Alan Knight Popular Culture

Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910-1940
Author(s): Alan Knight

Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review , Aug., 1994, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Aug.,
1994), pp. 393-444
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2517891
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Popular Culture and the Revolutionary

State in Mexico, 1910-1940
ALAN KNIGHT
H E N the dust of the battles of the Bajio settled and

the victorious Constitutionalists found themselves
*\'v7- loosely-in control of Mexico's national destiny,
they confronted a country bled by civil war, ravaged by disease, and
plagued by economic problems.' Reconstruction became the watchword
of the new regime, which espoused ostensibly radical means in order to
achieve more traditional ends: namely, the achievement of economic devel-
opment and political stability.2 Hence the revolutionary regime's apparent
ambivalence; its contradictory blend of conservative and revolutionary ele-
ments, which has created headaches for historians (especially those who
want to segregate Mexicans neatly into revolutionary sheep and conserva-
tive goats). The picture, as this article will suggest, is more complex. The
revolutionaries emulated their Porfirian (old regime) predecessors, hence
revisionist historiography shows a fondness for Tocquevillean notions of
revolutionary continuity; but they did so in radically changed circum-
stances, in the wake of a civil war that not only had ravaged the coun-
try, but also-and more importantly-had mobilized the masses. With
this mobilization came new popular forces, manifested in social banditry,
guerrilla and conventional armies, sindicatos and mutualist societies, peas-
ant leagues, and embryonic political parties of both Right and Left. Popular
mobilization also brought a genuine shift in popular mentality (or, more
likely, it brought into the open popular attitudes that, before the revolu-
1. The battles of the Bajio in the spring and summer of 1915 marked the triumph of the
Constitutionalists of Venustiano Carranza over the forces of Francisco Villa. See Alan Knight,
The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 2:321ff
2. Ibid., 498, 500, 511.

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394 | HAHR I AUGUST I ALAN KNIGHT
tionary annus mirabilis of 1910, had been l

after the manner described by James C. Scott).3
Thus, even if the socioeconomic structure of Mexico retained the linea-
ments of the old regime-the hacienda still existed; foreign companies still
dominated mining, much of industry, and exports-the revolution marked
a sea change in Mexican politics and political attitudes. Furthermore, as
the Constitutionalists took power nationally, this change was far from com-
plete. A national regime was in place and-as we know in hindsight-
it survived, despite some close calls (especially 1923-24). But the nature
of that regime, its personnel and policies, and, above all, its relationship
to Mexican civil society were all imponderables; hence they were to be
fought over, literally and figuratively, for at least a generation to come.
This paper reviews the struggle, focusing on the cultural project of the
nascent revolutionary state. It divides into three sections, each dealing
with a theme that is more difficult-although perhaps more interesting-
than its predecessor. First, it addresses the nature of the revolutionary cul-
tural project; second, it tries to explain that project's rationale and appeal
to policymakers; and finally, more briefly and tentatively, it tries to gauge
the success of the project as an engine of social change-in which respect
I offer rough hypotheses rather than considered conclusions. En route,
some comparisons with other revolutionary projects of cultural change are
suggested.4
The new regime was an activist, "Bourbon" regime.5 It sought to mold

minds, to create citizens, to nationalize and rationalize the wayward, re-
calcitrant, diverse peoples of Mexico. "To be a revolutionary today," de-
clared the anticlerical enrage Arnulfo Perez H., "means to forge minds
3. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990).
4. These comparisons chiefly involve the English and (more so) the French Revolution.
Partly because of the constraints of space and expertise, I do not address the socialist revolu-
tions of the twentieth century. However, while comparisons with Soviet, Chinese, or Cuban
"cultural projects" would no doubt be illuminating, I suspect they would be less fruitful-
since, notwithstanding the "socialist" emphasis of the Mexican project, it was conceived and
carried out in a developing capitalist society, in the wake, it could be argued, of a "bour-
geois" revolution. For this argument, see Alan Knight, "Social Revolution: A Latin American
Perspective," Bulletin of Latin American Research 9:2 (1990), 175-202.
5. For a brief discussion of the "ideal-type" Hapsburg and Bourbon states (the former a
more modest state, mirroring society, dedicated to the status quo and maintaining a quali-
fied consensus; the latter an ambitious state, seeking to mold society, committed to social
change, and productive of dissension), see Alan Knight, "State Power and Political Stability
in Mexico," in Mexico: Dilemmas of Transition, ed. Neil Harvey (London: Institute of Latin
American Studies, 1993), 42-44.

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CULTURE AND STATE IN MEXICO, 1910-1940 395
and to construct wills."6 Policies such as agrarian reform that, accord-

ing to the traditional view, responded to demands of social justice were
also exercises in state building and social engineering.7 Yet more clearly,
revolutionary educational policy sought to inculcate literacy, nationalism,
notions of citizenship, sobriety, hygiene, and hard work.8 Art, rhetoric,
and (by the 1930s) radio were enlisted for the same purposes.9 In Mexico,
as in revolutionary France or Cuba, the revolutionaries sought to create
a "new man" -and, with more difficulty, a new woman.'0 Most important
of all, they had to create a new child. For, in the eyes of many reformers,
Mexican adults were too far gone, and hope lay not with the proles, but
with the children of the proles. Hence the importance of the school and
the schoolteacher: "The nation of the future will be what the school has
been able to make of its children."" It was the task of teachers to "mold
and model that youthful material, purifying it of the blemishes and vices
that affect it." 12
A key item of this project of cultural transformation was anticlericalism.
In revolutionary eyes, the Catholic church was an antinational force, in
thrall to the Vatican, hostile to the new regime and its reformist program,
allied to conservative vested interests, and supportive of superstition and
backwardness. Priests were "vassals of the Vatican," "enemies in our own
6. P6rez H. equipped himself with an unusual business card that read: "First Secre-
tary of the Ministry of Agriculture. Deputy to the Federal Congress. Member of the PNR.
Personal Enemy of God." See Carlos Martinez Assad, El laboratorio de la revoluci6n. El
Tabasco garridista (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1979), 85, 198.
7. By "traditional" I refer to the view, initially espoused by the revolutionary regime
and apparent in many of the major studies of the Revolution, that depicts the latter as a dis-
interested movement for social justice and reform. Against this may be set the more recent
"revisionist" interpretation, which stresses the corrupt, power-hungry, careerist aspects of
the Revolution.
8. See Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, z88o-iz928
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1982).
9. Radio was considered especially important not only because listeners did not need to
be literate but also because it was accessible to rural women. See, for example, the programs
and services listed in Secretaria de Educaci6n P6blica, "Extensi6n educative por radio," Ar-
chivo Hist6rico de la Secretaria de Educaci6n P6blica, Mexico City (henceforth SEP), caja
1o86, expedient 12 (Morelos). (All SEP reports cited are from rural schoolteachers or fed-
eral school inspectors to the SEP, unless otherwise stated. Caja and expedient will be cited
thus: 1086/12).
10. Ibid., including didactic programs on "el nuevo papel de la mujer campesina";
Mariano Isunza, Tantoyucan, Veracruz, Feb. 8, 1933, SEP 1071/2, stressing that "la edu-
caci6n de la mujer es sumamente importante"; Serafin Sanchez, Veracruz, June 30, 1934,
SEP 1071/6, reporting his exhortations to peasant parents "que mandan a sus hijas grandes
a clase, demostrdndoles las ventajes de la mujer ilustrada sobre la ignorante."
1 1. Slogan of El Nino Mexicano, Apr. 15, 1935, in Froylan E. Cuenca, Galeana, Morelos,
SEP 202/5. See also Jose C. Lopez, Papantla, May 11, 1935, SEP 208/16.
12. Eve Toledo Arteaga, social worker, Nueva Italia, Michoacan, Nov. 20, 1939, to SEP,
Michoacan, Escuela Rural Federal, 1938 (IV/161[IV-14]), 3633.

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house."''3 Only by overcoming the church could Mexico achieve integra-

tion, progress, and development.
Before analyzing this project in somewhat greater detail, it is impor-
tant to establish its genealogy. It would be a mistake to exaggerate its
novelty. State projects of "modernization"-embracing education, anti-
clericalism, nationalism, and "developmentalism"-were nothing new in
Mexican history. They can be traced back to the Bourbons at least.'4 And,
as recent historiography stresses, the liberal project of the nineteenth cen-
tury owed a good deal to Bourbon precedent.'5 Similarly, the revolution-
aries of 1g9o harked back to the liberals, both wittingly and unwittingly.
Arguably more important, though less emphasized by today's politically
minded historians, was the continuity of "developmentalism," by which
I mean the current of ideas that stressed the need to develop Mexican
society and economy, above all by disciplining, educating, and moralizing
the degenerate Mexican masses.'6
This current crossed both party lines and the great chronological di-
vide of the Revolution: it was enunciated by conservatives as well as lib-
erals, liberals as well as Catholics, businessmen as well as ideologues,
local officials as well as national leaders. In short, this was a form of "class
project," espoused by those who wanted Mexico to emulate developed
Western Europe and North America and who believed that the vices of
the people-drink, dirt, disease (especially venereal disease), sloth, blood
sports, and prostitution-were major impediments to civic virtue and
social development.'7 Some, seduced by Social Darwinism, threw up their
hands and decided that Mexico's mongrel people were beyond hope, that
immigration on Argentine lines was the only hope; others believed that
Indians and mestizos were redeemable, given sufficient time, education,
and discipline.'8
13. According to the radical, anticlerical governor of Veracruz, Adalberto Tejeda, in

Myers to State Department (henceforth SD), Veracruz, July 1 and Sept. 30, 1931, 812.00/
Veracruz/22, 27.
14. If not the Hapsburgs. See Juan Pedro Viqueiro Albdn, eRelajados o reprimidos? Di-
versiones publicas y vida social en la ciudad de Mexico durante el Siglo de las Luces (Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1987).
15. Jean Meyer, La Cristiada, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, [1980] 1985), 2:11ff.
16. Knight, Mexican Revolution, 2:500-511.
17. The "bipartisan" character of this "developmental" project-that is, its espousal by
elite groups that, while bitterly hostile to each other, tacitly agreed on the failings of the
poor-is not peculiar to Mexico. In analyzing the Puritan project for the reformation of
popular culture, David Underdown similarly notes, "the concern for order was not unique to
Puritans, but was a product of the widening gulf between the substantial people 'of credit and
reputation' and the disorderly poor." Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Poli-
tics and Culture in England, 1603-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 48. This argument
will be developed later.
18. Charles A. Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century
Mexico (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989), 220-22.

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Thus, many of the key items of the "revolutionary" project can be

discerned well before i9io: the campaigns against drink and alcoholism;
the concern for prostitution and blood sports; the association (by liberal
anticlericals) of these vices with the perverse influence of the Catholic
church; the desire for clean streets, populated by a clean, sober people;
the rehabilitation, rhetorical at least, of the Indian; the creation of a
meaningful national identity-forjando patria ("forging a fatherland"), as
Gamio phrased it.'9 These themes surfaced not only in the ratiocinations
of cientiico intellectuals like Sierra or Bulnes, but also in the discourse
of the liberal opposition, including Madero; in the program of Catholic
Action (the commonality of liberal and Catholic elite preoccupations is a
theme I will return to); and in small-town Porfirian politics, especially
in the fast-developing north.20 Most revolutionaries ignored this ideologi-
cal parentage; a few, more honest or open-minded, recognized Porfirian
precedents for their project of national integration and development.2'
Meanwhile, foreign examples and models-French radicalism, Rhineland
social Catholicism, U.S. Progressivism-were often cited, and interpo-
lated with domestic traditions, both liberal and Catholic.22 After 1920,
fascism and communism were added to the roster of international models
suitable for citation and emulation.
Very evident continuities therefore linked the revolutionary project to
the past in respect not only of formal politics and political organization-
which Francois-Xavier Guerra rightly stresses-but also of broader socio-
economic ("developmentalist") concerns, which he largely neglects.23 This
continuity of ideas, however, does not mean that the Revolution repre-
sented simply a smooth shift of gears or, to use another popular technical
metaphor, a "blip" on the screen of Mexican history.24 Nor does it mean
19. Manuel Gamio, Foijando Patria (Mexico City: Porr6a, 1916).

2o. For the liberal discourse, see Justo Sierra, The Political Evolution of the Mexican
People, trans. Charles Ramsdell (1902; new edition, Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1969), esp.
342-68; Francisco Bulnes, Porvenir de las naciones hispano-americanas ante las conquistas
recientes de Europa y los Estados Unidos (Mexico City: El Pensamiento Vivo de Am6rica,
1899); Hale, Transformation of Liberalism, chap. 7; and Knight, Mexican Revolution, 1:30-
31, 56-57, 443-44. For the Catholic view, see Jorge Adame Goddard, El pensamiento politico
y social de los cat6licos mexicanos, 1867-1z914 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1981), chap. 8; see also
note 111. For the Porfirian trends, see the pioneering study by William E. French, "Peace-
ful and Working People; The Inculcation of the Capitalist Work Ethic in a Mexican Mining
District (Hidalgo District, Chihuahua, 1880-1920)" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Texas, 1990).
21. Mois6s Sdenz, Carapdn: bosquejo de una experiencia (Lima: Imprenta Gil, 1936), 14.
22. Meyer, La Cristiada, 2:49, 89; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 73; Knight, Mexican
Revolution, 1:69-70. The first edition of the Partido Liberal Mexicano newspaper, Regen-
eraci6n, carried a slogan not from Marx or Proudhon, but from Gambetta.
23. Frangois-Xavier Guerra, Le Mexique: de l'ancien regime a la revolution, 2 vols.
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1985).
24. Paul J. Vanderwood, "Explaining the Mexican Revolution," in The Revolutionary
Process in Mexico: Essays in Political and Social Change, ed. Jaime E. Rodriguez 0. (Los
Angeles: Latin American Center, UCLA, 1990), 98.

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that the very term revolution is inappropriate.25 It is true that revolution-
ary projects were not conceived de novo: unlike their French counterparts,
the Mexican revolutionaries were not trying to fill a tabula rasa.26 They
often resembled more those English revolutionaries who justified regicide
and radicalism in terms of the "Norman yoke" and the rights of free-
born Englishmen.27 In other words, images and allegiances drawn from
a (partly mythic) past helped shape discourse, policy, and political affilia-
tion, and did so across a wide ideological spectrum. Prescription was not
the monopoly of the Right. Indeed, such images and allegiances-cul-
tural baggage handed down across generations-tended to be bulky and
inert, resistant to (or, we should say, ingeniously compatible with) rapid
social and political change. Laws, political institutions, property relations
all changed-were "revolutionized," perhaps-but they often managed
to coexist with inherited traditions. Radicals like Adalberto Tejeda were
at pains to place themselves within old historical traditions: in this case,
the liberal tradition of Lerdo, Juarez, and Ocampo.28 Thus, tradition often
served not as an iron bulwark against change but rather as a cosmetic,
making change more seductive; or as a seasoning, making it more palat-
able.
Hence, if we focus too much on cultural continuities, on the persis-
tence of tradition, we may risk exaggerating the stability of postrevolu-
tionary Mexican society and underestimating the transformations that the
Revolution set in motion. For, despite its hoary and ponderous image,
tradition proved remarkably nimble. It could shift and mutate in response
to circumstances. In some cases, we witness the outright "invention of
tradition"; but more often we see genuinely old traditions being pragmati-
cally and selectively invoked to justify new practices, new allegiances, and
25. Cf. Ram6n Ruiz, The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905-1924 (New York, W. W. Nor-
ton, 1980), 3-7.
26. Cf. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1986), 27-31. In practice, the French revolutionary cultural project
was quite eclectic and did involve some invocation of the past. See Mona Ozouf, Festivals
and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), 34, 117. The cultural
rupture, however, was certainly much more pronounced in the French than the Mexican
case, which calls into question Guerra's close identification of the two revolutions. Whereas
the French revolutionaries were conscious of building anew on the rubble of a "feudal" and
monarchical ancien regime that had just fallen, their Mexican counterparts were no less
conscious of working within an old liberal, popular, and revolutionary tradition, which, they
believed, had achieved its first triumph with the overthrow of the colonial ancien regime a
century earlier.
27. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class ([New York: Vintage
Books, 1966] Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), chap. 4; Christopher Hill, Puritanism and
Revolution (London: Secker and Warburg, 1958), 50-122.
28. Myers, Veracruz, July 1, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/22.

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new policies.29 Agrarismo is given a Catholic veneer; radical sentiments

are expressed in traditional forms (such as corridos, popular ballads); and
revolutionary heroes are admitted to the old liberal-patriotic pantheon.
Thus, traditional cultural baggage was often the last item to be discarded
along the path of "modernization." Often, it was never discarded at all: for
example, in Mexico as in France, it seems, urbanization and industrializa-
tion did not neatly result in secularization.30 Such an argument suggests
why old ideas survived lustily through-and despite-periods of rapid
social change, such as 1910-40. It also suggests that the motor of social
change was to be found in the material rather than the ideological realm.
The motor's machinery was replaced, overhauled, redesigned; but the
ghost in the machine lingered. Much of Mexico changed during, after, and
often because of the Revolution, and this change was sometimes brusque
and far-reaching (that is, revolutionary). But ideas and customs changed
(if they changed at all) at a more glacial pace.3'
For a variety of reasons, the experience of the Revolution reinforced
certain long-standing objectives of successive Mexican regimes. These are
usually subsumed under the twin headings of economic development and
political stability (the latter usually bracketed with centralization: even the
liberal federalists of the nineteenth century had ditched their federalism
once in power). Economic development implied building an infrastructure
(railways with Diaz, roads with Calles and Cardenas); progressively nation-
alizing Mexican resources (hence the moderate economic nationalism of
the Porfirians-overlooked by many historians-and the more radical eco-
nomic nationalism of the revolutionaries, which historians, in contrast,
have tended to exaggerate); and using selective state interventions (rail-
way subsidies during the Porfiriato, irrigation and banking reform in the
1920s) to stimulate economic growth, according to broadly capitalist prin-
ciples (hence state intervention in no sense implied a command economy).
Politically, regimes sought to centralize power; to tame the wayward prov-
inces and the dissident military; to encourage notions of national identity;
and, in the wake of widespread popular insurgency, to inculcate "habits of
obedience," thereby to resolve the "crisis of order."32
29. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985); Irene Vdzquez Valle, La cultura popular vista por los elites
(Mexico City: Popular Culture, 1989), 4-5.
30. Alan Knight, "Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People," in Rodriguez, The Revo-
lutionary Process, 256-58; Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945: Anxiety and Hypocrisy
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981), 222-23.
31. For this reason, among others, it is difficult to measure change in the span of a sexe-
nio (1934-40) or even a decade; in this essay, therefore, I discuss official policy and objectives
with more confidence than I do popular responses and reactions.
32. The phrases are taken from Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 33-34. Note

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These aims were broad, however, and could be pursued by quite varied
methods. Protagonists of the continuity thesis overlook how significantly
the Mexico of Calles and Cardenas differed from the Mexico of don Por-
firio. The toppling of first Diaz and then Huerta had involved a mass mobi-
lization unprecedented in Mexican or even Latin American history. Popu-
lar demands-especially for land-were vocal. They were manifested in
de facto land seizures, running battles between campesinos and landlords,
and embryonic peasant leagues and parties. Politicians, even-perhaps
especially-those of cynical bent, realized that a pro-peasant agrarista
platform might win big dividends.33 So too with organized labor, which,
though small in numbers, exercised disproportionate influence through
the medium of the the CROM and the Partido Laborista-Mexico's first
national labor confederation and first genuine mass party, respectively.
The camarilla politics of the Porfiriato thus gave way to a new form of
mass-which is not to say liberal-democratic-politics.
The revolutionary politicos therefore had to cultivate a demotic politi-
cal style. At the national level, some-like Obregon-posed, not entirely
spuriously, as men of the people.34 Locally, the caciques of the postrevo-
lutionary period had to affect the manners and proclaim the interests of
the common people. Unlike their French counterparts, it seems, they had
to "dress down," had to present themselves as campesinos (or rancheros),
not bourgeois notables or squires (hobereaux).35 Some even lived up to
their proclamations, in the sense that they championed peasant struggles
for land or workers' attempts at unionization. In this respect, the Revolu-
tion brought about a form of "democratization" of politics-in the sense
that the parallel with the Porfiriato again holds, mutatis mutandis. Diaz came to power in
1876 after 2o years of civil war, popular insurgency, and foreign invasion; this experience,
roughly analogous to the Revolution of 1910-20, both encouraged and-by leaving a legacy
of war-weariness-facilitated the subsequent rebuilding of central authority.
33. See, for example, Heather Fowler Salamini, "Tamaulipas: Land Reform and the
State," and Raymond Th. J. Buve, "Tlaxcala: Consolidating a Cacicazgo," in Provinces of
the Revolution: Essays on Regional Mexican History, 1910-1929, ed. Thomas Benjamin and
Mark Wasserman (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 199o), 185-217, 237-69.
34. Knight, Mexican Revolution, 2:522.
35. For examples of sartorial populism, see Elsie Clews Parsons, Mitla: Town of the
Souls (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1936), 179; Frans J. Schryer, The Rancheros of Pisa-
flores: The History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Toronto: Univ.
of Toronto Press, 1980), 15. Note also Paul Friedrich, The Princes of Naranja: An Essay
in Anthrohistorical Method (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1986), 188. Compare this to the
French experience, where local elites sartorially distanced themselves from their plebeian
neighbors: "Above all else the rustic bourgeois gentilhomme sought to look the part. . ..
Dress and toilet were crucial matters, for they emitted unmistakable signals to neighbors
clad in grubby, homespun smocks and straw-filled clogs." P. M. Jones, Politics and Rural
Society: The Southern Massif Central, ca. 1750-1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1986), 81.

