club provided a place for elite social gatherings. Among the directors of the Jockey Club were Manuel Romero Rubio and José Yves Limantour, Díaz's closest advisors, and President González and Díaz himself as members. The Jockey Club had rooms for smoking, dining rooms, weapons, bowling, poker and baccarat. There were upscale gambling houses that were regulated by the government. One was in the former Palace of the Emperor Iturbide, which in the late nineteenth century was a hotel. Entertainment among men of the urban popular classes included traditional sports of cockfighting and bullfighting. Bicycles were imported from Paris and Boston to Mexico City in 1869, just after the French Intervention. A French company imported bicycles and set up a rental business, but the sport took off when the technology improved in the 1890s with wheels of equal size and pneumatic tires. Bicycle clubs and organized races made their appearance soon after. Organized sports with rules, equality of competition, bureaucracy and formal record keeping became hallmarks of modernity. Although men dominated the sport, women also participated. For women especially, bicycling challenged traditional behavior, demeanor, and fashions, freeing them from being closely supervised shut-ins. Riding a bicycle required better women's clothing, and many adopted Bloomers for riding. In 1898, cartoon montage in the satirical publication El Hijo del Ahuizote answered the question "why go by bicycle?": for amusement, for pleasure in the streets, and one panel shows a bicycle on its side with a couple embracing, with the caption "for love." Cycling was touted as promoting exercise and good hygiene and was associated with modernity, speed, and modernization through technology. Religion The mid-nineteenth century had been riven by conflict between the Catholic Church and the liberal State. The liberals' Mexican Constitution of 1857 had established separation of church and state, and there were strong anti-clerical articles of the constitution. As a pragmatic politician, Díaz did not want to re-open outright conflict between his regime and the Catholic Church in Mexico. His marriage to Carmen Romero Rubio, who was a faithful Catholic, helped to mend the rift. Díaz never had the anticlerical articles of the constitution repealed, but he did not strictly enforce them, so that the Catholic Church made a political and economic comeback during the Porfiriato. U.S. Protestant missionaries made inroads in Mexico during the Porfiriato, particularly in the north, but did not significantly challenge the power of Catholicism in Mexico.