Luis Navarro Origel: The First Cristero

[Stone]

LUIS NAVARRO ORIGEL: The First Cristero
Part I

Theresa Marie Moreau | July 26, 2024


Paying a debt is justice; giving more than one owes is generosity or gratitude; giving everything without expectations is love. Luis Navarro Origel gave everything, without expectations, because he loved God above all things.  - Martin Chowell

ROUNDS OF GUNFIRE exploded around 8 in the morning and continued to blast for the next hour, on September 28, 1926, in the Mexican town of Penjamo.

Without warning, the Cristero War had begun.

The next day, a disheveled and exhausted Luis Navarro Origel suddenly arrived on the doorstep of the home he shared with his wife and their five young children, who clutched onto his legs, chattering happily as he entered.

“We know that the government is coming. What are you going to do?” his terrified wife asked, as he changed into his riding pants and grabbed a pair of binoculars.

“We’re going to the mountains,” he explained, handing her some cash. “Keep this money outside the house, because if it burns down, you’ll have enough to eat the next day.”

At the threshold, she clung to him, their arms wrapped around one another, as the children – Ignacio, Guadalupe, Carmen, Margarita and Rafael – held tightly onto their father.

“When will we see each other again?” she asked.

“Not here, Carmela. We’ll see each other in Heaven,” he answered, with great serenity.

A final kiss. A final gaze. He pulled himself away, mounted his horse and galloped off, kicking up clumps of dirt, as his little family watched from the threshold until they could no longer see him, and never would again, alive.

Although the local telegraph and telephone cables had been cut, severing Penjamo from civilization, that didn’t stop the news from streaking out of that dusty town in the state of Guanajuato to the rest of the nation, from the northern border to the southern border, from the Sierra Madre Occidental to the Sierra Madre Oriental.

“Luis Navarro Origel stood up! Penjamo was taken by Luis Navarro Origel!” Catholics cheered.

In one day, that uprising changed everything after years of brutal tyranny in a reign of terror that smashed Catholics under the bloody fist of the ever-revolving Revolutionary regimes ruled by caudillos, those in the criminal class who ascended to the political class and relied on force and violence to grab and maintain power.

At last, hope. Finally. Finally, someone stood up. That someone: Luis Navarro Origel.

Born on February 15, 1897, to Guadalupe Origel Gutierrez and Bardomiano Navarro Navarro (1859-1919), he was the eighth child of 15, in an industrious, successful family. They lived happily and comfortably in a clean, spacious home, with a central courtyard, overgrown with ferns, flowers and trees, hugged by a loggia echoing with the songs of mockingbirds and canaries. In control of three large farms south of Penjamo – El San Jose de Maravilla, El Guayabo de Origel, El Tepetate de Navarro – the family, alongside hired laborers, worked the fertile fields day in, day out, which resulted in plentiful harvests and overflowing granaries.

A prayerful child, at an early age he studiously pored over and memorized the “Catecismo de los Padres Ripalda y Astete,” in preparation for his First Confession – which he made, prostrate, at the feet of the priest – and First Communion at the age of 6. When ready to launch his academic endeavors, his parents enrolled him in a school founded by Father Crisoforo Guevara. Buoyed at a young age by his intellectual achievements, he expressed a wish to transfer to the minor Seminary of Morelia, in the state of Michoacan, where his older brother, Ignacio, boarded and studied. Prodded for permission, Navarro’s father acquiesced and enrolled his son, at the age of 12, in 1909.

A year after he began attending classes at the seminary, the Mexican Revolution ignited, on November 20, 1910, after the promulgation of the Plan of San Luis Potosi, drafted by Francisco Ignacio Madero Gonzalez (1873-1913), who shot and slashed his way to the presidency, forcing the abdication of longtime dictator President Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915).

Slowly, steadily, the country submerged into a societal bleakness, plunged into the Second Dark Age, a creeping, evil creature that burst forth from its Parisian womb in the Bastille Saint-Antoine during a violent, bloody birth, on July 14, 1789. Thereafter, it spread its perverted ideology – of pro-State, pro-collectivism, anti-Church, anti-individualism – from the Old World to the New World, rampaging in a savage force to annihilate the fruitful civilization that had bloomed from the Greco-Romans and blossomed into Christendom, the foundation of the Western world.

Propagated for decades in Mexico to incite rebellion, chaos and hatred between classes, races, sexes, ideologies and even family members – Socialism found a welcome and comfortable home in Mesoamerican politics.

Any good Revolution worth its weight in blood is usually accompanied with demands of land reform, and Mexico was no different. The Agrarian Mass Movement, initiated by the Plan of Ayala, drafted by Emiliano Zapata Salazar (1879-1919) and first proclaimed on November 28, 1911, agitated for collectivism – the confiscation and nationalization of private businesses and private property, which included Church holdings, as well as haciendas – huge estates owned by wealthy natives, as well as Europeans and their Criollo descendants, all the wealthy without political standing.

To ensure the enactment of land reform, those in power agitated their troops and their countryside comrades, the agraristas: rural Socialists with little or no land who actively worked for and killed for land expropriation and redistribution, because they were promised – lied to – that they would receive that land as reward. Authoritarians whipped up their minions to steal land and valuables from the wealthy, labeled as class and race enemies, just as the Bolsheviks had incited violence toward the kulaks during the dekulakization in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Communists had pushed persecution and death against the landlords in the People’s Republic of China.

