In the summer of 1926, an army of Mexican Catholics launched a war against their government. Bearing aloft the banners of Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe, they equipped themselves not only with guns, but also with scapulars, rosaries, prayers, and religious visions. These soldiers were called cristeros, and the war they fought, which would continue until the mid-1930s, is known as la Cristiada, or the Cristero war. The most intense fighting occurred in Mexico's west-central states, especially Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Michoacan. For this reason, scholars have generally regarded the war as a regional event, albeit one with national implications. Yet in fact, the Cristero war crossed the border into the United States, along with thousands of Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees.
In Mexican Exodus, Julia Young reframes the Cristero war as a transnational conflict, using previously unexamined archival materials from both Mexico and the United States to investigate the intersections between Mexico's Cristero War and Mexican migration to the United States during the late 1920s. She traces the formation, actions, and ideologies of the Cristero diaspora--a network of Mexicans across the United States who supported the Catholic uprising from beyond the border. These Cristero supporters participated in the conflict in a variety of ways: they took part in religious ceremonies and spectacles, organized political demonstrations and marches, formed associations and organizations, and collaborated with religious and political leaders on both sides of the border. Some of them even launched militant efforts that included arms smuggling, military recruitment, espionage, and armed border revolts. Ultimately, the Cristero diaspora aimed to overturn Mexico's anticlerical government and reform the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Although the group was unable to achieve its political goals, Young argues that these emigrants--and the war itself--would have a profound and enduring resonance for Mexican emigrants, impacting community formation, political affiliations, and religious devotion throughout subsequent decades and up to the present day.
Industry Reviews
"Young's wide variety of sources such as personal correspondence, the emigrant press, and oral interviews with exile families creates the underpinnings of this far-ranging, yet concise treatment...[T]his study provides a valuable contribution for academic and general readers who wish to understand the Cristero War better."--American Catholic Studies
"[A] thoroughly researched, eminently readable examination of the transnational nature of the Cristero Rebellion (1926-1929)...Young has produced a work that is at times thrilling and sentimental This painstakingly researched book, appropriate for undergraduate surveys and more advanced seminars, makes a clear contribution to the literature and deserves a wide readership."--American Historical Review
"Scholars frequently note that a hemispheric approach is necessary to grasp the full significance of diasporic events. Now we have such a study for Mexico's Cristero Rebellion. Mexican Exodus interweaves intriguing anecdotes with superb analysis to examine the lives of Cristeros who crossed over to the United States, the fellow migrants who resisted their cause, and government and church officials on both sides of the border who intervened." --Timothy
Matovina, author of Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America's Largest Church
"Mexican Exodus provides a welcome transnational history of Mexico's Cristero Rebellion. On one hand, it reveals how Mexican Catholic exiles in the U.S. worked to influence the religious situation back home as propagandists, smugglers, and Borderlands fighters. On the other, it makes a suggestive argument concerning the importance of cristero activism to Mexican-American identity formation. The diasporic focus is original and fresh: Young tracks
patterns of cristero militancy along migrant routes and through multiple Borderlands encounters, showing how a nationalistic crusade was, paradoxically, key to imagining a 'greater Mexico.'" --Matthew Butler, author
of Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico's Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927-1929
"This fascinating story of a Catholic diaspora in the U.S. impresses us with the sophistication of its transnational frame and with the acuity of its insights into both Mexican politics and the development of Mexican American communities, even as it delights and moves us with its personal stories and colorful vignettes." --Margaret Chowning, Professor of history, University of California, Berkeley
