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The Seduction of Revolution: Anticlerical Campaigns against Confession in Mexico, 1914–1935

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2013

BEN FALLAW
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Abstract

During the Mexican Revolution, male revolutionaries in Mexico repeatedly tried to suppress confession by invoking the trope of the sexually predatory priest menacing weak, superstitious women. Campaigns against the rite resulted from long-standing gender divisions over the Church, fears of Catholic counter-revolution, and male revolutionaries' drive to modernise marriage as companionate and secular but still patriarchal. Although ultimately unsuccessful as policy, attacks on the confession strengthened radical anticlericalism. By equating masculinity with reason, nation and progress while painting femininity as vulnerable, fanatical and potentially treasonous, the campaigns subtly shaped gender roles and helped to consolidate post-revolutionary patriarchy.

Spanish abstract

Revolucionarios masculinos en México trataron repetidamente de suprimir la confesión al utilizar la figura del sacerdote sexualmente rapaz contra a mujeres débiles y supersticiosas. Las campañas en contra del ritual fueron el resultado de un anticlericalismo historicamente mayor entre hombres que entre mujeres, los temores de una contrarrevolución católica, y el deseo de revolucionarios masculinos de modernizar el matrimonio como algo secular y consensual, aunque aún patriarcal. Aunque ultimadamente no tuvieron éxito como política, los ataques en contra de la confesión reforzaron el anticlericalismo radical. Al comparar a la masculinidad con la razón, la nación y el progreso, mientras se representaba a la feminidad como vulnerable, fanática y potencialmente traicionera, las campañas transformaron sutilmente los roles de género y ayudaron a consolidar el patriarcado postrevolucionario.

Portuguese abstract

Revolucionários do sexo masculino repetidamente tentavam sufocar o confessório ao utilizar a alusão de padres sexualmente predadores ameaçando mulheres supersticiosas e frágeis. Campanhas contra o rito resultaram de um anticlericalismo historicamente mais acentuado entre homens que entre mulheres, temores de contra-revolução católica e o desejo dos revolucionários em modernizar o matrimôio em uma instituição laica e mais consensual, porém ainda patriarcal. Apesar de mal-sucedida enquanto política, os ataques ao confessório fortaleceram o radicalismo anti-eclesiástico. Ao vincular a masculinidade com a razão, a nação e o progresso e figurar a feminilidade como vulnerável, fanática e potencialmente desleal, as campanhas sutilmente definiram papéis de gênero que ajudaram à consolidar posições pós-revolucionárias patriarcais.

Keywords

Mexican Revolutionanticlericalismgenderpatriarchyconfessioncompanionate marriageRevolución Mexicanaanticlericalismogéneropatriarcadoconfesiónmatrimonio de compañerosRevolução Mexicanaanti-clericalismogêneropatriarcadoconfessóriocasamento consensual
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 91 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 I use the word ‘confession’ to refer specifically to Roman Catholicism's spoken or auricular form. It is one of the Church's seven sacraments, and its private nature makes it the most mysterious. See Fahlbusch, Erwin, Lochman, Jan Milic, Mbiti, John, Pelikan, Jaroslav and Vischer, Lukas (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 634–5Google Scholar.

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69 Various correspondence, AGN, DGG 2.347, caja 4, exps. 10 and 31. Confessional seduction is not specified.

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75 Pedro Benavides, ‘Instrucciones que el excmo. y rvmo. Señor Arzobispo de México dirige a los señores foraneos, parrocos y vicarios fijos de los lugares en donde no hubiere culto público’, 31 May 1932, AHAM, caja 6, exp. 74.

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79 Alfonso Escoto to SEP, 12 Jun. 1934, AGN, DGG 2.340, caja 38, exp. 50.

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84 Felipe Carrillo Puerto to Calles, 18 Feb. 1923, FAPECYFT, ‘Carrillo Puerto, Felipe’, exp. 25, inv. 830, leg. 4/7, and procurador general de justicia statement, 16 Feb. 1923, leg. 5/7.

