Mexico

MEXICO. - The southernmost and least extensive (1,964,000 sq. km.) of the three political units that divide the territory of North America, bounded by the United States, British Honduras and Guatemala, and therefore also comprising a small strip of Central America (the Yucatán Peninsula and the adjacent area east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec).

I. GEOGRAPHY

The country, extending over more than 18° in latitude, consists essentially of a broad plateau, of width gradually decreasing from north to south, enclosed between two mountain rims (Sierra Madre Occidental, 4,335 m., and Sierra Madre Oriental, including the Pico de Orizaba, 5,700 m.), which run along the two maritime fronts, the Pacific (7,480 km.) and the Atlantic (2,855 km.), the latter indenting the southeastern corner (Gulf of Campeche) of the Gulf of Mexico. The plateau, elevated on average between 1,500 and 2,400 m., constitutes in its southern section (Anahuac) the heart of the country, of whose population a strip of the central Mesa, extending over barely one-sixth of Mexican territory, alone gathers about two-thirds. Climate and vegetation are closely tied to altitude, which tempers or cancels the consequences due to the low latitudes characteristic of sub-tropical or tropical territories. The so-called tierras calientes (below about 1,000 m.), corresponding to the two coastal fringes, of which the wider is that on the Pacific, have uniformly high temperatures, abundant rains, luxuriant vegetation and are generally unhealthy (yellow fever) and therefore sparsely inhabited. The tierras templadas comprise the mountain slopes between 1,000 and 2,000 m., with milder temperatures (15°-20°) and still abundant rains; beyond their upper limit and up to about 3,000 m. extend the so-called tierras frías, with a more temperate, drier and healthier climate. This is the zone of the interior plateaus, in which the northern sector, where aridity determines the development of the steppe or heralds the desert, is contrasted with the central and southern sector, where the most profitable crops and activities are concentrated.

The population (24.5 million inhabitants; 12 per sq. km.), consists of three different ethnic groups. The most numerous is made up of mestizos (crossings between Amerindians and Spaniards; 55% of the total), followed by Amerindians (28%); the rest comprises the white (Spanish) population and immigrant elements, among which are also Chinese, Japanese and Blacks. The indigenous peoples belong to the two great stocks of the Maya and the Nahua, which include the Aztecs, dominators of the country in pre-Columbian times. The urban centers are relatively numerous, but barely a dozen approach or exceed 100,000 inhabitants (Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla de Zaragoza, Mérida, Tampico, Aguascalientes, Torreón, S. Luis de Potosí and León).

The capital, Mexico City, which stands at 2,275 m., today counts slightly fewer than 2 million inhabitants.

Agriculture is the fundamental activity of the country: alongside cereals (maize first of all; also wheat, barley and rice) and beans, industrial plants (agave, cotton, peanut, flax, sugarcane, tobacco, cacao) and tropical plants (bananas, pineapples), as well as the vine and citrus fruits, occupy a large place. Stock-raising and forestry remain modest in scale; not so the extractive industry, known ab antiquo as one of the principal resources of the Mexican economy. While in it the predominance of silver (Mexico supplies about 30% of the world total) and of petroleum (8.4 million tons in 1948) is evident, gold, iron, antimony, mercury, coal, natural gas, etc., also figure with more or less considerable quantities. Processing industries (above all iron and steel and textiles) received a strong impetus with the Second World War. Mexico is a federal republic, comprising 28 states, a federal district and three territories, with a president elected every 6 years and a bicameral representation, elected by universal male suffrage.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. ANCIENT RELIGION OF MEXICO

By religion of M. is meant here the religion of the Aztec people who, at the time of the Spanish conquest, held political dominion in the country and had their capital at Tenochtitlan, the present city of M. This population had arrived in M. only a few centuries before the coming of Cortez, coming from distant seats in the north, and had rapidly assimilated the civilization, much superior to its own, of the other Nahoa peoples who already inhabited the country, then using it to emerge and predominate. To the south of the Aztecs, in southern M. and in Central America, another civilization was widespread, that of the Maya (v. MAYA, RELIGION of).

