Tag: Venezuela

Morillo: Spain Seeks to Reconquer America

Richard Barnes

It has been a while since I’ve posted about Venezuela’s colonial and early republic history. It is not easy to write about and, should one care to peruse reader comments of the very few books critical of Simon Bolivar and his Criollo allies, one would see passionate, not to say blind, defense of Bolivar and trashing of anyone who would dare question the conventional narrative.

However, the conventional narrative must be questioned. Even as a child, it was difficult for me to understand just what the uprising was all about. The national anthem has a line that says: El pobre en su choza / libertad pidió (“The poor in his hut / asked for liberty”). 

However, setting aside the textbooks and reading contemporary correspondence of that era, or other primary documents, such as Alexander Humboldt’s (no friend of Spain!) voluminous correspondence and journals, one would not see the “poor in his hut asking for liberty”. On the contrary, one would see “centuries of civilization” — Bolivar’s own words as he lamented the maelstrom and cataclysm he unleashed but for which he never recognized responsibility.

Further, one would see men and boys, handcuffed with ropes, hauled out of their homes in front of screaming mothers and sisters, and dragged to the front lines, where the ropes would be cut and they would be ordered to fight, without any idea what they were fighting for. Or why.

Reading first hand accounts of the truly fratricidal upheavals and bloodletting of that era is depressing.

Few Americans know that the initial uprisings of 1811, fomented by the Criollos (the direct descendants of Spanish colonists), coincided with the period of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. The Criollos saw their chance to declare independence when Spain was focused on her own survival. It is important to note that “the poor in his hut” had not idea of the political maneuverings that the Machiavellian, power-hungry Criollos in Caracas were machinating.

Little did they understand the civil war that was being unleashed against anyone — including “the poor in his hut” — who would not swear allegiance to the Criollos, or who was merely suspected of loyalty to the king of Spain for something so insignificant as “centuries of civilization”. And, even less, did anyone suspect Bolivar’s “War to the Death” decree, which hurled vast regions into a truly racial war against all Spanish descendants (who were not bonafide revolutionary Criollos).

By 1815, Spain, having defeated Napoleon’s armies, now turned her attention to her bloodied colonies. She sent General Pablo Morillo as supreme commander. This was the first time in three centuries that Spain had sent such an army to the Americas. His large fleet arrived off the coast of the island of Margarita, then under the command of Bolivar’s sadistic sycophant, Juan Bautista Arismendi. Seeing the large fleet and knowing it meant business, Arismendi immediately surrendered and with tears groveled before Morillo who was empowered by the king to offer amnesty as he saw fit. Arismendi claimed ignorance of Spain’s victory over France and that his actions were actually in defense of Spain against France. He pled with tears, “Clemency! Clemency my general! I ask for clemency in the name of this poor people who have suffered so much! Save me from a deserved punishment, for the love of the king!”

Witnesses state that Morillo was deeply moved and told Arismendi to stand and offered him the amnesty he had begged for so genuinely and repentantly. This despite others present who passionately warned Morillo not to do this; that Arismendi had much innocent blood on his hands and was not to be trusted. But Morillo was firm in his belief that Arismendi was sincere and trustworthy.

Morillo departed to Caracas where he was received with genuine joy by a desperate citizenry which had suffered much under their “liberators”. This was in February of 1815.

On May 30 of 1816, over a year later, Morillo was in Santa Fe, Colombia, as guest of honor of a banquet given by the grateful people of Santa Fe. Toward the end of the festivities, “more than 50 ladies came to the general, most crying, begging forgiveness on behalf of their husbands, sons, and brothers who had been ringleaders in uprisings and killings on behalf of the Criollos against the Spanish authorities and loyalists. The tears and supplications were enough to soften a rock. Mothers had thrown themselves at Morillo’s feet begging for pity and mercy for their sons, refusing to stand up….” 

Morillo summoned internal strength to not show any emotion, however, witnesses state that he was deeply moved. Nevertheless, he remained silent, only once in a while murmuring almost in a whisper, “Levántese usted, Señora” (“Stand up, madam”), as he extended his gloved hand to help them stand.

