The Centenary of the Cristiada: Religious Memory or Political Resource?

 The Centenary of the Cristiada: Religious Memory or Political Resource?

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Television programs on Canal Once—specifically "Sacro y Profano" and "Los Periodistas"—have analyzed the outbreak of the Cristero War a century later. The question arises once more: what does it mean to remember that conflict?

The question should not be limited to determining who was right—the government of Plutarco Elías Calles or the Catholic hierarchy.

There is a more uncomfortable contemporary issue: who needs to reclaim that memory today, and for what purpose?

Mexico remains predominantly Catholic.

The 2020 Census recorded that 77.7% of the population identified with that religion. However, this national figure masks significant regional differences.

Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas maintain Catholic populations exceeding 88%, whereas in other states, the Catholic population is considerably smaller.

This leads to an initial hypothesis: the memory of the "Cristiada" does not necessarily hold the same political significance across all of Mexico.

The problem arises when a religious memory ceases to be merely historical and begins to function as a political identity.

To demonstrate that this is happening, it is not enough simply to point to bishops speaking about the "Cristiada" or Catholic organizations honoring its martyrs.

One must observe which symbols are being revived, which contemporary enemies are associated with them, which actors are promoting this memory, and what political objectives are linked to its use.

The centenary of the Cristero War may be creating an opportunity for certain conservative sectors to transform a regional religious memory into a tool for mobilization. The Mexican Episcopal Conference itself states that the commemoration is not intended to glorify violence or to place that memory at the service of any political or partisan agenda.

It even acknowledges that the conflict involved political calculations, erroneous decisions, and instances of culpability within the Church itself.

Therefore, it would be insufficient to claim that the hierarchy is simply manipulating that memory. If the memory of the Cristero War remains confined to religious acts, pilgrimages, lectures, and historical tributes, we will see evidence of a revival of religious memory, but not necessarily of a political maneuver.

However, if we begin to observe—the identification of contemporary political adversaries with the Church's historical enemies, the use of Cristero symbols in political campaigns or movements, and a concentration of such mobilization in regions with large Catholic populations—then more solid evidence would emerge of religious memory transforming into political identity.

A commemoration can bolster the public authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but it can also benefit conservative organizations, right-wing movements, or political actors seeking to portray themselves as defenders of a threatened religious tradition.

For this reason, the centenary of the Cristero War should be studied less as a dispute over the past and more as an experiment regarding the present.

The question is not merely who won that war, but who can gain political power by defining what it means to remember it a century later.

The evidence must be sought beyond commemorative speeches: in patterns of mobilization, political messaging, participating organizations, territorial distribution, and, above all, in the response of the citizens themselves.

Felipe Gaitan, Fernando M. González, and Roberto Blancarte agree that the Catholic hierarchy has consistently manipulated sociopolitical processes to weaken the Mexican State; this fact should also be part of the historical assessment.

The Catholic Church has been a systematic adversary of the Mexican State and its liberal development; now, amidst the political maneuvering of the "Fourth Transformation," the eternal game of invisible power resurfaces to hinder national modernization.

It is curious that, during this centenary, the Catholic Church is a key player in the federal government's disarmament campaigns, and that President Sheinbaum has requested a visit to Mexico by Pope Leo XIV.

The influence of Benito Juárez on the "Fourth Transformation" has been diminished to an incredible degree—a phenomenon explicable only by the populist, progressive, revolutionary conservatism of the current era.

Memory, Blood, and Faith: A Century After the Cristero War

Memory, Blood, and Faith: A Century After the Cristero War

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

Under the echo of a conflict that refuses to be relegated to mere archives, the San Juan Hall of the Parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Puebla hosted the colloquium “The Cristero War in Mexico 1926-2026.”

Contents

THE CLASH OF TWO NATIONALISMS

SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE: THE CUP AND DICE AND THE CALLES LAW

THE WAR ON THE PENTAGRAM: BETWEEN CORRIDOS AND AGRARIANISM

A CENTENNIAL THAT QUESTIONS THE PRESENT

The event marks the beginning of a series of reflections that, one hundred years after the Calles Law, seek to understand how faith and politics continue to dance a dangerous waltz in the construction of Mexican identity.

Far from being a cold review of the past, the colloquium served as a necessary reflection on the centennial commemorations of the Cristero War, that open wound in the Bajío region that redefined the national soul.

THE CLASH OF TWO NATIONALISMS

The panel, moderated by Juan Bernardo Galeazzi Oviedo, traced an intellectual map of the collision between revolutionary nationalism and Catholic nationalism.

Dr. Xochitl Patricia Campos López dissected the contradictions between the formation of the Liberal State and the Catholicism rooted since the Colonial era, a tension that erupted violently when 20th-century modernity attempted to impose itself on secular tradition.

For his part, Vicente Moreno Lima offered a global perspective by analyzing the position of Pius XI.

Their interventions revealed that the Vatican was observing not only a religious conflict, but also a strategic struggle by social Catholicism to curb the advance of anarchism and socialism among the Mexican working classes.

SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE: THE CUBILETE AND THE CALLES LAW

One of the most profound moments was the intervention of Preacher Javier Soriano Contreras, who contextualized the legislative trigger of the conflict: the Calles Law.

This code, which sought to limit the number of priests and prohibit public worship, was not only a legal affront, but also the catalyst that led figures like Anacleto González Flores and the Jesuit Miguel Agustín Pro to martyrdom.

Soriano highlighted an architectural symbol of this resistance: the construction of the Christ of the Cubilete in Guanajuato.

This monument was not just stone and lime; It was a direct challenge to secular centralism, a beacon of Sinarquism and Catholic identity that sought to remind everyone who held true sovereignty over the hearts of Mexicans.

THE WAR ON THE PENTAGRAM: BETWEEN CORRIDOS AND AGRARIANISM

Popular culture was not untouched by the debate.

During the colloquium, the sonic atmosphere of the era was revived.

Traditional music, that which runs through the veins of the Bajío region, served as a chronicle of war.

Melodies such as "El martes me fusilan" and "Valentín de la Sierra" (Portraits of Personal Sacrifice), "Los Altos de Jalisco" and "El Tapatío" (Anthems of the regional identity that rose up in arms).

However, the counterpoint was provided by "Canción del Agrarista" (The Agrarian's Song).

Dr. Diego Velázquez emphasized how this piece represented the ideal of the Revolution: the end of large landholdings, as well as the indispensable redistribution of land.

This musical clash revealed that the war wasn't just for the altars, but for the furrows; a struggle where the peasant was torn between faith in God and the hope of owning the land he worked.

A CENTENNIAL THAT QUESTIONS THE PRESENT

The audience was not passive.

Poignant questions hung in the air about the influence of Freemasonry and the role of the United States in the exile of Porfirio Díaz, as well as the subsequent aggressive factionalism of all political leanings, particularly those of Carranza and the Sonora Group.

The genetic link between the Cristero movement and the evolution of the far right in Mexico was also debated.

One hundred years after the first shots were fired, the conclusion is bittersweet: Mexico seems to have opted for the "Nicomachean arrangement," a pragmatism of shadows where institutions and the Church coexist without resolving the debts of justice and poverty that the 1926 conflict already highlighted.

The lesson of the colloquium is clear: on the threshold of 2026, the Cristiada is not just history; it is a mirror that asks us if we have learned to live in plurality or if we continue to be hostages of our own dogmas.

The end of the Cristero War?

The end of the Cristero War?
June 27, 2019

Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

https://www.semanarioelreto.com/single-post/2019/06/27/%C2%BFEl-fin-de-la-Guerra-Cristera

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.