Stealing land, livestock, harvests, treasures, depleting goods and resources from wherever they could, the Agrarista Junta – waving red flags, backed by warlords – devastated the countryside, as did the Revolution’s soldiers, uniformed malefactors who marauded from huts to haciendas as they marched along, filling their bellies and their pockets. What they couldn’t carry, they destroyed, burning anything that remained. And anyone deemed an enemy of the ruling Revolutionary faction was often executed on the spot, without proof, without trial.

A week after Navarro turned 16, he was still studying in the minor seminary when Madero – who had ignited the Revolution to oust Diaz – was overthrown and then assassinated three days later, on February 22, 1913, following the coup known as the Ten Tragic Days, headed by Jose Victoriano Huerta Marquez (1850-1916), who, in turn, usurped the presidency; however, he, himself, was overthrown, on July 15, 1914, by an opposing Revolutionary faction led by Jose Venustiano Carranza de la Garza (1859-1920).

With the ascension of Carranza – a rusty tool gripped in the bloodstained fists of the anti-clericals – the Revolution continued upon its path of destruction to force its sociopathic ideology upon the masses, especially Catholics. His military troops – culled from the most vicious criminal segments of society – terrorized the people.

Socialists – the self-proclaimed intellectually elite – categorized the majority of Mexicans – working-poor laborers and farmers – as sub-intelligent, illiterate religious fanatics, who needed to be cleansed of their superstitious beliefs inherited from the European colonizers and oppressors. The Old Man had to be destroyed for the creation of the New Man. Their old ways needed to be violently eradicated by the progressives, those in the vanguard who forced society to progress from Capitalism to a Socialist Utopia, translation: No Place.

To sledgehammer the Church in Mexico, stone by stone, to diminish its influence, the regime gobbled up property – which, not so coincidentally, often increased the wealth and estates of the politically powerful – targeting churches, rectories, convents, monasteries, orphanages, hospitals, clinics, asylums, old age homes and parochial schools.

Eventually, the chaos struck the seminary, in Morelia, where Navarro had thrived intellectually, surpassing all fellow students in philosophy classes, and where he had strived to perfect his interior spiritual life, through self-denial, restraint, daily examination of conscience, daily Communion, meditation – all to fine tune his Will, man’s highest faculty.

In 1914, the Revolutionaries – useful idiots as frenzied mobs under the protection of the Carrancistas – arrived at the seminary and plundered the Catholic institution, where Father Francisco Banegas Galvan (1867-1932) resided as rector. Seminary directors ruled not to resist the violent aggression, and Navarro watched helplessly as the rioters and looters trashed and stole costly furnishings, rare works from the library, and delicate meteorological instruments from the science laboratory.

Ravaged throughout. In one day, treasures – paid for by parishioners and collected over the centuries through great sacrifice – were destroyed.

After the seminary shut down, Navarro had no choice but to return home to Penjamo, to spend the winter holidays with his family, whose residence and agricultural business had also been attacked by locust-like Revolutionaries. The house, ransacked. The fields, destroyed. The granaries, emptied. Complete devastation.

But amidst the darkness, a light.

As Navarro had done before when home from school, he visited a fellow seminarian, Leopoldo Alfaro Madrigal, who lived 35 miles away, in Irapuato. It was then that Navarro – 17 at the time – fell in love with one of his friend’s five sisters: Carmen Alfaro Madrigal, a shy and sweet girl of 14.

Love bloomed.

Upon his return to Morelia to finish his final year of studies, since seminarians had been violently forced out from their residence, he boarded in the home of a Catholic family. His room was large, carpeted, with a padded kneeler, where he could pray his daily rosary. The family had a private chapel with an altar on which every few days he placed flowers, freshly cut from the planters that filled the patio garden. Waking early each morning, he attended Mass and received Communion before classes, which were held in secret wherever they could be conducted discreetly: in huts, open fields, under shade trees.

Because of the anti-clerical sentiment pushed by the Socialists, when not hiding for their lives, priests packed away their cassocks and wore common clothing. But, still, the clergy could not escape violence and death, such as Father David Galvan Bermudez (1881-1915), who was executed on January 30, 1915, after arrested for spiritually tending to soldiers wounded during a battle between opposing Revolutionary factions in Guadalajara.

A young man in the world, Navarro faced the fast-and-free debauchery pushed by the ruling ideology that condemned the sacred bond of traditional marriage as a bourgeois institution for class oppression, and denounced monogamous marital intimacy between a loving couple – taught by the Church to be equal in intimacy and dignity – as an oppressive and feudalistic aspect of a patriarchal, capitalistic society.

Instead, the 18-year-old deliberately chose and welcomed a supernatural, divine love and chastity, expressing his mature desires in a sweet correspondence to Carmen, as the two exchanged love letters filled with heart-felt expressions.

“My Beloved, we have an immense guarantee: We love each other with all our soul, and we have consecrated our love to our Creator, to our most loving Redeemer,” he gushed.

At the completion of his studies with a degree in philosophy, because of his stellar academic performance, his former superiors offered him assistance in any civil career of his choosing.

Unsure about his future, he narrowed down his options to just two choices: to find his vocation for the Church outside the clergy; or to continue his studies in a major seminary to pursue the priesthood, inspired by his older sisters – Margarita, Guadalupe, Concepcion – who had religious vocations and attended the Teresian College of Santa Maria de Guadalupe, in Morelia.

A decision needed to be made.

For clarity, he attended, in October 1916, a retreat based on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (born Inigo Lopez de Onaz y Loyola, 1491-1556), directed by Father Luis Maria Martinez y Rodriguez (1881-1956), vice-rector of the seminary. Ignatian retreats are a time of silent discernment. The first half is a lens that closely examines one’s past, followed with a General Confession. The second half focuses on a plan of action for the future. Between conferences, attendees pray and meditate in private, and it is not unusual for a retreatant to undergo an agonizing inner struggle.