The principal sources for the study of the Aztec religion are the writings of those Europeans who, at the time of the conquest or in the period immediately following it, gathered information from the living voice of the last Aztecs still practicing the religion of their fathers and saw unfold before their eyes the scenes of indigenous life. Among these writers one recalls, in particular, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun. Other sources are the documents provided by pictographic codices, the interpretations of archaeological remains, as well as the data provided by indigenous groups that survived the destruction of their civilization.

It seems that in a very remote era a monotheistic religious conception prevailed in M. Among the upper classes there was faith in a Supreme Being, invisible and incorporeal, not represented by any image. A testimony of this conception can be inferred from the names Teol (= God), Tloque Nahuaque (= He who has everything in himself), Ipalonemonationi (= He through whom things exist). At the time of the Spanish conquest, however, the religion was polytheistic, based on the cult of various divinities, clearly defined in their characters and their attributes, as appears from the descriptions of them that have survived. Polytheism was favored and accentuated by the fact that the Aztecs incorporated into their pantheon the divinities of the populations they were conquering. It seems, moreover, that the priests directed their efforts toward diminishing the multiplicity of the gods by reducing some of them to different manifestations of one and the same divinity.

At the basis of the generative process of the gods was, according to various traditions, the male creative principle and the female one, personified, respectively, in Omecutli (= Lord two) and in Omecubalt (= Lady two). They were represented with the symbols of fertility, because they were considered the origin of generation, and with the ear of grain insofar as they were masters of life and of food. They dwelt in Omeyoucan (= the place two); from there the life of men also had its origin: to this belief refers the invocation that the midwife addressed to the newborn: «O precious stone, o rich feather, o emerald, o sapphire, you were formed in the place where the great god and the great goddess reside, above all the heavens». The two gods would have had four sons: red Tezcatlipoca, black Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopoztli, who, among other things, would have been divinities of the cardinal points, through a certain parallelism, probably, with the generating pair, representing the zenith and the nadir. To these four gods was entrusted the creation of the other divinities, of the world and of man. About the origin of the gods the following tradition was also widespread: the goddess Citlalicue, wife of the god Citlatonac, gave birth to a flint stone which her children threw down from heaven. The stone, in falling, shattered into one thousand six hundred pieces, from each of which a god was born. These desired servants and worshipers: men were therefore created.

Important divinities were Teccatlipoca, Huitzilopoztli and Quetzalcoatl. The first, god of justice, was represented with a golden mirror in his hand through which he saw everything: he was therefore all-seeing, he rewarded the good and punished the wicked. Since his divine origin is not clearly explained in the most ancient myths, it has been supposed that he was a divinized warrior and, precisely, the Nahoa chief who directed the invasion of Tamoanchan.

Huitzilopoztli had probably been originally an Aztec chief or, according to others, a totemistic divinity of that same people. The myths relate that a woman, guardian of the temple of the goddess Coatlicue, was made pregnant by a ball of feathers of a hummingbird, fallen from heaven, which she had gathered and placed in her bosom. The woman's children, having become aware of the fact, decided to kill her; but, when they were on the point of carrying out their plan, Huitzilopoztli, armed with darts and shield, came out of the woman's body and killed his brothers. He is considered, therefore, the god of war. His cult is exceedingly bloodthirsty: to him is attributed the institution of human sacrifices. Quetzalcoatl would also be a divinized man, that is, the chief of a conquered population. According to the most widespread tradition he was the god of the winds; according to others he would have been a divinity identified with the dawn and linked to the solar cult. His cult had something mysterious about it: the people could not observe what took place in the temples dedicated to him. Other divinities personified celestial bodies, forces and phenomena of nature, activities of man, vices or virtues, etc. The sun was called Tonatiuh (v. CALENDAR, as regards its representation on the calendar stone); Metztli was the moon. Other divinities represented the various stars. Given the importance of agriculture, much venerated were the gods of rain, Thaloc and his wife. Their daughter Centeotl protected agriculture. The various trades had patrons such as Amimitl for fishermen, Noppacatccutl for mat makers, Xochiquetzal was the personification of beauty and love, goddess of flowers and patroness of domestic work. Even the vices, although reproved, had patrons: Tlazolteotl was the goddess of shamelessness, Tecatzoncal the god of drunkenness. Every noble family, moreover, had its own gentilitial numina, the Tepitoton, whose images were deposited in pieces in the tombs, together with the deceased.

