Lucha Feminista en Los Años 20-2.243 PDF

Bodies and Souls: A Fight between the
Revolutionary State and Catholic Women over

the Sexuality of Prostitutes in the 1920s
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Sofı́a Crespo Reyes
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Pamela J. Fuentes
Pace University, New York City campus
This article examines debates about the bodies and souls of women
prostitutes in Mexico City that confronted the revolutionary Mexican
government with the Catholic Church in the 1920s. We analyze the phil-
anthropic activities of women’s organizations such as the Damas Católicas
through the Ejército de Defensa de la Mujer and the ways in which they
engaged in political roles at a time of fierce political struggle between the
Catholic Church and the Mexican government. For both the government
and Catholic women, it was deemed necessary to isolate and seclude the
prostitutes’ bodies to cure them of venereal diseases and rehabilite them
morally. While the government interned them at Hospital Morelos,
Catholic women established a private assistance network, as well as so-
called casas de regeneración, where former prostitutes had to work to
sustain themselves while repenting for their sins and receiving the sacra-
ments. By exploring the tension-filled interaction about women prostitutes
between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church, we seek to
contribute to the understanding of sexuality and prostitution in Mexico
City in the 1920s.
Keywords: Catholic Church, Damas Católicas, marriage, prostitution, secu-

larism, venereal disease.
Este artı́culo explora debates sobre los cuerpos y almas de las prostitutas de
la ciudad de México, como un tema que enfrentó al gobierno posrevolu-
cionario y la Iglesia católica durante la década de 1920. Analizamos las
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 36, Issue 1-2, Winter/Summer 2020, pages 243–269. issn
0742-9797, electronic issn 1533-8320. ©2020 by The Regents of the University of California. All
rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.
ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/msem.2020.36.1-2.243.
243
244 Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
actividades filantrópicas de organizaciones de mujeres, como las Damas

Católicas mediante el Ejército de Defensa de la Mujer, y los procesos
mediante los cuales adquirieron funciones polı́ticas durante un compli-
cado contexto de lucha entre la Iglesia y el gobierno. Tanto para el
gobierno como para las católicas era necesario aislar los cuerpos de las
prostitutas usando la reclusión con el objetivo de curarlas de enferme-
dades venéreas o rehabilitarlas moralmente. Mientras el gobierno inter-
naba a las mujeres en el Hospital Morelos, las mujeres católicas

establecieron una red de asistencia, ası́ como casas de “regeneración,” en
las que mujeres que se habı́an dedicado al comercio sexual trabajaban
para su propia subsistencia, mientras confesaban sus pecados y recibı́an
sacramentos. Al explorar la tensa interacción entre el gobierno mexicano
y la Iglesia católica en relación al comercio sexual, buscamos abonar al
estudio de la sexualidad y la prostitución en la ciudad de México durante
la década de 1920.
Palabras clave: Damas Católicas, enfermedades venéreas, Iglesia católica,

matrimonio, prostitución, secularismo.
Introduction
In this article, we study the activism of the Unión de Damas Católicas
Mexicanas (Damas Católicas) and the Ejército de Defensa de la Mujer
(Ejército) as the Catholic response to the perceived problem of moral
decay in Mexico City in the 1920s. We explain the role that private
assistance played as a tool to promote Catholic morality before and
during the Cristero War. We compare and contrast the activities of
Catholic women with the policies implemented by policymakers at
the Hospital Morelos, who followed the rhetoric of the revolutionary
government, which wanted to replace religious beliefs with secular
values—in this case, by instilling job skills in the sex workers who
were patients in the hospital. We argue that both the state and the
Ejército sought to isolate bodies of sex workers, but for rather
different reasons.
Our study aims to contribute to discussions of the history of
sexuality by exploring the tension-filled interaction between the
Mexican government and the Catholic Church in the 1920s. By
focusing on the viewpoints that the state and the church had on
sexual commerce, this article uses the term sexuality to explore the
larger social context that the bodies of sex workers inhabited. At the
time, prostitution was still perceived as both a matter of public health
and a sin; therefore, prostitutes’ bodies were seen by sectors of
Mexican society as ill, as means of contagion, or as those of fallen
Reyes and Fuentes, Bodies and Souls 245
women.1 In the context of the consolidation of the revolutionary

state, the government sought to rehabilitate women by curing them
of venereal disease and by teaching them skills for new occupations.
The Catholic Church sought to mend sex workers’ morality by
showing them religious principles. In both cases, prostitutes (and
what their bodies represented) were perceived as something that
needed to be isolated in order to be transformed—as women who

needed to leave behind venereal disease and sex work in order to be
regenerated as morally acceptable.
The study is based on documents held in four Mexico City
archives, namely the Archivo General de la Nación, Archivo
Histórico de la Secretarı́a de Salud, Archivo Histórico de la Unión
Femenina Católica Mexicana, and Archivo Histórico de la
Arquidiócesis de México. These documents include the reports of
both religious organizations and revolutionary policymakers
regarding sex work, the description of the improvements to
Hospital Morelos, as well as the activities in casas de regeneración,
and the handful of complaints made by sex workers mentioned above.
We also use Catholic publications such as El Hogar, La Dama
Católica, and La Mujer Católica Mexicana to explore the activities
of Damas Católicas. Seeking to contribute new information about sex
work or Catholic women, we also used new sources, including reports
from undercover agents in Catholic organizations and documents
from the Dirección Federal de Seguridad. These archives shed light
not only on the network of undercover agents the government used to
obtain first-hand information about Catholic women but also on how
and why they were perceived as a threat by the state.
While prostitutes were expected to follow strict rehabilitation
standards, this does not mean that they passively accepted them.
Even though their voices are rarely found in the archives we exam-
ined, when present, they always contested the changes that institutions
wanted to impose on their lives. The resistance to social institutions
was not new for prostitutes working and living in Mexico City.
However, the changes brought by the Mexican Revolution altered the
interaction between prostitutes and the state, bringing new forms of
resistance. Something similar happened in the relationship between
the church and the government, as well as between Catholic women
and the religious organizations they belonged to.
1. We are using the term prostitutes to follow the language of the time and of the
sources. It is never our intention to add to the stigma historically associated with this
word. Even when the term sex workers is anachronistic, we sometimes use it to avoid
such stigma.
By exploring the tension generated around rehabilitation or

regeneration of sex workers during the highest points of rupture
between Catholicism and the new revolutionary ideology, our article
bridges two historiographic perspectives: sex commerce studies and
Catholic women’s organizations. Classic and recent studies of
Mexico’s sex trade have focused on the government’s role in the
regulation of prostitution. Topics have included the legislation of sex

workers and their workplaces, the relationship between legalized sex
commerce and venereal disease control measures, and the participa-
tion of international organizations.2
For its part, the historiography about Damas Católicas has been
divided into two streams. The first states that the action of these
women were under the tutelage of the high ecclesiastical hierarchy
and, consequently, was subject to strict surveillance.3 The second has
tried to recover the experiences of the women who made up this
organization in order to account for a feminine activism based on the
defense of domestic roles as their main space for political action. This
second current puts into question the alleged subordination of
Catholic women to the priesthood or other Catholic organizations.4
2. See, e.g., Katherine Elain Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public

Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005); Cristina Rivera Garza, “The Criminalization
of the Syphilitic Body: Prostitutes, Health Crimes, and Society in Mexico City,
1867–1930,” in Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late
Colonial Times, ed. Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 147–80; Cristina Rivera Garza, “The Masters of
the Streets: Bodies, Power, and Modernity in Mexico, 1867–1930” (PhD diss.,
University of Houston, 1995); Fernanda Núñez Becerra, La prostitución y su represión
en la Ciudad de México (siglo XIX): Prácticas y representaciones (Barcelona: Gedisa
Editorial, 2009); Pamela J. Fuentes, “The Oldest Professions in Revolutionary Times:
Madams, Pimps, and Prostitution in Mexico City, 1920–1952” (PhD diss., York
University, 2015); and Ixchel Delgado Jordá, “Mujeres públicas bajo el Imperio: La
prostitución en la Ciudad de México durante el Imperio de Maximiliano (1864–1867)”
(MA thesis, El Colegio de Michoacán, 1998).
3. Karla Espinoza Motte, “La resistencia militante de la Unión de Damas Católicas
Mexicanas (1920–1930),” (BA thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
2011); Patience Schell, “An Honorable Avocation for Ladies: The Work of the Mexico
City Unión de Damas Católicas Mexicanas, 1912–1926,” Journal of Women’s History
10, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 78–103. By “high ecclesiastical hierarchy,” we refer to the
highest-level Catholic authorities in Mexico, composed of men who held important
positions inside the Catholic hierarchy, such as the archbishop of Mexico José Mora y
del Rı́o and priests who had been trained in social Catholicism.
4. Kristina A. Boylan, “Mexican Catholic Women’s Activism, 1929–1940” (PhD diss.,
Oxford University, 2000); Barbara Miller, “The Role of Women in the Mexican Cristero
Rebellion: Las señoras y las religiosas,” The Américas 40, no. 3 (January 1984): 303–23;
Laura O’Dogherty Madrazo, “Restaurarlo todo en Cristo: Unión de Damas Católicas
In both historiographic tracks, the relation between sex commerce and

religion has not yet been fully explored; this gap offers a wide range of
possibilities for exploratory analysis. An important exception is
Katherine Bliss’s analysis of the similarities between the goals of
Catholic women and feminist activists inside the Hospital Morelos.5
Our article stems from Bliss’s research and examines tensions and
parallels between church and government, since both sought to rectify

the sexuality of sex workers and change their lives within either
Catholic or revolutionary moral norms while reincorporating women
into Mexican society according to the church’s and government’s goals
and values. In this article, we explore the tension between the state
and Catholicism by focusing on the programs that each developed for
the health and moral rehabilitation of prostitutes. Our article also stems
from previous studies that have examined the resemblances between
the church and the state in other realms and social projects, particularly
education.6 Some of those studies have explored the acquiescence of
teachers to clergy, just as here we study how nurses and doctors
consented to the work of Damas Católicas in Hospital Morelos.
The essay is divided into six sections. First, we provide a context
about the differences and similarities among the ideas about
women’s sexuality from the state and church perspectives during the
1920s. Second, we discuss the historical events that allowed the foun-
dation of a female Catholic militancy represented by Damas Católicas
within a period of political crisis caused by the Mexican Revolution
and the Cristero conflict. In the third section, we analyze the activities
that the revolutionary government developed—through the Hospital
Morelos—regarding regulation of prostitution and healing of the
bodies of sex workers. Then, we describe and discuss the moral
discourse of actions taken by the organization Damas Católicas and
their parallel group Ejército in their work with prostitutes. The last
section examines the reports of government agents concerning the
-
Mejicanas, 1920–1926,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 14,
no.14 (1991):129–58; and Juan Pablo Vivaldo Martı́nez, “La Unión de Damas Católicas
Mexicanas 1912–1929: Una historia polı́tica” (MA thesis, Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, 2011).
5. Katherine Elaine Bliss, “Theater of Operations: Reform, Politics, and the Battle
for Prostitutes’ Redemption at Revolutionary Mexico City’s Syphilis Hospital,” in The
Women’s Revolution in Mexico, 1910–1953, ed. Stephanie Mitchell and Patience Schell
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 125–48.
6. Patience Schell, Church and State Education in Revolutionary Mexico City
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003); Margaret Chowning, “Culture Wars in the
Trenches? Public School and Catholic Education in Mexico, 1867–1897,” Hispanic
American Historical Review 97, no.4 (2017): 613–49.
activities of Catholic women, while in the conclusion we reflect about

the implications of the study.
Women’s Sexuality Overview: Rising Tensions between the

State and the Catholic Church in the 1920s
Sexuality is a concept that often intersects with other analytical cate-

gories shaping a vast array of social attitudes about sex in particular
and different historical contexts. Here we are concerned about the
roles that class, politics, and religion played in the understanding of
both the moral and physical rehabilitation of women who worked in
the sex trade in Mexico City in the 1920s. The discussions about
vulnerable social groups, especially sex workers, were part of the
political struggle between the anticlerical revolutionary state and the
church that wanted to maintain its political influence.
Examples of this can be found in the press and official commu-
nications. For instance, in October 1925, the magazine El Hogar
published an article praising work done by Damas Católicas, one of
the most important Mexican women’s organizations in the 1920s
defending traditional Catholic ideology. The anonymous article
lauded as “grandiose” the efforts of Damas Católicas toward facili-
tating the rebirth of “the Mexican woman,” with the aim of restituting
women’s deserved place and embodying “their three divine phases:
fiancée, wife and mother.”7 According to this article, this domestic
and reproductive-oriented resurgence would be possible thanks to
the willingness of upper-class women to leave their comfort behind
in order to face the agitated context of the time with unparalleled
fortitude and heroism.8 This article also stated that these women
would set moral examples for other women while contesting regula-
tions created by the recently established revolutionary government.9
Among the women in need of redemption were working-class
women, heavily made-up and half-naked entertainers, women in the
streets “wearing nothing but their own beauty,” and even women
attending churches “dressed in clothes condemned by rigid religious
commandments.”10 In the postrevolutionary era, from a Catholic
perspective, any woman whose sexuality was outside traditional para-
meters (in other words, who was not a virgin, a wife, and devoted to
7. “Fémina rompe sus cadenas,” El Hogar, no. 288, 14 October 1925, 5. All
translations by authors of this article.
8. “Fémina,” 5.
9. “Fémina,” 5.
10. “Fémina,” 5.
home, whether single or married) had a corrupted soul through her

lack of respect for her body. According to this logic, the bodies of
morally vulnerable women would undergo moral rebirth when,
under appropriate guidance of respectable women, they retraced
their steps toward an ideal condition: starting a home with a man.
This conception of women’s role and sexuality conflicted with
that espoused by the Mexican government after the revolution, which

perceived social problems differently than the Catholic Church. For
example, in the 1926 Conferencia Panamericana de Directores de
Sanidad Pública, Dr. Bernardo Gastélum, as one of the representa-
tives of the Mexican government, claimed that syphilis affected 50
percent of the population, which made it the main public health issue
in Mexico City. Gastélum blamed the church for syphilis’s high trans-
missibility: instead of holding brothels accountable for the rise in the
disease as during the Porfirian era, Gastélum blamed Catholic
morality, which, he claimed, promoted shame, secrecy, and double
moral standards.11 While women were confined to housekeeping
and monogamy, men satisfied their sexual desires publicly. 12
According to Gastélum, Catholics avoided talking about symptoms,
treatment, and transmission of venereal diseases, which were seen as
inappropriate topics. So, the chief of the Departamento de
Salubridad of Mexico City called on other congress attendants to
follow the revolution’s example by promoting sex education and
medical treatments, and by aiming to redirect prostitutes toward
a different way of life. For Gastélum, “it was necessary to strip sexu-
ality of its antiquated cloak of privacy and situate it, instead, within
the modern domain of health science.”13
Although the ideas of the Damas Católicas and the Departamento
de Salubridad addressed similar topics regarding morality and sexu-
ality, their perspectives displayed an unbridgeable gap with the ideas
of the revolutionary government, particularly during the era of the
Cristero conflict (1926–29).14 Since colonial times, Mexico City has
11. See Bernardo J. Gastélum, “La persecución de la sı́filis desde el punto de vista
de la garantı́a social,” Boletı́n del Departamento de Salubridad Pública 4–8 (1926),
cited in Bliss, Compromised Positions, 95–96. The conference took place in Washington,
DC, from 27–29 September 1926, with representatives from the following countries:
Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, United States of America, Guatemala,
Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela.
12. Bliss, 95–96.
13. Bliss, 97.
14. Jean Meyer’s classic study was one of the first in documenting the partici-
pation of women in favor of the Cristero movement in Jalisco. Jean Meyer, La Cristiada
(Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, 1973).
been home to both secular and Catholic institutions (such as the

Archbishopric of Mexico City), whose moral policies would lead
other regions of the country. During the Cristero conflict, tensions
were playing out all over Mexico, particularly in provinces such as
Guanajuato, Michoacán, Jalisco, and Puebla, but due to the large
population and importance of the national capital, Catholic and revo-
lutionary groups clashed with particular intensity and significance
there.15 Both the Catholic Church and the state—the former through

