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  • Miguel Pro: Martyrdom, Politics, and Society in Twentieth-Century Mexico by Marisol López-Menéndez
  • Matthew A. Redinger
Miguel Pro: Martyrdom, Politics, and Society in Twentieth-Century Mexico. By Marisol López-Menéndez. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. 2016. Pp. xxxii, 187. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-4985-0425-6.)

During the most intensely anticlerical phase of the Mexican Revolution, the period corresponding with the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–28), the spilt blood of churchmen blended with that of rebels. For the Calles regime, there was no difference. However, Professor Marisol López-Menéndez successfully argues that for the faithful, the difference could not have been greater. In Miguel Pro: Martyrdom, Politics, and Society in Twentieth-Century Mexico, López-Menéndez examines the making of a martyr in the memorialization of the death of Jesuit Father Miguel Agustin Pro in 1927 at the hands of Calles' forces. López-Menéndez [End Page 617] blends a variety of analytical approaches to paint a complex portrait of Pro, and in doing so, blurs the boundaries of history and theology, sociology, and politics.

At first blush, this book appears to be a disposition on the life and death of Father Miguel Pro. Indeed, the author's examination of the context of Pro's arrest and execution deftly establishes his death as a signal event of the Revolution. But it quickly becomes clear that this examination of Pro's death is most appropriately used as a case study of how martyrdom is inextricably intertwined with institutional and social goals and ambitions. The identity and broader meaning of the martyr archetype is a result of "narrative constructions which shape real events and real lives to make them fit into a pattern able to give meaning to social causes, and promote loyalty and obedience in social configurations and hierarchies" (p. xx).

López-Menéndez masterfully constructs the Pro-as-martyr narrative by first examining the death of Father Miguel Pro within the context of Church-State relations in the 1920s. An important element of the development of Pro's martyrdom was the ways his death changed, and was changed by, the conversations on the meaning of the struggle undertaken by the Catholic Church and the added meanings—both clerical and secular—of Pro's death developed by the Society of Jesus. The book then outlines the contexts within which the narrative construction of Pro's martyrdom gained broader nationalist meaning for both Church and State, and juxtaposes that nationalist program within the Revolutionary agenda of each. López-Menéndez also explores the physicality of martyrdom—the disposition of Pro's body and the broader analysis of his final gestures (he extended his arms as a symbol of the Christian cross just before the executioners' fusillade). LópezMenéndez places Pro's martyr status within a comparative analysis of others martyred during the same period, and explores the institutional influences by which Pro's death took on a more profound importance than those of others who died for their faith. Finally, the book ends with a comprehensive examination of the ways and means of making sense out of Pro's martyrial death through "modes of remembrance," including films, books, museum exhibits, Facebook pages, and international tours of his relics.

Perhaps the most notable strength of this scholarly work is the contextualization the author establishes in the debate about the martyrdom of Father Pro. From examining period newspapers and contemporary remembrances of the death of Pro, to in-depth sociological expositions on Durkheim and Foucault, this book does an excellent job of viewing the issue of the ways in which Pro's execution constituted martyrdom.

López-Menéndez's Miguel Pro is an engagingly written, carefully researched, and impressively diverse examination of the making of a martyr. It makes a major contribution to the fields of religious studies, sociology, and Mexican history and politics in the twentieth century. It will surely be established as a significant synthetic text and find its way into many scholarly libraries. [End Page 618]

Matthew A. Redinger
Montana State University Billings

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