The Effects of the Cristero War on American Immigration

     Mexico has always been a predominately Roman Catholic country with most of the population being practicing Roman Catholics. Surprisingly at one time during Mexico’s past under the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles, it was an official atheist country. During his presidency, Calles adopted harsh laws in limiting the Roman Catholic Church’s power in Mexico and limiting the number of priests in Mexico. Public reaction was extremely negative against these laws known as the “Calles Laws”. In response to these laws people began to revolt against the government and this war became known as the Cristero Rebellion or War. The Cristero War of 1926-1929 greatly affected Mexican immigration during the late 1920s to the United States from the Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán because of the religious persecution they were suffering from the government at that time. 

           In 1924, Plutarco Elías Calles was voted in as the President of Mexico. Mexico had been a Roman Catholic country for over 400 years. During that time there was no significate anticatholic settlement in Mexico unlike, for example, in France during the Reign of Terror during the rule of Maximilien Robespierre. This all changed during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles. In July 2,1926, Plutarco Calles developed a series of laws known as the Calles Laws that took effect in July 14.[1] These laws made religious ministries register to the government and, failure to do so would mean imprisonment, limiting the number of priests, secularizing education, prohibiting the Church from owning property such as land and outlawing religious houses such as convents and monasteries.[2] Other laws included deportation of foreign priests and nuns, priests from taking public office, and public religious acts such as processions.[3] In response to these laws the Church ceased public worship on July 31 of the same year.[4] The Church did this in order to protest against the oppressive laws that were the government installed. [5]  The Church and the common people also protested when the Mexican government closed down religious schools.[6] To do this clergyman called on parents to not allow their children to attend secular schools. [7] In August 1926 the first outbreaks of violence started against the government for their anticlerical laws. [8] In the February of next year another outbreak of violence in the state of Michoacán was led by Simon Cortes Vieyra.[9]  He attacked several cities and towns in the span of months in which others followed his example and fought against the government.[10] From then on peasants from mostly the western states of Mexico such Jalisco and  Michoacán led a guerilla war against the Mexican government for their oppressive laws against the Church . This was devastating for Mexico which as a result of this war it had casualties of about 90,000 people. [11] The reason that there were so many refugees during this war was it was so  devastating especially in the western regions of Mexico.[12] It was especially brutal because of the soldier’s brutal tactics against civilians and villages where they looted villages and then razed the village to the ground.[13]  The Cristero War ravaged the formerly thriving Western Mexican states which also contributed to the immigration to the United States.[14] Also during the war unemployment steadily increased which further contributed to immigration to the United States. [15]

        The places most immigrants and refugees came from the Mexican states such as Jalisco and Michoacán, were where most of the fighting took place. Immigrants moved to traditional places where there was already a significant population of Mexicans who immigrated earlier living there such as California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.[16] They also immigrated to places where there was no known significant Mexican population such as the Midwest states of Illinois, and Wisconsin.[17]  Some people immigrated to cities that had a few Mexicans living in that area for example Detroit, and Chicago.[18] To prove that the Cristero War effected immigration in the Detroit area during the 1920’s most of the immigrants who arrived in Detroit were originally from Jalisco, Michoacán and Guanajuato which were the places where Cristero fighting were the fiercest.[19]  Another city Mexicans settled in was the city of Los Angeles where there was a sizable population of Mexicans already living there. 2500 religious refugees like nuns, priests, and bishops immigrated to the United States through their own choice or through forced deportation by the Mexican government.[20] Some of the religious refugees and exiles settled in cities with large Mexican population like the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in El Paso.[21]  Before the Cristero War, Detroit had a small community of Mexicans that totaled around 5000 but when the 1920s ended it reached 15,000 in size.[22] In the city of Los Angeles the population of Mexicans skyrocketed in the year 1920 the population of Mexicans was 29,757 and during the end of the decade it increased to around 100,000.[23]