He allowed them to speak for a long time and then, with a firm voice, said:

“Señoras, my king, as a Spanish gentleman, has generous and humanitarian sentiments and has invested me with the most precious faculty of offering pardon so long as such pardon will work for the health of the kingdom. So, upon stepping for the first time on American soil, on the island of Margarita, I offered pardon to all who requested it of me, very much in the same way in which you are requesting it of me now…”

“Do you know how those ingrates repaid my freely offered pardon? Those who, with many tears, begged me to forgive in the name of his majesty, the king? As soon as I turned my back, they, more bloodthirsty than ever, turned upon the officers and soldiers I, in my credulity, had left behind, outnumbered by 100 to 1. Each one was cruelly murdered by knife, sword, and bayonet.”

“Each one of my men who were so treacherously murdered, each one by 100 assassins, also had mothers, wives, and sons, who today curse my name a thousand times for having been so careless in believing such fraudulent protests from such miserable cowards. Had I listened to my men and executed twenty ringleaders, instead of so facilely pardoning men worthy of death, my conscience would not be burdened with the baleful regrets that weigh so heavily on me today….”

“If I put your men at liberty, who can assure me that the loyal people who remain in Santa Fe will not perish by their hands?”

“I am very sorry and saddened for the pain I see painted upon your faces … but … I cannot pardon when the health of the realm does not permit it. No. I cannot. My resolution as to the ringleaders is irrevocable.”

General Morillo had received a detailed briefing on the treachery of Arismendi. By November of 1815, Arismendi, pardoned by Morillo, had gathered 1,500 men and had come upon the 200 men left behind by Morillo. Each one was cut down with machetes, knives, hatchets, and spears.

Morillo should have known (as his own men had tried to warn him) that savages who would drag Spanish loyalists from hospital beds and then club them to death, were not to be trusted. 

Juan Bautista Arismendi (1775-1841). Considered a hero and patriot by the ruling class in Venezuela; however, his story as another side which is not so sublime.

General Pablo Morilla (1778-1837). He is portrayed as a monster of atrocities; however, the unbiased record does not support that description. He went to his grave remorseful for his untimely pardon of the treacherous Arismendi.

Isla Margarita, Venezuela

Municipal government site in Santa Fe, Colombia. First built in 1787, but then rebuilt in 1807. This structure remained until early 20th Century.

Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

Richard Barnes

In the mid 1980s I had the privilege of working with the Gideon’s organization. Every Saturday, rain snow or shine, a group of us would meet for breakfast in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, to review assignments and plan the upcoming weeks. Although our conversations covered just about everything under the sun, I’d often hear these men, all of whom were older than I, express gratitude for God, family, and country. In that order.

However, they were also realistic enough to gently tamp down my younger-man’s exuberance about America. In my naiveté I still believed that, if one would scratch beneath the surface across the country, one would tap into a vast reservoir of appreciation for our roots, both colonial and early republic. By that I meant, surely, the great majority of Americans understood that the truths we regard as “self-evident” are so because of the religious tradition undergirding our beliefs and our very lives and that to reject that heritage would lead to tyranny and ruin. 

My colleagues would point to Scripture, which has plenty of examples of nations whose names now gather dust in forgotten manuscripts and unvisited libraries. Nations that knew the Triune God but did not honor him. The words of Daniel to Belshazzar come to mind. Even the nation of Israel was judged for her betrayal. Sadly, it is the nature of men and women to forget, to deny, to dishonor.

John Stuart Mill, the great relativistic thinker, assumed that Christian ethics are permanent and hence we can take them for granted. He provides yet another example proving that “great thinkers” are not often wise.

I recalled my friends from Kalamazoo when I read the 2022 Transparency International Corruptions Perceptions Index comments on Venezuela.

