Irreligion in Mexico

Irreligion in Mexico may refer to atheism, agnosticism, deism, religious skepticism, secular humanism or general secularist attitudes in Mexico. Mexico was born after its independence as a confessional state. The first Mexican constitution was enacted in 1824, it stated that the religion of the nation is and will perpetually be the Roman Catholic Apostolic, and prohibited any other religion. Since 1857, the country has no official religion and some anti-clerical laws contained in both the 1857 and 1917 Constitutions imposed severe limitations on religious organizations and sometimes codified state intrusion into religious matters.

A 1992 constitutional amendment lifted most restrictions, granting all religious groups legal status, conceding them limited property rights, granting voting rights to religious ministers and lifting restrictions on the number of priests in the country. However, religious ministers cannot be elected to public office, the government does not provide any financial contributions to religious organizations and they can not participate in public education.

Although historically the Catholic Church has dominated the religious landscape of the country, according to the Catholic News Agency, there is a growing community of atheists and non-religious people.

Religion and Politics

The Street Gazzete: Anti Clerical Manifestation. Posada's satires depict the tension between the Church and the citizens.

Since the time of the Spanish conquest, the Catholic Church has had a prominent position in the way virtues and morals are supposed to be implemented and has helped in the shaping of a large population's cultural identity. The article 3 of first Mexican constitution of 1824 stated for example that: The Religion of the Mexican Nation, is, and will be perpetually, the Roman Catholic Apostolic. The Nation will protect it by wise and just laws, and prohibit the exercise of any other whatever.

However, during the middle of the 19th century there were many reforms in regards of the Church power on political matters. The current status of religious freedom reflects the historic tensions between the Catholic Church and the modern State. For most of the country's nearly 300 years as a Spanish colony, the Catholic Church involved itself heavily in politics. In the early national period, the Church's vast wealth and political influence spurred a powerful anti-clerical movement, which found political expression in the Liberal party. The Catholic Church supported rebel Conservatives in the mid-19th century and later welcomed the country's occupation by a French army. Robert Haberman of the Mexican Labour Party writes:

"By the year 1854, The Church gained possession of about two-thirds of all the lands of Mexico, almost every bank, and every large business. The rest of the country was mortgaged to the Church. Then came the revolution of 1854, led by Benito Juárez. It culminated in the Constitution of 1857, which secularised the schools and confiscated Church property. All the churches were nationalised, many of them were turned into schools, hospitals, and orphan asylums. Civil marriages were obligatory. Pope Pius IX immediately issued a mandate against the Constitution and called upon all Catholics of Mexico to disobey it. Ever since then, the clergy has been fighting to regain its lost temporal power and wealth."

When Vicente Fox took power in 2000 many people feared the secularism in the country would be damaged as it was the first time in decades that Mexico had an avowedly Catholic president.

Turn of the 19th to 20th century collaboration with Porfirio Diaz earned the Church the enmity of the victors in the Mexican Revolution. Consequently, severe restrictions on the Church were written into the country's present constitution, the Constitution of 1917. This constitution is the first one in the world to set out social rights, serving as a model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Russian Constitution of 1918. Nevertheless, like the Spanish Constitution of 1931, it has been characterized as being hostile to religion. The 1917 Constitution outlawed teaching by clergy even in private schools, gave control over Church matters to the state, put all Church property at the disposal of the state, outlawed religious orders, outlawed foreign born priests, gave states the power to limit or eliminate priests in their territory, deprived priests of the civil rights to vote or hold office, prohibited Catholic organizations which advocated public policy, prohibited religious publications from commenting on public policy, prohibited clergy from religious celebrations and from wearing clerical garb outside of a church and deprived citizens of the right to a trial for violations of these provisions. The anticlerical resolutions above were included in the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as a consequence of the support given by the High Mexican Catholic Clergy to the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta.

