The end of the Cristero War?
June 27, 2019
Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero
In 1929 the Agreements that brought peace to the conflict between the Catholic Church and Mexico were generated through the intervention of the United States of America and some of the world's main anti-Communist agents of the Holy See such as Edmund Walsh. The conflicts, unfortunately, continued. Still in 1937, Mexico, the Spanish Republic and the Soviet Union were besieged by Catholic nationalism that the Holy See implemented in several regions. The intransigent religious integralism was transformed into a confrontation with the Mexican Revolution, the social, indigenous and peasant movements.
Some years ago, historians such as Paolo Valvo and Fernando M. González came to the conclusion that certain bishops deceived the Holy See to involve it in the conflict and to acquire international pressure so that the Mexican government not only gave in to the demands of the conservative groups but, above all, stop the actions of social justice that had been sustained in the revolutionary demands. The objective was successful in the short, medium and long term. From the Agreements, then in 1941, during the Cold War and, above all, in the neoliberal era, it has gone from a diplomatic negotiation to a frank concordat where the republic is subordinated to an imperialism.
Despite the interpretation that historians make of the evidence, it is necessary to enrich the analysis with other sources and studies. It is true that local groups can manipulate things and distort information for an institution as large as the Catholic Church. However, given the geopolitical, historical, economic, social and informative power that Catholicism has; it does not lend itself to manipulation. It is incredible that, on the one hand, the Catholic Church is considered one of the pillars against the fight against world communism and, on the other hand, it is said to be deceived by some bishops located in our country.
The Spanish Republic was destroyed by the intervention of the Holy See in support of fascism, a similar pattern would develop in the USSR at the turn of the twentieth century. The regime of the Mexican Revolution saved the skin, but had to make multiple concessions and only kept the adjective against the counterrevolutionary demands to which it was subjected.
The Cristero War was an unfortunate event that should not have happened and that was caused by the ecclesiastical hierarchy attached to the Holy See. A perpetuation of the civil war that seems endless and prevents building a national project and develop an institutional scaffolding to promote well-being and well being among Mexicans. The remembrance of the agreements with the Holy See should be indicative that Mexico is subject to two imperialisms and that, in the face of such a situation, things are complicated.
Edmund Walsh was one of the Jesuit architects who infiltrated the USSR and shaped the anticommunism of the Cold War. Faced with such characters, can you believe that Mexicans cheat the Vatican State?
The anticlericalism of the first half of the twentieth century in Mexico and Latin America is justified. The political groups that tried to modernize and change the social structure of their countries, did not imagine that the Old Regime had such strong and powerful allies as the Holy See. General Porfirio Diaz's own government had to turn into a clerical dictatorship in the face of the impossibility of exercising a government without the pacts with the religious institution.
General Plutarco Elías Calles and Licenciado Benito Juárez are patriots who show us the way in which a government has to emancipate itself to combat this form of interventionism that does not cease or change over the years. In the case of Mexico, the agreements of 1929 are the sign of a pact between institutions that would end up subjecting Mexico and Mexicans to the control of intransigent integral Catholics. The military, agraristas and citizens who decided to confront the Holy See in those difficult days, must also be admired as heroes.
The space of Mexico was always ambitioned by several powers and the Cristero War was the conflict where the United States was also subjected to this tutoring of Imperialist Political Catholicism. The importance of remembering the imposition of these Agreements for the Mexican State, includes understanding one of the ideological inheritances of this coexistence with the Holy See: anti-communism.
This form of political thought authorized the survival of the most retrograde and anti-modern forms of the Mexican and Latin American social structure. Anti-communism, the legacy of such agreements, is maintained today with such radical ways as if only yesterday Lenin had come to power. Many groups of intransigent integral Catholicism forget that they co-governed with the PRI much more than thirty years neoliberal. The ninety years that fulfill the agreements of 1929 are the period of understanding between North America, the revolutionary Family and the Holy See to take over the country. In all these years only the Mexicans have lost, they have given time, sweat, blood, tears and resources for the dispute of these hegemonic powers that will never dedicate a few minutes of their mercy.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador is treated by the groups of the Mexican extreme right as if he were Tomás Garrido Canabal. Sometimes I should answer them as if I were. It is not like that, AMLO defines himself as a God-fearing man and there is no doubt about the ecumenical Christianity he practices, that is, to the detriment of the country's progressive liberal-ecological groups.
However, the agnostic-nihilistic-secular thought is misunderstood everywhere. The gods do not go to sea or space, they return in many ways and continue to nourish people's lives.
Despite the fact that religious representatives are held responsible for serious infamies, society needs metaphysical elements to continue living and to procure, as far as possible, its existence. However irrational religions may be, they manifest as control institutions that favor social order. And order, as an instinct for conservation, is necessary for human survival.
I hope that the far right also understood that the Welfare State and the distribution of wealth are elements that favor the conservation of humanity.
Anti-communism was the flag that was used in the last ninety years by those who plundered the country and subjected it to the imperialisms of the West. Power has always been the goal of your strategy. They never cared about the young man of the Gospels or the Tonantzin of December twelve.
The agreements and the reform of Article 130 must be seen as a product of imperialism that subjects Mexico and that is responsible for the serious social conditions that we keep.