The 1917 Constitution and its revolutionary and anticlerical character
Praised by Brazilian jurists such as José Afonso da Silva and Paulo Bonavides, the Mexican Constitution of 1917 was the product of the radical phase of the Mexican Revolution. Although it was not drafted by the most radical groups, its advanced social content—agrarian reform, labor rights, secular education, and state interventionism—directly incorporated the demands of those movements. The Jacobin wing of constitutionalism radicalized the initially more moderate project.
In addition to the agrarian (Article 27), labor (Article 123), and nationalist reforms, the text contained secularizing provisions that were strongly restrictive toward the Catholic Church. These norms were heirs to the laicist liberalism of the 19th century and to the revolutionary hostility toward the clergy, who were seen as allies of the old regime.
The main anticlerical provisions were:
- Article 3: compulsory secular education and the prohibition of confessional schools at certain levels;
- Article 27: nationalization of Church property and severe limitations on ecclesiastical ownership;
- Article 130: drastic restrictions on the clergy (prohibition on voting and political assembly, on wearing clerical dress in public in many contexts, state control over the number of priests, denial of legal personality to the churches, etc.).
These norms were not merely symbolic: they sought to subordinate the Church to the State and drastically reduce its social, political, and economic power.
Rigorous application and the Cristero War (1926–1929)
The application of the anticlerical provisions was, for years, discretionary and irregular. In many states and localities the authorities either did not enforce them or did so only partially, according to the local balance of forces.
With the consolidation of the revolutionary regime under the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928)—a radical anticlerical influenced by Jacobin liberalism and determined to use more forceful legal instruments—the resistance of the Catholic hierarchy came to be interpreted as a political threat. In June 1926, Calles decreed the so-called “Calles Law” (a reform of the Penal Code), which regulated and intensified the enforcement of the Constitution’s anticlerical articles: the closing of schools and convents, the expulsion of foreign priests, mandatory registration of the clergy, limits on the number of ministers of religion, and concrete penal sanctions.
The Catholic reaction—hierarchy, laity, and peasant militias—led to the suspension of public worship and then to the armed insurrection of the “Cristeros” under the cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” The war lasted from 1926 to 1929. Estimates of the dead range from about 90,000 to as many as 250,000 (including combatants and civilians); approximately 250,000 people emigrated from Mexico (about 1.5–1.7 % of the population at the time).
It was, in essence, a conflict over the concrete and rigorous application of the 1917 Constitution in the religious sphere.
From the Cristero War to the “perfect dictatorship” of the PRI (1929–2000)
The Cristero violence and the fragmentation of the revolutionary groups demonstrated to Calles and the post-revolutionary elite the need to institutionalize power. In March 1929, Calles founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), which evolved into the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM, 1938) and finally the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, 1946).
The PRI presented itself as the party “of the Revolution” and the guardian of the 1917 Constitution. The system it built—hegemony of a single party, controlled alternation of presidents every six years (the “sexenio”), co-optation of unions, peasants, and businessmen, electoral control, and clientelism—was nicknamed by Mario Vargas Llosa the “perfect dictatorship” at the intellectuals’ meeting “La experiencia de la libertad” in August 1990. It maintained a democratic and constitutional appearance but prevented real alternation of power until the year 2000.
The 1917 Constitution functioned as one of the pillars of this arrangement:
- it legitimized the secular and centralized revolutionary State that the PRI embodied;
- it provided the ideological discourse of the “institutionalized Revolution” that justified the monopoly of power;
- after the Cristero trauma, the regime learned to modulate the application of the religious articles in order to avoid new open confrontations, while preserving the formal superiority of the State over the Church.
In summary: the 1917 Constitution, by radicalizing the separation and subordination of the Church, was a direct cause of the Cristero War when applied rigorously by Calles. The trauma of that conflict and the need to consolidate the revolutionary project led to the creation of the state party (PNR/PRI), which used the same Constitution as the ideological and legal foundation of its long hegemony from 1929 to 2000. The 1917 Charter did not “cause” these events by itself, but it was a decisive structural factor in both.
Some conclusions
The Mexican experience (and the way Brazilian jurists praised it) offers valuable lessons about social-democratic constitutions.
1. The risk that “social justice” may serve as legitimation for authoritarianism
Constitutions that place the State as the central agent of social justice tend to expand the discretionary power of the Executive and create incentives for regimes that self-legitimize as “defenders of the people.” Broad positive social rights require a strong and interventionist State, which easily slides into authoritarianism under the cover of the common good.
2. Positive social rights versus negative rights: priority and feasibility
Negative rights (liberty, property, due process of law) are priority because they limit the State. Positive rights (health, education, housing, etc.) are, in reality, service provisions that depend on resources, public policies, and administrative discretion. When they are constitutionalized without economic viability, they generate unrealistic expectations, the judicialization of politics, and populism. The enthusiastic defense by Brazilian jurists often reveals irresponsibility and little concern for practical results.
3. Constituent radicalism and unintended consequences
Constitutions drafted in moments of revolutionary radicalization tend to incorporate ideological excesses that generate long-lasting conflicts. Prudence, historical continuity, and respect for intermediate institutions (Church, property, family, voluntary associations) are fundamental for institutional stability and economic progress.
4. Excessive flexibility and the illusion of the “living Constitution”
If, on the one hand, constitutional flexibility made possible a formal continuity, avoiding institutional ruptures and conferring relative legal stability, on the other hand it ceased to function as a real limit on power. It became an instrument of whoever controls the momentary majorities. Rigid constitutions, with strong protections for property, separation of powers, and checks on majoritarianism—rather than a text permanently rewritten according to political convenience—constitute better protection against populism and dictatorships.
5. The role of jurists and the seduction of “constitutional progressivism”
Intellectuals and jurists (often distant from the real world) tend to be seduced by models that promise substantial justice, underestimating the costs in terms of liberty, property, and limits on power. Constitutions that protect civil society against the State, and that do not turn it into an agent of radical social transformation, produce greater well-being for the population.
In synthesis
- Social-democratic constitutions tend to expand the State and create mechanisms of authoritarian legitimation under the banner of “social justice.”
- The Mexican experience illustrates how a “progressive” text helped produce a hegemonic single-party regime for decades.
- The true protection of liberty requires clear limits on power, priority for negative rights, respect for intermediate institutions, and skepticism toward social reengineering via constitutional text.
- The uncritical defense of social constitutions by jurists serves as a warning: doctrinal enthusiasm is often a symptom of disregard for the practical consequences of the proposals.
The deepest lesson is prudential: constitutions should be instruments for limiting power and protecting the spontaneous order of society, not vehicles for projects of radical social transformation. The Mexican experience clearly shows the risks of inverting that priority.
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