85 On Nieves, see Flores, Guillermo Guzmán, ‘El Cardenismo y la nueva democracia,’ in Salvo, Ramón Vera (ed.), Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana, estado de Zacatecas, vol. 2 (Mexico City: Juan Pablos Editor, 1992), pp. 256–63Google Scholar; Felix Ramírez et al. to General Juan José Rios, 25 Aug. 1931, FAPECYFT, Archivo Histórico Plutarco Elías Calles, gavilla 64, ‘RAMOS, Matías (Gral.)’, exp. 55, inv. 4740, leg. 13/19; and various correspondence, AGN, DGG, 2.311M, caja 87, exps. 21 and 27.

86 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 61–2Google Scholar, 116.

87 Boylan, ‘Revolutionary and Not-So-Revolutionary’, p. 178.

88 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 172. In a similar vein, Adalberto Tejeda, the ardently anticlerical strongman of Veracruz, described Rome as ‘the most extensive capitalist enterprise in the world’, with its financial tentacles wrapped around petroleum, shipping lines and railways: Adalberto Tejeda to Agapito Domínguez, 19 Aug. 1935, APTGC, caja 133, exp. 10.

89 Meyer, Michael, Huerta: A Political Portrait (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), pp. 167–70Google Scholar.

90 Cohen, Stanley, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (3rd edition, London: Routledge, 1972), pp. 26–7Google Scholar; see also Walkowitz, Judith, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 82–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Jenkins, Philip, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

92 Ben Fallaw, ‘“Anti-Priests” versus Catholic-Socialists in 1930s Campeche: Federal Teachers, Revolutionary Communes, and Anticlericalism’, in Butler (ed.) Faith and Impiety, pp. 203–23.

93 Kristin Harper, ‘Revolutionary Tabasco in the Times of Tomás Garrido Canabal, 1922–1935: A Mexican House Divided’, unpubl. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, 2004, p. 144. See also Alan Knight, ‘The Mentality and Modus Operandi of Revolutionary Anticlericalism’, in Butler (ed.), Faith and Impiety, p. 34.

94 Arnulfo Pérez to Tomás Garrido Canabal, 19 Nov. 1934, APTGC, caja 133, exp. 14.

95 See, for example, Tomás Garrido Canabal to Miguel Cantón, 20 Aug. 1929, AGN, APTGC, caja 141, exp. 12.

96 ‘La Llegada de Obispo Hernández,’ La poesía tabasqueña, APTGC, caja 133, exp. 15, fifth stanza:

Las viudas; las solteronas
de genio refunfuñón
que nunca habieron varón;
las arrugadas matronas
y un enjambre de jamonas
de hábito josefinas
con cruces clavos y espinas
van rezándole a San Pablo,
porque no las tiente el Diablo
como si fueran gallinas
Todas con afán se inclinan
la bienvenida a ofrecer
y entre toser y toser
el cumplido no declinan
Las viejas hasta rechinan
si no alcanzan a besar
y con tal del beso dar,
una la hace en la rodilla
y otras en la rabadilla

97 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 157.

98 Meyer, La Cristiada, vol. 2, pp. 201–2; see also www.phoenixmasonry.org/10,000_famous_freemasons/Volume_4_Q_to_Z.htm.

99 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 157.

100 See ibid., pp. 149–77; and Rodríguez, Cristóbal, Cauterios y látigos (Jalapa: Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, 1933), pp. 215–26Google Scholar.

101 El Rojo: Periódico Revolucionario del Pueblo y para el Pueblo de Ocotlán, Jal., 14 May 1927, Archivo Miguel Palomar y Vizcara, caja 81, exp. 14, fojas 495–6: ‘Su naturaleza de macho se excita al recibir el aliento de la boca de la hembra y procura descubrir secretos que solamente tu tienes derecho a saber. Fíjate si no, por qué las confesiones de la mujer son tan largas y las del hombre tan breves.’

102 Bantjes, ‘Burning Saints, Molding Minds’, p. 272.

103 Rodríguez, Cristóbal, La influencia del clero en la América Latina (Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1931), p. 163Google Scholar; Ramírez Rancaño, El patriarca Pérez, pp. 210–11.

104 Faust, Betty, Mexican Rural Development and the Plumed Serpent: Technology and Maya Cosmology in the Tropical Forest of Campeche, Mexico (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1998)Google Scholar, p. 26.

105 Diodoro Quiroz Martínez to Tomás Garrido Canabal, 1 May 1934, AGN, APTGC, caja 133, exp. 14.

106 Elsewhere, Rodríguez speculated that a gay priest invented confession to hear women's secrets: for his two contradictory claims, see Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 166; and Cauterios y látigos, pp. 222–4.