On October 26, Navarro endured an intense battle in his soul that completely overwhelmed him, but when the spiritual scuffle subsided, his mind calmed and his being filled with tranquility.

“Today has been one of the worst and one of the happiest days of my life,” he noted in his private writings. “Today, I have taken a decisive step along the path of my life, after a combat that lasted the entire day, with about a thousand indecisions that made me die of anguish.”

The decision that needed to be made, he made, little understanding how he had manifested his fatal destiny. He resolved to sanctify his state in life with marriage, and to fulfill his duties as a son by returning home, to his family, and to continue their work, in the fields, trying to restore that which had been destroyed by the Revolutionaries.

But, the Revolution and its maniacal manipulators continued to thrive in tyranny.

With the new regime came a new constitution. The drafting of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States – illegally imposed by force, on February 5, 1917, by a triumphant military faction – was conceived and written not only to attribute the authority of God to the State, but also to grab more control over the masses and to, finally, completely break the connection the faithful had with the Church.

Carranza’s Liberal Constitutionalist Party, like other Socialist parties – whether Vladimir Lenin’s (1870-1924) Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Benito Mussolini’s (1883-1945) National Fascist Party, Zedong Mao’s (1893-1976) Chinese Communist Party, – all had one commonality: Individualism must be destroyed, and oneness with the State must be forced.

But Navarro did not let the chaos in the nation ruin his plans for the future. On May 5, 1917, he and Carmen married, in her hometown of Irapuato. For their honeymoon, the newlyweds traveled to Mexico City by train – unreliable at best, dangerous at worst during the Revolution, with frequent de-railings, train robberies, bombed bridges, burned ties, twisted rails, hostile forces and the lack of upkeep on the rolling stock that incurred exploding engines and conked-out cabooses. Their excursion was no different, as the train they were on was attacked by bandits, and Navarro heroically defended the passengers.

As soon as the newly blessed couple arrived in their hotel, Navarro requested of his bride: “I want to ask you – like Tobias and Sarah – that we keep a few days of chastity.”

Blissfully, the few days stretched to 15, and, during that time, their conversations centered around spiritual endeavors and how their marriage would be consecrated, elevated from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the material to the spiritual, from the natural to the supernatural.

Upon their return to Penjamo, they toiled – rising early, pinching pesos – to undo the sacking done by the Revolutionary invaders to the Navarro holdings. But soon the whole family had to seek refuge in Irapuato because of the frequent incursions onto the property by one of the most fearsome and extremely violent Revolutionaries, General Jose Ines Garcia Chavez (1889-1919), a psychopath known as the “Atila of the Bajio” for his crazy cruelty and torture inflicted upon men, women and even young children.

In Irapuato, Navarro started several businesses with his older brother Ignacio. However, a better Catholic than a businessman, all of his attempts fell into failure rather than sail into success, which led to further financial difficulty. But he continued to persevere, always planning to return to Penjamo, which they did, after his father suffered a fatal stroke, around the time of the birth of Navarro’s firstborn, Ignacio, nicknamed “Nachito,” on July 18, 1918.

Undeterred by his failures, somehow, he stumbled upon beekeeping, an untapped venture, and he immersed himself in the project, reading, studying, attempting to entice a queen and encourage nector-filled nests. After failing twice, he finally triumphed and eventually established 200 colonies. After bees, he eschewed traditional modes of farming and adopted modern techniques to successfully cultivate the land and raise livestock, such as chickens, pigs, cows.

Blessed with a happy nature, he savored the joys in life with his young family, but he also had a passion for reading and self-reflection in his spare time at night. His favorites, two great mystics: Saint Teresa of Avila (born Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, 1515-1582) and Saint John of the Cross (born Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, 1542-91), who – from their graves – guided his ascetic life of strict self-discipline, to follow the Will of God and the precepts of the Church.

But then, yet another political earthquake shook Mexico.

Carranza had attempted to modify the anti-Catholic articles of the 1917 Constitution, but his proposed amendments were vociferously rejected by two up-and-comers: Alvaro Obregon Salido (1880-1928) and Plutarco Elias Calles (born Francisco Plutarco Elias Campuzano, 1877-1945). When Carranza refused to apply the anti-clerical statutes, he was warned that if he continued to ignore them, he would face the consequences. And, on May 21, 1920, at 4 o’clock in the morning, he faced the consequences. While he slept, in Tlaxcalantongo, where he had sought refuge in a safehouse in the Sierra Norte de Puebla Mountains, 30 bullets were fired through the thin walls of his hut, with six finding their target, the president. In addition, eight others died during the assault.

Among Carranza’s bloodied clothing was found a Virgin Mary medal with the following inscription: My Mother Save Me.

[Stone]

LUIS NAVARRO ORIGEL: The First Cristero
Part II

Theresa Marie Moreau | Saturday, July 27, 2024

THE EXECUTION OCCURRED during the Revolution’s Rebellion of Agua Prieta, led by three generals known as the Sonoran Triumvirate, all self-declared Bolsheviks: Obregon, Calles and Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor (1881-1955), who initially grabbed the reins of power as the interim president, but stepped aside months later when Obregon claimed to have won the presidential election – with a suspicious 95.8 percent of the vote – and was inaugurated president, on December 1, 1920.

tWith the Sonoran Socialists in power, Catholic persecution not only continued, it accelerated, with some very notable, very public bombings by the rojillos, the pinkos: that of the Mexico City residence of Archbishop Jose Mora y del Rio (1854-1928), on February 6, 1921; and that of the altar of the Basilica of Guadalupe, on November 14, when, miraculously, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe escaped harm.

