The Nazas-Aguanaval Group: Radical Priests, Catholic Networks, and Maoist Politics in Northern Mexico

Abstract

This article deals with the emergence of the Nazas-Aguanaval group of priests in the northern region of La Laguna, in northern Mexico, after the Second Vatican Council and the 1968 Medellín Conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM). I argue that both the reformism of the Second Vatican council and the push for a “preferential option for the poor” provided the space for an alliance between the progressive priests of the Nazas-Aguanaval group and the Maoist activists of Política Popular (People's Politics, PP). In this context, it was the Nazas-Aguanaval priests who introduced Política Popular's Maoism in La Laguna and Chiapas among peasants and students. At the same time, the radical tradition and economic conditions of La Laguna made it possible for local left-wing activists to connect with transnational currents such as the Movement of Priests for the Third World and Christians for Socialism. Based on a broad array of sources—including oral histories, Maoist pamphlets, local newspapers, Mexican security archives, and documentation from Mexican and Latin American priests’ organizations—this article brings together the regional history of protest in La Laguna, the historiography of the Global Sixties, and the history of the progressive factions of the Catholic Church in Latin America.

Lost among the chronicles of the emergence of a powerful movement of squatters in the northern Mexican region of La Laguna in the 1970s, we can find the story of a formidable alliance between students, priests, and squatters.¹ This coalition provided hundreds of impoverished rural immigrants with housing, services, and political power and created one of the most enduring experiments in collective farming in Mexico, the Ejido Colectivo Batopilas.² To explain the development of this coalition, previous studies on the squatters’ movement in La Laguna have pointed to the survival of local traditions of rural working-class radicalism, including a rich but under-studied history of lagunero Maoist militancy.³ The literature on Mexico's participation in the growing left-wing Catholic movements that emerged after the Second Vatican Council further recalls La Laguna as one of the few sites where direct involvement of local clergy resulted in popular mobilization.⁴

The case of the progressive priests of the Nazas-Aguanaval group in La Laguna stands out in a field dominated by the intellectual history of the reception of liberation theology in Mexico and the trajectory of left-wing bishops such as Samuel Ruiz in San Cristóbal, Chiapas, and Sergio Méndez Arceo in Cuernavaca, Morelos.⁵ For instance, many historians have treated the diocese of Cuernavaca in the 1960s as the sole paradigm of progressive Catholicism in Mexico. Every Sunday during these years, the city of Cuernavaca witnessed the “Red Bishop” Méndez Arceo defend socialism, embrace liberation theology, and promote liturgical innovations such as folk mariachi music at mass.⁶

However, Méndez Arceo's tenure has been questioned by recent studies that have emphasized the problematic relationship between progressive Catholicism and the indigenous and traditional mestizo communities’ religiosity. As Jennifer Scheper Hughes shows in her study of the Méndez Arceo campaign against images and popular devotions in Morelos, the liberatory project of progressive Catholics clashed with deeply ingrained religious traditions and local customs developed during colonial times. The idea of a human God involved in the struggles of everyday people competed with a suffering Christ already appropriated by the exploited communities.⁷ Only when both sides of the Catholic idea of Christ could be combined the liberatory project advanced.

As we have seen, several scholars have focused on regions of southern Mexico where the indigenous element is salient and the progressive Church developed an emphasis on defending the rights of the native population.⁸ Nonetheless, they have overlooked the experiences of northern Mexico, where progressive Catholicism emerged in a totally different setting. As we will see when discussing the revolutionary tradition of the La Laguna, the Nazas-Aguanaval group worked in a region without indigenous communities, which was dominated by Torreón, a highly modern urban center, with a mestizo hinterland of recently created rural communities.⁹

The experience of the Nazas-Aguanaval group must be understood as part of a popular movement that involved the participation of individuals who identified as Catholics, rather than a Catholic movement per se. In the movements of peasants, students, and squatters of La Laguna, the religious component was never absent but it was not at the forefront of its organization. This article thus contributes to the literature on Catholic progressivism in Mexico during the 1970s with a case study of how Catholics were involved in leftist politics, the revolutionary ideas they held, and their attempt to live the preferential option for the poor.

The Nazas-Aguanaval priest group emerged in September 1970 out of the attempt by the diocese of Torreón to implement a pastoral de conjunto (joint pastoral plan) that would create six priest groups among the local clergy. The pastoral de conjunto involved a high level of collaboration and dialogue among all the ministers of the dioceses and lay people, through a plan established by the bishop. Diocesan priests Benigno Martínez, José Batarse, Armando Sánchez de la O., and Jesús and Tobías de la Torre formed one of those teams. In the mid 1970s, the group had 12 members, representing 17 percent of the diocesan clergy, and became an active minority within the diocese of Torreón, working in urban and rural parishes. Inspired by the ideas of the Second Vatican Council and the Medellín meeting of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM), this group of priests tried to push the diocese in a more politically engaged direction.

The priests began working with a youth ministry and inside Catholic organizations such as the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano (Christian Families’ Movement, MFC), mainly among the middle classes. The rise of a strong popular movement in the region between 1971 and 1977, reinforced by members of the Maoist organization Política Popular and local student activists, redirected the political commitment of Benigno Martínez, Armando Sánchez, and José Batarse.¹⁰ These three participated in the activities of the Maoists, and faced jail and exile. Eventually, Batarse and Sánchez left the priesthood to join the Política Popular as full-time members. Conversely, Fr. Jesús de la Torre got involved in defending both the popular movement and his colleagues’ commitment, appearing in the local press and on television. This combination of political involvement with the popular movement and public presence became one of the group's vehicles for engaging with the preferential option for the poor and facing the changes brought by the 1960s—scientific advances, the sexual revolution, issues of underdevelopment,the push for democracy. In the early 1980s, when the popular movement faded, the remnants of the Nazas-Aguanaval group promoted the creation of Christian Base Communities.¹¹ But it was too late, as the tide of progressive Catholicism had receded in La Laguna. The arrival of a new bishop and the beginning of neoliberal reforms in the countryside coincided with the end of the Nazas-Aguanaval group.

To reconstruct the history of the Nazas-Aguanaval group, I refer to the testimonies of two former members, Benigno Martínez and Armando Sánchez, and their political allies in the La Laguna people's movement of the 1970s. The weekly column of father Jesús de la Torre in the local newspaper La Opinión is also essential to map the group's intellectual and political evolution. I examine these sources next to materials and files from the Bishop Sergio Méndez Arceo archive, the municipal archive in Torreón, the First Latin American Conference of Christians for Socialism collection at Columbia University, and the José María “Pichi” Meisegeier collection at the Catholic University in Córdoba, Argentina. The result is a story that combines local and global elements of progressive Catholicism.

