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Fascists, Nazis, or Something Else?: Mexico's Unión Nacional Sinarquista in the US Media, 1937–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2022

Julia G. Young
Julia G. Young*
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America Washington, DC youngjg@cua.edu
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Abstract

This paper examines the public relations battles in the US media over Mexico's Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS), an explicitly Catholic social movement founded in 1937 that aimed to restore the Church to its traditional role in Mexican society and to reject the reforms of the revolutionary government. The sinarquistas shared many of the features of fascism and Nazism, the major global antidemocratic movements of the time, including a strident nationalism, authoritarian leanings, an emphasis on martial discipline and strict organizational structure, and a militant aesthetic. Both its ideological leanings and rapid growth (as many as 500,000 members by the early 1940s) led many US writers to suggest that the UNS represented a dangerous fifth-column threat to both Mexico and the United States. Others, particularly in the Catholic press, saw the UNS as an anticommunist organization that could actually help foster democracy in Mexico. For their part, UNS leaders defended themselves vociferously and sought to build relationships with influential US Catholics who could advocate for them in the press. By analyzing this debate, this paper both underscores the transnational characteristics of the UNS and highlights the crucial role of US public opinion in Mexican politics during the 1940s.

Keywords

Unión Nacional SinarquistaMexicofascismCatholic ChurchsinarquismSalvador Abascal
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 229 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to the editors of this special issue for their encouragement and thoughtful comments; to the anonymous peer reviewers for their feedback; to Nathan Ellstrand for generously exchanging archival documents, particularly when the pandemic made archival research so challenging; and to Michael Estopinan for preliminary research assistance on this project.

References

1. For more on the fascist threat in the Western Hemisphere, see Friedman, Max Paul, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, as well as MacDonnell, Francis, Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. For more on the Zimmerman Telegram and German involvement in Mexico prior to World War II, see Katz, Friedrich, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981Google Scholar.

2. Chester M. Wright, “Strong Action Is Needed to Defeat Sinarchist Order, Butler County Press, Hamilton, Ohio, November 21, 1941, 2. On Mexico and the United States during World War II, see Salinas, María Emilia Paz, Strategy, Security, and Spies: Mexico and the U.S. as Allies in World War II (University Park: Penn State University Press), 2010Google Scholar. On Mexico and the Spanish Civil War, see Matesanz, José Antonio, Las raíces del exilio: México ante la guerra civil española, 1936–1939 (Mexico City: UNAM, 1999)Google Scholar.

3. After the writer Betty Kirk published several very negative assessments of the UNS in the US press, a writer for El Sinarquista noted that “the results of this campaign are already being felt. Representative Coffee, Democrat of Washington, based on the statements of Kirk, states before Congress that we are a danger for the United States.” “Los Sinarquistas son 3 millones de indios analfabetas y fanáticos,” El Sinarquista, July 11, 1943, 3.

4. In a 1965 interview between UNS co-founder Salvador Abascal and scholar James Wilkie, Abascal expressed his opinion about the role of the United States in the Cristero War: “Yankee politics has always demanded the weakening of the Catholic Church in Mexico. The Mexican bishops were aware of this situation, and they could not fight against the colossus of the North, because our pathetic government, in this territory, has been no less than a servant of Washington. The peace agreements of 1929 were made by order of the White House.” James Wallace Wilkie and Edna Monzón de Wilkie, “Oral History Interviews with Mexican Political Leaders and Other Personalities, Mexico, 1964–1965: Salvador Abascal,” University of California-Berkeley, Bancroft Library Manuscripts Collections, MSS M-M 1905, Carton 1, 95.

5. See Skirius, John, “Railroad, Oil and Other Foreign Interests in the Mexican Revolution, 1911–1914,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35:11 (2003): 25–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Katz, Friedrich, “Pancho Villa and the Attack on Columbus, New Mexico,” American Historical Review 83:1 (1978): 101–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Michael M. Smith demonstrates that revolutionary leader Venustiano Carranza paid a publicist, George Weeks, to promote his government between 1913 and 1920. See “Gringo Propagandist: George F. Weeks and the Mexican Revolution,” Journalism History, 29:1 (Spring 2003): 2–11Google Scholar.

