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84 n n n n n n n n n n n Three the church, the state, and the control of yucatecan families Honor and Morality In February 1923 a thirty-two-year-old single mother named Soledad Cadena appeared at Mérida’s police department with a shocking complaint. She reported that two days earlier, she had sent her six-year-old daughter, Casilda, along with another little girl, María, to run some errands. When her daughter and her friend returned, Soledad immediately noticed that Casilda seemed nervous and that she even had wet her pants. At first, her daughter refused to tell Soledad what had happened, but after hours of coaxing Casilda finally revealed her story. On the way to help Soledad that fateful day, the two girls had decided to take a shortcut through the San Sebastian church. There they saw Francisco Zapata, the parish priest, who, according to the girls, “raised María’s clothes and began to feel her up, touching her sexual organs.” Casilda told her mother that the priest did the same to her, taking his “virile member out of his trousers” and showing it to both of them. Crying, Casilda stated that she also saw the priest accost a thirteen-year-old girl named Margarita Pérez, taking down her underpants after lifting up her skirt and “introducing his member” into the young girl. Horrified, Casilda and María fled the church and returned home. The police chief ordered an immediate investigation of these appalling accusations. After both girls explained their version of the events, local officials arrested and detained the sixty-two-year-old priest. Mérida’s conservative newspaper and staunch supporter of the Catholic Church, La Revista de Yucatán, angrily reported the case in its local paper, contending that Francisco had been unfairly apprehended on direct orders from no less than the state’s governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Few of Mérida’s citizens would have expressed astonishment at the paper’s accusation since the revolutionary t h e c h u r c h , t h e s tat e , a n d y u c at e c a n fa m i l i e s n 85 governor’s policies on easy divorce, accessible birth control, and free love violently clashed with church doctrine. Furthermore, Yucatán’s wealthy hacienda owners, who also staunchly contested revolutionary land and labor reforms, politically aligned with church officials. Not surprisingly, the priest adamantly denied the girls’ report as he told the police a very different story of the day’s events. According to his account , Casilda and María had briefly appeared at his church, but only to ask for religious medals before quickly leaving. Francisco also contended that he never saw the other young woman, Margarita, whom the girls mentioned . When Margarita herself testified before the court, she said that she worked as a domestic servant for one of Mérida’s most influential families, the wealthy Peón family, and had never left her employer’s house on the day in question. The priest speculated that his enemies must have paid the young girls to testify against him since he was a well-respected member of the community who often helped women and children without ever receiving a complaint in the past. In light of this testimony, the police released the priest from prison and postponed his trial. Mérida’s criminal judge soon ordered Francisco back to jail, however, only this time with a formal prison sentence for the crime of “indecent assault.” Reappearing in court, Francisco expressed doubt as to whether he could ever receive a fair trial because, he argued, the judge was searching for ways to make him and his church appear immoral and dishonorable. To help appeal his case, Francisco retained the services of a team of lawyers, heralding his change of luck. Indeed, by December 1923 the accused priest once again presented his case, only this time before a new judge who proved to be sympathetic to his plight. First, the court decided that there was insufficient proof to send the priest to prison. Second, the judge ruled that Mérida’s criminal court had violated Francisco’s legal rights when officials failed to follow proper procedures during the original trial, thus unjustly depriving the priest of his liberty. In their final judgment, which permanently closed the matter, legal authorities repealed Francisco’s prison time and awarded him...

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