Those planned assaults preceded an international, diplomatic incident that made headlines around the world when Archbishop Ernesto Eugenio Filippi (1879-1951) was kicked out of the country. Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alberto Jose Pani Arteaga (1878-1955) had accused the Catholic priest of violating the Constitution as chief celebrant during an outdoor religious ceremony, when the first stone of Christ the King monument had been laid, on January 11, 1923, on Cerro del Cubilete, property owned by Jose Natividad Macias Castorena (1857-1948).

As a result of the breadth and depth of the hunger and the suffering of the people – some had only rags or no clothing at all and walked around nearly naked or completely naked – because of the pillaging and plundering and the ravaging and razing of the formerly established society, Navarro felt compelled to help alleviate the pain. The once-fertile fields had to be replanted, and the town infrastructure needed to be rebuilt.

Many times he had politely rejected the offer of an undisputed seat in the Guanajuato legislature. Instead, selflessly, with a generous, altruistic spirit of charity, he decided to run for the humble position of Penjamo’s mayor, and he legitimately won the election with an overwhelming majority, in 1923.

Instilled with the Catholic belief that all jobs have dignity, as mayor – with the help of others – he physically worked to upgrade the public utilities, to improve the nearly impassable dirt roads, to clear trails, to repair bridges and to widen the local dam. For charity work, each day he visited inmates housed in the city jail, where he shared honeycombs from his own hives, handed out leaflets with Catholic guidance, and personally instructed the men in Catholic doctrine and dogma. And to help the local prostitutes turn their lives around, he provided them protection in shelters – asylums established by Catholic nuns – keeping the women safe from their brutal pimps.

But there were always those who created chaos. Navarro’s troublemaking enemies – the Revolutionaries – falsely accused him and the City Council of Estradism, so named for the followers of General Enrique Estrada Reynoso (1890-1942), who allegedly plotted – along with General Guadalupe Sanchez Galvan (1890-1985) and General Fortunato Maycotte Camero (1891-1924) – to overthrow Obregon, then-president of Mexico.

In response, Obregon ordered that the Penjamo City Council be dissolved. Immediately. He sent his enforcer, General Jose Gonzalo Escobar (1892-1969), to fulfill his command. Once he flexed his muscle in Penjamo, Escobar quickly received resignations from council members, but not from Navarro. So the general instructed his troops to escort the independent-minded mayor to the military train’s traveling headquarters.

“I have orders from the president of the Republic to dissolve the City Council,” Escobar brazenly explained to Navarro.

“The president of the Republic does not have any power to issue this type of order,” Navarro bravely answered.

“The president of the Republic is the supreme authority.”

“The supreme authority is the law, and Article 115 of the Constitution mandates that the municipality be free and governed by a directly, popularly elected City Council. Penjamo is a free municipality, and I am a mayor elected by the people.”

The well-educated, well-read Navarro knew the law.

“You are accused of being an Estradista.”

“I cannot be accused without evidence. Do you have any?”

“I follow orders.”

“Well, I cannot fail in my duties.”

Undaunted, Navarro remained in his elected office.

Still, after accomplishing all that he could to better the lives of residents, rather than run again for a second term, he decided to devote all his spare hours to organize a spiritual counterrevolution to the material Revolution that had created so much death and destruction and promoted lawlessness and immorality. His mayoral term ended in December 1924, the same December when Calles clawed his way to the highest seat of power: the presidential throne, on December 1, 1924.

The third leg in the Sonoran Triumvirate, Calles had terrorized his way up the ladder, rung by bloody rung. He had begun his professional life with a career as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant, but was disgracefully dismissed after caught stealing money from the teachers. After conniving his way to the position of municipal treasurer of Guaymas, again he was fired, accused of embezzlement. Then as manager of a hotel and a warehouse, both businesses burned to the ground, by a rumored arsonist: Calles.

But then his luck turned. In 1913, he began his military career, as a lieutenant colonel. He found his niche: a position of undisputed, unquestionable power and control. When subsequently appointed chief of police, in Agua Prieta, he stuffed his pockets with filthy lucre and freely attacked perceived foes. After he became governor of Sonora, in 1917, he expelled every priest from the state, closed every church and freely slaughtered political enemies, including Catholics. In 1920, Obregon appointed him as Minister of the Interior, one of the nomenklatura.

While the be-sashed president of Mexico, Calles surrounded himself with radical Socialists, such as Robert Haberman (1883-1962), a native-born Romanian who migrated to America and then relocated to Mexico, where he acted, officially, as the Director of Foreign Languages Department in the Ministry of Public Instruction but, unofficially, as the Chief of the Bureau of Propaganda. Haberman was also the attorney for the Regional Confederation Mexican Workers (Confederacion Regional de Obreros Mexicanos, CROM), a brutal federation of labor unions – headed by Secretary General Luis Morones Negrete (1890-1964) – filled with public officials and employees from government factories, who willingly, with unbridled violence, did Calles’ bidding to quench his ravenous thirst for vengeance born of racial and class hatred.

Calles also backed rabid anti-Catholic, Socialist politicians such as Tomas Garrido Canabal (1890-1943), who reportedly named two of his sons Lenin and Lucifer. Also farmer, he named one of his bulls God, an ox Pope, a cow the Virgin of Guadalupe and a donkey Jesus. When elected to the gubernatorial office, he plundered churches, ordered priests to marry and banned Catholic symbols and all references to God.

