9 El Nacional, January 27, 1935.

10 Diario Oficial, February 18, 1935.

11 Diario Oficial, February 18, 1935.

12 Carreño, Alberto María, Páginas de historia mexicana (México, D. F.: Ediciones Victoria, 1936), p. 234.Google Scholar

13 Excelsior, December 31, 1934.

14 El Nacional, January 3, 1935.

15 La Palabra, March 1, 1935. New York Times, March 23, 1935.

16 Archbishop Díaz had made this statement to the New York Times. See New York Times, January 27, 1935.

17 Correa, Eduardo J., El balance del cardenismo (México, D. F.: Ediciones Botas, 1941), p. 269.Google Scholar

18 Carreño, Alberto María, Pastorales edictos y otros documentos del Pascual Díaz (México, D. F.: Ediciones Victoria, 1938), pp. 367368.Google Scholar

19 New York Times, March 31, 1935.

20 Correa, , Balance …, p. 276.Google Scholar

21 El Universal, July 3, 1935. El Día, July 3, 1935.

22 See Diario Oficial, December 1934 through December 1935.

23 Correa, , Balance …, p. 305.Google Scholar

24 Dulles, John W.F., Yesterday in Mexico (Austin: Texas University Press, 1961), p. 656.Google Scholar

25 New York Times, July 1, 1935.

26 New York Times, July 16, 1935.

27 Casasola, op. cit., p. 2179.

28 El Nacional, March 5, 1935.

29 Excelsior, April 14, 1935. Padilla, Ezequiel, Entrevista con Lázaro Cárdenas (México, D. F.: Imprenta de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1935), p. 4.Google Scholar

30 See Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, Cárdenas habla (México, D. F.: Turanzas del Valle, 1940), p. 12.

31 Diario Oficial, September 4, 1935.

32 New York Times, October 18, 1935.

33 El Nacional, November 5, 1935. New York Times, November 6, 1935.

34 Letter quoted in Quintana, Miguel A., “El Presidente Cárdenas y la educación,” El Nacional, October 26, 1946.Google Scholar

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 El Nacional, February 17, 1936.

38 Ruíz, J. Medrano, ed., Homenaje a la memoria del Excmo e Revmo, Sr. Dr. D. Francisco Orozco Jiménez, Arzobispo de Guadalajara (Guadalajara: Imprenta y Libreria Font, 1936), n. p.Google Scholar A Mexican historian, Moisés González Navarro, who witnessed the funeral, told me that he estimated the crowd at well over 100,000 persons.

39 J. Medrano Ruíz, op. cit., p. 138.

40 The full text of Dr. Cornejo’s oration is given in Blanco Gil, op. cit., pp. 85–90.

41 Kluckhohn, Frank, The Mexican Challenge (New York: Doubleday Doran and Co., 1939), p. 275.Google Scholar

42 New York Times, March 31, 1936.

43 Cárdenas, Lázaro, La escuela socialista y religión (México, D. F.: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1936), pp. 68.Google Scholar

44 Diario de los debates diputados, September 1, 1936, p. 6.

45 Correa, , El balance …, p. 294.Google Scholar

46 Ibid.

47 Excelsior, February 25, 1937.

48 Hombre Libre, February 12, 1937; New York Times, March 15, 1937.

49 Brown, Lyle C., “Mexican Church-State Relations 1933–1940Journal of Church and State, 6 (Spring, 1964), p. 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Universal, August 8, 1937.

51 Hombre Libre, January 2, 1938.

52 Universal, July 5, 1938. Excelsior, July 5, 1938.

53 Hombre Libre, February 19, 1937.

54 Kluckhohn, op. cit., p. 276; Excelsior, July 15, 1937.

55 Excelsior, July 15, 1937.

56 Excelsior, May 31, 1938.

57 El Universal, June 1, 1938.

58 Excelsior, May 31, 1938.

59 El Universal, June 2, 1938.

60 El Universal, June 3, 1938. Salvador Abascal operated in the state as an organizer for the recently formed Sinarquista party. The opening of the Tabasco churches was one of the Sinarquistas’ earliest and most impressive triumphs.

61 Smith, Lois Elwyn, Mexico and the Spanish Republicans (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955), p. 174.Google Scholar For Sinarquismo, see Michaels, Albert L., “Fascism and Sinarquismo: Popular Nationalisms Against the Mexican Revolution,” A Journal of Church and State, 8 (Spring, 1968).Google Scholar

62 Partido Nacional Revolucionario, La jira …, p. 94.

63 El Universal, December 15, 1939. See also Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Enseñanza de la República Mexicana, Conferencia Nacional de Educación (México, D. F.: Talleres Tipográficos Modelo, 1940).

64 The full provisions of the law are given in El Universal, December 28, 1939. The law was passed on December 31, 1939.

65 Hombre Libre, January 1, 1940.

66 Hombre Libre, January 8, 1940. Germán List Arzubide, well-known Marxist, was a member of the Mexican education ministry.

67 New York Times, January 20, 1940.

68 Full text in Hombre Libre, April 26, 1937.

69 Kirk, Betty, Covering the Mexican Front (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942), p. 133.Google Scholar

70 There were rumors that they had gone to school together or that María Martínez was related to Cárdenas’ wife. See Daniels, Josephus, Shirtsleeve Diplomat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 165,Google Scholar and New York Times, June 5, 1937. I have been unable to substantiate either of these claims.

71 Brown, op. cit., pp. 219–221.

72 New York Times, May 3, 1938; Kirk, op. cit., p. 132; Cline, Howard, The United States and Mexico (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 242.Google Scholar

73 Nathaniel, and Weyl, Sylvia, “La reconquista de México,” Problemas agrícolas e industriales de México, 7 (October-December, 1955), p. 288.Google Scholar

74 New York Times, May 3, 1938.

75 Omega, May 19, 1938.

76 Moreno, José T., El agrarismo (Guadalajara: Imprenta y Libreria Font, 1938), p. 29.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., p. 9.

78 Ibid.

79 Dr.Camacho, Ramiro, ¿Son ladrones los agraristas? (Guadalajara: Privately printed, 1940).Google Scholar

80 Camacho, op. cit., p. 16.

81 Ibid., p. 21.

82 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

83 Carreño, , Pastorales, edictos y otros documentos del Pascual Díaz (México, D. F.: Ediciones Victoria, 1938), p. 209.Google Scholar

84 Gil, Emilio Portes, The Conflict Between the Civil Power and the Clergy (México, D. F., 1935), pp. 120122.Google Scholar

85 Blanco Gil, op. cit., pp. 470–471.