Cristero Memory Reloaded: History, Social Media, and the New Christian Right in Mexico

1 The Cristero War: Between Historical Memory and Politics

The Cristero War is by far the most significant and recurring historical episode to surface whenever new Christian right actors – particularly people that identify as conservative, right-wing, anti-communist, and Catholic – refer to their tense and at times conflictive relationship with the Mexican secular state. This should come as no surprise as the Cristero War was, after the 1910 Mexican Revolution, Mexico’s most important armed conflict during the twentieth century.^[13] It was also the greatest threat to the legitimacy of the political and cultural hegemonic project that came out of the revolution.^[14]

Although the war formally came to an end in 1929, its reverberations were felt throughout the twentieth century. In addition to the so-called Second Cristiada, which took place in the late 1930s as a reaction to the government’s implementation of a socialist model of education, Catholics organized direct attacks against Protestant minorities in the 1940s and 1950s.^[15] Several of these anti-Protestant attacks were perpetrated by members of the Union Nacional Sinarquista (UNS), a right-wing, conservative, and ultra nationalist organization whose members saw themselves as inheritors of the Cristero tradition.^[16] During the 1960 and 1970s, anti-communist, nationalist, and right-wing groups that identified as descendants of the Cristeros gained presence across the country, particularly in urban centers and universities, with the explicit aim of fighting the presence of communism in the country.^[17] When present-day Christian right leaders appeal to the Cristero War, they are thus tapping into this long-term genealogy of right-wing movements in Mexico that have identified in this conflict the origins of their struggle as well as a blueprint of the type of ideology and praxis that faithful, devoted, and courageous Catholics should follow in the public sphere.^[18]

2 Cristero Memory Reloaded

What is the memory of the Cristero war that these new Christian right leaders and movements invoke, and with what purposes? An analysis based on historical evidence and social media suggests these groups invoke a memory of the Cristero War centered on three main themes or tropes: the existence of a tyrannical and socialist government; the imminence of a moment of crisis that demands urgent action; and the reimagining of the figure of the martyr as someone that is not only willing to die in the name of Christ but also to actively engage in belligerent forms of political activism. Taken together, these elements infuse these groups’ ideologies and calls for action with a sense of urgency and with an affective dimension that translates into greater levels of support. This collective memory resonates with a sector of Mexican society that sees the Cristero War as an unresolved conflict that ended up with faithful Catholics being betrayed by the government and by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

3 A Tyrannical and Socialist Government

New Christian right leaders have referred to Mexico’s current government as tyrannical, abusive, and communistic. Through social media, Verástegui has openly compared former President Andres Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) with Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928), the president considered responsible for igniting Catholics’ call for arms in 1926.^[19] Just like Calles, Verástegui has declared, López Obrador is “a dictator and an enemy of the church.”^[20] The description of the current government as tyrannical should not be taken lightly, as militant Catholics have and continue to theologize “tyrannicide” as a legitimate response to defend religious freedom.^[21]

This was not the first time Verástegui referred publicly to López Obrador’s government as socialist and tyrannical. In November of 2022, Verástegui organized the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Mexico. During his remarks, he criticized then president López Obrador for undermining democracy and promoting socialism. He next called upon the audience and said: “You as Mexicans have to be proud of your Cristero legacy, your ancestors fought against a totalitarian and communist government.”^[22] In a similar vein, the association Abogados Cristianos posted a message on social media that, accompanied with a photograph of Calles, read: “our Mexican state is not secular, it is anticlerical and the best example [of this] is the Cristero War.”^[23] In an article written in the context of the forthcoming centennial of the Cristero War, Raúl Tortolero equally referred to López Obrador’s government as socialist and called current president Claudia Sheinbaum (2024-) “atheist, communist, and Jewish.”^[24] In the article he also demands the government to recognize the “cristero genocide.”

Certainly, Mexico’s current political context differs greatly from that of the 1920s. During that decade, the country was characterized by a populist, military-led, and authoritarian regime that excluded democratic elections and promoted overt forms of religious persecution via stringent secularizing policies. Elias Calles energetically endorsed anti-Catholic policies aimed at excluding the Catholic Church and Catholics from politics and other social arenas, including public education.^[25] By contrast, the decade of the 2020s has been characterized by civilian and democratically elected governments. While López Obrador was a populist and pro-military leader, his was a civilian and democratically elected government that did not engage in acts of religious persecution. More so, despite defending a leftist agenda in economic terms, López Obrador promoted a conservative agenda on social issues and openly embraced popular forms of religiosity, including popular expressions of Catholicism such as the Virgen of Guadalupe.^[26] In spite of this, and despite the fact that in present-day Mexico religious freedom is not endangered by legal limitations, leaders like Verástegui argue that religion is now under siege due to the imposition of globalism, gender ideology, and socialist ideas.^[27]

4 A Moment of Crisis

The second trope that the new Christian right borrows from the Cristero conflict is the notion that Mexico is today, as in the past, experiencing a moment of crisis wherein basic elements of Mexican society – religious freedom, family, private property – are being significantly undermined and threatened by communism, atheism, globalism, and feminism.

