Politics of Mexico and the Influence of Catholicism

¶ … Catholic Church in Mexico underscored both its conquest and its independence. Organizationally, the church prior to the liberation theology of the 20th century has always been more cogent than the Mexican government. The church has traditionally been amalgamated with conservative interests that include the military and wealthier landowners. The institution of tithing and the role of the church as a colonizer through its missions helped to make the church the most powerful pre-revolutionary institution in Mexico. Additionally, at a time before the existence of broad-based commercial lending, the church not only acted as the principal lender in the colony and early republic, but served as the nexus for all public activity in many smaller communities. However, the influence of the church was severely limited under liberalism. Although the Diaz government returned to the Catholic church some of its former glory, the 1916 Constitution ultimately spelled an end to the church's dominance over the state.

The church had a major role in the revolution. This is because it felt threatened by liberal reformers that wished to auction off its land. Following the French Revolution, republicans in France had seized all church lands and sold them in an attempt to break the church's grip on the country and on society. This was reflected in the interests of liberals in Mexico from before the revolution through the civil wars that resulted in the liberal governments of the 1860's and 1870's.

The Spanish monarchy was the first administration to try to break the church'es grip on power in Mexico. In the 1700's it ejected the Jesuits from the country, and in 1804 introduced the Royal Law of Consolidation. This law authorized the government to seize Church lands for auction. To the consternation of most Mexicans, it also allowed the government to seize money lent out to individuals, in order to meet Spanish revenue needs. This in turn threatened to weaken the colonial economy by reducing money available for internal loans.

By the end of the eighteenth century the Church had become the principal lender in Mexico. For instance, in the area around Guadalajara it loaned as much as 70% of the funds for commercial projects. Many contended that the church'es capital wealth exceeded even its vast land holdings. Although it remained in effect for only four years, this decree severely affected small landholders and businessmen who operated with Church loans. The Church responded by demanding immediate payment of all loans. Those who could not make the payment had to sell their property at an inopportune time, and many property holders suffered.

There is no disputing that until the late 1850's, the church was one of the largest, wealthiest organizations in Mexico. However, in addition to this, it provided a cultural link to many between the state's sanctioned religion and their ancestral past. Many believe that the modified Christianity that resulted from the coercive conversion of natives was encouraged by the early Catholic priests in Mexico. This bears its similarities to the conversion of European tribes that resulted in the adaptation of holidays to Christianity.

In many cases it is unclear whether conversion was forced or voluntary. The religion that emerged represented the blending of Aztec and Christianity in a process known as syncretism: this was literally the fusion of various elements from each religious experience. The early church exhibited political power in what was essentially a fronteir;

Between 1570 and 1820 the Courts of Inquisitions in the colonies heard 6,000 cases, resulting in 100 individuals being burned at the stake. However, this continuation of the Spanish Inquisition was not aimed at the Indians but rather was an attempt by the Spanish to protect their market share: few of those that were brought before the Court were Indians, the majority being Protestant or those who had recently converted from Judaism and who were suspected of heresy toward the Catholic Church.

An analysis of the factions at play in Mexican independence cannot be attempted without a careful look at the demographics of their members. The liberals were comprised of a scholarly, mercantile and industrial middle class that dominated in a few of the major cities. They were inspired by their European counterparts and maintained republican philosophical leanings. Following the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars they advocated the 1812 constitution which placed systematic restrictions on the power of the monarchy. They principally wanted to divest the church of its large land holdings; they felt more threatened by the church as an institution than by the Mexican aristocracy. Although they reflected the ideological fervor of French and American liberals, their influence was initially limited compared to that of the church and the aristocracy.

The conservatives were comprised of the church, the aristocrats, and the military. They were in favor of tradition and frowned upon what might be thought of as enlightened principles: the church was interested in maintaining its institutional power while the aristocrats wished to maintain their large holdings. The military, which in Latin America has always maintained a degree of self-styled autonomy, was predominantly conservative in that it wanted to protect itself as an institution, although there were dissenters among the ranks.

