Varieties of Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Radicalism, Iconoclasm, and Otherwise, 1914–1935

• Ben Fallaw ^[1]
  1. [1] Colby College

     Colby College

     City of Waterville, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: The Americas: A quarterly review of inter-american cultural history, ISSN 0003-1615, Vol. 65, Nº. 4, 2009, págs. 481-509
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Two days before Easter 1916, a teacher in the Mérida ferrocarrilleros’ school demolished a pine statue of Saint Joseph with an axe to show “it was simply a monkey on a stick (un tucho de palo)”; students then hacked up smaller icons before approving parents. During the Cristiada, General Eulogio Ortíz ate consecrated hosts with carnitas de puerco in a public market in Zacatecas. Constitutionalist military proconsuls in 1914-15, leftist regional caudillos of the 1920s, and federal educators and some provincial strongmen during the Maximato (1931-35) all believed anticlericalism would build a new nation; these three waves of attacks against the Catholic clergy proved to be decisive moments in revolutionary state formation. At no point, however, did revolutionaries agree on either means or ends. Radicals favored the destruction of the Church (if not organized religion entirely). Their reliance on iconoclasm—literal as well as metaphorical—also distinguished them. Some iconoclastic radicals hoped their attacks would help create a humanistic, post-Christian belief system. More moderate anticlericals advocated less destructive and more persuasive measures, including using education and the law to weaken and/or reform Catholicism. Some moderates promoted alternative creeds; others hoped to remake the Catholic Church in Mexico. Certainly iconoclasts and reformers did collaborate at times, but they also clashed, as in the rancorous debates over the “religious question” at the Querétaro Constitutional Convention and again when anticlerical Reds and moderate Whites battled during the early 1930s.