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not of installing a functioning liberal democracy, but rather of broadening

political participation and forging links caciquista rather than electoral-
between governors and governed.
At the same time, the revolutionary regime aimed at social transfor-
mation, which in turn implied a substantial degree of social engineering.
Salvador Alvarado, sent to govern Yucatan in 1915, launched a "blitzkrieg
upon the region's manners and morals," combating peonage, prostitution,
liquor, and gambling while promoting reform, education, feminism (of a
sort), and that great engine of social change, the Boy Scouts.36 Through
the 1920S and 1930s, lesser officials strove to bring about a "transforma-
tion of customs" along broadly similar lines.37 Some social engineering-
for example, much of the agrarian reform-represented a combination of
"top-down" and "bottom-up" pressures. In other words, the revolutionary
leaders championed agrarian reform (a) because it bought support, fur-
thered careers, and enhanced the power of the central government and
(b) because they faced strong popular agrarian demands that were both
risky to ignore and-looping back to (a)-politically profitable to espouse.
As regards other policies-which will concern us more in this essay-the
pressures tended to be "top-down": they represented impositions by the
elite on a sometimes indifferent, even hostile people.
The classic case was anticlericalism, discussion of which necessarily in-
volves educational and cultural policy more generally. After an initial skir-
mish in 1918, the precarious national government avoided major conflict
with the church until the mid-1920s. Then, with the regime stabilized, the
major military rebellion of 1923-24 defeated, U.S. recognition assured,
and the economy buoyant, President Calles felt confident to give free rein
to his deep-seated anticlericalism. Of course, this was not the decision of
a single political actor, although Calles' "very definite and inflexible views
on the question of religion and education" were clearly crucial factors.38 It
reflected a broad-though not unanimous-current of opinion among the
revolutionary elite, and it responded in particular to the demands of orga-
nized labor, whose leadership feared the mounting competition of Catholic
unions and the political and ideological challenge of "social Catholicism."39
In addition to these factors-which have been stressed by recent re-
36. Gilbert M. Joseph, Revolution from Without: Yucatan, Mexico, and the United
States, i88o-i924 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982 [Paperback ed., Durham: Duke
Univ. Press, 1988]), 1o6.
37. For example, L6pez, Papantla, Apr. 30, 1936, SEP 2o8/16.
38. Josephus Daniels, U.S. Ambassador, Mexico City, Nov. 5, 1934, SD 812.00/303.
See also the French charge's graphic description of Calles' exalted, even apocalyptic, state
of mind, in Meyer, La Cristiada, 2:273.
39. Meyer, La Cristiada, 2:46-53, 212-31.

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visionist scholarship-it must be recognized that the Mexican church con-

tained powerful conservative as well as progressive elements and that the
revolutionaries' indictment of the church for conniving with "reaction"
especially with anti-agrarista landlords-was by no means wholly spuri-
ous. It must also be recognized that some of the Catholic laity-less so
the hierarchy and less still the Vatican-were spoiling for a fight, and
welcomed this opportunity to test their strength against the revolution-
ary Antichrist.40 Accordingly, the Calles government undertook to curtail
church education (especially at the primary level), to enforce the constitu-
tional provisions banning public manifestations of Catholic ritual, and, per-
haps most important, to subordinate church to state by requiring priests
to be registered by the government. An attempt was even made to estab-
lish a Mexican schismatic church, loyal to the state and hostile to Rome.4'
In response, the church ceased its services and the faithful took up arms
against the regime. The result was the bloody Cristero War (1926-29),
which has been seen, with some justification, as Mexico's Vendee. After
three years of carnage a deal was patched up, with both church and state
recognizing the futility of a continued guerre a' outrance.
The agreement, however, did not end the story. After 1931 the conflict
flared up again. The Callista government, alleging that the church had
not complied with its part of the 1929 bargain, renewed its attack.42 The
new ruling party-the PNR-adopted a radical program that embodied
anticlericalism, agrarianism, economic nationalism, and a commitment to
"socialist education"-an education that would impart scientific knowl-
edge, practical skills, class consciousness, and international solidarity.43
In his famous Grito de Guadalajara, Calles called for a "psychological
revolution" that would involve "taking over the consciences of children
and of young people" in order to "banish prejudices and create a new
national soul. "44
The renewed anticlericalism of the 1930S spurred a second, more lim-
40. Ibid., 303.

41. Ibid., 148ff
42. The "Callista government" refers to the administrations of the "Maximato" (1928-
34), during which period Calles, having left the presidency, continued to exert major political
influence, whether he occupied a cabinet position or not. In terms of policy and ideology,
the Maximato is usually seen as an extension of Calles' presidency.
43. Since comparisons with France are being introduced, it is worth clarifying that
while the methods of state cultural engineering were often strikingly similar-for example,
the stress on nationalism, integration, and republicanism; the reliance on the school, the
schoolmaster, civic rituals and festivals, icons, songs, and textbooks-the content was not
necessarily similar. The Mexican project, especially that of the 1930s, with its "socialist"
emphasis, its recognition of class conflict, and its overt anticlericalism, was more radical than
its French counterpart (which is hardly surprising, since it postdated 1917).
44. Quoted in Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 83.

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ited Cristero revolt and, more seriously, provoked widespread popular

resistance, involving considerable local violence and yet more foot drag-
ging, boycotts, and noncompliance-in other words, all the "weapons of
the weak" analyzed by James C. Scott.45 Now international alignments also
became significant. The Spanish Civil War polarized the Mexican political
nation. The 1938 petroleum nationalization became a test case not only of
economic nationalist policy but also of official mass mobilization, not least
through the agency of the school.
It is on this later period that I want to concentrate. How and why did
the state seek to transform Mexican society, particularly popular culture?
How did "the people" react? And, very briefly, what was the outcome?
These are difficult, often neglected, and sometimes almost unanswerable
questions.46 Yet they are crucial to our understanding of the Revolution,
especially in its "institutional" phase (1920-40). That such answers must
be tentative and incomplete does not mean that they should avoided
altogether.
While presenting themselves as men of the people, many revolutionary
leaders often entertained a dim view of "the people."47 Like their English
45. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forns of Peasant Resistance (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985).
46. Underdown raises similar questions for seventeenth-century England, advising that
"the wisest course . .. might well be to abandon the enterprise and consign questions about
popular allegiance to the extensive category of the interesting but unanswerable" (although,
fortunately, he does not follow his own advice). Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, ix. P. M. Jones
notes that for postrevolutionary France, "studies of the process of praise de conscience in the
countryside are few and far between." Politics and Rural Society, 1. And what is true for
France is all the more true for Mexico. We have good studies of elite ideology: Arnaldo C6r-
dova, La ideologia de la Revoluci6n Mexicana (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1973); Enrique
Krauze, Caudillos culturales en la Revoluci6n Mexicana (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1976);
Victor Diaz Arcienega, Querella por la cultura "revolucionaria" (1925) (Mexico City: Fondo
de Cultura Econ6mica, 1989). But the impact and reception of elite ideology among the
people remain unclear and largely unstudied. Compare C6rdova's "Ideologia dominante y
cultura popular en el M6xico de los afios treinta," in his Revoluci6n y el estado en Mexico
(Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1989), much of which consists of a shopping list of novels
and films.
47. Which "leaders"? The Revolution embraced a variety of leaders, movements, and
projects. Not all leaders subscribed to the kind of Puritan ethic I am discussing; recall Pala-
fox's criticism of Zapata for being over-fond of "good horses, fighting cocks, flashy women,
card games, and intoxicating liquor." John Womack, Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution
(New York: Knopf, 1968), 342. A combination of political and military "natural selection,"
however, tended to eliminate these more Rabelaisian revolutionaries; those who survived
(for example, Cedillo) found themselves out of place in the increasingly civilian, bureau-
cratic, and educated political environment of state and national politics. See Dudley Anker-
son, Agrarian Warlord: Saturnino Cedillo and the Mexican Revolution in San Luis Potosi
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984). In addition, ideological fashion-strongly in-
fluenced by global trends-favored Puritanism, Jacobinism, and more schematic forms of
socialism. By the 1930S these were the official norms, even if they were not always sincerely
believed or thoroughly implemented.

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revolutionary counterparts, they were torn between the competing goals
of emancipating and enlightening the people: the first implied trust; the
second seemed to require strong-arming.48 And, like their nineteenth-
century predecessors, they saw the Mexicans as prey to drink, dirt, and
disease. Indians, especially, languished in ignorance and sought conso-
lation in drink. Without energetic government action, the Totonacs of
Veracruz would remain mired in "indolence and apathy," as they had since
colonial times.49 The campesinos of Morelos, Zapata's homeland, were no
better: "The sad and naked truth of what we have seen in these people
who personally knew Emiliano Zapata is that the Morelos peasant con-
tinues to possess the soul of a peon: in religion a pagan-Christian, he is
fanatical and stupid, he blindly obeys the orders of the clergy, without
perceiving whether they are good or bad; in civic terms he is a system-
atic enemy of all governments and social organizations, suspicious of any
outside influence, apathetic when it comes to any social organization or
undertaking." In short, "the tendency toward progress, which is one of the
characteristics of humankind, is, in him, highly atrophied." 50
Rural proletarians were little better. Those of Nueva Italia-the scene
of a major agrarian reform and collectivization in the tierra caliente of
Michoacain-were dirty, drunken, diseased, and promiscuous. Three-
quarters of them, a social worker reported, suffered from venereal disease;
"they are completely ignorant of the meaning of the word moral." 51 Urban
proletarians showed similar signs of degeneracy. Labor Department offi-
cials reckoned that half the population of Mexico City was prey to the
endemic vice and disease that flourished in the "pigsties and tenements" of
the metropolis. This was a degenerate proletariat, "expelled from the mor-
bid atmosphere of the factory into the vice-ridden and degraded ambiente
of cantinas, pulque shops, and brothels."52
48. "The Saints were soon to discover that the corruption of the majority ensured that
the translation to liberty could be achieved only by force." Underdown, Revel, Riot, and
Rebellion, 240. Robespierre likewise was fond of invoking the crowd; but when confronted
by crowd insurgency, he reacted like an "ancien regime administrator." Peter Jones, "Pre-
sentation," in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 2,
The Political Culture of the French Revolution, ed. Colin Lucas (Oxford: Pergamon Press,
1988), 210.
49. L6pez, Papantla, Feb. 29, 1936, SEP 208/16.
50. Donaciano Munguia, Cuernavaca, Aug. 20, 1935, SEP 202/6. For further references
to the Morelenses' backwardness and apathy, see Conrado R. Garcia, Mazatepec, Morelos,
Oct. 29, 1935, SEP 202/7; and Bernardo Lefiero, Xochitlan, Morelos, Aug. 29, 1935, SEP
202/8. On the other hand, the informe general of Ram6n Garcia Ruiz, director of federal
education, is much more sanguine. Garcia Ruiz, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Oct. 30, 1933, SEP
1086/13.
51. Toledo Arteaga, Nueva Italia, Nov. 20, 1939. A similar picture of moral degrada-
tion-coupled with endemic violence-comes from the hot country of Guerrero. See Juan
Rodriguez Fraustro, Acapulco, May 18, 1938, SEP 2053/15.
52. Esperanza Tufi6n Pablos, "Vida cotidiana y cultura obrera en el cardenismo," in

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Reformers readily linked the baneful influence of the Catholic church

to Mexican degeneracy. The church inculcated superstition, retarded the
advance of science, and encouraged idleness and inebriation (most obvi-
ously by means of the religious fiestas that littered the calendar).53 Thanks
to the church, Mexicans were to be seen crawling on bloodied knees to
ancient shrines, or-lepers and syphilitics included-kissing the feet of
graven images.54 By claiming allegiance to a foreign potentate, the church
compromised Mexican sovereignty and the authority of the revolution-
ary state. And, revolutionaries claimed, priests-"the eternal enemies of
progress" -connived with landlords to obstruct agrarian reform, to repress
popular forces, ultimately to overthrow the state.55 All these allegations,
obsessive and exaggerated though they often were, contained a substantial
measure of truth.
In response, the state sought to clip clerical wings by eliminating
Catholic primary education, regulating Catholic secondary education,
limiting the number of priests allowed to practice, and banning overt
demonstrations of religiosity (for example, religious processions and open-
air services). These were provocative measures that incurred strenuous
Catholic resistance. But they were essentially negative; and the revolu-
tionaries realized that positive steps also had to be taken to counter the
hegemony of the church and enhance that of the state. The state and its
servants would have to take "consistent and persistent action" involving
regular contact with the people, especially the campesinos, and above all,
penetrating the inner sanctum of the campesino household, that tenebrous
den of vice and ignorance.
Thus, although they did not precisely use the term, the revolutionaries
Coloquio sobre cultura obrera, coord. Victoria Novelo (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1987), 93. As
will become apparent, this essay focuses on rural society rather than urban, on peasants and
peons rather than workers, in part because the thrust of policy was directed more toward
the countryside (which still harbored a majority of the Mexican population); in part because
the SEP archive is rich in rural documentation; and in part because some limitations of focus
are unavoidable, given the scope of the topic. I suspect that official attitudes toward-and
popular reactions from-urban plebeians would be broadly similar, although probably less
dramatic and conflictual.
53. Benjamin Avil6s, maestro rural federal, refers to "[las] prolongadas fiestas religiosas
que no eran mas que pretexto para escandalosas embriagueses y otros desmanes inmorales."
Avil6s, Nahautzen, Michoacdn, "Resefia hist6rica. . . ," Nov. 1933, SEP lo85/12. Many more
examples could be given. Compare the English Puritans' condemnation of "heathenish" and
"popish revelings." Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 47.
54. Daniels, Memorandum of conversation with Rodolfo Calles [ex-governor of Sonora,
minister of communications, and son of Plutarco Calles] on the penitentes, Mexico City,
Dec. 11, 1934, SD 812.42/318. On image-kissing, see Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 49;
see also Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage (London: Century Company, 1928), 257.
55. Federico A. Corzo, Colima, Jalisco, Apr. 23, 1935, SEP 199/2; Amador Silva,
Guadalajara, Sept. 27, 1934, SEP 1083/8.
56. Federico A. Corzo, Guadalajara, Apr. 6, 1935, SEP 199/2.

