Tomás Garrido Canabal

Tomás Garrido Canabal (September 20, 1891 in Playas de Catazajá, Chiapas – April 8, 1943 in Los Angeles, California) was a Mexican politician and revolutionary and atheist activist. Garrido Canabal served as dictator and governor of the state of Tabasco from 1920 to 1924 and again from 1931 to 1934, and was particularly noted for his Anti-Catholicism. During his term he fiercely persecuted the Church in his state, killing many priests and laymen and driving the remainder underground.

Tomás Garrido Canabal was born in the hacienda Catazajá in the northernmost part of the Mexican state of Chiapas. During the Mexican Revolution, he was drawn into politics. He was named interim governor of Tabasco for a brief spell in 1919 (and then of the Yucatán in May and June 1920) until in December 1920 "Garrido again became provisional governor of Tabasco. From this point until August 1935 (except for a brief hiatus during the de la Huerta rebellion) he controlled the state." Garrido's rule, which marked the apogee of Mexican anti-clericalism, was supported by the Radical Socialist Party of Tabasco (PRST) of which he was the leader.

A character thought to be based on Canabal, in the novel The Power and the Glory, was called an "atheist and a puritan" by Peter Godman. Canabal was a fervent anticlericalist and anti-Catholic, who supported President Plutarco Elías Calles's war against the Cristeros, a popular rebellion opposed to the enforcement of anticlerical laws. He founded several organizations "that terrorized Roman Catholics", most notably the so-called "Camisas Rojas" or "Red Shirts", and as a result some have labeled him a "fascist", but he named one of his sons after Vladimir Lenin, a Marxist and anti-fascist, and considered himself a Marxist Bolshevik. The anthem of his Redshirts was The Internationale, widely considered to be the socialist anthem. Some scholars have argued that his authoritarian policies were more akin to European right-wing dictatorships, though he wished to turn the traditionally conservative state of Tabasco into a socialist model and fought for socialist causes and Tabasco has been called a "socialist tyranny" by Martin C. Needler, Dean of the School of International Studies at the University of the Pacific in California. He also invited the First Congress of Socialist Students to meet in the state of Tabasco and created a form of socialist education which he termed "Rationalist".

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