The National Synarchist Union () is a Mexican political organization. It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, similar to clerical fascism and Falangism, implacably opposed to the policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and from 2012 to 2018. The organization was notably the only explicit right-wing movement in Mexico to garner such nation-wide support and influence during this era. At its peak in 1940, there were approximately 500,000 registered members. Mostly active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, its support for the Axis in World War II damaged its reputation. The organization experienced intense infighting in the mid-1940s which ultimately led to multiple schisms. The organization was dissolved as a political party in 1951 and largely faded into obscurity outside the city of Guanajuato, where it retained some local influence. In the 1980s, the UNS was reconstituted as the Mexican Democratic Party, which held seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1988, peaking at 12 Deputies in the 1982 election but losing its presence in 1988; the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM) dissolved in 1997, though two groups both claiming to be the legitimate UNS continue to exist.
History
Formation
The UNS was founded in May 1937, during the leftist administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40). It was developed by a group of Catholic political activists led by José Antonio Urquiza, who was murdered in April 1938. It was a revival of the Catholic reaction that drove the Cristero War (that ended in 1929), and its core was centred in the Bajío rural bourgeoisie and professional lower middle-class, where Catholicism was very strong. The group published the "Sinarquista Manifesto," opposing the policies of the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas. The Manifesto declared that "it is absolutely necessary that an organization composed of true patriots exists". The group's date of formation, 23 May, is celebrated annually in León, Guanajuato by the UNS membership.
The UNS was led by Salvador Abascal, a hard-liner, from 1940 to 1941 when he stood down in order to set up a synarchist commune in Baja California with the more moderate Manuel Torres Bueno becoming leader. The group was fond of large scale publicity stunts, such as the "takeovers" they launched in Guadalajara, Jalisco and Morelia in 1941. It has been stated that these temporary affairs amounted to little more than symbolic gestures but nonetheless helped to demonstrate the support the UNS enjoyed amongst the peasantry of the Western states.
Synarchist involvement in regional protest groups and political parties was both a reality and a regularly used accusation aimed at discrediting the opposition. The Civic Union of León, one such local party active in the mid-1940s, was dominated by a cadre of synarchists in leadership positions. For example, Austreberto Aragon Maldonado, whose Liga de Resistencia de Usarios del Agua de Oaxaca—a group that supported improvement in the water supply in Oaxaca—enjoyed widespread support in the region, he was regularly denounced by the state government as a synarchist. This occurred despite Maldonado's regular efforts to deny any involvement in the UNS and taking care not to involve himself with any extremist groups. Maldonado was targeted in this way due to the broad-based support his movement enjoyed and the possibility that it could become a focus for wider resistance.