Venezuela’s foundations differed widely from colonial and early republic America. However, she did have a basis for understanding the source of her prosperity in the first half of the 20th Century, a time when she enjoyed high levels of economic freedom which produced an environment of numberless voluntary transactions and unprecedented years of well-being with high growth rates. In 1960, Venezuela’s per capita income, at 45% of the US per capita income, was the highest in South America while her growth rate was higher than even Germany’s. 

Her great economic success fueled the transition to democracy in 1959. However, her democratically elected officials immediately began to curtail her economic freedoms in favor of Socialistic policies which eventually led to contractions and, by the end of the century, ushered in an authoritarian Socialist regime that, like a protean, angry octopus, has its tentacles in every nook and cranny of Venezuelan’s lives. By 2013, even the Carter Center, albeit belatedly, acknowledged the Venezuelan “elections” to be a sham (my word, not theirs; I don’t have to be diplomatic). By then the damage was done and the fix was in, and continues to be in, to this day.

Oh, but there’s more.

Transparency International’s 2022 report ranks Venezuela as the most corrupt country in the Americas. That’s “most corrupt”, as in more corrupt than Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Her rulers are reliably accused of leading massive drug cartels and having extensive ties to major international criminal organizations. Incredibly, illegal businesses account for 21% of Venezuela’s GDP. And her mining, especially gold and diamonds, are controlled by criminal groups who, with impunity, extort, enslave, prostitute, and murder the inhabitants, mostly defenseless indigenous peoples. 

In other words, Socialists are grossly guilty of what they delight in accusing Capitalists and Christians (they purposefully interchange the two).

In my youth, I would often hear the older generation’s assurances that Venezuela would not go the way of Cuba or Allende’s Chile. That she understood very well that liberty created her prosperity. As for her dalliances with Socialistic policies since 1960, those were very limited and did were not slippery slopes. I wanted to believe such assurances, even though my own family history said otherwise. Cuba, where my father was born, was also an economic miracle which went the way of all flesh practically overnight. At the time I did not know enough to ask my elders what made Venezuela any different; what would keep her from doing likewise.

And I certainly was not aware of Venezuela’s deeply infiltrated military, in cahoots with Castro and determined to rule Venezuela in Communist fashion, tyranny and all.

Venezuela “understood” where her prosperity came from. However, she ditched it nonetheless. 

The United States appears to be doing the same, with even less excuse.

Mourning the death of a child. In addition to the griefs which are the common lot of all, these peoples have been abused, murdered, displaced, and enslaved. Countless have fled to unknown destinies in Brazil.

Mother and children in Brazil after fleeing criminal attacks in Venezuela’s mining arc.

Plaza Colon in Caracas, Venezuela, circa 1950

Caracas boy, circa 1950

Castro In Venezuela In 1989

Richard Barnes

In my research on the Cuba-Venezuela Nexus I read about a remarkable photograph taken when Fidel Castro arrived at the Teresa Carreño theater to participate in the festivities celebrating the inauguration of the second (non consecutive) term of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), on February 2, 1989.

CAP thought highly of Fidel Castro, actually meeting with him secretly multiple times during his first tenure (1974-1979) which was, not coincidentally, the age of massive expropriations in Venezuela. CAP invited the bitter dictator to the inauguration for his second term (1989-1993). 

Bitter because he had an almost lifelong compulsive lust to use Venezuela’s riches to fund his Napoleonic dream of ruling over all of Latin America. A Spanish empire redivivus of sorts, only with lots more executions. He never lost that dream and when President Rómulo Betancourt spurned him he became inflamed with anger and took reckless actions to topple the elected president.

Fast forward to February 2, 1989, when the photo below was taken.

We cannot read another person’s mind. But in looking at this photo, you can! You can, because we now know what was going on in his mind at that moment.

CAP had naively given Castro carte blanche to enter the country with hundreds of “advisors”, by-passing immigration. This was unprecedented … and ominous. CAP also gave the Cubans full use of the Eurobuilding Hotel, then in final phases of construction, in Caracas. During Castro’s visit no Venezuelan was allowed in the sprawling premises, only Cubans, including food and cleaning services.

