...Designed to put teeth into the constitutional articles, it spelled out in specific terms the penalties for violations -- 500 pesos for wearing clerical garb, five years imprisonment for criticizing the laws or inducing a minor to join a monastic order, etc.

The trouble came when Calles mulishly attempted to enforce the laws in strongly Catholic west-central Mexico, particularly the states of Jalisco, Colima, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and Michoacán and even more particularly the Los Altos ranch country of northeast Jalisco, focal point of what would turn out to be the terrible 1926-29 Cristero War. Shouting their battle cry of Viva Cristo Rey! ("Long live Christ the King!"), a motley assortment of ranchers, Catholic students and workers from Guadalajara and Indians from Jalisco's northern sierra held off the cream of the federal army for three years.