“El Indio Gabriel”: New Religious Perspectives among the Indigenous in Garrido Canabal’s Tabasco (1927–30)

Abstract

“Defanaticizing” the people was an important theme in Ministry of Public Education (SEP) reports from 1926–29, a time of religious crisis, church closures, and cristero violence. In this period, the aims of revolutionary reconstruction mixed political reforms, economic development, and sociocultural (religious, educative, pro-Indian [indigenista]) questions. The projects of indigenous incorporation and religious defanaticization must therefore be interpreted within a broader framework of postrevolutionary modernization, which achieved its greatest radicalism to date under President Calles (1924–28). A note written after a 1927 trip to Puebla by SEP Under-secretary Moisés Sáenz captures callismo’s incorporationist spirit. For Sáenz, it was necessary to “incorporate civilization into the Indian,” and vice versa, so that indigenous people would assimilate “white civilization” and transform it into a true “Mexican civilization.” The link between national integration and religious defanaticization was strong, and SEP missionaries were particularly concerned about “fanatical” indigenous resistance to modernization. Sáenz, too, concluded that indigenous resistance was an obstacle to “national redemption,” if not militarily (as shown in the 1926 defeated Yaqui rising) then culturally.² This was clear in southern Mexico—in Chiapas, Yucatán, and Tabasco—where “rationalist” schools, cooperatives, and revolutionary leagues led the fight against “fanaticism.”

It is important to control that pueblo [San Carlos] because it is the most fanatical in the state. This year they celebrated religious fiestas with ceremonies from the time of the conquest, contradicting the socialist ideas of the state government.¹

Translated by Matthew Butler.