On the night of November 11, 1934, dozens of villagers lynched widow Micaela Ortega in the town of Acajete, in Puebla.Footnote 1 A 58-year-old woman, Micaela was known for her socialist ideas as well as for being a Spiritist healer. According to testimonies collected by inspector Fernando A. Rodríguez, villagers resented Micaela's politics and anticlericalism. She had threatened neighbors with turning the church into a library, and with burning the church's image of “Jesus the Father.” She was also a close friend of Moisés Juárez, an agrarista peasant who had allegedly stolen the harvest that belonged to indigenous communal lands and whose house was set on fire just moments before Micaela's lynching.
The autopsy revealed conspicuous cruelty on the part of Micaela's perpetrators. Clothed in a white dress with red flowers, a necklace made of coral, and white underwear that was now torn and burned, her body showed clear signs of torture. Her face presented several bruises and cuts made close to her ears with knives and machetes, her thorax and gluteus had been burned with pieces of hot iron, and her left leg had been broken with clubs. Micaela's children, Rafael and Enedina Castillo, recounted the event. Just minutes before the lynching, they heard the town's church bells ringing, as well as people shouting “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” and “¡Muera el socialismo!” and “¡Muera la espiritista Doña Micaela!” Enedina, who was also assaulted that night, further stated that among those who participated in the lynching was mayor Pedro Loranca Rosas, an alleged Cristero who was sent to the Islas Marías prison after the incident.
Despite its overt cruelty, the lynching of Micaela Ortega was not an isolated event. From 1934 to 1938, approximately 100 socialist teachers were hanged, mutilated, and tortured, all in the context of the so-called Segunda Cristiada.Footnote 2 Perpetrators were armed groups of vigilantes and lynch mobs.Footnote 3 Violence against socialist teachers constituted a reaction to the anticlerical and pro-agrarian undertones of the government's official campaign to secularize and modernize the countryside through public schooling.Footnote 4 Parallel was an effort to drive out Protestants.Footnote 5 During the 1940s dozens of Protestants were expelled from their communities, had their homes and churches burned, and were either threatened or actually lynched by groups of Catholics throughout Mexico's central and southern states.Footnote 6 Furthermore, throughout the period from the 1930s to the 1950s rioters and lynch mobs attacked dozens of individuals who were accused of desecrating Catholic churches and religious symbols in several cities and towns, also in the southern and central states of Mexico.Footnote 7
All of these expressions of violence took place after the religiously motivated Cristero War had formally ended.Footnote 8 Moreover, these forms of religious violence occurred in two phases, the 1930s and the 1940s and 1950s, each phase marking a distinct moment in the history of Church-state relationships. Whereas the 1930s were for the most part characterized by recurrent frictions between state and Church, the 1940s and 1950s were the height of the close, even collaborative, relationship that emerged between the upper ranks of the Catholic hierarchy and postrevolutionary government officials. The persistence of lynchings driven by religion across these periods shows that the modus vivendi reached between the state and the Church did not bring an end to religiously motivated forms of collective violence. Furthermore, it sheds light on the importance that popular strands of Catholicism had in legitimating these acts of violence.Footnote 9
This article examines the impact that religion had on the organization and legitimation of lynching in postrevolutionary Mexico. Although the article centers on lynchings connected with religion, lynchings were certainly not circumscribed to religious motivations in postrevolutionary Mexico. Political conflicts, witchcraft accusations, and criminal transgressions such as robberies, homicides, and kidnappings were also provocations of mob violence. Furthermore, feelings of distrust towards state authorities – from federal teachers to tax collectors and police officers – were also a central driver of mob violence.Footnote 10 In this sense, lynchings constituted a form of popular justice that served to articulate feelings of discontent and anger toward conduct considered offensive or immoral.
The article is based on the examination of archival materials and several cases of lynching reported by the press. Newspaper accounts on lynchings were mostly sensationalistic and tended to contrast the “barbarity” of mobs to the “civilizing” forces of the modern and secular postrevolutionary state. Moreover, reports on mob violence driven by Catholic beliefs were usually portrayed as an expression of the fanaticism and ignorance of the perpetrators. This was the case with pro-government and mainstream newspapers such as El Nacional, Excélsior, and El Universal, as well as with newspapers centered on crime news, like La Prensa. To give credence to the feelings of frustration, anger, and distrust driving lynchings, it was necessary for me to both recognize these biases and go beyond them, as well as to read these and other sources against the rich secondary literature that exists on the subject of Catholic religion and Catholics’ contentious relationship with the Mexican state.Footnote 11
The article's main argument is that the profanation of religious objects and precincts revered by Catholics, the propagation of conservative and reactionary ideologies among Catholics, and parish priests’ implicit or explicit endorsement of belligerent forms of Catholic activism all contributed to the perpetuation of lynching between the 1930s and the 1950s. These three factors, so the paper argues, need to be situated against both the backdrop of Mexico's contentious Church-state relationship and the material, symbolic, and political dimensions of Catholics’ religious experience.
For the purpose of this article, I will define religion, particularly the Roman Catholic religion, as a set of practices, beliefs, and institutions that are connected to material and political concerns as well as spiritual ones.Footnote 12 In other words, I will understand religion as a field that involves both otherworldly and mundane questions.Footnote 13 The spiritual realm includes belief in the holy and transcendental and the observation of religious rites, as well as the reverence of images associated with the sacred. Conversely, the realm of the material and political involves the power and influence of priests within given communities, the intricate connections between priests and public officials (particularly mayors), and the relationship between lay members of the Catholic Church and the interests of economic and political elites at the local level.
