A background to 1926’s Cristero War, Wolfe on the conflict between the Mexican government and Catholic Church in the early 20s. Bertram D. Wolfe was a leader of both the U.S. and Mexican Communist Parties during the 1920s. From 1923 Wolfe lived in Mexico, was active with the railroad union, and was on both the Executives of the Profintern and on of the Mexican C.P. In 1925 Wolfe represented the Mexican Party at the Fifth Comintern Congress. Upon returning to the U.S., Wolfe headed the U.S. Party’s ‘Latin American Department’ as well as leading the New York Workers School where he taught classes on Latin American History.

‘Church and State in Mexico’ by Bertram D. Wolfe from Workers Monthly. Vol. 4 No. 11. September, 1925.

THE conflict between the Calles administration and the Catholic Church promises to assume considerable importance and may even lead to a Catholic revolt. In the half-year that Calles has been President of Mexico dispute has followed dispute until the friction assumes the form of a running warfare It began with the foundation of the “schismatic” Church by seceding Catholic priests. The movement is known as the “Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church” in contradistinction to the “Roman Catholic.” It holds as its central doctrine that no money should be sent to Rome. Other doctrines are: the permission of priestly marriage, the obligation of all priests to be native-born Mexicans and other distinctly nationalistic features. The government covertly, and not too covertly, has favored the schismastic church while the CROM (“Confederacion Regional Obrera Mexicana”), government labor organization, has openly declared that it favors the Mexican Church. The net result so far is that the Schismatics as they are called have failed to capture the popular imagination but have aroused Catholic indignation.

As a counter organization to the Knights of Columbus (which in Mexico also has fascist armed-guard tendencies) the Laboristas and Schismatics together have formed the Knights of Guadelupe. (The virgin of Guadelupe is the brown virgin that is the patron saint of the Mexican Indian. She appeared not to a Spanish bishop or other dignitary but to a Mexican Indian. She appeared to him three times, giving him proofs to convince the sceptical archbishop of the truth of the vision and sending a message to the archbishop through the Indian Juan Diego, that said dignitary “was not worthy of seeing her.” She served as the standard of Mexican independence in the civil war that liberated Mexico from Spain and has now been taken as the symbol of liberation from Rome. It is interesting to note that the hill on which she appeared was formerly a sacred hill in the pre-Christian Indian religion and sacred to an Indian goddess.)

In addition to the Knights of Guadelupe, a group hostile to the yellow labor leaders and claiming to be Communists has formed an organization called “The Knights of Humanity” which is a sort of Christian Communist movement. It has received no sympathy or encouragement from the Communist Party but professes to sympathize with the latter as the Knights of Guadelupe sympathize with the Labor Party.

Recent events in the unofficial religious war have been: The closing of the Jesuit College in Guadalajara, capital of the State of Jalisco, by Zuno, the governor of that state. This governor is hostile to the CROM and the Labor Party and therefore pretends to have Communist sympathies, which pretension the Communist Party does not recognize.

The passing of a law at the instance of the governor of Tabasco, forbidding non-Mexicans and unmarried clergy to practice the profession of priest in that state. This law is based on article six of the Mexican Constitution which authorizes the governments of State and Nation to “regulate the practice of professions.”

An executive decree of President Calles was issued just before Easter week, forbidding non-Mexicans to officiate as priests. This is in accord with the Mexican Constitution, but has never been enforced. The majority of the priests are Spaniards and Italians, less than one-third being Mexicans. In general, the Mexicans are the “poor priests” and hold only lower positions. This gives a certain basis for the fomenting of class divisions within the Church and the Schismatics are attempting to utilize it.

The Catholics have responded to the attacks on the social field as well as through the forming of nuclei of armed bands. Among the miners, the Catholic unions are stronger by far than the CROM unions. In many parts of the country, the Catholic unions are the only ones in this basic industry. (Petroleum is not included. In the Petroleum field there are powerful autonomous unions in which the Communist Party is quite strong and which belong neither to Catholic nor CROM organizations.) The Catholic Church is now trying to give its labor movement national scope and extend its strength. It has issued programs quite as “advance as the hopelessly conservative program of the leaders of the CROM and very similar in language and scope. It has issued declarations attacking “godless socialism”, but its concrete program is no less “advanced” than that of the CROM since both include the protection of the “legitimate rights of capital,” both tend to condemn strikes, speak of harmony of interests between capital and labor, favor class collaboration and certain minor legislative reforms. Moreover, the Church, which has control of the majority of the peasant minds and has hitherto opposed political activities on the part of the peasants, now offers a “reasonable” agrarian program which compares favorably with that of the CROM. Here again, both oppose the taking of the land by the peasants and both favor the “enforcement of the agrarian laws” which provide for the distribution of small parcels of land as private property to the landless on the basis of compensation to the landowner.

It should be noted that the Church as a social force represents the reactionary landowners, whereas the CROM represents the government. Thus it is interesting to note that the landholders program under pressure of social unrest is exactly analogous to the government program under the same pressure although the government represents a difficult feat of “reconciling” the interests of the Mexican masses with those of American imperialism and is bitterly opposed by the landowners and the Church.

The struggle between Government and Church in Mexico is of long standing. The church dominated the government (which amounts to saying that it was a landowners’ government) until the so-called “reformation” of the fifties and sixties of the last century. Then the beginning of capitalism came into conflict with the Church, the feudal landholding system, based technically, not on serfdom, but on debt-peonage which amounts in practice to the same thing. The result of the conflict was the temporary triumph of a liberal, jacobinistic, anti-church, pro-capitalist faction under President Juarez (who became Minister of Justice in 1855, became President 1857.) The “reformation” Constitution of 1857, which still remains the fundamental law except where expressly modified by the Constitution of 1917, which doesn’t change its religious features, aimed at the destruction of the property of the Church and the communal property of the Indians, thus being analogous to the enclosure acts in England and the “liberation” of the serfs from the land. It. forbids, among other things, the holding of property by the Church, the right of ecclesiastics to sue or defend themselves in civil cases, the right to hold processions of a religious nature or wear religious dress outside of the church building, the right of the Church to interfere in politics or establish elementary schools etc. It is undoubtedly the most jacobin constitution that prevails at present in Christian and Catholic countries.

The Church responded by conspiracies and the invitation of the French to intervene which the latter nation did, setting up the Bourbon emperor Maxmilian of Austria in Mexico. The civil war in the U.S. coming to a close, Maximilian lost French aid, and Juarez was victorious. The reformation resulted in the distribution of the Church lands and the destruction of most of the communal Indian holdings thus providing a basis for capitalism in the enriching of government elements, liberal landowners etc., and in the “liberation” of a source of labor supply, the peasant.

The reformation laws gradually fell into disuse under Diaz and the Mexican bourgeoisie remained weak thanks to the entrance of the expanding American bourgeoisie. The Church allied itself with Diaz and the bourgeoisie with the landowners and the Church. But the revolutions culminating in the Constitution of 1917, on their formal and legal side revived the anti-Church tendencies to a limited extent. This was largely due to the fact that the Church and the landowners supported English as against American capital in the struggle for oil and Church and landowners and British capital, after temporary successes (the Huerta regime) lost out to the strange alliance of American capital and the Mexican peasant mass. This explains the present complicated situation and anti-Church policy of the government and the official labor and peasant organizations controlled by the government.

The Workers Monthly began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Party publication. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and the Communist Party began publishing The Communist as its theoretical magazine. Editors included Earl Browder and Max Bedacht as the magazine continued the Liberator’s use of graphics and art.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/wm/1925/v4n11-sep-1925.pdf