Review

Title: Martyrs in Mexico: A Mormon Story of Revolution and Redemption
Author: F. LaMond Tullis
Publisher: Religious Studies Center BYU / Deseret Book
Genre: History
Year Published: 2018
Number of Pages: xvi + 180
Binding: hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-9443-9432-5
Price: $19.99

Reviewed by Gabriel González for the Association for Mormon Letters, August 26, 2018

F. LaMond Tullis, the author of Martyrs in Mexico, is no stranger to writing about the history of the Church in Mexico. He has written at least a dozen works on different aspects of Mexican Church history, ranging from online publications to hardcopy books. In this book, Tullis brings to bear his expertise of Mexican history, his research into the Church’s history in Mexico, and his personal experience while living and researching in Mexico. In essence, the author has all the right credentials. And his book does not disappoint.

Martyrs in Mexico focuses on the first few decades of the Church in San Marcos, a small town in Mexico. It does so in two distinct parts. The first part focuses on the martyrdom of Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales, two early San Marcos converts who were executed by Zapatista rebels on 17 July 1915. Tullis sets up the martyrdom by telling us about the lives of Monroy and Morales, along with other members of the Monroy family, all of whom were pioneering converts in the area. The author then contextualizes the moment of their executions within the rabid dynamics of the Mexican Revolution and the broader societal culture of central Mexico a century ago. He then takes us into the martyrdom by giving a detailed description of the events leading up to it and the actual executions, all in a way that is reminiscent of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

I read this first part of the book with great interest. I remembered being a young adult when I first heard the story of two Mexican members who had long ago been murdered because they were Mormon. Years later, I heard that perhaps they might have been executed for other reasons altogether. I was happy to see Tullis handle the issue by convincingly arguing that a set of crisscrossing factors was at play—including, yes, a general dislike for Mormons that morphed into persecution, but also things like the martyrs’ association with Americans, the general violence unleashed by the Revolution, and the disdain Zapatistas felt for those who were in a relatively better-off financial position.

The second part of the book focuses on the history of the Church in San Marcos during the decades that followed the martyrdom. It reads like a different book. It is not that the author’s style changes, but rather that the first part of the book is very much a close up—dully contextualized—and the second part is a wide shot. The first part is more like a personal story and the second is more like an institutional history. Indeed, the second half focuses on what the author calls the “institutionalization” of the Church in San Marcos, i.e., the process by which the Church becomes established according to the model set by headquarters in Salt Lake City. This is the story of how the San Marcos Mormons go from a ragtag band of isolated converts to a group of local units that look and feel like other LDS congregations in the world.

The author goes about this in a respectful way that I personally appreciated. Early members in San Marcos had all sorts of personal challenges, ranging from violations of the law of chastity to backbiting. The author does not attempt to hide any of this, but he goes out of his way to be understanding of these people in their own time and circumstances. He constantly gives examples of similar types of behavior in the days of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, etc. He also does a great deal of contextualizing here as well, for example, by reminding readers that these early San Marcos members were largely disconnected from the Church’s central leadership and had to fend for themselves in a wide range of issues.

The book, like any other human product, is not perfect. (For example, as a language professional I was negatively surprised to read an argument that the phrase se me cayó el libro somehow reflects a responsibility-avoiding worldview, which from a linguistic standpoint is an unfounded assertion.) But there are just so may worthwhile elements to this book that it is hard not to be favorably impressed by it. Two examples will suffice. First, it contains many interesting photographs and visual aids. A handy family tree helps the reader keep track of who is who, and the abundant photographs help put faces to many of the names. Second, the footnotes are a highlight in and of themselves. They contain a treasure trove of interesting information. I eventually found myself reading through them as if they were in the body of the text.

In short, Martyrs in Mexico is an engaging read that will surely be of interest to Latter-day Saints who have some connection to Mexico or who are interested in Church history generally. No doubt Tullis’ book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of the global Church.