Metaphysical Battles? Anti-Communist Catholicism and the Radicalization of the Extreme Right in Mexico and Argentina, 1960–76

Recent studies on transnational networks and “transnational contact zones” in Latin America’s Cold War are shedding light on the need to de-center our understanding of the period’s political and cultural histories. This paper tackles the connections, overlaps and dialogues between Mexican Catholic anti-communist intellectuals Fr. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga and Salvador Borrego, and two of their Argentine “fellow travelers,” Fr. Julio Meinvielle and the lesser-known Carlos Disandro. While stressing the role of Catholicism as a shared politico-philosophical idiom, I aim at providing a punctuated analysis of the encounters, discrepancies and links between clerical and lay Catholic anti-communism. More specifically, I will dwell on the relation between these intellectuals’ views of communism as a meta-historical “enemy,” their shared integrism and anti-Semitism, and their role as ideologues, activists and promoters of various anti-communist initiatives with often unacknowledged exchanges and repercussions beyond their national contexts.