To grasp the significance of these Northern Mexican priests, it is necessary to reconsider the history of progressive movements among priests in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Also, we need to center the pastoral and political work of hundreds of Latin American parish priests and religious men and women. Historians have already produced a substantial literature on the emergence of priests’ groups inspired by the Second Vatican Council and the 1968 meeting of the CELAM in Medellín, Colombia.¹² The confluence of Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo (Priests for the Third World) with Peronism in Argentina, and the support of the Chilean Cristianos por el Socialismo in the Unidad Popular coalition have been thoroughly studied as cases of dialogue and cooperation between progressive Catholics and secular leftists.¹³ The less studied case of the Golconda movement in Colombia provides an interesting example of the ample repertoire available to progressive Catholic priests in the 1970s, from armed struggle to social activism in the slums to journalism and theological reflection.¹⁴ Finally, recent histories of the ONIS priest group in Perú show the interaction between foreign-born and local priests in the middle of a revolutionary process led by the armed forces.¹⁵

Parallel studies on Mexico are limited. These include the 1986 classic book edited by Miguel Concha on Christian participation in popular movements, Young-Hyun Jo's 2010 article about Sacerdotes para el Pueblo (Priests for the People), and most recently, Pilar Puertas's study on the Mexican chapter of Christians for Socialism.¹⁶ Leaving aside Concha's seminal book, research on Mexican priests’ movements focuses on the internal history of the Mexican Catholic Church, the overlap between theology and politics, and national organizations. Direct political commitment of diocesan priests in local struggles appears only in Concha's chapter on Christians and the popular movement. In fact, the progressive priests of La Laguna have been absent from the historiography of Latin-American progressive Catholicism. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature by examining those priests’ involvement with local struggles in light of the global changes brought by the Second Vatican Council.

I first situate the alliance between progressive priests and local movements in the history of the revolutionary tradition of La Laguna. Next, I examine the critical role that progressive priests had in facilitating the convergence of Maoist activists and lagunero students. Afterward, I explain how the convoluted history of the Mexican Church, together with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, provided the necessary context for the emergence of the Nazas-Aguanaval group. In the following section, I describe how the “preferential option for the poor” laid out at the 1968 CELAM conference led the Nazas-Aguanaval priests onto a path of more profound political commitment in favor of workers and peasants. Then, I provide a short overview of the participation of the Nazas-Aguanaval group in the Latin American networks of progressive priests that emerged in the early 1970s. Finally, the article concludes with an analysis of the last years of the Nazas-Aguanaval group, from their involvement in the agrarian conflict of the Batopilas vineyard to their final dismissal after the collapse of their leftist allies and the conservative backlash of Pope John Paul II.

La Laguna Radical Tradition

Railroads, cotton, and water availability shaped life conditions in La Laguna. La Laguna was a sparse, uninhabited zone until the late nineteenth century when the construction of a rail line from Mexico City to the northern border with stops in La Laguna allowed the region to prosper. This was part of an effort by the central government to consolidate control over northern Mexico. The development of hydrological infrastructure around the Nazas and Aguanaval rivers, in addition to the presence of seasonal lakes, was crucial for transforming this empty semi-desert area into a prosperous community.

Even though the region of La Laguna comprises municipalities in two states, Coahuila (Torreón, Francisco I. Madero) and Durango (Gómez Palacio and Lerdo), Torreón became the political and economic center of the region. From its humble origins in the late nineteenth century and a population of 50,000 inhabitants in 1920, Torreón became a densely populated city in the 1970s, with a population that had grown fivefold over five decades, reaching 250, 524 inhabitants.¹⁷ The city played a crucial role in the Mexican historical imagination during the twentieth century. It was the site of two decisive battles during the Mexican Revolution, and, starting in 1936, La Laguna witnessed the most significant postrevolutionary agrarian reform projects, which lasted 57 years. Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas intervened and expropriated the land to distribute it to almost 32,000 sharecroppers and laborers.¹⁸ One of the chief seats of Mexican Capitalism was transformed overnight into a gigantic experiment in collective farming and state intervention.

Throughout the twentieth century, Torreón, with its combination of industry, farming, and commerce, represented the contradictions between struggles for democracy, an active national state, and a capitalist development model. At the end of the 1960s, cotton production in La Laguna entered a crisis characterized by high unemployment. Factories and industries (soap, cattle food) that had been part of the original economic boom of the city faced foreclosure, and political unrest filled the ranks of Torreón's working class.¹⁹ Previously, a wave of rural migration to urban areas had taken Torreón and Gómez Palacio to their peak urban density levels. In the early 1960s, they reached their highest levels of population growth. While the population density began to diminish after 1970, both cities experienced territorial expansion booms caused by the self-managed construction of houses by the urban poor.²⁰

In the 1970s, a wave of protests and radicalism led by high school students struck La Laguna.²¹ These protests began as purely local affairs, with strikes for better working conditions led by sanitation workers in Torreón and demands for better public services in Gómez Palacio. Still, the protests created a small group of militant cadres that included Catholics influenced by the pastoral work of the Nazas-Agunaval group. They could have stayed an isolated student affair, but their contact with the Nazas-Aganaval group changed that. It was actually the priests who brought the Maoists to La Laguna.

The Política Popular (PP) Maoists arrived at Torreon after a fortuitous encounter in 1971 between a brigadista (militant), Alberto Anaya, and Fr. José Batarse. Batarse gave a lecture at Juárez University (UJED) in Durango's capital titled “Analysis of Reality Based on God's Laws” and made a great impression on Anaya. Anaya, future leader of the Partido del Trabajo (Labor Party) in the 1990s, informed PP about the Nazas-Aguanaval activities. As a result, PP founder Adolfo Orive traveled multiple times in 1971 from Bahía de Banderas, in the western coastal state of Nayarit, to Torreón to convince José Batarse to allow the young activists of PP to join the priests in their social activism among the urban poor. The Nazas-Aguanaval group analyzed PP documents and compared them with Church positions on the social question developed after the Second Vatican Council and Medellín Conference. The Nazas-Aguanaval priests found them compatible and adopted PP's political analysis and some concepts regarding the role of “the people” as “the subject of its own history.” They even asked the Maoist to develop a diagnostic of the social conditions of the region and then an action plan for them.²² Later in the article, we will see how the priests applied their vision of the preferential option for the poor to the squatter movement of La Laguna and coincided with the Maoists in their support of workers and peasants.