Damas Católicas, the latter through its institutions, like Hospital
Morelos—formulated very similar objectives regarding the behavior
of the sex workers: they sought to reincorporate them into society as
morally reformed individuals.
The Catholic Church and the state could not work together
toward the same goal because they sought to control women’s moral
behavior in their own terms, thus disregarding each other’s projects
and visions. This gap would eventually lead to the government
strengthening its power through public health measures and through
the centralization of welfare and charity. The adoption of a new revo-
lutionary ideology strove for inclusion in spaces dominated by the
church in the nineteenth century (such as schools, hospitals, and
jails). Hospital Morelos would be defended by Damas Católicas, with
the support of the Ejército, who sought to recover the lost morality of
young women engaged in prostitution.16 Throughout the 1920s,
these two organizations gradually gained power as conflict between
church and state sharpened. The actions of these organizations was
focused on vulnerable groups, including the prostitutes who were
confined in Hospital Morelos, an institution created for the treatment
of women with venereal disease.
Both the state and the Ejército considered it necessary to isolate
bodies of sex workers, but each had different reasons for doing so.
The government used Hospital Morelos to cure the sick bodies of sex
workers, while the Catholic group wanted to achieve their moral
rehabilitation and sought to establish a private assistance network
15. In 1921, Mexico City’s population was 906,063 inhabitants. Departamento de

Estadı́stica Nacional, Resumen del censo general de habitantes de 30 de noviembre de
1921 (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1928), 12, cited in Ariel Rodrı́guez
Kuri, Historia del desasosiego: La revolución en la Ciudad de México, 1911–1922
(Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2010), 24.
16. In regard to the struggle for spaces between the Catholic Church and the
Mexican State in the nineteenth century, see Elizabeth O’Brien, “‘If they are useful, why
expel them?’ Las Hermanas de la Caridad and Religious Medical Authority in Mexico
City Hospitals, 1861–1874,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 33, no. 3 (Fall 2017):
417–42.
of casas de regeneración where women simultaneously worked,

confessed sins, received sacraments, christened children, and
engaged in festivals and charity fairs.17 The methods that Catholics
and government shared came from an old collaboration between
these two actors. The main differences, however, originated during
the Revolution of 1910, as we explain next.

1910–1920: The Formation of the Revolutionary State and
the Origins of Damas Católicas
Damas Católicas was founded in 1912 during Francisco I. Madero’s
presidency; yet its origin was linked to a profound and painful
process of secularization experienced by the church after the addi-
tion of the Leyes de Reforma to the Mexican Constitution of 1857.18
After this legal separation between church and state, Mexican clergy
trained Catholics to become militants and defenders of faith, fighting
to re-establish the church’s influence.19 This process was accompa-
nied by renewing and modifying the role of diverse Catholic organi-
zations that had prevailed since the beginning of the nineteenth
century and allowed believers to identify with an antiliberal and anti-
modern political stance.20
17. For Catholic organizations such as Damas Católicas and Ejército, the word
regeneración meant the “rebirth of life” and was linked to a devotional process that
ended with the recognition of the moral principles of the church as the axis of
women’s lives.
18. For an in-depth analysis of the reform laws, see Cecilia Adriana Bautista
Garcı́a, Las disyuntivas del Estado y de la Iglesia en la consolidación del orden
liberal, México, 1856–1910 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2012); and Erika Pani,
ed., Conservadurismo y derechas en la historia de México (Mexico City: Fondo de
Cultura Economómica/Conaculta, 2009).
19. The emergence of a Catholic militancy was a Vatican-promoted policy,
especially after Leo XIII’s pontificate. For an in-depth analysis, see Marı́a Aspe Armella,
La formación social y polı́tica de los católicos mexicanos: La Acción Social Católica
Mexicana y la Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos, 1929–1958 (Mexico City:
Universidad Iberoamericana, 2008).
20. According to Margaret Chowning, since the first decades of the nineteenth
century, the majority of confraternities were made up of 80 percent women, meaning
that women populated the temples and that religious practices were coupled to the
needs of its female audience. This process represented a transformation of Mexican
women’s devotional practices and has been called a process of “feminization” of piety
and religious practices, because women began to take charge of devotional activities to
a greater extent than men. However, the present investigation considers, like Silvia
Arrom has, that this relative “feminization” was due more to a division of the activities
by gender than to a male disinterest in devotion. Women took charge of charity,
devotion, and philanthropy, while male piety flourished in other more political areas.
See Margaret Chowning, “The Catholic Church and the Ladies of the Vela Perpetua:
These efforts gained momentum during the first three decades of

the twentieth century, especially after the start of the revolution and
the 1911 presidential election, which represented a new opportunity
for the church to openly participate in national political life. The high
ecclesiastical hierarchy, formed within social Catholicism, then
promoted the formation of organizations, such as Damas Católicas,
to advance its interests.21 Damas Católicas were founded at the

request of Alfredo Mora y del Rı́o, the archbishop of Mexico, who
drew up their regulations and program plan. The members sought
a battle against “perverse, destructive, anti-Christian, pernicious, and
antisocial ideas and doctrines” through propaganda, catechisms,
labor circles, conferences, other Catholic social works, and by reaf-
firming women’s “Catholic-social duties” through charitable work.22
In this sense, they were identified as promoters of moral feminine
Catholic values: submission, self-denial, conjugal love, charity, senti-
mentality, and motherhood. All of these values were to be exhibited
in homes and among families and acquaintances.
Damas Católicas were upper-class women and part of the coun-
try’s most conservative sector.23 Among its core members were Elena
-
Gender and Devotional Change in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,” Past & Present 221
(2013): 197–237; Silvia Arrom, Volunteering for a Cause: Gender, Faith, and Charity
in Mexico from the Reform to the Revolution (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2016); and Michela De Giorgio, “El modelo católico,” in Historia de las mujeres
en occidente, ed. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot (Madrid: Taurus, 1991): 183–217.
On the Catholic organizations that emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century,
see Bautista, Las disyuntivas; José Alberto Moreno Chávez, Devociones polı́ticas:
Cultura católica y politización en la Arquidiócesis de México (1880–1920) (Mexico
City: El Colegio de México, 2013); and Arrom, Volunteering.
21. Social Catholicism is part of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church created
by Leo XIII, in which the pope pronounced against exploitation of the workers,
Marxism, and communism, and defended the principles of charity and the natural right
to private property. Leo XIII, “Rerum novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital
and Labor,” The Holy See, 1891, accessed 24 March 2019, http://www.vatican.va/
content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.
html; Roberto J. Blancarte, El pensamiento social de los católicos mexicanos (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996); and Manuel Ceballos, Catolicismo social:
Un tercero en discordia; “Rerum novarum,” la cuestión social y la movilización de
los católicos mexicanos, 1891–1911 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1991).
22. José Mora y del Rı́o, “Asociación de Damas Católicas Mexicanas: Idea
general,” 1912, Mexico City, 2, folleto, and José Mora y del Rı́o, “Reglamento general
de la Asociación de Damas Católicas Mexicanas,” 1912, Mexico City, 4, Fondo
Arzobispo José Mora y del Rı́o, sección Secretarı́a Arzobispal, serie Asociaciones
Piadosas, caja 186, exp. 11, Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de México (AHAM).
23. The ideology of Damas Católicas should be considered conservative because
this organization emerged as part of an international movement led by the Vatican
called social Catholicism (see n21 above), which condemned all forms of modern
Lascurain de Silva, president, whose family owned one of the most

important real estate companies, and Concepción Dı́ez de Bonilla de
Galindo y Pimentel, descendant of a Creole family with colonial
origins.24 These families’ philanthropic work indicated a public
display of faith that translated into recognition of their socio-
economic status. The rest of the membership, however, was made
up of women who worked as nurses, factory workers, operators, cigar

