Mexico

Spanish Colonization and Evangelization

The historical process of the development of Mexican Catholicism, which is rooted in the Spanish colonization, explains the paradox. The Catholic Church was one of the pillars of the colonial order, from the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century, and expanded during this period with the evangelization of the indigenous peoples and the development of a racially mixed (mestizo) society. As a parallel development, indigenous resistance to Spanish evangelization and the clergy's structural deficit favored the genesis of a religious syncretism that articulated autochthonous elements with the Catholic faith and prospered in mestizo and indigenous society. The Catholic Church motivated the construction of this religious syncretism, which was contained by the end of evangelization and was constitutive of popular Mexican religiosity. The latter was tamed by the Catholic clergy, exceeding, nonetheless, its capacity for social and territorial control. The most important expression of this popular Catholicism, which precisely characterizes the aforementioned ambiguities, is the cult of the Virgin of Guadeloupe. The popular and syncretic dimensions of the cult are seen to justify the perennial assertion that Mexicans are, more than being Catholics, “Guadalupanos.” Nevertheless, the Catholic Church itself established the cult. According to the legend, the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego five times between December 9 and 12, 1531, which was affirmed by Bishop Zumarraga, thus symbolically sealing the pact of adherence of the indigenous population to the Catholic faith.

Catholic Church and Mexican State

Beginning with Mexican independence in 1821, the Catholic Church was challenged by demands by liberals for the separation of church and state, which culminated in the Juarez reforms of 1859 to 1860. The reform was based on the lay concept of a nonconfessional state, legitimized by the principle of popular sovereignty and guarantee of pluralism of religious and civic convictions. Despite their considerable minority status, Protestants and Freemasons exercised an important role in the development of Mexican liberalism. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 assumed the lay legacy of the liberals, which led to a confrontation with the Catholic Church in the Cristero War of 1926 to 1929. The Catholic opposition to the revolutionary state was motivated by ecclesiastical sectors but constituted an active popular movement in the central area of the country, particularly in the highlands of Jalisco, where the level of violence frightened the clergy. Subsequent negotiations between the state and the Catholic Church initiated a long period of Church exclusion from the public sphere and limitation of the clergy's civic rights, the extent of which even contradicted the lay principle of state neutrality in religious affairs. The constitutional reforms of 1992 restored some of the clergy's civic rights and sought to improve guarantees of freedom of religion, thereby reducing the schism between church and state while also responding to the increased religious pluralization of the country. However, laicism remains the distinctive feature of Mexican cultural and political institutions despite the fears raised by the ascension of the National [Page 785]Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional, PAN), whose affinity with the Catholic Church is notorious, to the presidency in 2000.

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