It was during that infiltration that Nicolás Maduro returned to Venezuela camouflaged as a Cuban adviser. And, just as ominously, scores of fully equipped sharpshooters entered also. Upon departure, Venezuelan emigration officials reported to CAP that the number of Cubans and equipage departing was significantly less than what had entered. 

The president waved aside their concerns. Later, after the 9-day Caracazo (February 27 – March 8, 1989) which by some estimates killed over 1,000 Venezuelans, the usual suspects reported this rioting as “spontaneous” reactions to CAP’s economic policies. There was nothing “spontaneous” about it. The playbook was a reboot of the April 9, 1948 Bogotazo whose aftermath is what Castro wanted for Venezuela. He eventually got what he wanted.

What was the context of the much ballyhooed discontent supposedly suffocating Venezuelans in the 70s and 80s which led to a massive popular uprising which brought a Communist, Hugo Chávez, to power, never to be relinquished?

Between 1973 and 1982, when conspiracies, mostly within Venezuela’s left-wing military leadership, had sworn to do away with “democracy”, Venezuela “was a country whose economy had grown 50% in a decade … and found herself among the 20 top economies in the planet and in the top 10 with the best quality of life. Unemployment was 3.2% and poverty had fallen from 14.4% in 1976 to 9.5% in 1979 … the index of absolute privation was .53%, the lowest percentage of the entire American continent along with Canada and 90% of Europe.” (Source: Thays Peñalver)

Democracy in Venezuela was not ended because of poverty or privation which has been argued or asserted since the late 1980s. She eschewed her democratic institutions according to the designs of leftwing ideologues mostly ensconced in the Venezuela military.

Nor was Venezuela hopelessly in hock to American companies and interests. CAP was ardently anti-US and his policies left no room for doubt. His administration nationalized the oil and iron ore industries, and greatly regulated the American companies operating in the country. Unprecedented actions, all, which, produced an initial period of economic euforia, like a drug rush. But then the piper had to be paid and that was the situation in 1989, when CAP threw a vast party for his second inauguration, with Castro as a guest of honor.

It is difficult for most of us to appreciate the chaos and havoc faced by the citizens of Caracas during those nine days in late February and early March of 1989. 

In addition to his own plane, Castro had arrived accompanied by two Soviet transport planes, later known to have been packed with munitions, weaponry of war, and other arms and grenades with “great powers of destruction”. All this was waved in with not so much as a by-your-leave. And when he departed, only a fraction of the equipage returned with him.

The Venezuelan authorities, not briefed about the unaccounted personnel and equipage brought by Castro. assumed that the disturbances which began in late February were merely local unrest. As police and national guard personnel approached the areas of riots, they fell under unremitting, unrelenting fire. By some estimates as much as 200 sharpshooters ensconced in the roofs of the city’s buildings fired and killed at will — both unarmed civilians as well as police and national guard. Areas of Caracas were virtual war zones as attested by European journalists such as José Comas, who had reported on the wars in Kosovo and Serbia. He described his coverage as, “The Caracas war front”. 

To this day we still lack an authoritative accounting of the death and bloodletting of those nine days. The attacks were so severe and the crossfire so violent that the original intent — the overthrow of CAP, Castro’s good friend –was abandoned and the backup plan was implemented. Now the Caracazo was affirmed to have been the result of heavy handed suppression ordered by CAP himself and executed by the Venezuelan authorities.

Fidel Castro called CAP to express his support and solidarity and to denounce the scum who wished to overthrow him. American newspapers dutifully reported the crocodile tear expressions of the bitter butcher.

A mere three years later, CAP was impeached and removed from office. A few years after that, Hugo Chávez, who had been involved in three coup attempts was elected president and, though dead, his administration continues to this day, under Castro’s hand-picked successor to Chávez, Nicolás Maduro.

One important note: during last coup attempt in 1993, President Pérez, swearing he would not commit suicide like Allende, acted with great courage and audacity, fully armed and fighting his way out of La Casona to Miraflores where he was shortly surrounded once again, forcing him to fight his way out a second time that night. CAP was too much of an ideologue in his enmity of all things US and, worse, he was naive and foolish in his embrace of a rattlesnake like Castro. But when the chips were down, he acted valiantly. We are not cardboard creatures.

