This is what you said:
had dinner last week with an Hispanic family who, as it happens, gave a lot of material support to victims of the Sandinistas during that era. One of the things that doesn't get brought up much is that they, like the Marxists who took over Mexico and Cuba, were virulently anti-cleric, and killed priests and nuns and others involved with the Catholic Church.
My response was that it was news to me that Marxists took over Mexico and that they brutalized the Church. And since when does anyone need an ideological basis for suppressing the church, or anything, for that matter?
And it's still news to me. Oh, there were a few unabashed Marxists here and there after the Revolution, the labor leader Lombardo Toledanto being the most visible, but he never held the levers of power and was not as far as I recall ever involved in church issues.
Cardenas was probably the most leftist of all the presidents, but you would be hard-pressed to call him a Marxist since extreme nationalism and Marxism are like oil and water. Moreover, the violent suppression of the church didn't take place during his rule.
First back up your silly statement about Mexico being taken over by Marxists, then I'll respond to the incredibly complex relationship between government and the Church in Mexico, both before and after the Porfiriate, and, hey, I'll throw in La Reforma, too, if you wish, starting with the Constitution of 1857 and its [usually ignored, definitely pre-Marxist] limits on the Church. Maybe I'll discuss the war of Independence, which created many iconic Mexican figures the leader of which, the Mexican equivalent of Geo. Washington, if you must know, was a..........priest.
Hey, maybe I'll start at the very beginning, when the Church was a handmaiden of the Spaniards--before Marx was a gleam in his parents' eyes--and caused a lot of problems yet at the same time did a lot for the Indian folks.
You learned Hispanic family probably referrred to Plutarco Elias Calles suppression of the Church in about 1927-28. However, if Calles was a Marxist, I'll eat my hat. His interest in suppressing the Church, such suppression being legal for a very long time but ignored, was to keep it from meddling in politics after the revolution, which it didn't do, witness the Cristero revolt.
The truth of the matter is that the church was suppressed by the winners of the Revolution--99.999% of whom had no significant ideological beliefs whatsoever--because it was feared that it would take over power and/or meddle in politics with impunity thanks to the Catholicism of the bulk of the Mexican populace which might or might not support what it did. The Revolucionarios and those who consolidated the power gains of the Revolucion after it was over didn't want to share.
Marxists? Pffft, don't make me laugh.
Bottom line: It doesn't pay to be facile about Mexican history. It's very complex.
I'm no doubt going to enjoy the pigheaded retort, though. |
