For Christ and Country

By Robert Weiss,

Book cover of For Christ and Country: Militant Catholic Youth in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Book description

Why did Jose de Leon Toral kill Alvaro Obregon, leader of the Mexican Revolution? So far, historians have characterized the motivations of the young Catholic militant as the fruit of fanaticism. This book offers new insights on how diverse sectors experienced the aftermath of the Revolution by exploring the religious,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked For Christ and Country as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is not just the story of José de León Toral – the man who killed President Álvaro Obregón in 1928 – but the story of the world he inhabited. Often dismissed as a religious fanatic, Robert Weis seeks (in a sense) to redeem Toral by contextualizing him in a very peculiar postrevolutionary cultural milieu: Mexico City’s network of lay Catholics, forced underground by the revolutionary state. Weis masterfully reconstructs this clandestine ecosystem of private masses and informal convents, and their cat-and-mouse games with the agents of state repression. I love the layers of detail, the reconstructions of daily life,…

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