Abstract

PEREZ ROSALES, Laura. Censorship and Control: The National Campaign for Moralization during the Fifties. Hist. graf [online]. 2011, n.37, pp.79-113. ISSN 1405-0927.

In the context of the Cold War, Mexican Catholic Church hierarchy and the Federal Government were involved in a power struggle in various fields, for instance over guide lines for cultural programs and policies, like in radio, theater and publications, over which they often had clashes, but also viewpoints in common. In an epoch, in which both parties came to the decision to drop their traditional mutual grudges, the two powers, Church and State, brought their criteria to the negotiations table in order to qualify what should be considered as convenient and what not, what as moral and what as immoral, in matters of what Mexican society, in particular the younger generation, should see and hear, how people should go dressed and have as their entertainment, which should be their normal speech and what kind of criteria they should have as their own. The Mexican State had all the mass media at its disposition and the Church based its support on its traditional mechanisms of social control over the greater part of society. This article presents a review and gives an analysis of the common grounds between Church and State in Mexico at the beginning of the Fifties of the XX Century, and the common criteria they developed to normalize habits, judgments and general beliefs what morally should be considered as decent.

Keywords : State; Church; authoritarianism; radicalism; education.

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