Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. A Revolution in Spirit? Mexico, 1910–40

   • Matthew Butler

   Pages 1-20

3. The Mentality and Modus Operandi of Revolutionary Anticlericalism

   • Alan Knight

   Pages 21-56

4. Mexico’s “Ritual Constant”: Religion and Liberty from Colony to Post-Revolution

   • Fernando Cervantes

   Pages 57-73

5. Protestants, Freemasons, and Spiritists: Non-Catholic Religious Sociabilities and Mexico’s Revolutionary Movement, 1910–20

   • Jean-Pierre Bastian

   Pages 75-92

6. Ethereal Allies: Spiritism and the Revolutionary Struggle in Hidalgo

   • Keith Brewster, Claire Brewster

   Pages 93-109

7. The Regional Dynamics of Anticlericalism and Defanaticization in Revolutionary Mexico

   • Adrian A. Bantjes

   Pages 111-130

8. “The First Encounter”: Catholic Politics in Revolutionary Jalisco, 1917–19

   • Robert Curley

   Pages 131-148

9. Trouble Afoot? Pilgrimage in Cristero Mexico City

   • Matthew Butler

   Pages 149-166

10. Revolutionary and Not-So-Revolutionary Negotiations in Catholic Annulment, Bigamy, and Divorce Trials: The Archdiocese of Mexico, 1929–40

    • Kristina A. Boylan

    Pages 167-183

11. Religious Conflict and Catholic Resistance in 1930s Oaxaca

    • Jean Meyer

    Pages 185-202

12. “Anti-Priests” versus Catholic-Socialists in 1930s Campeche: Federal Teachers, Revolutionary Communes, and Anticlericalism

    • Ben Fallaw

    Pages 203-223

13. “El Indio Gabriel”: New Religious Perspectives among the Indigenous in Garrido Canabal’s Tabasco (1927–30)

    • Massimo De Giuseppe

    Pages 225-242

14. A Revolution in Local Catholicism? Oaxaca, 1928–34

    • Edward Wright-Rios

    Pages 243-260

15. “The Priest’s Party”: Local Catholicism and Panismo in Huajuapam de León

    • Benjamin Smith

    Pages 261-278

16. Back Matter

    Pages 279-295

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While Mexico's spiritual history after the 1910 Revolution is often essentialized as a church-state power struggle, this book reveals the complexity of interactions between revolution and religion. Looking at anticlericalism, indigenous cults and Catholic pilgrimage, these authors reveal that the Revolution was a period of genuine religious change, as well as social upheaval.

• complexity
• conflict
• Protest
• revolution
• latin american politics

"Together, these thirteen essays and Matthew Butler's introduction make an outstanding contribution to the study of twentieth-century Mexico and the politics of religion during the tumultuous 1910-1940 period. This book amounts to the first far-reaching entry into the history of church and religion in Mexico then that goes beyond the Cristero Rebellion and a teleological, top-level narrative of nation-building and 'defanaticization.' The roots and many branches of anti-clericalism are at the center of the book, and the perspectives are novel, often based on skillful use of hitherto untapped civil and ecclesiastical archives. Especially valuable is the attention to the southern states of Oaxaca, Campeche, Chiapas, and Tabasco, and to counterpoints of beliefs and practices, laws and their implementation, church and state, centers and peripheries, leaders and their constituencies, priests/politicians/teachers/lay catechists, Catholics/Protestants/Spiritists/ atheists in ways that break through familiar ways of thinking about tradition and modernity. The result is a more complex, synoptic understanding of a deeply contested history of religion and religious institutions in Mexico's public life." - William B. Taylor, Muriel McKevitt Sonne Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

Matthew Butler is Lecturer in Latin American Studies, Queen's University Belfast.

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