National Synarchist Union

The Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS) was a Mexican far-right political organization, founded on May 23, 1937 in the city of León, Guanajuato. The movement has its origins in the reaction of the Mexican Catholic extreme right to both secular and left-wing policies introduced during Maximato and Cardenismo. After an important internal division of the Sinarquista movement in 1945, there have been numerous neo-fascist, nationalist, conservative and syncretic organizations that use the name of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista to carry out their activities, although the Fuerza Popular Party and the Partido Popular are considered Mexican Democrat some of the most relevant ideological successors of the UNS.

Background

During the government of Plutarco Elías Calles, Catholic worship was restricted in Mexico through the Calles Law. This event gave rise to the outbreak of the Cristero War in 1926, which sought to reverse the actions of Calles.

After the Maximato and the Cristero War ended, during the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, a socialist educational system was introduced in Mexico and several million hectares of land were confiscated from the landowners who still remained in the country, to later redistribute the land to the peasants. This represented a new threat to the Catholic oligarchy and radical right-wing groups in the country.

To avoid conflicts with the groups of the extreme religious right, Cárdenas made concessions to the Church to try to appease them. However, various militants such as Juan Ignacio Padilla had the intention of completely reversing the secular policies of the country, since they strongly threatened the hegemony of the Church over Mexican society, and especially over the peasantry.

History

Foundation

The National Synarchist Union was founded on May 23, 1937 in the city of León, Guanajuato. There is no consensus on who founded the organization or under what circumstances. However, José Antonio Urquiza, Salvador Abascal, Juan Ignacio Padilla, Jesús Hernández Alcalá, the Trueba Brothers and the Zermeño Brothers are usually recognized as its main founders.

The city of León is located in the Mexican region of Bajío, which has always been characterized by preserving its Catholic culture and faith. Likewise, it was the region of the country where Cárdenas' agrarian reform was least successful. In this way, influenced by anti-communist and ultra-Catholic groups, students from the University of Guanajuato, including Urquiza and Abascal, founded the UNS.

Decay

During 1945, the movement split into two factions when Carlos Athie replaced Torres Bueno as leader of the UNS. Both organizations claimed the name of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista.

Ideological successors

In 1946, Manuel Torres Bueno founded the Fuerza Popular Party, a party that served as the electoral arm of synarquismo. Later, in 1949, the party founded by Torres Bueno was dissolved along with the Mexican Communist Party after a more aggressive policy against "extremism" came into force. On the other hand, the synarquist faction led by Juan Ignacio Padilla He chose not to form an electoral arm, but to become involved in the activities of the considerably more moderate and liberal conservative National Action Party (PAN), which actively cooperated with the Sinarquistas, particularly during the 1958 electoral campaign.

During the 1970s, Sinarquismo reappeared as a political movement under the name of the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM), which participated in the 1982 election, running Ignacio González Golláz as its candidate, who obtained only 1.8 percent. hundred of the votes. Finally, in 1988, the PDM lost its registration as a political party.

Ideology

Synarchist Meeting in 1945-1946

In its beginnings, the UNS had the objective of restoring the Catholic theocracy in Mexico, which they referred to as “the Christian social order”. With regard to fascism, although Salvador Abascal declared against Nazism and Adolf Hitler, it is also true that among the UNS militants there was sympathy for the Spanish nationalist cause, national syndicalism and Francisco Franco. Likewise, the movement retained the idea of "fight communism and atheism" supported by the Catholic groups of the Cristero War. The Sinarquistas were opposed to both the idea of class struggle put forward by the communist movements, as well as the ideas of liberalism. In the Mexican political context of the time, this meant the opposition to the secular, anti-clerical and semi-socialist policies of the Cárdenas government and its predecessors.