Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico

The religion question—the place of the Church in a Catholic country after an anticlerical revolution—profoundly shaped the process of state formation in Mexico. From the end of the Cristero War in 1929 until Manuel Ávila Camacho assumed the presidency in late 1940 and declared his faith, Mexico''s unresolved religious conflict roiled regional politics, impeded federal schooling, undermined agraria...