Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico by Ben Fallaw (review)

Between 1920 and 1940, Mexico’s revolutionary state imposed a series of anticlerical policies on the predominantly Catholic populace. Between 1926 and 1929, and to a lesser extent between 1932 and 1936, Catholic rebels took up arms to the cry of “Long live Christ the King.” Despite a smattering of studies of these militant uprisings, few historians of Mexico have taken seriously the role of both the Catholic Church and lay believers in shaping the postrevolutionary state. Studies of socialist education, a project specifically designed to “exclude all religious doctrine” from school syllabi have elicited some excellent scholarship on how this cultural revolution managed to incorporate popular aspirations and values, but surprisingly little on the role of clerical institutions or Catholic practice.

Ben Fallaw, by focusing on Catholic resistance in the geographically, ethnically, and politically diverse states of Campeche, Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Guanajuato, has bucked this trend. In doing so, he has produced one the most important histories of the postrevolutionary period, inserting Catholic organizational structures, practices, and beliefs into the process of Mexican state formation, without disregarding other themes including land reform, gender, ethnicity, and local politics. The work is a model of how multi-causal, anthropologically inflected history can not only challenge stable myths, but also bring readers to the big picture by presenting a more cohesive, persuasive account.

Three key findings stand out. First, although Catholic resistance in Mexico’s “Rosary Belt” gleaned the most column inches, it was not exclusively limited to the country’s Hispanophile, self-consciously orthodox center-west. In fact, in many indigenous and southern areas, pragmatic alliances, the threat of land reform, and the state’s ill-judged cultural interventions generated considerable Catholic opposition to a broad array of policies. In Campeche, gremios—semi-official religious artisans’ organizations—broadened anti-state movements beyond the high elites. Second, although fraud was rife, elections were key arenas for these Catholic challenges. At the municipal level, cross-class mobilizations (what Fallaw terms the voto morado) often forced the embryonic revolutionary party to accept pro-Church candidates. On Guerrero’s coast, rancher-led coalitions repeatedly took town halls either through election or by forcing the state to overturn chronically unpopular anticlerical councils. Third, building on the work of Kristina Boylan, Fallaw demonstrates that activist Catholic women throughout Mexico (commonly disparaged as beatas and ratónes de iglesia) were fundamental to this groundswell of popular mobilization. The combination of modernized Marianism and social Catholicism had given middle and upper class women new authority in the home and an expanded role in civil society, which they were unwilling to give up without a fight.

Fallaw’s research is outstanding. Weaving together extensive work in the national archives with anthropologists’ papers and insights drawn from Mexican pro-Catholic tabloid newspapers like Hombre Libre, he manages to fashion a forceful narrative of Catholic opposition without ever losing sight of the intricacies of Mexico’s scattered local political cultures. Flitting between federal policy, gubernatorial conflict, and village politics, the work also achieves an original and important of cartography of Cardenismo. Diverse social structures, gender relations, and religious cultures generated multiple reactions to state anticlericalism. These, in turn, patterned popular responses to government intervention for the next 30 or 40 years. For example, Fallaw’s work on José de Jesús Manríquez y Zárate—the flamboyant, militantly antirevolutionary bishop of Huejutla (Hidalgo)—works off, complements, and expands Frans Schryer’s careful ethnohistories of the region. In doing so, the author amply demonstrates how religious concerns clashed with, mediated, and eventually triumphed over the revolution’s reforms. Church support was essential to the faux ejidos and rancher fiefdoms, which undermined social change throughout the state.

Overall, Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico is one of the most important books on twentieth century Mexico of the last ten years. Original, thoroughly researched, and ambitious in scope, the work is a must read for those interested in revolutionary Mexico...