Labastida y Dávalos, Pelagio Antonio de (1816–1891)

Pelagio Antonio de Labastida y Dávalos (b. 1816; d. 1891), bishop of Puebla, archbishop of Mexico, opponent of the Reform. Born in Zamora, Michoacán, Labastida was ordained in 1839. He became rector of the seminary in Morelia and governor of the diocese in the early 1850s, and was bishop of Puebla from 1855 to 1863. Labastida protested against President Ignacio Comonfort's 31 March 1856 decree punishing the Puebla clergy for the rebellion of Zacapoaxtla, which he had not supported, and the loss of the city to the Conservatives. Banished from Mexico, he went to Rome and became a strong opponent of liberalism and the Reform movement. Labastida returned with the French Intervention, and on 21 June 1863 General Élie-Frédéric Forey appointed him to the three-man executive power. On 17 November Marshal François Bazaine removed him as an obstacle to French efforts to find a compromise with moderate Liberals. Labastida opposed Maximilian's ecclesiastical policy, which sought to conciliate Liberal opinion by upholding the disamortization (the transfer of corporate properties to private ownership) policies of the period 1856–1863. Exiled in 1867 by Juárez, he attended the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) in Rome. He was allowed to return to Mexico in 1871 and died in Oacalco, Morelos.

See alsoReligion in Mexico, Catholoic Church and Beyond .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jan Bazant, Alienation of Church Wealth in Mexico: Social and Economic Aspects of the Liberal Revolution, 1856–1875, translated and edited by Michael P. Costeloe (1971).

Michael P. Costeloe, Church and State in Independent Mexico: A Study of the Patronage Debate, 1821–1857 (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Peloso, Vincent C., and Barbara A. Tenenbaum, eds. Liberals, Politics, and Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

Villalpando César, José Manuel. Maximiliano. México: Clío, 1999.

                                     Brian Hamnett