As the district president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in central Mexico during the troubling times of the civil war, the Cristero Rebellion, and the Third Convention,[*] Isaías Juárez was the glue that held much of the Church together that could be held together. He was a confidant of the legendary Rey L. Pratt and an acquaintance of J. Reuben Clark Jr., then the US Ambassador to Mexico. Aside from his church work, he became a spellbinding orator on the Mexican political scene. His influence was eventually felt throughout central Mexico in matters of church and state, which on that account alone qualifies him for inclusion in the historical synopses in chapters 1 and 2 herein as well as in this pioneer vignette.

Isaías was twenty-two years old when, on May 6, 1907, he and Magdalena Flores, his wife of two years, were baptized in San Pedro Mártir, a village just outside Mexico City that became one of the strong branches of the Church in central Mexico.[1] They were the first two members there, which says something about their resolute courage and independent thinking. Reflecting on that day twenty-three years later, Isaías recounted: “When I heard the missionaries the first time, my conversion was not very easy because I believed I already had the truth. I even struggled against Brother [Arwell L.] Pierce, who in 1906 was a missionary [in San Pedro Mártir]. But eventually I succumbed in the face of the truth of the gospel. My testimony of this truth was for me like removing a veil from my eyes.”[2]

Although Magdalena’s family was open to the couple’s new church affiliation, Isaias’s family berated him for his “folly” in joining “an offbeat sect.” They could not dissuade him, however, from sharing his newfound faith. He often joined the foreign missionaries in making visits, preaching the gospel, and defending his new convictions. Unsurprisingly and before long, Isaías was appointed president of the San Pedro Mártir Branch, which since his own baptism had grown by numerous members.

With the start of the Mexican Revolution or civil war in 1910 and the subsequent withdrawal of foreign missionaries, Mexican Latter-day Saints carried their faith without the customary presence of emissaries from Salt Lake City. Despite threats and incarceration for actively sharing his beliefs, Isaías continued to hold church meetings and visit members during the civil war, which lasted officially until 1917 even though the hostilities emanating from it continued into the 1920s. He served as branch president until 1926, when the Church put an even more demanding task before him.

The new task derived from the Mexican government’s response to the 1926 Cristero Rebellion, a revolt by Catholic clerics against government policies that adversely affected them.[3] The government’s response was to enforce the anticlerical provisions of its new constitution and remove all foreign clerics—Spanish Catholics, US Protestants, and Latter-day Saint Anglo-European missionaries—from Mexican soil. Rey L. Pratt, the beloved mission president who was being forced from Mexico a second time, set apart several new leaders in the various branches and organized a mission district over which native members could lead in his absence. He tapped Isaías Juárez for the president of the new district, which encompassed 3,882 members.

As district president, Isaías presided over Church members in the Federal District and in the states of Morelos, Mexico, Hidalgo, and Puebla. This new level of leadership brought stability and confidence to the small branches in central Mexico, many of which already had a history of being staffed with local leaders. Now enjoying continued direction and encouragement from Isaías and his counselors—Abel Páez and Bernabé Parra—the small branches survived; some even flourished.

Isaías corresponded regularly with Church leaders, including Rey Pratt, who was confined mostly to the southern border of the United States even though he continued to serve as mission president over Mexico. Isaías also corresponded frequently with Pratt’s counselors and with the presidents of the twenty-two branches of the Church in the above-mentioned Federal District and central Mexican states. As his time and circumstances permitted (he received no salary or, apparently, even expense reimbursements from the Church), he visited the branches and organized conferences in some of them.

Isaías Juárez was an agriculturalist. The elite in Mexico’s then still highly rigid society, the civil war notwithstanding, called him a campesino, a “peasant.” However, Isaías was much more complex than a societal stereotype. He had been a justice of the peace in San Pedro Mártir and a comptroller, municipal treasurer, and civil judge of the district of Tlalpan. A gifted organizer, he also had served a term as vice president of the Tlalpan municipality. Clearly, he was accruing the experience befitting his natural talents that contributed to his being a stellar representative of the Church.

