Tomás Garrido Canabal

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Tomás Garrido Canabal (Playas de Catazajá, Chiapas, September 20, 1891—Los Angeles, California, April 8, 1943) was a Mexican politician and revolutionary. Garrido Canabal served as governor of Yucatan and Tabasco and was particulary noted for his strong anti-Catholic ideas.

Garrido Canabal was born in the hacienda Catazajá in the northernmost part of the Mexican state of Chiapas. During the Mexican Revolution he was drawn into politics. Garrido Canabal was elected governor of Tabasco in 1921, served a three year term and was elected a second time in 1931, making use of the constitutional amendment that allowed reelection for non-successive terms. Garrido's rule was supported by the Radical Socialist Party of Tabasco (PRST) of which he was the leader.

A rabid anticlericalist and anti-Catholic, he supported President Calles's war against the Cristeros, a popular rebellion opposed to the enforcement of anticlerical laws. He founded several fascist organizations that terrorized Roman Catholics, most noticeably the so called red shirts.^[1] Garrido's persecution of Catholics included killing of priests, closing all the churches in the state and forcing the priests to marry. All priests who did not marry were outlawed in the state of Tabasco and remained at risk of their lives. Garrido's contempt for Catholics and their Church is reflected in the names of his children, Lenin, Lucifer, and Satan. He even had business cards printed describing himself as "the personal enemy of God" and had a farm with animals called God, Pope, Mary, and Jesus.

Garrido's administrative achievements included stimulating the social development of the state of Tabasco by means agricultural and social policies and his support for the enfranchisement of women. In 1934 Women's suffrage was introduced in Tabasco, making him the second governor to do so after Felipe Carrillo Puerto of Yucatán twelve years earlier. In Mexico, Garrido's Tabasco was nicknamed "the laboratory of the revolution".

In 1934 he was named secretary of agriculture by president Lázaro Cárdenas, but was forced to step down one year later after his red shirts killed several Catholic activists. Garrido was forced into exile in Costa Rica 1935, and his paramilitary groups were disbanded. He was allowed to return to Mexico in 1941 and died two years later.

[edit] Artistic portrayals

The lieutenant in Graham Greenes The Power and the Glory is clearly based on Garrido Canabal, though his name is never mentioned in the novel. The protagonist in Greene's novel is a "whiskey priest", a theme often used in Garrido Canabal's antireligious propaganda.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References