PP began in Mexico City in the aftermath of the 1968 student movement, as a coalition of student activists that included Adolfo Orive, a former student of the French economist Charles Bettelheim, and a group of economics students from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN). PP members had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Some were middle-class students from the country's interior, while others, like Orive, were the children of former high-ranking officials in the federal government.²³ The coalition adopted a strategy of creating organizations fiercely independent of governmental control in the countryside and the new urban slums emerging in the peripheries of Mexican cities. Their political commitment combined a single-minded revolutionary élan with leftist sectarianism and a highly flexible sense of coalition politics. They stressed that a correct political line meant that they had to “live, work, and fight side by side with the masses. We have to know the needs and desires of the masses through their problems, traditions, and hopes.”²⁴ Following this premise, these former university students worked and lived with peasants and squatters, cultivating an image of self-sacrifice, altruism, and courage. At the same time, they led their organization's day-to-day operations according to “the wishes of the people,” expressed in assemblies where all the inhabitants of their communities had a say. The tactic was as effective as it was radical. During the 1970s, these Maoist militants followed a simple credo of getting involved in daily life struggles for water, public services, and demands of union democracy and better salaries.

Javier Gil, one of the original PP militants who moved to Torreon in 1971, explained their arrival by underscoring the role of the Nazas-Aguanaval group: “We did not have a tactical nor strategical plan. No, we arrived to promote the mass movement using Batarse's and other priests’ contacts and work as a foundation. We must recognize their good disposition to receive us, introduce us to people, and support us in everything. Our relationship with them created the possibility of reaching out to peasants.”²⁵ It took Javier Gil and Hugo Andres Araujo, the initial PP group, at least three years to consolidate an alliance with local activists, workers, and peasants. However, when the time came, they had strong roots in the new irregular settlements growing in the urban areas of La Laguna and a beachhead in the small sanitation workers union of Torreón.

The Local Approach: The Student Movement in La Laguna, 1971-74

The explosion of militancy and popular activism during the 1970s in La Laguna upended the apparent calm reported by PP militants on their arrival in the area. Between 1971 and 1973, students at several local high schools and community colleges in Torreón fought to incorporate their schools into the University of Coahuila system. They also advocated for creating institutions of co-governance (consejos paritarios) between academics, students, and authorities. Besides marching in the streets, students closed their schools to protest reforms to curricula and evaluation methods at the Instituto Tecnológico Regional de La Laguna (ITRL). Finally, in 1972 the students went beyond local demands and engaged in acts of regional solidarity when they suspended classes in support of the protests organized by students at other tecnológicos in northern Mexico.²⁶

PP militants became professors at the Coahuila University unit at Torreon. There they began to contact the already mobilized local students. Hugo Andrés Araujo, a former student of economics at UNAM and PP brigadista, called them social-inquietos (socially restless).²⁷ At that moment, dozens of students regarded PP as a vehicle to deepen their political commitment. Miguel Murillo, a medical student at that time, who had been working in La Laguna and had contacts with different groups in working-class neighborhoods and with peasant land petitioners, related the students’ exposure to PP activism as follows:

[I]n Política Popular we started to structure a movement with a method. First, we started to change our attitude. We started listening to the people and taking into account their interests. We took a stance on a series of issues, and we had to be consistent with them. . . . We were embarking on a movement in the short, medium, and long term. We started making contacts; we started to form groups of land petitioners in some places like Corona, in San Miguel, to help them do the paperwork.²⁸

Soon, student mobilization merged with popular demands articulated by peasants and squatters. Several of the most politicized student organizations moved away from traditional academic issues, leaving their classrooms to “integrate with the people” in the new working-class neighborhoods and the factories. Together, students and squatters occupied lands in Torreón, Francisco I. Madero, and Gómez Palacio, where they founded new “independent” communities with revolutionary names such as Tierra y Libertad (1973), Camilo Torres (1974), and Rubén Jaramillo (1975), among others.²⁹

Discussing the beginning of the occupation movement, Father Jesús de la Torre, one of the members of the Nazas-Aguanaval group, wrote in April 1972: “At night we can see the fires from the tents. Some of the locals have even commented that it looks beautiful, almost like an Exodus.”³⁰ Soon, students and priests followed them to a land burned by the sun, full of bugs, and punished by the elements. Two years later when an American researcher, Larry Meyer, asked them about the reasons for their political involvement in the urban movement, the priests argued they had an obligation to follow the poor into their embrace of political action: “When the wolf wants to destroy the sheep, there must be the shepherd to defend them or die with them.”³¹ As we will see later in the article, their mutual commitment with the urban poor joined radicalized priests and radicalized students.

At the peak of the movement, young activists faced the repression of municipal authorities and police. The crackdown coincided with the growth of PP in the working-class neighborhoods of La Laguna and with the presidential election of 1976. The response of lagunero students to repression was different from that of their peers at the tecnológicos in Chihuahua, who joined the emerging guerrilla cells of the September 23rd Communist League.³² As in many other parts of Mexico and contrary to the assumptions of left-wing militants, state repression and revolutionary ideals alone were not directly conducive to armed struggle.

The expansion and development of PP and the student movement in La Laguna held distinctive features. First, most brigadistas were teenagers or young adults from the local middle and high schools. Second, they had a militant mystique of self-sacrifice and ideological purity that strongly permeated all their attitudes and framed their actions with a dogmatism that quickly turned into sectarianism. They consistently declared that “the partidos oficiales” [the official parties, that is, the small “left-wing” parties recognized and supported by the Mexican government, such as the Partido Popular Socialista (People's Socialist Party, or PPS)] fight for small gains, such as government posts obtained through elections. They end up using the people and betraying the cause of the proletarian revolution.”³³ Based on this view, PP militants thought of themselves as possessing the “only correct ideological line” toward revolution.

Maoism was utterly hostile to Catholicism in China during the 1950s and the Jacobin tradition of the Mexican left was not precisely amicable to cooperation with the Church.³⁴ Moreover, former student activists from Torreón public schools, such as Héctor Ehrenzweig, recall their constant debates with conservative students from the Jesuit institution, Carlos Pereyra high school.³⁵ PP broke with this militant atheism and provided an ideological justification for cooperation. In a 1973 pamphlet that instructed its brigadistas on how to form a mass organization, PP advocated for strict respect of people's religious beliefs and identified “progressive priests” as friends of the people. The pamphlet declared: “Regarding the priests that help the people, we have to support them. . . . Many progressive priests have sincerely joined people's struggles because their spirits have been sensitive to the pain and despair of the masses. The revolutionaries are friends of these priests and extend their hands to them as comrades.”³⁶

PP militants were aware of the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council and understood the weight of Catholic tradition among Mexican population. They did not see any reason to handicap their movement by antagonizing a potential ally. In contrast to their intransigence in other matters, the positions of PP on religion and popular religiosity enabled the convergence of students, activists, and progressive Catholics. At the end, PP political heterodoxy and Nazas-Aguanaval group solidarity with the poor overrode the students’ prejudices against Catholic involvement and Maoist atheism.

