From Juarez to Fox

With the inauguration of Vicente Fox as President, an old debate has been reborn in Mexico over the separation of the church from the state. For more than one century, the Mexican state has been legally secular, and, for many politicians this means that anyone who holds a public office must be an atheist, an agnostic or, at least, not show any sign of religiosity.

Vicente Fox went to the Virgin of Guadalupe Basilica, prayed, and got in his knees before the virgin, all of this a few hours before the ceremony where he was sworn in as President. Politicians, especially leftist ones, trembled at the sight of the President of Mexico praying inside a catholic temple, and they made that clear with their shouts of Juarez! Juarez!

Benito Juarez García emerged from poverty and the social disadvantage of being an indigenous to the Presidency in the 1860's and 1870's. Juarez enacted the "laws of reform" in which he separated the Roman Catholic church that, until then, had been the official religion in Mexico, he civil offices under the jurisdiction of municipalities. Until then, those who were not roman catholics couldn't get a birth, death or marriage certificate.

Juarez also confiscated many of the church's valuable possessions and lands. From that day on Benito Juarez was admired by the church's critics and criticized by the church's followers. After his death the church was in a détente with the state until the 1920's when Presidents Plutarco Elias Calles and Alvaro Obregon enacted extreme laws against the church, thus provoking the "cristera war", a civil war in which people declared war to the state and defended their religion, a great part of central Mexico erupted to the battle cry of "Viva cristo rey" (Viva King Christ).

There was extremism on both sides, but Calles realized that in the war everyone was losing and the war ended oficially in 1929, the same year the PRI was born. The PRI governments had a policy of respecting the church if the church stayed out of politics. President Carlos Salinas changed the constitution, recognized the Vatican state and gave priests the right to vote. He did it with the PRI support. Those legislators who were shouting their terror because the church will gain more power obviously forgot that.

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