TO AROUSE and INFORM': the KNIGHTS of COLUMBUS and UNITED STATES-MEXICAN RELATIONS, 1924-1937 Contents

TO AROUSE AND INFORM': THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS AND UNITED STATES-MEXICAN RELATIONS, 1924-1937 Contents 1. The Coolidge Administration 2. Daniel(s) in the Lion's Den 3. The Borah Resolution When Francisco I. Madero ousted the long-time Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1911, he set into motion a series of events that we have come to know collectively as the Mexican Revolution. This revolution, with its relatively small beginnings, would soon grow and shake the Mexican nation to its roots. The United States, Mexico's overbearing northern neighbor, was not immune to the tremors emanating from south of the Rio Grande. For a significant part of the population of the United States, this revolution presented a challenge to something at their very soul--their Catholicity. Most Catholics in the United States, from the hierarchy's leadership in the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC)(n1) to devout lay men and women, viewed the challenge that faced the Mexican Church as one that struck at the heart of some of their most deeply held assumptions as American Catholics, i.e., that the freedom of religious expression was an inalienable and universal liberty. To meet this challenge arising from the Mexican Revolution, activist American Catholics-- particularly the Knights of Columbus--struggled to force the United States government to alter its diplomatic relations with that country. This essay will examine the work of the Knights of Columbus to aid their Mexican co-religionists within the context of the Mexican Revolution's assault on the Catholic Church. In this effort, the Knights of Columbus assumed a leadership position within a special interest group comprised of American Catholic hierarchy and laymen, striving to exert some degree of influence over public policy.(n2) The history of the Knights of Columbus has been a topic of inquiry for a number of scholars. By far the most important work on examining the history of the order is that of Christopher J. Kauffman. In works ranging from journal articles and a coffee-table-book illustrated history to the definitive monograph, Kauffman has traced the development of the Knights of Columbus as a lay group which responded to some of the most important movements of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: advocacy of fraternalism and Americanism, and opposition to the anti-Catholicism of the period.(n3) Others have portrayed the growth of the Knights of Columbus as typical of the attraction secret societies--such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Order of Foresters--had for men in the late 1800's.(n4) Kauffman notes that unlike these other organizations, the Knights represented "a unique blend of popular fraternalism, American Catholic patriotism, and traditional Catholicism."(n5) None of these scholars, however, have emphasized the Knights of Columbus as an organization active in the effort to influence United States foreign policy, as does this study. For most American Catholics, the anticlericalism of the Mexican Revolution must have taken them by complete surprise, since most Catholics in the United States assumed that Mexico was one of the most solidly Catholic nations on earth. The Roman Catholic Church, from the earliest days of the colonial period in the sixteenth century, had been a major force in the history of Mexico. Catholic missionaries served the conquistadores on their voyages of exploration and exploitation, not only in their capacity as evangelizers of the "heathen" natives but also as agents of royal control of the colony itself. Serving in this capacity was incredibly lucrative for the Church. Such institutions as tithes on agricultural produce and perpetual liens on land earned for the Church vast wealth. This wealth was contingent, of course, on maintenance of the colonial status quo. It was because of this traditional position in colonial society that the church hierarchy remained loyal to the Spanish crown, bringing all church resources, including its vast wealth, its control of the press, and even the dreaded Inquisition, to bear against the revolutionaries in 1808 in the wars for independence. Because of internal political intrigues in Spain, the independence movement in Mexico was co-opted by such royalists as pro- clerical Colonel Agustín de Iturbide, former officer of the Spanish army in Mexico and future emperor of independent Mexico. Since the original creole revolutionaries viewed the Church as a barrier to Mexican progress, and the new revolutionary leaders such as Iturbide proved amenable to a powerful church in independent Mexico, the foundation was laid for future conflicts over the position of the Church in Mexican society. The roots of the anticlerical movement of the Mexican Revolution lie deep in the nineteenth-century conflict between the landed, pro-cleric Conservatives and the urban, largely mestizo, anticlerical Liberals. Beginning in the 1820's, Liberals and Conservatives vied for dominance, and alternately replaced each other's constitutions with laws that reflected their philosophies. Most influential in laying the groundwork for conditions which would make a revolution necessary in 1910 was the Porfiriato, the thirty-four-year reign of Porfirio Díaz. The United States government first became actively concerned with the Mexican Revolution in the context of the Revolution's reaction to two basic trends of the Porfiriato. First, Díaz worked to modernize Mexico by actively encouraging foreign investment in such sectors as railroads, mining concessions, oil drilling, and public utilities. The result was the domination of Mexico's industrial capacity by foreign interests such as Standard Oil and Texaco, which produced approximately sixty percent of Mexico's oil and owned more land in Mexico than did Mexicans themselves.(n6) United States citizens' property rights in Mexico amounted to nearly $2,000,000,000 by 1910.(n7) The United States government's concern for property rights played a prominent role in the ways the Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations responded to the Mexican Church-State struggle. It was in the context of the Revolution's reaction to the second trend of the Porfiriato that American Catholics sought to interest the United States government in the affairs of Mexico. In the years following the coup which swept him into power, Díaz worked to secure his position by playing a double game; he simultaneously courted both the leadership of the Catholic Church in Mexico and those who favored active enforcement of the anticlerical provisions of the Liberal Constitution of 1857. The dictator garnered the support of the Liberals by allowing the anticlerical provisions of the Constitution of 1857 to remain on the books. At the same time, his devout wife Carmen acted as mediator between the Catholic hierarchy and Díaz. His policies toward the Church, which can best be described as benign neglect, allowed the clergy to more than triple in size during his reign, from some 1,600 in 1878 to nearly 5,000 by the time he left office in 1911.(n8) Consequently, the clergy managed to gain back a great degree of the power, wealth, and prestige it had lost under the Liberal regimes of Benito Juárez (1855-1872) and his successor Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada (1872-1876).(n9) Throughout the years of the Mexican Revolution, the United States government tried to maintain a balance between its interests in these two situations. On one hand, the government actively negotiated with the Mexican government over the disposition of American-owned property in the face of confiscatory policies of the later revolution. But on the other hand, the government largely avoided appearances of active involvement in the plight of the Catholic Church in Mexico. It was precisely this reluctance on the part of the United States government openly to support policies that reflected the American value of the right to worship freely, which spurred American Catholics into action. Few Catholics in the United States became involved in the Mexican Revolution in its earliest years. Most preferred to sit back and wait to see what would emerge from the revolution. Very early in the conflict, there was not a clear anticlerical agenda other than a general desire to enforce the anticlerical provisions of the Liberal Constitution of 1857, which had fallen into disuse under Porfirio Díaz. The latent nature of anticlericalism in the first years of the revolution changed dramatically after President Venustiano Carranza called a constitutional convention to order in December, 1916. Carranza's primary goal for the constitutional convention was to provide some stability to Mexico by consolidating his own power as the chief executive. Shortly after the convention began, however, Carranza's partisans lost control. Agrarian reformers, labor advocates, and those who favored land-ownership reforms painted the constitutional convention in more radical hues than Carranza had intended. Among the most vocal opponents of the status quo were anticlericals who saw to it that the new constitution would initiate an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. The anticlericalism of the Constitution of 1917 was much more strident than the anticlerical rhetoric of the liberal-conservative friction that characterized much of nineteenth-century Mexico. A growing fear that a reactionary Catholic Church threatened the new social revolution greatly magnified the older anticlerical antagonisms. Clearly, the radical members of the constitutional convention

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