As Mexico’s supreme leader with a psychopathic, anti-hierarchical aggression, arrogant sense of entitlement and lack of empathy, Calles – a bastard with ancestral roots deep in the Middle East, who was never baptized and never attended Mass – was able to fulfill his monomaniacal hatred for all things Catholic.

Backed by unyielding power, on February 21, 1925, Calles attempted to rip the Church from the heart of the nation and implant Socialist ideology into the void by creating a State church, a common action by authoritarian regimes. After the violent, orchestrated takeover of the Church of the Holy Cross and Solitude, in Mexico City, priest Jose Joaquin Perez Budar (1851-1931) declared himself Patriarch of the Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church. Met with protestors, the Calles regime dispatched firefighters and police to protect the squatters, but parishioners successfully fought the hostile forces and regained control of their church.

Exasperated, fearful and out of desperation, devout Catholics founded – in Mexico City, in March 1925 – the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty, to defend human rights and religious freedom. The League established itself as the coordination center for all Catholics throughout the entire country.

As soon as Navarro learned about the League, he joined right away. And after only a few days, he set up several local chapters, but he didn’t stop there.

He also established a chapter of the Catholic Association of Mexican Youth (Asociacion Catolica de la Juventud Mexicana), established on August 12, 1913, in Mexico City, by Father Bernardo Bergöend, (1871-1943, Society of Jesus), a French Jesuit dispatched to Mexico to organize Catholic youth to restore Christian social order. He modeled it after the French Catholic Youth Association (Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française), founded, in 1886, by Adrien Albert Marie de Mun (1841-1914). With its motto of Piety, Study, Action, the association gave the youth – looking for a purpose in life – a healthy and productive direction, which Navarro offered through study circles, libraries, soccer matches and hunting clubs.

A constant target of all the regimes was Catholic schools, not just to confiscate the property of the Church, and not just to behead the Church as the major spiritual influence in the children’s standards and morals, but, most notably, to steal and pervert the intellect of the youth and to use the mandatory, government-run schools as indoctrination camps to brainwash young, malleable minds, to remold their thinking with materialistic Socialist ideology.

Issued in February 1926, the Provisional Regulation of Private Primary Schools of the District and Federal Territories, contained the following:

Article 1. The teaching taught in private schools will be secular and the certificates used will have no value.

Article 2. Schools may not have names that indicate a religious nature nor possess a saint of any cult.

Article 3. In the buildings of private schools, there will be no oratories or chapels, nor religious prints or sculptures.

Article 4. It is a requirement to be a school director not to be a minister of any cult or a member of a religious order.

The ever-Revolutionary Calles believed that children belonged not to the nuclear family, but to the State collective, which he articulated years later in a public broadcast from Guadalajara, on July 19, 1934:

“The Revolution has not ended. The eternal enemies lie in ambush and are laying plans to nullify the triumphs of the Revolution. It is necessary that we enter a new period of the Revolution. I would call this new period the psychological period of the Revolution. We must now enter and take possession of the consciences of the children, of the consciences of the young, because they do belong and should belong to the Revolution.

“It is absolutely necessary that we dislodge the enemy from this trench where the clergy are now, where the conservatives are – I refer to education, I refer to the school.

“It would be a very grave stupidity, it would be a crime for the men of the Revolution to fail to rescue the young from the claws of the clericals, from the claws of the conservatives, and, unfortunately, in many states of the Republic and even in the capital of the Republic itself, the school is under the direction of clerical and reactionary elements.

“We cannot entrust to the hands of our enemies the future of the country and the future of the Revolution. With every artfulness the reactionaries are saying and the clericals are saying that the children belong to the home and the youth to the family. This is a selfish doctrine, because the children and youth belong to the community; they belong to the collectivity, and it is the Revolution that has the inescapable duty to take possession of consciences, to drive out prejudices, and to form the new soul of the nation.

“Therefore, I call upon all governors throughout the Republic, on all public authorities, and on all Revolutionary elements, that we proceed at once to the field of battle, which we must take, because children and the young must belong to the Revolution.”

On June 14, 1926, Calles lobbed a legislative bomb, designed to obliterate any rights of the Church.

That day, he signed the Law for Reforming the Penal Code – commonly called the Calles Law – that would not only ensure the enforcement of all anti-clerical laws against the Church as written in the 1917 Constitution, but the diktat included even more severe restrictions and penalties. It was the axe intended to forever cleave Church and State. Effective July 31, 1926, all churches were to have the 33 articles of the law posted on their main doors.

Calles described his Law as “a definite solution of the religious problem,” a legal maneuver to exterminate the Church and Her devout faithful.

Immediately, two major reactions from Catholics:

First, the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty called for a socio-economic boycott – to begin on July 21 – to weaken the regime by paralyzing the nation’s economic base that bolstered the authoritarian administration, which soon felt the ramifications. Concerned Revolutionary politician, Gonzalo Natividad Santos Rivera (1897-1978), revealed: “What we have called a ridiculous boycott is something very serious that is producing an economic crisis dangerous for the Revolution.”

Second, the Mexican Episcopate announced in their Pastoral Letter, of July 25, that, on July 31, all clergy would withdraw from the churches; otherwise, they would be colluding with the State against the Church. The churches would remain open, if possible, but only under the direction and care of the laity.

On the day services were suspended, July 31, the Navarro family walked to church around 8 that night to pray.

“Let us offer ourselves as victims, so that Jesus returns to the Tabernacles and our children will love Him and know Him,” a tearful Navarro whispered to his wife.

