Cristero War - Background To Rebellion

Background To Rebellion

There was violence on a limited scale throughout the early 1920s. In 1926, following passage of stringent anti-clerical criminal laws and enforcement of these so-called Calles Laws (named for President of Mexico Plutarco Elías Calles) coupled with farmer's revolts against land reform in the heavily Catholic Bajio, scattered guerrilla operations coalesced into a serious armed revolt against the government. Catholic and anti-clerical groups turned to terrorism. Of the several uprisings against the Mexican government in the 1920s, the Cristero War was the most devastating, and had the most long-range effects. It was largely resolved both through military defeat of the guerrilla army headed by Enrique Gorostieta Velarde and a diplomatic settlement by 1929. However, persecution of Catholics and anti-government terrorist attacks continued into the 1940s, when the remaining organized Cristero groups were incorporated into the Synarchist Party.

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 was originally fought against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz, and in favor of the demand by the mass of peasantry for land. Many of the revolutionary leaders took radically anti-Catholic stances, inspired by their freemasonry, despite of the Church's overwhelming support by the people. Francisco I. Madero was the first revolutionary leader. Madero became president in November 1911, but was eventually overthrown and executed in 1913 by the counterrevolutionary Victoriano Huerta. When General Victoriano Huerta seized power after Madero's assassination, Archbishop Ruiz y Flores from Morelia published a letter condemning the coup and distanced the Church from Huerta. The National Catholic Party newspaper, representing the views of the bishops, attacked Huerta severely and, as a result, the new regime jailed the President of the NCP and halted the publication of the newspaper. In spite of this, the bishops and Catholics were presented as supporters of the Huerta by the revolutionary generals Carranza, Villa and Zapata, who had previously vanquished Huerta's federal army under the Plan of Guadalupe.

Carranza was the first president under the new Constitution, but he was overthrown by one-time ally Álvaro Obregón in 1919, who succeeded to the presidency in late 1920. Obregón effectively applied the secularist laws emanating from the constitution, only in areas where Catholic sentiment was weakest. This uneasy "truce" between the government and the Church ended with the 1924 hand picked succession of an atheist, Plutarco Elías Calles. Mexican Jacobins, supported by Calles's central government, went beyond mere anticlericalism and engaged in secular antireligious campaigns to eradicate what they called "superstition" and "fanaticism", including desecration of religious objects, persecution, and murder, of the clergy and anticlerical legislation.

Calles applied the anti-clerical laws stringently throughout the country and added his own anti-clerical legislation. In June 1926 he signed the "Law for Reforming the Penal Code", known unofficially as the "Calles Law". This provided specific penalties for priests and individuals who violated the provisions of the 1917 Constitution. For instance, wearing clerical garb in public (i.e., outside Church buildings) earned a fine of 500 pesos (approximately $250 US at the time); a priest who criticized the government could be imprisoned for five years. Some states enacted oppressive measures. Chihuahua enacted a law permitting only a single priest to serve the entire Catholic congregation of the state. To help enforce the law, Calles seized church property, expelled all foreign priests, and closed the monasteries, convents and religious schools.