Mexican Migrants and the 1920s Cristeros Era: An Interview with Historian Julia G. Young
- Mexican Migrants and the 1920s Cristeros Era: An Interview with Historian Julia G. Young
It’s an honor to speak to you, Julia. As a professional historian in [the] areas of the Mexican Revolution and Cristero Revolt, you can provide interesting perspective on this film.
Thank you. It’s great to be here with you.
I’m excited to hear your comments on this subject.
I’d be happy to do that. As you can imagine, I was very interested in the movie when it came out, and arranged for a screening on the Catholic University campus, both because I wanted to see it, and also to publicize, let people know a little more about the Cristero [uprising]. I was very interested in seeing what the audience reaction would be. My own reaction was probably similar to that of any historian seeing a movie on the historical subject they examine: that it was a great picture but it was much more complicated than [depicted]. Part of the problem with a subject getting Hollywood treatment is that you lose a lot of the nuance and subtleties that we as historians see in the archives and try to bring out in our books. The job of the Hollywood movie is not necessarily to deal with subtleties.
I found it visually appealing, and emotionally resonant, although at times I thought it was a little emotionally overwrought. I wished the movie had dealt with the conflict in a more balanced way, in particular, to show those who are heroic and noble as well as those who commit vicious acts and heinous crimes, be they practicing Catholics or not. [Due to the 1910 Revolution], this was a really violent period in Mexican history, and violence came from both sides. There were also the ways that the movie portrayed those who represented the Mexican government, which I found somewhat simplistic, because most of these people were depicted as simple caricatures of godlessness and evil. [End Page 75] If you read the historical documents, you find people who were struggling [with the issue], people who considered themselves Catholic, but were also opposed to the role of the Catholic Church in the public sphere of the Mexican State.
The violence during the Cristero period was awful and bloody, and really a terrible time for many people in Mexico [not unlike the decade prior], but there were also people on both sides of the conflict who were trying to resolve the conflict through discussion and debate. This is lost in the movie because it simply focuses on the battles and bloodshed and moments of heroism. But on a positive note, I was glad the movie got people talking about Mexico in the 1920s, a topic that is not at the forefront of most peoples’ understanding of Mexico and Mexican history. It was great to have the opportunity to screen this movie and talk about it with a much wider audience than I am accustomed to.
I agree with you that there was a lack of nuance in the presentation. Also, the movie didn’t have a giant distribution. I had to go out to Cicero Avenue in Chicago, an area that is predominantly Mexican, in order to find a theater where it was playing. In follow-up, what do you think the impact was for Mexican Catholics in urban areas like Chicago, especially the younger generation, without a finely grained sense of their parents’ historical past? I think that was one of the groups they were targeting.
That’s interesting because the audience that I showed it to was primarily not Mexican-American, they were mostly Catholic, students of Catholic University, and they had a pretty positive reaction. Many of them said, “Wow, I never knew this conflict existed,” or, “I never knew that there was such a strict crackdown on Catholics in Mexico.” It was interesting to them, I think, precisely because they didn’t know much about [history], and the movie just didn’t give that to them. In terms of Mexican-Americans, it depends, I think, on which group of...