After that, he kept busy, attending local meetings, giving lectures, traveling to the capital city for more meetings with Catholics and members of the League, all the while keeping his wife in the dark, for her own protection, until, tearfully, he approached her, on September 2, 1926.

“I have to trust you with a secret. You see the situation of the Church; I cannot be oblivious to what She suffers. I feel a call from God inside, asking for my blood and my life. If I ignore this call, I will irrevocably condemn myself. Carmela, I'm going to take up arms. I am preparing everything, but before executing my project I want your approval, because you will sacrifice with me. Think about it before God, and decide after having thought about it.”

Overwhelmed with grief at the thought of widowhood and their children as orphans, she sobbed and prayed for strength whenever she was alone.

After two days, he could wait no longer.

“I’m dying of anguish to know your answer.”

“I’m willing to sacrifice. If He asks you, He asks me, too, because I am part of you.”

“I love you for this a thousand times more!” he exclaimed, between kisses, exuberant.

After that, he shared everything with her, and one day, faced with the gravity of the situation, he requested, “When my children grow up, tell them that their father died to leave them the faith.”

To those who condemned him for his choice, he responded: “I am going to kill for Christ those who kill Christ. And if no one follows me in this undertaking, I am going to die for Christ.”

In the early morning hours of September 27, Navarro kissed his sleeping children, one by one, held their heads in both of his hands and prayed, “Lord, if possible, take this chalice from me; however, not my will, but yours be done.”

That morning, the family attended an underground Mass celebrated in an oratory. After the liturgical service, Navarro turned and went his separate way, only to return home at dusk, to tell his wife that the time had arrived. He said goodbye, first to the children and then to his wife, who stood at the door. He stepped away, but soon returned.

“I didn’t say goodbye to the little one or bless him,” he explained, taking baby Rafael in his arms, holding him, hugging him, repeatedly kissing him. After blessing his youngest child, he turned and left, with his Mauser hanging from his shoulder.

[Stone]

LUIS NAVARRO ORIGEL: The First Cristero
Part III

Theresa Marie Moreau | July 28, 2024

The next morning, September 28, in a daring confrontation, Navarro led his brothers – Ignacio, Jesus, Manuel – and others to take Penjamo at gunpoint, annihilating the well-equipped government forces and re-establishing the Church in the town.

The next morning, the 29th, exhausted, dirty, already war-weary, he stealthily returned to his family, for a final goodbye. Never would there be another. After placing himself under the protection of Saint Michael the Archangel – Guardian of the Church, Champion of Justice, Spiritual Warrior in the Battle of Good versus Evil – Navarro tore himself from his home, forever, that morning, the saint’s Feast Day.

For eight days – without food, without sleep – he and his men battled the Socialist forces. Victorious despite the overwhelming odds against them, they took Cueramero and then Barajas. But as they neared Corralejo, General Jose Amarillas Valenzuela (1878-1959) ambushed them as they crossed the railroad tracks.

One of the Navarro brothers, Jesus, nicknamed “Chucho,” fell from his horse and played dead. Although trodden by the cavalry of the Callistas, he survived, and when fighting ended, he escaped and headed north, to the United States of America, with brother Manuel. Navarro fled with brother Ignacio to the mountains of Michoacan, on Cerro de Tancitaro, where they found refuge at a sawmill, owned by their cousins, Leopolde and Daniel Navarro.

As soon as Navarro arrived, he contacted the League, informing them that he was ready to receive help, with manpower and firepower. But headquarters had neither men nor weapons to send and encouraged him to go ahead, with whatever means he had to fight.


Amidst the lonely and quiet times, a yearning Navarro wrote love letters to Carmen. In his writings of February 6, 1927, he poetically addressed her as “my wife, my only and passionate love, the love of my life, the life of my life, my holy companion since my childhood.”

But he remained steadfast and faced the enemy, nearly alone, with just his small unit of troops, until January 1, 1927, when Rene Capistran Garza (1898-1974) – head of the League – issued a manifesto, “A la Nacion,” which declared, “The hour of battle has sounded,” announcing its organization was ready for an armed movement against the tyrannical regime.

With that declaration, areas of Mexico exploded, including Jalisco, giving rise to the Cristeros, so-named by the regime for their invocation of Christ. Initially intended as a term of derision, the religious militia delighted in the sobriquet and readily adopted it for themselves.

For the Catholic soldiers of Christ, faith formed an important part of military discipline. Divisions of the National Liberation Army elevated obedience to the supernatural, spiritual level, adopting codes of conduct, such as the following:

1. To render an official, public and solemn homage to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, sovereign King of our army, and to humbly and lovingly consecrate to Him all the works and all the persons of this division;

2. To never omit, under any pretext, the daily group recitation of the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, and to accord this observance the same priority as a strict disposition of military regulation;

3. Whenever possible, to arrange things to allow all the leaders, officers and soldiers to officially fulfill the precepts of Sunday worship, Confession and Communion; and

4. To guarantee Divine protection during the battles by making the army and the Catholics prepare themselves by humble, confident prayer and by recommending making acts of perfect contrition.

In an attempt to squash the rebellion, Calles ordered the execution of the leaders of the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty, viewed as enemies of the State. Capistran evaded capture and slipped across the border into the United States; however, authorities caught attorney Anacleto Gonzalez Flores (1888-1927), falsely charged him with murder and tortured him: hanged him by his thumbs until pulled from their sockets, slashed the bottom of his feet, punctured his body with bayonets and broke bones with rifle butts.