The residence of the gods was heaven, divided into thirteen layers, over each of which some important divinity reigned. Men too, after death, ascended to heaven: not all, however, could enjoy immortality there or the same privileges. The attainment of these goods was based, rather than on criteria of a moral order, on the causes that brought about death or on the occupations that the deceased had exercised in life.

The fact that between morality and the afterlife there existed no relation derived from the belief that the actions of man did not depend on his will and his free choice, but on external causes or influences. The priest, during the funeral ceremony, thus excused the deceased before the gods: «He did not sin freely, since he acted under the influence of the star that presided over his birth».

The gods, who disposed the fatal and mechanical unfolding of human life, were honored with a public cult - which included collective and solemn prayers, processions, sacrifices sometimes even human (on certain occasions, a truly impressive number of victims was killed) - and an inner cult comprising prayers, mortifications, etc. Many prayers, as B. de Sahagun affirms, were distinguished by a high and noble sentiment and by a refined language. Whoever sinned through adultery or through drunkenness (sins liable to the death penalty)

could confess his own sin in order to erase it before the gods and the law. On a favorable day the sinner presented himself to the priest who, squatting on a mat, exhorted him to reveal every sin because the god Tezcatlipoca, knower of every secret, was present even if invisible. The confession was followed by the penance, which consisted in piercing the sinner's tongue until it bled.

The class of priests, or guardians of the gods, was directed by a high priest and by one of his deputies, elected from among the nobles, and under whom were various orders of priests, whose life was regulated by severe rules of discipline. In addition to the duties arising from the obligations of worship, the priests were also entrusted with the education of the young and the compilation of the annals and of the calendar.

The temples were all roofless, with the exception of those consecrated to the god Quetzalcoatl, and had the form of a truncated pyramid. The summit was wide enough to accommodate the sacrificial stone, one or two shrines, the priests and the victims. Around the pyramid, stairs and terraces allowed access to the summit.

Tullio Tentori

III. HISTORY

In 1517 Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, sent by the governor of Cuba Diego Velásquez, landed on the coasts of Yucatán and of present-day Campeche; in 1518 Juan de Grijalva explored the coast of Tabasco; on 21 April 1519 Hernán Cortés landed at the head of about 700 men on the site where the city of Vera Cruz would later rise: thus Mexico "was born" to Western civilization.

Cortés, like the other Spaniards who landed on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, found in the region a population endowed with a notable degree of civilization and a high political organization. The Toltecs, who had settled around the 7th century in the central valley of Mexico (the Anahuac), had been replaced in the 10th century, following their migration toward the regions that would later form part of Guatemala and Nicaragua, by the tribes of the Aztecs, who had likewise arrived from the north: Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, was founded around 1325. Once a hereditary monarchy had been established, the period of greatest splendor for the Aztec people may be said to be was that between 1412 and the arrival of Cortés. Their knowledge, in the field of building and hydraulics, in astronomy, in the exact sciences, attested also by Cortés and by Diaz del Castillo, the chronicler of the conquest, prove the high degree of civilization reached by the Aztecs.

