Irreligion in Mexico refers to atheism, deism, religious skepticism, secularism, and secular humanism in Mexican society, which was a confessional state after independence from Imperial Spain. The first political constitution of the Mexican United States, enacted in 1824, stipulated that Roman Catholicism was the national religion in perpetuity, and prohibited any other religion. Since 1857, however, by law, Mexico has had no official religion; as such, anti-clerical laws meant to promote a secular society, contained in the 1857 Constitution of Mexico and in the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, limited the participation in civil life of Roman Catholic organizations and allowed government intervention in religious participation in politics.
In 1992, the Mexican constitution was amended to eliminate the restrictions and granted legal status to religious organizations, limited property rights, voting rights to ministers, and allowed a greater number of priests in Mexico. Nonetheless, the principles of the separation of church and state remain; members of religious orders (priests, nuns, ministers, et al.) cannot hold elected office, the federal government cannot subsidize any religious organization, and religious orders, and their officers, cannot teach in the public school system.
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church dominated the religious, political, and cultural landscapes of the nation; yet, the Catholic News Agency said that there exists a great secular community of atheists, intellectuals and irreligious people, reaching 10% according to recent polls by religious agencies.
According to the 2020 census, 8% of the population is nonreligious.
Religion and politics
Since the Spanish Conquest (1519–21), the Roman Catholic Church has held prominent social and political positions concerning the moral education of Mexicansthe ways that virtues and morals are to be socially implementedand thus contributed to the Mexican cultural identity. Such cultural immanence was confirmed in the nation's first political constitution, which formally established Catholicism as the state religion while prohibiting all others. Article 3 of the 1824 Constitution of Mexico established that:
For most of Mexico's 300 years as the Imperial Spanish colony of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1519–1821), the Roman Catholic Church was an active political actor in colonial politics. In the early period of the Mexican nation, the vast wealth and great political influence of the Church spurred a powerful anti-clerical movement, which found political expression in the Liberal Party. By the middle of the 19th century, there were reforms limiting the political power of the Mexican Catholic Church. In response, the Church supported seditious Conservative rebels to overthrow the anti-clerical Liberal government of President Benito Juárez and welcomed the anti-Juárez French intervention in Mexico (1861), which established the military occupation of Mexico by the Second French Empire, under Emperor Napoleon III.
About the Mexican perspective of the actions of the Roman Catholic Church, the Mexican Labour Party activist Robert Haberman said:
At the turn of the 19th century, the collaboration of the Mexican Catholic Church with the Porfiriato, the 35-year dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz, earned the Mexican clergy the ideological enmity of the revolutionary victors of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20); thus, the Mexican Constitution of 1917 legislated severe social, political, economic and cultural restrictions upon the Catholic Church in the Republic of Mexico. Historically, the 1917 Mexican Constitution was the first political constitution to explicitly legislate the social and civil rights of the people and served as constitutional model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Russian Constitution of 1918. Nevertheless, like the Spanish Constitution of 1931, it has been characterized as being hostile to religion.
The Constitution of 1917 prohibited the Catholic clergy from working as teachers and as instructors in public and private schools; established State control over the internal matters of the Mexican Catholic Church; nationalized all Church property; proscribed religious orders; forbade the presence in Mexico of foreign-born priests; granted each state of the Mexican republic the power to limit the number of, and to eliminate, priests in its territory; disenfranchised priests of the right to vote and to hold elected office; banned Catholic organizations that advocated public policy; forbade religious publications from editorial commentary about public policy; prohibited the clergy from wearing clerical garb in public; and voided the right to trial of any Mexican citizen who violated anti-clerical laws.Ehler, Sidney Z. Church and State Through the Centuries p. 579-580, (1967 Biblo & Tannen Publishers) Needler, Martin C. Mexican Politics: The Containment of Conflict p. 50, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995
During the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the national rancour provoked by the history of the Catholic Church's mistreatment of Mexicans was aggravated by the collaboration of the Mexican High Clergy with the pro–U.S. dictatorship (1913–14) of General Victoriano Huerta, "The Usurper" of the Mexican Presidency; thus, anti-clerical laws were integral to the Mexican Constitution of 1917, in order to establish a secular society. In the 1920s, the enforcement of the Constitutional anti-clerical laws by the Mexican Federal Government provoked the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), the clerically abetted armed revolt of Catholic peasants known as "The Christers" (Los cristeros). The social and political tensions between the Catholic Church and the Mexican State lessened after 1940, but the constitutional restrictions remained the law of the land, although their enforcement became progressively lax. The government established diplomatic relations with the Holy See during the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) and the Government lifted almost all restrictions on the Catholic Church in 1992. That year, the government ratified its informal policy of not enforcing most legal controls on religious groups by, among other things, granting religious groups legal status, conceding them limited property rights, and lifting restrictions on the number of priests in the country. However, the law continues to mandate strict restrictions on the church and bars the clergy from holding public office, advocating partisan political views, supporting political candidates, or opposing the laws or institutions of the state. The Church's ability to own and operate mass media is also limited. Indeed, after the creation of the Constitution, the Catholic Church has been acutely hostile towards the Mexican government. As Laura Randall in his book Changing Structure of Mexico points out, most of the conflicts between citizens and religious leaders lie in the Church's overwhelming lack of understanding of the role of the state's laicism. "The inability of the Mexican Catholic Episcopate to understand the modern world translates into a distorted conception of the secular world and the lay state. Evidently, perceiving the state as anti-religious (or rather, anti-clerical) is the result of 19th-century struggles that imbued the state with anti-religious and anti-clerical tinges in Latin American countries, much to the Catholic Church's chagrin. Defining laicist education as a 'secular religion' that is also 'imposed and intolerant' is the clearest evidence of episcopal intransigence."Laura Randall, Changing structure of Mexico: political, social, and economic prospects, (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) Page 435
Demographics From 1940 to 1960, about 70% of Mexican Catholics attended church weekly while in 1982, only 54% partook of Mass once a week or more, and 21% claimed monthly attendance. Recent surveys have shown that only around 3% of Catholics attend church daily; however, 47% percent of them attend church services weekly and, according to INEGI, the number of atheists grows annually by 5.2% while the number of Catholics grows by 1.7%.