By the end of the 1810's, Liberals had grown upset with King Ferdinand's failure to abide by the 1812 constitution, which had been a stipulation of his restoration to the Spanish throne in 1814. A number of liberal Spanish officers under Rafael de Riego refused to comply with the crown unless it accepted the 1812 constitution. At the same time, conservatives in Mexico feared the liberal policies being implemented in Spain, which included anti-clerical policies.

The most prominent of these conservatives in the military was Inturbide, the conservative head of the army that made peace with the rebels and proposed the establishment of a Mexican state in the Plan de Iguala in February of 1821. This agreement established a precedent for political change that dominated Mexico until the twentieth century. Iturbide's plan consisted of three planks, one of them being that the Catholic Church would remain the central form of religion. This connoted intolerance of other religions. The plan also established the Army as the guarantor of these principles. This plan, which also appealed to liberal interests in that it advocated independence, was hugely popular.

A disturbing trend in Iturbide's plan was that the army was responsible for this set of political objectives. The idea of a politically empowered army had been rejected in England in Cromwell's time but has remained a permanent fixture in Latin American politics; up through the Chilean and Argentinian dictatorships of the 1980's. The catholic church has usually backed armies, which tend to be conservative; they were initially threatened by the insistence of the capitalist republican liberals of auctioning off their land. Accompanied by rebel leaders Vicente Guerrero and Guadalupe Victoria, Iturbide at the head of the Army marched into Mexico City on September 27, 1821.

The political arena subsequently became a stage for a series of power struggles between military leaders; the church and many within the military clamored for the appointment of a Mexican king. This, to the church, had worked well in Europe where Metternich had stabilized the political system by returning many governments to monarchic rule. The church saw this as something that did not threaten the established order.

Despite a political order ostensibly modeled after that in the United States, armed conflict typified the condition of Mexico until the Reforma forced Mexico to examine its political and social organization and recognize the need for change. Moreover, Iturbide's emergence as a political leader also marked the beginning of the era dominated by caudillos such as Santa Anna. The country found itself repeatedly led by charismatic military leaders. Mexican independence hadn't been a republican struggle, but rather a factional power grab by elites in Mexico from elites in Spain.

This suited the church'es interests perfectly. The liberals derived their wealth from capitalism and desired social reforms that would empower the masses by extending equal opportunities. This they figured would be enhanced through social services and private lending. However, all of these things were diametrically opposed by the existing social order maintained by the church. The church maintained a unifying factor in a fragmented society in times where factions vied for political power. In such an environment (which must have seemed biblically forboding to devout Catholics,) the church provided a stable institution that if summoned, would attend to the needs of the community.

Following August'n Iturbide's flight into exile, three military: officers -Nicolas Bravo, Guadalupe Victoria, and Pedro Celestine Negrete -- controlled Mexico through their positions in a junta but wished to create a stable republic. This resulted in the adoption of the Constitution of 1824. The delegates used the U.S. Constitution as a model. Importantly, however, they abandoned the separation of church and state clause, and instead stated that only Catholicism would be practiced in Mexico.

Conservatives saw it in their interest to protect the fueros, or privileges, possessed by the Church and military that had their origins in the colonization of Mexico. Liberals opposed these fueros. Not only was the church the principal lender, it also was exempt from taxation on investments and land holdings. However, neither faction represented the true majority: most conservative land-owners and many liberal industrialists saw the state as an institution that existed to protect their interests by keeping rural peasants and the urban workers under control. In this respect at least, they were similar to their counterparts in Great Britain.

In the aftermath of Mexico's defeat at the hands of the United States that lost the country half of its territory many blamed the conservatives and Santa Anna. Strong criticisms were also leveled at the Church and the military, institutions that were viewed as incapable of responding to the changes needed to stabilize Mexico's economic and political sectors.