An understanding of religion that accounts for both the spiritual and material dimensions of the religious experience is particularly pertinent for the period under study. The Cristero War had revealed the contentious character of the secular and anticlerical undercurrents of the postrevolutionary project. It had furthermore revealed the deep influence that Catholicism had on the social and political makeup of communities throughout Mexico, as well as the extent to which attacks on religion could result in political mobilization, organized dissent, and even armed resistance. The decades that followed the Cristero War would only further illuminate how deeply the Catholic religion was embedded in the sociopolitical structure of communities.Footnote 14
In addition to the material and symbolic dimensions of religion, it is important to recognize the fault lines between popular and institutional strands of Catholicism, as well as between different members of the clergy. Multiple divisions cut across Mexico's Catholic Church, including different approaches to the ways in which the Church ought to relate to both the state and to those elements that opposed the influence of Catholicism.Footnote 15 These divisions involved bitter disagreements between the clergy and lay groups and organizations, as well as significant frictions among members of the Catholic hierarchy itself, including prelates and diocesan priests. The 1929 accords that put an end to the Cristero War were themselves a source of discord among the clergy. Radical members of the clergy and the laity felt betrayed by the episcopate's willingness to negotiate with authorities who had consistently attacked their faith and disrespected their worldviews. Divisions within the Catholic Church would become even more evident during the following decades, as the higher ranks of the Church decided to distance themselves—at least officially—from the actions of those who opted to take up arms or use violent means in the name of religion.Footnote 16
As the examples I present in this article show, and in clear contrast to the Church's official position, lay Catholics did endorse the use of violence, including lynching, as a means to defend the moral and material integrity of their communities. Moreover, parish priests would play a relevant role in legitimating lynching through their actions and omissions, particularly so in light of the spiritual and moral weight they had within communal life. That is not to say that the higher ranks of the Church were entirely opposed to the violence that was being waged in the name of religion. Despite condemning the use of violence, bishops’ use of belligerent and intransigent language, as when referring to the threat posed by socialism and Protestantism, did little to stop the violence against so-called infidels. Instead, it provided ideological grounds for its legitimation.Footnote 17 The influence of their words and opinions was, however, ultimately mediated by the role of local priests, as well as by lay men and women who appropriated and deployed the Church's official position to justify their actions.
Rather than arguing for a cause-and-effect relationship between lynching and religion, I am interested in understanding the ways in which the religious experience contributed to shaping both the legitimacy and the occurrence of lynching. To do so, I look at several interrelated dynamics that characterized the exercise of Catholic religion in postrevolutionary Mexico. The first refers to the importance that religious images, artifacts, and spaces had for Catholics’ spiritual and ritualistic experience of religion, both at the individual and community level.Footnote 18 Bestowed as they were with sacred meaning, the defense of these religious symbols by laymen and clergy alike would acquire a particularly belligerent character during the period under study, when representatives of the government and anticlerical groups sponsored by postrevolutionary politicos openly engaged in acts of iconoclasm.
The second dynamic has to do with the Catholic Church's promotion, carried out by both official and folk members, of a conservative and reactionary ideology that rejected the influence of religious creeds and progressive ideologies considered foreign and threatening to the stability and internal cohesion of the community and the nation. This ideology would provide the basis for rationalizing the lynching of communists, socialist, and Protestants, as a means to defend both the community and the motherland against strange and dangerous elements.
The third dynamic of the religious experience in relation to lynching is the role that parish priests had in the spiritual, social, and political makeup of communities. Local priests blessed the newborn and officiated at death, organized the town festivals, formed alliances with the economic and political elites, and delineated the moral contours of the community by establishing what were considered acceptable or unacceptable forms of behavior. As such, their actions and omissions were central in shaping Catholics’ predispositions toward violence.
I will develop my argument in three sections, each of which will focus primarily on one of the three different manifestations of religious violence mentioned earlier: the lynching of impious individuals accused of desecrating religious images or spaces, collective attacks against socialist teachers, and assaults on Protestants by lynch mobs and rioters. The cases discussed in each section will be presented, to the extent possible, in chronological order.
A War of Symbols to Justify the Lynching of the Blasphemous
On June 16, 1931, a group of worshippers lynched León J. Musthe outside a small church located in the town of Santa Ana Maya, in Michoacán. Musthe, a Dutch national who was initially described by the press as either Russian or German, had ignited the sentiments of churchgoers when he started shouting offenses against Catholic religion and in defense of Communism.Footnote 19 The worshippers who were praying inside the church asked Musthe to stop his anti-religious diatribe. The town's priest, Agustín Parra, joined his congregation and reprimanded the man for his provocative actions. Instead of discontinuing his incendiary speech, Musthe threatened the priest with what appeared to be a gun. In that moment, a crowd of worshippers, including a group of young devoted women, surrounded Musthe and started to beat him.
The man died in the hands of the lynch mob before the police could intervene. The priest Parra, together with four young Catholic women, were taken to the Morelia penitentiary, where they were to remain while an investigation established who had been responsible for the lynching. Interviewed by the press, the priest stated that he had been taken inside the church by a group of churchgoers who were trying to defend him against Musthe and that he was “absolutely unaware” of what his flock had done afterward.
The lynching of Musthe in Michoacán, home state of Lázaro Cárdenas and one of the hotbeds of the Cristero War, illustrates the violent reactions that blasphemous individuals and their deeds could precipitate among Catholic devotees.Footnote 20 Although press accounts might make these and other incidents seem sudden and irrational, an analysis of several cases that took place under similar circumstances in postrevolutionary Mexico allows us to situate their occurrence in a context characterized by revolutionary anticlericalism and by Catholics’ fierce defense of their religious beliefs and practices.