makers, and maids, and were considered by the high ecclesiastical
hierarchy as mere helpers in the work that the archbishop had
entrusted to the higher-status members.25
During Victoriano Huerta’s illegal seizure of power (1912–14),
Damas Católicas embarked on several initiatives to exert its influence.
They thus created and maintained night schools for workers and
poor children, recruited members for the Partido Católico Nacional
(PCN), promoted propaganda exercises (such as catechism and Mass
attendance), and campaigned to ban plays and films that “affected the
society’s moral awareness and perverted customs.”26 Huerta had
support from the ecclesiastic hierarchy and the PCN; therefore, the
defeat inflicted on his army in 1914 left Damas Católicas in a vulner-
able position. Nevertheless, they continued providing humanitarian
aid, for example, founding a community kitchen for poor people.27
The administrations that followed sought to centralize and
consolidate state dominance through new legislation over spheres
that had been historically church dominated. The strength gained by
the state through institutions that it created or reformed and through
numerous legislative changes was aimed not only at reducing the
church’s influence but also at suppressing its authority over areas the
government sought to control as revolutionary cornerstones: educa-
tion, labor justice, public health, and welfare. Social benefits had to
be portrayed as an outcome of the revolution, and, to this end, the
Constitution of 1917 established secular, free education and banned
-
thinking and, in opposition, proposed to preserve the moral values promoted by the
Christian faith as the core of societies. Conservatism sought to defend the role of the
church as a public and political institution against the process of secularization of
nations.
24. Ricardo Ortega y Pérez Gallardo, “Familia Dı́ez de Bonilla,” in Estudios
genealógicos (Mexico City: Imprenta de Eduardo Dublan, 1902), 235–42.
25. Mora y del Rı́o, “Reglamento,” 3.
26. “El porvenir de las jóvenes,” La Mujer Católica Mexicana: Órgano de la
Confederación Nacional de Damas Católicas 20 (1914): 5.
27. Alan Knight, “The Mentality and modus operandi of Revolutionary
Anticlericalism,” in Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico, ed. Matthew Butler
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 25.
religious entities from being part of educational programs.28 The

constitution also established freedom of worship and prohibited
clergy from holding public office or making any religious or political
propaganda efforts.29
As a result, from 1917 to 1924 the ecclesiastical hierarchy closed
ranks, modifying the ways its organizations utilized public participa-
tion to radicalize people for the cause and engaging in warlike strat-

egies. This affected Damas Católicas, who reorganized and
reinterpreted their activities as defenders of Catholicism, home,
family, and morals. Damas Católicas advanced a political agenda with
social nuances aimed at recovering women’s domestic and maternal
role and thereby promoting Catholicism among children. They also
declared a moral crusade against indecency and lust.30
These years also heightened revolutionary rhetoric dissociating
the new government from social abuses committed during the
Porfirian dictatorship. The new government facilitated the formation
of trade unions and other organizations to co-opt workers and
peasants, reinforcing political participation of social classes that,
prior to the revolution, had been regarded by the Porfirian govern-
ment as susceptible to crime and vice.31 The government also estab-
lished moral standards for what they considered true revolutionaries,
promoting an idea of pueblo composed of formerly suppressed
groups that the revolution ought to serve, and the government
considered those who flouted these guidelines as antirevolutionary.
Sex workers, for instance, went from being regarded as socially ill to
being seen as victims of economic circumstances.
Damas Católicas created a program centered on helping female
factory and domestic workers, orphans, the sick, prisoners, and pros-
titutes.32 The group thought that, under the new regime, Mexico City
was going through a social crisis seeded by a lack of morality,
28. “Constitución polı́tica de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos que reforma la de 5

de febrero de 1857,” Diario oficial: Órgano del gobierno provisional de la República
Mexicana 5, no. 30 (Mexico City: Secretarı́a de Gobernación, 1917): 149–61.
29. “Constitución polı́tica,” Articles 5, 13, 24, 27, 55, and 130.
30. Damas Católicas made a fight against what they considered immoral sexual
behavior their main goal.
31. Gerardo González Asencio, “Positivismo y organicismo en México a fines del
siglo XX: La construcción de una visión determinista sobre la conducta criminal en
alcohólicos, mujeres e indı́genas,” Alegatos 76 (2010): 706–10.
32. Sofı́a Crespo Reyes, “Entre la filantropı́a y la práctica polı́tica: La Unión de
Damas Católicas Mexicanas en la Ciudad de México (1860–1930)” (PhD diss., Instituto
Dr. José Marı́a Luis Mora, 2016), 130–80.
reflected in the increase of sex commerce and venereal diseases.33

Therefore, it was necessary to fight those amoral practices by culti-
vating Christian values by establishing a social network able to sustain
Catholic practices and establishing strong ties within society by
affirming the role of the Catholic woman as the center of life. Thus,
Damas Católicas contested the state’s new morals and challenged the
concept of social justice as belonging only to government.

The conflict between church and state grew, reaching its climax
between 1924 and 1928, when Plutarco Elı́as Calles’s administration
introduced a number of regulations banning Catholic organizations
from public and political affairs. For instance, public-education laws
prohibited religious involvement in schools, and none could bear
a name related to any religion.34
In May 1925, Damas Católicas announced its affiliation with the
Liga Nacional de Defensa de la Libertad Religiosa (LNDLR), an orga-
nization created by Catholic militants to defend faith and protect
priests against religious persecution that had recently begun.35 The
publication of what became known as the Ley Calles marked a turning
point on 2 July 1926—the “Ley que Reforma el Código Penal para el
Distrito y Territorios Federales sobre Delitos del Fuero Común y
Delitos Contra la Federación en Materia de Culto Religioso y
Disciplina Externa,” to which the LNDLR reacted by distributing
a newsletter calling for a boycott, inviting everyone to “bring
economic and social life to a halt” by not purchasing products that
were not essential and by removing children from secular schools.36
By mid-1926, just before the outbreak of armed conflict between
church and state, Damas Católicas had developed a robust organiza-
tion. However, during the Cristero War the government closed down
their schools, unions, and academies. When the LNDLR turned clan-
destine in order to lead the Cristero army, Damas Católicas devoted
33. Crespo Reyes, 173–78. See also Marı́a del Carmen Zavala Ramı́rez, “El
enfermo venéreo, ¿vı́ctima o criminal? El delito de contagio venéreo en la primera
mitad del siglo XX,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 35, no. 1 (Winter 2019):
417–42.
34. Informe de la Sección de Escuelas de 1926, libro de actas 35, 1920–1926, fojas
37–44, Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavijero (BFXC), Universidad Iberoamericana
(UIA), Archivo Histórico de la Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana (AHUFCM).
35. Carta agente no. 18 a jefe del Departamento: Confidencial, 7 April 1925,
Mexico City, Secretarı́a de Gobernación, Investigaciones Policiacas y Sociales, gener-
alidades, caja 228, exp. 33, clasif. 311.1-175 [T. 1], fojas 33–37, Archivo General de la
Nación (AGN).
36. Liga Nacional Defensora de la Libertad Religiosa, circular no. 2-A, 14 July
1926, Mexico City, libro de Actas del Consejo General (1926–28), caja 18, exp. 47,
BFXC, UIA, AHUFCM.
themselves to strengthening and preserving their own social links.

They organized pilgrimages and other liturgical acts as political
protest, distributed leaflets, and sought donations to help Catholic
prisoners, such as priests and members of the LNDLR.37 These activ-
ities gave them important public recognition and a strong capacity to
mobilize different sectors of the population.
The Cristero War ended abruptly. In 1929, the state and the high

ecclesiastical hierarchy brokered peace after a series of clandestine
meetings. They declared the hostilities between both bodies
suspended throughout the Mexican territory. Government registra-
tion of ministers became mandatory, prohibition of religious educa-
tion was maintained, and the church was forced to exert strict control
over their organizations in order to contain the radical currents of
Catholic militancy. The Mexican clergy imposed a new organization,
under the scheme of Catholic Action proposed by Pope Pius XI, and
the name and direction of Damas Católicas was modified. They
became the Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana and joined the
Acción Católica Mexicana, an organization focused on centralizing,
hierarchizing, and incorporating all Catholic organizations from the
country into one, in order to increase control over its militants.38
In 1933, former members of Damas Católicas recalled how their
organization had been transformed as an act of “sacrifice and obedi-
ence” to the ecclesiastic hierarchy.39 After almost twenty years of
organizational life, they lost the name that forged their identity, class,
and status—a name that distinguished them from other groups and
positioned them as the representatives of devotion, piety, and the
spirit of Catholic charity among society. They considered that they
had to obey “the authority of their beloved prelates” and accept the
37. According to Matthew Butler, the pilgrimages comprised two hundred

thousand people, which represented one-fifth of Mexico City’s population. Matthew
Butler, “Trouble Afoot? Pilgrimage in Cristero Mexico City,” in Faith and Impiety in
Revolutionary Mexico, ed. Matthew Butler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 155;
Actas de las sesiones del Consejo de General de las Damas Católicas de 1926 a 1928,
BFXC, UIA, AHUFCM.
38. Ten years after the Acción Católica Mexicana was founded, several of its
members founded the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) as an outlet for the political
demands of conservative groups. The PAN became the first opposition party to
participate in an electoral contest against the hegemonic party, the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1940. See Tania Hernández Vicencio, Tras las
huellas de la derecha: La historia del Partido Acción Nacional, 1939–2000 (Mexico
City: Itaca Editorial, 2009).
39. “Informe que presenta la Presidenta del Comité Central de la Primera
Asamblea General de la Unión Femenina Católica de México,” Acción Femenina 1
(1933): 13.
structural modifications imposed by Catholic Action.40 The years of