Irreligion by state
Rank Federal Entity % Irreligious Irreligious Population(2010)1 13% 177,3312 12% 580,6903 12% 95,0354 10% 315,1445 9% 212,2226 7% 253,9727 7% 194,6198 7% 219,9409 7% 174,28110 6% 495,64111 6% 108,56312 6% 40,03413 6% 151,31114 5% 484,083- 5% 5,262,54615 5% 93,35816 4% 169,56617 4% 192,25918 4% 58,08919 3% 37,00520 3% 486,79521 3% 20,70822 3% 100,24623 2% 62,95324 2% 58,46925 2% 38,04726 2% 21,23527 2% 83,29728 2% 104,27129 2% 124,34530 1% 76,05231 1% 14,92832 1% 18,057
Timeline of events related to atheism or anti-clericalism in Mexico
1821 – Mexico is born after its independence as a confessional state. The first Mexican constitution was enacted in 1824; it stated in Article 3 that the religion of the nation is and will perpetually be the Roman Catholic Apostolic, and prohibited the exercise of any other religion. 1831 – Vicente Rocafuerte was arrested in Mexico for publishing an Essay on Religious Toleration. He was accused of violating Article 3 of the constitution, which stated that Mexico was a confessional state.Jaime E. Rodríguez O., Kathryn Vincent (1997). Myths, misdeeds, and misunderstandings: the roots of conflict in U.S.-Mexican relations. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 5. , . 1844 – Ignacio Ramírez "El Nigromante" wrote "There is no God: natural beings support themselves", causing several controversies throughout the country. 1855 – The Ley Juárez (Juárez's Law) of 1855, abolished special clerical and military privileges, and declared all citizens equal before the law. 1857 – Liberal Constitution of 1857 drafted during the presidency of Ignacio Comonfort granting basic civil liberties for all Mexicans: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, secularised education and suppression of the Church power. 1906 – Flores Magón published his Manifesto to the Nation, The Plan of the Mexican Liberal Party declaring: "The clergy, this unrepentant traitor, this subject of Rome, this irreconcilable enemy of native liberties, in place of finding tyrants to serve and from whom to receive protection, will find instead inflexible laws which will put a limit on their excesses and which will confine them to the religious sphere."Ricardo Flores Magón, Chaz Bufe, Charles Bufe, Mitchell Cowen Verter, Dreams of freedom: a Ricardo Flores Magón reader (AK Press, 2006) 1917 – The 1917 Constitution of Mexico is the first one in the world to set out social rights, serving as a model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Russian Constitution of 1918. Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130, as originally formulated, seriously restricted religious freedoms. These anticlerical resolutions were included in the Mexican Constitution as a consequence of the support given by the High Mexican Catholic Clergy to the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta. 1924 – Election of atheist Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles applied anti-clerical laws throughout the country and added his own anti-clerical legislation.
1926 – In June 1926, Elías Calles signed the "Law for Reforming the Penal Code", known unofficially as the Calles Law. This provided specific penalties for priests and individuals who violated the provisions of the 1917 Constitution. 1926 – On November 18, 1926, the Pope issues the encyclical Iniquis afflictisque (On the Persecution of the Church in Mexico). The Pope criticized the state's interference in matters of worship, outlawing of religious orders and the expropriation of Church property. Alluding to the deprivation of the right to vote and of free speech, among other things, he noted that, "Priests are ... deprived of all civil and political rights. They are thus placed in the same class with criminals and the insane." 1927 – Cristero uprising.