The Mexican Church and the Impact of the Second Vatican Council

On October 16, 1976, Coahuila's state police detained Benigno Martínez, a Catholic priest, along with a group of PP activists, under bogus charges but with the clear intention of punishing their support of peasant and worker struggles in La Laguna. Fr. Benigno's trajectory exemplifies how the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council allowed the emergence of a progressive tendency in the Mexican clergy.

Born in León, Guanajuato, in a family of five brothers, Martínez enrolled in 1966 in the order of the Misioneros del Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit Missionaries) and studied in Mexico City's Altillo seminary. There, he was influenced by the ideas of the Second Vatican Council and collaborated with the Secretariado Social Mexicano (Mexican Social Secretariat, SSM) under Pedro Velázquez. Martínez spent a few months working in the slum of Cerro del Judío in Mexico City and later worked as an advisor to the Juventud Obrera Católica (Young Catholic Workers, JOC). That experience changed him. After requesting permission to abandon his order, he moved to Torreón in August of 1969, looking for a place where he could work as a priest committed to the idea of social change. At his arrival in La Laguna, Benigno worked in the town of San Pedro de las Colonias, promoting the liturgy and enrolling peasants in the Catholic organizations of the diocese. Despite his being one year short in his theology studies, the bishop of Torreón, Fernando Romo, ordained him as a priest on February 2, 1970. Bishop Romo then appointed Benigno head of the youth ministry, and soon he got involved in promoting the ideas of the Second Vatican Council and the 1968 CELAM conference.

Later, as a rural parish priest, Father Benigno Martínez was fundamental in connecting PP activists with a group of discontented farmhands from the Batopilas vineyard, then a privately owned farm dedicated to producing grapes for making brandy.³⁷ When the farmhands stopped receiving their salaries in 1972, they organized a strike with the support of the Nazas-Aguanaval priests. The state government expropriated the farm and in 1974 Batopilas became an experiment in communal farming and self-management when the former farmworkers became ejidatarios and took over the farm. The detention of Fr. Martínez and PP militants happened in the context of the transformation of Batopilas into an ejido (communal farm).³⁸ The police accused them of engaging in acts of vandalism, although the actual perpetrators belonged to the Partido Popular Socialista.³⁹ The conflict between PP, which supported the squatter and peasant movement in La Laguna, and the government of Coahuila escalated during the second week of October of 1976. Benigno Martínez was one of a group of progressive priests who had supported the movement since 1971, and who were targeted and harassed by the state police, together with PP activists. One of these priests, Fr. José Batarse Charur, hid in the parish house of the town of Francisco I. Madero under the protection of his parishioners, while the police waited outside to take him to prison.⁴⁰

Most accounts about Fr. Benigno Martínez's detention and the persecution of José Batarse emphasize the reaction against Coahuila's state government and the broad coalition that came to Batarse's defense. Middle-class Catholics, Méndez Arceo, squatters, and even the national leader of the PAN raised their voices in support of Batarse. All of the accounts mention the protection that the bishop of Torreón, Fernando Romo, provided to Batarse and his courageous stand in support of “people's causes.”⁴¹ Indeed, Bishop Romo intervened on behalf of Torreón's sanitation workers during their strike in 1973.⁴² In his Palm Sunday homily of April 15, 1973 Romo spoke of the unsolved problem of land distribution and the suffering of the squatters and encouraged his parishioners to understand and support the struggle of workers demanding better working conditions. At the end of the homily, published in El Siglo de Torreón, Romo declared: “We have to understand that, in case of doubt, Christians should always act on behalf of those in need because that was the position of our Lord Jesus Christ.”⁴³ Romo acted on several occasions to protect his priests, but he resented it when their political commitment got in the way of respecting Church discipline.⁴⁴

In a press release published by El Siglo de Torreón on October 24, 1976, Bishop Romo complained about the protesters and the squatter organizations’ demand to keep Batarse in Torreón after Romo ordered his transfer to Chiapas. He accused PP of coercing Batarse to stay and disobey him. With this statement, Romo sought to reinforce the image he had built as a bishop committed to the welfare of his people: “My concern, affection, and love for the poor and dispossessed, hurt too much and for so long, [have] always kept me looking for the best ways to serve them. That is why I chose priests that could serve them best.”⁴⁵ However, Romo also expressed his weariness with the “methods” that led the common people to assume a disgruntled attitude instead of an accepting one. Like other Mexican bishops and the Mexican Episcopal Conference, Romo had trouble dealing with the challenges posed by left-wing priests involved in social activism with workers, peasants, and squatters. Bishops oscillated between dialoguing with the radical priests, transferring them, issuing calls to obedience, and denouncing their attempts to use the cause of the “oppressed people” as part of an “international plot.”⁴⁶

Romo and other bishops put institutional obedience over these radical priests’ prerogatives, but he always protected his priests from governmental repression. When the state police kidnapped Fr. Jesús de la Torre in 1978, Romo published an open letter to President José López Portillo asking for De la Torre's release.⁴⁷ However, Romo never abandoned his role as an institutional leader defending the unity of the Church. In 1976, he declared: “There are not two Churches, the bishop's and the people's; the Church is one, and the Lord put Peter and the apostles, among them the Pope and the bishops, in charge.”⁴⁸

The priests of the Nazas-Aguanaval group had a different interpretation of Romo's reaction. On November 20, 1976, Benigno Martínez sent a letter to the bishop analyzing the conflict around the detention of PP militants related to the Batopilas farm and its resolution, from the progressive priests’ point of view. In the letter, Martínez criticized Romo for forcing Batarse into the crucible of supporting the popular movement or being obedient to the bishop. He used a Maoist trope, “a lack of integration with the people,” to explain Bishop Romo's shortcomings.⁴⁹ The clash between the Nazas-Aguanaval group and Bishop Romo was harsh but never reached a breaking point.

