That there is, on the part of the natives, even in remote corners of the country, a formal devotion is beyond question. Even in the villages of interior Yucatan, miles from a railroad or from anything which elsewhere would be dignified by the name of a wagon road, each oval mud and stake hut has its family altar with its Virgin and such ornaments as its barefoot proprietor and his wife can provide. In such communities, it appears that the church has exercised quite as much influence as the state, which is the more remarkable because of the relations that the two have borne to each other since the Juarez period.
The fact is, however, that in the districts away from the centers of civilization and the railroads neither the state nor the church is a very important factor in the life of the people. The functions of each are formal to a large extent, and skillful agitators can sway the populace to an attack on one as easily as upon the other. Of the two, if anything, the church seems in the weaker position. To be sure, in some states like Puebla, it seems that the revolution surged about the bases of the cathedrals yet, as a rule, left them unharmed; but taking the country in general the churches fell before the hands of the revolutionists with but little popular protest. That so small a minority as that which grasped the standard of revolution in Yucatan, for example, could dominate the population so completely and make them allow, when they did not abet, the general destruction of church property does not show that the church held the position in the lives of the people that the census statistics would indicate.
