National Synarchist Union of Mexico pt 2 : AZ IMC

who only died in the year 2000, confirmed the role of Valdivia as a contributor to El Sinarquista in an interview in August 1987.

Nazi-Communist Collaboration
During the period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, which was signed on Aug. 23, 1939 and was only abrogated on June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded Russia, there was intensive collaboration between the Nazis and the Communists in Mexico. Kirk reports that a pact was signed at Barcelona late in 1940 between the Communists and the Falangists. The Naval Attaché's report of April 9, 1940 on the subject of Mexico-Germany-Russia says:

"Communist and Nazi agents are reported to be working actively in all labor groups side by side, to develop agitation against U.S., to promote civil disorders and to gain ideological control of Mexico.

"Alleged purposes of activities:

"1—Foment a civil war to

"a. insure political control of Mexico for Berlin-Moscow axis

"b. use Mexico as a base of operations against the Allies and the United States when the U.S. becomes involved in the European war, and

"c. use Mexico as a base for further ideological penetration of Latin America and for the dissemination of anti-United States propaganda.

"2. Seek through agitation and civil war to distract United States from Europe and prevent American entrance into the conflict. 1(b) would take effect if 2 should fail. That is, as far as the United States is concerned.

"Technique:

"The German agents have infiltrated into the various organizations supporting Almazán. (A declassified FBI report of Jan. 11, 1941 reports that J.A. Almazán, who ran against Avila Camacho for President of Mexico, gave a donation to the Nazi Party. 'His donation of 10,000 pesos on April 4, 1940 apparently was for Nazi activities in his campaign.')

"The Russian Agents have infiltrated into the various organizations supporting Avila Camacho, such as the PRM, CTM, CNC, Communist Party, etc.

"They are the cells of agitation, of violence, of urgers of strong action, etc. within the two camps.

"The Communist agents are said to be those responsible for organizing the anti-United States campaign now being organized throughout the nation by the pro-government groups as a result of the American note requesting arbitration of the petroleum controversy.

"Important:

"The Russian and German agents, though in opposed Mexican political camps, are not in opposition. They are acting in perfect collaboration and cooperation. Theirs is a single aim of armed revolution in Mexico, of action against the United States, of political control of Mexico.

"Their information, their resources and their personnel are pooled in this one effort.

"Comment: 'On several occasions I have reported that there is a very strong tendency in Mexican Government circles and various political groups such as the 'Acción Nacional' to develop Latin Americanism as opposed to Pan Americanism, as a weapon, to oppose the United States.... The Attaché again wishes to emphasize this point, as it will undoubtedly have a bearing on the future development of the Good Neighbor Policy.'"

Vicente Lombardo Toledano, one of the leading trade unionists in Mexico, who had visited the Soviet Union in 1935 and was influenced by the Communists, was replaced as general secretary of the CTM by Fidel Velázquez on Feb. 25, 1941. His replacement occurred because the Mexican government was in the process of coming to an agreement with the United States. On Nov. 19, 1941, just 17 days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Good Neighbor Agreement was signed, and a framework set up for the settlement of the oil question. The Nazi-Communist alliance to denounce the United States and Britain as "the imperialist gangsters," had been superseded.

After the Nazi invasion of Russia, there was a definite shift in the Communist policy. A declassified U.S. document authored by Assistant Naval Attaché Earl S. Piper on Sept. 11, 1941 reported the following:

"As stated in Naval Attaché Mexico Confidential Report Serial Number 360 of 17 July, 1941, it is believed that since the outbreak of war between Germany and Russia, the Communists as a group in Mexico have definitely broken with the Nazis as a group. It is probable of course that a few individual Communists are still working here for the Nazis."

For example, according to Alan Chase, Lombardo Toledano, the head of the "anti-Axis" Latin-American Confederation of Labor, summed up the Axis aims in Mexico in a speech delivered a month before Pearl Harbor—i.e., after the Nazi invasion of Russia—in which he identified the Axis war aims in Mexico:

"1. To use Mexico as the nearest base for Nazi espionage in the United States.

"2. To use our country as a source of raw materials for its war.

"3. To make Mexico a center for organized acts of sabotage against the United States, as well as against our own export trade, so that we may be prevented from sending help to the countries fighting the Axis.

"4. To establish a center of Fascist provocation against the United States, thus distracting that country's attention from the European and other theaters of war.

"5. To secure a center from which Fascist propaganda can be directed to all of Latin America.

"6. To instigate provocations against the government of Mexico from within our country itself, so that the government will be obliged to retaliate with restrictive measures. Afterward, these measures will be used to discredit the present regime in Mexico, and turned against democracy within and without our country."

In his Oct. 31, 1941 report, now declassified, Harold Braman wrote that "'Vicente Lombardo Toledano has been making effective speeches against the Sinarquistas and Acción Nacional. In fact, he seems to be the head of whatever counter-movement there may be." Having collaborated with fascists during the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Lombardo Toledano was clearly in a good position to know what the intentions of the Axis powers were.

2. Japan's Role: The Berlin-Madrid-Tokyo Axis
As the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines approached, the Nazis arranged for the Spanish Falange to pave the way for the Japanese takeover of the Philippines, and to prepare for Japanese-orchestrated operations against the United States on its southern flank, from Mexico. Although the Japanese were not able to carry out their plans in Mexico in full after the U.S. victory at Midway Island on June 4-7, 1942, their plans included the establishment of a naval base in Baja California and an invasion of the United States from Mexico.

According to both Mario Gill and Alan Chase, at the end of 1940, von Faupel arranged a series of talks in Madrid between General Franco and Colonel Fugirito, a person in the confidence of Japan's General Tojo. The talks had the objective of establishing the basis for future collaboration between the Spanish and Japanese governments, for immediate action in the Philippines and in Mexico.

When Serrano Suner, Franco's brother-in-law, announced the formation of the Council of Hispanidad on Jan. 8, 1941, he said that the Spanish Consul General in the Philippines would be a member. The person selected to become the Consul General was José del Castaño, the chief of the National Delegation of the Falange Exterior.