Isaías taught his children that to be a successful priesthood leader and servant of their Lord required humility, principle, and patience. “Do good to all” was the motto that his son Domingo recalls: “My father’s life was an example for all of us.”[4]

Following his release as district president when the foreign missionaries returned to Mexico after the Cristero Rebellion, the Mexican government forced Isaíasinto exile in Guatemala for his activities in organizing Mexico’s peasantry into a political force. Although the civil war, or “the Revolution,” as Mexicans call it, had been fought and reforms implemented, most workers and peasants never really benefited to the extent they expected. Union organizing activity among them continued long after the guns fell quiet, and sometimes that activity earned its participants the enmity of the government they may have fought to help install. Isaías Juárez was one such organizer. Later, when it was politically possible, he returned to Mexico to help found its national peasant union (Confederación Nacional Campesina). From his leadership role in that union, Isaías helped improve working conditions for campesinos throughout central Mexico.[5]

From left: Abel Páez (first counselor in the district presidency), J. Reuben Clark Jr. (US ambassador to Mexico) and Isaías Juárez (district president), 1932. Photo courtesy of the Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Because of his parents’ poverty, Isaías had received only a limited formal education. Yet when he returned from his Guatemalan exile, he became a principal adviser to regional and national politicians, including two men who later became presidents of Mexico. His influence enabled him to help prevent the confiscation and nationalization of some lands in Colonia Juárez where Latter-day Saints had settled in the 1880s. By virtue of his reputation, he facilitated a government decision that allowed northern Chihuahua Latter-day Saints from North America to become citizens of Mexico and thereby protect their lands.

Isaías Juárez stood up to enemies of the Church—dissidents, apostates, Catholics, Protestants, and politicians alike—and he withstood temptations to abandon his principles.[6] He once flatly refused a bribe of two million pesos (about $25,000 in 1930 US dollars) to betray his public trust.[7]

For a period during and following his exile to Guatemala, Isaías became discouraged and somewhat alienated from Church authorities in Mexico. But his faith remained intact, and he was eventually named a member of the mission advisory council formed in 1946 after the reconciliation with the Third Convention. Then, on December 3, 1961, Elder Marion G. Romney of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles ordained Isaías the first bishop of the new San Pedro Mártir Ward, which had just been elevated from its status as a branch that began in 1907 and over which he had earlier presided as its president. Aside from his new role as a bishop, Juárez had one unfulfilled personal goal: to do vicarious temple ordinances for his ancestors. Despite a battle with diabetes, he achieved that final ambition before passing away in 1967.

“He served [in the Church] until he could no longer walk,” his son Domingo said. “He endured and overcame to the end of his life.”[8]

Isaías Juárez, a man of the soil, rose above turbulent times and found peace, even joy, as a pioneer for his newly learned truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Notes

[*] For this vignette I draw on my article “Los Primeros: Mexico’s Pioneer Saints,” Ensign, July 1997.

[1] The legendary strength of the San Mártir Branch is noted in Ricardo Flores Alquicira, “Los Mormones en San Pedro Mártir,” typescript 1994, MS 25469, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[2] Mexican Mission manuscript history and historical reports, 1874–1977, Church History Library, quarter ending March 31, 1930.

[3] See Jean A. Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People between Church and State, 1926–1929, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

[4] Magdalena Flores de Juárez, interview by Gordon Irving, Mexico City, September 4, 1975. Magdalena Flores was Isaías Juárez’s wife. Aside from her own reflections in Irving’s interview about the San Pedro Mártir Branch as well as the Third Convention and activities of Margarito Bautista, this interview also includes an account by her son, Domingo Juárez Flores, of the religious and political activities of his father, Isaías Juárez. Biographical information about Isaías Juárez also appears as an appendix to the interview.

[5] Agrícol Lozano Herrera emphasized the civic contributions Isaías Juárez made during his epic battles with the Mexican government over the working plight of Mexico’s campesinos. Interview with LaMond Tullis, Mexico City, May 31, 1975. See Julio García Velázquez interview: Mexico City, D.F., Mexico, 1974, by Gordon Irving, LDS Church History Library. For general background, see Ann L. Craig, First Agraristas: An Oral History of a Mexican Agrarian Reform Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

[6] See LaMond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987), 138–39.

[7] See García Velázquez interview; and Humberto Meza Méndez, Pioneros mormones en México, recopilación, 2nd ed. (Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico: printed by the author, 2012), 102.

[8] From an addendum attached to Gordon Irving’s 1975 interview with Domingo’s mother, Magdalena Flores. See note 5 above for details.