Beginning within weeks of the Liberal Revolution that brought Miguel Garcia Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios to power in 1871, Guatemala's new liberal government moved in a sequence of dated decrees to break the economic and political power the Catholic Church had held since colonial times. The Jesuits, the order Barrios regarded as most responsible for having propped up the previous conservative government, were given twenty four hours to leave and expelled from the country on 3 September 1871, seventy two of them embarking at Puerto San Jose for Corinto in Nicaragua. Garcia Granados followed on 17 October 1871 by expelling the Archbishop of Guatemala, Bernardo Pinol y Aycinena, and the Bishop of Teya, Mariano Ortiz Urruela, for backing a conservative uprising in the eastern departments. The mandatory tithe was abolished on 22 December 1871, and in May and June 1872 the government confiscated the property of the remaining religious communities and suppressed the regular orders outright, occupying religious buildings with the army and giving members the choice of secularizing or leaving the country. In March 1873 secular clergy were made subject to civil rather than ecclesiastical courts and freedom of worship was decreed, and the 1879 constitution formally prohibited the establishment of any new monastery in Guatemala.
Facts
The Event
When It HappenedSourced to the subject's own accountSeptember 1871 to 1879, opening with the 3 September 1871 Jesuit expulsion and closing with the 1879 constitutional ban on new monasteries. 1 PeriodSourced to the subject's own account Principal PartiesSourced to the subject's own accountMiguel Garcia Granados, provisional president who issued the 1871 expulsion decrees against the Jesuits and against Archbishop Bernardo Pinol y Aycinena and Bishop Mariano Ortiz Urruela. Justo Rufino Barrios, who succeeded Garcia Granados in 1873 and drove the 1872 property confiscation and the 1879 constitutional ban on new monasteries, having personally regarded the Jesuits as the order most responsible for propping up the prior conservative government. 1 Victim GroupSourced to the subject's own accountThe Roman Catholic Church in Guatemala: the Jesuit order expelled outright, the country's archbishop and one bishop expelled by name, the remaining regular religious orders suppressed and given the choice of secularizing or leaving, and the secular clergy stripped of the tithe and placed under civil court jurisdiction. 1 Perpetrator RegimeSourced to the subject's own accountGuatemala's Liberal Reform government, first under Miguel Garcia Granados and, from 1873, under his successor Justo Rufino Barrios, who continued and deepened the anticlerical program through the 1879 constitution. This is a bureaucratic-decree persecution: the perpetrator is the liberal Guatemalan state, not a rival religious tradition, and no perpetrator-tradition edge is written. 1 Consequences
What It SettledSourced to the subject's own accountThe Catholic Church in Guatemala lost its tithe income, most of its landed property and its regular religious orders within a decade, and the 1879 constitution's ban on new monasteries kept the prohibition in force into the twentieth century. Guatemala did not restore formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See or substantially reverse the Liberal Reform's church-state settlement until well into the twentieth century. 1 Displaced (Low Estimate)Sourced to the subject's own accountThe seventy two Jesuits reported to have embarked at Puerto San Jose for Corinto, Nicaragua on 3 September 1871, the campaign's only firm quantified figure; this is a property and expulsion campaign rather than a killing campaign, and no source consulted gives a death toll, so none is recorded here. Displaced (High Estimate)Sourced to the subject's own accountThe same firm count of the September 1871 Jesuit expulsion; not a range, a single reported number, and it excludes the further members of the regular orders suppressed in 1872 who were given the choice of secularizing rather than leaving, for whom no source gives a count. Status
Official RecognitionSourced to the subject's own accountNot formally recognized by any body 1 Recognition BasisSourced to the subject's own accountNo Guatemalan government since the Liberal Reform has issued a formal apology or reparative determination for the 1871 to 1879 campaign against the Church's institutional property and religious orders. The episode is documented through Guatemala's own surviving nineteenth-century legislative decrees rather than through any later legal or truth-commission process. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Guatemala, Countries The Guatemalan liberal state carried out the campaign inside its own national territory.
The targeted tradition. This is an Associated With edge to the tradition that was persecuted, not a perpetrator-tradition edge; the perpetrator was the liberal Guatemalan state.
Sources
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