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licensed with the enactment of increasingly anti-religious laws. The first to strike at the clergy was Carranza, who, under the pretext of aiding the indigenous classes, confiscated Church property, forced religious to abandon places of worship, and sought to create a national Church in which the government arrogated to itself even the power to fix the number of priests for each state. In February 1917, in Querétaro, in the presence of special envoys of President W. Wilson and of Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, a law of Soviet inspiration was enacted that, in practice, proclaimed communism in Mexico through a new ruling class: the profiteers of the revolution.
The Constitution grants no legal personality to the Church (Art. 130); it mandates that primary education be secular even in private schools and forbids the Church, priests, and religious from founding or directing primary schools (Art. 3); it denies the Church and religious congregations the right to own, acquire, or administer, either directly or through intermediaries, real estate or mortgages. Moreover, all churches, episcopal palaces, hospitals, seminaries, schools, and any other buildings or institutions 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). Article 5 forbids monastic orders and is at the same time a thinly veiled attack on religious vows.
The Church thus found itself in a state of genuine legal persecution, to the point that violence and bloodshed sometimes resulted when one or another ruler insisted on enforcing the laws. Churches were sacked; an attempt was made to blow up the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe; Mass and Confession were prohibited; priests and zealous Catholics were shot; nuns, wives, mothers, and sisters of civilians murdered for their Catholic faith were condemned to deportation to the Islas Marías; their property was confiscated for the benefit of the state. Foreign priests were expelled as undesirable aliens; many dioceses were suppressed; the Catholic hierarchy was no longer recognized; a registry of priests was organized, their number fixed at one per 15,000 inhabitants, and their functions, the candles to be lit, and other matters strictly regulated. Freely taken vows were forbidden; freedom of association was restricted; religious communities were abolished. In the face of this array of measures, the great mass of the faithful resisted heroically until matters gradually eased, thanks to the action of Cárdenas and the moderating and far-sighted spirit of the Holy See between 1937 and 1938. Today, in official circles, the idea is beginning to prevail that the religious sentiments of the people must be respected.
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Mexico. – The volcano Popocatépetl, 5,452 m. – State of Puebla.
VI. EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Since the establishment of the Secretariat of Education in 1921, public instruction has been progressively standardized. While primary education falls under the federal Secretariat of Education, secondary and higher education are also administered by individual departments. Civic and socialist education are integrated into instruction. Religious instruction is banned from schools, which were declared secular by the law of 14 December 1874. The Querétaro law of 5 February 1917, applied by the government only in 1926, forbids the clergy from establishing or directing schools. School attendance is compulsory from ages 6 to 16. The campaign against illiteracy, begun in 1920, is carried out through mobile schools known as “Misiones culturales.” Education is characterized by coeducation and extensive physical and pre-military training. In 1946, agricultural education was reformed.Education is divided into preschool, school-age, and post-school. Preschool education is provided in 777 kindergartens. School-age education comprises primary, secondary, and university levels. Primary education is conducted in 23,244 primary schools, divided into government, federal, municipal, company, private, adult, and Indian schools. Secondary education takes place in 377 secondary schools, divided into pre-vocational, vocational, agricultural, and academic schools, which include 17 colleges, 57 teacher-training schools, and 43 technical colleges. Higher or university education is provided at the universities of Potosí, Puebla, Veracruz, Yucatán, Nuevo León, and Jalisco, at the Socialist University of Culiacán, at the Workers’ University in Mexico City (Coyoacán), and at the National University (formerly the Royal and Pontifical University) in Mexico City DF, founded in
1551. Post-school education is overseen by the Department of Popular Mass Education through evening courses and schools, radio, and cinema
See plates LIV–LV.MEXICO, ARCHDIOCESE OF. – Archdiocese and capital city of the Republic and center of the Federal District. It covers an area of 28,300 sq. km. and has a population of 4,000,000, of whom 3,500,640 are Catholic; it comprises 264 parishes served by 315 diocesan priests and 280
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religious, with 1,020 churches and chapels. The archdiocese includes the famous shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, situated on the hill of Tepeyac, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in December 1531. A small chapel was immediately erected on the site of the apparition under the care of Bishop Zumárraga; a larger second structure was built between 1555 and 1575, and a third was completed in 1662. The first stone of the present basilica was laid by Monsignor Aguiar y Seijas on 25 March 1695, with generous contributions from the entire Mexican people; the building was solemnly opened in 1709. A century later, it was reinforced and renovated internally. On 12 December 1747, Pope Benedict XIV declared Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal patroness of Mexico, and two years later the same Pontiff raised the shrine to the status of a collegiate church. On 12 October 1895, the miraculous image was crowned after the shrine had been enlarged and restored for the occasion. Pope Pius X declared Our Lady of Guadalupe patroness of all Latin America in 1910. Today, the vast edifice is too small to accommodate the unceasing throngs of pilgrims—about half a million annually—among whom at least 100,000 Indians may be counted, who display an ardent devotion to their Madonna.
The exterior of the basilica is in semi-Moorish style, with many domes and numerous octagonal towers. The interior, by contrast, is in Byzantine style; the altar and the rich baldachin are of Carrara marble. The miraculous image is framed in purest gold.