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Not Even Past

A Texas Historian’s Perspective on Mexican State Anticlericalism

By Madeleine Olson

Housed in a miscellaneous folder in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is an assortment of thirteen broadsides, letters, newspapers, and drafts of two articles by prominent Texas historian Herbert Gambrell (1898-1982). Gambrell had a long and prestigious academic career studying Texas history as a fixture at Southern Methodist University. These documents all originate from a summer research trip to Mexico City, where, in 1925, Gambrell studied the creation of a new, factional, schismatic Mexican Church, the Apostolic Mexican Catholic  Church (known by its Spanish acronym, ICAM), in order to better understand the causes and impacts of the budding movement. These papers give us a particularly interesting view into Mexican cultural life in the 1920s through the lens of Church relations and offer understanding of state-sponsored anticlericalism during this period.

Black and white photograph of leaders of the 1910 Mexican Revolution after the First Battle of Ciudad Juarez (SMU Central University Library via Flickr).
Leaders of the 1910 Mexican Revolution after the First Battle of Ciudad Juarez (SMU Central University Library via Flickr).

In February 1925, one hundred men took over the Catholic Church of La Soledad in Mexico City, removed the head priest of the church, and announced that they were converting it into the Apostolic Mexican Catholic Church (ICAM).  An ex-clergyman by the name of Joaquín Pérez then entered and announced he was the “Patriarch” of this new Church. Breaking off from the Roman Catholic Church, the ICAM pledged allegiance to the Mexican state instead of recognizing the Papacy in Rome as the spiritual head of the church. Picking and choosing which Catholic dogmas, or fundamental tenants of the faith, to keep, this new church allowed priests to marry, offered mass in Spanish, instead of Latin, left biblical interpretation to the individual, and did not require members to pay tithes, or financial contributions to the church. ICAM took root in several hundred communities in the southern and central states of Mexico and, in some places, lasted until the 1940.

This incident occurred in the context of renewed anticlericalism and persecution in Mexico and it contributed to the start of the Cristero Rebellion, when from 1926 to 1929, Catholic peasants took up arms against the state in order to restore the place of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. The Mexican president, Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928), a Protestant and fervent anti-clerical, blessed this schismatic Mexican Church and allowed it to function freely during his presidency. Its creation represented one challenge of many during this time to the position of the Roman Catholic in Mexico.

Photograph of the front facade of the Church of La Soledad in Mexico City, Mexico
Church of La Soledad, Mexico City (via Wikimedia Commons).

Herbert Gambrell arrived in Mexico City only six months after the birth of this schismatic church. The drafts of his articles come from interviews with the head of the ICAM, Joaquín Pérez, and Mexican Secretary of the Chamber and Government, López Sierra. Also included in this folder are newspaper clippings relating to the ICAM, a reprint of the ICAM’s main ideology, called Bases fundamentals, a personal letter, and a short letter from López Sierra asking him to share the findings from his articles.

Trying to contextualize the creation of the new church, Gambrell starts out by commenting that this is not the first effort to lead Mexicans away from the Catholic Church in Rome, but this is one of the most successful examples. The ICAM arose from a long nationalistic tradition in Mexico, as the church’s slogan, “Mexico for Mexicans,” suggests. Nevertheless, the church remained controversial in Mexico. Gambrell notes that there were pamphlets plastered all around the city reading “Viva el papa!” (Long live the Pope) alongside those proclaiming “Muera el papa! Viva Mexico,” (Death to the Pope, Long Live Mexico) suggesting the controversy remained unresolved.

Gambrell’s observations about the creation of the ICAM emphasize the disjointed implementation of certain segments of the Mexican Constitution. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the  Constitution of 1917 was written with a liberal, secularist, political view: various articles limited the power of the Catholic Church within Mexico in an effort to strengthen the government. Because Article 130 of the Constitution required the nationalization of all church property, Gambrell remarked that the ICAM ran into obstacles because their private Churches were not publicly owned “templos.” Another 1917 article required foreign-born priests to be removed from their positions in the Catholic Church, many of whom were replaced by Mexicans. The ICAM’s nationalist message was less powerful now that the Catholic Church was less “foreign.”

Black and white photograph of Mexican president, Plutarco Elias Calles standing with members of the Apostolic Mexican Catholic Church
President Calles stands center, with a mustache (via Wikimedia Commons).

The budding evangelical church was not without faults, according to Gambrell. He comments on one of the major faults of the movement, namely the absence of proper leadership. The ICAM was also more political than spiritual: “It is semi-political in its makeup… a religious movement which does not come from a deep spiritual ideal can succeed more or less apparently, but does not triumph in a definite way.” Gambrell concluded that the success of the new church would only show itself with time.

Gambrell’s insights provide a particularly fascinating perspective as he, himself, came from an evangelical family, growing up with a Baptist pastor. His opinions were formed through the lens of his own experiences as the son of a Baptist pastor.  Gambrell believes that ICAM marked an important step towards what he considered real progress and celebrates that “Rome’s grip has been weakened, seriously weakened, by the movement, nor will she ever be able to regain what she has lost.”  With documents written in both English and Spanish, this collection is an accessible resource for interrogating state anticlericalism and the 1917 Mexican constitution.