Anticlericalism was a key aspect of nineteenth-century liberalism and its efforts to modernize society.Footnote 21 Although it receded temporarily under Porfirio Diaz's rule (1884–1911), it returned in full and with greater atheistic undertones during the postrevolutionary years. Anticlericalism provided a means to undermine the influence exercised by the Catholic Church and created the conditions for establishing a new “civil religion” based on reason, individual autonomy, and socialist values.Footnote 22 Moreover, some political elites adopted iconoclastic action as part of their mission to de-fanaticize. Iconoclasm was common among military commanders during the Mexican Revolution and iconoclastic acts continued to be performed during the 1920s and 1930s. By burning and destroying religious symbols and desecrating churches, postrevolutionary politicos sought not only to assault the political and economic power of religion, but also to “strike at the heart of religion's symbolic structure.”Footnote 23
The enduring authority of the Catholic Church and the strong presence of popular religiosity in rural and urban communities alike meant that these policies faced substantial opposition and resistance. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and with less frequency during the 1950s, rumors and accusations regarding the potential expulsion of priests, the closing of churches, and the robbery or destruction of religious images prompted riots, lynchings, and other forms of collective violence in different localities of central Mexico.
Lázaro Cárdenas's presidency (1934-40) promoted a more conciliatory approach to the religious question. Yet, the persistence of anticlericalism at the regional level, together with Catholics’ past encounters with revolutionary Jacobins, continued to contribute to the perpetuation of religiously motivated violence.Footnote 24 This is not to suggest that all of those who engaged in blasphemous or iconoclastic forms of behavior were Jacobins or anticlerical ideologues. People accused of stealing religious images, in particular, acted more like small-time thieves than anticlerical revolutionaries, yet their doings were equally offensive to the religious crowd. For instance, in contrast to Musthe, whose verbal attacks on religion were informed by communism, the motivations of Fructosa Concha, a man who stole several religious images from a church in Tlaxcala were economic in nature.Footnote 25 Concha stole religious images made of gold and precious stones in April 1933 and was taken to prison after confessing to his crimes. Considering the punishment insufficient to meet his wrongdoing, a mob broke into the penitentiary a month later, dragged Concha out of the building, and lynched him. His corpse was left hanging from a tree in the middle of the town plaza.
The lynching of Fructosa Concha demonstrates that sacrilegious robberies, even when not overtly political in intent, could provoke the inflamed reaction of Catholic mobs. The story of Jacinto B. Saldaña, a man accused of trying to steal a religious image from the temple of San Miguel Nonoalco, in Mexico City, resembles that of Concha.Footnote 26 In this case, however, the victim turned out to be innocent. After spending an unusually long time inside of the church, Saldaña became the object of a rumor that claimed he was there to commit a robbery. Although they had no evidence to confirm that this was the case, a group of worshippers dragged Saldaña out of the church with the intention of lynching him. Later on, they decided to throw him into a nearby river, from where he was rescued by a Red Cross ambulance.
As suggested by this and other cases, the circulation of rumors regarding alleged assaults on religious images, spaces, and authorities played a key role in the precipitation of lynchings. According to social scientist James Scott, rumors thrive most in moments in which people experience situations of distress in the face of events that impact their vital interests.Footnote 27 In the case of Saldaña, the rumor precipitating his lynching was based on the fact that people had indeed stolen objects from the church many times before. A more basic source of anxiety, however, had to do with the continuing assault on religious symbols that Catholics experienced during this period.
This context, together with the centrality that religious images and spaces had for Catholics’ experience of the sacred, contributed to the willingness to believe in the veracity of these rumors, as well as to the belligerent reactions that ensued. For instance, in May 1936, a riot took place in the temple of San Miguel Nonoalco, the same church wherein Saldaña was nearly lynched.Footnote 28 This time, rioters surrounded the church after learning by word of mouth that the government was planning on removing the church's religious images in order to burn them. The crowd threatened public official Alfaro Vázquez, who had been commissioned to take the images. Vázquez tried in vain to calm the crowd by explaining that the images were indeed being removed—not to be burned as Catholics feared, but rather to be taken to the Museum of Religious Arts where they would be preserved and exhibited. The police had to intervene to disband the rioters.
Despite references in the press to some of these incidents as expressions of ignorance or “religious fanaticism,” assaults on religious symbols were indeed part of a systematic campaign that sought to create a new model of citizenry, freed from the “backward” influence of Catholic religion.Footnote 29 Although not all postrevolutionary politicos embraced iconoclasm, the visibility and impact of those who did support it made iconoclasm a salient feature of the postrevolutionary period.
Among those revolutionaries who did embrace iconoclasm, and this with a particular ferocity, was Tabasco governor and strongman Tomás Garrido Canabal (1919-34). Convinced of the need to create a new society based on reason and science, Garrido Canabal promoted an aggressive strand of anticlericalism that involved the systematic use of iconoclasm as a means to “educate” and “de-fanaticize” people. Central to his de-fanaticization efforts was the formation of Bloques Juveniles Revolucionarios, also known as Camisas Rojas (Red Shirts). Comprised of young male and female anticlericals, the Red Shirts orchestrated acts of provocation and religious defilement, including the destruction and burning of religious images and statues. When Garrido Canabal was appointed minister of agriculture during the first year of Cárdenas’ presidency, the Red Shirts started a campaign aimed at bringing Tabasco's “exemplary model” of anticlericalism to the capital, and eventually to the whole country.Footnote 30 It was in the context of this campaign to step up the presence of anticlericalism that the riot in Coyoacán and the ensuing lynching of Ernesto Malda took place.
On the morning of Sunday, December 30, 1934, about 60 Red Shirts gathered in front of the San Juan Bautista church in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City.Footnote 31 The young radicals had arrived from Tabasco a few weeks before and had been organizing anti-religious demonstrations, every Sunday. That Sunday was no different. While worshippers listened to their morning mass, the Red Shirts gathered outside the church, planted a red and black flag in the churchyard, and started their vociferous attack on religion. Official newspapers reported that the worshippers confronted the Red Shirts as they came out of the mass, incited by the priest and enraged by the inflammatory speech of the young iconoclasts.Footnote 32 Regardless of who started the clash, the fact that five Catholics, one woman and four men, were shot and killed by the Red Shirts makes clear that the young radicals were certainly no mere passive agents in the event that unfolded.