In the case of Mexico, since it was the only nation in the Americas to recognize the Spanish Republic, it did not have consular relations with Franco's Spain. Therefore, Augusto Ibañez Serrano, a Spanish merchant, whose visiting card said "Franco's official representative in Mexico" and who was the nominal head of the Falange in Mexico, worked out of the offices of the Portuguese legation.

After the creation of the Council of Hispanidad in Madrid, the Falange's weekly magazine in Mexico, Hispanidad, said that "our sympathies are completely with the Axis," and clamored for the unity of Spanish-speaking countries "to throw off the yoke of Yankee imperialism."

Spain launched an effort to obtain recognition from Mexico, in which case the Spanish Consul General in Mexico would have been a member of the Council of Hispanidad as well. This effort bore no fruit. However, when the German, Italian, and Japanese embassies were shut down after Pearl Harbor, their interests as in the Philippines were represented by the Falange, in this case, operating out of the Portuguese Embassy.

What happened in the Philippines is instructive as to the nature of the Nazi-directed Falange-Japanese cooperation which simultaneously occurred in Mexico. On the day that the Council of Hispanidad was created, the Falange organizations in the Philippines were placed under direct control of the Japanese organization, controlled in turn by the Nazis. The secret treaty between Franco and the Japanese provided that the former would surrender all Spanish claims in the Philippines to the Japanese, for which he would be amply paid. Accordingly, at least a year before the Japanese attack on Hawaii and the Philippines, Franco and the Japanese had their plans fully developed and in operation.

In February 1941, Antonio Castillo Ornelas arrived in the Philippines and Commander Marcelino García Puerta in Tokyo, to direct Falangist activities in the Philippines. The operations occurred on three overlapping levels: 1) the Falange fostered the Hispanidad movement; 2) it promoted an ultra-nationalistic Filipino movement; and 3) it promoted the racist Saka de Ly movement to throw all Occidentals out of Asia.

On June 18, 1941, the United States gave the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan until July to close their consulates on U.S. soil and territories, including the Philippines. The Falangist Castaño took over the consular duties of all three closing consulates in Manila. He was then appointed the top liaison agent of all Axis undercover work in the islands.

Every Falangist was told to join the ranks of the Philippine Civilian Emergency Administration (CEA). On Dec. 7, Spain's Japanese Axis partner bombed Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. On Dec. 29, the Japanese Air Force raided Manila, and on Jan. 2, 1942, the Japanese marched into the city. The CEA had spread disinformation and had functioned as a fifth column to facilitate the Japanese takeover.

On Jan. 5, 1942, in Granada, Spain, Pilar Primo de Rivera, the sister of José Antonio, who was chief of the feminine section of the Falange, accepted in the name of the Philippine Section of the Falange Española, a formal decoration from the Japanese government for its aid to the Imperial Japanese Government in the capture of Manila.

Japan's Fifth Column in Mexico
In this same time period, the Falange and the Japanese under Nazi direction had similar plans in Mexico involving the UNS. Franco's Military Intelligence Service (SIM) had worked with the Japanese since late 1941, and its operations in Mexico were directed through the SIM's headquarters in San Francisco by Franco agent, Amat.

In Mexico, which at the time of World War II had a population of 20 million, there were substantial colonies of citizens of the Axis powers, many of whom were sympathizers and supporters of the Axis war aims. There were 12,238 Germans, 5,646 Italians, 6,232 Japanese, and 15,000 Spaniards.

The Japanese plans for Mexico were extensive, although they depended in large part on a more successful prosecution of the war on the part of the Axis powers. Japan was very interested in Mexico from the standpoint of oil and other raw materials. For example, on Oct. 15, 1940, Dr. Kisso Tsuru obtained a concession to explore and exploit 250,000 acres of oil land in Veracruz. His company, Compañía Veracruzana, was a front for the House of Mitsui, which provided oil to the Japanese Navy.

Japan had a skeleton army in Mexico, called the Mexico Military Service Men's Association, which was directly under the command of Premier Hideki Tojo. It also had an intelligence division, which operated under the name of the Japanese Association of Lower California, with addresses in Mexicali, Mexico and in Calexico, California in the United States.

Depending on the progress in the war, the Japanese had two plans: 1) a direct invasion of the United States through the states of Sonora and Sinaloa; and 2) a rebellion of Mexican Indians against the whites. Sonora and Sinaloa were honeycombed with Japanese "farmers" and "fishermen," and the Japanese fishing fleet operated in Magdalena Bay in Baja California.

In June 1941, Kiyoshi Yamagata, Minister Without Portfolio, came to Mexico from Tokyo to coordinate operations. Then one month before Pearl Harbor, 300 Japanese met secretly in Mexicali. The meeting was called by Gen. Hideki Tojo, then Minister of War. A testimonial from Tojo was read to the meeting by Captain Hamanaka, the military attaché of the Japanese Legation in Mexico City and director of Japanese subversive activities in Mexico.

There is significant evidence to believe that this Japanese activity, which was coordinated with the Nazis and the Falange and involved the participation of the UNS, included the possibility of a coup d'état against the Mexican government.

On Nov. 26, 1941, less than two weeks before Pearl Harbor, Eugene T. Turley, American Vice Consulate in La Paz, state of Baja California, Mexico, reported the existence of "a group of Mexicans composed of the military, Sinarquistas, and other dissatisfied elements who are planning to overthrow President Avila Camacho and his administration on or later than January 1, 1942." Turley reported that "the proposed plan ... is to make General Francisco J. Múgica provisional president.... [T]hey are said to have twenty million pesos with which to finance the coup d'état. For further aid, this revolutionary group has asked Lombardo Toledano to remain in Mexico and continue his subversive activities in the labor unions. The Sinarquistas, who are also being included in the group, are said to be financed and supported by the Nazis and Japan. It would obviously be greatly to the advantage of these powers to have such a group favorable to them located in a strategic area. Because of these factors, the Sinarquistas are very anxious to establish the first colony near Magdalena Bay."