107 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 151.

108 Assad, Carlos Martínez, El laboratorio de la revolución: el Tabasco garridista (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1979), pp. 43–4Google Scholar.

109 See also Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional, p. 187.

110 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, pp. 149–53.

111 Rodríguez, Cauterios y látigos, p. 221.

112 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 165.

113 Ibid., p. 152.

114 Polilla, Father (Edmundo Peimbert Colombia), Desde mi púlpito (Mexico City: n.p., 1933), pp. 88–90Google Scholar. For Polilla's true identity, see Edmundo Peimbert Colombia to Tomás Garrido Canabal, 8 Dec. 1934, AGN, APTGC, caja 9, exp. 141.

115 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, p. 189.

116 Alexander, Ruth, The ‘Girl’ Problem: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; see also Odem, Mary, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

117 Bliss, Katherine Elaine and Blum, Ann, ‘Dangerous Driving: Adolescence, Sex, and the Gendered Experience of Public Space in Early-Twentieth-Century Mexico City’, in French, William and Bliss, Katherine Elaine (eds.), Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), pp. 164–5Google Scholar.

118 Ibid., pp. 165–7.

119 Anne Rubenstein, ‘The War on Las Pelonas: Modern Women and Their Enemies, Mexico City, 1924’, in Olcott et al. (eds.), Sex in Revolution, pp. 57–8, 63.

120 Ugarte, Marta Eugenia García, Génesis del porvenir: sociedad y política en Querétaro (1913–1940) (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997)Google Scholar, p. 396.

121 Alvarado, Salvador, Actuación revolucionaria del general Salvador Alvarado en Yucatán (3rd edition, Mexico City: Costa Amic, 1965)Google Scholar, p. 49.

122 ‘La mujer y el clero’, 3 Dec. 1934, AGN, APTGC, caja 86, exp. 18.

123 Rodríguez, Sobre la brecha, pp. 159, 174.

124 Pablos, Julia Tuñón, Women in Mexico: A Past Unveiled (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1999), pp. 96–7Google Scholar.

125 Alonso, Ana María, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995), pp. 122–3Google Scholar.

126 Macías, Ana, Against All Odds: The Feminist Movement in Mexico to 1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. xiv, 90–8Google Scholar.

127 Vaughan, Mary Kay, ‘Modernizing Patriarchy: State Policies, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930–1940’, in Dore, Elizabeth and Molyneux, Maxine (eds.), Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 200Google Scholar.

128 Stephanie Coontz argues that only in the last two centuries has the idea of companionate marriage, which began in Western Europe and North America, been globalised: see Coontz, Stephanie, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking, 2005)Google Scholar.

129 Wardlow, Holly and Hirsch, Jennifer, ‘Introduction’, in Hirsch, and Wardlow, (eds.), Modern Love: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship & Companionate Marriage (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 1–31Google Scholar, esp. p. 9.

130 The idea of marriage being based on ‘attachment and will’ was present (though contested) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Mexico: see Seed, Patricia, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 47–60Google Scholar, 119. By the 1830s it was widespread in Mexico: see Arrom, Silvia, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 206–58Google Scholar.

131 For a statistical history of civil and sacramental marriages as well as free unions in twentieth-century Mexico, see Salgado, Julian Quilodrán, Un siglo de matrimonio en México (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2001)Google Scholar.

132 Eugenia Rodríguez S., ‘Civilizing Domestic Life in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, 1750–1850’, in Dore and Molyneux (eds.), Hidden Histories, p. 88.

133 Maxine Molyneux, ‘Twentieth-Century State Formations in Latin America’, in Dore and Molyneux (eds.), Hidden Histories, pp. 33–81.

134 Ibid., pp. 37, 53.

135 Smith, Stephanie J., Gender and the Mexican Revolution: Yucatán Women and the Realities of Patriarchy (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 3, 13.

136 Olcott, Revolutionary Women, p. 15.

137 Ibid., pp. 183–5.

138 Ibid., p. 180.

139 Mary Kay Vaughan, ‘Introduction: Pancho Villa, the Daughters of Mary, and the Modern Woman: Gender in the Long Mexican Revolution’, in Olcott et al. (eds.), Sex in Revolution, pp. 25, 28.