Damas Católicas were winding down, which would have an impact
on the sex trade, one of their main concerns.
1920–1929: Prostitution, the Revolutionary State, and the

Healing of Bodies

Hospital Morelos was located in the heart of the Mexico City, near the
Alameda Central, an enormous public garden established at the end
of the sixteenth century. Set in a former colonial-era convent
building, adjoining the Church of San Juan de Dios, Hospital
Morelos specialized in the treatment of women suffering from venereal
diseases. They arrived after compulsory medical check-ups, if they
were registered as prostitutes with the Oficina de Sanidad, or after
having been arrested on the streets by police for practicing sexual
commerce illegally. On one of the hospital walls, a sign read, “We shall
protect the woman’s work in which she looks for redemption.”41 On
the way to the top floor, visitors could faintly see time-worn religious
murals and a wooden figure of the Virgin holding the corpse of Jesus
Christ.
The hospital had hosted women suffering from venereal diseases
as part of the French System established in Mexico for the purpose of
regulating prostitution.42 In the words of historian Fernanda Núñez
Becerra, “To speak of prostitution in the nineteenth century means to
speak necessarily, and first and foremost, about syphilis.”43 This
system, embodied in the 1865 Reglamento de la Prostitución,
mandated that prostitutes be municipally registered, subjected to peri-
odical medical check-ups, and admitted for long hospital stays if diag-
nosed with venereal ailments. Keeping women under observation was
the only way doctors felt they could ensure that prostitutes carefully
followed treatment and avoided sexual contact during healing.44
Eventually, the hospitalization of prostitutes became synonymous with
40. “Disciplina,” Acción Femenina 1 (1933): 15.

41. Luis Ángel Rodrı́guez, Jaulas y pájaros de amor: Veinticinco estampas del
vicio en México (Toluca: Talleres Tipográficos “La Carpeta,” 1934), 57–59.
42. The system of regulated prostitution was internationally known at the time as
the French System, since it had its origins there in the nineteenth century. In Mexico
City, it was established during the French Intervention (1862–67) and revoked in 1940.
43. Núñez Becerra, La prostitución, 165.
44. For a detailed background regarding prostitution policies after the revolu-
tion, see Bliss, Compromised Positions, 23–61; and Ricardo Franco Guzmán, “El
régimen jurı́dico de la prostitución en México,” Revista de la Facultad de Derecho en
México, 85–86 (1972): 99–123.
confinement, and Hospital Morelos became equivalent to a jail. Since

the nineteenth century, sex workers had been using diverse techni-
ques to escape hospitalization (e.g., they would attend medical check-
ups during their period, or they would constantly change addresses).
There was also a class stigma associated with this institution, since
prostitutes from first-class brothels were more likely to avoid confine-
ment, as their madams paid well to skip registration and medical
inspection or bribed doctors to report sick women as healthy.45

Hospital Morelos was regarded with disdain by the city’s inhabi-
tants, due to their fear of venereal diseases and moral prejudice
against sex workers.46 The hospital was also the last step in the system
of regulated prostitution, a system permeated by corruption. By the
end of the 1920s, the chief doctor of the Oficina de Salubridad
reported to his superiors that women were often taken by nonauthor-
ized police agents to police stations, where they were forced to
undergo check-ups, given fines, and sometimes had their work
permits destroyed.47
After the revolution, those who supported state-regulated pros-
titution claimed that it was the most effective method of preserving
the morality of both married women and virgins while, at the same
time, avoiding the propagation of sexually transmitted diseases.
Those against the French System argued that contagion had not been
reduced and that women had to depend on themselves to save their
chastity. They also questioned the integrity of the postrevolutionary
state, since it allowed for the exploitation of underprivileged women.
In the middle of these debates, the government headed by Calles
enacted what would become the final legislation on prostitution in
Mexico. The 1926 Reglamento para el Ejercicio de la Prostitución
aimed to prevent diseases by using principles of regulation.
However, unlike previous legislation, the moral rehabilitation of
prostitutes through work became a central goal, and Hospital
Morelos became the place to put this into practice.48
From 1925 to 1928, Salubridad Pública conducted important
reforms that included changes both to hospital premises and to
45. Luis Lara y Pardo, La prostitución en México (Mexico City: Librerı́a de la Vda.
de Ch. Bouret, 1908), 206–7; Núñez Becerra, La prostitución,155, 159; and Alfredo
Oviedo Mota al Presidente Pascual Ortı́z Rubio, Fondo Salubridad Pública, sección
Servicio Jurı́dico, caja 20, Archivo Histórico de la Secretarı́a de Salud (AHSS).
46. Núñez Becerra, 167.
47. Respecto a la policı́a urbana, Fondo Salubridad Pública, sección Inspección
Antivenérea, caja 3, exp. 7, AHSS.
48. Departamento de Salubridad Pública, “Reglamento para el ejercicio de la
prostitución,” Boletı́n del Departamento de Salubridad Pública 1–2 (1926): 168.
activities carried out inside the hospital. The material reforms

included waterproofing, reconstruction of facades, floor replace-
ments, and skylight renovation to improve illumination; additionally,
storage rooms were converted into workshops and classrooms. In the
activities report of Hospital Morelos, staff stated that the biggest
change carried out was the reform “of the patients, in the moral
sense.”49 According to this document, literacy courses and handi-

crafts workshops had reduced the long hours of idleness that had
previously made prostitutes’ stays “absolutely unbearable.”50 The
authorities developed a strategy that allowed women to leave the
hospital not only free from contagious diseases but also with skills
that enabled them to leave sex commerce behind. They built a school
inside the hospital, with eight instructors who taught patients how to
read, write, do basic arithmetic; how to make toys, clothes, shoes,
wicker baskets, hosiery, jewelry, linen; how to machine embroider;
and how to sing and draw.51 According to the Inspección de Sanidad,
between 1925 and 1928 women produced hundreds of clothing
items, embroidered mats, women’s accessories, and lead toys,
which were given to some of the most outstanding interns and poor
children.52 In accordance with the precepts of hygiene and modern
medicine, the hospital staff sought to sow the seed of love for work
in women, which would in theory allow them to change the course
of their lives. Unlike the positivist discourse prevailing at the turn of
the century, this new perspective enabled sex workers to reincor-
porate into the life of the city, if they wished. Work would be their
redemption.
While repairs were clearly intended to improve both the
women’s experiences and the staff’s working conditions (even
though this project followed the recommendations of the modern
hygiene guidelines of the time), sex workers still refused to be taken
into the hospital and sometimes expressed their discontent by
exposing deficiencies in the institution’s regulations and reforms.
In 1926, only three months after a grand reopening ceremony that
included the Mexican president as the guest of honor, three sex
workers (Ángela de los Monteros, Emma Zaldı́var, and “Josefina”)
49. “En el sentido moral, de las enfermas.” Departamento de Salubridad Pública,