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406 I HAHR I AUGUST I ALAN KNIGHT
subscribed to a clear notion of popular "false consciousness"-and clerical

"hegemony"-and they set out to subvert both. This meant an ideological
battle, conducted on quasi-military lines with crusading zeal. "We were
apostles and missionaries in the new crusade to integrate the Mexicans,"
Moises Saienz wrote; rural pedagogy was "a true crusade of conversion
(cruzada de convencimiento)," involving "red advances," "pioneers of hy-
giene," a variety of "brigades" (sanitary brigades, brigades of social action,
"Red Star" brigades), "songs of war," and a welter of "campaigns": "Anti-
alcoholica, Pro-higiene, Pro-pajarito, Pro-Baja California, Pro-airbol, de
comprension del Codigo Agrario, del salario minimo, en contra de las
uniones prematuras, de la vagancia, y de los juegos de azar."57 Revolution-
ary acculturation also involved a barrage of secular rituals, some modeled
on Catholic precedent. This was not, of course, an entirely new stratagem:
Mexico's liberals had created a set of rituals and heroes in the course of
their long struggle against domestic enemies and foreign invaders; further
back, in the century of the conquest, Catholic priests had ideologically
quarried pagan symbols and rituals, just as they physically quarried pagan
temples in order to raise Christian churches. Revolutionary syncretism
was thus the third in a series of acculturating processes, each of which
reacted against-but also built on-its predecessor.58
While transcending liberalism, the revolutionaries saw themselves as
continuing the liberal-patriotic tradition. Schools were therefore named
after liberal as well as revolutionary heroes: Juarez, Ocampo, and San-
tos Degollado consorted with Ricardo Flores Magon, Cardenas, Garrido
Canabail, Carrillo Puerto, Ursulo Galvain, and occasional foreign interlop-
ers, such as Karl Marx and Francisco Ferrer. The revolutionaries sustained
the old liberal-patriotic fiestas (Constitution Day in February; the anniver-
sary of the Battle of Puebla on May 5; Independence Day in September),
fiestas that had served to inculcate appropriate allegiances whose roots,
historians have recently shown, were deep and extensive.59 But after 1g9o
57. Sdenz, Carapdn, 34; Sanchez, Veracruz, Nov. 20, 1935, SEP 2o8/15; Gonzalo Rami-
rez, Altotonga, Veracruz, Mar. 13, 1935, SEP 208/7. Of 217 rural primary schools in Tabasco
(1934), 88 had organized "Red Star" brigades, which were juvenile versions of the Red Cross
(but could not, of course, use that name). Rafael Bolio Yenro, May 21, 1934, SEP 1093/s n.
58. This, of course, is a highly schematic description of the process of syncretization.
Furthermore, we should guard against the tendency, evident in many studies (for example,
Parsons, Mitla), to attempt a neat separation between "Indian" and "Spanish" elements,
"pagan" and "Christian"-or, by extension, "liberal" and "revolutionary" or "traditional" and
"modern." (Cf. Guerra, Le Mexique, which places great faith in this latter dichotomy.) These
supposed antinomies cohere in complex, dynamic, sometimes mutually congenial patterns;
they are rarely amenable to dichotomous analysis; and to separate out the "Indian" from the
"Spanish" or the "traditional" from the "modern" may be to engage in armchair abstractions.
See the perceptive study by Judith Friedlander, Being Indian in Hueyapan (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1975), esp. chap. 4.
59. For a good example, see Guy P. C. Thomson, "Bulwarks of Patriotic Liberalism:

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these celebrations were supplemented by new revolutionary rituals and

symbols, manifestations of a new species of "red folklore," to use Agulhon's
phrase 60
Revolutionary heroes were commemorated, especially those who were
Martyrs to Reaction: Madero, whose assassination was recalled in a dia de
luto on February 22; Zapata, commemorated every April lo; Obregon, the
anniversary of whose death, at the hands of a Catholic activist on July 17,
1928, afforded ample scope for anticlerical rhetoric.6' There were regional
and local martyrs to be commemorated too: Carrillo Puerto, victim of
Yucateco reaction; Primo Tapia, the Michoacan agrarian martyr; and the
many more anonymous "maestros rurales sacrificados por el clericalismo
y capitalismo" or "maestros sacrificados por el ideal de la Escuela Socia-
lista," some of whom gave their names posthumously to local schools.62
In addition, street and place names were changed wholesale, with saints
replaced by "heroes, teachers, and regional liberators," or by suitable ab-
stract concepts, laws, manifestos, and constitutions. In Tabasco, "adios"
was banned in favor of"salud," and the state capital, San Juan Bautista (St.
John the Baptist), became Villa Hermosa (Beautiful Town)-something of
a misnomer.63
Schools were at pains to celebrate both secular anniversaries and those
that honored worthy collectivities or entities: the Day of the Mother, of
the Soldier, of the Race, of the Tree, of the Child. May was a particu-
larly busy month, beginning with Labor Day on May 1, continuing with
the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla on May 5, the birth of Hidalgo on
May 8, Mother's Day on May io, and Corn Day-El Dia del Maiz-on
May 21 .64 In Tabasco, where, under the aegis of Toma's Garrido Canabail,
official anticlericalism reached its apogee, the government encouraged a
The National Guard, Philharmonic Corps, and Patriotic Juntas in Mexico," Journal of Latin
American Studies 22:1 (Feb. 1990), 31-68; and Margarita Loera, Mi pueblo: su historia y sus
tradiciones (Mexico City: Gobierno del Estado de M6xico, 1987), 35-36.
6o. Maurice Agulhon, The Republic in the Village: The People of the Var from the
French Revolution to the Second Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), 164.
The French radicals of the nineteenth century appear to have been more successful than their
seventeenth-century English counterparts, whose Puritan rituals-reliant on verbal com-
munication and neglectful of, or downright hostile to, visual iconography-lacked popular
appeal and stamina. Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 68, 70-71, 257.
61. Dawson, Veracruz, Aug. 1, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/23, citing bloodcurdling
rhetoric coming out of Veracruz on the occasion of the commemoration of Obreg6n's death.
See also Judith Friedlander, "The Secularization of the Cargo System: An Example from
Postrevolutionary Central Mexico," Latin American Research Review 16:2 (1981), 132-43.
62. Corzo, Guadalajara, July 19, 1935, SEP 199/2; Manuel Malpica, Jalapa, July 5,
1935, SEP 208/8.
63. Dawson, Veracruz, Aug. 31, 1932, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/40; Martinez Assad, El
laboratorio, 38, 198; Knight, "Revolutionary Project," 246.
64. Daniels, Mexico City, June 28, 1935, SD 812.42/359.

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whole barrage of secular fiestas, linked to local commodities: the fiesta of

the orange, of the coconut, of tobacco, corn, and cacao.65 Fruits would
supplant saints as symbols of parochial identity. Tabasco also witnessed
satirical displays designed to lampoon the church: the parading of a stud
bull called "the bishop," of an ass labeled "the pope."66 In Chiapas, which
somewhat aped Garrido's antics, secular festivals were days for burning
religious relics or displaying pictures of the pope wearing the ears of a
donkey; in Yucatan, which shared in this wave of southeastern Jacobinism,
a theater in Merida was "virtually demolished" during an anticlerical play
in which "an actor destroyed the cross of Christ."67 Meanwhile, the anti-
clericals continued the old practice of putting confiscated churches to good
secular use: as schools, museums, libraries, union headquarters, even pro-
letarian theaters.68 One radical proposed that the Basilica of Guadalupe,
Mexico's most revered shrine, become a museum of the Revolution.69
Perhaps most outrageous, especially to the devout (not necessarily the
orthodox devout), was revolutionary iconoclasm: the destruction of the
sacred images that densely populated the Mexican liturgical landscape,
especially in the countryside. As the Garridistas smashed the idols of
Tabasco, the faithful carried them for safekeeping out of the state; in the
Mayo Valley of Sonora, the wholesale confiscation of churches and de-
struction of images ("the Little Children") provoked armed rebellion and
further reinforced the Mayo Indians' historical religious revivalism.70 But
revolutionary iconoclasm was not mindlessly destructive. Just as the con-
version of churches into schools made a political point, so the destruction
of images was deliberate and didactic. The broken image of Santa Teodora
of Jalapa was displayed to the people in order to prove that it was mere
65. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 46, 125. Tabasco was an extreme but not unique
case: in Catholic Jalisco, efforts were made to promote fiestas of corn, beans, and tomatoes.
Samuel Perez M., Ocotlin, Jalisco, Feb. 1, 1934, SEP 1083/1.
66. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 47-48. Ozouf offers French revolutionary examples
of monkeys wearing mitres and donkeys sporting papal tiaras, apropos of which she wonders
whether "Freud, who suggests that the displacement of the figure of the father toward the
animal figure is one of the themes of infantile neurosis, [would] agree that the expression
of the royal or papal image by the animal figure may be a theme of collective neurosis" -a
triumph of whimsy over common sense unusual even by French historiographical standards.
Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 88, 213.
67. Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 9, 1935, SD 812.42/304; La Prensa (Mexico City),
Nov. 27, 1934, cited in SD 812.42/312.
68. Williams, Veracruz, Apr. 2, 1935, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/72; Knight, "Revolutionary
Project," 246.
69. Dawson, Veracruz, Dec. 31, 1935, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/29.
70. Idem, May 29, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/19. Adrian Bantjes offers an excellent
analysis of this and other aspects of politico-cultural conflict in Sonora in the 1930S in "Poli-
tics, Class, and Culture in Postrevolutionary Mexico: Cardenismo and Sonora, 1929-1940"
(Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Texas, 1991), 98-105.

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cotton and wax, not "flesh and blood, miraculously preserved. "7' Didac-
tic Jacobinism went a good deal further. The state encouraged regular
conscious-raising sessions, analogous to church services. Red Mondays or
Red Saturdays were to be days of speeches, music, and study. Teach-
ers were told to conduct "revolutionary reading hours" (horas de lecture
revolucionaria) in the villages.72 Garrido broadcast both an "anticlerical"
and an "anti-alcohol" hour on Tabascan radio.73 The teachers themselves,
whose radical credentials and preparation were often suspect, received
instruction in "the socioeconomic doctrines that agitate the world, in the
interpretation of socialism, as well as in the history of religions."74
Forms of secular celebration and recreation were deliberately set
against their Catholic counterparts. Holy Week-traditionally gloomy-
was the appropriate time for secular diversions. In Michoacan the Workers'
Revolutionary Confederation shifted its spring holiday to Eastertime, "to
take advantage," as one activist explained, "of the so-called 'Holy' week for
our antireligious campaign. All the more when it is considered by Catho-
lics as a week in which one must mourn, therefore we must devote all our
efforts so that the period . .. be devoted to social and sporting festivals."75
Sport and recreation were therefore encouraged (but not drink: tem-
perance and anticlericalism went hand in hand, just as, in the minds of the
anticlericals, church and cantina were allies in the exploitation of the Mexi-
can people).76 The revolutionaries aimed at spatial as well as chronologi-
cal juxtaposition: the anticlericals of Morelia-a strongly Catholic city
celebrated their first manifestacion antireligiosa by marching from their
cultural center to the cathedral, where they held a basketball match in the
atrium. (The match, incidentally, had to be halted "since, in the strong
wind, one of the baskets fell down." We can guess what the faithful of
Morelia made of that.77)
Sport in general was considered a crucial weapon in the struggle against
the church as well as related popular vices. Hitherto, the church-along
71. Dawson, Veracruz, Sept. 2, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/26.

72. Emiliano Perez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de organization de las brigadas de acci6n
socialist dependientes del sindicato 'Trabajadores de la Ensefianza,"' Morelia, Michoacdn,
July 16, 1935, SEP 202/1.
73. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 47, 148. Such phenomena were not confined to
Tabasco.
74. Corzo, Guadalajara, July 19, 1935, SEP 199/2.
75. Jose Ventura Gonzalez, Morelia, Apr. 17, 1935, SEP 202/1. Compare the Free
Thought Society of Le Mans, which similarly held a street celebration every Good Friday.
Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Reberioux, The Third Republic: From Its Origins to the
Great War, 1871-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), 109.
76. L6pez, Papantla, Apr. 30, 1936, SEP 208/ 16; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 46-47,
148-49; Knight, Mexican Revolution, 2:501-3.
77. Ventura Gonzalez, Morelia, Apr. 20, 1935, SEP 202/1.

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with the cantina and the brothel-had monopolized rural recreation; by

providing alternatives, the state could both weaken clerical hegemony and
help extirpate popular vices.78 Sport offered a means to "counter the cleri-
cal campaign" as well as "a very effective method to draw the peasant away
from vice" and "to distance youth from centers of vice."79 Here again the
revolutionaries built on Porfirian precedent, but they did so with a zeal
and commitment that the Porfirians had never entertained, in part because
the Porfirian state, while capable of banning popular diversions it did not
like (such as Judas burnings), was institutionally incapable of encouraging
those it did. Cycling might attract the gente decente of Mexico City, but
few campesinos were to be seen pedaling through the hilly countryside.80
In this as in other areas of policy, the revolutionaries displayed more
commitment, positive as well as negative, and they possessed greater clout.
The PNR established a Secretaria de Accion Educativa y Deportiva, which
held an inaugural parade in November 1934 ("It is not an athletic parade,"
warned Catholic broadsheets, "but a display of adhesion to the immoral
atheistic school").8' Presidents led by example: Calles kicked off football
matches; Cardenas rode and swam.82 Baseball, which already had a foot-
hold in Mexico, was further encouraged (in Tabasco, it is said, they played
with the heads of decapitated saints; certainly the state boasted a team
called the Macuspana Atheists). Basketball and volleyball ("bolibol") were
introduced, often to communities that had never seen these sports.83 In
Baja California, a progressive northern district, the authorities mounted
"district Olympiads," in which local communities competed against each
other.84 Even traditional violence assumed new recreational and ideologi-
cal forms. Battles between rival communities-nothing new in the factious
Mexican countryside-were now fought according to new rituals, with
78. "The rural environment in Michoacdn, as elsewhere, has always had, as its only form
of recreation, the Church, the cantina, and the brothel." Perez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de
organizacion.
79. Lopez, Papantla, Nov. 12, 1935, SEP 208/16; Samuel Herndndez, Cuitzeo, Michoa-
can, Sept. 3, 1935, SEP 202/3; Roberto Y.fiez, Puente de Ixtla, Morelos, SEP 202/7.
8o. William H. Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian
Mexico (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1987).
81. Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 16, 1934, SD 812.42/306.
82. Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage, facing p. 321; William Cameron Townsend,
LiAzaro Cardenas, Mexican Democrat (Ann Arbor: G. Wahr, 1952), 226.
83. Gilbert M. Joseph, "Forging the Regional Pastime: Baseball and Class in Yucatan,"
in Sport and Society in Latin America, ed. Joseph L. Arbena (New York: Greenwood Press,
1988), 29-61; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 198; Program for Feria Escolar, Pueblo de
Tierra Colorada, Macuspana, Tabasco, June 22-25, 1934, SEP 1093/s.n. Teachers' and in-
spectors' reports for the 1930S are full of references to "basquetbol" and "bolibol." Baseball
and football (soccer) figure much less.
84. Corzo, Guadalajara, July 25, 1935, SEP 199/2. (Corzo, a federal inspector, had
recently moved from Baja to Jalisco).

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new slogans. On Maundy Thursday 1937, several hundred agrarians from

the Zacapu Valley and the Eleven Pueblos gathered on the outskirts of
the conservative community of Cherain. Red and black banners waved,
and two locally famous bands played "indigenous tunes." This demonstra-
tion, "a show-literally a sort of fiesta-of anticlerical force," provoked
the people of Cherain, and a major affray ensued, in which more than 40
people died.85
The school and the home were seen as the chief agencies for social-
ization. At school, rituals were carefully prescribed and, it seems, carried
out. Twice a week, if not once a day, the pupils gathered for a salute to the
flag (flags were among the material assets most requested by schoolteach-
ers). The salute might be accompanied by a patriotic pledge, whereby
pupils offered their lives to the patria (as Hidalgo and Juarez had done)
and resolved to "combat the three mighty enemies that our Nation faces;
namely, the Clergy, Ignorance, and Capital."86 These evil abstractions,
as we will see, were given pictorial form by schoolchildren. Meanwhile,
the heroes of the nation adorned the schoolroom wall. "Because of the
approaching Independence Day fiestas," reported a rural school inspector
from northern Veracruz, "various communities of this zone have requested
from this office portraits of the principal Heroes of Independence, in order
to decorate the places where they celebrate this anniversary. . . . there-
fore I urge that these petitions, which I consider very appropriate, be
met, since they display that patriotic sentiments have been aroused in the
various communities."87
Throughout, teachers were required to answer detailed questionnaires
evidencing the level of political and patriotic awareness in their districts
and reporting on the labor social they had accomplished by way of en-
hancing such awareness. Replies were often perfunctory and ambiguous;
but there were also respondents who carefully filled in their scoresheets,
or who proudly recorded their pupils' output: "The children of both sexes
have learned 39 recitations, i8 stories, 14 dramatizations, and 13 dances,
all of socialist tendencies."88
85. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 162-63.

86. Alberto Terin Ortiz, Antonio Plaza, Veracruz, May 26, 1935, SEP 208/8.
87. L6pez, Papantla, Aug. 24, 1936, SEP 208/16.
88. Andr6s Mendez, Escuela Federal Miguel Medellin, Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, report
on Jan.-Aug. 1939, SEP, Tlaxcala, 1939 (IV/loo[641IV-12). Many questions in these lengthy
questionnaires went unanswered. Some were answered ambiguously; for example, in reply
to the question, Do the local authorities assist or obstruct your efforts? a good many teachers
wrote simply yes or no. A pair of questions asked, To what race do the local people belong?
and To what ethnic group? In several cases, teachers replied Indian to the first and mestizo
to the second. As much as reflecting the teachers' incapacity or confusion, such answers were
probably a comment on the vaulting bureaucratic ambition that had inspired these elaborate
questionnaires.

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It was one thing to organize such collective activities; another to pene-
trate the home and the hearts and minds of men, women, and children.
The home, so policymakers reckoned, was the basic social unit (la socie-
dad elemental); it was in the home that ideological formation took place:
"At the root of every social transformation has been and always will be
the transformation of the home and the family."89 Hitherto, the home had
been the preserve of archaic notions and practices characteristic of peas-
ant society and of clerical domination. The latter was strongly reinforced
through the confessional, whereby priests exercised their sway over and
vented their lust on-ignorant women, lasciviously extracting from them
the innermost secrets of their wedding nights.90
By limiting or even eliminating-the clergy, such clerical domina-
tion could be curbed. But positive alternatives had also to be found, some
of which involved robbing the opponents' armory.9' Civil marriage and di-
vorce had been established (and teachers were at pains to encourage the
former), but the radicals now went further and instituted socialist wed-
dings and baptisms.92 The formula for a socialist baptism in Veracruz went:
"In the name of the sacred cause of the proletariat and as a just protest
for the centuries of ignorance in which we have been held by the priestly
class, and as a positive revindicating act of liberty of thought, I baptize
thee in the waters of the river [well, fountain, and so on] in the same way
as, at another time, John did with Jesus, the socialist of Nazareth, in the
waters of the Jordan. I name thee , because the brothers of your
class so desire, and with this ceremony I emancipate you from the secular
error that the nefarious clerical element maliciously inculcated in the brain
of your ancestors."93 If we believe the conservative press, truckloads of
89. Perez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de organizaci6n."

go. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 43, 287-88. Cf. Zeldin, Anxiety and Hypocrisy, 266.
91. "Advocates of moral reformation were quite willing to borrow cultural forms whose
use in other hands they were trying to eliminate." Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion,
71. In the Mexican case the form was borrowed but not the substance; as good anticleri-
cals, the Mexican revolutionaries did not try to enlist the church or Catholicism as overt
props of the new regime (as their French counterparts sometimes did; see Ozouf, Festivals
and the French Revolution, 51, 94). In this sense, Phillip E. Hammond is right to argue
that Mexico's revolutionary discourse and ritual did not constitute a civil religion in the
strict sense; they remained thoroughly secular, even antireligious, and claimed no transcen-
dental validity. Robert E. Bellah and Phillip E. Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), 51-52.
92. At the same time, they sought to encourage the proper naming of children; particu-
larly Indian children, since many Indians had no apellido and were known by a single given
name (Juan, for example), so that a small community might contain half a dozen undifferen-
tiated Juans. All of which made education-not to mention bureaucratic control or political
mobilization-somewhat problematic. Mariano Ysunza, Jalapa, Dec. 22, 1933, SEP 1071/2.
93. Dawson, May 29, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/19. Compare the "civic baptisms" con-
ducted by cockaded godfathers in revolutionary France (Ozouf, Festivals and the French
Revolution, 268) and, a yet closer parallel, the socialist baptism "in the Holy Name of Op-

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children, allegedly destined for picnics in the Veracruz countryside, were

baptized according to this radical rite.94 Children also paid for parental
zeal by bearing bizarre first names. Garrido named his son Lenin; two
children born in Veracruz in 1932 were christened 66 and 323, these being
the numbers of the state laws that regulated the clergy and sanctioned the
expropriation of private property.95
Meanwhile, teachers were required to keep in close touch with the
peasants of their area. In the Indian zones of Veracruz they "visited homes,
propagating hygiene and striving to transform the lifestyle of the ab-
origines."96 Throughout Mexico, they were to encourage regular bathing;
vaccination; correct prenatal care; short haircuts; the use of individual
beds, tables, and drinking glasses (el vaso individual); and the separa-
tion of humans and animals (who habitually slept together).97 Again, the
frequency and success of such visits had to be carefully reported; points
were scored for each social, academic, or material advance, and school
inspectors tallied the points for the communities under their supervision.
Music and art offered means to penetrate the recalcitrant peasant psy-
che, it was thought. At secular fiestas, regional songs and dances were
interspersed with educational talks. A typical program involved a talk,
"The Concept of the Personality of Christ"; a hot country tune (son tierra-
calienteno); a talk, "The Woman and the Confessional"; a cowboy ballad
(cancion ranchera); a talk, "Critique of the Catholic Religious Sacraments";
and a Jaliscan dance (jarabe tapatio).98 Teachers were collectively enjoined
to provide new lyrics "consonant with socialist tendencies" for old popu-
lar ballads.99 And, of course, a good many "socialist" corridos-"impios
pressed Humanity" at the "Altar of the Universal Fraternity of United Workers," enacted in
Libano (Tolima, Colombia) in 1929. James D. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History
of the Violencia in Tolima (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1985), 70.
94. Dawson, May 29, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/lg, citing El Dictaren (Veracruz). The
truth of this story should be judged in light of the rumors, scare stories, and "versiones ten-
denciosas" that both sex and socialist education provoked and that teachers worked hard to
dispel. See, for example, Ynfiez, Puente de Ixtla, Morelos, Nov. 24, 1934, SEP 1086/7. See
also notes 107 and 155.
95. J. M. Ortiz Monasterio, memo, Feb. 12, 1932, in SD 812.oo/Tabasco/3; Dawson,
Veracruz, Jan. 31, 1933, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/46.
96. L6pez, Papantla, Aug. 24, 1936, SEP 208/16.
97. For example, see Serafin Sanchez on actual and future hygienic improvements in the
seventh zone of Veracruz, including "la instalaci6n del excusado, cuya importancia moral e
higienico es irrefutable." Sanchez, Veracruz, June 30, 1934, SEP 1071/6. See also Mary Kay
Vaughan, "The Implementation of National Policy in the Countryside: Socialist Education
in Puebla in the Cdrdenas Period" (Paper presented to the 7th Conference of Mexican and
U.S. Historians, Oaxaca, Oct. 1985).
98. Ventura Gonzalez, Morelia, Apr. 20, 1935, SEP 202/1. For examples of "revolution-
ary music," see George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society (Stanford: Stanford Univ.
Press, 1941), 123-41.
99. Salvador Hermoso Ndjera, La Piedad, Michoacdn, Apr. 20, 1935, SEP 202/4.