With the conquest a new history began for that immense country. The "New Spain," as it was called, was for three centuries a mine of agricultural and mineral wealth for the successors of Charles V. The government was entrusted to viceroys, 64 in 300 years; but the administrative and judicial organization of M. depended on the Consejo de las Indias, resident in Seville until 1718, later in Cadiz. The restriction on trade, imposed by the monopolistic regime of Madrid, provoked and fomented the war of the filibusters, the famous buccaneers, who for over a century and a half made the waters of the Gulf of M., of the

Caribbean Sea and Pacific, the most unsafe in the world.

The European and American events of the end of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th that spread the spirit of independence throughout Latin America also determined the detachment of the Mexican colony from Spain. After a first movement was suppressed, on Sept. 16, 1810 the revolt broke out, led by a parish priest, Miguel Hidalgo, in which Indians, mestizos and creoles took part. The war was waged ferociously for ten years by guerrillas. Hidalgo, captured by the Spaniards, was shot like the other priest-soldier Morelos. But when the Spanish viceroy Felix Calleja del Rey believed he had put down the revolt, in Jan. 1821 one of his creole colonels, Iturbide, going over to the insurgents, gave them new impetus. On Febr. 24, 1821, with the so-called "Plan de Iguala," the independence of M. was proclaimed, the castes were abolished, without distinction of nationality, and the Catholic religion was recognized as the religion of the State; the Plan of Iguala was ratified by the Treaty of Cordova of Aug. 24, 1821, signed, for Spain, by the last viceroy, Juan O'Donojú; the triumphal entry into Mexico of the liberating army, on Sept. 17, 1821, sealed the achieved independence; which, however, was immediately disturbed. Iturbide had himself proclaimed emperor under the name Augustine I (1822), but was captured in 1824 and shot.

From 1821 to 1857 M. had six different forms of government, 55 ministries, 250 insurrections; there was a succession of struggles among leaders, attempts at restoration, complications with foreign countries (in 1830 the French squadron bombarded Vera Cruz), mass expulsions of Spanish citizens. Disputes arose with the neighboring United States over the secession of Texas, determined and favored by the slaveholders of the two States harmed by the law abolishing slavery in M. In Sept. 1847 the North American troops occupied the capital of the Republic and left it only when M. ceded to the United States Texas, New Mexico, New California, a part of the State of Coahuila, losing almost half of its own territory, ca. 1,400,000 sq km, in exchange for an indemnity of 18,500,000 dollars, which were paid with the Treaty of Febr. 2, 1848. In 1853, the United States acquired another 116,000 sq km of Mexican territory in exchange for another payment of 10 million dollars.

From 1857 to 1860 the so-called "war of the reform" raged between the liberal and the conservative party, which led to the separation of Church and State, with the secularization of hospitals, charitable institutions and schools. Its leader was Benito Juárez, a full-blooded Indian, lawyer, president of the State in 1858. The disorders, the financial difficulties, the non-payment of debts contracted abroad provoked repeated protests and, consequently, foreign military interventions. From 1861 to 1863 M. was successively at war with Spain, with England, with France; the latter, left alone, militarily occupied the entire country and attempted to establish there, under its protection, a constitutional monarchy with Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg (v.) as emperor.

But Juárez, well provided with means and money by the United States, began a series of military operations as a result of which, with a continuation of guerrilla warfare that flared up everywhere, forcing the imperial troops into continuous marches and painful movements, he made himself master of Matamoros (June 1866) while Maximilian had to abandon the capital and find refuge in Querétaro. Besieged in that locality by Porfirio Díaz, one of Juárez's generals, he was forced to surrender, subjected to a council of war, condemned to be shot, which it was not possible to avoid despite the most desperate attempts made by the unhappy empress Carlota, and shot on June 16, 1867.

Profoundly and intimately nationalist, certain of the still embryonic strength of his people, Mexican and American one hundred percent, Juárez did not shrink from any action that he deemed conducive to the well-being of his own country, from the exactions of every kind to which he subjected his fellow citizens to the loans contracted with foreign States, from the subsidies obtained from the United States to the indiscriminate confiscations of ecclesiastical property, to the most obtuse anticlericalism and to fratricidal struggles; from systematic, fanatical opposition to Maximilian as emperor and as a European, to his execution, which he, an Indian, wanted out of resentment against old colonialism and against the whites; and all this always for the dream of making M. a first-rate nation on the American continent, a worthy continuer of the deeds of the Aztecs and of the peones.