            When Mexican immigrants and refugees arrived in the United States during the 1920’s they mostly lived in Mexican communities that were already established by immigrants who immigrated earlier during the Mexican Revolution more than seven years prior.[24] Mexican immigrant men often worked as automobile factory workers in Ford Motor Company constructing cars and tractors for the company[25]. The migrants who worked at the car manufacturing companies had difficulty adjusting to their new lives in the US.[26] For example the winters in the Northern US where some immigrants lived had a much different climate than they were used to.[27] Another difficulty was the food when they had no significant community of Mexicans so they had to improvise with what they had.[28] They also had to adjust with their working schedule because it was different than the one they had in Mexico. For example in Mexico they had to work until dawn to dusk and had religious days and Sundays off.[29] However, in the US they to work long hours and included Sundays and religious days.[30] Some other Mexican migrants maintained establishments such as restaurants, barbershops and grocery stores as well.[31] The migrants also experienced racism in the United States.[32] In Kansas, Mexican migrants were segregated in most of the public places such as movie theaters, restaurants, schools and hospitals.[33] The only Mexican Americans that were allowed to go to the area where white people were allowed, and where they would be treated received better treatment, were light-skinned Mexicans.[34] The other migrants with dark complexion were allowed only in African-Americans area in which treatment was worse.[35] The migrants also established Roman Catholic churches in areas where there were not any such as Detroit [36] When religious refugees and exiles arrived in the US they often arrived without  money or possessions. [37]  In order to survive they often set bakeries up as did the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in El Paso.[38] Other religious orders taught sewing and music classes in order to gain a living.[39] Most of the religious exiles coming from Mexico taught in schools because of the opening of many Roman Catholic schools in the area where Mexicans settled.[40] 

    In conclusion, the Cristero War affected US immigration from Mexico sending thousands of civilians and refugees to the United States these included priests and nuns, farmers and autoworkers. Once there they experienced racism, such as public segregation in public places. However, they now had religious freedom something they had not experienced in Mexico during the Calles presidency. In the end, this freedom would help them prevail.  

Bibliography

• Butler, Matthew. Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacâan, 1927-29. A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monograph. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2004.
• ———. “The Church in Red Mexico: Michoacn Catholics and the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1929.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55, no. 3(2004): 520–41.
• Oppenheimer, Robert. “Acculturation or Assimilation: Mexican Immigrants in Kansas, 1900 to World War II.” The Western Historical Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1985): 429–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/968607.
• Rosales, Francisco Arturo, and Daniel T. Simon. “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest: East Chicago, Indiana, 1919-1945.” Indiana Magazine of History 77, no. 4 (1981): 333–57.
• Vargas, Zaragosa. “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’: Mexican Immigrants in 1920s Detroit.” Michigan Historical Review 15, no. 1 (1989): 45–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/20173156.
• Young, Julia G. “Cristero Diaspora: Mexican Immigrants, The U.S. Catholic Church, and Mexico’s Cristero War, 1926-29,” The Catholic Historical Review 98, no. 2 (2012): 271–300.

[1]. Matthew Butler, “The Church in Red Mexico: Michoacán Catholics and the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1929,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 55, no. 3 (2004): 530.

[2] Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacâan, 1927-29, A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 154.

[3]  Butler, “The Church in Red,” 530

[4] Butler. “The Church in Red,” 521

[5] Butler “The Church in Red,” 521

[6]  Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, 89

[7] Butler. Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, 89

[8] Butler. Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, 158

[9] Butler. Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, 179

[10] Butler. Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion, 180

[11] Julia G. Young, “Cristero Diaspora: Mexican Immigrants, The U.S. Catholic Church, and Mexico’s Cristero War, 1926-29,” The Catholic Historical Review 98, no. 2 (2012):  274.

[12] Young. “Cristero Diaspora “275.

[13] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 275

[14] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 276

[15] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 275-276

[16]  Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 274

[17] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 274

[18] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 281

[19]  Zaragosa Vargas, “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’: Mexican Immigrants in 1920s Detroit,” Michigan Historical Review 15, no. 1 (1989): 47.

[20] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 278

[21] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 280

[22] Vargas, “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’: Mexican Immigrants in 1920s Detroit.” 46

[23] Latino Los Angeles Historic Context Statement pg. 7

[24] Young, “Cristero Diaspora,” 274

[25]  Vargas, “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’: Mexican Immigrants in 1920s Detroit,” 46

[26]     Francisco Arturo Rosales and Daniel T. Simon, “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest: East Chicago, Indiana, 1919-1945,” Indiana Magazine of History 77, no. 4 (1981) 336.

[27] Rosales and Simon, “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest,” 336

[28] Rosales and Simon, “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest,” 336

[29]  Rosales and Simon, “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest,” 337-338

[30]  Rosales and Simon, “Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest” 338

[31]  Vargas, “Life and Community in the ‘Wonderful City of the Magic Motor’ 46

[32] Robert Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation: Mexican Immigrants in Kansas, 1900 to World War II,” The Western Historical Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1985) https://doi.org/10.2307/968607. 432

[33] Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation” 432 

[34] Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation” 432 

[35] Oppenheimer, “Acculturation or Assimilation” 432 

[36] Young “Cristero Diaspora,” 281

[37] Young “Cristero Diaspora,” 279

[38] Young “Cristero Diaspora,” 280

[39] Young “Cristero Diaspora,” 280

[40] Young “Cristero Diaspora,” 280-281