7. Specifically, Cristeros were unable to purchase weapons in the United States legally; a 1924 US presidential proclamation forbade the exportation of arms and munitions of war to Mexico by anyone except the Mexican government. See Young, Julia G., Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), chapts. 2 and 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Most published historical studies of the UNS have portrayed the organization as a national or even regional organization largely ignoring its existence outside of Mexico. These studies include Rubén Aguilar, V. and Guillermo Zermeño, P., Religión, política y sociedad: el sinarquismo y la Iglesia en México (Nueve Ensayos) (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana: Departamento de Historia, 1992)Google Scholar; Flores, José Gustavo González, “Los motivos del Sinarquista. La organización y la ideología de la Unión Nacional Sinarquista,” Culturales 3:1 (June 2015): 49–7Google Scholar; Meyer, Jean, El sinarquismo: ¿un fascismo mexicano? 1937–1947 (Mexico City: Editorial Joaquin Mortiz, 1975)Google Scholar, and El sinarquismo, el cardenismo, y la Iglesia, 1937–1947 (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2003); Ortoll, Servando, “Los origenes sociales del sinarquismo en Jalisco 1929–1939,” Encuentros 1:3 (April-June 1984): 75–119Google Scholar; and Álvarez., Pablo Serrano La batalla del espíritu: el movimiento sinarquista en El Bajío, 1932–1951 (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1992)Google Scholar; In English, see Jason Dormady, “Sinarquismo and the María Auxiliadora Colonization Experiment,” chapt. 4 in Primitive Revolution: Restorationist Religion and the Idea of the Mexican Revolution, 1940–1968 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011); Martín Tomás Velázquez, “Radical Catholic Resistance to the Mexican Revolution: The Cristero Rebellion and the Sinarquista Movement” (Ph.D diss., Texas A & M University, 2011); Hernández, Hector, The Sinarquista Movement: With Special Reference to the Period 1933–1944 (London: Minerva Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Two notable exceptions are a master's thesis by Oscar Lozano, “Patria y Nacionalismo en el México de Afuera: The Extension of Sinarquismo into the United States,” (MA thesis: University of Texas at El Paso, 1999); and another by John Smith, “‘True Patriots for the Salvation of the Fatherland’: Sinarquistas and the Struggle for Post-Revolutionary Mexico” (MA thesis: University of New Mexico, 2014). Smith also explores the portrayal of the Sinarquistas in US media. Nathan Ellstrand is currently completing a promising dissertation at Loyola University Chicago about UNS activities in the United States, titled “Reclaiming La Patria: Sinarquismo in the United States.”

9. For an excellent explanation of Catholic activism and its relationship to the Catholic Church in Mexico, see Andes, Stephen J. C., “A Catholic Alternative to Revolution: The Survival of Social Catholicism in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” The Americas 68:4 (2012): 529–562CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Enrique Guerra Manzo, “Las encrucijadas del catolicismo intransigente- demócrata (1929–1932),” Signos Históricos 14 (July-December 2005): 42–73.

10. José Antonio Urquiza, Brief History of the Legionnaires in Mexico, September 24, 1936, The Catholic University of America, American Catholic History Research Center, National Catholic Welfare Conference Collection [NCWC], Mexican Files, box 140, folder 28.

11. Meyer, El sinarquismo, 47.

12. Young, Mexican Exodus, chapt. 1.

13. The El Paso and Juárez committees were established as early as 1937. “Communist Raid Fought,” El Paso Times, November 16, 1938, 12. Lozano dates them to 1939 in “Patria y nacionalismo,” 59–61. See Julia G. Young, “Creating Catholic Utopias: Transnational Catholic Activism and Mexico's Unión Nacional Sinarquista,” Catholic Southwest 29 (December 2018): 3–20. Nathan Ellstrand's forthcoming dissertation will offer a thorough accounting of the number and activities of UNS chapters across the United States.

14. The UNS newspaper, El Sinarquista, regularly tallied monetary and in-kind donations by UNS chapters in the United States.

15. With its origins in nineteenth-century political thought, particularly that of French Catholic intellectual Charles Maurras, integralism argues for the inseparability—and further, the integration—of Church and state. Circulating throughout Europe, infusing fascist governments in Spain and Italy and igniting movements in Haiti and Brazil as well as Mexico, integralism proposed an alternative to the secular modern state. Williams, Margaret Todaro, “Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54:3 (1974): 431–452CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. On Catholic nationalism in Mexico, see Benjamin Smith, The Roots of Conservatism in Mexico: Catholicism, Society, and Politics in the Mixteca Baja (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012), 197–198. The literature on corporatism has tended to focus more on state-level and party-level corporatism, than on alternatives such as the UNS. On corporatism and its relationship to fascist governments in Europe, see Pinto, Antonio Costa, Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America: Crossing Borders (New York: Routledge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On corporatism in Latin America and Mexico, see Malloy, James M., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Jeffrey W. Rubin, “Popular Mobilization and the Myth of State Corporatism,” in Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico, Ann Craig and Joseph Foweraker, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), 247–267.

17. On women in the UNS, see Eva Nohemi Orozco García, “Las mujeres sinarquistas (1937–1962); las manos ocultas en la construcción del sentimiento nacionalista mexicano de derecha,” (PhD diss.: University of Texas at El Paso, 2019). See also Roxana Rodríguez Bravo, “El sufragio femenino desde la perspectiva sinarquista-católica (1945–1958),” Letras Históricas 8 (2013): 159–184; Rodríguez Bravo, Mujeres sinarquistas en México. Historia de una militancia católica femenina (1937–1948) (PhD thesis: Colegio de Michoacán, 2011); and Laura Pérez Rosales, “Las mujeres sinarquistas: nuevas Adelitas en la vida política mexicana (1945–1948 ),” in Religión, política y sociedad: el sinarquismo y la Iglesia en México (Nueve Ensayos), Aguilar and Zermeño, eds., 169–193.

