Catholic Church and Mexican Politics: From Colony to Constitution

The Church as Colonial Power and Lender

The Catholic Church in Mexico underscored both its conquest and its independence. Organizationally, the Church prior to the liberation theology of the twentieth century was always more cohesive than the Mexican government. The Church has traditionally been aligned with conservative interests, including the military and wealthier landowners. The institution of tithing and the Church's role as a colonizer through its missions helped make it 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 also 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 Díaz government restored some of the Church's former glory, the Constitution of 1917 ultimately spelled an end to the Church's dominance over the state.

The Church played a major role in the revolution because it felt threatened by liberal reformers who 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 sentiment was reflected in the interests of liberals in Mexico from before the revolution through the civil wars that produced the liberal governments of the 1860s and 1870s.

The Spanish monarchy was the first administration to attempt to break the Church's grip on power in Mexico. In the 1700s it expelled 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, which 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. In the area around Guadalajara, for instance, it loaned as much as 70% of the funds for commercial projects. Many contended that the Church's capital wealth exceeded even its vast land holdings. Although the Royal Law of Consolidation remained in effect for only four years, it severely affected small landholders and businessmen who operated on Church loans. The Church responded by demanding immediate repayment of all outstanding loans. Those who could not meet payment obligations were forced to sell their property at an inopportune time, and many property holders suffered as a result.

Until the late 1850s, the Church was one of the largest and wealthiest organizations in Mexico. Beyond its financial power, it provided a cultural link between the state's sanctioned religion and many Mexicans' ancestral past. Many scholars believe that the modified form of Christianity that emerged from the coercive conversion of indigenous peoples was, in fact, encouraged by the early Catholic priests in Mexico — a process bearing similarities to the conversion of European tribes, which resulted in the adaptation of pre-Christian holidays and traditions into Christianity.

In many cases it is unclear whether conversion was forced or voluntary. The religion that emerged represented a blending of Aztec and Christian elements in a process known as syncretism — the fusion of various elements from each religious tradition. The early Church also exercised political power through its courts. Between 1570 and 1820, the Courts of Inquisition 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 primarily aimed at indigenous people; rather, it was an attempt by the Spanish to protect their religious market share. Few of those brought before the Court were Indians; the majority were Protestants or recent converts from Judaism suspected of heresy toward the Catholic Church.

An analysis of the factions at play in Mexican independence requires 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. Inspired by their European counterparts, they 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, feeling 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 favored tradition and opposed what might be thought of as Enlightenment principles: the Church was interested in maintaining its institutional power while the aristocrats wished to preserve their large holdings. The military, which in Latin America has always maintained a degree of self-styled autonomy, was predominantly conservative in that it sought to protect itself as an institution, although dissenters existed within the ranks.

Independence, Conservatism, and the Plan de Iguala

By the end of the 1810s, liberals had grown frustrated with King Ferdinand's failure to abide by the 1812 constitution, which had been a condition 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, including anti-clerical measures.

The most prominent of these conservative military figures was Iturbide, the conservative head of the army who made peace with the rebels and proposed the establishment of a Mexican state in the Plan de Iguala in February 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 which declared that the Catholic Church would remain the central form of religion — connoting intolerance of other faiths. The plan also established the Army as the guarantor of these principles. Because the plan also appealed to liberal interests by advocating independence, it was hugely popular.

A disturbing feature of Iturbide's plan was that the army was made responsible for its 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, persisting through the Chilean and Argentinian dictatorships of the 1980s. The Catholic Church has usually backed armies, which tend to be conservative; both were initially threatened by the insistence of capitalist republican liberals on auctioning off Church lands. Accompanied by rebel leaders Vicente Guerrero and Guadalupe Victoria, Iturbide marched at the head of the Army into Mexico City on September 27, 1821.

The political arena subsequently became a stage for a series of power struggles among military leaders; the Church and many within the military clamored for the appointment of a Mexican king. To the Church, this model had worked well in Europe, where Metternich had stabilized the political system by returning many governments to monarchic rule — a development that did not threaten the established order.

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

This suited the Church's interests perfectly. The liberals derived their wealth from capitalism and desired social reforms that would empower the masses by extending equal opportunities through social services and private lending — all of which were diametrically opposed to the existing social order maintained by the Church. The Church maintained a unifying role in a fragmented society in which factions vied for political power. In such an environment, the Church provided a stable institution that would attend to the needs of the community.

Following Agustín Iturbide's flight into exile, three military officers — Nicolás Bravo, Guadalupe Victoria, and Pedro Celestino Negrete — controlled Mexico through their positions in a junta while working to create a stable republic. This resulted in the adoption of the Constitution of 1824, which used the U.S. Constitution as a model. Importantly, however, the delegates abandoned the separation of church and state clause and instead declared that only Catholicism would be practiced in Mexico.

