'Not just a better Mexico': Intentional religious community and the Mexican state, 1940--1964

As the Mexican Revolution (1910--1920) transformed in to Mexican Economic Miracle (1940--1968) and the cultural Golden Age, how did the popular classes of Mexico interpret the Revolution as it increasingly became an institutionalized program devoid of radical social programs? This dissertation explores how some members of the urban and rural poor of Mexico used religion and community to adapt and critique the Revolution by practicing their own religious versions of that first, great social movement of the twentieth century.;While the federal government and the ruling party attempted to codify and institutionalize what it meant to be part of the "Revolutionary Family," the three case studies in this dissertation simultaneously acknowledged the benefits of the Revolution (such as education), while living in closed religious communities that flouted Revolutionary laws and the 1917 Constitution (especially laws that restricted religious practices relating to land, household economies, and family). These groups built communities not only to preserve their own rights of religious worship, but also as a critique of the shortcomings of the Revolution as carried out by the ruling party.;Such behavior demonstrates local interpretations of the Mexican Revolution, the importance of the absence of the rule of law to preserve religious human rights, and finally, the persistence of corporate identity and local community, even as Mexico grew more "modern," urban, and consumer oriented.;The dissertation includes three case study religious movements: the Luz Del Mundo Pentecostal church in Guadalajara, the El Reino de Dios en su Plenitud church in Mexico State, and the Sinarquista Catholic colony of Maria Auxiliadora in Baja California. Though many rural and urban poor did not leave written accounts for historians, they did leave a record as they joined these exclusive communities, living the demanding principles required by each group and signifying their critique of the Mexican cultural Golden Age and Economic Miracle (1940--1968) by the way they chose to live their lives. Evidence for such communities is gathered from municipal, state, national, and private archives as well as published and unpublished memoirs and oral histories.