Sources:

Herbert Gambrell Papers, “The New Catholic Church of Mexico,” Benson Latin American Collection, (all quotes come from this collection of documents).
David C. Bailey, Viva Cristo Rey, The Cristero Rebellion and the Church-State Conflict in
Mexico, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974)

You may also like:

For Greater Glory (2012), reviewed by Cristina Metz.
War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and the Tejano Communities edited by Arnoldo De León (2012), reviewed by Lizbeth Elizondo.
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (2003), reviewed by Matthew Butler.


The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Show & Tell: The Video Essay as History Assignment

From the editor: As our thoughts turn back to teaching, Not Even Past turns back to some of our posts from 2013-14 about new and best teaching experiences. (JN, August 15, 2014)

As the school year comes to a close, we end our series of monthly features on teaching history with a creative assignment devised by one of our US History professors. Instead of assigning only written or oral work, Robert Olwell was one of a handful of History faculty who asked their students to make video essays on specific topics related to the course. On this page, Olwell tells us about the assignment and we include some of the best of the videos his students created. Below we link to the instructions Olwell gave to the students. And throughout the month of May, we will post video essays our students produced in other History Department courses. (JN, May 1, 2014)

by Robert Olwell

In the fall of 2013 I taught the first half of the US history survey course (HIS 315K), which offers a treatment of the major themes of American History from 1492-1865. There was nothing unusual in this. I have taught 315K at least once a year (and often twice) since I came to UT twenty years ago. The course is designed as a lecture course, with assigned readings, and four in-class essay exams. The enrollment is generally 320 students. This time however, my enrollment was capped at only 160. The relatively small number allowed me to conduct a pedagogical experiment. In addition to their individual written essay exams, I assigned each of my students the task of working with three classmates to create a short “video essay.” Their task might fairly be described as a producing a brief research report in which they present their findings not on paper but on the screen. My hope was to enlist students’ familiarity and fascination with digital media in the cause of history and pedagogy.

In order to keep control of the project, I made several command decisions. First, I divided the class into forty teams of four students each. I allowed students no choice of partners but simply used the class roll and the alphabet to make the groups (hence team members’ last names often start with the same letter). Second, I gave the groups no choice as to their topic. I created a list of forty topics that I deemed suitable (i.e., could easily be presented in a four-five minute video) and assigned one topic to each group.

As the rubric that I posted for the assignment indicates, by far the most important part of their task was the first one: writing the “script.” In late October, my Teaching Assistants and I poured over the forty, ten-page- long scripts. (Each TA looked at ten scripts and I looked at all of them.) Our aim was to offer historical critiques and suggestions, and to make sure the students were on the right track as regards sources, bibliography, and so on. We acted more as “historical consultants” to their projects than as producers. Having never made or posted a video myself, I could offer them little or no assistance in that regard. Instead, I relied on the students’ own facility with visual and digital media to carry them through. (Having watched my two teen-aged daughters produce videos both as school projects and for fun, I rightly suspected my students would be more than capable of fulfilling this part of the assignment on their own.)

Overall, I would judge the “video essay” project to have been a great success. In their peer evaluations most students agreed; some wrote that it was the most interesting thing they had ever done in a history class. The standard of the finished videos was quite high (the average grade was a B+). There were some difficulties, of course. Some of the groups did not work well together and some students did not pull their weight. The final part of the assignment, peer evaluation, was included to address this possibility. However, most groups did cooperate effectively and I used the peer evaluations as often to reward those students acknowledged by their teammates to have been project leaders, as to punish the slackers.

Would I do it again? Yes, but. Next time, I would probably make the project optional (perhaps replacing one of the written exams), and allow students to make their own teams and choose their own projects.

Here is the assignment sheet and rubric that I handed out to the students.

And here are the six video essays that I deemed the best of the forty produced by my students last fall.

Cahokia 
by Valerie Salina, Jeffrey A. Sendejar, Victor Seth, and Sharmin Sharif

The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment (1863-65)
by Madeline Christensen, Nathan Cliett, Rebecca Coughlin, and Corbin Cruz

Anne Hutchinson
by Justin Gardner, Rishi Garg, Yanni Georghiades, and Rachelle Gerstner

The Book Of Negroes
by Will Wood, Anfernee Young, Qin Zhang, and Sally Zhang

Dr. Josiah Nott
by Salina Rosales, Felipe Rubin, and Hunter Ruffin

New Amsterdam
by Evan Taylor-Adair, Oliver Thompson, Kimberly Tobias, and Reynaldo Torres Arellano

Watch for more student videos in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, revisit Blake Scott’s examination of the coming of tourism to the Panamanian rain forest: I am Tourism/Yo soy Turismo

And check out other stories on teaching and learning:

Also by Robert Olwell, You Say You Want a Revolution? Reenacting History in the Classroom

Video assignments by Jacqueline Jones, Students Debating History: Another Look at the Video Essay

Penne Restad and Karl Hagstrom Miller on Teaching

Recent Posts

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