As referenced in this declassified report, the UNS under the leadership of Salvador Abascal had decided to establish a colony in Baja California in the vicinity of Magdalena Bay on the Pacific Coast. In Mexico, Synarchist propaganda said that Japan would avenge all the crimes that the United States had committed. One of the public rationalizations for this colonization project was that the UNS claimed to fear the U.S. might annex the peninsula on the alleged pretext that the Japanese might establish a naval base in the Bay of Magdalena. However, the reality was just the opposite. As Alfredo F. Díaz Escobar, a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies asserted, "the colonization of Lower California was a German and Japanese concern."

On Oct. 15, 1941, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies had voted unanimously against the UNS colonization project. However, the Japanese lobbied the government of Avila Camacho to give the UNS permission to set up the colony and Camacho agreed. Had the war gone the other way, this decision would have laid the basis for a post-Pearl Harbor Axis offensive against the U.S. from Mexico.

A declassified report issued by Earl S. Piper, Assistant Naval Attaché, Mexico City, on March 3, 1942, includes the following source report: "Portes Gil, together with General Abelardo Rodríguez, brought about the Presidential decree permitting the Sinarquistas to colonize in Lower California. On January 26, 1942, a General Félix Ireta, who had been paid 50,000 pesos by Dr. Tsuru [Japanese leader in Mexico], called on President Camacho and succeeded in having Japanese funds unfrozen and in placing a Japanese in charge of distributing money for the transportation of Sinarquistas to Lower California. The Japanese ex-minister, Yoshiaki Miura, revealed that the Sinarquistas would be used by the Japanese Government in an armed movement against some of the southwestern states of the United States. In Arizona and California there are approximately 45,000 Sinarquista sympathizers and followers. In November, 1941, a large fund was set aside in the Japanese Legation here to be used as 'expenses' in these two states. The Japanese Legation has paid large sums of money to the Sinarquistas in Mexico." Although this report was not substantiated at the time it was written, it should be noted that Harold Braman had identified the former Mexican President Lic. Emilio Portes Gil, as a sub-chief of the UNS.

The Japanese-Nazi cooperation in this project is indicated by two further reports. According to Mario Gill, Salvador Abascal was aided in setting up the colony by two individuals, one of whom was a Japanese and the other a German Nazi. The Japanese was José de Jesús Sam López, the son of a Japanese father, who was educated in Japan and who returned to Mexico only two months after the founding of the UNS, at which point he immediately joined the movement. He travelled with Abascal to the colony in Baja California.

Abascal also had a personal secretary with blond hair and blue eyes who they said was Antonio Sam López, the half brother of Jesús Sam López, the son of the same Japanese father and a German mother. In reality, Antonio Sam López was a member of the directorate of the Nazi Party in Mexico, a Mr. Hans Trotter.

In addition, Abascal was aided in setting up the colony by a German engineer by the name of Wiegman. A U.S. declassified document of Nov. 26, 1941 submitted by the above-mentioned American Vice Consul Turley, reports the following:

"On November 22, 1941 there arrived in this port one Pieter Theodore Wiegman, Ingenieur Agronome, a Dutch (or perhaps German) colonization and agricultural engineer. This man was accompanied by Pedro Varges Covarrubias, Felipe Vásquez Galvan, Priciliano Murillo, all Mexicans serving as guides and interpreters. Wiegman has an American wife, left Europe four to five months ago and has a visitor's visa from the American Consulate in Lisbon. He speaks German, Swiss, French and English.

"To obtain needed data and cooperation from local authorities, Wiegman had a photostatic copy of a letter from Governor Mújica to Lic. Biarent, Secretario General del Gobierno, dated Nov. 6, 1941 ... introducing him and requesting that all necessary assistance be given him. The governor stated that the engineer was recommended to him by Lic. Abascal, visible head of the Sinarquista movement, to carry out a mission in Baja California. The mission is said to be the survey and organization of the movement of the Sinarquistas to the area of Santo Domingo and the Llanos de Irai, both north of Magdalena Bay. Wiegman is an agriculture expert and is to classify the lands for the above mentioned project."

3. UNS Subversion of the United States
As documented above, the UNS was very active in the United States and represented a direct threat to U.S. national security and the war effort. According to Mario Gill and Betty Kirk, the Synarchist movement was officially registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as alien agents. According to Gill,

"Brigades of propagandists were deployed to the states of California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana and Illinois. The Synarchist propaganda, prepared for export in the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, began to be distributed profusely in the United States, but with preference in the states of the southwest, where there existed a Mexican population of more than one quarter million. This campaign culminated in the 'zoot suiters' disorders in Los Angeles in June 1943."

According to Kirk, at first Mexican citizenship was a requirement for membership, but after a few months this was changed to Mexican descent, so that the UNS could infiltrate into Mexican communities in the United States. The process began with the establishment of the Southern California Regional Committee at Los Angeles on Nov. 1, 1937. A year later a Regional Committee was organized at El Paso, Texas. According to Enrique Prado, in total there were four Regional Committees, the other two in Bakersfield, California and in McAllen, Texas. As many as 50 local committees were established.

As of August 1941 there were 3-4,000 hard-core Sinarquistas in the United States. Although some consider his estimate an exaggeration, in an article in The Nation on April 3, 1943, Díaz Escobar stated: "I assert, unreservedly, that the Sinarquistas have in California today—United States California—a powerful unit of 50,000 members, well organized and looking to the Sinarquista Central Committee in Mexico for orders."

The March 26, 1942 issue of El Sinarquista reports meetings in El Paso, Montoya, Borderline, and McAllen, Texas; Las Barrancas, New Mexico, Indiana Harbor, Indiana; and of donations from Fresno, Bakersfield, Fowler, and Richmond, California. The May 14 issue reported meetings at Antioch, Los Angeles, Fresno, Bellavista, Bakersfield, Stockton, La Verne and San Bernardino, California.