Juan Alvarez was Mexico's president when the first of the two classic liberal laws was passed in November 1855. It was at that time that Minister of Justice Juarez pushed through Ley Juarez, a law restricting clerical fueros; specifically the authority of church courts. The attack on corporate fueros spread to Mexico's military, challenging the precedent that the legislature and president answered to the military instead of the other way around. This lead to a backlash against the president: a month later Alvarez named Ignacio Comonfort temporary president and announced his own resignation. However, Comonfort was even more aggressive in his persuit of liberal reforms. Commonfort attacked the traditional privileges of the church, enraging conservatives.

Conservatives struck back against the administration, but not before the long anticipated confiscation of Church land, Ley Lerdo. Commonfort accused conservatives of having used the Church to finance their military campaigns. Under Minister of Finance Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, all urban and rural property owned by the Church had to be sold at reduced prices. If the Church was unable to sell this property, the government would hold public auctions. Ley Lerdo also stipulated that the Church could not own property in the future. This move was designed to effectively transition power away from the church. The system of tithing required everyone to give the church 10% of their wealth, which was well below the rates typical of 19th excise and property taxes. The church did not need to pay any taxes at all, and could sit on vast plots of land awaiting a rise of value.

Essentially Ley Lerdo was opposed to the institutional ownership of land; this included the communal land owned by Indian villages. Actions taken by these administrations lead to a new constitutional debate, which asked whether Mexico would be a federalist or a centralist state. A centralist government was established.

In April 1857 more power was stripped from the Church with the passage of the Iglesias Law (named after Minister of Justice Jose Mar'a Iglesias). Unsurprisingly, a conservative faction decried the new Constitution as invalid, captured Mexico City and forced Commonfort's resignation following his successful election bid. Thereafter another Mexican army general, Felix Zuloaga, occupied the office of the presidency. This government won the full support of the Church and Military; the Commonfort administration's chief opponents. Following the arrest of prominent liberals, Mexico plunged into war.

The Church and military tended to support the conservative faction, but there were exceptions. Some clerics favored liberal reforms for the Church, and in rural areas many landholders also adopted the liberal position because Ley Lerdo represented greater opportunities for them to acquire more land.

The war raged on, and church property became the target of liberal forces' destructive appetites. Clerics who resisted actions carried out by the liberal armies were executed by firing squads. Conservatives also took innocent lives; General Leonardo Marquez ordered his soldiers to execute the medical staff who assisted liberal soldiers.

From the liberal enclave of Veracruz, liberals under Juarez passed more anti-clerical laws designed to ensure the power of the state over the Catholic Church. Such actions included ending the collection of tithes, limiting the number of convents and their membership, and restricting the number of religious holidays and the practice of religious processions. Liberals ostensibly maintained the goal of separating church and state, but in actuality wished to break the church'es grip on Mexico. Meanwhile, the conervatives denounced these laws and openly defied liberals by publicly taking communion. However, following the defeat of the conervative faction and the arrival of would-be king Maximillian, the struggle took on nationalist elements. The church at this point was not nearly as involved in the struggle. After his overthrow and the instatement of arch-nemesis of the Catholic church Benito Juarez, relations with the church hit a low as the church was associated with Conservative elites and foreign interventionists. Juarez was considered one of Mexico's greatest heros, a politician turned warrior who had fought the conservatives and military on their own turf and won.

It was the autocrat that followed Juarez, Porfirio D'az, that would favor the church again. Diaz married a young conservative Catholic, Carmen, who convinced her husband not to uphold some of the more stringent elements of the 1857 constitution. However, under Diaz, many elements in the church would take a socialist turn, pitting themselves against the interests of the wealthy rulers of the country and seeing itself as a champion of the poor. Ironically, similar sentiments had allowed Diaz to assume the presidency. Because capitalism had come to replace aristocracy as the economic system that favored the country's wealthy, empowered elite, many churches responded by turning to the doctrine known as Christian Socialism, a two-tiered program of protection for the workers and preservation of their spiritual needs. This represented dissolution of the tie between the church and conservatives in some areas, notably in Indian communities.