Tormented, bloodied, stabbed, flayed, broken, Anacleto Gonzalez Flores attempted to sit up in his final moments of life, on April 1, 1927, leaving his torturers and executioners with his final words before the tiro de gracia: “I die, but God does not! Viva Cristo Rey!”

Days later, upon Navarro’s return to the battlefield, in Coalcoman, on April 6, he named his First Brigade the Anacleto Gonzalez Flores Brigade, in honor of the martyr. Feeling his own impending death, he wrote a sweet-yet-sorrowful letter, dated April 8, to his wife, saying good bye “until when God wants, which will be very soon, anyway!”

During his first meeting with Coalcoman’s parish priest Father Jose Maria Martinez and parishioners – who had never given up the faith or the exercise thereof – he explained about the breadth and depth of the corruption in the government – comprising of assassins and thieves – that persecuted not only religious believers but violated basic human rights. He suggested that they form a true government to oppose the violent and cruel reign.

In response to his proposal, on April 23, 1927, the residents of Coalcoman declared themselves not in rebellion, but independent of the Calles government. Navarro – under the nombre de guerra General Fermin Gutierrez, Soldier of Mary – sent the declaration to the governor and then placed Catholics in charge of the administration, reopened schools and suppressed public sins.

Coalcoman was to serve as headquarters for Navarro – one of the division generals in the National Liberation Army, stationed in the designated Southwest Division: the Michoacan coast region, from Colima to Guerrero. In order to maintain control of Coalcoman, he decided it was necessary to take nearby Aguilillas, Chinicuila and Tepalcatepec.

The next day, April 24, word reached him that federal troops had settled in Aguilillas, posing a definite threat. Navarro decided to attack. He and his 300-man-strong AGF Brigade surreptitiously snuck into the town of Aguilillas at dawn routing the regime’s men without firing a single shot. In celebration, the Cristeros rapturously rang the church bells, surprising residents, who realized they were freed from their oppressors. Joyful, they cheered at the tolling, silenced for so long, for it had become a criminal offense to even ring the bells.

“Solemn Mass will be celebrated in the church, followed by a public procession. Finally, you are going to breathe the air of freedom! Finally, there is a place in the Mexican nation where you can freely worship God!” Navarro announced.

Parishioners near and far filled the church. The national flag was laid at the foot of the altar. Navarro, the liberating general, and his brother Ignacio sat in the front, surrounded by his men. During Mass, at the time of the elevation, the soldiers of Christ presented arms, a salute of respect with weapons.

During the procession – a public affirmation of the faith through the town’s streets, with the Blessed Sacrament at the head, under a baldacchino, a processional canopy – parishioners sang an old, Mexican eucharistic hymn:

Host, sun of love,
Your light inflames the heart of loyal Mexico,
The heart of a people who love you,
The heart of a town that acclaims you
At your step, your triumphant step.

Next, Navarro focused on the taking of Tepalcatepec, where he hoped to replenish their war chests.

The Tierra Caliente, the Hot Land, was controlled by two outlaws: Serapio “Guarachudo” Cifuentes and “El Perro” Ibanez, who respected absolutely no one, with one exception: the parish priest. During an arranged meeting between the two bandits and Navarro at a ranch near Las Animas, the two men agreed to follow and submit to his command.

To attack Tepalcatepec, Navarro had 200 troops; the two outlaws had 200; and a local rancher in Coalcoman, Colonel Ezequiel Mendoza Barragan (1893-?), had 100 ranchers ready to join at a moment’s notice. Grand total: 500, mostly undertrained, poorly armed men, who thrived with spiritual inspiration.

Before daybreak on the morning of May 2, 1927, hundreds of men prepared for the attack on Tepalcatepec. They fell to their knees and prayed the rosary, with the Ave Marias and Padre Nuestros soaring above the hot, still, black night under the new moon that concealed the men under its 0 percent illumination, perfect for the impending assault. Standing, they recited their morning prayers, received spiritual communion, offered their day and their lives to God and asked for the grace of martyrdom. Each man received two ribbons, blue for the color of Mary, one to put on their hats and one to put on the right sleeves of their white shirts.

Lacking ammunition against a well-armed force, the best plan was to launch a surprise attack to catch the enemy off guard. At dawn, the two outlaws entered the town of Tepalcatepec. Surprised, they found it, seemingly, totally abandoned by its inhabitants. As Serapio raised a flag and took over City Hall, the rest of the troops sauntered in. But, around noon, the Callista soldiers suddenly stormed the town, attacking from all sides. Overwhelmed, the Cristeros fled.

After retreating and regrouping, they later took the town of Chinicuila.

And then Navarro rallied his troops to once again attack Tepalcatepec. On May 29, fighting ensued, street by street, corner by corner, house by house, until they reached the church. For three days, they exchanged gunfire until they broke the siege of the federal troops and agraristas and took the town, triumphant after a humiliating defeat.

From there, Navarro and his men marched month after month, engaging in battles, village after village. In the nomadic existence with no creature comforts and little food except rice and the occasional morisqueta, life was difficult and lonely.

After months of receiving not a parcel, not a letter, not even a postcard from his wife because of his constant moving from one transit camp to another, Navarro received a package, on September 15, 1927. Only after offering his unopened gift at the foot of the altar, he gently, lovingly unfolded the sheets of paper and read how his youngest child, Rafael, had died in the arms of his mother, who had to sell their last calf, just to bury him.

Grieved, he immediately wrote to his wife, “The soul that the Lord had lent to us and entrusted to our care for a short time, He has already collected from us to make him a participant in his own infinite happiness forever.”