Having eliminated Maximilian, Juárez implemented liberal reforms, granted amnesties, issued laws on the press, formed alliances with foreign powers, obtaining recognition of his regime. Some dissident generals were fomenting a new revolt, when a stroke of apoplexy struck him down, in 1872, at the age of 66. Through continuous turmoil the Republic reached 1876, when Porfirio Díaz, a mestizo, assumed the presidency of M. and held it until 1910. Under his government M. experienced a period of great economic prosperity, but there was no lack of attempted revolts, for which Díaz was forced to take refuge in Europe in May 1911.

Francisco Madero, who succeeded Díaz, was assassinated in 1913 for his plans for agrarian reform; his main enemy, Huerta, who was said to be implicated in the killing, took his place, but shortly afterward was deposed and exiled. Vicente Carranza replaced him, and was killed in 1920; then Álvaro Obregón and Elías Calles successively occupied the presidential seat, amid incessant revolts and pronunciamentos, religious agitations, and international complications with England because of a massacre of British subjects and confiscations of English property. Relations with the United States as well were extremely tense, so much so that on June 30, 1926, there came the ultimatum of the American minister Kellogg to amend the Constitution in a sense acceptable to the United States. Meanwhile, Obregón, re-elected in 1928, had been assassinated by a fanatic; Portes Gil succeeded him, and to him must be acknowledged the merit of having known how to quiet political and religious dissensions. These would later resume with renewed vigor under the presidencies of Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo Rodríguez.

On Nov. 30, 1934, Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, having become president, began the execution of the six-year plan of the National Revolutionary Party, of which he had been the exponent from 1924 to 1934, and brought it to a good point, overcoming, through no small difficulties, problems of domestic and international politics of wide scope; he defended the country from communist immigration, while continuing to welcome political refugees, such as, for example, the Russian L. Trotsky and the Spanish general Miaja; while he safeguarded the Mexican peso from the devaluation of silver, he conquered new markets for the export of petroleum, etc. In his action the president was aided by the support given him by Mexican Catholics from June 1938 onward, the time at which Cárdenas authorized the reopening of churches in the State of Tabasco. Cárdenas was succeeded, in July 1940, by the former Minister of War, M. Avila Camacho. Having granted a broad amnesty, the new president subjected the activity of Spaniards and Germans to strict surveillance, excluded communists from the government, became fully reconciled with Catholics, encouraged the formation of small property, and attempted to discipline the labor movement. On June 1, 1942, M. entered the war in agreement against Germany, Japan, and Italy, adhering at the same time to the Atlantic Pact and to the United Nations.

The new president, Miguel Alemán, elected on July 7, 1946, has worked hard to restore a climate of internal and external tranquility.

Nardo Naldoni

IV. EVANGELIZATION

In 1519, together with the conqueror of the Aztec Kingdom in Mexico, Hernán Cortés, some missionaries also arrived in the country. However, true missions were not begun until 1522, with the arrival of the Franciscans, and even more so in 1524, when the "Twelve" ("Los Doce"), under the direction of the Franciscan Martín de Valencia, devoted themselves systematically to the conversion of the Indians. In 1526 the Dominicans arrived, and the Augustinians in 1533. The apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Indian Juan Diego, in 1531, contributed greatly to the conversion of his countrymen.