The Federal Government's attempt to enforce the restrictions of the 1917 Constitution in the 1920s led to violent repression and an open revolt by Catholic peasants in the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29). Tensions between the Church and the State eased after 1940, but constitutional restrictions were maintained even as enforcement became progressively lax over the ensuing decades. The Government established diplomatic relations with the Holy See during the administration of President Carlos Salinas, and the Government lifted almost all restrictions on the Catholic Church in 1992. That year the Government ratified its informal policy of not enforcing most legal controls on religious groups by, among other things, granting religious groups legal status, conceding them limited property rights, and lifting restrictions on the number of priests in the country. However, the law continues to mandate strict restrictions on the church and bars the clergy from holding public office, advocating partisan political views, supporting political candidates, or opposing the laws or institutions of the State. The Church's ability to own and operate mass media is also limited. Indeed, after the creation of the Constitution the Catholic Church has been acutely hostile towards the Mexican government. As Laura Randall in his book Changing Structure of Mexico points out, most of the conflicts between citizens and religious leaders lie in the Church's overwhelming lack of understanding of the role of the state's laicism. "The inability of the Mexican Catholic Episcopate to understand the modern world translates into a distorted conception of the secular world and the lay state. Evidently, perceiving the state as anti-religious (or rather, anti-clerical) is the result of 19th-century struggles that imbued the state with anti-religious and anti-clerical tinges in Latin American countries, much to the Catholic Church's chagrin. Defining laicist education as a 'secular religion' that is also 'imposed and intolerant' is the clearest evidence of episcopal intransigence." Others, however see the Mexican state's anticlericalism differently. Recent President Vicente Fox stated, "After 1917, Mexico was led by anti-Catholic Freemasons who tried to evoke the anticlerical spirit of popular indigenous President Benito Juarez of the 1880s. But the military dictators of the 1920s were a more savage lot than Juarez." Fox goes on to recount how priests were killed for trying to perform the sacraments, altars were desecrated by soldiers and freedom of religion outlawed by generals.

Demographics

As many students of Latin American religion have pointed out, it is substantially different to describe oneself as religious or culturally religious and to practice one's faith literally. In the case of Mexico the decline of religious influence of the Church is specially mirrored by the decline of church attendance among its citizens. Church attendance itself is a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that is subject to political and socio-economic factors. From 1940 to 1960 about 70% of Mexican Catholics attended church weekly while in 1982 only 54 percent partook of Mass once a week or more, and 21 percent claimed monthly attendance. Recent surveys have shown that only around 3% of Catholics attend church daily, however 47% percent of them attend church services weekly and, according to INEGI, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2%, while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%.

Timeline of events related to atheism or anti-clericalism in Mexico

• 1824 - Mexico is born after its independence as a confessional state. The first Mexican constitution was enacted in 1824, it stated in the article 3 that the religion of the nation is and will perpetually be the Roman Catholic Apostolic, and prohibited any other religion.

• 1831 - Vicente Rocafuerte was arrested in Mexico for publishing an Essay on Religious Toleration. He was accused of violating Article 3 of the constitution, which stated that Mexico was a confessional state.

• 1844 - Ignacio Ramírez "El Nigromante" wrote "There is no God: natural beings support themselves", causing several controversies throughout the country.

• 1855 - The Ley Juárez (Juárez's Law) of 1855, abolished special clerical and military privileges, and declared all citizens equal before the law.

• 1857 - Liberal Constitution of 1857 drafted during the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort granting basic civil liberties for all Mexicans: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, secularised education and suppression of the Church power.

• 1906 - Flores Magón published his Manifesto to the Nation, The Plan of the Mexican Liberal Party declaring: "The clergy, this unrepentant traitor, this subject of Rome, this irreconcilable enemy of native liberties, in place of finding tyrants to serve and from whom to receive protection, will find instead inflexible laws which will put a limit on their excesses and which will confine them to the religious sphere."

• 1917 - The 1917 Constitution of Mexico is the first one in the world to set out social rights, serving as a model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Russian Constitution of 1918. Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130, as originally formulated, seriously restricted religious freedoms. These anticlerical resolutions were included in the Mexican Constitution as a consequence of the support given by the High Mexican Catholic Clergy to the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta.