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corridos"-were penned and sung, whether as a result of schoolmasterly

exhortation or not.1'? Teachers were to promote not only socialist "choirs
and songs" but also "revolutionary pictures and placards"; schools duly
draped themselves in "revolutionary pictures," and children drew politi-
cally correct-and sometimes very skillful-drawings of fat bourgeois and
skinny peasants.101
Not all ideological infusions were so palatable to their infant con-
sumers (we might presume). Appropriate motifs were introduced into
teaching-and tests. Children wrote compositions about broken images
whose miraculous powers had been disproved; they recited learned re-
sponses: "The saints do not exist, and those made of wood are good only
for burning"; they refuted the notion of God ("some old man with whis-
kers who, they say, lives in the sky"), since "if he did live in the sky he
would fall to earth as all bodies that are heavier than air do."'102 Even
when teaching arithmetic, teachers had "to justify the Mexican Revolu-
tion by referring frequently, among the problems to be solved, to those
questions which coincide with the proposed objectivee" ("foreign debt,
for instance," minuted a cynical U.S. State Department official).'03
The celebrated petroleum nationalization of March 1938 afforded a
splendid pedagogical opportunity. Teachers paraded phalanxes of children
through the streets, flags waving; schools made donations to the petro-
leum debt.'04 The second- through sixth-grade examinations of that sum-
mer were awash with oil, as language and social studies questions dwelt
on the oppression of the companies and the tribulations of the workers,
and mathematics questions required students to calculate petroleum con-
sumption, contributions to the petroleum debt, even the cost of painting
oil storage tanks.'05 Half the questions, it was reckoned, had a petroleum
content. Spain was another topical theme: a comprehension test, citing
a donation to the petroleum fund made by the daughters of the Spanish
ambassador, asked, Why did they help? and What would you do if Spain
needed your help? (which, of course, it did).
loo. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 277-79, 287. Two examples of rousing radical
lyrics set to old tunes are enclosed in Hermoso Ndjera's report, La Piedad, Apr. 20, 1935.
lol. Circular no. 13, May 2, 1935, Morelia, SEP 202/1; Corzo, Guadalajara, July 25,
1935, SEP 199/2; Booth, Mexico's School-made Society, facing p. 83.
1o2. Dawson, Veracruz, Sept. 2, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/26; Martinez Assad, El
laboratorio, 71; Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Culture," 55.
103. Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 16, 1934, SD 812.42/307.
104. Alan Knight, "The Politics of the Expropriation," in The Mexican Petroleum In-
dustry in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jonathan C. Brown and Alan Knight (Austin: Univ. of
Texas Press, 1992), 105-13.
105. Daniels, Mexico City, Sept. 1, 1938, SD 812.42/338; see also Engracia Loyo,
"Lectura para el pueblo, 1921-1940," Historia Mexicana 33:3 (Jan.-Mar. 1984), 338.

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It is easy to criticize these proselytizing efforts-as utopian, dogmatic,

even authoritarian-and the trend of recent historiography has been criti-
cal.'06 Of course, criticism is nothing new: Catholics, conservatives, and
some classic liberals denounced socialist pretensions.'07 Graham Greene
carried his Catholic prejudices to Mexico and proceeded to equate Mexi-
can radicalism with "Herbert Spencer, the Thinkers' Library, alpaca jack-
ets, and bookshops on Ludgate Hill." 108 Certainly, the radical agenda was
quixotic, paternalist, even patriarchal. As was the counteragenda of many
Catholic activists. Indeed, a certain irony lay in the fact that anticlerical and
Catholic reformers, bitter enemies in their campaigns for cultural hege-
mony, often agreed on the popular vices-drink, idleness, gambling-
that needed to be extirpated. Catholic attempts to clean up, educate, and
moralize the Mexican masses were nothing new, and they united both
conservative and reformist wings of the church.'09 The church also had a
lo6. Marjorie R. Becker, "Ldzaro Cdrdenas, Cultural Cartographers, and the Limits of
Everyday Resistance in Michoac'n, 1934-1940" (Paper presented at the 46th International
Congress of Americanists, Amsterdam, July 1988). Becker's more recent work, notably her
interesting Setting the Virgin on Fire: Ldzaro Cdrdenas, Michoacdn Campesinos, and the
Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, forthcoming),
while still critical of Cardenista dogmatism, is more even-handed. For a succinct list of crit-
ics, many of whom are foremost "revisionists" (cf. note 7), see Salvador Camacho Sandoval,
Controversia educative entre la ideologia y la fe: la educaci6n socialist en la historia de
Aguascalientes (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1991), 17, n. 3.
107. A good deal of recent "revisionism" (see notes 7, lo6) echoes contemporary
Catholic-conservative rhetoric just as much as "traditional" historians echo the official "revo-
lutionary" view; the notion that revisionism represents some kind of bold historiographical
breakthrough is, therefore, exaggerated and, at times, quite misleading. For an example of
Catholic-conservative diatribes, see the pamphlet "La educaci6n sexual, complement de
la Escuela Racionalista," put out by El Grupo "Alerta" to parents, Sept. 1934, along with
related propaganda from Jalisco, in SEP 1083/1. These texts stress the perils of bolshevism,
denounce estadolatria, threaten excommunication, allege that the public schools will pro-
duce "a generation of atheists, deicides, slaves, and prostitutes," and offer a socialist version
of the Ten Commandments in which, for example, the original fifth commandment, "no
matards," becomes "mata sin escripulo," and the sixth, "no fornicards," urges "adultera a tu
placer."
io8. Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads (1939, 1950; reprint, Harmondsworth: Pen-
guin, 1971), 21. Greene's sour portrait of Mexico and dyspeptic critique of revolutionary
policy should be read in light of that general rejection of mass society and materialism on the
one hand and corresponding exaltation of individual, intellectual, elitist values on the other
that affected Britain's early twentieth-century intelligentsia and that have been highlighted
by John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary
Intelligentsia, 188o-1z939 (London: Faber and Faber, 1992).
109. It is worth recalling that El Correo de Chihuahua, one of the main reformist crit-
ics of the Porfirian old regime, which has been productively mined by several historians,
was a Catholic paper, as was the leading national newspaper, El Pais. Popular vices figured
prominently in the pages of both; see, for example, French, Peaceful and Working People,
chap. 4. Note also Refugio Galindo, "Informe presentado al Segundo Congreso Agricola de

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long history of combating popular religious activities that combined drink,
superstition, revelry, and license."0 The construction of a "rational" reli-
gion, as Geertz describes it, involved some of the same social engineering
as the construction of a "rational" society and nation."' What is more,
clerical critics of the socialist agenda blamed it for "brutalizing, dragging
down, and ruining" the common people, who, once godless, would be left
"without any brake on vice"; and, like their anticlerical counterparts, those
critics lamented the absenteeism, indifference, and backsliding of their
supposed converts."12 Across this great ideological divide, therefore, rival
elites echoed each other: the people were wayward, filthy, and feckless;
they were refractory to improvement; and they succumbed to the demoral-
izing appeal of the enemy. In Mexico as elsewhere, the battle for cultural
hegemony was essentially a three-way struggle, involving church, state,
and people; it was not a simple tug-of-war between church and state."13
Thus, it is neither difficult nor original to criticize, even to mock,
the high-flown radical agenda of the i930s its optimistic goals, bizarre
innovations, and dogmatic practices. To understand it requires a certain
empathic effort, analogous to that which historians have made in their
attempts to understand Cristeros or Zapatistas."14 Radical anticlericalism
derived from a particular milieu, within which it made sense and exerted
a strong appeal, particularly, though not exclusively, to educated middle-
and working-class groups-above all, those whose education was in part
homegrown, the product of reading by candlelight rather than attending
centers of higher education.
The cultural and ideological dominance of the Catholic church was
marked, especially in certain areas of Mexico (such as the center-west).
Just as the church, commanding the central plaza, was usually the domi-
nant landmark in town, so parish priests were often the most influential
figures in rural communities, eclipsing the secular mayor or prefect. As
already mentioned, their connivance with the landed elite, while not in-
variable, was common; hence, in regions where agrarian tensions ran high,
the cura was often a key ally of the hacendado and an enemy of agra-
Tulancingo," in La servidumbre agraria en M6xico en la 6poca porfiriana, by Friedrich Katz

(Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1980), 83-103.
11o. For example, Viqueiro Albdn, eRelajados o reprirnidos?, chap. 3. Again, there are
plenty of Old World parallels; for example, Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The
Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1976), 363-70.
iii. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973),
171-75.
112. El Sembrado. Hoja catequistica 4:8, s.f., cited by Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and
Culture," 69-71; see also note 107.
113. For similar French clerical alarmism, see Mona Ozouf, L'Ecole, l'6glise, et la Repu-
blique, 1871-1914 (Paris: A. Colin, 1963), 79.
114. Meyer, La Cristiada; Womack, Zapata.

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rismo."15 "God is the counterrevolution," as one radical put it, echoing

Barbusse."16 More generally, social life was governed by religious fiestas;
the year was counted off according to the church calendar; the church
bells-whose "monotonous and miserable tolling" matched the "lugubri-
ous and sad voice of the cura" -were often the only form of timekeeping
(they were used to call the peons to the field, for example) as well as the
traditional tocsin, summoning the townspeople in time of emergency."l7
Some anticlericals therefore wanted to ban bell ringing altogether, and
in the Mayo Valley they made off not just with the Indians' saints but with
their church bells, too."8 The church played an important role in educa-
tion and, even in the growing public school system, "teachers of strong
clerical affiliation" were common."'9 Public libraries also were stocked with
religious texts.120
In the home, Catholic influence was pervasive, a condition some revo-
lutionaries (like the maverick Vasconcelos) found spiritually nourishing,
many (like Mulgica) intellectually stifling. In many homes, it seems, devout
mothers competed with liberal fathers; the children's ultimate choice was
perhaps determined as much by familial and psychological pressures as by
rational political calculation. (Calles, the arch-clerophobe, was a bastard,
and perhaps translated his resentment at illegitimacy into anti-Catholic
politics.'2') As the adolescent emerged-literally and figuratively-from
the home, so he (and the cases we know tend to be male) faced a socio-
political choice between the Catholic world of priest, confessional, mass,
pilgrimage, ACJM, PCN, and LNDR and the liberal, anticlerical alter-
native, which revolved around the schoolteacher, the pharmacist or town
printer, the local poolroom, Masonic lodge, mutualist society, or sindi-
cato. 122
115. Ann L. Craig, The First Agraristas: An Oral History of a Mexican Agrarian Reform
Movement (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983), 70-71; Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt
in a Mexican Village (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977), 48, 120; Luis Gonzalez, Pueblo
en vilo: microhistoria de San Jose de Gracia (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica,
[1972] 1984), 173-74; Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage, 216-17.
ii6. German List Arzubide, quoted in Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 69.
117. Augusto Hernindez, quoted in ibid., 46.
ii8. Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 9, 1934, SD 812.42/304; Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and
Culture, 102.
119. Corzo, Colima, Apr. 23, 1935, SEP 199/2; P6rez M., Ocotlin, Mar. 20, 1934, SEP
i083/1. "Clericals" were also to be found in the educational bureaucracy.
120. Samuel Herndndez, Cuitzeo, Michoacdn, Sept. 3, 1935, SEP 202/3.
121. Enrique Krauze, Reformar desde el origen: Plutarco Elias Calles (Mexico City:
Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1987). Parallels with Eva Per6n and Augusto CUsar Sandino
spring to mind.
122. Cdrdenas' (liberal) father ran a pool hall (a "much-frequented place for men to
while away their time") in Jiquilpan; Carrillo Puerto's father "supported his large family
with a small neighborhood grocery store attached to a bustling billiard parlor" in Motul,

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Richard Cobb, no friend of socioeconomic generalization, has produced
a neat cultural portrait of the "average" French revolutionary, one of the
bons sansculottes revolutionnaires, who, he says, "do not constitute a class
but .. . do represent an identifiable group." Membership is premised on
their "general attitude to life"; thus, "sans-culottisme can be defined . . .
not so much in terms of wealth as of moral and civic utility." 123 In similar
fashion, Mexican radicalism (or Jacobinism, anticlericalism-the precise
label may be disputed) should be seen as a moral and cultural product,
albeit a product closely linked-which is not to say reducible-to cer-
tain socioeconomic positions: "petty bourgeois" professionals and retailers,
artisans, literate workers, some rancheros, and members of the "peasant
bourgeoisie." 124
In this social and cultural milieu a distinctive philosophy, a particular
variant of the "Great Tradition," was nurtured. It was liberal (and lib-
eralism easily mutated into forms of radicalism and anarchism).'25 It was
Yucatan; at Naranja, a prominent "prince," agrarian activist, ex-teacher, and local politico,
Camilo, managed the town pool hall. Townsend, Lazaro Cdrdenas, 11; Joseph, Revolution
from Without, i88; Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 36. I mention this partly to illustrate that
liberals and revolutionaries, like Catholics and conservatives, had their own forms of ("tra-
ditional") sociability and were not necessarily practitioners of some new, cerebral, "modern"
form of association. Cf. Guerra, Le Mexique. The acronyms refer to Asociaci6n Cat6lica de la
Juventud Mexicana, Partido Cat6lico Nacional, and Liga Nacional Defensora de la Religi6n.
123. Richard Cobb, "The Revolutionary Mentality in France," in A Second Identity:
Essays on France and French History (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), 128-29. Cf. Ray-
mond Carr's view: "Anarchism in Andalusia remained less an organization than a state of
mind." Carr, Spain, 1808-1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 443. For further parallels
with Spanish anarchism, see note 130.
124. For example, Schryer, Rancheros of Pisaflores, 70, 77. The sociology of Mexi-
can anticlericalism remains to be written. Meyer, La Cristiada, 2:193-206, offers some
useful ideas, but his heart is elsewhere. As for radicalism, in the course of this paper-
and elsewhere-I have wittingly used various labels (anticlericalism, Jacobinism, radical-
ism, developmentalism), each of which captures certain key aspects of the revolutionary
project. Obviously, not all revolutionaries subscribed in equal measure to all these postulates;
however, it can be argued that each postulate was integral to the project as a whole, and
that collectively they displayed a functional compatibility (or "elective affinity"), not least in
the minds, discourse, and policies of the revolutionaries themselves. Note the parallel with
"Puritanism"; see Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 41.
125. As this brief sketch suggests, a strong anarchist strain runs through revolutionary
cultural politics, albeit wedded anomalously to an ambitious state-building project. Apart
from the general commitment to education, enlightenment, science, anticlericalism, and
clean living (see note 130), it displays more specific elements, such as schools named after
Ferrer, citations of Kropotkin, or theatrical performances of plays by Ricardo Flores Magon.
See Camacho Sandoval, Controversia educative, 204, 238; and Concha Michel, "Pastorela o
coloquio," Mexican Folkways 6:i (1932), 30. Thus, despite its obvious supercession by statist
forms of socialism, and by virtue of its pioneer mobilization, anarchism remained a significant
influence on the Mexican Left at least a generation after the Revolution. See Barry Carr,
"Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation of the Mexican Communist Party, 1910-1919,"
HAHR 63:2 (May 1983), 277-305.

