National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty ( – LNDLR) was a Mexican Catholic religious civil rights organization formed in March 1925 that played a crucial role in the Cristero War of 1926 to 1929. History The Mexico City-based organization was created by former members of the short-lived National Catholic Party (Partido Católico Nacional), the Union of Mexican Catholic Ladies (Unión de Damas Católicas Mexicanas); a student organization, the Jesuit-led Catholic Association of Mexican Youth (Asociación Católica de la Juventud Mexicana, ACJM); the Knights of Columbus; the National Parents' Association; and the National Catholic Labor Confederation. The League had by June of its founding year about 36,000 members and chapters in almost every state of the country. The organization arose after the anti-clerical provisions of the 1917 Mexican Constitution were enforced by the President Plutarco Calles and after he enacted further provisions in the Calles Law. The LNDLR, along with the Catholic hierarchy, initially advocated peaceful resistance to the Calles Laws including a boycott of tax payment and nonessential goods and a petition drive to rescind the offending constitutional provisions. When the Church failed to obtain a compromise from Calles, the Mexican hierarchy ordered the priests to go on strike beginning July 31, 1926, the day the Calles Law was to go into effect. Soon after the clerical strike began on July 31, 1926, sporadic popular uprisings began and beginning in September 1926 the LNDLR began to discuss revolt, but they maintained the policy of boycott. As the popular uprisings continued, especially in Jalisco and Colima, despite the lack of formal support from the bishops, the LNDLR advocated on January 1, 1927, open rebellion to overthrow the regime and institute a new constitution with guarantees of religious freedom. While the LNDLR served the purpose of giving the rebelling peasants organizational structure and military guidance, the onset, development and character of the war were more rooted in grass roots circumstance and groups. At first the rebellion was only able to sustain suppression in a half dozen western states where there was intense popular support and the organizational aid of local groups, the Popular Union (UP), initially spearheaded by Anacleto González Flores and the covert U, with cells dispersed throughout Jalisco and Michoacan. In 1927, the LNDLR reorganized the rebellion in the west and, in August 1928, gave the rebellion its first military leader: General Enrique Gorostieta – well-experienced soldier who