Fidel Castro arrives at the Teresa Carreño Theater to celebrate Carlos Andres Perez’s second inauguration on February 2, 1989. He had arrived in Venezuela accompanied by two Soviet Transport planes with war materiel which was allowed into Venezuela without being searched. Most stayed in Venezuela after Castro’s departure and was deployed in the Caracazo of February 27 – March 8, 1989. Surely all this was on his thoughts as he saw the realization of his decades-long dream close at hand.

Scolopendra Gigantea (Giant Centipede)

Richard Barnes

My last visit to Venezuela was in 2005 during which my cousins took me to visit the massive Las Macaguas Dam in Ciudad Guayana. As we walked the site, we eventually entered, in the “innards” of the structure, a small museum dedicated to the creatures encountered during the years of study and construction of Las Macaguas and also the even greater Guri Dam, the second or third largest in the world — sadly saddled with colossal incompetence resulting in far reaching failures for the entire country.

Corporate media reports, including Wikipedia, blame droughts for these life-threatening failures. However, to put it as diplomatically as possible, droughts did not suddenly show up with Chavez and Maduro. For further reading on the deterioration of Venezuelas electrical grid, refer to my posts on the Cuba-Venezuela nexus, such as here.

As we walked the museum we were awed by the variety and gigantic sizes of the insects on display. Childhood memories flooded back as I recalled seeing many of those or similar specimens live-and-in-color as we tramped about El Pao or fished in the Caroní or Orinoco rivers.

A recent email exchange with George and Richard Scheipe, the sons of a gentleman who taught school in El Pao in the 1950s, brought those memories back. George tells of John Tuohy, one of the “older kids” in El Pao, who had come to visit his brother, Ted Heron, Jr., in Pennsylvania, and had brought a dead giant centipede in his suitcase. The mischievous ones hid the critter in aluminum foil in the backyard and “would torment the local kids, including me, with it.” 

These centipedes are the Scolopendra gigantea and are found almost exclusively in South America (but also southern Mexico) with many in Venezuela. They are venomous and their bite can be fatal to small children. In 2014 a 4-year-old in Venezuela died from a bite he incurred when he picked up an empty soda can into which a Scolopendra had hid. In 2015 a 19-year-old man was hospitalized in San Tomé and when he worsened he was taken to a major city for better care. He recovered.

These centipedes can grow as large as 12 inches and are very quick. They are carnivores who feed on any other animal it can overpower and kill, including other arthropods, insects, small birds, lizards, frogs, and snakes. Students have investigated their feeding on bats, something which was not known until relatively recently.

They “climb cave dwellings and hold or manipulate their heavier prey with only a few legs attached to the ceiling.” A study done in southern Mexico discovered that, contrary to earlier belief, bats were killed by these giants pursuant to clever hunting tactics.

It had been believed that the centipedes killed the bats in reaction to being disturbed by the latter when flying in or out of their caves. Careful observation disclosed that the hunters attach themselves to the high walls or ceilings waiting for their prey to fly close, upon which the Scolopendra pounce. “We have observed that, during the trajectory taken by the bats, some perch momentarily. It is during such brief stops that the giant centipede attacks and kills [he who hesitates is lost!].” Also, it is probable that as a bat flies very close to the walls it is also attacked and killed.

I appreciate the recollections of folks who lived in or who have some connection with mid-20th-Century El Pao. Truly we were blessed and had memorable — sometimes frightening — encounters with a unique flora and fauna which so fascinated great explorers such as Alexander Humboldt and others.

Don’t try this at home

Nor this

Represa Las Macagua in Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela

The Cristiada I–Mike Ashe 

Richard Barnes

[Prelude I and Prelude II documented the historical background of events leading up to the appalling years of the Cristiada in Mexico. The Cristiada did not appear spontaneously; its seeds were sown after the French Revolution, its first sprouts were seen in 1810, the trees took root in 1914 with the Carrancistas and their “constitution”, and the conflagration exploded in the 1920s.