According to a declassified document submitted by Assistant Naval Attaché Harold P. Braman on March 30, 1942, the two most important Sinarquistas in the United States were S.G. Vásquez and R.B. Arnaiz, with offices in the Wilcox Building, 206 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, California. Braman also lists branches of the Sinarquistas in U.S. cities, which contributed funds to the UNS colonization scheme in Lower California. These include:

Dec. 26, 1941: San Diego, Azuza, Oxnard, Watts, Wilmington, Los Angeles, Claremont, La Verne, Pomona, San Fernando, Ontario, Pacoima, San Bernardino.

Dec. 30: Antioch, Calif.; McAllen, Tex.

Jan. 7, 1942: Indiana Harbor, Indiana, El Paso, Tex.; Santa Ana, Calif.

Jan. 26: Clint, Tex.; Pittsburg, Calif., Fresno, Calif., other places in California: Fowler, Richmond, Antioch, Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Wilmington, Pacoima, La Verne, San Fernando, Ontario, San Pedro, Oxnard, Watts, Los Angeles.

Jan. 30: El Paso, Tex.

Feb. 13: Bakersfield, Richmond, Calif.

Feb. 16: Oxnard, Calif.; and Chicago, Ill.

Feb. 21: Bakersfield, Fowler, and Pittsburg, Calif.

Feb. 26: Indiana Harbor, Ind.; Antioch, Calif.

Mar. 3: Chicago, Edinburg, Weslaco, and McAllen, Tex.; San Francisco, Calif.

In Los Angeles, the UNS published a special edition of El Sinarquista. They were aided by such figures as Jesús M. Jiménez, whom President Cárdenas exiled for Gold-Shirt and Nazi activities, and by members of German and Italian organizations dissolved after Pearl Harbor.

Gill also says that the Synarchists were supported by the National Union of Social Justice, the organization of Father Charles E. Coughlin of Royal Oak, Michigan, who was an opponent of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Coughlin's magazine, Social Justice, gave official backing to the UNS on Sept. 29, 1941:

"Advocates of Christian social justice in America, Christian Americans who once dreamed of a national union to effect a 16 point reform, and who have watched the progress of the Christian States headed by Salazar, De Valera, General Franco and Mussolini, will want to hear further from Mexico's Sinarchists with their '16 principles' of social justice."

Coughlin's Social Justice magazine, which expressed pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic views, was suspended in 1942 for violation of the Espionage Act, by U.S. Attorney General Biddle.

The UNS was also received favorably by several important pro-fascist clerical weeklies published in the Southwest. La Esperanza, published by the Claretian Fathers in Los Angeles, and Revista Católica, a Jesuit weekly put out in El Paso, both of which supported Franco, frequently covered the UNS favorably.

In April 1943 four Synarchist organizers, Roberto Carriedo, Efrain Pardo, Alfonso Trueba, and Juan Ignacio Padilla, toured the United States. Both Trueba and Padilla were founding members of the UNS, Trueba its chief of propaganda and an editor of El Sinarquista, Padilla was in charge of the Baja California colonization project and an editor of the paper. The tour was sponsored by the Inter-American Catholic Institute of Washington, D.C., an organization headed by Bishop Edwin V. O'Hara of Kansas City.

But the UNS's fascist activity in the United States was not received favorably by all. In November 1942, the CIO Union Council of Los Angeles conducted a study of UNS activity and then passed a resolution characterizing the Sinarquistas as an "evil influence among Mexican workers in the United States whose program coincides with that of Franco's Fascist Spanish regime." The resolution continued: "The Sinarquistas are telling the Mexican people in the United States not to enlist in war activities, such as Civilian Defense and the Red Cross, not to purchase war bonds, and in general not to support this country's war effort, because the 'Mexican people have nothing to gain from an Allied victory.'"

In Chicago, the offices of an anti-Synarchist Mexican organization were invaded and wrecked by an armed mob of Sinarquistas in late 1942. In places as far north as the Bronx, New York, Synarchist agents were arrested for inciting Mexican-Americans to treason.

4. Faction Fights Within Synarchism

The Pearl Harbor Effect
Just as there was an extraordinary paradigm shift in the United States immediately following the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, a similar sudden shift occurred in Mexico, and affected the future direction of the UNS. This shift was accentuated by the fact that on Nov. 19, 1941, just 17 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Good Neighbor Agreement was signed with the United States, and a framework set up for the settlement of the oil question.

The Good Neighbor Agreement was the concrete realization of the Good Neighbor Policy of which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had spoken in December 1932, and then again in his Inaugural Address on March 1, 1933. The most important aspect of the agreement was that the United States officially recognized Mexico's sovereign ownership of its subsoil wealth. The agreement contained six points: 1) an evaluation of the expropriated oil properties; 2) Mexico agreed to satisfy all outstanding claims of U.S. citizens for revolutionary damage and expropriated properties, through the payment of $40 million over 14 years; 3) negotiation of a reciprocal trade agreement; 4) the U.S. Treasury would stabilize currency through the purchase of Mexican pesos, and would buy Mexican silver at the fixed rate of 35¢ an ounce, renewing the arrangement it had prior to the oil expropriations; and 6) the U.S. Export-Import Bank would open credits to the Mexican government. The first credits were to expand the network of highways from border to border and from coast to coast.

In this connection, there were also significant moves made in the Mexican Congress to counter the UNS. On Oct. 14, 1941, Alfredo Félix Díaz Escobar, in a congressional debate on Synarchism, called the UNS a fascist fifth column in Mexico. Then on Nov. 30, 1941, after the signing of the Good Neighbor Agreement and a little more than a week before Pearl Harbor, the Mexican Congress approved the constitution of a group to resist the "regressive tendencies represented by the UNS," the National Anti-Synarchist Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Comité Nacional Antisinarquista y en Defensa de la Democracia).

