This week on The Hard Country, Joshua Treviño and Ariana Guajardo mark the centennial of La Cristiada, the Cristero War, which erupted in Mexico in August 1926 when traditional, practicing Catholics rose up against a government determined to strip the Church from public life.
Josh and Ariana trace the roots of Mexico’s church-state conflict from independence in the 1820s through the Reform Wars, the French intervention under Emperor Maximilian, the Mexican Revolution, and the 1917 Constitution, up to the 1926 Ley Calles, the decree that banned religious orders, criminalized clerical dress, and pushed the country’s Catholic majority to armed rebellion.
They also explore the competing origin myths of modern Mexico, the Aztec centered narrative promoted by today’s Morena government versus the mestizo, Guadalupan synthesis of Spanish and indigenous cultures, and tie it to current events, including a recent essay describing the Church as an obstacle to the state and comments from President López Obrador’s sons on Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday.
📌 Follow Joshua Treviño’s writing at National Review, The Cannon Online, and TexasPolicy.com