Mexico’s Holy War Is Part of Many Family Histories

Maria Luisa Godinez is 66, hard of hearing and frail, a result of regular dialysis treatments. Still, her face comes alive with a little girl’s wonder when she recalls childhood stories about Mexico’s holy war.

They were tales of priests hunted down by soldiers and summarily hanged along roadsides for all to see and fear. And of unarmed believers who harbored fugitive clerics and offered their homes to hold underground Masses.

They were the tales of Mexico’s so-called Cristero War of 1926-29, a popular uprising against the strict anticlerical provisions of Mexico’s 1917 constitution. Earlier this year, Pope John Paul II made saints of 25 Mexican martyrs of that bloody conflict.

The crackdown on Catholics came under President Plutarco Elias Calles, a moody ruler who later lived in exile in the United States. The once-mighty church was stripped of its property and schools; priests were barred from voting and punished for wearing clerical garb in public.

Some saw the draconian measures as revenge for the church’s defense of the old, elitist regime of Porfirio Diaz, who was overthrown in 1910. But the Catholic rebels, guilty of their own atrocities, didn’t always win converts. The holy war spurred even more migration north.

For Godinez, who has lived in the same Santa Ana house for 44 years, it’s the story of her own family, preserved in a red album of photographs. There’s the parish church with its odd steeple built by the residents of the hacienda where she was born, Jalpa de Canovas in Jalisco. And there are her grandparents, who dared to hide the holy sacrament in a secret compartment behind the bricks of the family fireplace.

The law banned the practice of religion outside of churches, which were closed by Catholics in protest. So when the pastor came to say Mass at her grandparents’ home, he was disguised as a peasant.

In Southern California, one can still find people like Godinez, who were personally touched by the upheaval. Her stories reminded me of those often told by my mother, who was a child during the persecution and who lived long enough to see religious restrictions lifted 75 years later in the constitutional reforms of 1992.

Their homespun recollections are part of a living lesson in the history of our country of origin, a history of sinners and saints that wasn’t taught in California schools.

When I visited Godinez one recent evening, a light sprinkle was falling. She warmly showed me in despite warnings from loved ones never to admit a stranger. She knew I must be a good person, she said. My interest in the Cristero struggle was my door opener.

Earlier by phone, I had asked her about the good priest who sought refuge in her Orange County parish from the fighting in Mexico. His name was Father Jose Origel, a humble man “who never had, and never wanted, any luxuries.” In a musical jewelry box shaped like a piano, Godinez still keeps a holy card (una estampita) marking his death in 1965, after having served Santa Ana’s Delhi barrio for more than three decades.

Godinez keeps her home impeccable, decorated with sarapes and a sombrero on the wall. A narrow bed dominates her small living room, where she rests frequently throughout the day. It struck me that she uses the living room to recuperate, just as her grandfather had done before he died back home in Jalpa.

Pedro Godinez was a short, disciplined man who always dressed in a charro outfit, the kind worn by mariachis. He worked as the hacienda’s bookkeeper and telegraph operator, with living quarters behind the grand main house. After he took ill, his living-room convalescence served as a cover during searches.

The soldiers would go right by his sickbed, and miss the hidden Eucharist in the chimney, recalled Godinez, her eyes sparkling. Catholics believe Christ is contained in the consecrated host. Candles always were kept lit in the house as if it were a church. When soldiers became suspicious, Godinez’s mother, Eulalia, told them the candlelight was needed because the electricity was always out.

“Fix the lights and we’ll turn out the candles,” she bluffed.

By the time Godinez was born in 1934, an uneasy truce had taken hold and the law later was rarely enforced. She and her mother migrated to Orange County 20 years later, after her father’s death.

“Many people who live around here remember all of this,” said Godinez, who worked for 25 years packing oranges in Irvine.

When the Mexicans were canonized, it was big news in her local church bulletin.

“Well, just imagine,” she said. “So many saints who in truth gave their lives for Christ. And it all happened where I was born.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.