While marching through the rough terrain from town to town, battle to battle, he often expressed his grief, with his beautiful voice, singing ranchera songs from his homeland. His favorite, “Las Cuatro Milpas” (“The Four Cornfields”):

“Only four cornfields remain
“From the little ranch that was mine, ay, ay! ay, ay,
“And that little house so white and pretty
“How sad it is.”

Lyrics depicted the gut-wrenching devastation incurred by the Revolution. The 1926 piece, mournful and melancholic, composed by Belisario de Jesus Garcia de la Garza (1894-1952), a soldier in the one-time Carrancista ranks, painted a picture of the bleakness of the countryside, a true representation of life in Mexico amidst the desolation.

And then, another political earthquake: the assassination of Obregon, on July 17, 1928, shortly after his re-election to the presidency following Calles’ four-year stint in office. Although the regime pinned the killing on the Cristeros, a rumor failed to die that Calles had actually ordered the hit.

Weeks later, Navarro learned that Callista troops – under the command of General Rodrigo M. Quevedo Moreno (1889-1967) – headed his way.

August 9, 1928. The first combat. Navarro with only 13 men.

The next day, August 10, proved ominous as the Feast of Saint Lawrence (225-258), a Catholic deacon martyred after Emperor Valerian (born Publius Licinius Valerianus, c. 199-c. 264) ordered the immediate execution of all clergy: bishops, priests, deacons.

After receiving Communion and offering their day and their lives to God around 7 that morning, the men clashed with the Callistas, on Cerro de las Higuerillas, near Pihuanto, in Jalisco. Surrounded by the enemy, Navarro continued to fight, at close range. At his side, his brother Ignacio, his assistant Alejandro Larios, Major Filiberto Calvario and Bernardino Gonzalez.

“Adelante!” he yelled, his favorite rallying cry. “Forward!”

A shot rang out. Navarro stumbled, losing his footing.

“My general is wounded!” Larios yelled, grabbing Navarro by one arm. Gonzalez grabbed the other, as Calvario continued firing at the Callistas, keeping them at bay.

With head bent slightly forward, he staggered with difficulty until his men were able to lay him down, on the bare ground, behind a rock, out in the open.

“Where are you wounded?” Ignacio asked, kneeling.

Navarro’s forehead, covered in sweat. Upon his lips, a smile of immense joy. With both hands, he lifted his blood-soaked coat, exposing the bullet hole, exactly over his heart.

“Brother of my soul,” Ignacio said, kissing the dying man’s forehead twice, thinking of their mother and of his brother’s wife and children.

“Go. Go ahead,” he whispered, encouraging his brother to welcome his eternal fate, the same fate that he would face eight months later, on April 3, 1929.

Ignacio returned to the fight. Minutes later, he saw his wounded brother hobbling down the hill.

“There goes someone very well dressed!” cried out a Callista, raising his gun and shooting Navarro, who collapsed upon the ground and rolled down the hill. At the bottom, his limp body came to a rest.

A vengeful Larios pointed his gun and shot the murderous Callista dead.

Unable to reach their general until the enemy retreated, Ignacio and Larios ran to Navarro and picked up his lifeless body, with a beatific glow of happiness on his lips and on his face.

He was 31.

Ever-loyal, his men sent for Father Octaviano Marino and carried their martyred leader – the First Cristero – from the violence of the battlefield, to their camp in the little valley of Christ the King, singing “Te Deum,” a hymnal praise of God. They established an Honor Guard to keep the all-night vigil, a post-death, pre-interment rite.

Before the celebration of the funeral Mass and burial accompanied by a Funeral Guard, Ignacio reverently removed his brother’s blood-stained clothing, relics of his holy death. Among the dead man’s possessions, a wallet.

Tucked inside, a small note, written many years before, during the Saint Ignatian retreat, with a simple, heartfelt message: “My God, may I be a martyr.”



Miscellanea and facts were pulled from the following:

“Antagonistic Narcissism and Psychopathic Tendencies,” by Eric Dolan. “Apocalypse et Revolution au Mexique: La Guerre des Cristeros (1926-1929),” by Jean Meyer. “The Black Czar: Plutarco Elias Calles, Bolshevik Dictator of Mexico,” translated from the Spanish of Francisco Gomez del Rey and Hernan Diaz by Fr. John Moclair. “Boceto de un Gran Caracter: Luis Navarro Origel,” by Editorial Libertad. “Bomb Exploded in Home of Mexican Archbishop,” by Associated Press. “Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the First Session of the Seventy-Fourth Congress of the United States, Volume 79 – Part 2, January 30, 1935, to February 20, 1935.” “Experiences and Observations of an American Consular Officer During the Recent Mexican Revolutions,” by Will. B. Davis. “Historical Data of the Elias,” by Rosa Albina Garavito Elias. “Luis Navarro Origel: El Primer Cristero,” by Martin Chowell (possible nom de plume of Alfonso Trueba Olivares). “Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation of the Mexican Communist Party, 1910-19,” by Barry Carr. “Red Mexico: A Reign of Terror in America,” by Captain Francis McCullagh. “Retributive Justice in Mexico,” by Adolphe de Castro. “Roberto Haberman Dead at 79; Founder of Mexican Labor Unit,” Special to the New York Times, March 5, 1962. “The Rosalie Evans Letters from Mexico,” arranged with comment by Daisy Caden Pettus.

Theresa Marie Moreau, an award-winning reporter, is the author of Martyrs in Red China; An Unbelievable Life: 29 Years in Laogai; Misery & Virtue; and Blood of the Martyrs: Trappist Monks in Communist China.