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in the wake of the U.S. recognition of Mexico's rights in the oil expropriations, the entire picture changed in Mexico. On Dec. 8, 1941, Mexico broke relations with Japan and on Dec. 12 with Germany and Italy, upon which Mexico had previously depended to sell its oil.

In May 1941, the UNS asserted that pan-Americanism concealed American imperialism and reasserted its intention to create an international bloc of Hispanic-American states to oppose the United States. However, after Pearl Harbor, Antonio Santacruz, the chief of the Base, which controlled the UNS, told the followers of UNS leader Salvador Abascal: "We must agree with the United States—because since Pearl Harbor it is a matter of life or death...."

On Dec. 12, 1941, the Base effectively overthrew Salvador Abascal and replaced him with Manuel Torres Bueno.

On May 14, 1942, the Nazis sank the Mexican tanker, the Potrero de Llano, off the coast of Florida, and on May 17, a second tanker, the Faja de Oro. On May 28, the Chamber of Deputies approved a declaration of war. On May 30, the Senate followed. And on June 1, President Avila Camacho signed the decrees declaring that Mexico had been at war since May 22. In November 1942, all members of Congress subscribed to the formation of the National Anti-Nazi, Anti-Fascist Committee, which was an enlargement of the National Anti-Synarchist Committee for the Defense of Democracy. The president of the committee was Díaz Escobar.

One article in the constitution of this Committee read as follows:

"Given the documentary proof which we possess, we consider Sinarquismo and other organizations affiliated with it a fifth column which follows in Mexico the lead of the Falange Española and uses Nazi-Fascist tactics."

After Pearl Harbor, although the Catholic Church was no less pro-Falange, it came under increasing pressure to at least publicly rein in the UNS, as is clear from Santacruz's statement. The leadership of the Church could see the handwriting on the wall. Therefore, under pressure from the United States and from political forces within Mexico, it attempted to give the impression that it was breaking from the Falange, and even lied that it had nothing to do with either the UNS or the National Action Party (PAN), both of which it controlled through the secret Church-Falange Council or the Base.

A now declassified U.S. intelligence document authored on March 30, 1942 by Naval Attaché Harold Braman shows how the Mexican Catholic Church used a Spanish Monarchist later exposed as a Falangist to give Washington this impression:

"The Catholic Church of Mexico which has had an important role in the building up of the Sinarquista movement in this country is about to throw aside its cooperation with the Falange in the direction of the group and will assume full control of the Sinarquistas as soon as 'convenient,' according to the Marqués de Castellón, representative here of the Spanish Monarchist-Catholic group.

"While this statement must be accepted with full reserve, the Marqués has excellent connections with the Church and is working here in close collaboration with the local representative of the National Catholic Welfare Conference of Washington, D.C. The Marqués states that the latter, whose name is Saavedra, is the 'inside man' on the matter and is waging a successful campaign to bring all Church dignitaries into line to agree on a detailed program for support of and direction of the Sinarquistas.

"The role of the Church in the Sinarquista Union has, to date, been a highly suspicious one. Local priests have long been known to supply lists of 'recommended' names for membership in the Union. The Falange, which directs the Axis propaganda work in the Union and its secret ally, the Acción Nacional, has had such a close connection with Archbishop of Mexico and various key Bishops that all Church activity in relation to the Sinarquistas has been suspected.

"It is the claim of the Spanish Monarchists, however, that the Archbishop has been 'using' the Sinarquistas for the advantage of the Church by 'playing along' with the Union and the Falange in order to ferret out the principal backers and leaders, obtain full information on the program, and gain control of the funds, to the end that full directional control of the union might be placed under the Church, either outwardly or secretly."

According to historian Alan Chase, in May 1942, this source was discredited when a dossier was presented which showed that he was not Spanish, but a Mexican named Luis Sevilla. In 1931 he sailed for Spain while out on bail pending charges of swindling a sum of money from General Limón. During the Spanish Civil War he worked in Marseilles, France as an agent of General Franco's Secret Service, posing as an agent of the Spanish Monarchist Party. He came to Mexico in 1939 and maintained relations with Serrano, Franco's official representative. When the dossier was presented, he disappeared.

The March 30, 1942 report continues: Abascal

"resigned recently after his arrest by the police on a charge of saying insulting things about the Mexican Army. Abascal denied the charge and was later released, but the incident embarrassed the Trueba Olivares brothers, who really run the Union and founded it for the Nazis, [and they] decided to send him to Lower California as Chief of the Colonization project there."

"One hundred thirty-two leftist deputies and forty senators of the National Congress have formed a 'National Anti-Sinarquista Committee for the Defense of Democracy' and have signed statements claiming the Union is against the democratic countries and liberalism. They charge that Sinarquismo is the 'real fifth Column of Mexico' and that it is working with the Spanish Falange.

"On March 3, 1942, this new Committee came out openly on the Church question by stating publicly that the Union is acting 'within' the 'Catholic Clergy,' that it is a political organization very similar to Spanish Fascism such as the Spanish Traditionalist Falangists, and that there was connection between all of these groups.

"In response, the Bishop of Guadalajara, Monsignor Garibi Rivero, issued a statement through the office of the Archbishop of Mexico, stating that the Church has nothing whatever to do with the Sinarquistas or the Acción Nacional...."

UNS Taken Over by Anti-Roosevelt
Anglo-American Faction
According to Mexican author Mario Gill, after the Nazi defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad on Feb. 2, 1943, it was clear that the synarchists' future did not lie with the Axis powers, but rather with an adaptation to a pro-Franco, fascist faction in the United States. Under these conditions, the UNS was steered away from its openly anti-Yankee, pro-Axis direction, by the intervention of an anti-Roosevelt, Anglo-American imperialist faction spearheaded by Cardinal Francis J. Spellman of New York and Bishop Fulton Sheen, both of whom are mentioned favorably by Harvard's Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington in his 2004 book Who Are We?.