18. Abascal, Salvador, Mis recuerdos: sinarquismo y Colonia Maria Auxiliadora (1935–1944): con importantes documentos de los Archivos Nacionales de Washington (Mexico City: Tradicion, 1980)Google Scholar; James Wallace Wilkie, Edna Monzón de Wilkie, and Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda, Frente a La Revolución Mexicana: 17 protagonistas de la etapa constructiva: entrevistas de historia oral, Vol. 3, Líderes políticos: Salvador Abascal, Marte R. Gómez, Luis L. León, Jacinto B. Treviño” (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1995).

19. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 209; For an excellent recent article on martyrdom, see Eva Orozco García, “Teresa Bustos, “La mujer bandera”: los caídos Sinarquistas, su simbología religiosa y la mártir que traspasó las barreras de género, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 31:1 (2020): 79–103.

20. A map of Sinarquista headquarters produced in 1943 by the US Office of Strategic Services reveals that the organization, though highly concentrated in west central Mexico, had chapters throughout Mexico and in California, New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, and Indiana. Centers of Sinarquismo in Mexico, US Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, Stanford Libraries, Office of Strategic Services Maps, available at exhibits.stanford.edu/oss-maps/catalog/sb027jq1702, accessed January 8, 2022. For an excellent description of Sinarquista chapters in rural Mexico, see Orozco, José, Receive Our Memories: The Letters of Luz Moreno, 1950–1952 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 24–31Google Scholar.

21. A fascinating repository of Sinarquista songs and imagery is Antonio Martínez Aguayo et al., Historia gráfica del sinarquismo (Mexico City: Comité Nacional de la UNS, ca. 1950). For more on Sinarquista mysticism, see Pablo Serrano Álvarez, La batalla del espíritu, 286.

22. Sinarquistas’ position toward the United States was complicated and evolved over time. While Abascal and other leaders initially took a strongly anti-American stance, Abascal would later state in his autobiography that, “as we are neighbors . . . we cannot be enemies . . . but we are sons of Spain . . . and our heart is strongly Hispanic.” Abascal, Mis Recuerdos, 372. The UNS position toward the United States had certainly softened considerably by 1944, as Margaret Shedd describes in “Thunder on the Right in Mexico: The Sinarquistas in Action,” Harper's Magazine 190 (April 1945): 414–425.

23. On the UNS and anti-Semitism, see Albert L. Michaels, “Fascism and Sinarquismo: Popular Nationalisms against the Mexican Revolution,” Journal of Church and State 8:2 (March 1966): 234–250.

24. Pablo Serrano Álvarez, La batalla del espíritu, 344, 346; Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 196.

25. Padilla, Juan Ignacio, Sinarquismo: contrarrevolución (Mexico City: Polis, 1948), 218Google Scholar.

26. Padilla, Sinarquismo, 218.

27. “Cómo vive y prospera la colonia de B. California: seis días en el pueblo sinarquista creado en la desierta península,” El Sinarquista, June 17, 1943.

28. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 285–286.

29. James A. Magner, “Sinarchism–Mexican Threat or Promise?” America, November 24, 1945, 206.

30. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 281.

31. Michaels, “Fascism and Sinarquismo,” 245.

32. Monica Rankin notes the 1941 founding of the Comité contra la Penetración Nazi-Fascista en México in ¡Mexico, la patria! Propaganda and Production during World War II (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 113. See also Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Hispanismo y Falange: los sueños imperiales de la derecha española (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1992); Pérez Montfort, Por la patria y por la raza: la derecha secular en el sexenio de Lázaro Cárdenas (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1993); and Savarino, Franco, “The Sentinel of the Bravo: Italian Fascism in Mexico, 1922-35,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 2:3 (2001): 97–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Hugh Gerald Campbell, “The Radical Right in Mexico, 1929–1949” (PhD diss.: University of California, Los Angeles, 1968), 325; Kenneth Prager, “Sinarquismo: The Politics of Frustration and Despair” (PhD diss.: Indiana University, 1975), 348; John Smith, “‘True Patriots for the Salvation of the Fatherland,’” 62–63.

34. Héctor Hernández García de León, “The Sinarquista Movement with Special Reference to the Period 1934–1944” (PhD diss.: London School of Economics, 1990), 276.

35. Serrano Álvarez, La batalla del espíritu, 293.

36. These include newspapers.com; Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers from the Library of Congress at https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/; and ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

37. “Nineteen Mexican Peasants Slain in Political Rioting,” Corpus Christi Caller Times, July 13, 1939, B1; Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, July 13, 1939, 2.

38. “Communist Raid Fought,” El Paso Times, November 16, 1938, 12.

39. A July 2021 search on newspapers.com (the most comprehensive online database of digitized newspaper articles in the United States) for the terms “sinarquista,” “sinarquist,” and “sinarchista” returned 2,105 articles from US newspapers, many of them reprints of syndicated articles from the major newswire agencies. The vast majority of these articles were published between 1940 and 1945, with a peak of 481 articles in 1945. The largest number of news stories appeared in Texas (452) and California (227), and there was also significant coverage in Pennsylvania (138), Arizona (127), and Florida (92), as well as in other parts of the Midwest and Northeast. There was no US state with zero newspaper articles about the Sinarquistas.