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anticlerical, patriotic, and nationalist.'26 It maintained a positivistic faith

in objective science and a contempt for Catholic superstition.'27 It was
convinced of the truth of evolution, biological and social.'28 Its viewpoint
was sometimes Social Darwinian and racist.'29 It was also morally austere,
prone to temperance and Puritanism (like its Spanish and French counter-
parts).'30 It possessed considerable faith in book learning and the power of
both the printed and the spoken word, especially words spoken in veladas
and speeches in the plaza. Graduates of this cultural academy were fond
of quoting authorities (Henry George and Victor Hugo had been favorites
in the l9oos; by the 1930s Lenin and Bukharin figured more prominently)
and grand principles of social science.'3'
Socialist education-whose very objective was the inculcation of a
"rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life"-involved
talks expounding, for example, the "scientific explanation of miracles" or
the scientific basis of natural phenomena; anticlerical newspapers, par-
tisans in the "historic struggle between Religion and Science," set out
to refute Genesis. A calendar of 44 secular festivals included only one
non-Mexican event (the fall of the Bastille) and only one non-Mexican:
James Watt, celebrated as the "inventor of the steamship." 132 Aviation, too,
126. For the patriot-nationalist distinction, see Alan Knight, U. S-Mexican Relations,
1910-1940: An Interpretation (La Jolla: Center for U. S. -Mexican Studies, Univ. of California,
San Diego, 1987), 31-89.
127. See, for example, the statement of rigorous scientific purpose in Sdenz, Carapdn,
14, 36-38; and notes 132-35 in this article.
128. Francisco MWgica, a leading radical and anticlerical, could not look at a pretty
woman (which he did often enough) without reflecting that she was "the product of grad-
ual evolution that guides nature toward beauty." Migica, diary, July 31, 1926, p. 11, in
Migica Archive, Centro de Estudios de la Revoluci6n Mexicana "Ldzaro Cdrdenas," Jiquil-
pan, Michoacdn. Eugenics also figured in radical thought (such as Tejeda's). See Martinez
Assad, El laboratorio, 142-43; Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender,
and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), 55-57, 129-33.
129. Narciso Bassols, the radical education minister, exalted Mexico's "valores raciales,"
which he sought to promote. Bassols to Maria Elvia Gamas, Liga de Maestros Ateos, Feb. 9,
1934, SEP 1093. This equation of nationality and race was standard. See Alan Knight,
"Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940," in The Idea of Race in Latin
America, 1870-1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 19go), 71-113.
130. In France, Zeldin notes, "the anticlericals' leaders were almost as Puritan as the
Jansenists." Anxiety and Hypocrisy, 266-67. The parallel with Spanish anarchism can be
pressed further, for there are similarities in respect of "Puritanism," faith in science and
education, hopes of creating a "new human nature," ideological links to liberalism, and prose-
lytizing by means of "traditional" (including quasi-religious) methods, such as ritual and bib-
lical language. Temma Kaplan, Origenes sociales del anarquismo en Andalucia (Barcelona:
Gribaljo, 1977), 107-8, 232, 236.
131. P6rez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de organizacion."
132. Victoria Lerner, Historia de la Revoluci6n Mexicana: periodo 1934-40, la educa-
ci6n socialist (Mexico City: El Colegio de M6xico, 1979), 82; Martinez Assad, El laboratorio,
42; Daniels, Mexico City, June 28, 1938, SD 812.42/359.

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figured as a powerful symbol of human ingenuity, technological advance-
ment, and social integration.'33 Governor Garrido traversed Tabasco in an
airplane painted in the red and black colors of radicalism; an anticlerical
poem, directed at the clergy, rejoiced that "now man, burgeoning with
force and power, violates your heaven in a bird: the airplane."' 34 Calles,
the doyen of Jacobinism, summed up the secular-scientific position well.
The General replied that no religion would be taught in the schools;

that the school would combine general education with technical train-
ing; that definite, natural, and scientific knowledge would be imparted,
to replace the obscure and nontechnical education previously given by
the Catholic clergy. As an example, he stated that most of the peas-
ants believed a certain Saint produced the rain and they were eternally
hunting up images before which to pray for rain. He also said that the
peasants were taught to believe that earthquakes were sent by God to
punish people for their sins. In the future, children would be taught
that rain and earthquakes were phenomena of nature.'35
The "hegemony" of the church, in other words, was a powerful, visible

force; hence those who rebuffed it logically sought to oppose it with their
own counterinstitutions' philosophy and rituals. Families and communities,
also logically, were often profoundly divided along these sectarian lines.
Quixotic they were, perhaps, but the anticlericals were not stupid. They
knew what they were up against. Agraristas faced real threats of clerical and
landlord reprisals: excommunication and, perhaps, social ostracism in the
first case; unemployment, intimidation, and even assassination (sometimes
committed with sadistic zeal) in the second.'36 Sometimes they enjoyed the
backing of the central government, but the central government-recent
talk of "Leviathans" notwithstanding-was far from omnipotent or consis-
tent. Local authorities were often leery of anticlericalism and socialism,
hence lukewarm-at best-in their support of beleaguered rural schools.
In La Piedad, Michoacan, the municipal authorities stood by while the
schools remained empty and the churches were "full of children who are
133. "The aerostats of a scientific century" also figured in French revolutionary ritual.
See Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 53, 132.
134. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 291. Garrido also reportedly built 62 airstrips
in his state-not one of Mexico's biggest. Bowman, Frontera, Mar. 16, 1934, SD 812.00/
Tabasco/4.
135. Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 5, 1934, SD 812.42/303. For similar textbook didac-
tics-showing that hard work beats praying-see Camacho Sandoval, Controversia educa-
tiva, 212.
136. See, for example, Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, loo, 104, 120, 130; David Raby,
Educaci6n y revoluci6n social en Mexico (1921-1940) (Mexico City: SepSetentas, 1974), 191;
Camacho Sandoval, Controversia educative, 137-38, 156-6o; John Gledhill, Casi Nada: A
Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991),
8o-8i.

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attending ceremonies prepared by the clergy to celebrate the Month of

Maria."'37 Such complaints were common.'38 Nor was it just a question
of local officials: powerful state bosses like Cedillo (San Luis), Yocupicio
(Sonora), and Avila Camacho (Puebla) were indifferent, even hostile, to
radical education.139
The secular crusade therefore was an uphill struggle. Its protagonists
on the ground did not-as some critics have suggested-embark on their
task with the arrogance of power; they recognized, rather, the risks and
failings of their project.'40 Socialist teachers urged and practiced "pru-
dence" (a recurrent term) and "exquisite tact."'14' It was one thing for an
authoritarian state boss like Garrido to flaunt his anticlericalism in the easy
environment of Tabasco; quite another for isolated rural teachers to do so
in hostile regions like the "hard and rugged" Sierra Norte de Puebla.'42
Gratuitous anticlericalism 'a la Garrido gave offense, incurred opposition,
and compromised the broader objective of winning campesino hearts and
minds. Many teachers soft-pedaled anticlericalism in favor of less conten-
tious economic projects; in doing so, they could cite the august authority
of Lenin and, after 1936, follow the lead of President Cardenas.'43 State
authorities, such as those of Durango, also sought compromise rather than
confrontation, as did Cardenas after L936.'44 If the Revolution was to create
a new man, it would have to do so gradually, incrementally, and labori-
ously; material would have to precede moral transformational45
137. Hermoso Ndjera, La Piedad, Michoacdn, May 14, 1935, SEP 202/4.
138. Corzo, Colima, Apr. 23, 1935, SEP 199/2; Yfiiez, Puente de Ixtla, Nov. 2, 1935,
SEP 202/7; P6rez M., Ocotlin, Mar. 20, 1934, SEP 1083/1; Camacho Sandoval, Controversia
educative, 165-66.
139. On Cedillo, see Ankerson, Agrarian Warlord, 142, 152-53; on Yocupicio, see
Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Culture"; on Avila Camacho, see Vaughan, "Implementation of
National Policy."
140. Marjorie Becker stresses the arrogance and dogmatism of Cardenismo. See "Ldzaro
Cdrdenas, Cultural Cartographers," and "Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the
Search for a Campesino Ideology," Comparative Studies in Society and History 29:3 (July
1987), 453-65. Ben Eklof depicts a similarly diffident and vulnerable teaching profession
in rural czarist Russia. Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular
Pedagogy, 1861-1914 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986), 244.
141. For example, Ram6n Garcia Ruiz, SEP circular, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Nov. i,
1933, SEP 1086/7.
142. On the problems (educational and otherwise) of the Puebla Sierra, see Narciso
Bassols, Obras (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1964), 167-69; and Vaughan,
"Implementation of National Policy."
143. P6rez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de organizaci6n"; Camacho Sandoval, Controversia
educative, 182-87.
144. Eaton, Durango, May 21, 1936, Mar. 31 and Apr. 30, 1937, SD 812.oo/Durango/
200, 234, 237.
145. I borrow the term from Ozouf, who characterizes French revolutionary cultural
engineering as either "miraculous" (that is, dogmatic, utopian, committed to sudden and
sweeping change) or "laborious" (pragmatic, flexible, aware that "the 'prison of history' did

200.68.161.127 on Fri, 29 Jul 2022 17:07:27 UTC
This diffidence was justified. If we consider the effect of "socialist"
proselytization-the campaign to "rationalize and nationalize" the Mexi-
can people-it is, in general, the failings and failures that claim atten-
tion.'46 Resistance was widespread and, at times, insuperable. Most obvi-
ous was violent resistance: the attacks on schools, arson, intimidation, and
assassination, which led to many deaths, fearful resignations, the "concen-
tration" of teachers in safer zones, and, in 1938, a government decision to
issue small arms to all teachers. (Many had already equipped themselves:
the first thing a rural teacher often did was to acquire a pistol.'47) Land-
owners, white guards, and so-called "liquor lords" were responsible; but
so, too, were Catholic ("fanatical") campesinos.'48
No less important, however, was the low-key, quotidian, and "spon-
taneous" resistance that the Jacobin project encountered. Sometimes this
took the form of overt but peaceful protests, in which women were fre-
quently prominent. At Veracruz, women protected persecuted priests; at
Orizaba they heckled a radical teachers' meeting and were arrested for
"creating a disturbance"; at Jalapa, where the anticlericals "began a sys-
tematic campaign of putting cartoons, posters, etc. on the walls of build-
ings throughout the city, the posters were removed almost as fast . . .
by the Catholic organizations, usually women." 149 In these cases the pro-
exist and could not be simply willed away," hence ready for the long haul). The first set of
attitudes is heavily stressed in recent historical analyses of both French and Mexican revo-
lutionary cultural engineering, where it fits very comfortably with "revisionist" critiques of
revolutionary extremism, arrogance, authoritarianism, and attachment to abstract principle;
that is, within the old Burkean tradition. The second-"laborious"-interpretation is his-
toriographically less evident and, of course, less spectacular; however, it fits the (Mexican)
facts rather better. See Jones, "Presentation"; and Ozouf, "La R6volution frangaise et l'id6e
de ihomme nouveau," 207-32.
146. The phrase derives from Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 205. "Failure" is, of
course, very hard to measure. Although the SEP archive is voluminous-and offers the
potential for statistical analysis of cultural change over time-the research has scarcely
begun; furthermore, cultural change can be very resistant to positivistic calibration. A good
example of how both "hard" and "soft" data may be effectively combined is Mary Kay
Vaughan, "Rural Women's Literacy and Education in the Mexican Revolution: Subverting a
Patriarchal Event?" (Paper presented at the conference "Crossing Borders, Creating Spaces:
Mexican and Chicana Women, 1848-1992," University of Illinois, Chicago, Apr. 9-11, 1992).
As I suggest in conclusion, the "failure" of the revolutionary project was partial, not total;
and it must be seen in light of the ambitious goals that the revolutionaries had set themselves.
By way of comparison, see the arguments of Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution,
91, 217, 261; and Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 49, 55, 58, 68, 88, 257, 280,
286, who-Ozouf especially-point out the obstacles to and failures of revolutionary cultural
reformation.
147. Raby, Educaci6n y revoluci6n social, 181-97; Froylin E. Cuenca, Galeana,
Morelos, Dec. 25, 1935, SEP 202/5; Daniels, Mexico City, July 26, 1938, SD 812.42/454.
Again, we may note that priests also sometimes carried guns. Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, 107.
148. Williams, Veracruz, Apr. 30, 1936, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/87; Booth, Mexico's
School-made Society, 36-37.
149. Dawson, Veracruz, June 22, 1931, Aug. 1, 1931, Nov. 4, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/
22, 23, 28.

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testers were urban and, it would seem, mostly middle-class.'50 But rural
women, in villages and haciendas, also combated Jacobinism, resorting to
demonstrations, social ostracism, and even violence.'5' Such overt protests
rode on the back of a pervasive "apathy" or "passive resistance," of which
teachers constantly complained.'52 Among 30 schools in Colima, "the at-
tendance is very thin and in some schools the teacher was to be found
alone." Inspectors recorded the dismal experience of finding a school de-
serted "because the community was having a fiesta, on account of the visit
of the parish priest." 153 It was galling, too, when sacred images, taken out
of Tabasco to the greater security of Veracruz, at once became busy-and
profitable-foci of pilgrimage.'-4
In many regions, the school was actively boycotted: parents refused to
send their children, offended by official anticlericalism, socialism, and sex
education, which they tended to lump together-and which were all sub-
ject to wild rumor mongering.'55 Clerical encouragement and threats-
denial of absolution, excommunication, hellfire-played their part; and,
of course, they spurred anticlerical responses. (Primo Tapia, the agraristas
of Naranja recalled, "used to explain everything to us, that such-and-such
ideas were false, that such-and-such ideas were good, and that it was a
pure lie that we would be sent to hell for taking part in agrarianism." 156)
But it would probably be wrong to see the school boycott as a simple
150. The names of those arrested at Orizaba were not released, "as the women are be-
lieved to belong to prominent Catholic families of Orizaba." Dawson, Veracruz, Nov. 4, 1931,
SD 812.oo/Veracruz/28. For an overview of church mobilization of women (and the state's
response), see Shirlene Soto, Emergence of the Modern Mexican Woman: Her Participation
in Revolution and Struggle for Equality, 1910-1940 (Denver: Arden Press, 1990), 113-18,
123-33.
151. For example, Sdenz, Carapan, 48-52; Camacho Sandoval, Controversia e

150, 155-58.
152. For example, Sanchez, Veracruz, Mar. 10, 1935, SEP 208/15. Sdenz talks of peas-
ant "passive resistance" in terms strongly reminiscent of James C. Scott. Sdenz, Carapdn,
47, 51.
153. Corzo, Colima, Apr. 23, 1935, SEP 199/2; L6pez, Papantla, Aug. 24, 1936, SEP
208/16.
154. A Tabascan image that found refuge in Puerto M6xico-a place not noted for its
religiosity-received two thousand pesos in six weeks. Dawson, Veracruz, May 29, 1931,
SD 812.oo/Veracruz/29.
155. Daniels, memo of conversation with Education Minister Ignacio Garcia T6llez,
Mexico City, Dec. 12, 1934, SD 812.42/322, in which the latter downplayed the need for sex
education for peasant children, "inasmuch as from their lifelong association with animals they
learned this side of life unconsciously." Ambassador Daniels, seeking further reassurance,
asked "if it were true that children were exhibited in the nude as a means of demonstrating
the differences between the sexes?" to which the minister replied that "if this were the case
he was not aware of it." Rumors circulating in Aguascalientes suggested that prostitutes were
being recruited as public school teachers, and that children sent to the socialist school would
be shipped to the Soviet Union, where they would be made into soap. Camacho Sandoval,
Controversia educative, 139, 151.
156. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 6.

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clerical device or the peasants as malleable instruments of the clergy.'57
Attendance suffered for other reasons: children had to work in the fields,
especially during the summer planting and harvesting season. They stayed
away when disease prevailed or the rivers ran high; because the teachers
were mediocre and the classes ineffective; or, parents claimed, because of
the family's "lack of clothes and extreme poverty." 158
For similar reasons, adult night schools suffered. These classes, de-
signed to impart literacy, tended to be male preserves (which, from the
revolutionaries' point of view, was regrettable, since women were seen
as the chief victims and carriers of clerical hegemony). Women avoided
night classes given by male teachers, not least because their husbands ob-
jected to this infringement of patriarchal control. Indeed, the patriarchal
leaders of the revolutionary regime faced a dilemma: anxious to eman-
cipate women from the trammels of clergy and confessional (as already
described), they did not necessarily want their women to fall prey to
school and schoolmaster, which, too, could represent a threat to patriar-
chal power in the home. In Mexico, as in France, Jacobin feminism was
distinctly ambivalent.'59
Schools also suffered from chronic shortages of resources and staff. The
national government increased educational spending, but never enough
to fund the ambitious program of school building, especially rural school
building, that it had conceived.'60 In many cases, the construction, im-
provement, and maintenance of the school-as well as its ancillary units,
the casa del maestro, the open-air theater, the garden, and the sports
field-devolved to the community and became a test of communal commit-
ment to secular schooling. Some, we shall see, passed the test. But, not sur-
prisingly, some communities were reluctant to part with their hard-earned
pesos. They begrudged money or labor; they charged market rates-or
157. J. Melquiades Vergara paints a rather bleak picture of local schooling, stressing
poor attendance, lack of labor social (that is, cultural reform), and popular apathy; but he
makes no mention of clerical influence or culpability. Melquiades Vergara, Orizaba, July i6,
1934, SEP 1071/8.
158. Munguia, Cuernavaca, Aug. 6, 1935, SEP 202/6; Sanchez, Veracruz, Mar. io and
Nov. 20, 1935, SEP 208/15. In this case the school inspector was skeptical about the alleged
"lack of clothes and extreme poverty," which he believed were excuses for absenteeism (more
"weapons of the weak"?). Whatever their validity, these reasons were still being invoked 20
years later-after socialist education had been dropped. Similar causes of popular indiffer-
ence and pupil absenteeism have been cited in the cases of republican France and czarist
Russia. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 319-22; Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, 326-27.
159. Cf. Zeldin, Anxiety and Hypocrisy, 229.
i6o. The government planned to devote 15 percent of total expenditures to education
in 1935, raising the level to 20 percent in 1940. In actuality, spending hovered between 11.7
percent and 13.6 percent. The number of schools, both public and "incorporated" (that is,
approved, private) increased 40 percent; the number of primary pupils perhaps 30 percent.
For these and other statistics, see Lerner, La educaci6n socialist, 118-31.