These dangers are understood as originating in both national and transnational forces. Cristeros and post-Cristeros believed these threats originated in countries like Russia or even the United States in the early twentieth century, or in Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua during the Cold War years. In the contemporary context, the new Christian right associates these so-called “polluting influences” with Cuba and Venezuela, countries led by leaders that came to power with either leftist or socialist agendas and which are considered highly authoritarian. In a banner used on social media by Gilberto Lozano and the group FRENAA, images of Joseph Stalin and Kim Yong-un appear next to Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Nicolás Maduro as individuals that shaped López Obrador’s ideologies.^[28] These threats are also linked to the United States, particularly within the ranks of democratic liberal “woke” politicians that are identified as communist, such as former vice-president and presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. For instance, in a post on X, Verástegui published a portrait of Harris looking like Che Guevara with the phrase “Ke-mala la Che-mala. ¿Qué tienen en común la comunista de Ke-mala y el Che Guevara?” [So bad Kamala. What do the communist Ke-mala and Che Guevara have in common?].^[29]

Echoing previous generations of right-wing and militant Catholics in Mexico, new Christian right actors refer in their social media communications to mainstream or center-right political parties (like the Partido Acción Nacional) as spineless, cowardly, or too liberal.^[30] Playing on misogynistic tropes, they characterize mainstream right-wing groups as effeminate and lacking the necessary courage to fight. Even within the Catholic and conservative camp then, they see enemies. This fatalistic and urgent vision of the present produces moral panic and authorizes belligerent and agonistic forms of political mobilization.^[31]

5 The Need for Martyrs Who Act Also as Warriors

The third important trope refers to the figure of the martyr as a powerful symbol of faith, resistance, and virility. As several scholars have shown, in more traditional terms a martyr refers to an individual who dies defending his or her religion but without recourse to violence.^[32] That is, a martyr is regularly thought of as the victim of an act of violence perpetrated by a so-called tyrannical authority. Nevertheless, historically speaking, militant Catholics have stretched the meanings of martyrdom and blended it with the figure of the warrior, who is not only willing to die but also to kill in the name of Christ.^[33]

In the present context, key figures of the new Christian right deploy warrior-like symbols and gestures. For instance, in a controversial post via social media, Verástegui appeared wielding a machine gun against the “terrorist of the 2030 agenda, of climate change, and gender ideology.”^[34] Interestingly, as an actor, Verástegui played the character of Cristero martyr Anacleto González Flores in the film For Greater Glory (2012). González Flores (1888–1927) was a Catholic lawyer and Cristero martyr who, despite sympathizing with the Cristero cause, believed in peaceful and civic means to defend religious freedom and was known as the “Mexican Gandhi.”^[35]

Raúl Tortolero has also explicitly stated that Catholics need to fight, and he defines the current moment as one of cultural counterrevolution. Even when he claims to embrace pacifist methods, he continuously promotes a confrontational discourse. In the following excerpt from a post on social media we can observe this clearly and note how history (and the remaking and reimagining of history) is crucial for these individuals:

The history taught in public schools is TRASH: pure lies and ideological indoctrination.

This guy, Benito Juarez, became a CULT for the Freemasons in Mexico, and they worshipped him as a sort of “religion” of public service, of governmental liberalism. Why is his photo in government offices throughout the country, like a pagan god, as pagan as celebrating his birthday on spring day? Why the hell is his anti-Christian, anti-clerical, “priest-eating” name in so many schools, city halls, and streets, as if he had provided great services to the country?

An opportunistic guy who as a young man went to the Seminary preparing to be a Catholic priest, but with little power, attacked the Church, and TRAITOR that he was, STOLE church properties so that they could be enjoyed by his friends and acquaintances, the nineteenth-century liberal mafia. …

Down with Juarez, the pagan god, [the god of] ordinary things! Prayer and Action: Counterrevolution! Long live Christ the King and Saint Mary of Guadalupe!

Dr. Raul Tortolero^[36]

For Verástegui and other new Christian right leaders, the history and memory of liberalism, anti-clericalism, and of the Cristero War emerges as a generative historical site filled with stories of militant Catholics who reclaimed Catholics’ recourse to arms as a legitimate means to defend religious freedom.

6 Conclusion

Whether the new Christian right will or will not acquire a greater presence in Mexico as it has in other countries of Latin America and Europe is a question that remains open. Independently of this, as scholars, it is our responsibility to provide a critical account on how the memory of the Cristero conflict might make these leaders’ calls for radical, undemocratic, and agonistic political actions more appealing or legitimate. Social media communication has accelerated and amplified the voices of the new Christian right. Even if the traditional channels of conducting politics (including political parties and electoral cycles) have thus far remained elusive to these actors, their appeal amongst several sectors of Mexican society is undeniable and could potentially increase.^[37]

As the centennial of the Cristero War approaches, new Christian right leaders and their sympathizers have appealed to a memory of the conflict that purposefully mobilizes fears and anxieties regarding the existence of a socialist, tyrannical, and irreligious government that, today, as in the past, demands urgent collective action on behalf of all people of faith. Historical evidence suggests that religious beliefs, next to notions of martyrdom and sacrificial violence, provide a powerful political and affective register to ignite belligerent forms of political organizing in Mexico. Considering this, it becomes pressing to continue to theorize and historicize the contingent relationship between violence, politics, and religion in this and other Latin American countries.