Anti-clericalism in Latin America

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Anti-clericalism in Latin America sprang up in opposition to the power and influence of the Catholic Church in colonial and post-colonial Latin America.

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Mexico

The Mexican Constitution of 1824 had required the Republic to prohibit the exercise of any religion other the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith. [1]

Reform War

The War of Reform (Spanish : Guerra de Reforma) in Mexico, during the Second Federal Republic of Mexico, was the three-year civil war (1857–1860) between members of the Liberal Party who had taken power in 1855 under the Plan of Ayutla, and members of the Conservative Party resisting the legitimacy of the government and its radical restructuring of Mexican laws, known as La Reforma. The Liberals wanted to eliminate the political, economic, and cultural power of the Catholic church as well as reduce the role of the Mexican Army. Both the Catholic Church and the Army were protected by corporate or institutional privileges (fueros) established in the colonial era. Liberals sought to create a modern nation-state founded on liberal principles. The Conservatives wanted a centralist government, some even a monarchy, with the Church and military keeping their traditional roles and powers, and with landed and merchant elites maintaining their dominance over the majority mixed-race and indigenous populations of Mexico.

This struggle erupted into a full-scale civil war when the Liberals, then in control of the government after ousting Antonio López de Santa Anna, began to implement a series of laws designed to strip the Church and military—but especially the Church—of its privileges and property. The liberals passed a series of separate laws implementing their vision of Mexico, and then promulgated the Constitution of 1857, which gave constitutional force to their program. Conservative resistance to this culminated in the Plan of Tacubaya, which ousted the government of President Ignacio Comonfort in a coup d'état and took control of Mexico City, forcing the Liberals to move their government to the city of Veracruz. The Conservatives controlled the capital and much of central Mexico, while the rest of the states had to choose whether to side with the Conservative government of Félix Zuloaga or Liberal government of Benito Juárez.

The Liberals lacked military experience and lost most of the early battles, but the tide turned when Conservatives twice failed to take the liberal stronghold of Veracruz. The government of U.S. President James Buchanan recognized the Juárez regime in April 1859 and the U.S. and the government of Juárez negotiated the McLane-Ocampo Treaty, which if ratified would have given the Liberal regime cash but also granted the U.S. transit rights through Mexican territory. Liberal victories accumulated thereafter until Conservative forces surrendered in December 1860. While the Conservative forces lost the war, guerrillas remained active in the countryside for years after, and Conservatives in Mexico would conspire with French forces to install Maximilian I as emperor during the following French Intervention in Mexico.

Cristero War

More severe laws called Calles Law during the rule of atheist Plutarco Elías Calles eventually led to the Cristero War, a widespread struggle in central and western Mexico. The massive popular rural uprising in north-central Mexico was tacitly supported by the Church hierarchy, and it was also aided by urban Catholic supporters. US Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow brokered negotiations between the Calles government and the Church. The government made some concessions, the Church withdrew its support for the Cristero fighters, and the conflict ended in 1929. The rebellion has been variously interpreted as a major event in the struggle between church and state that dates back to the 19th century with the War of Reform, as the last major peasant uprising in Mexico after the end of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, and as a counter-revolutionary uprising by prosperous peasants and urban elites against the revolution's agrarian reforms.. [2]

Colombia

Although Colombia enacted anticlerical legislation and its enforcement during more than three decades (1849–84), it soon restored “full liberty and independence from the civil power” to the Catholic Church.

La Violencia is considered to have begun with the 9 April 1948 assassination of the popular politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Liberal Party presidential candidate for the election in November 1949. [3] His murder provoked the Bogotazo rioting that lasted for ten hours and killed some 5,000 people. [3] An alternative historiography proposes as the start the Conservatives' return to power following the election of 1946. [3] Rural town police and political leaders encouraged Conservative-supporting peasants to seize the agricultural lands of Liberal-supporting peasants, which provoked peasant-to-peasant violence throughout Colombia. [3]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Mexico</span> Overview of Mexicos history

The written history of Mexico spans more than three millennia. First populated more than 13,000 years ago, central and southern Mexico saw the rise and fall of complex indigenous civilizations. Mexico would later develop into a unique multicultural society. Mesoamerican civilizations developed glyphic writing systems, recording the political history of conquests and rulers. Mesoamerican history prior to European arrival is called the prehispanic era or the pre-Columbian era. Following Mexico's independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, political turmoil wracked the nation. France, with the help of Mexican conservatives, seized control in the 1860s during the Second Mexican Empire but was later defeated. Quiet prosperous growth was characteristic in the late 19th century but the Mexican Revolution in 1910 brought a bitter civil war. With calm restored in the 1920s, economic growth was steady while population growth was rapid.