Following the death of the five Catholics, tensions escalated further. The young instigators rushed to the Coyoacán delegation, just across from the church, while a large group of Catholics rioted outside the building and demanded that authorities arrest the Red Shirts. Ernesto Malda arrived at the scene in the midst of this mayhem. A young man in his early twenties, Malda had joined the Red Shirts, together with a number of Mexico City residents who were persuaded by the organization's mission.Footnote 33 Arriving late at the Red Shirts’ gathering, he was immediately spotted by the infuriated crowd, as he was wearing the typical uniform of the group, red shirts and black pants. After being dragged by the mob in the direction of the church, Malda was beaten to death with fists, knives, and stones. The police arrested 62 Red Shirts in connection with the killing of the five Catholics, while three men were held in connection to the lynching of Malda.Footnote 34
The lynching of Malda drew the condemnation of official newspapers and government supporters. A representative article published by the government mouthpiece El Nacional on January 3, 1935, explained the lynching of Malda as part of a systematic campaign promoted by the highest ranks of the Catholic Church to “oppose in a violent way the implementation of socialist education, the economic liberation of the worker, and the defanatization of the masses.”Footnote 35 A related article reinforced the notion that the clergy was responsible for a systematic campaign against the government, which included the tactical use of lynching on behalf of the “ignorant multitude,” and against the socialist and collectivist ideas promoted by the state.Footnote 36
These and other newspaper articles framed the lynchings as both expressions of the backwardness and religious fanaticism of people and outcomes of a master plan orchestrated by the higher ranks of the clergy. The true influence of the clergy in the organization of lynching was, however, more nuanced and was certainly not part of a top-down strategy carefully crafted by the higher ranks of the Catholic Church. Although the antagonistic position promoted by bishops provided an important basis for legitimating the use of violence in the name of religion, the influence of the Church was most clearly manifested in the behavior of local priests who, through their discourse and actions, ignited the sentiments of churchgoers. More so, the influence of the clergy in the legitimation of lynching was mediated by ordinary members of the Catholic Church, whose popular reinterpretations of Catholic beliefs sanctioned the rightfulness of violence as a means to defend religion.
The lynching of Micaela Ortega in November 1934, narrated at the start of this article, illuminates the complexities of the clergy's influence in the organization of mob violence. The lynching prompted an investigation by the federal government to determine the degree to which local priest Federico Osorio y Corona bore responsibility for the killing of Micaela.Footnote 37 According to neighbors interviewed by federal inspector Fernando A. Rodríguez, the priest had warned his flock about the laws promoted by the government and about the possibility of the church being closed down as a result of those laws. The priest had also made reference to Micaela's political inclinations and had repeatedly told churchgoers that if they were not happy with him he would leave the town.
Despite these facts, the inspector did not believe the priest was responsible for the lynching of Micaela. This is remarkable, considering that the inspector was a government official who had explicitly been asked to investigate the potential responsibility of the priest in the lynching. Instead, the inspector echoed the opinion of most villagers, including family members of the deceased, who identified Moisés Juárez as the person who had stirred the sentiments of villagers. As stated in the opening paragraphs, Moisés was an agrarista who had allegedly stolen the harvest of communal lands and was a close friend of Micaela. The day of Micaela's lynching, Moisés had called a group of villagers “indios cristeros” and, in the company of two soldiers, had threatened them with closing down the church. The villagers, who already resented Moisés, decided to punish him for these offenses and walked to his house with the intention of lynching him. When they did not find Moisés, they set his house on fire. While some villagers watched Moisés’ house burning, others started to walk toward Micaela's home. So it was her close relationship with a loathed agrarista such as Moisés, and the fact that she had also threatened villagers with closing down the church and even with burning the image of Jesus the Father, that made Micaela a target of the religious crowd.
As this account of the event suggests, the influence of the priest alone cannot explain the lynching of Micaela. Villagers’ defense of religious symbols as well as intra-community conflicts over land and resources were also crucial in the precipitation of the lynching. More so, even if the priest's opinions about Micaela's socialist ideas or the government's anticlerical policies influenced the temper of the crowd, we cannot rule out the genuinely affective experience of distress and anger that threats against religion provoked among Catholics. Catholics experienced religion through their participation in community festivals, rituals, and the veneration of religious images, including local patron saints. In this sense, Catholicism was intimately linked to communities’ identity and shared values. In defending their religious symbols and traditions thus, Catholics were not simply defending a set of abstract or universal dogmas—they were defending the moral and religious integrity of their communities.
To acknowledge that the influence of the clergy in the organization of lynchings was more nuanced does not mean, however, that such influence was not relevant. Parish priests, in particular, were considered a central source of local authority and their presence was regarded as an essential component of the spiritual well-being of communities. They acted as a moral compass that contributed to delineating the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, norms, and ideologies. Their religious authority, particularly in small towns, often blended with political influence as priests developed close relationships with landed elites and civil authorities.Footnote 38 Aware of the weight that priests had at the local level, teachers, workers, and agrarista peasants complained, time and again, about the priests’ ability to agitate worshippers. The next section will consider these factors in the context of the explosive responses that socialist education encountered in several communities of Mexico.