• 1924 - Election of atheist Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles applied anti-clerical laws throughout the country and added his own anti-clerical legislation.

• 1926 - In June 1926, Elías Calles signed the "Law for Reforming the Penal Code", known unofficially as the Calles Law. This provided specific penalties for priests and individuals who violated the provisions of the 1917 Constitution.

• 1926 - On November 18, 1926, the Pope issues the encyclical Iniquis Afflictisque (On the Persecution of the Church in Mexico). The Pope criticized the state's interference in matters of worship, outlawing of religious orders and the expropriation of Church property. Alluding to the deprivation of the right to vote and of free speech, among other things, he noted that, "Priests are ... deprived of all civil and political rights. They are thus placed in the same class with criminals and the insane."

• 1927 - Cristero uprising.

• 1927 - November 23, 1927, Miguel Pro, SJ is killed after being convicted, without trial, on trumped-up charges of conspiring to kill President Obregon. Calles' government carefully documented execution by photograph hoping to use images to scare Cristero rebels into surrender, but the photos had the opposite effect.

• 1927 - September 29, 1932 Pope Pius XI issued a second encyclical on the persecution, Acerba Animi.

• 1928 - July 17, 1928 the Mexican elected president Álvaro Obregón is assassinated by José de León Toral, a Roman Catholic militant who was afraid that Obregón would continue with Calles anti-clerical agenda.

• 1934 - There were 4,500 priests serving the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion and assassination.

• 1934 - Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.

• 1935 - By 1935, 17 states had no priest at all.

• 1937 - The Pope issues the third encyclical on the persecution of the Mexican Church, Firmissimam Constantiamque.

• 1940 - Between 1931 and 1940 at least 223 rural teacher were assassinated by the Cristeros and other Catholic armed groups, because of their atheist and socialist education.

• 1940 - By 1940 the Church had "legally had no corporate existence, no real estate, no schools, no monasteries or convents, no foreign priests, no right to defend itself publicly or in the courts, and no hope that its legal and actual situations would improve. Its clergy were forbidden to wear clerical garb, to vote, to celebrate public religious ceremonies, and to engage in politics", but the restrictions were not always enforced.

• 1940 - Manuel Ávila Camacho, a professed religious believer, becomes President. This was a change from his predecessors in the first half of the 20th century who had been strongly anticlerical. His open profession of faith was politically dangerous as it risked the ire of Mexican anticlericals.

• 1940 - By 1940 open hostility toward the Church began to cease with the election of President Ávila (1940–46), who agreed, in exchange for the Church's efforts to maintain peace, to nonenforcement of most of the anticlerical provisions, an exception being Article 130, Section 9, which deprived the Church of the right of political speech, priests of the right to vote, and the right of free political association.

• 1948 - In June 1948, Diego Rivera painted the mural Dreams of a Sunday in the Alameda at the Del Prado Hotel depicting Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign reading, "God does not exist". Rivera would not remove the inscription, so the mural was not shown for 9 years – after Rivera agreed to remove the words. He stated: "To affirm 'God does not exist', I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramírez; I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis. I am not an enemy of the Catholics, as I am not an enemy of the tuberculars, the myopic or the paralytics; you cannot be an enemy of the sick, only their good friend in order to help them cure themselves." The Publicity in the newspapers had been riot-provoking, and Rivera's stand - "I will not remove one letter from it" - brought forth a mob of some thirty persons who vandalised everything in their path. They further violated the mural by defecating the self-portrait of Rivera as a young boy. On that very night, not far from the Hotel, Rivera, along with Mexico's leading artists and intellectuals, was attending a dinner honouring the director of the Museum of Fine Art. When the word arrived about the attack on Rivera's mural, it caused a stir in the audience. David Alfaro Siqueiros exhorted the guests to go to the Del Prado Hotel and, arm-in-arm with José Clemente Orozco and Dr. Atl, marched at the head of 100 people. Among them were Frida Kahlo, Juan O'Gorman, Raul Anguiano y José Revueltas. When they arrived Rivera climbed on a chair, asked for a pencil and calmly began to restore the destroyed inscription: "God does not exist".