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above market rates-for their work; the

dal land and instead rented it out on a shares basis.'6' Teachers therefore
labored under harsh conditions. They taught in gloomy, cramped rooms
in the presidencia municipal, in ramshackle huts, in old hacienda barns or
confiscated churches (as uncomfortable for the pupils as it was offensive to
the devout). In some cases, they perforce taught under a tree-a manifes-
tation of the Rousseauesque ideal, which, like most of that ideal, did not
translate well into practice.'62
Teachers' accommodations were poor, and their pay was frequently in
arrears. They worked long hours, playing multiple roles-"teacher, law-
yer, engineer, secretary"-under the aegis of a growing, and sometimes
despotic, bureaucracy.'63 Staff turnover was rapid: some schools had three,
even four teachers in a single year.'64 Many were young; the average age in
Morelos ejidal communities was 24.165 Young women teachers-symbols
of female emancipation from clergy and confessional-were particularly
vulnerable, as they were pitched into the rough, macho, violent ambiente
of the Mexican countryside.'66
In light of these conditions, it is not surprising that results were lim-
ited. Literacy rates rose, but they may have done so despite rather than
because of the radical curriculum of the 1930s. In the following decade,
as radicalism faded, literacy rates rose more quickly: the school was now
less a mechanism for overt social engineering than a means to impart skills
increasingly necessary in an urbanizing and industrializing Mexico.'67 And
i6i. Sanchez, Veracruz, Sept. 30, 1935, SEP 208/15; Munguia, Cuernavaca, July 25,
1935, SEP 202/6.
162. For an example of teaching en campo raso, see Leonides Ayala, Cuamancingo,
Tlaxcala, Mar. i6, 1937, SEP, Tlaxcala, 1937-38 (IV/16i[IV-14]), 21303. For the Rousseau-
esque ideal, see Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 63. Possibly the roof of heaven was prefer-
able to the "techos de carton asbesto [sic]" that were used at Zempoala, Veracruz. Sanchez,
Veracruz, June 30, 1934, SEP 1071/6.
163. Carlson, Veracruz, Oct. 1, 1935, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/78 (pay); Camacho Sando-
val, Controversia educative, 196, 222 (roles); Erasto Valle, Guadalajara, Aug. i8, 1933, SEP
i083/2 ("despotic" inspectors).
164. On teacher turnover at Moreno Sur, see Sanchez, Veracruz, Mar. 10, 1935, SEP
208/15.
i65. Ignacio Ramirez, Cuernavaca, May ii, 1934, SEP 1086/13.
i66. See Mary Kay Vaughan, "Women Schoolteachers in the Mexican Revolution: The
Story of Reyna's Braids,"Journal of Women's History 2:1 (1990), 143-68. Jos6 C. L6pez cites
the case of Paulina Becerra, victim of an attack by unknown persons believed to be vecinos
(locals). She begged to be transferred, and was; and her school was placed under armed
guard. L6pez, Papantla, Sept. 5, 1935, SEP 208/16.
167. Of course, the school still "engineered"; in particular, it engineered nationalism
and respect for the PRI and the state. This, however, was a less radical, less ambitious, and
less contentious project than that of the 1930S, not least because it did not go against the eco-
nomic grain and did not advocate class mobilization. It is for this reason (among others) that
it is possible to distinguish between the "Bourbon" regimes of the 1920-40 period and the
"Hapsburg" regime of post-1940. Knight, "State Power." Vaughan shows how female literacy

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the quixotic vision of a new man (and woman) proved, of course, a chi-
mera. Nevertheless, the radical project had its successes; that is to say,
in some cases it excited a positive reaction and was enthusiastically taken
up-and in the process, subtly altered-by popular groups: by "militant
folk (gente de lucha) of revolutionary spirit," those who "with many sacri-
fices" built their own schools, revered the teacher, displayed "enthusiasm
and interest" for the radical project, and whose "children [were] avid for
learning." 168To that extent, anticlericalism and socialist education exerted
a genuine appeal and were not simply "top-down" impositions on a reluc-
tant, God-fearing people. The Mexican people-like the Mexican elite-
were divided; they responded differently to these new messages and op-
portunities, and they did so as positive actors, not mere recipients or
victims of "top-down" manipulation.
III
Can we go beyond this modest conclusion? Can we map Mexican popu-

lar culture, gauging the impact of the revolutionary project, the progress,
perhaps, of literacy, secularization, radicalization? Such a political topog-
raphy is problematic even in the well-researched case of France.'69 It is
difficult, certainly premature, and perhaps impossible in the Mexican case:
the parish records have not been worked; electoral and party statistics are
of very limited use; and the data on literacy are, at present, too vague
and general.'70 At best-and pending further research-only informed
increased more rapidly after the late 1930s-after, that is, the more violent and radical phase
of the institutional revolution had passed and a new era of market involvement, prosperity-
and inequality-had dawned. Vaughan, "Rural Women's Literacy." For aggregate statistics
on literacy (which are necessarily ballpark figures), see James W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revo-
lution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1g9o (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1970), 207-14, which suggests that the illiterate proportion of the population declined
by some 13 percent in the 1930s, 27 percent in the 1940s, and ii percent in the 1950s.
i68. Ayala, Cuamancingo, Mar. i6, 1937, SEP, Tlaxcala, 1937-38 (IV/16i[IV-14]),
21303; J. Socorro Vdzquez, Ario de Rosales, Michoacdn, July 31, 1942, SEP, Michoacdn,
Escuela Rural Federal, 1938 (IV/16i[IV-14]), 3620; Petition of Eugenio Perez and 20 others
to President CQrdenas, El Agostedero, Atengo, Jalisco, Dec. 28, 1937, SEP, Jalisco, Escuela
Rural Federal, 1938-39 (IV/i6i[IV-14]), 11228; and, for a case study of a successful school,
Eyler N. Simpson, The Ejido: Mexico's Way Out (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press,
1937), 311-15. In light of this evidence, it is an exaggeration to call this a "desolate and
fruitless" period in terms of rural educational effort. John Britton, Educaci6n y radicalism
en M6xico, 2 vols. (Mexico City: SEP, Direcci6n General de Divulgaci6n, 1976), vol. 2, Los
aios de Cdrdenas (1934-1940), 6i.
169. Thus the illustrative maps depicting electoral participation or patriotic sentiments
in Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 106-7, 272-73; Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 131;
or Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945: Politics and Anger (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1979), 3-11, would be impossible to replicate for Mexico with any degree of confidence.
170. Cf. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 309-10, on the problems of defining and
measuring literacy; and Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, 3-9, on the significance of schooling

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suggestions can be hazarded. First, agrarismo and anticlericalism formed

an organizational tandem, although it was agrarismo that-pursuing the
metaphor-sat at the back and pedaled. Although there is some evidence
of "top-down," imposed, even unpopular agrarian reform, it should not be
exaggerated. Most of the agrarian reform of the 1920S and 1930s depended
on a significant degree of prior popular mobilization, including autono-
mous mobilization during the years of armed revolution.'7' This does not
mean the reform was uniformly welcomed. On the contrary, it polarized
classes, regions, and communities. For every beneficiary there was also a
victim (or, we should perhaps say, a self-perceived victim); and the vic-
tims were not all opulent hacendados. Nevertheless, the period witnessed
the formation and consolidation of a powerful agrarista lobby that em-
braced peasants, politicos, and other sympathetic groups, such as urban
artisans and workers (indeed, the latter were often important allies of the
peasantry).172
Agrarismo was intimately associated with other radical policies.
Whether, for example, the church came to oppose agrarismo chiefly be-
cause it was the work of an abominated anticlerical state is a moot point
(in my view, the church's hostility went deeper and often reflected cleri-
cal sympathy for and association with the propertied class). The important
point, however, is that by the 1920S, agrarismo and anticlericalism were
coupled in both practice and perception. Teachers were active in support-
ing eijdal solicitations, organizing sindicatos, forming consumer coopera-
tives, and campaigning for the implementation of the minimum wage or
pro-peasant legislation (such as Jalisco's Ley de Tierras Ociosas).'73 This
incurred opposition on the part of the provincial well-to-do and fostered
trust on the part of the peasantry, or at least that part of the peasantry
aligned with the agraristas.'74
and literacy; again, questions that have been little discussed in the historiography of Mexican
education and social change.
171. Alan Knight, "Land and Society in Revolutionary Mexico: The Destruction of the
Great Haciendas," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 7:1 (Winter 1991), 73-104.
172. For example, Craig, First Agraristas, 61-52, 97; Heather Fowler Salamini,
Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz, 1920-1938 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1978), 26-
33.
173. Garcia, Mazatepec, Oct. 30, 1935, SEP 202/7 (ejidal solicitation); Ydfiez, Puente de
Ixtla, May 21, 1935, SEP 202/7 (two sindicatos organized); Lefiero, Xochitlan, Aug. 29, 1935,
SEP 202/8 (a flour mill cooperative); Diego Huizar Martinez, Tecolotlan, Jalisco, Aug. 7
and Oct. 5, 1935, SEP 199/3 (Ley de Tierras Ociosas and minimum wage); Erasto Valle,
Guadalajara, Aug. i8, 1933, SEP 1083/2 (school inspectors "helped the agraristas in every
way possible to get lands or to solve their problems").
174. On opposition to agrarista mobilization, see Garcia, Mazatepec, Oct. 30, 1935,
SEP 202/7; on the opposition of local corn merchants, Lefiero, Xochitlan, Aug. 29, 1935,
SEP 202/8. In the 1950s there were still "elements of the bourgeoisie [who] again opposed
the Ejidal School [of Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala], saying that the Federal Ejidal School belonged

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Against those communities that repudiated socialist education we must
set those that eagerly sought the establishment of a school, called for
the federalization of existing state schools, or petitioned for teachers who
might serve as "counselors and mentors" of the people.'75 Thus, just as the
church denounced the agraristas, so, too, the agraristas came to espouse
anticlericalism-even if their initial stance in the matter was ambivalent.
Agrarian leaders like Primo Tapia made great play of their opposition to
the church, and a popular anticlerical tradition-which had prerevolution-
ary roots-was thus solidified.'76 It survived despite opposition within the
peasant community, even within the peasant family (peasant, like middle-
class, households were often split between devout wives and anticlerical
husbands). Long after the conflict cooled, diehard anticlericals were to be
found in the villages, lamenting the new respectability of the clergy and
the continued religiosity of the women.'77
In general, therefore, agrarian communities-beneficiaries of the
agrarian reform, possessed of ejidos-were frequently the keenest sup-
porters of the socialist school. Furthermore, the exceptions-that is,
agrarian communities hostile to socialist education and loyal to the church
-were recognized as such.'78 Apart from their ideological complimen-
tarity, school and ejido also formed an organizational pair: agrarian commu-
to the thieving agrarista rabble [era de los pelados y ladrones agraristas]." Isaias Garcia, Eji-
dal Committee President, Calpulalpan, Oct. 6, 1952, SEP, Escuela Federal Tlaxcala (IV[ioo/
64]IV-12).
175. Fidencio Campos, Comisario Ejidal, n.d., rec'd. June 1939, SEP, Jalisco, Escuela
Rural Federal, 1938-39 (IV/i6i1[IV-14]), 11218. A 1933 review of schools in Morelos refers to
the "overt sympathy of the peasants who see in them a bastion of redemption and progress."
Garcia Ruiz, Cuernavaca, Oct. 30, 1933, SEP 1086/13. While in light of other, more pessimis-
tic reports from the same state (see note 50) we may regard this with suspicion, some harder
evidence from 1934 shows that of 143 ejidal communities possessing schools in Morelos, 13
percent had entirely paid for and built the schools themselves, and 36 percent had partially
done so. Ignacio Ramirez, Cuernavaca, May 11, 1934.
176. Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt, 62-63, 74-75, 91-92; see also Gledhill, Casi Nada,
8o-8i, 92. Prerevolutionary popular anticlericalism has been little studied. The revolution-
ary period saw recurrent examples of ostensible Catholics (that is, men wearing Virgin of
Guadalupe insignia) maltreating priests; a few priests were killed. Villa, the preeminent
popular revolutionary of the north, had no love for the clergy. These phenomena had deep
roots. For years, carnival had afforded an opportunity to lampoon priests-"popes, bishops,
cardinals, and friars." Parsons, Mitla, 264; see also Roberto Montenegro, "El carnaval en
Zaachila, Oaxaca," Mexican Folkways 5:1 (1929), 28-29. In some parts of the country, such
as the northwest, the church's institutional presence was feeble; in the south its presence was
felt, but-partly because of steep fees for marriage, baptism, and other rites-it was not uni-
formly venerated. Popular religiosity of a somewhat heterodox kind could thus consort with
popular indifference or even antipathy to the clergy (the Lollard syndrome; see note 184).
The Mexicans, as a priest once put it, were "very good Catholics but very bad Christians."
H. G. Ward, Mexico in 1827, 2 vols. (1828; reprint, London: H. Colburn, 1929), 1:222.
178. For example, Sanchez, Veracruz, Dec. 27, 1935, SEP 208/15.

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nities had more discretionary resources with which to support the school
(the provision of a "parcel" of land for the school was automatic with every
ejidal grant). They even had the guns with which to defend embattled
teachers.'79 For its part, the school celebrated the ejido in song, ritual, and
fiesta.'80 In certain cases the school became the hub of the community, and
the teachers were "the soul" of the ejido.'8'
Agrarian struggle thus encouraged the dissemination and espousal of
radical (in this case, Jacobin) ideas. Of course, popular espousal of an
"elite" ideology was an old story. Mexican Catholicism had taken a simi-
lar route; so, too, had Mexican liberalism. French history reveals similar
mutations: the Provengal peasantry's shift, under pressure of historical
circumstances, from "Right" to "Left," "white" to "red."'82 Furthermore,
each of these artifacts of the "Great Tradition"-Catholicism, liberalism,
Jacobinism-once taken up by calloused campesino hands, was signifi-
cantly refashioned. Tridentine Catholicism became "folk Catholicism," re-
plete with pagan, pre-Columbian elements; "folk liberalism" (as it has been
called) diverged from the cerebral, elite liberalism of Mora and others
and established itself as a heterodox but powerful set of ideas, symbols,
and myths.'83
So, too, the message of the (elite) Revolution was appropriated and re-
fashioned afer 1g9o. (We should recall that a good deal of the revolutionary
agenda responded to "spontaneous" popular demands in the first place).
It assumed popular forms: corridos, clubs, fiestas, local memories and
traditions. The result was often ideologically heterodox-consistency was
assuredly not the hobgoblin of popular minds-but it was effective. Anti-
clericalism, for example, could consort with popular religiosity, a contra-
179. "Fortunately, in the majority of [agrarian] Communities we receive a great deal of

help from the Agrarian Committees, since it is these that attend to the most urgent expen-
ditures." Sanchez, Veracruz, Nov. 20, 1935, SEP 208/15. "There are places that are divided
into ejidatarios and non-ejidatarios, the former being the only ones who share revolutionary
ideals; hence they are always very concerned for their schools and keen that they should
function normally." Erasto Valle, Guadalajara, May 8, 1934, SEP 1083/8. On the armed agra-
ristas' defense of schoolteachers, see Eaton, Durango, May 29, 1936, SD 812.oo/Durango/
202; and also Camacho Sandoval, Controversia educative, 157, 224.
i8o. Donaciano Munguia, La Junta, Chihuahua, n.d., report on Sept.-Oct. 1934, SEP
202/5; see also "El ejido: comedia en un acto," by maestro rural Jos6 Montero, in Montero,
Donaciano Ojeda, Michoacdn, Mar. 14, 1934, SEP 1o85/6.
i8i. Munguia, La Junta, report on Sept.-Oct. 1934, describing how at La Ci6naga de
Ojos Azules, Chihuahua, three maestras "have been the soul of the ejido where they work,
they are the hub (eje) and center of the life of the peasants, who love and venerate them (las
quieren con veneraci6n); their little school is the justifiable pride of all the region." Such
encomia carry more weight, I think, because they are interspersed with bleak reports of
apathy and failure.
182. Agulhon, Republic in the Village.
183. Alan Knight, "El liberalismo mexicano desde la Reforma hasta la Revoluci6n (una
interpretaci6n)," Historia Mexicana 35:1 (July-Sept. 1985), 59-91.

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diction that is only superficial and that has many precedents, such as
Lollardy.'84 Anticlerical and agrarian heroes were depicted in Christlike
poses. Christ was portrayed as the first agrarista ("Cristo no era como los
patrones" [Christ was not like the bosses], as a song went); or was depicted
giving his blessing to the agraristas. "Jesus the Socialist of Nazareth," as
we have seen, figured in radical baptisms.'85 Traditional religious fiestas-
such as All Souls, the Day of the Dead-were incorporated into the radi-
cal calendar; in Aguascalientes the feast of San Marcos became the Festival
of Spring, endowed with "revolutionary and socialist content." 186
Radicalism also plagiarized religious terminology more generally. Gov-
ernor Tejeda was "the anointed of the gods"; Garrido's followers sang the
"hymn of the red-shirts"; the confiscation of churches meant that "temples
of obscurantism, perfidy, and evil are today temples of idealism, light, and
truth."'"87 The impact of such rhetoric is hard to gauge. The "civil reli-
gion" of the Revolution remained resolutely secular and did not, in the
main, acquire transcendental qualities.'88 Nor did the cult of the caudillo
spill over into outright idolatry-Madero did not go the way of Marat.'89
But revolutionary radicalism certainly borrowed from religious forms and
built on traditional rituals. Thus, in some cases, "fanatical anticlericalism
was converted into a surrogate religion.'"'90 Similarly, the socialist project
of the 1930S could be presented not as some abstract and alien doctrine,
but rather in terms of an old, comprehensible polarity-rich and poor, ex-
ploiters and exploited. For teachers, many of poor background themselves,
"socialism . . . was more a feeling than a theory." '9'
Ethnic themes were also invoked. The Revolution inaugurated a major
rehabilitation and exaltation of Indian culture. Like anticlericalism, this
184. M. E. Aston, "Lollardy and Sedition, 1381-1431," Past and Present 17 (1960),
1-44, esp. 7-16.
185. Martinez Assad, El laboratorio, 43; Loyo, "Lectura para el pueblo," 329; Gruen-
ing, Mexico and Its Heritage, facing p. 265; Knight, "Revolutionary Project," 249; Dawson,
Veracruz, May 29, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/ig.
i86. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 20, and Agrarian Revolt, 93, 121; Camacho Sando-
val, Controversia educative, 246.
187. Dawson, Veracruz, Aug. 1, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/23; Martinez Assad, El labo-
ratorio, 278-79. See also Ilene V. O'Malley, The Myth of the Revolution: Hero Cults and the
Institutionalization of the Mexican State, 1920-1940 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986),
27-28, 46, 82.
i88. Bellah and Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion, 45-64; cf. O'Malley, Myth of the
Revolution, 130-32, although O'Malley goes too far in homogenizing revolutionary ideology,
equating it with (a homogenized) Catholicism and thereby denying its emancipatory power
while exaggerating its genuinely transcendental qualities.
189. Albert Soboul, "Sentiments religieux et luttes populaires pendant la R6volution:
saintes patriotes et martyrs de la liberty," Annales Historiques de la R6volution Frangaise
148 (1957), 200-203.
191. Dofia Socorro Melhndez, quoted by Vaughan, "Implementation of National
17.

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was largely an elite construct (indigenismo was not the work of Indians).'92
Also like anticlericalism, the construct had prerevolutionary roots: a pallid,
cerebral, and arty indigenismo had been evident during the Porfiriato and
even earlier. The Revolution, however, served to pump red blood into this
anemic corpus of ideas. To the parvenu nation- and state-building popu-
lists of the 1920S and 1930s, indigenismo was a major ideological resource
(which is not to say that they espoused it simply cynically and instru-
mentally). Accordingly, they harked back to Mexico's Aztec past, glorified
Cuauhtemoc (the given name of Cardenas' son), and vilified Cortes. The
supposed anniversary of the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capi-
tal, was celebrated on December 12, traditionally the feast of the Virgin
of Guadalupe. Even the radical labor confederation, the CROM, boasted
an Aztec logo as its letterhead. Nor was this simply an elite imposition
(or, if it began as one, it soon acquired added dimensions of meaning). A
humble Veracruz schoolteacher emulated Diego Rivera, painting "Aztec
allegories" on the plaster walls of his schoolhouse; local agrarian activ-
ists capitalized on their ethnic roots and asserted their ethnic identity in
pursuit of political power.'93
Like Geertz's Javanese nationalists, who blended Hinduist-animist be-
liefs with "secular nationalism and Marxism," so Mexico's postrevolution-
ary indigenistas married traditional "nativist" images to radical new mes-
sages. Meanwhile, their sworn enemies, the Catholic radicals, offered a
more austere, "rationalized" Christianity, a close parallel to the "Islamic
modernism" that, in Java, confronted resurgent Hindu nationalism.'94
Thus, although anticlericalism, "socialism," and even indigenismo began
as elite dogmas, lacking popular bases and often offending popular sensi-
bilities, they acquired genuine support-and were subtly reworked-in
the process of popular struggle and conflict.'95
Although this can be put forward as a general proposition, it is not easy
to map the process of assimilation and syncretism, nor to attempt a topog-
raphy of popular radicalism. As already mentioned, the conventional (that
is, European) indices-elections and party membership-are poor, if not
useless, guides to the labyrinth of Mexican politics.'96 Second, the political
192. Knight, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo," 76-77.