In the Name of Christ: The Lynching of Socialist Teachers
In July 1934, the jefe máximo Plutarco Elías Calles announced the beginning of a new era of the revolution, one in which revolutionary ideas would enter the consciousness of children and youth in order to fight the detrimental influence of conservative and clerical elements.Footnote 39 The main battlefield for this new front of radical transformation would be education. Within months of this announcement, Article 3 of the Mexican constitution was amended, establishing public education as a socialist endeavor and defining its core mission: to “fight fanaticism and prejudices.”Footnote 40
To the Catholic Church, the dangers presented by this new model of education were evident. The socialist education envisioned by the state was informed by an overt anticlerical and anti-religious ideology, and it threatened two of the Church's most valued natural rights: the right of parents to provide a religious education to their children and the right to private property.Footnote 41 Entrusted to rural teachers, the promotion of agrarian reform directly challenged the right to private property enshrined by Catholics.Footnote 42 More so, the agrarian reform altered communities’ status quo and antagonized peasants, landlords, and priests who regarded this reform as an unwelcome intrusion on behalf of the federal state.
Equally problematic in the eyes of Catholics was the role that socialist teachers played in the de-fanatization campaigns promoted by the government. Teachers denounced the “seditious” activities of priests, petitioned for their removal or expulsion, contributed to the closing of churches, and organized patriotic festivals and cultural activities that were meant to eclipse religious celebrations.Footnote 43 Although teachers did not homogenously embrace radical forms of anticlericalism, and many actually preferred to avoid an all-out confrontation with the Church, their image as official representatives of an anticlerical state, together with the iconoclastic actions of a few Jacobin teachers, made them vulnerable to the hostility of Catholic mobs. Furthermore, teachers’ promotion of co-education and sexual instruction triggered moral anxieties among Catholic parents, who in turn accused male and female teachers of trying to pervert their children.Footnote 44
Acts of iconoclasm left a particularly deep impression among Catholics who witnessed teachers and their young pupils destroy crosses, set images of the Virgin on fire, mutilate images of patron saints, and vandalize churches.Footnote 45 In San Juan de Gracia, Michoacán, for instance, the maestro rural used the church as a kitchen, a toilet, and even a chicken coop. Ildefonso Vega, in charge of the parish, reported that the church was vandalized, with damages including “two Virgins without heads, a Christ without head, a Sacred Heart without a head, and the body of the local patron saint, San José, with only his feet [left in place].”Footnote 46 He added that these abuses could “result in great disorders,” given the discontent they generated among villagers. Indeed, in some cases, these impious acts did carry great consequences. In a small town in the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the northwestern state of Durango, two teachers who asked their students to deny the existence of God and to make other heretical pronouncements in the classroom were found dead in the town's main plaza.Footnote 47 The female teacher asked students to greet her by saying “There is no God,” while the male teacher told students that he “urinated on God.” Sometime later, the woman was found naked, raped, and with her breasts mutilated.Footnote 48 The male teacher was found castrated, with the urinary meatus cut. On his body, the perpetrators left a note that, in poor spelling, said, “So you do not go around peeing on God.”
The maiming of socialist teachers as a means to retaliate for their assault on Catholic symbols and practices deserves attention. Catholic mobs and groups of vigilantes responded to teachers’ defilement of religious symbols and practices not only by threatening them with violence or by physically assaulting them, but also by mutilating and marking their bodies. On November 15, 1935, for instance, three teachers were killed in different towns of the municipality of Teziutlán, in the Sierra Norte of Puebla by a group of vigilantes under the command of Clemente Mendoza.Footnote 49 One of the teachers, Carlos Pastrana, had his head practically dismembered with a machete blow. The other two, Carlos Sayago and Librado Labastida, were shot and their bodies left outside of the school where they had imparted socialist education. Days later, a group of armed men assailed two sisters, Micaela and Enriqueta Palacios, for imparting socialist education in San Martín Hidalgo, Jalisco. The group cut the teachers’ ears and also assaulted their father, who was with them at the moment of the attack.Footnote 50 The same month, another female teacher was mutilated using machetes, this time in Jalacingo, Veracruz.Footnote 51 In April 1936, in Tlapacoyan, also in Veracruz, around 70 armed men carrying a flag with the motto “Viva Cristo Rey” burned teacher Carlos Toledano alive and cut the ears of teacher Pablo Jiménez.Footnote 52
The mutilation of ears was salient among the forms of violence used against teachers, as were hangings and, to a lesser extent, burnings. One of the most famous vigilantes who participated in the Segunda Cristiada, Odilón Vega, was even known as “el desorejador de maestros” (something like the teachers’ ear cropper), in clear reference to this form of violence. The maiming of opponents, including cutting off their ears, was common during the Mexican Revolution, and it is thus probable that the use of this technique of torture against teachers made direct reference to this experience.Footnote 53 At a more symbolic level, the cutting off of ears can be interpreted as a way to denounce the government's deafness toward those who opposed socialist education, or as a means of marking the teachers’ bodies to send a message to a broader audience. For instance, a picture of sisters Micaela and Enriqueta Palacios wearing heavy bandages around their heads, published in the newspaper Excélsior, sent a clear message regarding the potential costs of imparting socialist education.Footnote 54
Although the cutting off of ears was more closely linked to groups of vigilantes than to lynch mobs, the lynchings of teachers also involved the use of torture, as well as the exposure of teachers’ corpses in public spaces. In March 1935, for instance, 19-year-old teacher David Moreno Herrera was lynched in Aguascalientes. After forcing him out of his house, the lynch mob proceeded to torture him and then hanged him from a tree.Footnote 55 A few months later, a teacher was tortured and tied to a rock in the municipality of Zacatlán; the perpetrators had also hanged the mayor and the president of the agricultural commission in protest against socialist education.Footnote 56 And, in Tlaltenango, Zacatecas, teachers Saúl Maldonado and Guillermo Suro were hanged from a tree after being brutally attacked and forced to pray by their assailants.Footnote 57
As implied by these cases, teachers were victimized by both armed groups of vigilantes and more spontaneous lynch mobs. Reflecting on this dynamic, historian Ben Fallaw has suggested that attacks against the maestros could be categorized as offensive and defensive attacks, with the former consisting of well-planned attacks perpetrated by vigilantes who were sponsored by landowners, and the second involving more impulsive communal reactions to teachers’ anticlericalism.Footnote 58 However, particularly in those cases where the violence perpetrated by vigilantes reflected the sentiments of villagers, the line between “top-down” and “bottom-up” attacks is not easily drawn.Footnote 59 The following examples will further explore the blurred lines between vigilante killings and the lynch mob.
