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La guerra cristera. Aspectos del conflicto religioso de 1926 a 1929, ofrece un panorama completo de los factores políticos, sociales y económicos que desencadenaron un conflicto armado entre la Iglesia y el Estado mexicanos. Con una gran labor documental, una redacción sencilla y recursos pictóricos, Alicia Olivera Sedano analiza uno de los enfrentamientos más icónicos y menos estudiados de la historia de nuestro país.

Why did José de León Toral kill Álvaro Obregón, leader of the Mexican Revolution? So far, historians have characterized the motivations of the young Catholic militant as the fruit of fanaticism. This book offers new insights on how diverse sectors experienced the aftermath of the Revolution by exploring the religious, political, and cultural contentions of the 1920s. Far from an isolated fanatic, León Toral represented a generation of Mexicans who believed that the revolution had unleashed ancient barbarism, sinful consumerism, and anticlerical tyranny. Facing attacks against the Catholic essence of Mexican nationalism, they emphasized asceticism, sacrifice, and the redemptive potential of violence. Their reckless enthusiasm to launch assaults was a sign of their devotion. León Toral insisted that'only God'was his accomplice; in fact, he was cheered by thousands who dreamed of bringing the Kingdom of Christ to beleaguered Mexico.

Vertientes del catolicismo mexicano

En el 2006, el mundo de la literatura y el cine volvió a poner de moda temas vinculados con la Iglesia católica como institución: la fuerza de su tradición y la cultura del secreto que, se supone, conlleva la misma. Este nuevo auge despojó a los “iniciados” y a los estudiosos de la cercanía exclusiva a las fuentes secretas. Dan Brown publicó una serie de escritos controvertidos que mezclan fuentes de archivos, creencias populares y pseudoestudios científicos. El héroe de esas aventuras, quien desenmascara complots internacionales, es un profesor ficticio, Robert Langdon, supuesto experto en iconografía y simbología religiosas adscrito a la no ficticia y célebre Universidad de Harvard. Nuevo Indiana Jones del siglo XXI, Robert Langdon es interpretado por el multilaureado Tom Hanks y recorre lo mismo los archivos nacionales de Francia, las colecciones exclusivas del Louvre o los famosos archivos secretos vaticanos. No es la primera ni la última vez que cine y literatura tratarán el tema de sociedades secretas vinculadas a la Iglesia católica u opuestas a ella.

The history of Mexico in the twentieth century is marked by conflict between church and state. This book focuses on the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to influence Mexican society through Jesuit-led organizations such as the Mexican Catholic Youth Association, the National Catholic Student Union, and the Universidad Iberoamericana. Dedicated to the education and indoctrination of Mexico's middle- and upper-class youth, these organizations were designed to promote conservative Catholic values. The author shows that they left a very different imprint on Mexican society, training a generation of activists who played important roles in politics and education. Ultimately, Espinosa shows, the social justice movement that grew out of Jesuit education fostered the leftist student movement of the 1960s that culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968. This study demonstrates the convergence of the Church, Mexico's new business class, and the increasingly pro-capitalist PRI, the party that has ruled Mexico in recent decades.Espinosa's archival research has led him to important but long-overlooked events like the student strike of 1944, the internal upheavals of the Church over liberation theology, and the complicated relations between the Jesuits and the conservative business class. His book offers vital new perspectives for scholars of education, politics, and religion in twentieth-century Mexico.

The religion question—the place of the Church in a Catholic country after an anticlerical revolution—profoundly shaped the process of state formation in Mexico. From the end of the Cristero War in 1929 until Manuel Ávila Camacho assumed the presidency in late 1940 and declared his faith, Mexico's unresolved religious conflict roiled regional politics, impeded federal schooling, undermined agrarian reform, and flared into sporadic violence, ultimately frustrating the secular vision shared by Plutarco Elías Calles and Lázaro Cárdenas.Ben Fallaw argues that previous scholarship has not appreciated the pervasive influence of Catholics and Catholicism on postrevolutionary state formation. By delving into the history of four understudied Mexican states, he is able to show that religion swayed regional politics not just in states such as Guanajuato, in Mexico's central-west'Rosary Belt,'but even in those considered much less observant, including Campeche, Guerrero, and Hidalgo. Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico reshapes our understanding of agrarian reform, federal schooling, revolutionary anticlericalism, elections, the Segunda (a second Cristero War in the 1930s), and indigenism, the Revolution's valorization of the Mesoamerican past as the font of national identity.

Esta obra expone la forma en que a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y en el primer decenio del siguiente se conformó una nueva relación entre el Estado y la Iglesia que contribuyó a reforzar la nueva forma estatal sin entrar en conflicto con la Iglesia, permitiendo a esta última encontrar en el nuevo contexto institucional una nueva e importante función. A diferencia de los estudios existentes, la autora nos ilustra que tanto el Estado como la Iglesia buscaron una nueva forma de colaboración, sin renunciar el primero -el Estado- a su orientación laica, y permitiendo a la Iglesia expandir su defensa de los intereses de la religión católica. Esta concertación fue posible porque el liberalismo en México, como en otros países católicos, no consideró la religión como su enemiga, convicción en la cual coincidían tanto los gobernantes como los gobernados.

Mexico's Hidden Revolution is the first book to examine the relationship between the Catholic church and the government in Mexico from 1929 until the present. Following the Mexican Revolution, religion was constitutionally banned from the political sphere, church property was seized, and clerical attire was outlawed in public. Yet, as this fascinating study demonstrates, behind the scenes the church and government had a tacit understanding that has led to cooperation rather than conflict. Reich's empirical and theoretical analysis in Mexico's Hidden Revolution will interest scholars and students in the fields of Latin American history, legal history, political science, and religious studies. In addition, all readers interested in the current constitutional debates in Mexico over the appropriate role for Catholicism in public life will find Mexico's Hidden Revolution an important and timely book.

Based on a decade of field research, this work is the first book-length, scholarly examination in English of the role of Catholicism in Mexican society since the 1970s through 1995, and the increasing political activism of the Catholic church and clergy. It is also the first analysis of church-state relations in Latin America that incorporates detailed interviews of numerous bishops and clergy and leading politicians about how they see each other and how religion influences their values. It is also the first analysis of the Mexican Catholic Church which uses national survey research to examine Mexican attitudes toward religion, Christianity, and Catholicism, and provides the first inside look at the decision-making process of bishops at the diocesan level.