Conservatives sought to protect the fueros — the privileges possessed by the Church and military that dated to the colonization of Mexico — while liberals opposed them. The Church was not only the principal lender; it was also exempt from taxation on investments and land holdings. Yet neither faction represented the true majority: most conservative landowners and many liberal industrialists viewed the state as an institution that existed to protect their interests by keeping rural peasants and urban workers under control, much like their counterparts in Great Britain.

In the aftermath of Mexico's defeat at the hands of the United States — which cost the country half of its territory — many blamed the conservatives and Santa Anna. Strong criticism was also directed at the Church and the military, institutions viewed as incapable of responding to the changes needed to stabilize Mexico's economic and political sectors.

Liberal Reforms and the Reforma Laws

Juan Álvarez was Mexico's president when the first of the classic liberal laws was passed in November 1855. Minister of Justice Juárez pushed through the Ley Juárez, a law restricting clerical fueros and specifically curtailing the authority of Church courts. The attack on corporate fueros spread to Mexico's military, challenging the precedent by which the legislature and president had answered to the military rather than the reverse. This provoked a backlash: a month later Álvarez named Ignacio Comonfort temporary president and announced his own resignation. However, Comonfort proved even more aggressive in pursuing liberal reforms, attacking the traditional privileges of the Church and enraging conservatives.

Conservatives struck back, but not before the long-anticipated confiscation of Church land under the Ley Lerdo. Comonfort 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 was required to be sold at reduced prices. If the Church was unable to sell such property, the government would hold public auctions. The Ley Lerdo also stipulated that the Church could not own property in the future. The system of tithing had required everyone to give the Church 10% of their wealth — a rate well below the excise and property taxes typical of the nineteenth century — while the Church itself paid no taxes at all and could sit on vast plots of land awaiting a rise in value.

In effect, the Ley Lerdo was opposed to institutional ownership of land, including the communal land owned by Indian villages. These actions led to a new constitutional debate over whether Mexico would be a federalist or a centralist state. A centralist government was ultimately established.

In April 1857, additional power was stripped from the Church with the passage of the Iglesias Law (named after Minister of Justice José María Iglesias). Unsurprisingly, a conservative faction declared the new constitution invalid, captured Mexico City, and forced Comonfort's resignation following his successful election bid. Another Mexican army general, Félix Zuloaga, then occupied the presidency, winning the full support of the Church and military. Following the arrest of prominent liberals, Mexico plunged into civil war.

Although the Church and military generally supported the conservative faction, there were exceptions. Some clerics favored liberal reforms, and in rural areas many landholders also adopted the liberal position because the Ley Lerdo presented greater opportunities for them to acquire more land.

As the war raged, Church property became a target of liberal forces. Clerics who resisted were executed by firing squads. Conservatives also committed atrocities; General Leonardo Márquez ordered his soldiers to execute the medical staff who assisted liberal soldiers.

From the liberal enclave of Veracruz, Juárez's forces passed more anti-clerical laws designed to ensure the power of the state over the Catholic Church — ending the collection of tithes, limiting the number of convents and their membership, and restricting religious holidays and processions. Liberals ostensibly maintained the goal of separating church and state, but in practice sought to break the Church's grip on Mexico. The conservatives denounced these laws and openly defied liberals by publicly taking communion. However, following the defeat of the conservative faction and the arrival of the would-be king Maximilian, the struggle took on nationalist elements. After Maximilian's overthrow and the reinstatement of Benito Juárez — arch-nemesis of the Catholic Church — relations between church and state reached a new low, as the Church was associated with conservative elites and foreign interventionists. Juárez was considered one of Mexico's greatest heroes: a politician turned warrior who had fought conservatives and the military on their own terms and won.

It was the autocrat who followed Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, who would restore the Church's fortunes. Díaz married a young conservative Catholic, Carmen, who persuaded her husband not to enforce some of the more stringent elements of the 1857 constitution. Under Díaz, however, many elements within the Church took a socialist turn, pitting themselves against the interests of the country's wealthy rulers and presenting themselves as champions of the poor. Ironically, similar populist sentiments had helped Díaz assume the presidency. Because capitalism had come to replace aristocracy as the economic system favoring the country's privileged elite, many in the Church responded by turning to the doctrine known as Christian Socialism — a two-tiered program combining protection for workers with preservation of their spiritual needs. This represented a dissolution of the tie between the Church and conservatives in some areas, notably in Indian communities.

One might wonder whether this turn was a method by which the Church hoped to re-establish its power following the defeat of conservative interests. However, there are two arguments to the contrary. First, the socialist impulse within the Catholic Church was coming from outside Mexico — specifically from Pope Leo XIII. Second, 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 as elsewhere.