National Question and Transnational Challenge: The Roman Catholic Church, Religion, and Secular Nationalism in Mexico

Veselica Milan (Student master akademskih studija, Fakultet političkih nauka – Univerzitet u Beogradu, Srbija), veselica.milan@gmail.com

Аuthor examines the relationship between religion and nationalism in Mexico from independence until today. Mexico is a country that, after gaining independence, had established the Catholicism as the state religion and a model of religious nationalism, and then with the liberal Constitution of 1857 and the revolutionary Constitution of 1917 had separated the Church and the State and established a model of secular nationalism based on secularism and anti-clericalism. The author raises the twofold research question: what the nature of secular nationalism looks like after a period of “thawing” of frozen relations during the 1990s and whether the unstable form indicates a gradual transition to a model of civil-religious nationalism? The aim of the paper is to point out the changed character of nationalism, the most important identity and state-building characteristic of Mexico, and to offer a prediction of the development trend of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the future of Mexico. Because there is no prospect of secular nationalism being abandoned in the near future, its real provocateurs are drug cartels, which, as a “state within a state”, tend to build their own form of religion. Аuthor predicts that the Roman Catholic Church will respond to it, equally as a national and transnational actor. Its strategy would require the stabilization of secular nationalism, but this time within the limits of “twin toleration” between the Church and government.

Keywords: Mexico, nationalism, religion, Roman Catholic Church, secularism, civil religion, drug cartels