The 20th Century saw several Cristiadas, for example, see The Black Book of Communism which documents the atheistic hatred and intolerance of Christianity and its resultant tens of millions of unspeakable tortures, desolations, and deaths. Mexico suffered this a century before Russia and Eastern Europe and China and sundry lands in between, in many of which the faithful died, as in Mexico, proclaiming “Christ the King!”

As you read the preludes and as you read Mike’s documentation below, surely you can see ourselves, as in a mirror, in places clearly, in places blurrily. 

Our awakening must be spiritual; a living desire to recognize that man was created in the image of God and his choice remains the same as in the Garden: God or man. The First leads to liberty and life, the latter, to tyranny and death — RMB]

La Cristiada (Viva Cristo Rey!)

This is dedicated to Jesus Perez Mendez, my father in law, from the State of Zacatecas, and my mother in law Maria Luna de Perez from the state of Guanajuato.  Both states were in the epicenter of the Cristiada during their early childhoods.  

Prologue:

The forces of good and evil collided in Mexico during the 1920’s.  Surprisingly this catastrophic event is not part of the country’s memory.  Few modern day Mexicans are even aware how this all played out or why [and few Americans are aware as well — RMB]

They also are not aware of the  consequences of the “liberal” dictatorships of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). 

These liberals exercised  power in a cruel and arbitrary way for decades.  Aiding this tyranny are the liberal media and their historian cohorts, all of whom have blood on their hands.

Public education in Mexico is run by the government with liberal propaganda taught from K-12 and beyond in the public Universities (that are supposedly autonomous). Even comic books are loaded with left wing heroes [the same is true of Venezuela today — RMB]

Many Mexicans migrated to the US during these decades to escape the oppressive liberalism of Mexico.

The War’s Beginnings

The Cristeros Rebellion was a war of ideologies between the Catholic Church (stable force) and the Mexican Government (unstable liberal force).  Wide scale violence (guerrilla warfare) began in 1926 and lasted for three years. The large scale outbreaks were confined to the States of Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato, and southern Zacatecas.  Moderate to minor outbreaks were also felt thoughout the Republic. The de facto end of the conflict did not occur until the election of Avila Camacho in 1940 (center right politician) after the disastrous left-wing presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas.

Root Causes of the conflict

Liberalism took root in Mexico during the mid 19th century among the ruling elites including Benito Juarez. In 1857 the Constitiution formally limited the power of the church and in 1859 reform laws separated the church and state. The revised constitution and reform laws proved to placate the liberals while at the same time being ignored by the government, this was particularly the case during the Porfiriato [the years of peace noted by William F Buckley, Sr. in his House testimony in 1919 — RMB].

The 20th Century Revolutionaries

Madero — The first ruler after Diaz was Francisco Madero, who had committed to cleanse the corrupt federal and state governments. The Church gave Madero its cautious support, but held it up, when he refused to acknowledge the church’s unifying influence. The church then ended her support for Madero, which was followed shortly thereafter by Huerta’s seizing power and allegedly having Madero killed [see Prelude I for further discussion and detail — RMB]. Afterwards, the church’s further supported Huerta which enraged the liberal revolutionaries.

Zapata — Stance towards the church was ambiguous. He discribed himself as a conservative catholic, but at the same time would shoot a priest without hesitation. The US liberals lionized Zapata, even making a movie portraying him as a champion of the people, while ignoring that he was a killer and mostly ignorant/illiterate. In spite of all his shortcomings he was a champion for agrarian reform which turned out to be his legacy. The commander of the Southern Army, Zapata was a formidable figure in Mexican history.

Villa — Believed in God,  but not religion and was a clerophobe.  After his break with Carranza, unsurprisingly,  he became a defender of the Church. Villa often times played the US by trying to draw them into Mexican internal conflicts. Villa folklore ignored the fact that he murdered countless asians including walking them off the roof of the highest building in Chihuahua. A cold blooded killer, the commander of the Northern army (the most feared army in Mexico during that time), and a governor who carried out significant land reform in the north.