The latter episode is illustrative of the profound transformations that affected the Church during this period and of the set of conflicts that put into question deep-seated notions of what it meant to be a Catholic in the political realm. These transformations should be understood against the backdrop of the changes set in motion by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). In less than a decade, the climate created by the council's reforms enabled a small but highly active section of the Mexican clergy to move from sponsoring anticommunist demonstrations to allying with left-wing activists.⁵⁰

The Second Vatican Council promoted a more decentralized and less hierarchical Church, emphasizing individual conscience and openness toward other religious and philosophical traditions.⁵¹ Conservative sectors of the Mexican Church, particularly bishops like Antonio López Aviña of Durango, and others who identified with traditionalist and integralist perspectives, faced the changes imposed by the Second Vatican Council with a sense of uneasiness and resistance.⁵² Their weariness was probably informed by the Church's previous encounters with progressive ideologies. Indeed, the constant clashes with radical Liberalism in the nineteenth century, and later with the postrevolutionary governments of the 1920s, set a precedent that was hard to overcome.

Considering the religious persecution experienced by the Church during the prior decades, it is difficult to imagine an attitude for the Mexican bishops other than active opposition to Liberalism and socialism—on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, conservative positions among the Mexican bishops were hegemonic. Historically, this conservatism did not approve of the existence of independent Catholic lay movements. As a result, the bishops’ relationship with political movements with ample Catholic participation but outside of the hierarchy's control, such as sinarquismo or the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party, or PAN), was always ambivalent.⁵³ These attitudes partly explain why the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, with a new role for laypeople, never got traction among the Mexican hierarchy who remained attached to the older model of Catholic Action.

Nonetheless, the Mexican Church stumbled upon the task of modernizing its structures and doctrine. The bishops gave a new impetus to the reading of Scripture. They made timid moves towards collegiality by creating informal groups to exchange opinions and experiences.⁵⁴ Robert Mackin argues that two main factors prevented the emergence of a solid progressive faction in Mexico's Church: the subordinate position of the Church to the state; and its failure to advocate for a set of social policies that could compete with the national-revolutionary welfare state.⁵⁵ In Brazil and Chile, bishops, priests, and theologians were experimenting with new pastoral practices and organizational innovations like the comunidades eclesiales de base (Christian Base Communities, or CEBs). In contrast, in Mexico, the bishops were trying to reinforce the model of 1930s Catholic Action to get closer to their flock.⁵⁶ Despite this general pattern, a few Mexican bishops and priests tried to emulate their South American peers. They soon gained notoriety for their actions and ideas.

At the end of the Second Vatican Council, a group of eight bishops led by Alfonso Sánchez Tinoco from Papantla formed the Unión de Mutua Ayuda Episcopal (Episcopal Mutual Aid Union or UMAE) and attempted a renewal of the pastoral work in their dioceses by promoting cooperation between bishops interested in incorporating the council's innovations. Members of the UMAE invited the French priest and scholar Fernand Boulard to research their communities’ social conditions and help them develop a plan to attend to the faithfuls’ needs, based on the spirit of Vatican II. The result of that collaboration was a report published in 1966, exploring the demography and economy of nine dioceses.⁵⁷ Also, starting in 1965, the UMAE partnered with the Instituto de Pastoral Latinoamericana (Latin American Pastoral Institute) to impart courses introducing hundreds of priests and nuns to the ideas and practices of a pastoral de conjunto.⁵⁸ In 1966, the UMAE formed a committee to promote the pastoral de conjunto and advocated for the formation of diocesan commissions centered on pastoral ministry, with uneven results.

In this context, under the guidance of Bishop Fernando Romo and following the pattern of the pastoral de conjunto, a group of progressive priests developed pastoral and social work among the farmers and land laborers of La Laguna's countryside. They had begun to move from working with middle-class Catholic organizations such as the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano to engaging directly with the mass of impoverished urban dwellers and young peasants looking for land.⁵⁹ The bishop tolerated them because of the conditions of his see, which was in dire need of priests. According to a study at the University of Trent, in 1967 there were only 14 parishes served by 52 priests in the diocese of Torreón.⁶⁰ As each priest had to minister to almost 7000 parishioners, Bishop Romo needed to preserve his forces and was open to recruiting any priest he could get. Romo's policy opened the opportunity for priests expelled from more conservative dioceses to seek refuge in Torreón.

However, in a diocese that had only 12 years of existence, the resistance to the innovations of the Second Vatican Council and the political commitment of these priests came from sectors of the clergy and the middle classes who supported a more traditional view of Catholicism. These traditionalists complained about the abandonment of the fiercely anticommunist outlook of the previous period and expressed a longing for a Church “purely” committed to the spiritual and sacramental.⁶¹ Between 1970 and 1974, a conservative columnist identified as F. Villarreal carried that critique in the editorial pages of the local newspaper La Opinión, constantly debating Fr. Jesús de la Torre's articles on Catholic progressivism: “They [the Nazas-Aguanaval group] don't believe in God but in the historical process. The ‘Theology of God's death’ turned them into worshipers of Marx. They don't believe in anything, and that is why they preach nihilism.”⁶² These strong words haunted the practitioners of the preferential option of the poor at Torreón and the rest of Latin America. The Conservative critique denied the religious element of the progressives’ practices and ideas. The critique certainly responds to the emphasis the progressives gave to the matters of the world, but it obscures the whole range of progressive responses to the spiritual and religious practice.

As noted above, Bishop Romo maintained an ambiguous stance toward the popular movements and the active participation of some of his priests in them. In 1973, Romo defended the strike by Torreón's sanitation workers, but one year later, he explained his declaration of support as an attempt to raise awareness of the needs of the poor, rather than an endorsement of the strikers.⁶³ Still, Romo's position seems far more progressive than the one taken by Durango's archbishop, Antonio López Aviña, who did not allow the introduction of any progressive practices in his diocese.⁶⁴

The Preferential Option for the Poor: The People's Priests of La Laguna

In 1968, the Second CELAM Conference in Medellín inspired priests to further discuss the transformations promoted by the Second Vatican Council and their application to the Latin American context. In the conclusions of the conference, the progressive wing of the Latin American Church found its rallying cry: the preferential option for the poor. For these progressives, it was time to shift away from the Church's traditional siding with the powerful and wealthy and, instead, move “closer to the poor in sincerity and brotherhood.”⁶⁵ Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Medellín, internal conflict was rife within the Mexican Catholic Church. A small group of newly ordained priests pushed for the implementation of measures according to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. From the seminaries of Mexico City to the urban parishes of Guadalajara, Monterrey, and León, voices of change confronted the ecclesiastical establishment. They sought to give new life to the exhausted structures of the Mexican Catholic Action.⁶⁶

