CHAPTER VII
RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MEXICO
The history of Mexican politics is indissolubly bound up with the great struggle between Church and State or Church and people, for, strongly Roman Catholic as Mexico has been and still is, in no country in modern times has such a determined effort been made to destroy the power of the priesthood and relegate the sphere of the Church to religious as apart from political activities.
The first notable religious reformer was President Benito Juarez, who between 1850 and 1856 succeeded in expelling the brotherhoods—Dominicans, Franciscans, and, finally, the Jesuits—from Mexican soil. These fraternities held in their possession the choicest land in the country, and their rapacity had become a circumstance of public scandal. Moreover, to employ an expressive Americanism, they were "clogging the wheels" and were the determined foes of progress of every description. The wealthier and more enlightened portions of the community are now entirely outside their influence, but the Indian and mestizo population are as fervent in their adherence to Roman rule as before.
Let us glance for a moment at this religiosity of the peon classes. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico in 1520 they found the Aztecs in possession of a religion which, if still in process of evolution, was still fairly complete so far as its ritualistic side was concerned. In early types of religion, ritual is of much greater importance than dogma or theological belief, and the thing seen and done bulks much more largely in the eye of the barbarian than any ethical consideration. The transition for the subject caste of Mexico from the worship of Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca to the practice of Catholicism was a simple one. Gaudily-dressed
