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Content: Between 1833 and the early 1840s, the Mexican government produced
        various pieces of legislation to limit the power of the church. In 1833
        the government adopted several anticlerical measures, including one
        providing for the secularization of education and another declaring that
        the payment of the ecclesiastical tithe was not a civil obligation. The first major confrontation between the church and the state
        occurred during the presidency of Benito Juárez (1855-72). The 1855 Juárez
        Law drastically reduced traditional ecclesiastical privileges. On March
        11, 1857, a new constitution was adopted that denied all ecclesiastical
        entities the right to own real estate and abolished most remaining
        ecclesiastical privileges. On July 12, 1857, Juárez confiscated all
        church properties, suppressed all religious orders, and empowered the
        state governors to designate what buildings could be used for religious
        services. Mexico's first religious civil war was fought between 1857 and
        1860 in reaction to the legislation (see Civil War and the French
        Intervention, ch. 1). The constitution of 1917 highlighted and institutionalized many of
        the nineteenth-century secular reforms. The new constitution included at
        least five articles that affected all religious groups, regardless of
        denomination.