Nazis, Fascists, or Something Else? International Media Coverage of Mexico's Union Nacional Sinarquista, 1937–45

This paper examines the international media response to Mexico’s Union Nacional Sinarquista. The UNS was an explicitly Catholic political movement that arose during the late 1930s. It aimed to restore the Church to its traditional role in Mexican society, to reject the agrarian reforms of the Revolutionary government, and to generate a religious nationalism that countered the secular nationalism espoused by the revolutionary state, particularly the government’s program of “socialist education.” By the early 1940s, the UNS claimed some 500,000 members across Mexico, while in the United States, hundreds of Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees joined the UNS and contributed thousands of dollars to the cause. Most importantly, the UNS sought to establish Catholic colonies in Baja California and in Sonora, where they could put their ideas for social organization into practice. While the Catholic colonies ultimately failed, the UNS attracted significant coverage from the press in the United States, Europe, and the rest of Latin America, and generated persistent debates about what kind of organization it was (fascist, Nazi, or idiosyncratic). In both Mexico and the Mexican diaspora, the UNS was an active and essential participant in the construction of a right-wing religious nationalism that persistently confronted and opposed Mexico’s longest-ruling political party, the PRI. This project is part of a book-in-development that will offer the first transnational study of the UNS, and uses sources from both U.S. and Mexican archives that have not yet been examined by historians.