“En el Hospital Morelos,” Boletı́n del Departamento de Salubridad Pública 3 (1928):
139
50. “Absolutamente insoportable.” Departamento de Salubridad Pública, 139.
51. “El Hospital Morelos ha quedado convertido en una institución nueva y bien
instalada,” El Universal, 1 January 1926, sec. 4, 8–9.
52. Departamento de Salubridad Pública, “En el Hospital,” 140–41.
sent a letter to President Calles explaining that Inspección de Sanidad

agents used regulations to charge fees that neither they nor the
owners of brothels, hotels, or accesorias could afford. According to
the women, Inspección de Sanidad agents also used Hospital
Morelos for coercion practices.53 For example, if women resisted
paying for the record books in which doctors confirmed their health
(which, according to the 1926 legislation should be obtained or

renewed for free), they were arrested and consigned to the hospital,
to be released only after covering the cost of the book.54
During their hospital stays, women who were prostitutes were
denied their daily routines, source of income, and even access to
their families. If we take into account possible recidivism, prostitutes
could be confined for months, which meant an economic loss, in
addition to emotional exhaustion. In their complaint, the three
sex workers claimed that the Inspección de Sanidad was the one
committing immoral acts, not the brothel and hotel owners—or even
themselves—since they complied with regulations. They mentioned
how the internees of the recently reopened Hospital Morelos had
been thrown into the streets because the number of beds was insuf-
ficient, which implied a common practice of assigning up to three
women to one bed.55
The 1925–28 records of hospital activities, however, present
a different picture. In 1926, the hospital received more patients than
in previous years. Since there were only 350 beds, staff accommo-
dated two women in each bed, which led doctors to ask the Oficina
de Inspección de Sanidad to stop sending patients “until the
premises had no more overcrowding.”56 This situation likely wors-
ened the opinion that sex workers had of the hospital, since reforms
did not translate into immediate benefits for them, as the press or
authorities had assured they would. In addition, the stay was not free
of charge: every patient had to pay three pesos and thirty cents daily,
which covered medical attention, food, and accommodation; surgery
cost an extra twenty-two pesos. The women, confined as they were,
could not afford such fees. By the end of 1926, the year that brought
great renovations to Hospital Morelos, the internees faced a new
53. “El Hospital Morelos ha quedado,” 8; Ángela de los Monteros, Emma Saldı́var
y Josefina al C. Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 1926, Fondo Salubridad
Pública, sección Inspección Antivenérea, caja 3, exp. 2, AHSS.
54. Ángela de los Monteros, Emma Saldı́var y Josefina; and Departamento de
Salubridad Pública, “Reglamento,” ch. 3.
55. Ángela de los Monteros, Emma Saldı́var y Josefina.
56. Departamento de Salubridad Pública, “En el Hospital,” 134.
provision, which was contested by five self-proclaimed “homeless

women.”57 The director of the institution “FIRMLY AND
UNEQUIVOCALLY” banned the children of sex workers from staying
with their mothers in hospital.58 Although the director’s order might
have been a hygienic measure with the objectives of avoiding conta-
gion and overcrowding, for the internees it meant having to abandon
their children “in the street, to the arms of generous people or people

[they] trusted” for weeks, since they could not leave the hospital
without a doctor’s consent. Also in the letter, the five women signa-
tories declared that “La Liga de la Defensa de la Mujer Caı́da” was
forming, with the aim of publicizing the damage that the new regula-
tions had caused.59 Sources do not provide more evidence about the
organization, but in the few documents where we found prostitute’s
voices, their posture in them is always that of opposition and
resistance.
The only way for women to legally separate themselves from
government records was if a man vouched for her. Hospital staff
maintained a prerevolutionary practice that, while not openly
promoted by the government in 1927, was considered a respectable
way to redeem sex workers in former legislation. This practice known
as radiar (lit. to suppress, to eliminate) deleted women from pros-
titution records when a man promised to the authorities that he
would marry her. Between 1920 and 1927, Hospital Morelos received
telegrams sent by different men requesting to have women
discharged and deleted from its active records, because it was the
men’s wish to marry them.60 During the nineteenth century, such
requests, anchored to the idea that getting married was the best
strategy to secure the future of women in general, were often used
to delete women from the records, as long as there was a man’s word
to marry them.61 Each case had to be examined individually since,
according to regulation, women who attempted to definitely
“separate” themselves from prostitution had to request it in writing.
The corresponding authorities would evaluate the request, and
women would be taken out of the records if approved. However,
57. Las mujeres sin hogar a C. Presidente de la República, Fondo Salubridad

Pública, sección Inspección Antivenérea, caja 3, exp. 4, AHSS.
58. Las mujeres sin hogar. Capitalization in original.
59. Las mujeres sin hogar.
60. Memorándum dirigido al Jefe de la Inspección de Sanidad, emitido por el Jefe
del Servicio Jurı́dico, 14 March 1927, Salubridad Pública, sección Servicio Jurı́dico, caja
10, exp. 5, AHSS.
61. Ana Marı́a Atondo, “La prostitución en los siglos XVI y XVII: Una alternativa
para la supervivencia femenina,” Historias 26 (April–September 1991): 66.
Inspección de Sanidad agents would still “discreetly” watch them for

a period of time that had not been clearly established, in order to
verify that they had quit commercial sex completely.62
1920–1925: Prostitution, Damas Católicas, and the Healing

of Souls
Damas Católicas considered it vital to propagate Christian values

throughout society via maternalistic discourse, which identified the
role of women with the Catholic ideal of a devoted and virtuous
mother willing to serve husband and children at home, while
spreading faith and religious practice by all means possible. 63
Under this vision, Damas Católicas organized more than two thou-
sand members in several sections dedicated to promoting Catholic
values among children, youth, and parents through catechism,
charity fairs, and receptions around the city. The idea, according to
their records, was to promote devotion and religious practice as
a guide for life well above the power of the state.64
The organization viewed Mexico City in a social crisis along with
a decline in values, evidenced by the increase in sex commerce;
hence Damas Católicas sought to combat amoral practices, especially
prostitution. Thus, in October 1920, the Ejército was founded at the
request of members of the Damas Católicas, such as Dı́ez de Bonilla,
Guadalupe de Amezcua, Marı́a de Serrano, Natalia Méndez Cóndon,
Ana Amezcua, Guadalupe de Palma, Concepción de Garcı́a, Soledad
de Arena, Rosario de Alfaro, Dolores de Escalante, among others.65 It
62. Departamento de Salubridad Pública, “Reglamento,” 171.

63. We are using the category of “maternalism” as construed by Sonya Michel.
The term maternalistic, according to Michel, is heuristic and useful to define the
political mobilization of women during the formation of the welfare states between the
last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Michel also
points out that maternalism operated on two levels: on the one hand, it exalted the
private virtues of domestic life; on the other, it legitimized women’s public relations
around politics, the state, community, their workplace, and the market. See Sonya
Michel, “Beyond Maternalism,” in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare
and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, ed. Marian van der Klein et al. (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2012), 22–37; Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mother of a New World:
Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993).
64. The documents of the Damas Católicas and the Ejército are part of the
AHUFCM. These documents are housed at the UIA in Mexico City.
65. The Ejército emerged as an initiative independent from the project of Damas
Católicas. The president, Concepción Dı́ez de Bonilla, was a member of the Central
Committee, so it is not surprising that, seven months after its foundation in May 1921,
the group incorporated into Damas Católicas as part of its moralizing project.
Moreover, the number of members increased from ten to thirty-five. Acta de la junta del
should be noted that the Ejército made a clear distinction by using

two opposing terms, dama and mujer; damas presented themselves
as part of a privileged, distinguished, and respectable group, who
undertook a moral crusade against lust to rescue mujeres from evil
and perversion by promoting the domestic role of women and the
values of Catholicism.
To accomplish this task, Damas Católicas required the help of