40. For a comprehensive review of anti-Sinarquista authors and public figures and their publications, see Prager, “Sinarquismo,” 365–369.

41. “Call Colonizers Nazi Shock Troops: Mexican Chamber of Deputies Opposes Lower California Colonization,” Lawrence Journal-World, October 15, 1941.

42. Félix Díaz Escobar, “The Spread of Sinarquism,” The Nation, April 3, 1943, 156; Alejandro Carrillo, “Crisis in Mexico,” Virginia Quarterly Review 16 (July, 1940): 321–333; Alejandro Carrillo, “Mexico and the Fascist Menace” (Mexico City: n.p., 1940); Lombardo, Vicente, Fifth Column in Mexico (New York: Council for Pan American Democracy, 1942)Google Scholar; Synarchism (New York: Council for Pan American Democracy, 1940). The American Chamber of Commerce also published at least two articles in opposition to the UNS: American Chamber of Commerce, Mexico City, “The Menace of Sinarquism,” Mexican American Review, December 1941, 26–29, 81; and “Thumbs Down on Sinarchism,” Mexican American Review, March 1943, 24–26.

43. Articles in El Sinarquista repeatedly launched such charges against the Mexican government. See for example “¡Imperialismo soviético en la Sría de Educación Pública!” El Sinarquista, Janary 6, 1944, 1.

44. See for example “Axis Plot to Enlist Mexicans Charged,” a wire article that was reprinted widely and repeated the rumor that the Sinarquista colonization project was “merely a pretext to facilitate [a] selection of a group of Mexicans to fight the Russians under Hitler's banner,” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1941, 6.

45. Thomás, Joan Maria, Roosevelt, Franco, and the End of the Second World War (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Betty Kirk, “Unrest In Mexico: Sowing The Seeds Of Fascism,” Washington Post, June 28, 1941, 7.

47. Betty Kirk, “Sinarquista Rise in Mexico Seen as Totalitarian Plot,” Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 1941. She also published “Mexico's Social Justice Party,” The Nation, June 12, 1943, 329; and “Mexico's Party Line,” Washington Post, June 21, 1941, 7.

48. Kirk, Betty, Covering the Mexican Front: The Battle of Europe versus America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942), 324–325Google Scholar. This charge was very common among members of the Mexican government and the Left. Most important was the journalist Mario Gil, who wrote El sinarquismo: su origen, su esencia, su misión (Mexico City: Ediciones Club del Libro “Mexico,” 1944), as well as numerous articles in Spanish and English arguing that the UNS was Nazi-directed and that Schreiter, a German professor of languages at the Colegio de Guanajuato, had been the shadow founder of the UNS. According to Hernández, “there was no evidence that Schreiter had any influence on the early stages of Synarchism.” Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 196. Friedrich Schuler agreed, arguing that Schreiter had had “little influence” on the UNS. Schuler, Friedrich E., Mexico between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934–1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 75Google Scholar. Pablo Serrano Álvarez, like Hernández, argues that while the UNS had “fascist or falangist features,” these were superficial in nature and not due to actual connections to foreign movements. “Their ideology as well as their modes of action stemmed from Catholic, nationalist, regional, social, and cultural factors that in the context of cardenismo created the conditions for the development of a struggle of the right, in this case, of Catholics. Fascist characteristics cannot be denied either, but this did not imply that the movement was a ‘Mexican fascism.’” Serrano Álvarez, La batalla del espiritu, 347.

49. Kirk, Covering the Mexican Front, 324. The Saka de Ly movement, which Kirk describes as an effort to foment an Indian uprising against “the whites” in both Mexico and the United States, seems to have only one reference outside of her own writing, in an article by William Wentz Jr, “The Nazi-Instigated National Synarchist Union of Mexico,” Executive Intelligence Review 31:27 (July 9, 2004), which heavily cites Kirk.

50. Chase, Allan, Falange: The Axis Secret Army in the Americas, 1943 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1943), 26Google Scholar.

51. Allan Chase, Falange, 154.

52. Allan Chase, Falange, 82.

53. Allan Chase, Falange, 160.

54. Allan Chase, Falange, 170–171.

55. Allan Chase, Falange, 173.

56. John W. White, “Mexican Socialism: Rights And Lefts Seek Control,” Washington Post, October 12, 1941, 11.

57. “Mexico is filled with rumors that the Sinarchists are financed with Nazi and Falangist (Spanish) Funds. One person told this correspondent that Willie Beick Jr, former head of the Beick-Felix drug concern and one of Mexico's strongest Nazis, had given the Sinarchists 1,000,000 pesos. It is difficult to prove such a statement. But it is obvious that funds to finance their Nation-wide activities must come from somewhere.” Alvadee Hutton, “Mexican Sinarchists Disavow Nazism But Follow Pattern Closely,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 14, 1941, 13.