These two U.S. Church leaders, both of whom were allies of CIA director Allen Dulles and his deputy James Jesus Angleton, worked with the Base in Mexico to reorient the UNS towards a universal form of fascism under the guise of a New Christian Social Order.

Mario Gill's thesis, which Héctor Hernández attempts to refute, was also the assessment of El Popular, the newspaper of the Confederation of Mexican Workers, which in its Dec. 14, 1943 issue wrote as follows:

"There is no doubt that the recent visit to Mexico of Msgr. Sheen, the pro-fascist 'black leader' of North American clericalism, contributed towards obtaining the conversion of the Mexican Synarchists to a new policy in tune with the demands of the situation of the new world."

According to Gill, "Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen came to Mexico to assist at the Eucharistic Congress in Tulancingo, Hg. During his stay in the country he lodged at the house of Father Iglesias and it is known that he celebrated a series of conferences with the political leadership of the church, the mentors and confessors of the leading Synarchists. Upon his return to the U.S. in Nov. 1943 he made some declarations to the press in Washington in which he affirmed the following: 'What Mexico needs is a revolution; no revolution has been less revolutionary than that of Mexico; the corruption in this country is scandalous and total.... [O]nly the religious faith of the people and their Catholic tradition can save Mexico.'" Sheen made this statement in the middle of World War II against the government of a wartime ally of the United States.

Gill stressed that Sheen's views coincided exactly with those of the UNS and the PAN. Gill pointed out that Sheen, Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, and the Rev. Jerome P. Holland represented a faction in the U.S. Catholic Church which wanted to establish a New Christian Order in America. Spellman was known as one of those who had fought on behalf of Franco, in the United States. Holland was the chief editor of the Catholic newspaper The Tablet in Brooklyn, N.Y. On May 8, 1943, fresh from his trip to Mexico with Sheen, Father Holland published the Sinarquistas' 16-point program. In the same issue, he defended the Franco regime.

This grouping in the U.S. Catholic Church is the old network of William F. Buckley, Sr. and the Morgan interests, who had been deeply involved in attacking the Mexican government and encouraging the Cristero Rebellion from the turn of the century. Since 1921, Buckley had worked with Thomas W. Lamont of J.P. Morgan to form the American Association of Mexico. In November 1921, he had been expelled from Mexico for "counterrevolutionary conspiracy" by President Alvaro Obregón. It was Buckley who had encouraged René Capistrán Garza, the military head of the National League, to meet Nicholas Brady, president of the New York Edison Company and the United Electric Light and Power Company, to obtain funding for the Cristeros.

Before Pearl Harbor, William F. Buckley, Sr. promoted Standard Oil executive Nelson Rockefeller, whose company sold oil to the Nazis, to head the Office of Coordination of Inter-American Affairs. His son, William F. Buckley, Jr. was assigned in 1952 by James Jesus Angleton, director of counterintelligence for the CIA under Allen Dulles, to set up the first CIA office in Mexico City.

Before the war, both Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles of the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, had represented Schröder, Rockefeller and Company, an investment bank, whose partners included Avery Rockefeller, nephew of John D. Rockefeller, Baron Bruno von Schröder in London and Kurt von Schröder of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Gestapo in Cologne, Germany. Alan Dulles was himself a board member.

The Spellman-Sheen operations in Mexico are totally coherent with the fact that after World War II, Alan Dulles, who had headed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operations in Germany and who worked with Angleton, head of the OSS in Italy, protected his Nazi collaborators. Members of the Nazi SS leadership were spirited out of Germany via the "Rat Line," first to Italy and then to Franco's Spain, whence they escaped to Ibero-American countries. It is estimated that by 1950, about 16,000 Nazi immigrants were living in Spain.

Spellman and Sheen, both of whom supported Franco, were part of the corrupt elements in the Catholic Church, committed to imposing a form of "universal fascism" in the postwar period.

After ordination in 1919 and the receipt of two degrees from Catholic University of America in Washington in 1920, Sheen went to Louvain University in Belgium. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy and a "super-doctorate" in 1925. The University of Louvain was a center of support for the Cristeros. The Jesuit priest Alfredo Méndez Medina studied theology there, and was the ecclesiastical advisor to the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty. The two main offices of the International Union of the Friends of the League were located in Rome and Louvain. Reportedly, Sheen won the respect of G.K. Chesterton, the nominally Catholic "Distributionist" who in the June 8, 1933 issue of his publication GK's Weekly, endorsed Hitler's Nazi state.[3] During World War II, Spellman took Sheen under his wing. Sheen was also a personal friend of J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, and was known for his anti-communism.

In 1941, Cardinal Spellman had become the "Grand Protector" and "Spiritual Advisor" to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), the American association of which was created in 1927. The treasurer of the SMOM was none other than John J. Raskob, the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), who opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt in his campaign to win the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1932, and who in 1934, inspired by the French fascist Croix de Feu, and working closely with Morgan Bank's John Davis, was the principal financier of the fascist coup plot against FDR. William F. Buckley, Sr. and Nicholas Brady were both members of the SMOM. William F. Buckley, Jr. is also a member, as was James Jesus Angleton.

After Sheen's visit, the Fifth National Assembly of the Chiefs of the UNS occurred, also known as the Conference or Junta de los Volcanes. There, according to Gill, the UNS

"corrected some tactical errors which were observed by Sheen including their rabid hispanism and anti-Yankee positions hostile to the U.S. and the democracies. Synarchism proclaimed that it did not admit an anti-Yankee hispanism, just as equally they could not admit an anti-Spanish Pan-Americanism. The thesis of Hispanidad as political theory which synarchists wielded initially against North America, as per their conviction and interest and according to the suggestion of the Nazi-Falangist fifth column (inspired by the policy of the Ibero-American Institute of von Faupel) was replaced by the following: Continental unity will never be attained if one attempts to de-hispanize the people who are found to the south of the United States, for which reason Pan-Americanism and Hispanidad ought not to be counterposed; but rather should be suitably harmonized. We consider that the Christian culture and origin of America are the better bases for attaining the unity of the Continent."