priest José Marı́a Troncoso, of the Josephine order, one of the most
active promoters of social Catholicism in Mexico City.66 From the
nineteenth century onward, Josephine congregations specialized in
hospital care, welfare, and education for prostitutes who wished to
get away from sex commerce.67 It is therefore not surprising that Dı́ez
de Bonilla joined forces with Troncoso in order to create the Ejército,
with the main goal of providing spiritual aid to the women in
Hospital Morelos.
The newly created Ejército took actions parallel to those of
authorities at Hospital Morelos. Unlike the government, however,
the seventeen members of the Ejército who went to Hospital
Morelos every Tuesday and Friday were not interested in safe-
guarding public health; instead, they wanted to promote Catholic
values by rescuing sex workers’ bodies and souls.68 So they placed
worship imagery in various wards and gave scapulars to the sick
women. Despite “humiliation, shunning, and fear of contagion,” as
brave “Soldiers of Christ,” they supplied spiritual aid, promoted the
-
mes de mayo de 1921, libro de Actas del Consejo General 1913–1923, BFXC, UIA,
AHUFCM.
66. From the Sagrada Familia parish located in Santa Marı́a la Ribera neighbor-
hood, José Marı́a Troncoso founded and directed several organizations whose objec-
tive was to promote Catholic morals following the precepts of class and gender that we
have explained here. For example, Asociación de Sirvientas Católicas de Santa Zita
promoted the moralization of the domestic workers sector through the teaching of
Christian doctrine, mutualism, and “the imitation of virtues of its celestial patron.”
Ceballos, Catolicismo social, 268–72.
67. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, Josephine Sisters undertook the
mission to re-educate women who had fallen into the nets of prostitution. They
opened asylums and “homes for the repentant,” where, through the daily practice of
spiritual exercises, they sought to “overcome the misery abyss these poor girls, crea-
tures of dissolution and sin, had fallen into.” Lucı́a Esquivel, “Un panorama sobre la
lectura entre prostitutas en la Ciudad de México, 1872–1911,” in Voz popular, saberes
no oficiales: Humor, protesta, disidencia y organización desde la escuela, la calle y
los márgenes (México, siglo XIX), ed. Rosalı́a Rı́os Zúñiga and Juan Leyva (Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones sobre la
Universidad y la Educación, 2015), 603–8.
68. “Informes y sugestiones,” La Dama Católica 1, no. 9 (31 March 1921): 16.
recitation of the rosary, and arranged for one or two children to be

christened each week.69
Among the main concerns of the Ejército were girls under twelve,
whom it considered “urgent and humane” to protect from the envi-
ronment of sex trade.70 It is unclear if the Ejército was referring to
actual underage working prostitutes or to the daughters or family
members of the patients who might be in danger of corruption. To

address this concern, on 26 August 1921, five years before authorities
installed a school on the premises of Hospital Morelos, the Ejército
founded the first casa de regeneración. The casa took in eighteen
women who had been discharged from Hospital Morelos and who,
according to Damas Católicas, were “repentant for the bad life they
had led [and] wanted to enter the asylum to take the path of good-
ness and regeneration.”71 The women received Communion every
day, took elementary classes, made handicrafts, and asked for forgive-
ness for past mistakes. The Ejército also set up a sewing workshop
and a silkworm rearing area. On Sundays, Troncoso celebrated Mass,
and after reciting the rosary in the evenings, he led a procession while
carrying a banner of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes, patron saint
of the sick.72
According to the Damas’ own reports, some women discharged
from the hospital came back by their own will on the days when the
Ejército (as part of Damas) was visiting the premises to request admis-
sion to their casas de regeneración.73 The reports were based on the
vulnerability of lone women and the need for both a controlled space
and resources that could save them from the sex trade. In response,
the Damas Católicas established another casa de regeneración, where
women were given necessary accommodation and economic, social,
and cultural facilities. This asylum also provided shelter to women
who were “exposed to multiple dangers.”74 Vulnerable women
included “honorable señoritas without a family, employees,
teachers, or women who came from other parts of the country to
study [in the capital].”75 They had to pay a monthly fee of forty, fifty,
or sixty pesos and present two recommendation letters attesting to
their good conduct. This home had a library and offered classes in
69. “Lo que hacen las Damas,” La Dama Católica, 3, no. 33 (1 June 1923): 35.
70. “Informes y sugestiones,” La Dama Católica, 1, no. 12 (1 August 1921): 14.
71. “Informes y sugestiones,” (1 August 1921): 14.
74. “Lo que hacen las Damas,” 35.
75. “Lo que hacen las Damas,” 35.
sewing, language, embroidery, shorthand, typing, painting, and

music.76
In 1923, Damas Católicas obtained legal status as a charitable foun-
dation and upgraded their facilities. A report presented that same year
contained detailed information about their first two years of activities,
stating they had assisted ninety-five women who had previously been
sex workers. Two years later, they founded another casa de regener-
ación.77 These casas were set in neighborhoods located away from the

main areas of sexual commerce and away from Hospital Morelos, such
as Santa Marı́a la Ribera, near the Sagrada Familia Church, under the
supervision of Fr. Troncoso.78 To obtain resources, the Ejército sought
benefactors and raised money around the city.79 All these activities
required careful logistics, since they were aimed at strengthening links
between communities and charitable activities promoted by Damas
Católicas. They intended to get the Catholic community of Mexico
City engaged in the sustenance of this social labor.
There are few testimonies from the Ejército members. Our main
sources of evidence are mostly of an administrative nature and
contain descriptions of daily activities, accounting, donations, and
a couple of stories focused on highlighting the charitable role of the
organization.80 The testimonies of the sex workers were not included
in the reports of the Ejército. The war fought against sin gave these
women neither a voice nor autonomy; it actually undermined their
freedom. While they required a doctor’s order to leave Hospital
Morelos, in order to leave the Damas’ casas de regeneración a third
party was required to vouch for the women (e.g., living with their
families, moving into a monastery, or getting married) so as to avoid
moral decay. In fact, the reports, without giving further explanation,
only accounted for ten women who “refused to be regenerated, no
matter how much effort [Damas Católicas made, . . . the former sex
workers] took the wrong path again.”81
Interestingly, between 1920 and 1925, Damas Católicas reported
no intervention or coercion from hospital staff. Apparently, nurses,
76. “Defensa de la mujer,” La Dama Católica 3, no. 27 (1 December 1922): 8.

77. Carta de Elena Lascurain a Concepción Galindo, 20 October1925, sección
Correspondencia, series Comité Central, caja 1, exp. 3, BFXC, UIA, AHUFCM.
78. For details of where the main tolerance zones could be found in the city, see
Bliss, Compromised Positions, 153–83; Fuentes, “Oldest Professions,” 81–146.
79. “Lo que hacen las Damas,” La Dama Católica 4, no. 44 (1 May 1924): 29.
80. Reportes anuales del Ejército de Defensa de la Mujer correspondientes a los
años 1921–1924, Fondo Arzobispo José Mora y del Rı́o, sección Secretarı́a Arzobispal,
caja 172, exp. 11, 13, and 14, AHAM.
81. “Lo que hacen las Damas,” (1 June 1923): 35.
doctors, and directors had no objections regarding their work. To

explain this silence, we turn to the historiography of relations
between the church and the state in the educational field. We draw
on the research of Patience Schell, who has shown that Damas
Católicas worked under the supervision of school government
inspectors, who observed an important advance in the educational
level of students and, therefore, allowed Damas to bend the rules.82

We believe Damas Católicas established good relationships with the
hospital staff, as they did with others: for example, in the Hospital
General they convinced nurses to establish a Catholic union.83
A Frontal Collision
From the moment of the foundation of the LNDLR, undercover
agents from the government began to watch and persecute Damas
Católicas, managing to locate and infiltrate Catholic meetings, at the
request of the Departamento Confidencial de la Secretarı́a de
Gobernación. Members of this state intelligence service pretended
to be Catholic militants and reported to their superiors actions that
they perceived as dangerous to the revolutionary government. These
undercover investigations led to police raids, church and parish
closures, the shutting down of headquarters, and the invading of
private residences.84
The agents turned a spotlight on associations and militants
whose activities were seen as direct threats to the government, and
their reports reflect the shift in their own perception of Catholic
women, first regarded as benefactors, then gradually identified as
conspirators against the system.85 In 1926, agents launched an inves-
tigation into the Ejército and its leaders. The first suspect was Fr.
Troncoso, who was, according to agent S. Villar, the founder and
director of more than ninety-two schools and welfare institutions,
and creator of the Liga Católica de Trabajadores, who managed to
gather thirty-five thousand workers and advised diverse organizations
such as the Damas Católicas, the Caballeros de Colón, the LNDLR,
82. Schell, Church, 38–39.