The mission succeeded in developing despite overcoming immense obstacles, such as the pagan religions with their superstitious rites involving the sacrifice of human victims and, on the part of the Spanish colonial government, the oppression of the Indians through encomiendas and forced labor. The missionaries' principal means was adaptation to the Indian mentality: the erection of magnificent churches, festive processions and celebrations with dances and songs; the introduction of a patriarchal social system. The church and the convent in the heart of the Indian village formed the center of religious life; the missionary was father and protector of the people, even against the abuses of the Spanish colonial masters. Schools and hospitals were erected, trades and arts were introduced. The formation of an indigenous clergy was also aimed at, principally through the erection of a Franciscan college at Tlatelolco; the initiative, however, failed, first because of its rather negative outcome and then because of the stubborn resistance of the Spanish monks. The ecclesiastical hierarchy was erected with the founding of the dioceses of Tlaxcala in 1526, of Mexico in 1530, of Oaxaca in 1534, of Michoacán in 1536, of Chiapa in 1538, of Jalisco in 1548 (transferred in 1560 to Guadalajara), of Yucatán in 1526 (already erected in 1518 as Carolensis before the conquest). In 1545 the diocese of M. was elevated to an archdiocese. The first pastor was Juan de Zumárraga, an Observant Friar Minor (1468-1548), who gave a very strong impetus to the mission among the Indians, promoting Christian instruction and procuring the cultural and social advancement of the natives, and who, with the help of the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, set up the first printing press. Under him three synods (Juntas) took place. His successor, the Dominican Alonso Montufar (1548-89), convoked in 1555 and 1565 two provincial councils that were of the greatest importance for the further development of the Mexican Church. Under his government the University was also established in 1553. After 50 years of intense work, the central and southern part of M. were brought to the faith and enriched with churches and convents of the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians with their flourishing provinces.

Toward the end of the 14th century the evangelization of the northern provinces began, continued until the 19th century, penetrating deeply into the southern states of the present-day United States, Texas, New M., Arizona and California. The pioneers of these missions were above all the Jesuits and the Franciscans. From 1572 the Jesuits opened schools and colleges in M.; in 1591 they founded the first mission in Sinaloa; in the 17th century they then worked among the Indians of Durango, Sinaloa, Sonora and Chihuahua, extending their activity at the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century to Pimería and California. The Franciscans, in the course of the 17th century, erected missions and reductions in the provinces of Nuevo León and Coahuila.

The mission colleges founded by them toward the end of the 17th century, the first in 1682 at Querétaro, then in Zacatecas, M. and Pachuca, were their centers of outreach during the 18th century.

When, in 1767, the Jesuits were expelled, the missions passed partly to the secular clergy, partly were continued by the Franciscans, who took charge of the most advanced posts in Pimería and California, extending their work also to northern California.

At the end of the 18th century the missionary work, in the strict sense of the word, among the Mexican Indians could be considered finished, with the exception of some isolated minor tribe. The grave persecutions stirred up by the Masonic governments in the course of the 19th-20th centuries did not succeed in uprooting the faith awakened by the old missionaries in the hearts of the Indians. In the 19th century the only true mission remaining was that of Tarahumara. It was begun in 1872 by the Mexican Josephites, to pass in 1900 into the hands of the Jesuits, who continue it with success. The ecclesiastical circumscriptions of M. that depend on Propaganda are the apostolic vicariate of Lower California, erected in 1874 and entrusted to the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit (Mexican Congregation), and the mission sui iuris of Tarahumara, erected on 6 May 1950 and entrusted to the Jesuits.

At present, in M., the Catholic hierarchy comprises the metropolitan sees of Puebla de los Angeles, with the suffragans Huejutla, Huijuapán de León, Papantla; of Antiquera, with the suffragans Chiapas and Tehuantepec; of Durango, with the suffragans Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Sonora; of Guadalajara, with the suffragans Aguascalientes, Colima, Tepic, Zacatecas; of Mexico, with the suffragans Chilaca, Cuernavaca, Tulancigo, Vera Cruz; of Monterrey, with the suffragans León, Querétaro, Tacámbaro, Zamora; of Yucatán, with the suffragans Campeche, Tabasco. The apostolic vicariate of Lower California, with residence at La Paz, has also been constituted.