At some dioceses, compromises between bishops and local oligarchies hindered the push for change. For instance, under the pressure of local business organizations, the bishop of León forced the priests Armando García, Natividad Fuentes, and Carlos Zarazúa—who were working with the JOC—to leave the city. These priests moved to Torreón, where they found refuge and a space to work following the principles of progressive Catholicism developed after the Second Vatican Council and the Medellín Conference. There, they met with Fr. Benigno Martínez and became the core of the Nazas-Aguanaval group. Martínez had traveled from Mexico City to Torreón, leaving behind an elite-oriented Catholicism and instead adopting a vision centered on the preferential option for the poor, thanks to his contact with the progressives from the JOC, and the SSM, and with those supporting the work of SSM director Pedro Velázquez.⁶⁷

In 1983, after 13 years of pastoral work, the Nazas-Aguanaval group had a presence in the parishes of Matamoros, Cristo Redentor del Hombre (Torreón), La Unión, Francisco I. Madero, and Concordia. They tried to push the diocese in a more politically engaged direction, following the ideas of the Second Vatican Council, Medellín, and the mutualism of UMAE.⁶⁸ Most of them had humble origins and were in their early thirties in 1968. Some came from the Catholic traditionalist hotbed of Guanajuato, but others were part of La Laguna's middle class.

As we saw earlier, the figure that brought together PP and the Nazas-Aguanaval group was the priest José “Pepe” Batarse Charur. After finishing his chemical engineering degree at the tecnológico in La Laguna, Batarse entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in Monterrey. He studied in Spain and Rome before returning to La Laguna to minister.⁶⁹ His name appeared regularly in the announcements of weddings, baptisms, and Catholic charity events in the Society section of El Siglo de Torreón. Conversely, Father Jesús de la Torre's column in La Opinión portrays Batarse as a cleric highly involved in the inner life of the dioceses. Indeed, Batarse led the efforts to renew Catholic Action in Torreón and supervised the local JOC. Fellow priest Benigno Martínez even saw in Batarse the potential to become bishop, given his prominent leadership in the diocese.⁷⁰

Another sign of these priests’ promotion of progressive Catholicism was the announcement of a series of talks sponsored by a Catholic Action organization, the Unión Femenina Católica Mexicana (Union of Mexican Catholic Women, UFCM) in the cathedral of Torreón. Buried in the social section of newspapers along seemingly unimportant stories, the announcements gave news of talks by Fr. Benigno Martínez about the Second Vatican Council and its reforms, to be held each Friday afternoon during Pascua (Lent) of 1972.⁷¹ Later, on August 26, the Nazas-Aguanaval group published a manifesto in El Siglo de Torreón, denouncing the detention of peasants from the La Victoria and La Fe ranches. In the manifesto, the priests condemned governmental repression and declared themselves in favor of the struggles of “workers, peasants, railroad workers, electricians, students, and squatters.” Moreover, they asked Catholics belonging to the rich and influential sectors of society to “review before God their Christian commitment to their fellow brothers who suffer oppression.”⁷² The group's process of radicalization would deepen in the following five years.

From 1971 onward, the Nazas-Aguanaval group became involved in organizing peasants and squatters in La Laguna. They limited their ministerial activities to weekends and at other times served as advisers to their parishioners in their demands for land and services. Through their contact with the PP, the Nazas-Aguanaval priests crossed the line from preaching to actively supporting the struggles of La Laguna's poor. In 1986, Batarse claimed that the turning point was the PP-led sanitation workers’ strike of 1973, when the priests appeared on the picket line in full priestly vestments and deterred the police from engaging in further violence against the protestors.⁷³ From then on, their participation in the popular movement increased.

Conservative media such as El Siglo de Torreón accused the priests of leading the paracaidistas (squatters).⁷⁴ A conservative pundit mocked the priests’ involvement with a satirical piece in El Siglo, stating: “And now people say they plan to invade the bishop's house [Obispado], from which they could carve ten little houses of the right size.”⁷⁵ The truth behind the libel underscores the priests’ commitment to the people but reinstates their position as allies rather than leaders. On Sunday, August 26, 1973, Fr. Batarse stayed after mass with a group of squatters at the Prolongación División del Norte neighborhood. The situation was tense, as the squatters feared that the police would act to repress them. Batarse called Fr. de la Torre, who had a friendly relationship with the occupiers.⁷⁶ The next day the police received a tip from a local snitch accusing the priest of leading the occupation of vacant land. The accuser was one of the corrupt leaders of squatters sponsored by the PRI, which opposed forming an independent squatter organization.⁷⁷ This version of what happened became the most widely known, when El Siglo published a note taking the viewpoint of the priista snitch and the police. The police report and the priests’ version in La Opinión contradict that version and help us to understand the true nature of the relationship between priests and squatters.

Around 1973, the relationship between these Torreón priests and the Maoists of PP evolved into full cooperation in support of peasants and squatters. The priests’ political involvement infuriated the local oligarchy and triggered their persecution by Coahuila's state government. The state police put them under surveillance, beat them, and finally imprisoned them without trial.⁷⁸ Fr. José Batarse and Fr. Armando Sánchez became further radicalized during this process; both left the ministry to become full-time political activists, following on the actions of La Laguna high school students who left school to do the same. The Nazas-Aguanaval priests followed the path chosen by hundreds of other clerics during the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America: redemption through revolution.

The Nazas-Aguanaval Group and the Latin American Priests’ Movements

Between April 23 and April 30, 1972, the Chilean organization Christians for Socialism gathered Catholic clergy and laypeople interested in advancing a socialist agenda in their countries at the Primer Encuentro Latinoamericano de Cristianos por el Socialismo (First Latin American Encounter of Christians for Socialism, or PELCS). The encounter represented the highest point of the Latin American priests’ movements and, for the Nazas-Aguanaval group, the culmination of its involvement with the Latin American network of progressive Catholics.⁷⁹ The Mexican security apparatus and the press carefully followed the meeting. at a distance. In early 1972, government agents reported rumors of an invitation sent to 20 Mexican Catholics (priests, nuns, and laymen) to attend the PELCS conference in Chile. Almost all attention centered on the bishop of Cuernavaca, Sergio Méndez Arceo. Rumors became a reality when Méndez Arceo announced he would attend the conference, although not as a representative of the Mexican Church.