According to Gill, "The new fascist strategy for America was not the establishment of a new Hitlerian order, but rather a new type of fascism directed by the Church; a clerical-corporative regimen, that is, the New Christian Social Order."

Gill went on to say that the UNS began to look for help from the more reactionary sectors of Anglo-American imperialism. All of the initial financiers of the UNS came from the philosophical and political camp of Hispanidad, "the brilliant theory of those who dream of the reconstruction of the empire of Philip II, those enamored of the old viceregal order." This is also the wet-dream of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement's (MSIA's) Fernando Quijano.[4]

"But at the end of 1943 the situation in the world had changed. The hope of a triumph of fascism in Europe had disappeared. To rely on a force which is collapsing is a tactical error, and the UNS expediently revised its line. In this strategic turn it had the important participation of Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, the pro-fascist Catholic prelate, one of the prophets in America of the New Christian Social Order. It is unquestionable that the intervention of Monsignor Sheen was not purely theoretical, he did not confine himself to giving the line and pointing out the new plans of action to the organization. It is indubitable that he also opened new sources to the economic advantage of the UNS. Unquestionably the result was that after the trip of Monsignor Sheen to Mexico, Torres Bueno, the national chief of the UNS, began to have funds in large amounts from anti-Rooseveltian imperialist sectors of the U.S."

Gill argues that the philosophical inspiration for the synarchist notion of the New Christian Social Order was the anti-Semitic fascist ideology of an Argentine priest, Julio Meinvielle (1905-73). Interestingly, Meinvielle's thinking has been promoted by Alejandro Peña, formerly associated with Lyndon LaRouche, but now a leader of the oppositon to President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, with connections into the exile Cuban community in Florida. Meinvielle's views were also advocated by the MSIA's Fernando Quijano.

5. Synarchism in the Post-War Period
The UNS from World War II to 1954
On Aug. 6, 1940 Salvador Abascal acceded to the leadership of the UNS. His father was a lawyer and a declassé landlord, who had been an important member of the Union Popular or the "U." Santacruz, the chief of the Base, had known Abascal since 1935, and nominated him as the new UNS leader. According to a now declassified report written by Harold Braman on March 30, 1942:

"The German agents had ... worked out a scheme for the Spanish Falangists in Spain to take over much of the active direction of the union, due to the desire to keep things on a Spanish language and culture basis, for public consumption. Abascal proved to be an ideal 'stooge' for leader, since he would take orders and he stood high with the Archbishop of Mexico.... [H]e was educated in the Seminario de Morelia at a time when the Rector was Luis María Martínez, now Archbishop of all Mexico. He formed a lasting friendship at the feet of this powerful church figure, and showed a fondness for aggressive church political work."

Abascal's pre-World War II predecessors included José Antonio Urquiza, who, although not an official chief of the UNS, became an icon of the group when he was assassinated on April 11, 1938. The UNS claimed that he was murdered under orders of President Cárdenas, although later it was disclosed that he was killed by one of his own peons. Nonetheless, he was treated by the UNS as a martyr, comparable to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange in Spain, who had the same first name.

José Trueba was officially the first chief of the UNS from its foundation until October 1938. He was followed by Manuel Zermeño Pérez until August 1940. He had been stabbed in the back following a Synarchist rally in Tepic on Jan. 12, 1939.

Abascal was an anti-Semitic fascist, thoroughly committed to overthrowing the Mexican Revolution, which he, like his fellow Synarchists, blamed on U.S. Ambassador Joel Poinsett's actions in 1822. Typical of his mentality are two books which he wrote long after he had left the leadership of the UNS, but while he continued to be a leader of the Base, La revolución antimexicana (The Anti-Mexican Revolution) (1978) and La constitución de 1917, destructora de la nación (The Constitution of 1917, the Destroyer of the Nation) (1984). Under his leadership, the UNS was rabidly anti-U.S. and pro-Falange.

While denying that he and the UNS were Nazis, Abascal spewed forth the anti-Semitic, anti-U.S. line concocted by the Nazi Wilhelm von Faupel's Ibero-American Institute in Berlin: "Only faithfulness to Hispanic culture, to Hispanidad, and to the political integration of all Hispanic America can free us from the hypocritical Judeo-Yankee imperialism, whose only objective is the destruction of our essence."

At the Third National Synarchist Meeting in October 1941, Abascal announced that he was going to head the colony in Baja California, and would hand over leadership of the UNS to Torres Bueno, who took over on Dec. 13, 1941. The colonization project, as we have demonstrated, was designed to serve the interests of the Axis powers. Torres Bueno was himself a close associate of the Nazi Helmuth Schreiter, and also of Abascal. However, after Pearl Harbor, Torres Bueno came under severe pressure from Santacruz and the Supreme Council of the Base, to change the line of the UNS and not to provide Abascal with the resources needed for the colonization project to succeed.

In December 1942, Abascal returned to Mexico City and began to speak publicly in opposition to the shift which was taking place in the UNS. In July 1943, he read some issues of El Sinarquista, in which the names of Hidalgo and Morelos, two Catholic priests who were the leaders of the Mexican Independence movement, whom he regarded as traitors, were placed at the same level as Emperor Iturbide, who was in his view, and the view of Jesuit operative Bernard Bergoend, one of Mexico's greatest heroes. Abascal also disagreed with the characterization in El Sinarquista of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy as "absolutely sincere." Abascal saw the United States as the enemy of Mexico, and stated: "I have never believed in the Good Neighbor Policy, nor will I ever, until the United States converts to Catholicism."

In 1943, Alfonso Trueba, the editor of El Sinarquista, was replaced, because he refused to print pro-American articles. In December 1943, Torres Bueno declared that Synarchism would support Pan-Americanism and continental unity. Abascal objected.

