above left:
 When the new constitution was written in 1917, the anti-clerical revolutionary Mexican government sought to enact and enforce land reform measures, with an eye to benefiting the rural population, usually the poorest of the poor in a country that was economically weak and torn by a century of revolution. This meant a redistribution of church wealth, much of it held in the form of land.  The cristeros ['soldiers for Christ'] were in the main rural peasants, conservative and devout Catholics, who if faced with the hard choice, supported the church and the status quo rather than the revolutionary government's attempts at land reform. They were aided and supported by pre-revolutionary elites, the wealth land owners, who for their own economic reasons were against land reform measures. Violence took lives on both the progressive and conservative sides of this issue in the 1920s and 1930s.  Méndez made a portfolio of seven lithographs in memory of 200 rural school teachers, killed between 1936-1938 by the cristeros. Scans of the actual En Nombre de Cristo [In the Name of Christ] portfolio are supplied here courtesy of Michael Ricker. For more detailed information and a start at understanding these complex times and issues, see Don Mabry's historic text archive |
