Religious and other conflicts in 1930's Chihuahua: the immense silence and quest for lost patrimony

This thesis is a study of religious, ideological, and natural resource conflicts in Chihuahua, Mexico from 1929 to 1940. Its frame of reference is that these conflicts were part of a quest for lost patrimony on the part of individuals, locales, and state and federal governments. Patrimony in this context is defined as both natural and attributed rights and expectations for the resources with which to experience an expected cultural and personal customary lifestyle. These struggles were not grand battles, but local conflicts between competing individuals and small groups for those rights and the power to achieve them. The campesino of this time period were not looking for a new way to exist, but for the creation of, or return to, a customary way of living which was part of their individual and collective memory and inheritance. The 1930s in Chihuahua was an important time of recovery and hope for the Chihuahuense. This thesis seeks to highlight the frustration and violence that accompanied the failed realization of those goals among both the native-born and migrant cultures that often came into conflict in 1930s Chihuahua.