The Cristero War in Mexico

In 1926 President Plutarco Elias Calles began enforcing anticlerical articles of the 1917 constitution. The Calles Law required priests to register with the state and limited the number allowed, and it banned religious education. On July 31, 1926 the Church suspended public worship in protest. Armed Catholic laity, called Cristeros after their cry of Viva Cristo Rey (Long live Christ the King), rose in the west-central states of Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato and Colima.¹²

The conflict was rooted in the revolutionary state's drive to reduce the power of the Church, which went back to La Reforma of the 1850s and the 1917 constitution. Revolutionaries saw the Church as an obstacle to modernization. For many rural Catholics, though, the priest and the parish were at the center of village life. Fighting went on for three years, with guerrillas, executions and the burning of villages. In 1928 a Catholic activist assassinated president-elect Alvaro Obregon.¹²³

Under pressure from the US ambassador Dwight Morrow, the government and Church leaders reached an agreement in June 1929 that restored church services but did not repeal the laws. Many Cristero fighters felt betrayed, and some were killed afterward. About 90,000 people are estimated to have died, though estimates vary. The war shaped Church and state relations in Mexico for decades, and the state's anticlerical constitution was only reformed in 1992.¹⁴