58. Nearly every issue of the newspaper contained a page headed “Noticias de toda la República,” with reports from UNS chapters across the nation as well as in the United States, and a column listing the donations made by UNS members for the colonization effort, and later for the families of fallen UNS members.

59. Jack Starr-Hunt, “Mexico's Fifth Columnists Show Their Hands; Sinarquistas Gain,” Milwaukee Journal, January 24, 1943.

60. Marshall Hail, “Mystified Mexican Government Uneasily Watches Rise of Sinarquista Movement: Members Hate an Easy Life; Love Discomfort and Death,” Marshfield [Wisconsin] News-Herald,” October 7, 1941.

61. Jack Starr-Hunt, “Sinarchists of Mexico Building up Power from Discontent of Farmers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 19, 1941, 1.

62. Alvadee Hutton, “Mexican Sinarchists Disavow Nazism But Follow Pattern Closely,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday morning, October 13, 1941, 13; Alvadee Hutton, “Mexico Nursing ‘Ism’ With Close Similarity to Ideologies of Axis,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 13, 1941, 8.

63. In East Liverpool, Ohio, readers of the Potters Herald were informed that “The Sinarchist movement . . . drills members, using the Nazi march step. The arm bands are Nazi-Fascist. The songs, it is interesting to note, are the songs of the Spanish Falange. . . . Sinarquismo publishes books, pamphlets and other propaganda matter. And it contrives to show Nazi-Fascist motion pictures. It doesn't miss a trick . . . [it] is a Nazi movement, financed by Nazi money.” “Fifth Column Is Still Working in Mexico,” Potters Herald (East Liverpool, Ohio) September 11, 1941, 5. See also John W. White, “Mexican Socialism: Rights And Lefts Seek Control,” Washington Post, October 12, 1941, 11; Joseph Driscoll, “Alemán Seeks Mexican Aid on Left and Right,” New York Herald Tribune, February 12, 1946, 14; and Magner, “Sinarchism–Mexican Threat or Promise,” 204.

64. “Strange Mexican Pacifist Group Has Ear-Marks of a Nazi Organization,” Hope Star, October 10, 1941, 1.

65. From the New York Times alone: A 1943 article, quoting Mexican congressman Alfredo Díaz Escobar, reported that the organization had “from a million to a million and a half members” (“Mexican Fascist Unit Said to Have U.S. Link: Anti-Nazi Says Sinarquista Has 50,000 Members in West, New York Times, March 23, 1943, 6), while an article in the following year claimed that “some estimate [sic] from reliable sources would put the membership as high as 3,000,000.” Will Lissner, “Danger to Mexico in Sinarquism Seen,” New York Times, June 11, 1944, 20. At the end of the decade, the Times printed an article estimating a membership of one million: “Party of Rightists Banned By Mexico: Sinarquista Leaders Declare They Are Outlawed Because Their Strength Is Feared,” New York Times, January 30, 1949, 15. In other papers throughout the United States, numerical estimates varied, from several hundred thousand (Paul Winkler, “From the Underground,” Courier-Post, Camden, NJ, December 16, 1943) to three-and-a-half million (“States to Gain By Mexican Associations,” The Missoulian, July 3, 1943.

66. Edgar Ansel Mowrer, “Fascism in Mexico,” Gazette and Daily, York, PA, March 2, 1944, 15.

67. Willis Thornton, “Leader of Mexico's 500,000 Sinarquistas Watched as Possible “Front” for Fascists,” Indiana Evening Gazette, January 23, 1942, page illeg.

68. “Mexican Fascist Unit Said to Have U.S. Link: Anti-Nazi Says Sinarquista Has 50,000 Members in West, New York Times, March 23, 1943, 6. The reference to other fascist groups may be to the Camisas Doradas, a violent right-wing organization led by Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco. For more on these, see César Cruz Vences, “La admiración de José Vasconcelos sobre Adolfo Hiter y el Régimen Nazi en la revista Timón” (PhD Diss.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2014), 49–54. See also Backal, Alicia Gojman, Camisas, escudos y desfiles militares: los Dorados y el antisemitismo en México, 1934–1940 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000)Google Scholar.

69. In his mystery novel Day of the Dead, Charles Murray portrayed the UNS as a shadowy fascist and fanatical organization, led by a sinister lawyer and funded by Spain, Germany, and “Argentine colonels.” The book's protagonist, a handsome Irish-Cherokee-Mexican named Angel O'Brien, thwarts the Sinarquistas’ plans to murder President Cárdenas, as well as his love interest, an American tourist, on Mexico's Day of the Dead. Charles Murray (writing as Cromwell Murray), Day of the Dead (Philadelphia: David Mckay Company, 1946), 198. Murray based his novel in Pátzcuaro, where he lived for a few months after receiving a Pulitzer Fellowship in 1942 (Greg Lange, “Morgan, Murray (1916–2000),” HistoryLink.org, Essay 5021). The book was Murray's first, but it did well enough to receive a review in the New York Times: “Sinarquistas,” December 29, 1946, 110. A 1945 novel by the popular author Alice Tisdale Hobart also portrayed the sinarquistas as a military and fanatical group, “against Protestantism, against democracy.” Alice Tisdale Hobart, The Peacock Sheds His Tail (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945). According to a contemporary reviewer, her book was popular enough that it became “a sort of traveling companion for many tourists to Mexico.” James A. Magner, “Sinarchism Today,” America 76:19 (February 8, 1947): 513–515.

