Mexican emigration during the Cristero War, 1926--1929

This doctoral dissertation examines the actions and ideologies of Mexican emigrants, exiles and refugees in the United States who sided with the Catholic Church during Mexico's Cristero War (1926-1929). Collaborating across regions and cities in both the United States and Mexico, this diaspora of Cristero sympathizers took a variety of steps to further their cause: they founded associations to aid Mexico's Catholic insurgency; sent money, arms, and military recruits from their communities to the battlefields; printed newspapers and pamphlets to disseminate their views; and plotted to overthrow the anticlerical Mexican government. Aided by exiled Mexican priests and nuns as well as by the Catholic hierarchy in both Mexico and the United States, these emigrants extended the Cristero conflict across national borders, and developed an enduring religious nationalism that competed with Revolutionary ideologies.