On March 2, 1938, newspapers reported that a group of vigilantes under the command of Enrique Rodríguez, alias “El Tallarín,” had assassinated teacher José Ramírez Martínez and two local officials in the municipality of Tochimilco, in Puebla.Footnote 60 Maximino Ávila Camacho, then governor of Puebla, sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior explaining that an investigation conducted by local authorities had established that El Tallarín had indeed provoked the attack.Footnote 61 He further explained that, contrary to rumors, villagers had not participated in the killing of the maestro; indeed, they had consistently demonstrated their willingness to cooperate with federal authorities. However, a letter addressed to the president on behalf of the local teachers’ union provided an alternative explanation.Footnote 62 In that letter, Jesús A. Ceja explained that although El Tallarín had allegedly shot the teacher and then demanded villagers hang his corpse from a tree only after he had died, the autopsy revealed the victim had died from asphyxia and not from gunshot wounds. This, together with villagers’ contradictory accounts of the events, made Ceja conclude that villagers had played a more active and complicit role in the teacher's killing than they would say. In other words, Ceja hinted that it was probably villagers themselves who had hanged Ramírez Martínez, of their own will.
The popular support that vigilantes enjoyed within certain communities further complicates the distinction between the motivations and actions of vigilantes and lynch mobs. The case of the three teachers that were assassinated in Teziutlán, Puebla in November 1935 exemplifies this. As already stated, the teachers Carlos Sayago, Carlos Pastrana, and Librado Labastida were killed by a group of vigilantes under the command of Clemente Mendoza. The investigation that followed the attack made a revealing conclusion: while it was true that the vigilantes were responsible for the murder of the three teachers, it was also true that villagers had never welcomed the teachers and that the community thus had probably approved of their assassination.Footnote 63
According to the report sent to the federal government, children's attendance had decreased in the months preceding the attack. Moreover, parents had started a campaign with the support of the clergy and the Liga Nacional Defensora de la Libertad Religiosa (LNDLR) to denounce the immoral character of socialist education. Carlos Sayago's sister declared that the parish priest of Teziutlán had warned her, days before the assassination, that teachers had become “too anticlerical.” Teacher Carlos Pastrana, for his part, had organized a dance in August that year to boycott a simultaneous Catholic celebration in the town of Ixteopan. As a result, one of the villagers had come to his house and, armed with a machete, had threatened to kill him. Similarly, teacher Librado Labastida had received various death threats from villagers who shouted at him “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” every time they saw him passing by. In sum, the actions of Mendoza coincided with the animosity of villagers toward anticlerical teachers.
As this and other cases reveal, local priests contributed to shaping villagers’ perceptions of socialist education. They were thus instrumental for the moral legitimization of those who decided to resist it through violent means.Footnote 64 Aware of their influence, teachers, workers, and education inspectors denounced the activities of parish priests, sending letters and examples of “religious propaganda” to federal authorities. Referring to the killing of the three maestros in Puebla, the Unión Nacional de Maestros Federales (National Union of Federal Teachers) denounced the antisocialist propaganda promoted by “the fanatical clergy.”Footnote 65 Included as an example of such propaganda was a copy of the publication Rayo de Sol, which referred to socialist education as an ideology that undermined Catholic morality and a “plague” that promoted perverse and irreligious ideas. Similarly, in a letter to president Cárdenas, socialist worker José Parra denounced the seditious activities of a local priest in Guadalajara, Jalisco.Footnote 66 Parra claimed that in a meeting in February 1935, inside of the temple of San Sebastián de Analco, the priest had told churchgoers that it was their duty to defend the integrity of their faith, even if this meant sacrificing their lives. In reference to the precarious situation faced by teachers in Tonalá, Jalisco, teacher Luis N. Rodríguez asserted that priests had threatened parents with excommunion if they sent their children to school, and complained about “una chusma de viejas beatas” (a rabble of pious old women) who had stoned a group of female teachers in front of the school.Footnote 67
Violence against socialist teachers, including lynchings, declined considerably after the year 1938.Footnote 68 The resistance that socialist education had encountered at the local level contributed to the government's decision to moderate its antireligious and anticlerical aspects.Footnote 69 As a result of this shift, the vulnerability of teachers, as well as communities’ perception of them as individuals who threatened their exercise of religion, receded significantly. The following years witnessed a significant shift in the relationship between state and Church. Although this shift began under the Cárdenas’ presidency, it was with the arrival of president Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-46) that the state's relationship to the Catholic Church became not only less antagonistic, but increasingly harmonious and even collaborative. However, this détente did not put an end to lynchings driven by Catholic religion. Although lynchings against teachers declined, Protestants would become the target of attacks organized in the name of religion and the defense of the nation. Furthermore, lynchings against sacrilegious thieves continued to occur throughout the 1940s, reflecting the persistence of Catholics’ belligerent attitudes toward those that violated religious symbols. The next section will bring to the fore the perils that Protestants faced during this period.