• 1979 - Pope John Paul II visits Mexico and violates Mexican anticlerical laws by appearing in public wearing clerical garb and by engaging in public religious observances; some anticlericals objected to the violation of the law and President Jose Lopez Portillo himself offered to pay the 50 pesos fine.

• 1992 - Publication of Rius' illustrated book 500 years screwed but Christian, a book critical of the Spanish conquerors, the Catholic Church and its effects on Mexican society.

• 2008 - On 28 September 2008, the First Global Atheist March for a Secular Society was held in Mexico City and Guadalajara as a part of a series of global protests that call for the civil rights of atheists and non-religious people.

• 2009 - On Saturday 26 June 2009, during a meeting celebrating the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, president Felipe Calderón stated that atheism and irreligion render the youth criminals and leave them at the mercy of drug traffickers. His statement was prompted by a previous opinion on the death of Michael Jackson. Before the results of the singer's autopsy, Calderón claimed that Jackson's death was due to his purported abuse of drugs and his lack of faith. According to him, the lack of religion and union with God fosters addictions and crime among young people. A letter from a community of Mexican atheists was submitted to La Jornada newspaper as a counter-attack to the allegations against non-religious people, claiming that the president's position was a crystal-clear example of discrimination against minorities in the country.

• 2009 - Mexico City played host to international symposium on religious freedom in Latin America sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the first time such an event has occurred in Mexico City. Sociologist Jorge Trasloheros noted that many powerful Mexicans see religion not as "the opium of the masses", but as "the tobacco of the masses"—a bad habit to be banned from the public arena. Supreme Knight Carl Anderson denounced this idea still commonly held in Mexico that "religious beliefs are not welcome in the public square, or worse are not allowed in the public square".

• 2010 - In March 2010, the lower house of the Mexican legislature introduced legislation to amend the Constitution to make the Mexican government formally "laico"—meaning "lay" or "secular". Critics of the move say the "context surrounding the amendment suggests that it might be a step backwards for religious liberty and true separation of church and state". Coming on the heels of the Church's vocal objection to legalization of abortion as well as same sex unions and adoptions in Mexico City, "together with some statements of its supporters, suggests that it might be an attempt to suppress the Catholic Church's ability to engage in public policy debates". Critics of the amendment reject the idea that "Utilitarians, Nihilists, Capitalists, and Socialists can all bring their philosophy to bear on public life, but Catholics (or other religious minorities) must check their religion at the door" in a sort of "second-class citizenship" which they consider nothing more than religious discrimination.

Mexican atheists and agnostics

Mexican writer and free-thinker El Nigromante was hailed as the Voltaire of Mexico due to his outspoken criticism of religion

• Guillermo Arriaga, screenwriter and novelist
• Hector Avalos, religion researcher
• Narciso Bassols, co-founded the Popular Party
• Luis Buñuel, Spanish-Mexican filmmaker
• Plutarco Elías Calles, president (1924–1928)
• Leonora Carrington, artist
• Ricardo Flores Magón, anarchist
• Carlos Frenk, cosmologist
• Gael García Bernal, actor
• Tomás Garrido Canabal, politician
• Frida Kahlo, painter
• Guillermo Kahlo
• Manuel de Landa, philosopher and artist
• Germán List Arzubide, poet and revolutionary
• Carlos A. Madrazo, politician
• Subcomandante Marcos, activist
• Juan O'Gorman, artist
• Ignacio Ramírez, "El Nigromante" also known as the Voltaire of Mexico
• Rius, cartoonist and highly critical of the Catholic Church
• Diego Rivera, muralist and Marxist
• Jesus Silva-Herzog Márquez, economist
• Remedios Varo, Spanish-Mexican surrealist artist
• Fernando Vallejo, Colombian-Mexican writer
• Jorge Volpi, author

See also

• Demographics of atheism
• Religion in Mexico