The casual analyst might wonder if this was a method by which the church hoped to re-establish its power following the defeat of conservative interests. All of Mexico's regimes had lasted for many years and been supported by the country's military backbone. The dissolution of the aristocratic-military-church coalition forced the church to look for new options at a time when it was threatened by atheist communists and anarchists. However, there are two arguments to the contrary. First, the socialist pangs of the Catholic church were coming from outside Mexico; indeed, they were coming from Pope Leo XIII. Secondly, it can be argued that the new leader had successfully shielded the Catholic Church from further nationalist encroachment. The Pope, however, was concerned that socialist movements remain Christian ones, in Mexico and elsewhere.

The Catholic Church declared its support for worker activism when, in 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued his papal bull entitled Rerum Novarum. From this call Catholic associations sprang up to counter the influence of communist and anarchist movements. Anarchists in the country were fundamentally anti-clerical, as they associated the church with the static status quo that kept workers at the bottom of society.

One of these organizations was the Partido Liberal Mexicano, which first met in 1905 and argued against the conciliatory position adopted by the government toward the Church. Preceding the formation of this group, however, Catholic congresses first met in 1903 to question the treatment of workers. Such groups continued to meet until 1919, advocating improved wages for urban workers and better workplace conditions. These groups spoke against the practices that contributed to rural indebtedness and opposing the calls for secular education. The Catholic church was still seen as a lender, and as a lender it incurred the same wrath as commercial banks at the hands of socialists who saw a transition of capital from church to state as a logical next step to land reform. However, these groups wished to see the same fate befall all organizations in Mexico.

The belief commonly held by representatives of worker's groups in the PLM and Catholic congresses was that President D'az tacitly supported the oppression of Mexican workers. The events of June 1906 at the Cananea copper mine and the events of January 1907 at the R'o Blanco textile mill in Veracruz reflected this notion. Both events were similar to the Homestead riots in Pittsburgh in which Henry Frick of the U.S. Steel corporation hired a private army to combat striking workers. In the former incident, such an army was recruited in nearby Arizona.

Rebel groups were successful in the next decade in removing Diaz from power. However, in this struggle the groups opposed to the clergy prevailed. In the newly formed constitution, Article 130 re-iterated and strengthened and enforced the anti-clerical language enunciated in the 1857 constitution that had inspired Juarez and been ignored by Diaz. The de facto tolerance of Catholicism and the unwillingness to enforce the provisions of the liberal Constitution of 1857 had been a cornerstone of the relationship between church and state during the Porfiriato regime. This changed, as the new Mexican government established itself as superior in power to the church. The proviso furnished the government the means to control matters of worship, establish rules for clerical officials, limit the Church's right to property and its involvement in political affairs, and exclude the Church from participating in the nation's educational system. This last point reflected Mexico's belief in the significance of the educational system as a means of controlling the transmission of ideas.

According to Jean Meyer, author of The Cristero Rebellion, the article "had the effect of denying the Church any legal personality." 13 Article 130 allowed state governments to determine the number of clerics based on its population, abolish religious orders such as monasteries and convents, prohibit the Church and clerics from owning property, and restrict voting rights and the Church's teaching privileges.

In response, many of Mexico's Catholic leaders had fled to the United States to escape anti-clericalism. From exile in San Antonio, Texas, Catholic clerics protested the constitution and Article 130 in February 1917. The goal of the constitutionalists was to prevent political opposition from weakening the authority of the new regime. Whereas previous attacks on the church had been ideological in nature or designed to protect the interests of large liberal industrial and mercantile concerns, the constitutional silencing of the Catholic Church was designed to take from it the social institutions that would have rivaled those created by the new government. After four hundred year of dominance in Mexico, absolutist political interests subsumed the Catholic domination of social institutions.