From Modus Vivendi to Modus Moriendi: Anticlerical Resistance in Mexico, 1929-1938

Abstract

This research does a simplified documentary reconstruction of what happened between 1925 and 1932 in the Mexican political environment, specifically speaking about the Cristero War waged within the territory, as well as the immediate consequences of the modus vivendi established in the country after the 1929 agreements, answering: Did the Cristero War end in 1929? What happened after the resumption of cults? What does history refer to as a ‘second Cristero War’? It also examines the anticlerical resistance in Mexico after the end of the first movement, 1929, until the beginning of the second, 1932. The methodology used for this documentary research was initially the realization of an audit of sources, a large part of them being books or articles on the subject, from which the data was compared and interpreted to reach the conclusions established in the work. At the end of this work, it was concluded that the Cristiada was an event that was not linear in terms of its chronology, whose supposed end in 1929 according to history was actually the beginning of a conflict that, would later be partially ignored by Mexican historiography due to its reduced level of political coverage compared to the first stage of this civil war.