Entre aromas de incienso y pólvora: Los Altos de Jalisco, México, 1917-1940
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the Mexican Revolution and on the opposition strategies followed by the opponents of the revolutionary regime who lived in the region known as Los Altos de Jalisco. In this particular region, the Catholic population, supported by the Clergy, was in constant conflict with the revolutionary government. It shows how the new revolutionary rationale clashed with the traditional moral codes and cultural patterns of the local population who attempted to protect their way of life and traditions.
The government was backed up by the classical principles of sovereignty of the modern state, that is, from design of laws and decrees that since then had all the rule of legal norms, also backed up the strength of an army accustomed to fighting. The Church, for its part, based on their right moral standards and traditions, but also the Church hierarchy and in particular the clergy in general repeatedly mentioned that the Catholic Church for being a society was founded by God not only the right but the obligation to proclaim the gospel, for which required the most absolute freedom, because only thus could fulfill the mandate of divinity. Based on the foregoing, the revolutionary government and the Church hierarchy was given the task to coordinate their organizational and operational bases according to the elements and gave them grounds to justify their institutional objectives.
The three elements that made possible the construction of the Alteña identity were: the relationship that the man had with the land, the relationship he had with his family, including of course its specific form of structure and organization, and finally, the relationship was with God, while recognizing the priests in a kind of envoy to the divinity who should respect and obey, because he was an emissary of the on earth. As far as the trial of alteños who opposed the Constitution, it prejudicial to its values and beliefs, they iban to design specific strategies to counter any act of government, because they believed that such laws were preventing them eternal salvation, what for them was a central part of its very existence. The actions carried out by the Catholics who were part of the conflict are a central part of the investigation, because they were very diverse and always found elements to curb the intentions of the State. The agricultural division was opposed to the idea that they were about all that material goods come from an act of generosity of divinity, then, if the land had already spread God: Who was the government to spread? The owners of large agricultural properties, which certainly did not have the dimensions of large estates northerners were armed and carried out punitive actions against the peasants who demanded they be handed an envelope ejido; course this will not only was in the region alteña, because in other latitudes owners also acted the same way. Another of the measures taken, especially by women, is that their husbands were in the house when they knew that he was seeking land, the reasoning was simple: if the government stripped of their property to landowners to give to farmers what was equated to a robbery and as such, was considered a sinful behavior, so they did not want them and their children live with someone who was permanently living in sin.
