Sacred Fire. The Second Cristiada and the Case of Michoacan (1931-1938)

This work deals with the Catholic guerrilla of the 1930's, better known as the second Cristiada, and its expressions in Michoacan. On the one hand, it analyzes the main ideas and motivations of its national leaders and their relations with the guerrilla groups in Michoacan, and on the other, it reviews the way in which Mexican bishops struggled against the movement's head, the Liga Nacional Defensora de la Libertad Religiosa [National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty]. The author's main point is that these second cristeros were not “pawns in a political chessboard” or “primitive rebels”, as they have been described up to now, but a social movement that tried to play its own political game