Mexico Acts to Legitimize Shunned Catholic Church

In a bold step to mend a historic rift between the government and the Roman Catholic Church, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari proposed Friday to give “a new legal position” to the church, which now is without rights under the Mexican constitution.

The announcement marks a departure from more than a century of anticlerical sentiment on the part of the Mexican government, stemming from the church’s opposition to Mexican independence from Spain and the 1910 Mexican Revolution that is the ideological root of the ruling party.

Salinas, in his midterm state-of-the-union speech, suggested that he would grant legal status to the church with conditions. He said a separation of church and state must remain intact, as should secular education in public schools. He also indicated that he might not go so far as to allow churches to own property or permit clergy to vote.

“Owing to past experience, the Mexican people do not want the clergy to take part in politics or to accumulate material wealth,” Salinas said to a standing ovation that signaled the depth of sentiment over the issue. “But neither do they wish to live in pretense or mistaken complicity. . . . I therefore call for the promotion of a new legal position for the churches. . . . “

Catholic leaders who have been pressing for constitutional shifts applauded Salinas’ announcement as the end of an era of church-state conflict.

“This is the beginning of an important change,” said Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, the primate of Mexico and one of several clergymen invited to the address. “It is very opportune.”

The vast majority of Mexicans consider themselves Catholic, and the church’s cultural influence is pervasive. But Mexican distrust of the church also is deep-rooted.

In the 19th Century, the Catholic Church owned half the land in Mexico and opposed its independence from Spain. Tensions increased in the 1850s, when President Benito Juarez stripped the church of most of its property, closed monasteries and convents and made marriage a strictly civil act.

Under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, the church regained some of its power and allied itself with the rich against the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

But the revolution prevailed. Under the constitution in 1917, which is still in effect, nuns and priests are forbidden to join political parties, vote or wear clerical garb in public. The constitution banned parochial primary schools and religious ceremonies outside church buildings.

After President Plutarco Elias Calles decided to vigorously enforce the constitution in 1926, the church shut its doors in protest for three years. Conservative peasants, called Cristeros, took up arms against the government in a bloody rebellion that had the blessing and, perhaps, the guidance of priests.

Over the last 40 years, restrictions on the church gradually were relaxed. Religious processions are common, as are religious schools, even though they still are illegal. Increasingly, priests and nuns are seen publicly in their vestments.

When Salinas took office three years ago, he vowed to modernize church-state relations and began by inviting clergy to his inauguration. He sent a personal envoy to the Vatican, although the two states do not have formal diplomatic relations. He received Pope John Paul II at his official residence 1 1/2 years ago.

Salinas touched on another sacred topic in his speech--the ejidos or communal farms granted by the state to peasants after the revolution. Asserting that the small farms are “unproductive and impoverishing,” he said the land-tenure system “will remain, but the state will promote its transformation.”

By law, ejido farmers may not rent, sell or mortgage their lands. Those opposed to a privatization of ejidos fear the farms will again end up in the hands of latifundistas, or large landowners. To avoid a political battle over privatization, the Salinas administration has been restricting credit to ejidos and pushing the small farmers into commercial alliances with agribusiness.

Rosa Albina Garavito, a left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party deputy, warned that the ruling party-dominated legislature “will try to disappear the ejido to respond to international interests.”

In stark contrast to his first state-of-the-union speech, Salinas’ third address was interrupted only once by a protest from the Democratic Revolutionary Party, when he spoke of electoral reform. Opposition parties charge that Salinas stole his election in 1988. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party won a majority of the new legislature in August, but two gubernatorial elections were fraught with charges of fraud.

Salinas recounted details of a major economic recovery since he took office, including sustained growth, lower inflation, control of public spending, tax collection and debt reduction. He reiterated his policy of opening up the country to trade and foreign investment.

Garavito responded that Salinas’ economic policy is producing more poverty and a greater gap between rich and poor. She said it is “sacrificing sovereignty, social justice and . . . democracy.”