Fighting the Infernal Serpent: Lynching Protestants
On April 16, 1944, in the town of Santa María Techachalco, Puebla, a crowd of approximately 50 people assaulted a group of Evangelical worshipers, armed with clubs, stones, and pistols. Shouting “¡Mueran los prontestantes!” and “¡Arriba el sinarquismo!” the crowd injured several worshipers, who had to be taken to the municipal hospital. Reporting on the incident, a newspaper reported that days before this attack, a group of sinarquistas had taken a national flag to the town's Catholic priest to have it blessed.Footnote 70 The federal deputy Salvador Ochoa Rentería declared that this was yet another case that illustrated the abuses of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, an ultra-nationalist organization founded in 1937 whose aim was to defend both Catholicism and the motherland against the alleged threats of Protestantism and communism.Footnote 71 The following month, in the towns of Guadalupe Victoria and La Gloria, two municipalities on the border dividing the states of Puebla and Veracruz, a group of Catholics burned down the houses of 12 Evangelical families. The attack was perpetrated in retaliation for the iconoclasm of Evangelicals who, after burying a member of their congregation, destroyed the crosses of the municipal cemetery.Footnote 72
From 1944 to the end of the 1950s, dozens of Protestants fell victim to Catholic rioters and lynch mobs in different states of central and southern Mexico.Footnote 73 Echoing the dynamics of violence against socialist teachers during the 1930s, attacks against Protestants were perpetrated by both spontaneous mobs and armed groups of vigilantes, in this case, members of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista. Attacks against Protestants, together with the seeming impunity that followed them, need to be understood against the backdrop of the conservative politics brought about by the Ávila Camacho presidency and of the new relationship that was forged between state and Church during this period.Footnote 74
From the moment he was elected president, Manuel Ávila Camacho made clear that the days of anticlericalism and state-sponsored socialism were over. He openly expressed his Catholic faith and eliminated the constitutional clause that characterized the content of Mexico's public education as socialist.Footnote 75 The new president also distanced himself from the progressive politics promoted in the 1930s, including agrarian reform.Footnote 76 Instead, he promoted a message of unity, reconciliation, and discipline based on an anticommunist, nationalistic, and conservative ideology. Ávila Camacho, together with a new generation of postrevolutionary politicos, laid out the basis for a new era of ideological alignment between the Mexican state and the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church had also changed during these years. From the mid 1930s onward, the higher ranks of the clergy adopted a critical stance toward those who defended religion through the use of arms. Conversely, the Church supported the pacific and civil mobilization of Catholic lay members under the umbrella of the Acción Católica Mexicana. This shift grew out of the lessons learned from the Cristero War regarding the costs of opting for a confrontational strategy vis-à-vis the state. It was further propelled by the existence of a new common ground with the Mexican state: the battle against communism and the defense of the motherland against foreign influences. In a letter published by national newspapers in 1943, Mexico's archbishop Luis María Mártinez affirmed this vision as he declared that the Church was willing to collaborate effectively with the government for “the good of the Patria” and for the unity of the nation.Footnote 77
In addition to its battle against communism, the Church engaged in a parallel struggle against Protestantism. In his pastoral letter of October 1944, archbishop Martínez launched a crusade in defense of the Catholic faith and against the “infernal serpent of Protestantism.”Footnote 78 He wrote that through their resources and propaganda, “Protestant sects” intended to take away Mexicans’ “most valuable treasure, the Catholic faith that four centuries ago was brought to us by the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe.”Footnote 79 This putative crusade singled out both Protestantism and communism as foreign and dangerous ideologies that had to be eliminated to secure the moral integrity of Catholic communities, all the while reiterating that Catholicism was the only authentic national religion.
Catholics took into their own hands archbishop Martínez's call to repel Protestants and their “dangerous” propaganda. In December 1944, for instance, a crowd assailed a group of Lutherans who were distributing flyers with information about their religious doctrine in a town close to Irapuato, in the state of Guanajuato. In addition to destroying their religious leaflets, the crowd attempted to lynch a member of the congregation.Footnote 80 Similarly, in May 1945, in Coyoacán, the same place where Red Shirt Ernesto Malda was lynched, three young men were threatened by a mob of Catholics in the neighborhood's main plaza. The young men were distributing religious leaflets and hanging some posters in the streets urging the Mexican people to renounce Catholicism.Footnote 81
As these cases make clear, Catholics considered Protestants’ dissemination of their religious beliefs offensive and potentially threatening. Although Catholicism continued to be Mexico's dominant religion, the marginal increase of non-Catholic faiths, together with the Church's official discourse regarding the increasing presence of Protestants in the country, heightened Catholics’ animosities toward these religious minoritiesFootnote 82 Furthermore, Protestants had historically sided with political ideologies that were condemned by Catholicism, such as liberalism and socialism, both of which encouraged social change and the emancipation of the individual, as well as the elimination of the Catholic Church's corporate privileges.Footnote 83
Equally important, Protestants refused to participate in Catholic festivals and rituals that were contrary to their beliefs.Footnote 84 Because Catholics considered festivals to be an integral part of communities’ socioeconomic integration and political order, Protestants’ refusal to participate was seen not only as an affront to Catholics’ exercise of religion but also as a source of danger for the unity and stability of the community. Furthermore, Catholics’ portrayal of Protestantism as a foreign, and more specifically American, religion made Protestants an easy target of the nationalistic and anti-US undercurrents embraced by higher ranks of the Catholic Church.Footnote 85 It also drew the attention of Catholic organizations such as the Sinarquistas.Footnote 86
Emulating the religious persecution they had endured during previous decades at the hands of anticlerical revolutionaries, Catholics intimidated and harassed Protestant ministers. They also directed their attacks against entire families of Protestant believers, breaking into their temples, vandalizing their houses, and forcing them out of their communities. In March 1945, for example, approximately 200 Catholics, in the town of Cuerámaro, Guanajuato, broke into a Protestant temple and assaulted a group of Protestant worshippers, including a pregnant woman.Footnote 87 The incident was triggered by an inflammatory sermon pronounced by the town's Catholic priest against Protestants, just moments before the attack. Similarly, on May 27, 1945, in the town of Santiago Yeche in Estado de México, a group of Catholic neighbors raided the homes of nearly 20 Protestant families.Footnote 88 Among those targeted by the assault was the pastor Vicente Garita who, together with his brother in law, died after his house was set on fire.