Giovanni Rommerskirchen

V. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

The juridical status of the Church in Mexico is regulated according to the constitution in force, promulgated on 5 February 1917 by a revolutionary minority, and not submitted to the approval of the people, who are in great majority Catholic (95%) and who would certainly not have approved it.

An eminently religious country, almost the entirety of the population is Catholic. After the ruthless laicism of Benito Juárez and after the era of relative peace during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz, the clergy and the Catholic religion were made the target of renewed radical oppressive measures. The various "general" presidents raged against Catholics with the enactment of ever more anti-religious laws. The first to strike the clergy was Carranza, who, under the pretext of favoring the indigent classes, confiscated the goods of the Church, obliging religious to leave the places of worship, creating, or attempting to create, a national Church, in which the government even arrogated to itself the right to establish the number of priests for each individual State. In February 1917, at Querétaro, in the presence of the special envoys of President W. Wilson and of the envoy of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, with a law of Soviet inspiration communism was practically proclaimed in Mexico through a new ruling class: the profiteers of the revolution.

The Constitution does not recognize any juridical personality for the Church (art. 130); it orders that primary instruction be lay even in private schools, and prohibits the Church, priests and religious from founding or directing primary schools (art. 3); it denies the Church and religious Congregations the right to possess, acquire and administer, whether directly or through an intermediary person, real estate or mortgaged property. Moreover all churches, episcopal palaces, hospitals, seminaries, schools and buildings and institutes in any way dependent on the Church are confiscated by the State. Priests are deprived of political rights (arts. 55, 58, 82, 130); every confessional party is prohibited (art. 130). Art. 5 prohibits monastic Orders and is at the same time a poorly concealed attack against religious vows.

The Church thus finds itself in a state of true juridical persecution, so much so that at times matters have gone as far as violence and bloodshed, when one or another of the rulers wished to insist on the application of the laws. Churches were in fact devastated, an attempt was made to blow up the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mass and Confession were prohibited, priests and Catholic zealots were shot, nuns and wives, mothers and sisters of civilians slaughtered because they were Catholics were condemned to deportation to the Marías Islands, and their goods were confiscated for the benefit of the State. Foreign priests were also driven out as undesirables, many bishoprics were abolished, the Catholic hierarchy was no longer recognized, the registration of priests was organized, their number was fixed at one for every 15,000 inhabitants, the functions to be celebrated and the candles to be lit were established; freely pronounced vows were forbidden, freedom of association was limited, religious communities were abolished. In the face of this complex of acts, the great mass of the faithful resisted heroically until little by little things were smoothed over, through the action of Cárdenas and through the moderating and far-sighted spirit of the Holy See, between 1937-38. Today in official circles the idea is beginning to prevail that it is necessary to respect the religious sentiments of the people.

Ludovico Mendoza

VI. SCHOOL SYSTEM

Since the founding of the Secretariat of Education in 1921, the standardization of public education has proceeded gradually. While primary education depends on the federal Secretariat of Education, secondary and higher education is also administered by the individual departments. Civic and socialist education is associated with instruction. The teaching of religion is banned from schools, which were declared non-denominational by the law of 14 Dec. 1874. With the Querétaro law of 5 Feb. 1917, applied by Calles only in 1926, the clergy is forbidden to establish and direct schools. School attendance is compulsory from 6 to 16 years of age. The campaign against illiteracy, begun in 1920, is carried out through the traveling schools "Misiones culturales." Instruction is characterized by coeducation and by a broad physical and pre-military education. In 1946 agricultural education was reformed.

