The Roots of Conservatism in Mexico: Catholicism, Society, and Politics in the Mixteca Baja, 1750-1962

5: “No leaf of the tree moves without the will of God”: Regional Catholicism During the Revolution, 1910–1940

203 Chapter 5 “No leaf of the tree moves without the will of God” Regional Catholicism During the Revolution, 1910–1940 v On August 19, 1919, Tranquilino Pacheco, a former priest of Tequixtepec, wrote to his “beloved friend” and municipal president, Luis Niño Pacheco. After recounting his day-to-day affairs he turned to the fate of the village, suggesting both the cause of and the solution to the Zapatista raids, harvest failures, and epidemics that had afflicted the village for nearly ten years. He reminded his compadre that two decades ago the priest and parishioners of Tequixtepec had placed crosses on the surrounding hills to ward off “demons” and “devils.” But now, “Who remember[ed] the devotion to these crosses? Who remember[ed] the processions? Who remember[ed] these signs of redemption?” He concluded that the villagers of Tequixtepec “no longer ha[d] faith in the holy cross to free them from the evil enemy.” As a result, “so many bad things ha[d] befallen the village.” To remedy the situation he suggested the revival of devotion to these community icons, the reinvigoration of the cofradía of the Holy Cross, the celebration of regular hilltop Masses, and the inception of a regular festival in honor of the Cross on September 14. Starting with the situation in his own village, he pondered the fate of Mexico as a whole, speculating that without such communal acts “the Americans will intervene . . . what is worse they are all protestants!”1 During the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution, Chapter 5 204 , . Tranquilino Pacheco was not alone in his lamentation and spiritual solution . Throughout Mexico, priests and parishioners saw the regular rhythm of violence, pestilence, and hunger as God’s punishment for the citizens’ declining faith. To survive, they suggested a mass of devotional innovations ranging from the hierarchy’s consecration of the Mexican church to the Sacred Heart to the establishment of new apparition cults and messianic sects. In regions like the Mixteca Baja where Porfirian evangelization had worked and revolutionary reforms offered few gains, these devotional innovations highlighted the importance of the sacraments, intensified layclerical relations, and aligned the interests of the community and the parish . As a result, in these regions successive governments’ anticlerical policies gained few adherents and pushed most villagers into an intense distrust of the postrevolutionary state. Between 1910 and 1940, Mexico underwent a widespread, popular, and transformative uprising that replaced Díaz’s dictatorial regime with a revolutionary state. During the armed phase of the Revolution (1910–1920), peasants, workers, and disgruntled members of the middle class, combined into huge unwieldy armies or operating as small irregular bands, roamed Mexico, attempting to gain regional superiority and implementing formal and impromptu agrarian, labor, and political reforms. At first, revolutionaries worked together against the Porfirian regime. But with the defeat of don Porfirio and the election of the Coahuila rebel Francisco Madero, the alliance fell apart. In late 1911 radical peasants and workers, dissatisfied with the pace of reform, rose up in revolt. In 1913 right-wing remnants of the Porfirian party followed suit, murdering Madero and imposing a militarist regime. For the next two years, General Victoriano Huerta and his battalions of the conscripted poor faced off against northern rebels under Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa and southern insurgents under Emiliano Zapata. Despite Huerta’s defeat, victory brought limited respite. From 1915 to 1920 Carranza’s so-called Constitutionalists wore down and eventually subjugated Villa and Zapata’s more radical plebian armies. Yet military superiority was not enough to achieve national control. To pacify Mexico’s dissident masses, the Constitutionalists had to push through a radical platform of their own. On the one hand, they borrowed from the defeated radicals and instituted Article 27 of the Constitution, which encouraged the redistribution of land in the form of ejidos. On the other hand, they also reiterated the virulent anticlericalism of their liberal predecessors, asserting state control of the church, banning ecclesiastical properties, and prohibiting confessional education. “No leaf of the tree moves without the will of God” 205 , . For the next twenty years these twin policies, often operating “in tandem,” acted to undergird the developing policy of reconstruction. Successive governments combined the pan of land grants with the palo of cultural reform to placate land-starved peasants, undermine clerical authority, and engender a broad loyalty to the state.2 As numerous historians have argued, the...