83. “Informes y Sugestiones. Vea usted lo que hacemos, vea usted en que puede
ayudarnos, vea usted lo que puede hacer en su ambiente o en su ciudad ¡A trabajar con
entusiasmo y amor!” La Dama Católica 2, no. 12 (30 September 1921): 19; “Lo que
hacen las Damas,” La Dama Católica 3, no. 31 (1 April 1923): 18.
84. Informe, 28 July 1926, Gobernación, Dirección General de Investigaciones
Polı́ticas y Sociales (DGIPS), caja 228, exp. 33, original classif. 313.1-175 [T.I], foja 61,
AGN.
85. Informe, 28 July 1926, foja 61.
and the Ejército. He additionally raised money for the foundation of

a seminar in Italy, an act Villar not only condemned but also
conceived as unpatriotic, since that money (a sum of 2.5 million
pesos) “came from Mexico, and it [therefore] constituted a loss.”86
Of even more serious concern was Troncoso’s connection to the
Ejército. When the persecution commenced, the moral wing of the
Damas Católicas had been operating for five years, and their work was

not only fully established but also on the increase. According to
agents’ reports, the Ejército managed to isolate roughly 120 women
a year, some of whom were relocated in new jobs, while some were
encouraged into ecclesiastic or family life. Only a few former prosti-
tutes returned to the activities of their past life. However, in the
state’s view, the main objective of the Ejército was to “teach
Catholic religion,” which contravened secular laws.87 The agents
called it a rebellious organization that supported the LNDLR and sold
books and leaflets to sustain their “seditious labor.”88
Undercover agents “1 and 4,” who had infiltrated a meeting
between members of the Ejército and the Damas Católicas on 5
April 1929, found that these women criticized the government and
praised the importance of Catholic organizations like the LNDLR.89
The agents perceived these statements as dangerous, for the Damas
Católicas were defending the church’s political stance in a moment of
armed conflict that had undermined the relationship between church
and government.90
A few weeks later, the police broke into and closed down one of
the casas de regeneración of the Ejército. The women who were
confined in that asylum were considered victims of this insubordinate
group and were taken to the Reformatorio de Mujeres, a unit of the
Departamento Central del Distrito Federal.91 The Reformatorio de
Mujeres established a school in 1926, the same year in which reforms
86. S. Villar, “Importante personalidad,” 7 June 1926, Gobernación,

Investigaciones Polı́ticas y Sociales, Generalidades, caja 0228, original classif. 313.1
175 [T.I], fojas 40–41, AGN. About the activism of Caballeros de Colón, see Julia G.
Young, “Knights and Caballeros: Cross-Border Catholic Activism during Mexico’s
Cristero War,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 33, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 245–71.
87. Agentes 1 and 4, “Informe,” 9 April 1929, Gobernación, Departamento
Confidencial, caja 57, exp. 11, original classif. 7/130/213 [T.II], fojas 487–89, AGN.
88. Agentes 1 and 4, fojas 487–89.
91. Jefe del Departamento al Agente no. 26, “Memorandum,” 4 May 1929,
Gobernación, Departamento Confidencial, Personal de la Secretarı́a de Gobernación,
caja 61, exp. 11, classif. 130–321, foja 5544, AGN.
to Hospital Morelos were introduced. The teachers sought to instill

“a sense of community, nationalism, and faith in the secular state” in
their young pupils.92 By the end of the decade, the government
consolidated its role as protector and procurer of social assistance,
taking welfare and public health as far away as possible from the
social Catholicism promoted through the ranks of the Damas
Católicas.

Conclusions
The new revolutionary laws and institutions aimed to foster secular
nationalism and to remove the influence of the church on public and
private life. For the sanitary authorities, regulated prostitution and its
failure to control venereal diseases were the result of traditional
gendered Catholic double standards within families themselves (such
as women being confined to the home and men being free to pursue
sex in the streets). Due to the legacy of the nineteenth-century system
of regulated prostitution, revolutionary authorities and doctors
needed the support of an institutional network of sanitary inspectors,
nurses, and physicians both to manage registration and examination
of sex workers, and to take the sick to Hospital Morelos. The new
project, however, offered the possibility of not only curing sex
workers’ venereal diseases but also providing them with tools to
enable them to be part of social life as workers.
For their part, Damas Católicas and their Ejército believed the
government project represented the biggest threat to Christian prin-
ciples and the root of moral decay in society. They agreed on and
circulated a religious agenda for public spaces and institutions, which
they considered immoral, unsanitary, and antireligious. Catholic
women started to work with sex workers, who they regarded as
victims of the deepening postrevolutionary moral crisis, considering
it vital to rescue the highest number of young women from sex
commerce and thus bring them spiritual relief. They founded shel-
ters, where several women who were discharged from the Hospital
Morelos were welcomed in exchange for the promise of rehabilita-
tion by devoting themselves to contemplation, to the study of reli-
gious doctrine, and to learning new skills.
Damas Católicas adopted a protective and maternalistic
discourse and practices. Their assumed moral superiority, conferred
by Catholicism and social status, granted them the authority as they
92. Bliss, Compromised Positions, 116; on the reformatory and its annexed
school, see also Bliss, ch. 3, “The Science of Redemption.”
saw it to regenerate sex workers. Not all women were, however, good
candidates for rehabilitation. According to some Catholic women,
greediness or immoral instincts could cause or increase the likeli-
hood of prostitution, and women afflicted with such instincts
deserved their utmost contempt. But those forced into prostitution
because of economic need, a lack of solid family values, or deception
were the main concern of the Ejército, who vowed to rescue their

souls by means of religion and to rescue their morality by removing
them from the influence of a secular state.
Despite sharing similar objectives and strategies regarding sex
workers, the Catholic Church and the state pursued political goals
that were diametrically opposed. The consolidation of the revolu-
tionary state required a clean break from the social and political
power of the church. However, both entities undervalued sex
workers’ voices, imposing institutional interests and rehabilitation
methods on the women, namely, forcible confinement, education,
or a man’s promise to marry. Some of these women left testimony of
their disagreement in letters addressed to the president or as protests
against being rehabilitated within the parameters of Catholicism.
During this confrontation, representatives of the state and the
church entered into spaces that in the past belonged to the other
side. Damas Católicas worked at Hospital Morelos with the approval
of the staff, while agents of the government sent undercover opera-
tives to meeting places of the Catholic organizations. By the late
1920s, the revolutionary government and its agents were successful:
they were able to perpetuate the system of registration, inspection,
and confinement of sex workers. This continued until 1940, when the
government revoked the laws that had regulated prostitution in
Mexico City since the nineteenth century.

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Bodies and Souls: A Fight between the

Revolutionary State and Catholic Women over

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Keywords: Catholic Church, Damas Católicas, marriage, prostitution, secu-

actividades filantrópicas de organizaciones de mujeres, como las Damas

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Palabras clave: Damas Católicas, enfermedades venéreas, Iglesia católica,

women.1 In the context of the consolidation of the revolutionary

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By exploring the tension generated around rehabilitation or

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2. See, e.g., Katherine Elain Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public

In both historiographic tracks, the relation between sex commerce and

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activities of Catholic women, while in the conclusion we reflect about

Women’s Sexuality Overview: Rising Tensions between the

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home, whether single or married) had a corrupted soul through her

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been home to both secular and Catholic institutions (such as the

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15. In 1921, Mexico City’s population was 906,063 inhabitants. Departamento de

of casas de regeneración where women simultaneously worked,

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These efforts gained momentum during the first three decades of

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Lascurain de Silva, president, whose family owned one of the most

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religious entities from being part of educational programs.28 The

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28. “Constitución polı́tica de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos que reforma la de 5

reflected in the increase of sex commerce and venereal diseases.33

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themselves to strengthening and preserving their own social links.

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37. According to Matthew Butler, the pilgrimages comprised two hundred

structural modifications imposed by Catholic Action.40 The years of

1920–1929: Prostitution, the Revolutionary State, and the

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40. “Disciplina,” Acción Femenina 1 (1933): 15.

confinement, and Hospital Morelos became equivalent to a jail. Since

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activities carried out inside the hospital. The material reforms

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49. “En el sentido moral, de las enfermas.” Departamento de Salubridad Pública,

sent a letter to President Calles explaining that Inspección de Sanidad

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provision, which was contested by five self-proclaimed “homeless

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57. Las mujeres sin hogar a C. Presidente de la República, Fondo Salubridad

Inspección de Sanidad agents would still “discreetly” watch them for

1920–1925: Prostitution, Damas Católicas, and the Healing

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62. Departamento de Salubridad Pública, “Reglamento,” 171.

should be noted that the Ejército made a clear distinction by using

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recitation of the rosary, and arranged for one or two children to be

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sewing, language, embroidery, shorthand, typing, painting, and

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76. “Defensa de la mujer,” La Dama Católica 3, no. 27 (1 December 1922): 8.

doctors, and directors had no objections regarding their work. To

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