Education is divided into preschool, school, and postschool. Preschool education is provided in 777 kindergartens. School education comprises primary, secondary, and university education. Primary education is carried out in 23,244 primary schools divided into government, federal, municipal, company, private, adult, and Indian schools. Secondary education is carried out in 377 secondary schools divided into prevocational, vocational, agricultural, and academic, which include 17 colleges, 57 teacher-training schools, and 43 technical colleges. Higher or university education is provided in the Universities of Potosí, Puebla, Vera Cruz, Yucatán, Nuevo León, and Jalisco, in the Socialist University of Culiacán, in the Workers' University of M. a Cyocán, and in the National University (formerly the Royal and Pontifical University) in M. DF, founded in 1551. Postschool education is handled by the Department of Instruction for the Popular Masses through evening courses and schools, radio, and cinema. - See plates LIV-LV.

Miroslav Stumpf

MEXICO, ARCHDIOCESE of - Archdiocese and capital city of the Republic and center of the Federal District. It has an area of 28,300 sq. km., with a population of 4,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 3,500,640 are Catholics; it has 264 parishes, served by 315 diocesan priests and 280 regular clergy, 342 male communities and 99 female communities (Ann. Pont., 1951, p. 269).

The diocese was created by Clement VII in 1530; elevated to an archdiocese in 1545. Pope Pius XII, with the apostolic constitution Si tam amplo of June 4, 1950, dismembered a western part of the archdiocese, creating the new diocese of Toluca (v.: AAS, 42 [1950], pp. 711-13).

Its suffragans are the dioceses of Chilapa, Cuernavaca, Toluca, Tulancingo and Vera Cruz. The Cathedral is dedicated to the B. V. Assunta; it occupies the site of the first Christian church built in M. as early as 1525 and of the Iglesia Mayor, which was demolished in 1573 in order to erect the Cathedral on a design by A. Pérez de Casta, with modifications by J. Gomez de Mora; the works, interrupted several times, were finished only in 1791. It suffered damage in the earthquake of 1907. The building is in the Ionic style with two great towers and five domes. In the "Capilla pequeña" of the Chapter the Virgen de Belen by Murillo is preserved. Other notable churches are: St. Mary of the Angels, St. Hippolytus (1525-1546); St. Bridget (1548); Jesus the Nazarene (1575-1665); St. Mary of Consolation (1581-1675); St. Diego (1593); Jesus and Mary (1597); St. Catherine of Siena (1615); St. Teresa, "la Antigua" (1678-84) with a dome of the 18th century; the Judio convent and the church of Corpus Christi (1720); St. Ferdinand (1735-55); the Most Holy Trinity (1755-83); St. John of God (1766); St. Felipe de Jesús on the site of the ancient convent of St. Francis (1886-97, rebuilt in 1909). The ancient church of St. Augustine is occupied by the National Library. Characteristic is the cloister of the convent of La Merced. The University was founded in 1551.

Enrico Josi

SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

In the archdiocese is found the most famous and venerated shrine in all of America, namely that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, situated on the hill of Tepeyac, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in Dec. 1531. At the site of the apparition a small chapel was immediately built under the care of Bishop Zumarraga; a second, larger structure was erected between 1555 and 1575. The third was completed in 1662. The first stone of the present Shrine was laid by Msgr. Aguiar y Seijas on 25 March 1695 with the generous contribution of all the Mexican people; the building was solemnly opened in 1709. A century later it was reinforced and renovated on the interior. On 12 Dec. 1747 Pope Benedict XIV proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe principal patroness of Mexico, and two years later the same Pontiff raised the Shrine to a collegiate church. On 12 Oct. 1895 the miraculous image was crowned, after the Shrine had for that occasion been further enlarged and restored. Pope Pius X proclaimed in 1910 Our Lady of Guadalupe patroness of all Latin America. Today the grandiose building is too cramped to contain the ceaseless pilgrims who throng it in numbers of about half a million a year, and among these are counted at least 100,000 Indians who profess an most ardent devotion to their Madonna.

The exterior of the Basilica is in a semi-Moorish style with many domes and numerous octagonal towers. The interior, however, is in Byzantine style; the altar and the rich baldachin are of Carrara marble. The miraculous image has a frame of purest gold.

Ernesto Burrus