Carranza — The leader most associated with persecution of the church. His presidential victory in 1917 was the death knell for an independent church. Francisco Mujica speaking to the Constitutional committee in Queretaro signaled the government’s new stance:

“I am a foe of the clergy, because I consider it the most disgraceful and perverse enemy of our people. What has the clergy given…our nation? The most absurd ideas, the greatest contempt for our democratic institutions, the most unrelenting hatred for the very principles of equity, equality, and fraternity taught by the first democrat, Jesus Christ…. What sort of morality, gentlemen, will the clergy teach our children? We have seen it —the greatest corruption.”

The Constitution of 1917 — Although guaranteeing freedom of religious beliefs, it severely restricted religious practices.  Article 24 stated that every religious act must be performed inside the churches which were under the supervision of the government.  Article 130 restricted every aspect of religion in Mexico. No longer could priests hear confession, perform marriages; the number and assignments of the clergy were now controlled by the Mexican government; the church was not allowed to own land without the government’s consent [in effect, the Mexican constitution expected religion to remain, in word and deed, in no public place, but only between the two ears of the faithful. Is that not what the left desires in America also? — RMB]

Church leaders did not accept the new Constitution, and began to mobilize support in the US and in Rome.

The Mexican anticlericalism was the work of a small radical minority.  Most Mexicans were Catholics and had no desire of seeing religious rituals changed. The Catholic majority response was the only true revolutionary during that period.

Obregon –– Presidency was supposedly to be a period of conciliation which gave way to a strict revolutionary law. However, in 1925 many state legislatures began implementing Article 13 (stripping civilian human rights). Obregon hand-picked his successor, Plutarco Elías Calles.

Calles — The true enemy of the church gained power in 1926 and began attacking the church on two fronts. First the leader of Church opposition, Jose Mora y del Rio was placed on trial; second, Calles immediately implemented Article 130 and Article 3 which prohibited schools operated by the Church.  Calles actions prompted the church to suspend all church services until the anticlerical laws had been amended. The church went on strike, which was called by the Archbishop Mora y del Río who was promptly exiled by Calles. They also called for economic boycotts which did not hold because of economic issues throughout Mexico at that time. The 1917 constitution was amended in 2015 with little substantive change. 

Calles did not count on popular opposition that resulted from these actions and the war that ensued. 

Outcome was predictable: the Church survived despite being called the counter revolutionary. Actually, now the strongest Catholic Church in the world today is in Mexico with their devotion to our lady of Guadalupe and to Christ the King. If you happen to enter a factory throughout Mexico you will see a statue of “The Lady” at the center of the work area.

Carranza was assassinated, Obregon was assassinated by a Cristero, and Calles was exiled to the US [which he passionately hated for the anti-Communist attitudes of her people — RMB] in 1936.  The Cristero war took 90,000 lives: 60,000 government, 30,000 Cristeros guerrillas, plus countless civilians. A settlement was finally reached between the Vatican and the government which ended the conflict in 1929. 

This war was started by the liberals under the direction of Plutarco Calles against his own people and is not included anywhere in the memories of a nation. It was basically covered up, so much so, that few Mexicans are even aware that this ever happened.

The Vatican conferred sainthood to twenty-three clerical and laymen martyrs at the beginning of the 21st century. A brief accounting of their sacrifices will be listed in the next and final post on the Cristiada.

Plutarco Calles (center) and American Ambassador, Dwight Morrow (right), circa 1928. Morrow negotiated a cease fire to the Cristiada but not before tens of thousands had been killed.

Miguel Pro, Roman Catholic priest, executed in 1927. Although Mexican President Calles fully expected him to recant and had planned to use his recantation for propaganda purposes, Rev. Pro prayed, then stood before his executioners, spreading his arms as a sign of the cross and said his last words, “May God have mercy on you…. Lord, you know that I am innocent. With all my heart I forgive my enemies. Viva Cristo Rey!”