The Women's Revolution in Mexico, 1910-1953 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461646105
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

Although the religious conflict changed the UDCM’s activities, the group never lost is goal of promulgating and protecting the Catholic faith. The 1920s were a time of transition, in which the survivors, the defeated, and the winners of the revolution searched, not necessarily together, for a means to make a nation in new circumstances, incorporating the experiences of the revolution and the ideas of social justice with the need to consolidate and institutionalize power. For the social Catholics, who shared many ideas with the declared intentions of the revolutionary government, it was an era to continue to defend religion, to increase influence in civil society, and to take new initiatives in the social sphere.

In their social work, the Catholic organizations were part of what Manuel Ceballos Ramirez terms a “resurgence of a popular, activist, and enterprising Catholicism that intended to participate in national reconstruction.”63 If we examine these events from the perspective of the start of the 1920s, and if we put ourselves in the place of members of the UDCM, we see an era full of opportunities for social action. We also see various possible ways to integrate social Catholicism with the goals of the revolution. From this perspective, the Cristiada and its terrible wounds were only one of the many possibilities. But during this decade, the victors’ consolidation of power little by little reduced the ways in which Mexicans could be politically active. By inventing a difference between revolutionaries and Catholics that did not necessarily exist, the revolutionary government tried to force the people to choose between their political and religious beliefs. Part of the consolidation of power was the elimination of other revolutions and actors, thus making the revolution an exclusive rather than an inclusive event.

The revolution in the 1920s thus began to define itself by those who were excluded, especially Catholics. The official revolution and the myth of revolution not only excluded Catholics but also denied women’s critical participation. The soldaderas—so necessary on the battle fields—were erased from history or relegated to the soldiers’ beds.64 Women’s participation in the revolution, as soldaderas, spies, secretaries, or publicists, won them neither the pensions of soldiers nor the right to an ejido, as Martha Eva Rocha makes clear in chapter 1. Eventually, the damas católicas, being both Catholic and women, were doubly excluded from the project of making Mexico revolutionary. But in the first half of the 1920s, they understood that the revolution and the memory of the revolution were still fluid. So they reclaimed Mexican identity, creating a patriotic and feminine Catholicism that challenged the government. A few years later, when it became impossible to be a Catholic and a revolutionary at the same time, Mexicans were forced to choose only one part of their identity.

In their social, cultural, and moral work, the damas fostered their own version of revolutionary Mexico, but the revolution they embraced was that of Catholic social action. Until recently, the historical interpretations of this period have followed the official narrative, the government narrative,

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