In the summer of 1926, an army of Mexican Catholics launched a war
against their government. Bearing aloft the banners of Christ the King
and the Virgin of Guadalupe, they equipped themselves not only with
guns, but also with scapulars, rosaries, prayers, and religious visions.
These soldiers were called cristeros, and the war they fought, which
would continue until the mid-1930s, is known as la Cristiada,
or the Cristero war. The most intense fighting occurred in Mexico's
west-central states, especially Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacán. For
this reason, scholars have generally regarded the war as a regional
event, albeit one with national implications. Yet in fact, the Cristero
war crossed the border into the United States, along with thousands of
Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees.
In Mexican Exodus,
Julia Young reframes the Cristero war as a transnational conflict,
using previously unexamined archival materials from both Mexico and the
United States to investigate the intersections between Mexico's Cristero
War and Mexican migration to the United States during the late 1920s.
She traces the formation, actions, and ideologies of the Cristero
diaspora―a network of Mexicans across the United States who supported
the Catholic uprising from beyond the border. These Cristero supporters
participated in the conflict in a variety of ways: they took part in
religious ceremonies and spectacles, organized political demonstrations
and marches, formed associations and organizations, and collaborated
with religious and political leaders on both sides of the border. Some
of them even launched militant efforts that included arms smuggling,
military recruitment, espionage, and armed border revolts. Ultimately,
the Cristero diaspora aimed to overturn Mexico's anticlerical government
and reform the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Although the group was
unable to achieve its political goals, Young argues that these
emigrants―and the war itself―would have a profound and enduring
resonance for Mexican emigrants, impacting community formation,
political affiliations, and religious devotion throughout subsequent
decades and up to the present day.
eBay Box 1