In parallel, a committee of Mexican priests and laypeople involved in social justice initiatives began to prepare a national report to present during the encounter. The report provided a brief left-wing history of the postrevolutionary regime, along with a critical description of the living conditions of workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples during the twentieth century up to 1971, and information about the emergence of a progressive faction among the Mexican clergy.⁸⁰ Its input came from a nascent organization called Grupo Liberación, which evolved into Sacerdotes para el Pueblo.⁸¹ This organization took inspiration from the development, between 1970 and 1971, of various movements involving radical priests in South America: Priests for the Third World in Argentina, Golconda in Colombia, and Christians for Socialism in Chile. Some young priests, among them the Jesuits Luis G. del Valle, Luis Vidales, and Onésimo Cepeda, were behind the organizing effort for Grupo Liberación. The group had connections across 12 Mexican cities, including Mexico City, Monterrey, Torreón, Hermosillo, Poza Rica, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosí, Cuernavaca, Tepic, Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and Zamora.⁸²

Méndez Arceo and the Mexican delegation traveled to Santiago de Chile on April 20, 1972. There, the bishop of Cuernavaca gave the keynote speech to an audience of young radical priests, nuns, and journalists in the hall of a textile union. For seven days, attendants discussed and debated texts from Catholic and Marxist authors, as well as from the Mexican anthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen. They listened to nueva canción (protest folk music) and drafted the final document of the meeting.⁸³ A correspondent sent copies of the text to the United States, where a complete archive remains, and soon an edited version circulated in English and Spanish.⁸⁴ The event gained visibility in the press: a brief article appeared in the New York Times and at least eight Mexico City newspapers covered the event.⁸⁵

In addition to the press coverage of PELCS, the example of Christians for Socialism repeatedly appears in Mexican intelligence documents that narrate the emergence of Priests for the People. Agents of the Federal Security Directorate (DFS) worried about the potential links between Mexican guerrillas, such as the September 23rd Communist League, and progressive Catholics. One DFS report even noted that the geographical zones of influence of the two groups overlapped on the map.⁸⁶

Together, and with considerable journalistic detail, DFS reports and Méndez Arceo's private archives uncover a network of Mexican priests involved in a Latin American movement of radical Church politics that advocated for socialism. The Nazas-Aguanaval group was related to that network. Through their relationship with an Argentinean priest, they were the only Mexican signatories of the letter of Latin American priests sent to the 1971 Synod of Bishops in Rome.⁸⁷ Under the instructions of Pope Paul VI, the synod discussed the role of priests in the modern world and the subjects of peace and justice. Promoted by the Argentinean group Priests for the Third World and signed by dozens of other Latin American priests, the letter tried to influence the synod's discussions from the point of view of Latin America. They advocated for the political involvement of Catholic priests in the struggle for social justice and argued that local Christian communities should decide the specific terms of the priests’ commitment to the “liberation” process.⁸⁸ The final document of the synod, “Ministerial Priesthood,” recognized the duty of the priests in defense of human rights and the promotion of justice. Still, the bishops also reaffirmed that politics belonged to the laity and that the primary mission of the priests was sacramental.⁸⁹ The Mexican press focused on the synod's discussion of celibacy. It gave scant attention to issues of primary concern to Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo or the Nazas-Aguanaval group, such as workers’ and peasants’ rights.⁹⁰ Fr. Batarse used his media presence at the time to publicize the letter. He talked about it on the local TV show Diálogo and gave an interview for El Siglo de Torreón.⁹¹

However, the most substantial evidence of the participation of the Nazas-Aguanaval priests in this Latin American network is the story of their delegate at PELCS. The Nazas-Aguanaval group sent Armando Sánchez de la O. as their representative to PELCS, despite the objections of Bishop Romo. Instead of returning to Mexico after the conference, Sánchez de la O. stayed in South America for six months and traveled to Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. There, he became acquainted with many progressive practices among priests, from urban worker-priests in Chile to rural base communities in Brazil and Peru. Although Sánchez de la O. left the priesthood two years later, he helped connect Torreón's priests with their South American peers after returning to Mexico. He became an active militant of PP, working in the slums of Torreón and the surrounding countryside for a decade.⁹² The contact between Mexican and South American priests’ movements continued well into the 1970s.

In the weeks after their return from Santiago, members of the Mexican delegation at PELCS began publishing a bulletin calling for the creation of a chapter of Christians for Socialism in Mexico. In May 1973, the newsletter included a solidarity declaration issued by the Second National Congress of Sacerdotes para el Pueblo. A coalition of progressive priests from all around Mexico, Sacerdotes para el Pueblo shared members with the Mexican chapter of Cristianos por el Socialismo. They functioned as a forum to socially engaged progressive priests.

The Sacerdotes para el Pueblo declaration expressed the priests’ support for the sanitation workers of Torreón who went on strike with the backing of PP militants and the “seventeen priests, who followed their bishop, and . . . opted for the people.”⁹³ The solidarity declaration closed with a cartoon taken from a Chilean pamphlet that contrasted the alliance between the Church and the capitalists with the new coalition formed among workers and young priests to defend the workers' rights.⁹⁴ Sacerdotes para el Pueblo and many progressive priests in Latin America believed the time for an alliance between the working class and the Church had arrived.

From Batopilas to Chiapas and Beyond

In 1994, when communities in the southeastern state of Chiapas rebelled against the Mexican state under the banner of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN), it seemed unlikely that one of the paths that led to the revolt would have started in the community of Francisco I. Madero, Coahuila. As the parish priest who had served the local Batopilas vineyard since 1973, Fr. Benigno Martínez developed his pastoral work close to the rural workers and farmers of the area, with Fr. Carlos Zarazúa and former priest Armando Sánchez. In 1976, Batopilas farmworkers sought the priests’ help in a dispute with the vineyard owner. The priests put them in contact with PP activists based in Torreón. A strike followed, and a coalition of students, squatters, and strikers took over the farm. The conflict lasted until 1984, and a combination of protests and legal actions resulted in forming a collective ejido; the former strikers became the owners of Batopilas. They worked the land in collective and shared the profits, they even cooked their meals and dinned together during the first years of the process. Basically, they were a Cultural Revolution “commune” in Mexico instead of “normal” ejido.

In October 1976, under the orders of the governor of Coahuila and with the support of La Laguna's oligarchy, state police arrested Benigno Martínez, Armando Sánchez de la O., Hugo Andrés Araujo, and three Batopilas workers.⁹⁵ The event sparked the protest of Bishop Fernando Romo, the squatters, and the former national leader of the PAN, José Ángel Conchello. Conchello later publicly stated that the detention was “only a lesson to anyone who claims land and does not do it through the mechanisms of mass control created by the state.”⁹⁶ The bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz, and the future president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who had contacts in PP, visited the prisoners.⁹⁷ Also, Bishop Méndez Arceo defended the priests in his homily of October 26.⁹⁸ After a smear campaign against the priests in El Siglo de Torreón, the conflict became national news, with Méndez Arceo's intervention. It gained visibility through the pages of the newspaper Excélsior, and the newly created weekly Proceso narrated the event in its first issue.⁹⁹

In the meantime, Bishop Romo and Benigno Martínez's parishioners from the town of Francisco I. Madero in Coahuila tried to pressure authorities to release Fr. Martínez and avoid Batarse's detention. Samuel Ruiz acted as a mediator with the authorities.¹⁰⁰ As mentioned above, a compromise was reached, involving the “exile” of Batarse to Chiapas, but not before the Church hierarchy faced the resistance of grassroots organizations that rejected the expulsion of Batarse from La Laguna. It was in their role as Catholics that the squatters’ movement and parish assemblies spoke out to the bishop: “Like you, we are also concerned about the unity of Christians: That is what we seek! That the attacks of the mighty, the enemy, the exploiter, find us all united and organized against him to confront and defeat him, so we can then build a more just, more fraternal world, where we, the poor, can live with more dignity.”¹⁰¹ These words remain a testimony to the extent that PP and progressive Catholic ideas converged in La Laguna.

