Viva Cristo Rey!: The Cristero Rebellion and the Church-State Conflict in Mexico by David C. Bailey

Author:David C. Bailey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government, Church & State, Mexico, International & World Politics, Americas, Religion, Religious Studies, Caribbean & Latin American, Religious Studies & Reference, Politics & State, World, Religion & Spirituality, Religious, History
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-04-10T06:00:00+00:00

8. The Ways of Frustration

HOPE THAT AMERICAN HELP might come died hard in the breasts of the Catholic insurgents, and disputes over what should or should not be done to win that support plagued the leadership long after the question had become moot. Contention reached its climax over the issue of broadening the movement’s base through the medium of the Unión Nacional.

Bustos was angry as he sat out the gray winter days of early 1928 in a New York hotel. After the Unión Nacional’s paper birth he had returned to the United States, confident that at last he had the tool he needed to attract U.S. aid. But weeks passed with no sign that the Directive Committee was close to completing even the minimum organization in Mexico that would give the unión a believable existence. The committee, he knew, was not enthusiastic about the plan, and he became increasingly certain that the directors meant to leave his cherished cure-all to die.1

On February 16 he poured out his feelings in a letter to the directors. He and they were on divergent paths, he told them. They obviously believed that the league by itself could overpower the revolution and create a de facto situation that the United States would have to accept. They were mistaken, he warned: Victoriano Huerta had produced a de facto regime, supported in Mexico and recognized in Europe; Adolfo de la Huerta had accumulated quantities of men and material as well as a large popular backing. Had the U.S. government recognized those de facto situations? No. Only a party that the United States accepted could win. If the rebellion continued to appear to be the work of “white radicals,” the cause was doomed, “because this government [the United States] is determined to support the red radicals more strongly, and never White Radicals.” The league must decide which way it would go. It was strong and capable; if it could not hold its own in a coalition like the Union Nacional, how could its ideals survive later in an organism as complex as a nation? As for Pascual Díaz, Bustos told the directors that they had misjudged the bishop. Díaz had done everything he could to help. He had established important contacts and lent support in other ways. Father Parsons had been a friend too. As for the league’s favorite, González Valencia, Bustos said that, although he liked and respected the archbishop of Durango, he believed his ignorance of conditions in the United States had misled him completely.2

Bustos’s impatience with the directors was reciprocated. They decided that his carping was an excuse for his own lack of success, and they refused to be intimidated. Palomar y Vizcarra told Ceniceros y Villarreal early in April that he believed Bustos’s mission had failed, that he had taken too long and got no results.3

The directors also had to contend with grumbling from some of their lieutenants in Mexico. In May local LNDLR leaders in the Federal District posed to the Directive Committee a wide-ranging list of questions and offered some advice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.