70. Eva Orozco García, “Teresa Bustos, “La mujer bandera,” 80.

71. Betty Kirk, “Sinarquista Rise in Mexico Seen as Totalitarian Plot,” Christian Science Monitor, 1941; Will Lissner, “Danger to Mexico in Sinarquism Seen,” New York Times, June 11, 1944, 20.

72. John W. White, “Mexican Socialism: Rights and Lefts Seek Control,” Washington Post, October 12, 1941, 11.

73. “Sinarquista Leader Denies Organization Tool of Axis,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1942, 14.

74. “Mexican Fascist Unit Said to Have U.S. Link: Anti-Nazi Says Sinarquista Has 50,000 Members in West,” New York Times, March 23, 1943, 6; “Biddle Lists Big Sum Spent on Propaganda,” Washington Post, June 12, 1945, 9.

75. Editorial, York Daily Record, October 30, 1945, 16.

76. Allan Chase, Falange, 174–175. Here, Chase was referring to the Zoot Suit riots, a series of clashes between Mexican “zoot-suit”-wearing youth and US servicemen in Los Angeles. The charge of Sinarquista involvement in these riots was echoed by Josefina Fierro de Bright, one of the founders of El Congreso del Pueblo de Habla Española, a working-class and progressive movement that she founded along with Luisa Moreno in 1938. García, Mario, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 172Google Scholar. According to García, Sinarquistas also tried to influence “young Mexican Americans not to sell war bonds or cooperate with the Red Cross and USO,” although unsuccessfully. Fierro de Bright also said that “the Sinarquistas preached against U.S. involvement in the war.” (169) See also del Castillo, Richard Griswold, “The Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives,” Estudios Mexicanos 16:2 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sinarquistas were also participating (at least at the beginning) in anti-draft activities in Mexico. See Thomas Rath, “‘Que el cielo un soldado en cada hijo te dio . . . : Conscription, Recalcitrance and Resistance in Mexico in the 1940s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37:3 (2005): 507–531.

77. Allan Chase, 170. The historian Zaragosa Vargas also contended that this fantasy was articulated in the pages of El Sinarquista. There, he states, the Sinarquistas “presented the fantasy of a new Spanish empire, El Gran Imperio Sinarquista, whose capital city, Sinarcopolis, was to be built on the plains of west Texas.” Vargas, Zaragoza, Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 190Google Scholar. In reviewing issues of El Sinarquista from 1941–1944, I was unable to find this reference to Sinarcopolis; Vargas does not cite the specific issue of the newspaper. I do not believe that there is archival evidence to support UNS plans for domination of US territory. While the UNS did use the term “Sinarcópolis,” it was to describe the city of León, Guanajuato, where the organization was founded in 1937. In response to charges printed in a report circulated by the US Office of Naval Intelligence on October 15, 1941, that the UNS wanted to conquer “large sections of the United States,” Abascal issued a complete denial, making the remarkable—and remarkably anti-Semitic—statement that “We never had such dreams, not even the slightest thought; but we did think, and I still believe, that some day—if it is convenient to Judaism—the United States might be broken into 3 or 4 parts, with Mexico being unable to recover even one inch of territory.” Mis Recuerdos, 419, 419 fn10.

78. See Vargas, Zaragoza, Labor Rights are Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 190Google Scholar; William F. Wertz Jr, “La Unión Nacional Sinarquista de México: la UNS subvierte a los Estados Unidos,” n.d., Schiller Institute, https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/newspanish/InstitutoSchiller/Literatura/Sinarquismo/uns_subveu.html, accessed January 8, 2022.

79. While I am more interested here in investigating the mainstream secular press in comparison to the Catholic press, there was also coverage of the UNS in strongly left-leaning media outlets. This was, unsurprisingly, extremely negative in tone. One writer in The Nation claimed that the UNS was “the Spanish Phalanx in guaraches [sic],” quoted in Mario T. García, Mexican Americans, 168. In the New Masses, Marion Bachrach wrote a long and searing essay on Sinarquists and other fascist Catholic threats in Latin America: “Plotters Against the Church,” New Masses, February 8, 1944, 3–6.

80. Lozano, “Patria y Nacionalismo en el México de Afuera,” 15. While the topic of US government surveillance of the UNS is largely outside the scope of this article, I intend to expand upon this topic in future research. Nathan Ellstrand discusses this topic in his forthcoming dissertation. See also Servando Ortoll, “La ‘política de diseminación’ y la colonia sinarquista María Auxiliadora, en el contexto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” unpublished paper presented at the 2021 Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, May 27, 2021.