193. Sanchez, Veracruz, June 30, 1934, SEP 1071/6; Friedrich, Princes of Naranja,
142, and Agrarian Revolt, 127.
194. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 148-49.
195. The same would be true of economic nationalism, which, initially lacking a popular
base, was diffused by revolutionary rhetoric and reinforced by historical events (notably the
long tussle between the state, the petroleum workers, and the Anglo-American oil compa-
nies), thus making possible the nationalist ralliement of March 1938. Knight, "U. S. -Mexican
Relations," 84-86, and "Politics of the Expropriation."
196. Although elections are not meaningless as exercises in political mobilization, they
are Door indicators of political opinion. Membership of the official party, the PNR, is an

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map was highly localized, and depended to some degree on the random
distribution of individuals. Just as patterns of rebellion in ig9o depended
in part on the distribution of oppressive officials and abusive landlords,
so, too, adherence to radicalism-or its most obvious converse, adherence
to the church-depended on the distribution, across space and time, of
radical caciques and governors or influential parish priests. Yucatan, for
example, underwent a brief radical phase under Carrillo Puerto, followed
by a severe reaction.'97 Radical movements experienced similar, if less
pronounced, vicissitudes in Michoacan (as Cardenas gave way to Serrato)
and Veracruz (with the rise and fall of Tejeda).'98 At the community level,
both teachers and priests came and went, made progress or failed. Some
teachers were "dynamic and capable," others negligent, absent, or cor-
rupt; some curas became significant community leaders, some remained
cyphers, or were confounded in their attempts at proselytization.'99
Nevertheless, some patterns can be teased out. The protagonists them-
selves recognized categories. According to educational officials, Mexico's
myriad communities could be divided into three groups: (i) those that
displayed no prejudice against secular, state education; (2) those that mani-
fested suspicion (desconfianza); (3) those that mounted "real opposition"
(verdadera oposicion).20
The third category, embracing Colima, Michoacan, Aguascalientes,
Jalisco, and parts of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Durango, precisely fol-
lowed the battle lines of the Cristero War.20' An explanation of that war
would imply, to a considerable extent, an explanation of cultural and
political divisions throughout the postrevolutionary period. Unfortunately,
equally indifferent guide: the PNR claimed 5.7 percent of the country's population as mem-
bers in 1934; the Federal District, at 7.7 percent, had the highest membership relative to
population, as might be expected; and San Luis, at 3.4 percent, had the lowest (a reflection,
perhaps, of the strength of the Cedillo machine). Yet Catholic Jalisco stood at a high 7.2
percent, radical Tabasco at a low 4.7 percent. See Norweb, Mexico City, June 12, 1934, SD
812.00/30058. An alternative "European" approach-which has the advantage of avoiding
electoral data-is offered by Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, esp. chap. 4, which
relates patterns of popular culture and politics to economic and ecological determinants (for
example, wood pasture as against arable farming). Although the Mexican empirical data are
inferior, this approach is potentially fruitful; and some of my tentative arguments are cast in
this explanatory mold.
197. Joseph, Revolution from Without, chaps. 7-9; Timothy J. Henderson, "Unraveling
Revolution: Yucatan, 1924-1930" (Master's thesis, Univ. of Texas, 1988).
198. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 145-55; Salamini, Agrarian Radicalism; Romana
Falc6n and Soledad Garcia, La semilla en el surco: Adalberto Tejeda y el radicalism en
Veracruz, 1883-1960 (Mexico City: El Colegio de M6xico, 1986).
199. Corzo, Guadalajara, July 19, 1935, SEP 199/2; Sanchez, Veracruz, Aug. 1, 1935,
SEP 208/15; Gonzalez, Pueblo en vilo, 91, 96, 100, 123; and Parsons, Mitla, 17-18, on the
impact of successive curas.
200. Corzo, Guadalajara, Mar. 6, 1935, SEP 199/2.
201. Meyer, La Cristiada, 1: map facing p. 13.

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there is no consensus concerning the Cristiada; we may therefore reverse

the explanatory arrow and suggest that the tentative hypotheses put for-
ward here may also help explain that conflict.202
First, in general terms, central Mexico was more conservative and
Catholic than the north or the Gulf coast, and the center-west was particu-
larly wedded to Catholic institutions and dogma. Compare, for example,
Baja California, Chihuahua, Sonora, or the Laguna with Colima, Jalisco,
much of Michoacin, even Morelos.203 Should this be attributed to socioeco-
nomic conditions? to earlier Catholic proselytization? to historical events?
Here we enter a debate that parallels the one surrounding the "politi-
cal geography of revolution" (and counterrevolution) in France.24 Like
Charles Tilly, we might argue that Mexico's center-west consisted of scat-
tered communities held together primarily by parish networks and clerical
authority (in contrast to the tightly knit, more self-governing communi-
ties of, say, Morelos, which parallels Provence).205 We might also argue
that the center-west had witnessed, during the Porfiriato, a form of sec-
ond "spiritual conquest," whereby priests and churches had increased in
number and influence-partly in response to an advancing (internal) fron-
tier.206 Certainly some communities existed, such as San Jose de Gracia,
which were, in some senses, petty theocracies.207
202. Meyer, La Cristiada, is the revisionist locus classicus, stressing the autonomous
power of religion (for example, 3:259). John Tutino adheres to a more traditional (materi-
alist) explanation, emphasizing rural class relations, in From Insurrection to Revolution in
Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1910 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1986), 7, 343. Ram6n Jrade suggests a broader set of sociopolitical interests underlying an
ostensibly religious conflict. Jrade, "Religion, Politics, and the State: The Rural-Urban Alli-
ance in Mexico's Cristero Insurrection" (Paper presented at the i5th Latin American Studies
Association Conference, Miami, Dec. 1989).
203. Federico A. Corzo, Report on Baja California Sur, July 25, 1935, SEP 199/2, is dis-
tinctly bullish. On the Laguna, see Maria Candelaria Vald6s Silva, "La Comarca Lagunera:
educaci6n socialist y reparto agrario" (Master's thesis, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, 1990).
Mary Kay Vaughan shows that Puebla was a tougher nut to crack than Sonora, and even
Sonora was a tough proposition. "El papel politico del magisterio socialist de Mexico, 1934-
40: un estudio comparative de los casos de Puebla y Sonora" (Unpublished paper, 1987).
See also Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Culture," part 1. Other comparisons are based on my
selective reading of the SEP archive.
204. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, chap. 4.
205. Charles Tilly, The Vendee (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), esp. chap. 4.
206. Meyer, La Cristiada, 2:45. Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez shows that between 1895
and 1910 the number of priests officiating in Mexico rose by 31 percent, while population
rose only 20 percent. "The Struggle for Hegemony: An Analysis of the Mexican Catholic
Church, 1877-1911" (Unpublished paper, Univ. of Texas, Austin). In 1910 the ratio of priests
to population was highest in Aguascalientes, Campeche(!), Colima, Jalisco, and Michoacdn
(in descending order); and lowest in Chiapas, Baja California, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Sonora,
Tamaulipas, and Tabasco (in ascending order). With the exception of Campeche, this confirms
"impressionistic" evidence of clerical influence.
207. Gonzalez, Pueblo en vilo, 87.

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Third, it is important to note that the center-west had been less di-
rectly involved in the armed revolution than the center or north; thus, the
revolutionary regime, when it came bearing unwanted gifts, appeared as
an alien intruder. For the peasants of Morelos, the heartland of Zapatismo,
anticlericalism was not particularly welcome (Zapata's own relations with
the curas had been amicable); but the revolutionary state offered certain
benefits-land above all-and opposition did not crystallize around the
church question.208 For many-though by no means all-Michoacanos,
by contrast, the revolutionary state offered few such offsetting benefits.
Anticlericalism was the defining characteristic of the Revolution and, thus
arrayed in the robes of blasphemy, the Revolution was repudiated.209 In
Mexico, as in France, the religious question became so contentious be-
cause it subsumed a wealth of conflicts-landlord versus peasant, state
versus locality, insider versus outsider-and touched deep questions of
cultural identity, as well as political power and material livelihood.210
These broad regional breakdowns, however, are only a start. Within
states-and within localities-communities reacted differently (schismat-
ics were even found on the outskirts of Catholic Guadalajara!).21' Again,
rough patterns can sometimes be discerned at this lower level. In the small
state of Colima, the highlands tended to be clerical, the hot coastal low-
lands radical and anticlerical.212 So, too, in Puebla, where the sierra was the
seat of conservatism, the llano of agrarismo; in Sonora, where, similarly,
the northeastern sierra produced Cristeros, the valley lowlands agraristas;
in Chiapas, where highland San Cristobal was the clerical headquarters
and coastal Soconusco the hub of Chiapaneco socialism; and finally in
Veracruz, where, for example, the would-be iconoclasts of Catemaco were
confounded when "serranos from the nearby mountains marched to the
town with the purpose of guarding the [threatened] image."213
208. This is an inference. A somewhat corroborative example comes from the pueblo
of Nextlalpdn, Mexico State, which supplied a large contingent of revolutionaries. There, a
local man recounts, "the Cristero movement had no echo . . . our fathers tell us that the
curas made out that they were persecuted in order to incite the people," and, he immediately
comments, "the great benefits that the Revolution brought Nextlalpdn were, of course, the
ejidos, produced by the division of the Hacienda Santa Inks." Loera, Mi pueblo, 1o6.
209. Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire.
210. "All work in this domain emphasizes that popular support for the refractory church
frequently articulated an affirmation of community identity, of its norms and values against
the intrusion of revolutionary authority and its demands." Colin Lucas, "Presentation," in
The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 3, The Trans-
formation of Political Culture, 1789-1848, ed. Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf (Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1989), 350.
211. At San Martin de las Flores, Tlaquepaque. Corzo, Guadalajara, Apr. 10, 1935, SEP
199/2.
212. Corzo, Colima, Apr. 23, 1935, SEP 199/2.
213. Vaughan, "Implementation of National Policy"; Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Cul-

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Patterns of settlement, of ethnicity, and of Catholic "church build-

ing" (both literal and figurative) all contributed to this dichotomy. In
part, the split reflected the strength of religion in "Indian" communi-
ties of long standing; these communities, concentrated in the temperate,
maize-growing highlands, were notoriously difficult to penetrate (cerrado,
closed, was the adjective most often applied to them).214 They were not
necessarily under the thumb of the cura-for in many cases the cura was
a transient figure-but they were strongly wedded to local religious prac-
tices and symbols that, like the "Little Children" of the Mayo Indians,
served as foci of community and ethnic identity, as well as rallying points
for community resistance.215 As in parts of Central and Andean America,
such resistance was popular and religious, but often independent of cleri-
cal control. Again, we witness the three-way struggle between church,
state, and communities-in this case, Indian communities-that still en-
joyed a real measure of political and cultural autonomy. For the church,
too, had great difficulty in penetrating and acculturating these "closed"
highland people.
Still, ethnicity is no explanatory passe-partout. Some Indian commu-
nities were receptive to the state's educational project, while some mes-
tizo, Hispanized communities stood in the van of the clerical, conserva-
tive forces-and did so precisely because of clerical mobilization.216 The
center-west region of the Cristiada is the obvious case: here, Jean Meyer
argues, resistance derived from a profound Catholic (not pagan-syncretic)
religiosity.217 Here, we may hypothesize, were communities that had con-
structed their identity on the basis of institutional Catholicism: priests
and churches were thick on the ground, and the priests were often eager
activists (when the church wanted aggressive missionaries for Chiapas, it
found them in Michoacan).218 Within this region, however, were plenty of
dissidents, some of them Indian. The "red" communities of Michoacan-
Naranja, Tarejero, Tirindaro-were also heavily Indian; mestizo San Jose
was conservative and clerical; neighboring Mazamitla, across the state line
ture," chaps. 3, 8; Thomas Benjamin, A Rich Land, A Poor People: Politics and Society in
Modern Chiapas (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1989), 79, 82-83, 1o8, 153-54;
Dawson, Veracruz, Sept. 30, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/27. Cf. also Quito and Guayaquil,
Bogota and Barranquilla.
214. See, for example, Parsons, Mitla, 14, 237, 515.
215. Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Culture," 94-11o.
216. For receptive examples, see Melquiades Vergara on the success of schools in the
Indian zone of Atzompa; although, his report adds, "the local people ... are entirely hostile
to anything to do with cleanliness, they have a horror of water . . . and are utterly dirty."
Orizaba, Sept. 8, 1934, SEP 1071/8.
217. Meyer, La Cristiada, 3:272-82.
218. Antonio Garcia de Le6n, Resistencia y utopia, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Ediciones
ERA, 1985), 2:23, 24.

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in Jalisco, was both more Indian and more radical and receptive to socialist
education.219
A principal determinant of this pattern was landholding and agrarian
conflict. Whereas the agrarismo of Zapata and the Morelenses-mani-
fested in the great, spontaneous uprising of 1910-20-did not carry over
into anticlericalism, Michoacano agrarianism, forged in the politicking
and power struggles of the 1920s and 1930s, inevitably acquired an anti-
clerical, Jacobin temper. Naranja, scene of a bitter land dispute, became
agrarista and anticlerical; Cheran-also Indian but less economically af-
flicted-remained largely conservative, and thus fell victim to the Maundy
Thursday massacre. In similar fashion, rural communities and regions pos-
sessed of (non-Catholic) trade unions were on the fast track to radicalism
and Jacobinism (for example, Veracruz, Soconusco, the Laguna), while
regions of Catholic smallholding-such as the Calvillo district of Aguasca-
lientes, the Colotlain region of Jalisco, or the northeastern Sierra Madre of
Sonora-constituted Cristero bastions, bitterly hostile to the revolutionary
project.220
In addition to these loosely "structural" explanations-relating to
agrarianism, ethnicity, and prior proselytization-we should finally note
contingent "historical" factors. First, no student of Mexican society can
ignore the pervasive importance of factionalism and clientelism. In numer-
ous cases, political allegiances-for or against agrarian reform, for or
against the church, even for or against "progress"-depended on the
logic of local factionalism.22' Groups and individuals made tactical choices,
which were then set in ideological cement. The Molina Betancourt family
espoused federal and socialist education as a means, it would seem, to
reinforce their political sway in northern Puebla; their enemies sought to
219. Gonzalez, Pueblo en vilo, 44, 73, 109, 175. Samuel P6rez M., on the relative suc-
cess of schools in the Mazamitla region, which the inspector attributed in part to his reactive
policy, observed: "A school must not be offered; the communities must solicit one." Ocotlin,
Mar. 20, 1934, SEP 1083/1.
220. "[Our] social work [labor social] should turn out very well here because it takes
place in an already socialized context [medio socializado], since this is a working-class and
unionized community." Sanchez, Veracruz, Sept. 30, 1935, SEP 208/15, concerning the
Ingenio de San Francisco, Lerdo municipio, Veracruz. For Catholic and smallholder resis-
tance, see Camacho Sandoval, Controversia educative, 29, 118, 147, 158, 163, 219; Tomds
Rubalcaba, Guadalajara, Mar. 2o, 1934, SEP 1083/1; Bantjes, "Politics, Class, and Culture,"
119-33.
221. Cf. Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 242, 265, 267, on the "splintering of
parish unity" that accompanied the rise of Puritanism. Ozouf quotes a newspaper comment
of 1890 concerning the local impact of church-state conflict: "The hamlets? They are like Pisa
in the evil days of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, sliced into two factions that threaten each
other with knife and dagger." L'Ecole, l'eglise, et la R6publique, 161. For a Mexican example,
see Simpson, Ejido, 358-74; Gledhill, Casi Nada, 62-63; and Robert Redfield, Tepoztlan: A
Mexican Village (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, [1930] 1946), 68, 209, 218-23.

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confound it.222 At the highest level, education, agrarian reform, indige-

nismo, and trade unionism were all weapons the central government could
use to topple or constrain wayward state bosses-Grajales in Chiapas,
Cedillo in San Luis, Yocupicio in Sonora.223 And, at the lowest level, the
municipal factionalism that pervaded the country-evidence of which also
pervades the SEP archive-had a lot to do not with neat class or ideo-
logical affiliations, but with questions of power and clientele: "ins" versus
"outs," caciques versus caciques, families versus families, barrios versus
barrios 224
These "contingent" alliances were both old and new, and, as they
aged and matured, thereby perhaps became "structural" features of com-
munity life, cultural "givens" that strongly determined subsequent politi-
cal options. For, as Paul Bois argues for the Sarthe, political allegiances
forged-perhaps contingently-in the heat of war, revolution, and crisis
can have enduring consequences.225 So, too, in Mexico, traditionally lib-
eral pueblos-those that had backed the liberals against their conservative
and French enemies-tended to be receptive to the radical message of
the Revolution, which, as we have seen, was often couched in "neoliberal"
terms. Their conservative, clerical foes were logically hostile. Old dyadic
enmities were thus redefined in terms of the new revolutionary situation.
Liberal Jiquilpan became radical Jiquilpan (being Cardenas' birthplace
helped, of course), hence the old feud with (conservative) Sahuayo took a
new twist.226 Juchitan, the traditionally liberal opponent of Tehuantepec,
shed its liberalism in favor of radicalism, later socialism.227 Matamoros, a
beacon of liberalism in the Laguna, became a center of radicalism in the
1920S and L93os.228 Similar continuities can be seen in families (and, per-
222. Vaughan, "Implementation of National Policy."

223. For example, Benjamin, A Rich Land, 191-92; Ankerson, Agrarian Warlord; Bant-
jes, "Politics, Class, and Culture," part 3.
224. Such conflicts are neatly summarized in the phrase cited by Bantjes, "Es pleito
entre los mismos, hombre, de quitate tu para ponerme yo." "Politics, Class, and Culture,"
79. For graphic detail and cogent analysis of such "pleitos entre los mismos," see Friedrich,
Princes of Naranja. Ironically, while the spread of federal (especially socialist) education
often tended to foster local divisions and factions, teachers and education officials repeat-
edly stressed that such divisions represented formidable barriers to educational advance,
while community cohesion was a major asset. See, for example, Juan Rodriguez Fraustro,
Acapulco, May 18, 1938, SEP 2053/15.
225. Paul Bois, Paysans de l'ouest (Paris: Flammarion, 1960).
226. On Sahuayo-"el foco de esa nefasta propaganda [clerical]"-see Amador Silva,
Guadalajara, Sept. 27, 1934, SEP 1083/8.
227. Jeffrey W. Rubin, "Popular Mobilization and the Myth of State Corporatism," in
Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, ed. Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 247-67.
228. Ann L. Craig, "Legal Constraints and Mobilization Strategies in the Countryside,"
in Foweraker and Craig, Popular Movements, 72.

