This book shows the centrality of religion to the making of the 1910 Mexican revolution. It goes beyond conventional studies of church-state conflict to focus on Catholics as political subjects whose religious identity became a fundamental aspect of citizenship during the first three decades of the twentieth century.
Robert Curley is currently the chair of the Departamento de Estudios Socio Urbanos, an interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. His interests include cultural history, secularization and religious practice, and the Mexican revolution.
"Curley effectively navigates the tension between church-state relations and local dynamics as a cause of the conflict. This monograph will serve anyone examining the revolutionary period in Mexico in general and church-state relations in particular."--Andres Hijar, H-LatAm
"Citizens and Believers helps to lay a new path for thinking about the Cristero Rebellion specifically, but also for considering the intersections among religious faith, politics, modernity, and violence. It offers both specific detail and theoretical framing."--Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, American Historical Review
"With vivid prose and lyrical language, Curley narrates how Mexican Catholic men and women in early twentieth-century Jalisco tried valiantly to gain a foothold in civil society: forming political parties, founding workers' unions, participating in public pilgrimages, and resisting anticlericalism through religious practice. Curley's incisive analysis generates an invaluable and original portrait of Catholic citizens as truly modern political actors."--Julia G. Young, author of Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War
"A much-needed, thoroughly researched tour de force of political Catholicism rooted in the context of Mexico's revolutionary process and its regional genesis in Jalisco. Subsequent research on the topic will have to start with Curley."--Stephen J. C. Andes, author of The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations
Chapter One. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: An Introduction Chapter Two. Religion and Society in Social Catholicism Chapter Three. Christian Democracy in Mexico Chapter Four. The Limits of Catholic Party Rule in Jalisco Chapter Five. The Battles for Jalisco Chapter Six. Local Politics and the Mexican Revolution in Jalisco Chapter Seven. Work and Religion in Post-Revolutionary Mexico Chapter Eight. José Guadalupe Zuno and the Collapse of Public Space Chapter Nine. Anacleto González Flores and the Martyrs' Plebiscite Conclusion. Politics and Religion in the Mexican Revolution
