greenybeeny

During the relatively tranquil interlude, the faithful (at least Cruz Chávez) hinted at the kind of world millennial they would like to establish. There was to be equality between all men, which seems to have excluded women as well as the dozens of Tarahumara Indians in and around the pueblo. Private property would be respected and money circulated, although the worth of a person was not to be measured by money alone—the new association was not to be communal, nor would all natural wealth be shared. In fact, these Tomochitecos intended to carry a good part of their old world into their new one, and they certainly did not embrace all the teachings of Santa Teresa, who was influenced by Spiritism and rejected much of the dogma and many major precepts of the official Catholic Church. Although these ideas were discussed among the faithful at Tomochic, they were never institutionalized in any form. The pious seemed to be awaiting—perhaps inviting—the inevitable, an all out assault by Porfirian brute force.

In September 1892, Díaz finally ordered the army to put an end to the resistance at Tomochic. Some 500 soldiers marched on the pueblo defended by only 60 men. Banners flapping, the army underestimated the tenacity of its foe and blundered into disaster. A rout ensued, and as remnants of the battered military limped back to its garrison, people everywhere began to wonder at the will of the Almighty in this affair. A furious Porfirio Diaz ordered his military to envelope the pueblo in a pincers movement. Strong contingents sent from Sonora would reinforce those attacking from the Chihuahua side, and in October more than 1,000 army troops practically encircled the town.

The defenders were ready for them, assigned to strategic posts such as the thick-walled church with its commanding bell tower as well as the large, natural cave which overlooked the locale from a cliff to the east. The initial day's combat was ferocious, the contenders locked in hand-to-hand combat on the fringes of the pueblo. Unable to break through the defenses, the military commanders decided to put Tomochic under siege—to strangle their antagonists to death.

For seven days the army tightened the noose. Defenders were rooted from the cave, and soldiers set the church ablaze, suffocating those (mainly women and children) who had taken refuge inside. The bell tower crashed down in a fury of smoke and dust, and the roof of the church caved in. As survivors inside attempted to flee the holocaust, they were picked off by army riflemen. Now the defense was limited to a well-fortified house or two near the center of the pueblo. On the sixth day the army offered refuge to the remaining women and children, and some 70 of them accepted and survived.