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José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 December 1876, 17 February 1877 to 1 December 1880 and from 1 December 1884 to 25 May 1911. The entire period from 1876 to 1911 is often referred to as Porfiriato and has been characterized as a de facto dictatorship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benito Juárez</span> President of Mexico from 1858 to 1872

Benito Pablo Juárez García was a Mexican liberal politician and lawyer who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in office in 1872. As a Zapotec, he was the first indigenous president of Mexico and the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venustiano Carranza</span> President of Mexico from 1917 to 1920

José Venustiano Carranza de la Garza was a Mexican wealthy land owner and politician who was Governor of Coahuila when the constitutionally elected president Francisco I. Madero was overthrown in a February 1913 right-wing military coup.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cristero War</span> 1926–29 Mexican rebellion

The Cristero War, also known as the Cristero Rebellion or La Cristiada[la kɾisˈtjaða], was a widespread struggle in central and western Mexico from 1 August 1926 to 21 June 1929 in response to the implementation of secularist and anticlerical articles of the 1917 Constitution. The rebellion was instigated as a response to an executive decree by Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles to strictly enforce Article 130 of the Constitution, a decision known as Calles Law. Calles sought to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, its affiliated organizations and to suppress popular religiosity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberalism in Mexico</span> Aspect of Mexican political history

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<i>La Reforma</i>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reform War</span> Civil war within Mexico from 1858 to 1861

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melchor Ocampo</span> 19th-century Mexican lawyer and Liberal politician

Melchor Ocampo was a Mexican lawyer, scientist, and politician. A mestizo and a radical liberal, he was fiercely anticlerical, perhaps an atheist, and his early writings against the Catholic Church in Mexico gained him a reputation as a leading liberal thinker. Ocampo has been considered the heir to José María Luis Mora, the premier liberal intellectual of the early republic. He served in the administration of Benito Juárez and negotiated a controversial agreement with the United States, the McLane-Ocampo Treaty. The Mexican state where his hometown of Maravatío is located was later renamed Michoacán de Ocampo in his honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Catholic Church in Mexico</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irreligion in Mexico</span>

Irreligion in Mexico refers to atheism, deism, religious skepticism, secularism, and secular humanism in Mexican society, which was a confessional state after independence from Imperial Spain. The first political constitution of the Mexican United States, enacted in 1824, stipulated that Roman Catholicism was the national religion in perpetuity, and prohibited any other religion. Since 1857, however, by law, Mexico has had no official religion; as such, anti-clerical laws meant to promote a secular society, contained in the 1857 Constitution of Mexico and in the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, limited the participation in civil life of Roman Catholic organizations and allowed government intervention in religious participation in politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catholic Church in Latin America</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857</span> Fundamental law of Republican Mexico from 1857 to 1917

The Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857, often called simply the Constitution of 1857, was the liberal constitution promulgated in 1857 by Constituent Congress of Mexico during the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort. Ratified on February 5, 1857, the constitution established individual rights, including universal male suffrage, and others such as freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to bear arms. It also reaffirmed the abolition of slavery, debtors' prisons, and all forms of cruel and unusual punishment such as the death penalty. The constitution was designed to guarantee a limited central government by federalism and created a strong national congress, an independent judiciary, and a small executive to prevent a dictatorship. Liberal ideals meant the constitution emphasized private property of individuals and sought to abolish common ownership by corporate entities, mainly the Catholic Church and indigenous communities, incorporating the legal thrust of the Lerdo Law into the constitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty</span> Mexican religious civil rights organization

National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty was a Mexican Catholic religious civil rights organization formed in March 1925 that played a crucial role in the Cristero War of 1926 to 1929.

The Liberal Party was a political coalition that emerged in Mexico after independence. Strongly influenced by French Revolutionary thought, and the republican institutions of the United States, it championed the principles of 19th century liberalism, and promoted republicanism, federalism, and anti-clericalism. They were opposed by the Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party was one of two major factions in Mexican political thought that emerged in the years after independence, the other being the Liberals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reform laws</span> Set of anti-clerical laws enacted in Mexico between 1855 and 1863

The Reform laws were a set of anticlerical laws enacted in the Second Mexican Republic between 1855 and 1863, during the governments of Juan Alvarez, Ignacio Comonfort and Benito Juárez that were intended to limit the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church and the military. The laws also limited the ability of Catholic Church and indigenous communities from collectively holding land. The liberal government sought the revenues from the disentailment of church property, which could fund the civil war against Mexican conservatives and to broaden the base of property ownership in Mexico and encouraging private enterprise. Several of them were raised to constitutional status by the constituent Congress that drafted the liberal Constitution of 1857. Although the laws had a major impact on the Catholic Church in Mexico, liberal proponents were not opposed to the church as a spiritual institution, but rather sought a secular state and a society not dominated by religion.

References

  1. Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States (1824) Archived March 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Article 3.
  2. Chadwick, A History of Christianity (1995), pp. 2645
  3. 1 2 3 4 Livingstone, Grace; foreword by Pearce, Jenny (2004). Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War. Rutgers University Press. p. 42. ISBN   0-8135-3443-7.