81. “Ickes Denounces Sinarquista Group,” Gazette and Daily Mail, York, PA, October 6, 1943, 2.

82. “U.S. Congressman Asks Quick Break with Fascist Spain,” Nevada State Journal, Reno, April 16, 1944, 5.

83. Despite this, the Cárdenas and Ávila Camacho governments refused to officially censor the organization until 1944, when El Sinarquista published two articles that seemed to call for a military coup, and its publication was banned. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 322–333.

84. “Los Sinarquistas son 3 millones de indios analfabetas y fanáticos,” 3. In addition to the newspaper El Sinarquista, the UNS published Orden, an illustrated monthly magazine. According to Prager, pro-Sinarquista articles frequently appeared in publications such as the Catholic-oriented weekly La Nación, the semi-monthly Lectura, the pro-Catholic popular monthly Divulgación Histórica, La Voz de México, Omega, and El Hombre Libre. Prager, “Sinarquismo,” 362-363. According to Mario García, UNS members in the United States would sell copies of El Sinarquista after Sunday masses in Mexican neighborhoods. García, Mexican Americans, 169.

85. “Es inminente la revolucion roja en mexico,” El Sinarquista, April 6, 1944, 1.

86. “Peleando por los Viejos Ideales,” El Sinarquista, May 23, 1942, 3.

87. “El caso de la gringuita pizpireta que escribió notas mendaces,” El Sinarquista, October 23, 1941, 3. Hutton, like Charles Murray, was in Mexico on a Pulitzer fellowship for journalists. Her piece in Excélsior (October 12, 1941) was entitled “Según el Lider Abascal, la agrupación es anti-Nazista.”

88. “Vuelve a calumniarnos la prensa de Estados Unidos,” El Sinarquista, March 26, 1942, 1.

89. Sinarquistas Condemn Communism, and Deny Nazi or Totalitarian Leaning in Statement of Policy,” El Paso Herald-Post, August 2, 1942, 1.

90. Nathan Ellstrand, “The Transnational Sinarquista Movement,” IEHS Online: Immigration and Ethnic History Society, March 2, 2020, https://www.iehs.org/nathan-ellstrand-Sinarquista-movement, accessed January 19, 2022.

91. See Julia Young, Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War, chapt. 4.

92. This correspondence can be found in the archives of The Catholic University of America, National Catholic Welfare Conference [NCWC], box 71, folder 35, and box 72, folders 1-5.

93. William Montavon to Nelson Rockefeller, July 17, 1941, Archives of the Catholic University of America, NCWC, box 72, folder 1.

94. Memorandum from William Montavon on the Second Annual Convention of Synarchist Leaders, December 5, 1940; Memorandum on Federation of Labor, January 17, 1941; Letter from R. M. Walsh to Antonio Santacruz, March 20, 1941.

NCWC, Collection 10, box 72, folder 1.

95. “Charge Sinarquistas Stir up Lawlessness in Los Angeles Denounced,” NCWC News Service, September 4, 1942, Catholic News Archive, thecatholicnewsarchive.org.

96. “Mexico Sinarquists Reply to Charge of Totalitarian Plot,” NCWC News Service, July 21, 1941, Catholic News Archive.

97. “Here's Hope for Mexico: Growth of Sinarquismo Frightens Communists,” St. Louis Register, April 17, 1942, 7.

98. “Is It Fascism or Step Toward Christian Social Order? Rapid Growth of Sinarquist Movement in Mexico Kicks up Bitter Controversy,” St. Louis Register, September 10, 1943, 7.

99. C. J. McNeill, “Did Axis Agent Help Establish Movement in Mexico? Disgust With Failure of Bloody Revolts Led to Foundation of Sinarquist Union,” St. Louis Register, September 17, 1943, 9.

100. “Listening in,” St. Louis Register, September 24, 1948, 4.

101. After the 1940 election, which was widely regarded as fraudulent, the UNS did assert that Almazán had received the majority vote. Prager, Sinarquismo, 283.

102. Pablo Serrano Álvarez, “El Sinarquismo en el Bajío mexicano, 1934-51. Historia de un movimiento social regional,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 14, documento 187, https://moderna.historicas.unam.mx/index.php/ehm/article/view/68856. Fuerza Popular was banned in 1948 after the UNS held a protest in front of the Hemiciclo de Juárez in Mexico City's Alameda Popular. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 367.

103. This was not surprising, since America tended to look the other way in the face of fascism and anti-Semitism, given that its editors perceived Communism to be so much greater a threat to the global Catholic Church. See Gallagher, Charles, “‘Correct and Christian’: American Jesuit Support of Father Charles E. Coughlin's Antisemitism, 1935–1938,” in The Tragic Couple: Encounters Between Jews and Jesuits, Bernauer, James and Maryks, Robert A., eds. (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2013), 297–315Google Scholar. This was not the only Catholic publication that leaned toward the hard right. Patrick Scanlan, editor of The Tablet, “was eventually considered the dean of the nation's Catholic press—the loudest supporter of Fr. Charles Coughlin when the radio preacher descended into his most obvious anti-Semitism in the late 1930s, and also of Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his rise and fall in the 1950s.” Commonweal 147:7 (July/August 2020), 12.