Proclaiming their rights as Mexican citizens, Protestants asked federal authorities to intervene to protect their lives and guarantee their right to exercise their religion. As socialist teachers did before them, Protestants denounced local authorities for their incapacity or unwillingness to protect their lives and provide them with justice. In May 1945, in a letter addressed to president Ávila Camacho, Evangelicals from the town of Acatzingo, in Puebla, denounced an attack orchestrated by a group of Sinarquistas led by Esteban Méndez.Footnote 89 Among the victims was their minister, Leonardo Tamariz, who had been forced outside of his house in the middle of the night and then shot in the town plaza. The Sinarquistas had also forced their way into the house of Doctor Juan V. Montiel with the intention of killing him. When they did not find him, they decided to kill Enrique Aguilar, a young man who worked for Montiel. Aguilar was struck with machetes and clubs, while Montiel's wife was stripped of her clothing and forced out of her house. The signers of the letter asked the president to intervene, stating that local authorities supported the Sinarquistas and had done nothing to protect them.
Like the lynchings against socialist teachers, attacks against Protestants were often preceded by intra-community conflicts that preceded their occurrence. In August 1945, for example, a group of Evangelicals from the town of Esperanza in Puebla addressed the Interior Minister, urging him to condemn and investigate a number of assaults perpetrated against them during the previous month.Footnote 90 These assaults included the attempt of lynching of Melquiades Lezama and three Evangelical women by a group of Catholics who had also threatened Evangelical families with burning down their homes. The signers of the letter complained about the disregard shown by local authorities toward these incidents, stating that, “with a clear partial attitude, [authorities] have neither implemented measures to prevent such crimes, nor proceeded against the wrongdoers.” After this petition was submitted, an investigation was carried out in the town of Esperanza during the month of September. Although federal inspector Carlos Reyes Retana concluded that local authorities had indeed protected Melquiades to the best of their capacities, his description of the event deserves some attention, as it brings into sharp focus the impact of intra-community conflicts on religious violence.Footnote 91
Based on several interviews with members of the community, Reyes Retana stated that, over the preceding few weeks, Melquiades had held meetings inside of his shop with some out-of-town Evangelicals who were distributing flyers with information about their religion. Melquiades wanted his children to convert to Protestantism, so he welcomed the presence of the Evangelicals at his business. According to the Catholic parish priest, Odilón Romero, the flyers were “insulting” to the Catholic religion, as they contained images of the pope looking like Hitler and other fascist leaders. The day before the incident, a brawl had taken place in Melquiades's shop, involving a group of Evangelical and Catholic men. As a result of this brawl, a Catholic man had died.
Although he was not involved in the fight, villagers blamed Melquiades for the death of the Catholic man and gathered outside of his house with the intention of lynching him and setting his house on fire. Luz López, a Catholic woman who participated in the attack, claimed that she had been summoned, together with dozens of other women, by the president of Acción Católica, Josefina de Trujillo. The mayor was able to prevent Melquiades's lynching by rushing him out of his house and taking him into the municipal office. While Melquiades was in the municipal office, three Evangelical women went to the local penitentiary to visit one of the men involved in the brawl. It was at that moment that another group of Catholics gathered, with the aim of lynching these women. With the help of a military commander, the Evangelical women were able to find refuge at the local school.
The narrative of the events in Reyes Retana's report exposes Catholics’ outright rejection of Protestantism. It also reveals the ways in which Catholic villagers reacted when a community member attempted to introduce a different faith in their towns. Although the lynching of Melquiades was averted, the resentment and antipathy built up around him resemble the tensions that precipitated the lynching of Micaela Ortega, the Spiritist and socialist woman who was killed in November 1934 in Acajete, Puebla. Villagers in Esperanza gathered outside of Melquiades’ home, in the same way that they did with Micaela. Although the Catholic priest did not participate in the organization of the lynching, his religious authority appears in the background of this incident: he did not approve of Melquiades's Protestantism, and he was openly critical of the religious propaganda being distributed at Melquiades's shop. Furthermore, the fact that it was the leader of Acción Católica, an organization created by the Catholic Church to promote civil and pacific forms of resistance, who summoned the potential lynchers demonstrates that it was ultimately lay Catholics, and not the upper ranks of the Catholic Church, who sanctioned the use of lynching.
Protestants denounced several more incidences of violence in the coming years, pointing at the responsibility of local authorities and the fact that attacks organized against them went unpunished. Like the maestros rurales, Protestants urged authorities to live up to the promise of religious tolerance and secularism promoted by revolutionary elites. Despite the various letters and telegrams sent to the office of the president and to the Minister of the Interior, the central government neither condemned these attacks publicly nor did it provide effective protection for these citizens.
The détente between Church and state did not bring an end to lynchings and other forms of collective violence inspired by Catholics and the Church. In the case of Protestants, in particular, the new ideological proximity of the Catholic Church and postrevolutionary politicos, grounded in the defense of the nation against so-called foreign influences, meant that violence against Protestants could go unpunished.
Conclusion
This article has argued for an understanding of religion as a political and ideological force in the organization and legitimation of lynchings in postrevolutionary Mexico. Religion did not merely articulate communities’ symbolic and spiritual concerns, expressed in the defense of sacred spaces and religious images: it also served to define the political and economic contours of the community. These rather worldly concerns do not deny the authenticity of the religious experience, but rather illustrate the particular weight of religion in shaping social and political relations at the local level.
Despite the intentions of central elites during the 1920s and 1930s, Catholicism's stronghold in shaping people's mentalities and dispositions remained a dominant feature of Mexico's social and political makeup. As such, Catholic religion, particularly folk strands of Catholic religion, had a central role in the history of lynching in postrevolutionary Mexico.
