The United States-Mexican film, “For Greater Glory” (Spanish title: “Cristiada”), which opened in Mexico April 20, and is scheduled for U.S. release June 1, has special meaning for the people of Jalisco — however it may be judged as cinematic fare. That’s because it revives a valorous and bloody past. “Glory” recounts a special moment in history (1926-1929) when Jalisco become the center of a furious, ambitiously dispersed post-Revolution rebellion involving 13 states.
The Cristiada rebellion was a war of religious freedom and faith in the Mexican Catholic Church — a rigidly frozen and unperceptive bureaucracy — versus a new, unexperienced, openly corrupt government made up primarily of generals who had won Mexico’s 1910 revolution — men with the battlefield habit of killing opponents.
Many Mexicans, it is said, do not know much about the Cristiada, and you won’t find it in government school books. The Church doesn’t mention it. The benchmark text examining this war is “The Cristero Rebellion” (1973), by Jean A. Meyer. Born in Nice, France, in 1942, Meyer obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Sorbonne. He taught at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, Colegio de Mexico, the Colegio de Michoacan, and the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas. He has written books on the Cristiada for the University of Cambridge and the Universidad de Guadalajara, and founded France’s University of Perpignan’s Institute of Mexican Studies.
“When I arrived in Mexico in 1965, the armed stage of the religious conflict ... was still a recent event,” Meyer has said. Guerrilla remnants of the movement, and well-organized parties of government “avengers” were still active into 1942. That was “when the Church delegitimized all armed uprising for religious (and political) reasons.” Thus, historically minded North Americans arriving in, say, 1963, who explored Los Altos, the northeastern, cattle-raising sector of the state, home of the fiercely committed Cristeros, found the rebellion a highly sensitive subject.
Mexico’s president 1924 to 1928 was General Plutarco Elias Calles, a canny power-hungry commander and politician — and a virulent anti-Catholic. As the 1910 Revolution sputtered reluctantly toward an ending, Calles backed one Revolutionary strong man after another. Once what was to be called the “revolutionary Family” recklessly declared the Revolution at an end in 1920, dissatisfied, marginalized revolutionaries kept fomenting uprisings into, and beyond, the presidency (1920-1924) of General Alvaro Obregon, who was assassinated July 17, 1928. Calles, an Obregon crony, became president.Unlike the politically savvy Obregon, Calles, used all the religiously limiting, but prudently ignored, laws of the 1917 Revolutionary Constitution in a campaign to exterminate the Mexican Catholic Church. It was an example of pathological emotion gone destructively out of control. And it was unnecessary. Obregon, who was assassinated primarily because he was running for a second term in violation of constitutional prohibition, would have never fallen into such a trap. Yes, the Church habitually sided with the rich conservatives against everybody else. No, the Church did not joyously embrace democracy. But the victorious generals and their friends possessed unwavering power as they accumulated and recklessly flaunted vast wealth — and Mexico’s underclasses continued to suffer, their opportunities limited by brutal authoritarianism. And, while there were areas of considerable freedom –freedom of the press, surprisingly enough — government was rigidly autocratic, celebrating the open farce of “free elections.” Thus, the Revolution, in various lethal forms, stuttered on for another ten years.
Calles enforced the law requiring that only native-born Mexicans could be ministers of religion. Raids on convents scooped up hundreds of Spanish priests who were deported. The Ley Calles was ratified by Congress June 14, 1926. It ruled that no priest could teach primary school; no priest could speak a word against the constitution or the government; no priests or nuns could appear in public in religious garb; the government could close any church on short notice for failing to conform with these laws. The Mexican Catholic Church was forced to play the only card it had: either Calles changed the law or the Church would abandon Mexico. Recklessly, Calles welcomed this threat and refused. All Mexican churches closed July 31, 1926; most priests and nuns left for Texas or Guatemala.
Confusion, anger and rebellion swept much of Mexico. January 1927, Catholic laymen calling themselves Cristeros drove federal troops from scattered rural areas where priests were still offering the sacraments. The Vatican, of course, advised moderation. Instead, without any true centralized organization and, surprisingly without a caudillo (a strong leader), workers, campesinos, storekeepers, ranch owners and vaqueros, fighting for their religion, became bands of guerrillas. They attacked stealthily, capturing weapons and ammunition from their enemies and disappearing, much like the Zapatistas of the Revolution, but more effective. Yet often the bands worked at odds to one another. Early on, it was two primary groups: the LNDLR, National League for Defense of Religious Liberty, and the UP, the Popular Union.
Finally, La Liga, the LNDLR , called for a drastic change: pragmatism over ideology. The man chosen to bring military coherence and discipline to the “movement” shocked most Mexicans: General Enrique Gorostieta (played in the film by U.S. actor Andy Garcia). Monterrey-born, Gorostieta attended the Colegio Militar de Chapultepec. He was an artilleryman with an affinity for physical science. He had favored Porfirio Diaz — the dictator overthrown by the Revolution. And he joined the forces of Victoriano Huerta — who had ordered the death of Mexico’s democratic hero, President Francisco Madero. Gorostieta became a general and fought against Emiliano Zapata and the American intervention at Veracruz. He liked neither of the two Revolutionary victors, Venustiano Carranza or Obregon, and went into exile, ending up in the U.S. When amnesty was granted, he returned to Mexico, used his chemistry skills to become an engineer of a soap company. It was boring work. The LNDLR offer came as he sought a change. Yet as an anti-cleric and a fervent Mason, his antipathy to the Catholic Church grew as the Cristiada advanced. He loathed the Catholic hierarchy’s vacillation, its limp lip-service and empty promises to finance the Rebellion.
Despite the disdain he often expressed for the religious rituals of his mostly uneducated troops, he brought to bear an orderly mind and a professional military man’s dislike of disorganization produced by reckless zealots.
One of the reasons Gorostieta appears to have joined this Catholic uprising is because, like most Mexican military men, he possessed overweening ambition founded in good part on a realistic assessment of his military and scientific skills. If the “movement” could only get the full support of the Church hierarchy, that would mean money to buy adequate amounts of ammunition — always in short supply. But the Church was stingy and vacillating. It didn’t seem to trust the campesinos or the officers who were fighting to save Catholicism. The other reason for joining the movement was that he was paid 3,000 pesos a month; a federal divisional general received just 1,620 pesos.
In the early 1960s many contradictory reports about Gorostieta surfaced in In Los Altos. He was savagely blunt, often threatening, when giving orders. Yes, others said, campesinos were not used to the wartime discipline. Still others said the Cristiada was undermined by U.S. counterinsurgency aid, meaning the advice given to Calles by Colonel Alexander MacNab, the U.S. Embassy’s undercover expert.
Many spoke of Gorostieta’s conversion to Catholicism. Yet, other researchers doubt that. He had fine relations with Father — and General — Aristeo Pedroza, and Father — and Colonel — Jose Reyes Vega. He said that if he were killed, Father Pedroza would take his place.
Fervent Catholics said that Gorostieta joined the Cristeros a despotic blasphemer, but became a convert, pointing to the large crucifix he wore in combat. But that, others said, was to identify himself in battle to his troops. Gorostieta’s so-called conversion seems to have been wishful thinking. He died June 2, 1929, rightfully doubting the loyalty of the Church hierarchy and trying to fight his way out of a trap.