104. Magner, “Sinarchism–Mexican Threat or Promise,” 204–206.

105. Francis J. Heltshe, “No Sinarquista Conspiracy: Catholic Chaplain Disagrees with Mexican Labor Delegate,” New York Times, May 19, 1944, 18.

106. “El Sinarquismo enjuiciado por un extranjero,” June 8, 1944, 3.

107. Paul Dearing, “Letters to the Editor: Pro-Sinarquista,” Washington Post, July 25, 1943. Dearing also wrote “Sinarchism in Mexico,” Current History 5 (November 1943): 247. Other Catholic defenders included H. J. Wirtenberger, “In Defense of the Sinarquistas,” Latin-American Monthly (August 1942); Shiels, Eugene W., “Left Wing Smear Hits Sinarquista,” America 69:19 (August 14, 1943)Google Scholar; and Richard Pattee, “Synarchism—A Threat or a Promise?” Columbia 29 (January 1945), 3–4, 13–14. See Prager, “Sinarquismo,” 373.

108. H. L. Moore, “Sinarquism Not Presented Well by Chicago Writer,” Catholic Advance, February 4, 1944, 2.

109. Edward Skillin Jr, “Notes on Sinarquism: Mexican Movement of National Regeneration,” Commonweal 40 (June 9, 1944), 178. Catholics in the United States tended to support Franco in the Spanish Civil War, although Commonweal split from this opinion. Valaik, David J., “American Catholic Dissenters and the Spanish Civil War,” Catholic Historical Review 53:4 (1968): 537–555Google Scholar.

110. See for example Edgar Ansel Mowrer, “Making up Our Minds about Sinarquism,” Nebraska State Journal, June 20, 1944, 6; and Will Lissner, “Danger to Mexico in Sinarquism Seen,” New York Times, June 11, 1944, 20.

111. According to Kenneth Prager, after the publication of Skillin's article “a lively debate ensued. Skillin's contention that the UNS was authoritarian and tyrannous was violently challenged by Frank Gross Jr. and Right Reverend Luigi Ligutti, who condemned the former's assertion as being fallacious, totally unobjective and poorly documented.” Prager, “Sinarquismo,” 372–373.

112. “La prensa honrada de los Estados Unidos sale en defensa del Sinarquismo,” El Sinarquista, May 14, 1942, 3. The article cited and provided a translation of a 1942 article entitled “Los Mexicanos se organizan para un orden nuevo,” written by W. Eugenio Shiels in the Jesuit magazine America.

113. Hernández, The Sinarquista Movement, 368. On the rise of the PAN, see Mizrahi, Yemile, From Martyrdom to Power: The Partido Acción Nacional in Mexico (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The organization continued to exist, on and off, throughout the twentieth century. After a fallow period in the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s saw a reorganization, and a new generation of leaders organized the Partido Demócrata Mexicano (PDM) as the party “of and for the Sinarquistas.” The party went on to participate in state elections in 1979 and 1982, doing particularly well in the Bajío. Serrano Álvarez, La batalla del espíritu, 308. For more on the PDM, see Alfonso Guillén Vicente, “Partido Demócrata Mexicano,” in Octavio Rodríguez Araujo, La reforma política y los partidos en México (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1979), as well as the essay by Rubén Aguilar V. and Guillermo Zermeño P., “Religión y política en el caso de la militancia del partido demócrata mexicano (PDM). Una aproximación,” in Religión, política y sociedad, Aguilar y Zermeño, eds., 273–304. Today, there are still people and groups in Mexico who identify as Sinarquistas, with several social media pages that claim to represent the UNS, including a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Union-Nacional-Sinarquista-130282460319080/), an Instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/union_nacional_sinarquista/), and a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/UNSmx).

114. Executive Sessions of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, Vol. 2, 1953, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-107SPRT83870/html/CPRT-107SPRT83870.htm, accessed January 8, 2022.

115. “Sinarquista Praises U.S.: New Leader Supports a ‘Solid, Disinterested Friendship,’” New York Times, May 31, 1945, 3.

116. The UNS's relationship with influential US Catholics seems to have weakened after 1945, when Antonio Santacruz, who had regularly corresponded with William Montavon, stepped away from the movement. Wiliam Montavon to Antonio Santacruz, July 10, 1945, NCWC, Collection 10, box 72, folder 4.

117. In This Storm, a recently published novel set in 1940s Los Angeles, author James Ellroy describes the Sinarquistas as a fiendish right-wing Mexican group involved with arms-trafficking and murder in the city. Ellroy, James, This Storm (New York: Vintage, 2020)Google Scholar

118. Shedd, “Thunder on the Right,” 422.

119. Orozco García, “Las mujeres sinarquistas (1937–1962);” Ellstrand, “Reclaiming La Patria;” Orozco, Receive Our Memories; see also the contributions by Luis Herran Ávila and Gema Santamaria in this special issue.