Doctrine and Conviction: Ideology, the Vatican, and the Catholic Right in Mexico, 1930–40

The resurgence of Mexico’s Catholic Right in the wake of the failed Cristero Rebellion was a multifaceted movement.  It contained both a populist and an institutional current, and a number of different groups within each of these.  Though disparate, these groups shared a number of common characteristics including an ideological basis fixed on official pronouncements from the Vatican, a shared sense of Catholic Panhispanismo, and strong support for Franco and Spain’s Falange movement. One of the largest and most prominent of the populist movements was the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, founded in 1937. While the Sinarquistas were largely marginalized in Mexico, especially during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas––whose policies they were originally organized to oppose––they were a key part of the Catholic Right in the pan-Hispanic world of the late 1930s and 1940s. This paper examines the role of official Vatican pronouncements, particularly Encyclical Letters, in the ideological evolution of the Sinarquitas and offers a transnational perspective on their political activities both within Mexico and abroad.