Members of PP followed Batarse in his exile to Chiapas and Samuel Ruiz's diocese in San Cristóbal. Thus, these northern Maoists moved into the jungles and mountains of Chiapas.¹⁰² José Batarse returned to Torreón on April 23, 1977, and was harassed by the police soon after. On May 16, 1977, he was even taken by force by the police but freed late at night that same day. Forced to move again, he went to Tula, Hidalgo, where he worked with a PP brigade to infiltrate a PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos, the state oil company) refinery. Batarse entered into a relationship with a former secretary of his parish. He wanted to continue his ministry as a married priest, but he was forced to decide between priesthood and marriage. He left the priesthood and, for a short time, was part of a PP brigade in Querétaro's Sierra Gorda.¹⁰³ In 1979, PP disbanded due to internal conflicts, and Batarse returned to Torreón, where he lived a modest life outside of politics.¹⁰⁴

Shortly before returning to Torreón, Batarse sent a letter to the squatters of the 2 de Marzo neighborhood, requesting solidarity for the Batopilas struggle and begging them to keep the communal organization alive. He reminded them of their past efforts and compared the indifference of some with Cain's attitude when God asked him about Abel. In this one-page flyer, Brother and compañero (comrade) Batarse made a last-stand call to maintain an independent and non-electoral people's struggle at La Laguna.¹⁰⁵ Nonetheless, the end of PP brought the retreat of the student activists and the gradual collapse of the independent organization in the neighborhoods. The remaining priests turned toward pastoral work, establishing Christian Base Communities to raise the consciousness of the peasants. Their work was cut short by the rising tide of conservatism in the Church and economic liberalization policies in the countryside.¹⁰⁶ In 1984, following Bishop Romo's retirement, the Nazas-Aguanaval group dissolved.

Conclusion

The rise of a strong popular movement in La Laguna during the 1970s can be seen as a continuation of the long history of revolutionary mobilization in the region. The economic and social conditions of the area only partly explain the convergence between the transnational currents of Maoism and progressive Catholicism with the local activism of students and priests. This article shows the active role of the Nazas-Aguanaval priests in the introduction of PP's Maoism in La Laguna and Chiapas. The priests interpreted PP ideas as compatible with their preferential option for the poor, while PP activists took a positive stance towards progressive Catholicism and popular religiosity. At the end, the groups joined together because the urban poor and peasants without land accepted them as allies in their struggle for land. When radical students joined PP, they adopted the organization's political line regarding religion. Moreover, the students aspired to become one with the people and were ready to accept almost any ally in the struggle of liberation. Working among a deeply Christian population, a religious ally was a godsend.

With a history of almost two centuries of confrontation between the Church and progressive political movements in Mexico and Latin America, the wave of reform brought by the Second Vatican Council helped to create the conditions for the ideological realignment of an active minority of the Latin American clergy. The emergence of various movements of Latin American progressive priests, including the Nazas-Aguanaval group, is testimony to an alliance between the clergy and the popular movements of peasants and workers. At the same time, the 1971 letter to the synod of bishops in Rome and the 1972 PELCS are proof of the scope and reach of a growing network of Latin American Catholic progressives, and of the participation of Mexican priests in this network. The network brings to the fore how Catholic ideas and persons circulated and came into contact in Mexico and Latin America.

Whereas the interactions of the Nazas-Aguanaval group and PP with local authorities were clearly antagonistic, the relationship of the priests with the bishop and local elites was more complicated. The ambiguous position of Bishop Romo speaks to the realities of an institution that tolerated political diversity to a certain degree but was wholly against insubordination. On the other hand, Batarse's dealings with PAN leaders and his media presence reflect the priests’ privileged position in La Laguna society. It all ended with the collapse of PP in 1979 and the decline of progressive ideas within the Church during John Paul II's papacy in the 1980s.

After disbanding in 1984, the priests of the Nazas-Aguanaval group continued their pastoral work individually, following the directives of the diocese's plan established by the new bishop, Luis Morales, who requested the dissolution of the group and its integration into diaconates. The Nazas-Agunaval priests weighed the need to align themselves with the diocese instead of keeping a “sectarian” attitude and falling into isolation. They saw this change as an opportunity to transfer their experience into the work of the parishes. They continued supporting popular movements and forming Christian Base Communities, but the diocese's plan allowed them to overcome the tensions with the more conservative sectors of Torreón's clergy.¹⁰⁷ Their disappearance as a distinct group, their adherence to the new position of the diocese that constrained political involvement of the priests, and the political defeat of popular movements in La Laguna in the 1990s ended their conflict with the conservative Church.

In the 1980s, the Church took a more conservative turn. Under John Paul II's papacy, it attacked the pastoral commitment to the poor that had informed the actions of groups like the Nazas-Aguanaval. Despite recognizing the deep inequalities and injustices present in Latin America, the Vatican condemned any attachment to the concept of class struggle and called for the unity of the clergy under the hierarchy.¹⁰⁸ These interventions signaled the end of the institutional conditions that facilitated the convergence of progressive Catholics and left-wing activists in northern Mexico. Institutional support for progressive Catholicism survived in Chiapas and Central America, but always under siege and without Rome's tolerance.

As this article shows, dialogue and cooperation between Marxists and Catholics in Latin America during the 1970s was not limited to the connections that developed between progressive Catholicism and liberation theology. A broader understanding of progressive Catholicism, based on examining the priests’ movements in Latin America and their regional manifestations, such as the one presented here, complements existing accounts focused on the intellectual history of liberation theology. Further research should decenter the study of progressive Catholics from bishops and theologians while recovering the grass-roots dimension of Catholicism as the point of encounter between the faithful and those beyond the Church, such as the Maoists of Política Popular.