This article analyses Catholic resistance to the anti-clerical laws of the 1920–1940 period in various municipalities in eastern Michoacán. It argues that the diverse strategies adopted by Catholics in each region was more a response to the variety of local power dynamics at play, than an expression of different religious expressions (sacramental versus ‘popular’ Catholicism). It concludes that the predominance of pacific forms of resistance was the result both of efforts on the part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to reach a modus vivendi with the Mexican state, and of social expressions of Catholicism ‘from below’.
