Between 1926 and 1929, thousands of Mexicans fought and died in an attempt to overthrow the government of their country. They were the Cristeros, so called because of their battle cry, ¡Viva Cristo Rey!—Long Live Christ the King! The Cristero rebellion and the church-state conflict remain one of the most controversial subjects in Mexican history, and much of the writing on it is emotional polemic. David C. Bailey, basing his study on the most important published and unpublished sources available, strikes a balance between objective reporting and analysis. This book depicts a national calamity in which sincere people followed their convictions to often tragic ends. The Cristero rebellion climaxed a century of animosity between the Catholic church and the Mexican state, and this background is briefly summarized here. With the coming of the 1910 revolution the hostility intensified. The revolutionists sought to impose severe limitations on the Church, and Catholic anti-revolutionary militancy grew apace. When the government in 1926 decreed strict enforcement of anticlerical legislation, matters reached a crisis. Church authorities suspended public worship throughout Mexico, and Catholics in various parts of the country rose up in arms. There followed almost three years of indecisive guerrilla warfare marked by brutal excesses on both sides. Bailey describes the armed struggle in broad outline but concentrates on the political and diplomatic maneuvering that ultimately decided the issue. A de facto settlement was brought about in 1929, based on the government’s pledge to allow the Church to perform its spiritual offices under its own internal discipline. The pact was arranged mainly through the intercession of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow. His role in the conflict, as well as that of other Americans who decisively influenced the course of events, receives detailed attention in the study. The position of the Vatican during the conflict and its role in the settlement are also examined in detail. With the 1929 settlement the clergy returned to the churches, whereupon the Cristeros lost public support and the rebellion collapsed. The spirit of the settlement soon evaporated, more strife followed, and only after another decade did permanent religious peace come to Mexico.

*Includes pictures*Includes a bibliography for further reading*Includes a table of contents"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 RebellionThe 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.