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haps, barrios). A detailed prosopography of the revolutionary generation

might confirm the impression that many of its leaders-such as Zapata and
Cardenas-had grandfathers who had fought with the liberals against the
conservatives and the French.
Thus, any map of the "geography of revolution" seeking to capture
popular allegiances and identities is likely to resemble a Seurat more than
a Mondrian. No uniform colors and stark outlines; rather, countless dabs of
contrasting color: red here, white here, pink there. If we stand back, the
picture assumes a rough pattern: the north and parts of the Gulf coast are
redder; the center-whose politics are as convoluted as its landscape-
appears pink; the center-west is white. But close up, the pattern dis-
solves into a host of local particularities. In Mexico as in France, it seems,
popular political culture is something of a myth; we should talk instead of
numerous popular political cultures, many of them specific to individual
communities.229
These local particularities strongly conditioned popular reception of-
or participation in-the Revolution. In communities possessed of a strong
liberal-patriotic lineage, the Revolution-with its new messages of radi-
calism and anticlericalism-could be more easily assimilated into local
lore and myths. Assimilation was certainly not guaranteed, but it stood a
better chance than in communities that lacked such historical traditions
or whose historical traditions were conservative and Catholic. Here again,
the role of the local teacher-the local tinterillo or "village intellectual"-
was often crucial.230 The "best" (that is, the most effective) teachers, one
inspector ruefully admitted, were not those most primed in pedagogical
theory and socialist dogma but those who came from the locality, who
knew it, and who could establish a ready dialogue with the people.23' In
truth, the most successful (that is, popular) teachers were often those least
attuned to the new socialist dogma, while, conversely, many of the fresh-
faced (blanquito) new graduates of the teacher-training program preferred
to pursue careers in the towns and cities, away from the benighted rural
backwoods. They were keen for promotion, and they took their diplomas
229. P. M. Jones convincingly postulates "a meridional 'culture' embracing the en-
tire southern Massif Central [of France] and specific local 'cultures' differentiated from the
common cultural heritage by neighborhood allegiances." Politics and Rural Society, 107.
Underdown notes a "bewilderingly varied nature of local circumstances" making for a "paro-
chial patchwork with dedicated Puritans in a few places, quiescent conformists in many other
places." Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, 81, 244.
230. Alan Knight, "Los intelectuales en la Revoluci6n Mexicana," Revista Mexicana de
Sociologia 51:2 (Apr.-June 1989), 25-66.
231. Sanchez, Veracruz, Nov. 20, 1935, SEP 208/15. On categories of teachers, cf.
Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, 225, including those "who fit snugly into the village culture,
but only by spurning the ways they had learned outside the village."

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and ran.232 Again, the church shows a parallel. Like the hedge-priests of
the Middle Ages or the rabble-rousing curas of late colonial Mexico, it
was often the heterodox clergy who enjoyed the closest relationship with
their flock, while those who-like their anticlerical counterparts-tried
to reform popular customs and manners were rebuffed.233
Just as, in the past, elite projects (Catholicism, liberalism) elicited dif-
ferent responses according to local and contingent criteria, so, too, the
Revolution generated new pressures, to which local people had to react:
the incursions first of armed forces, later of revolutionary politicos and offi-
cials, representatives of parties, ministries, and agencies. In the absence
of powerful alternative determinants-such as agrarian demands or prior
political commitments-people often reacted tactically, contingently, and
selectively. The revolutionary message-land, schools, anticlericalism,
nationalism-became a resource in the ancient conflict between commu-
nities and clans. As such, it was received, judged, espoused, or rejected
on the grounds of expediency as well as principle. It was a question of "ask
not what you can do for your Revolution, but what your Revolution can
do for you"-by way of jobs, power, patronage, and connections to "the
center."
Accordingly, the community's response was selective. Agrarian reform
was sometimes rejected, often enthusiastically espoused; it offered ma-
terial betterment, economic security (perhaps), sometimes a strengthening
of the community. The agrarian reform transformed rural Mexico and cre-
ated powerful loyalties-for example, to Cardenas and Cardenismo-that
are still apparent today.234 In this respect, the radical project, articulated
232. Thereby conforming to "the widespread tendency for teachers in developing coun-
tries to flee the countryside for more lucrative employment elsewhere." Ibid., 480. Cf
Sanchez, Veracruz, Mar. lo, 1935, SEP 208/15, on the "not very proficient" teacher of Puerta
de Mata Anona who had not even achieved the sixth grade himself, but "who is much es-
teemed by all the locals"; and Carlos Mercado, Jalapa, Feb. lo, 1935, SEP 208/9, on those
teachers who, "hardly having got their Honorific Diploma in their hands, turn their backs on
their people." Blanquito is derived from Angel Alvarado to Rafael Ramirez, June lo, 1934,
SEP 1083/3, which describes new young teachers who "stick indoors, so you would find
them all pallid (blanquito), the sun doesn't touch them, they're afraid of getting ill...."
233. Compare the more recent complaint: "Unfortunately, the clergy put an end to this
beautiful tradition [of dancing and singing Nahuatl songs on All Souls Day or the Fiesta of the
Virgin of Guadalupe], since they thought these were pagan dances, because they involved
ridiculing the Spaniards." Loera, Mi pueblo, 94. Many similar examples could be given.
This is not to say that more "rational" or ascetic religious appeals were invariably unpopular:
Protestantism (defined in 1930s Mitla as the creed of "people who do not know the saints,"
Parsons, Mitla, 206) made some progress in (chiefly southern) Mexico, although less than
in Guatemala. In revolutionary Chiapas, an apparently successful Catholic "rationalization,"
imparted by keen reformist priests from Michoacdn, finally stimulated a heterodox Indian
revivalist cult. See Garcia de Le6n, Resistencia y utopia, 2:23-33.
234. See Adolfo Gilly, coord., Cartas a Cuauhtemoc Cdrdenas (Mexico City: Ediciones
ERA, 1989).

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by the school and socialist education, left an enduring legacy. But these
loyalties were premised on a material struggle and, in some respects, a
class victory-of peasants over landlords. In addition-a more mundane
but nonetheless important point-along with the school and the ejido often
came further material improvements: paved roads, piped water, powered
corn grinders, radio, basketball courts, and baseball diamonds.235 Indeed,
the growth of sport represented a significant change. Basketball, in par-
ticular, caught on: it was easy to introduce; it offered a new, convenient,
enjoyable form of recreation for rural youth; it may even have countered
the appeal of the cantina, as its proponents hoped. In some pueblos, it
became a source of social status and an avenue of political mobility.236
What did not take root and endure was the radical cultural project
of the Revolution, its anticlericalism and commitment to socialism. Agra-
rismo could carry anticlericalism on its coattails, at least for a time, and
especially while the cura inveighed against the ejido; but once the ejido
was secured and the cura had, to some extent, been silenced, the coattails
were cut off In Mexico as elsewhere, post-reform peasantries tended to
cultivate their own gardens: the momentum of mobilization faded, and the
radical peasantry of the pre-reform period, disposed to militancy, became
the (relatively) quiescent smallholders of the post-reform era, disposed to
clientelist alliances with the burgeoning state.237
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries' ambitious program of cultural transfor-
mation made limited (though not minimal) progress. Essentially, it was the
product of a distinct time and cultural milieu, especially that of the radi-
cal autodidacts of the revolutionary generation-men (and occasionally
women) of the cities and small towns, readers of the radical-sometimes
235. The list (of items and sources) is impressively long, and bespeaks a degree of in-
cremental material improvement that armchair critics of federal education-who seem more
impressed by the closing of a shrine than the opening of a road-tend to neglect.
236. Jose C. L6pez laments the failure of night classes "due to the indifference of the
local people," but reports that "basketball matches with other communities take place fre-
quently." L6pez, Papantla, Sept. 5, 1936, SEP 208/16. In Mitla, basketball even became
a political force: the team ran and elected a candidate to municipal office. Parsons, Mitla,
92, 166, 249-50. Sport also furthered political careers in Naranja. See Friedrich, Princes of
Naranja, 47, 193.
237. After the Bolivian Revolution and agrarian reform of 1952-53, Laurence White-
head notes, "the newly enfranchised peasantry delivered a massive and apparently uncritical
vote of support to the officially approved or incumbent candidate." General Barrientos, who
overthrew the "revolutionary" MNR regime in 1964, consequently "derived his electoral
strength from a peasant base that the MNR had handed him on a plate." Whitehead, "Bolivia
After 1930," in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, vol. 8, Latin
America Since 1930: Spanish South America (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991),
549, 555. Since the 1930s, Mexican ejidatarios have formed the backbone of the PRI vote
(at least before 1988); nineteenth-century France saw the emergence grosso modo of the
so-called r6publique paysanne. Zeldin, Politics and Anger, 17.

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the anarchist-press, who sought to bring enlightenment and progress to

a rural population they both pitied and patronized. Their achievements
were by no means inconsequential, especially with regard to agrarian
reform, material betterment, and-although this is hard to estimate-
nation building. Of these three goals, however, only agrarian reform was
genuinely new; in promoting material improvement and nationalism the
revolutionary generation followed Porfirian goals, which the pOst-1940
Alemanista generation, in turn, pursued further.238 In contrast, the dis-
tinctive features of the revolutionary cultural project-the anticlericalism,
egalitarianism, and commitment to class conflict-proved more ephem-
eral. Sex education was curtailed when-to the delight of the Catholics-
Bassols fell from power in 1934 .239 Anticlericalism was throttled back after
1936 and virtually eliminated after 1938; socialist education, already in full
retreat, was officially wound up by President Avila Camacho. The crowded
calendar of secular fiestas was reduced, simplified, and deradicalized.240
The revolutionary "new man"-and "new woman" and "new child"-did
not materialize.
This relative failure derived from a multiplicity of reasons, but three
general causes are obvious: the limits of state power (which contrasted
with the grandiosity of state objectives); the selective resistance of civil
society; and the overriding long-term influence of socioeconomic factors
(over which the state exercised only limited control). As already noted,
literacy rates rose faster in the 1940S than in the 1930s, chiefly because the
demand for literacy was stimulated by industrialization and migration; sec-
ondarily because the state, while continuing to stress education, dropped
238. It should be stressed, however, that while the goals may have been similar (and
therefore, talk of Porfirian-revolutionary continuity has a broad and superficial validity), the
means differed (for example, Porfirio Diaz never attempted mass mobilization through party
or sindicato). And the revolutionary state's degree of success was very much greater: post-
1940 Mexico became an integrated, thoroughly capitalist society, which it had not been
under Diaz.
239. "La renuncia de Bassols," El Amigo del Pueblo (Guadalajara), 2:28 (May 27, 1934),
in SEP 1083/3. For the context, see Britton, Educacion y radicalism, vol. 1, Los aios de
Bassols (1931-1934), loo-lo8, 112.
240. A 1957 calendar for the federal school at Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, reveals (as com-
pared to calendars of 20 years earlier) a less congested schedule; the omission of several radi-
cal dates (for example, May Day); continued homage to nineteenth-century heroes (Judrez,
the niios heroes); the interpolation of a couple of new celebrations (Pan-American Day and
United Nations Day); and more stress on local or regional commemorations (Tlaxcalan state-
hood, "the 83rd anniversary of the annexation of the municipality of Calpulalpan to the state
of Tlaxcala"). The only revolutionary event to be commemorated was the 1938 petroleum
nationalization. See Leonor Ndjera y Herndndez, Nov. 30, 1957, SEP, Tlaxcala, 1937-38
(IV/161[IV-12]), 1031. For the ideological shift in Aguascalientes, see Camacho Sandoval,
Controversia educative, 249-54; and, from a national perspective, Britton, Educaci6n y
radicalism, 2:112-19.

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its commitment to radical social engineering. Henceforth, schools would
still inculcate nationalism and loyalty to state and revolution, but it was
a different state and a different revolution. This outcome could hardly be
foreseen in the 1930s.
The 1940 presidential succession and the onset of World War II brought
major, unpredictable changes; and, as contemporaries recognized, educa-
tional and cultural change was necessarily slow and could not be calibrated
on a yearly basis. Even under Cardenas, however, the retreat had begun.
The uphill struggle of many rural teachers bespoke the recalcitrance of
popular customs and culture. The latter were not inert; they shifted, mu-
tated, and reacted. But they did so chiefly in reponse to major socio-
economic pressures: industrialization, urbanization, migration, population
growth, proletarianization. The village cargo system-the ancient civil-
religious hierarchy-was more likely to be undone by commercial accu-
mulation than by radical preaching.24' Even then, some aspects of "popular
culture" remained remarkably durable; compatible, it would seem, with
fast-changing social milieus. Proletarianization and urbanization, for ex-
ample, do not appear to have produced a predominantly secular society-
nor even a "rational" religious one, perhaps because the vicissitudes of life
in Mexico's teeming cities are as volatile and unpredictable as those faced
by the campesinos.242
Compared to these profound socioeconomic trends, government pro-
grams and educational campaigns were much weaker forces for social
change; they proved particularly ineffectual when they went against the
grain of economic "development." It is not surprising, therefore, that they
failed to create a new, secular, scientific, progressive man (and woman).
The rural community's preference for heterodox teachers (and priests) was,
in this respect, symptomatic: the teacher, some said, was a "faithful re-
flection" of the community, sometimes a local boy or girl made good.243
Many teachers never internalized the radical message of socialism; they
spurned official textbooks and programs of study; and telling them to read
El Nacional was a counsel of despair.244 Given their own cultural makeup
241. Parsons, Mitla, 164, 178. So, too, in early modern England, traditional ceremonies
like Rogationtide "fell into desuetude less from any growth of rationalism than because of the
social changes which broke up the community." Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of
Magic (New York: Scribner, 1970; reprint Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 74.
242. Knight, "Revolutionary Project," 257-58. Thomas relates religious and magical
beliefs to "the hazards of an intensely insecure environment." Religion and the Decline of
Magic, 5.
243. Munguia, Cuernavaca, Aug. 20, 1935, SEP 202/6; also, for example, Friedrich,
Princes of Naranja, 29, 58.
244. Jesus Brambila Oliva, Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, May 6, 1934, SEP 1071/3 (neglect of
official texts); Garcia, Mazatepec, Oct. 26, 1935, SEP 202/7 (El Nacional).

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and that of the communities they inhabited, they were chary of radical
social engineering. "Understanding the conditions he has to work under,"
an observer commented about one maestro, "he is neither impatient nor
ambitious to change them, at least quickly. He has still something to learn
from the federal doctrinaires who might also learn something from him
and men of his class." 245 Thus, many continued in their old ways, as did the
communities in their charge. Bourbon projects for radical social change
once again surrendered to Hapsburg inertia: obedezco pero no cumplo
("I obey but I do not carry out") remained as relevant as it had been in
colonial times.
Similarly, the educated, go-ahead teacher, who upped sticks and used
the teaching credential as a passport to urban employment-in Mexico or
the United States-was representative of a stream of city-bound and U. S. -
bound migrants, which by in the 1940S and 1950S had become a torrent.
It was not that rural Mexico refused to change, but rather that, having re-
fused to obey many of the dictates and exhortations of radical government
in the 1930s, it obeyed instead the imperatives of the capitalist market
in the 1940s and 1950s. It did so, above all, because its inhabitants had
to survive, had to gain their livelihood in an urbanizing, industrializing,
"de-peasantizing" world. Ejidatarios-recipients of land grants-did not
become virtuous citizens overnight (if at all). At Nueva Italia, scene of a
major agrarian collectivization, a social worker commented, "the majority
of the workers daily earn more money, so that they can nourish their
vices," particularly hard liquor and marijuana.246
Meanwhile, the regime built roads and distributed radios, and in doing
so undoubtedly strengthened national integration and national markets.
But the roads and the radio brought a different culture: Americanized,
consumerist, aural (and later visual) rather than oral and written-yet still
strongly Catholic. Over time, this new "Great Tradition"-if that is not an
oxymoron-established itself, in defiance of the high hopes and elaborate
projects of the 1930S radicals. The latter were more realistically circum-
spect and less ruthlessly dogmatic than some observers suggest.247 They
had not been blind to these dangers: "the action of the school," they recog-
nized, "could be easily destroyed by other factors, such as the home, the
'movies,' the press, and so on"; but, they optimistically believed, gov-
ernment policy would work "to get all of these agencies to cooperate
245. Parsons, Mitla, 478.

246. Toledo Arteaga, Nueva Italia, Nov. zo, 1939.
247. Becker, "Ldzaro Cdrdenas, Cultural Cartographers," and "Black and White and
Color" are trenchant examples, which I choose simply because they are trenchant.

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in a clearly outlined program with a socialistic purpose."248 They were

wrong. They overestimated the power of the state and its transient "petty-
bourgeois" Jacobinism, and they underestimated both the recalcitrance of
the people and the resourcefulness of the market.
248. Anonymous, "An Explanation of the Essence and Basis of the Socialistic School
in Force in the State of Sonora," translated and enclosed in Daniels, Mexico City, Nov. 16,
1934, SD 812.42/307. On the school's work of enlightenment, "in the face of the tremen-
dous disorientation [wrought by] the contradictory and false news of the mercenary press,
see Guadalupe Zavaleta, "Informe general de labores de la Escuela Regional Campesina de
Roque," Guanajuato, Dec. 1, 1940, SEP 2053/62.

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Alan Knight Popular Culture

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Alan Knight Popular Culture

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Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910-1940

Author(s): Alan Knight

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2517891

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Popular Culture and the Revolutionary

H E N the dust of the battles of the Bajio settled and

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tionary annus mirabilis of 1910, had been l

The new regime was an activist, "Bourbon" regime.5 It sought to mold

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and to construct wills."6 Policies such as agrarian reform that, accord-

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house."''3 Only by overcoming the church could Mexico achieve integra-

13. According to the radical, anticlerical governor of Veracruz, Adalberto Tejeda, in

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Thus, many of the key items of the "revolutionary" project can be

19. Manuel Gamio, Foijando Patria (Mexico City: Porr6a, 1916).

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new policies.29 Agrarismo is given a Catholic veneer; radical sentiments

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not of installing a functioning liberal democracy, but rather of broadening

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visionist scholarship-it must be recognized that the Mexican church con-

40. Ibid., 303.

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ited Cristero revolt and, more seriously, provoked widespread popular

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Reformers readily linked the baneful influence of the Catholic church

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subscribed to a clear notion of popular "false consciousness"-and clerical

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these celebrations were supplemented by new revolutionary rituals and

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whole barrage of secular fiestas, linked to local commodities: the fiesta of

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71. Dawson, Veracruz, Sept. 2, 1931, SD 812.oo/Veracruz/26.

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with the cantina and the brothel-had monopolized rural recreation; by

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new slogans. On Maundy Thursday 1937, several hundred agrarians from

85. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 162-63.

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89. Perez Rosa et al., "Proyecto de organizaci6n."

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children, allegedly destined for picnics in the Veracruz countryside, were

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corridos"-were penned and sung, whether as a result of schoolmasterly

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It is easy to criticize these proselytizing efforts-as utopian, dogmatic,

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Tulancingo," in La servidumbre agraria en M6xico en la 6poca porfiriana, by Friedrich Katz

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rismo."15 "God is the counterrevolution," as one radical put it, echoing

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anticlerical, patriotic, and nationalist.'26 It maintained a positivistic faith

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The General replied that no religion would be taught in the schools;

The "hegemony" of the church, in other words, was a powerful, visible

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