In April 1944, Abascal wrote to Torres Bueno: "I was equally very upset to learn about the exoneration of Benito Juárez, at last year's León rally." Abascal considered Juárez, who forged an alliance with U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War, and who became President of Mexico in 1867, to be a traitor. Torres Bueno broke with this commonly held Synarchist view as part of the UNS opportunist adaptation to the U.S.-led war effort.

Abascal also reproached Torres Bueno in a letter "for a most shameful act: putting on the same level the Christianity of the Mexican people with the 'Christianity' of the Protestant United States...." Abascal wrote that he thought "that our destiny was in our Hispanic culture and in the ideological battle against Yankee imperialism."

In 1944 Abascal was expelled from the UNS. José and Alfonso Trueba Olivares, among others, soon followed him.

However, due to the pressure of Abascal's criticism, the UNS was desperate to show that it had not sold out to the "imperialists" and abandoned its radical opposition to the Mexican Revolution. Therefore, Juan Ignacio Padilla, the deputy leader of the UNS, authored two articles in the June 22 issue of El Sinarquista: "This is no government" and "Synarchism appeals to the Army." The first declared that President Camacho was under the influence of forces bent on Sovietizing the government, and the second was a seditious appeal to the Army to prevent a communist coup. In the latter article, Padilla wrote:

"We have raised an army of five hundred thousand soldiers who are resolved to give Mexico a government with real authority. Can a regime be called a government when it is presided over by a man who prefers to abandon his people to the mercy of vultures in order not to annoy the vultures?"

This appeal to the Army was written in response to rumors of a general strike organized for July 5, in the event that a labor dispute at Puebla was not solved. Padilla declared that this strike was insurrectionary.

The government immediately imposed a ban on Synarchist meetings in the eight states which were its stronghold. The ban was extended within a week to all 28 states. El Sinarquista was suspended and its editor, Juan Ignacio Padilla, was indicted on charges of abuse of the President, breach of the peace, violation of the law of the press, and treason. On July 5, the public prosecutor denounced Synarchism as a mixture of "Spanish and Italian fascism," of the "Jonsismo" of Ramiro Ledesma, and the traditionalism of Vázquez de Mella, two factional leaders of the Spanish Falange.

The seriousness of the UNS call to arms is further underscored by the fact that on April 10, 1944, a young lieutenant, José Antonio de la Lama y Rojas, on guard at President Camacho's private elevator in the National Palace, used his revolver at close range, although he failed to kill the President. Two days later, the lieutenant died of bullet wounds received while trying to escape from prison. Lombardo Toledano publicly produced photos of de la Lama with Father Sáenz, who, according to Mario Gill, was one of the Jesuit advisors to the UNS. The weekly Tiempo published a report of a memorial for de la Lama held April 14 at the UNS headquarters. Subsequently a bomb plot was foiled against Camacho, a couple of ex-Presidents, and other officals. The 20 conspirators admitted they were Synarchists.

In response to Padilla's appeal to the Army, Capt. Castañeda Chevarría, a friend of de la Lama's, urged recruits in one training camp to mutiny.

In October 1944, the Base solicited Torres Bueno's resignation, but he refused. His proposed replacement, Gildardo González Sánchez, also refused to accept the position. The Base sent armed men to occupy the offices of the UNS, and accused Torres Bueno of embezzlement. At that point, Bueno, who had made the shift demanded of him by Santacruz, broke with his controllers.

In February 1945 the Supreme Council of the Base elected Carlos Athie Carrasco as the new national chief of the UNS, thus creating two organizations: the UNS-MTB and the UNS-CAC.

Bueno was replaced in his faction in May 1945 by his friend, Gildardo González Sánchez, who remained the chief of the UNS-MTB for two years.

According to Gill, the UNS-CAC group gained control of the newspaper El Sinarquista. The UNS-MTB group published a new newspaper, Orden. Athie had to abandon his position soon afterward, as a result of his being accused of robbing the Banco Internacional Inmobiliario. He was replaced by Hernán Leal Zetina.

In February 1946, the UNS-MTB faction entered electoral politics with the Partido Fuerza Popular (Popular Force Party), despite the fact that the UNS had always eschewed electoral politics. Enrique Morfín González was the first president of the party, which published its own newspaper, El Poder. In this first foray into electoral politics, only one candidate won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, but this deputy resigned from the UNS-MTB before one year and became a high-ranking government employee. The UNS-MTB claimed electoral fraud.

Dissatisfaction with Bueno's subservience to the government resulted in the replacement of González Sánchez by Luis Martínez Narezo from April 1947 until 1949. This change was welcomed by Abascal and by José Vasconcelos.

Once again, the UNS-MTB returned to its militant anti-government ways. In December 1948, members of the Popular Force staged a rally before the statue of Benito Juárez in the Alameda Central of Mexico City, during which they put a black hood on the head of Juárez. The registration of the Popular Force Party was cancelled one month later, on Jan. 28, 1949. The decision read as follows:

"The unpatriotic activities of the Popular Force Party, its confessional nature, its campaign of proselytism based on stirring up religious feelings, its ardent desire to modify the political organization of the country by means of violence, longing for times that have definitvely gone, and the resemblance of its structure to fascism, have been undeniably established by the sad events of 19 December at the Juárez Hemiciclo, perpetrated by Popular Force and the UNS."

In 1950, Martínez Narezo was replaced by Juan Ignacio Padilla himself. Under Padilla's leadership, Orden continued to editorially attack "Yankee imperialism" and the materialist domination of the Anglo-Saxons.

The opposing faction continued to publish El Sinarquista, under the direction of Hernán Leal Zetina, who accused Padilla of having gone into the camp of the communists, for his attacks on the United States during the Cold War. According to Gill, it was evident that the faction in the United States which had previously been financing Torres Bueno, was now financing the group of Leal Zetina. El Sinarquista was the only newspaper in Mexico which dared to support the signing of the Mexican-North American Military Assistance Treaty.

In 1954, there was another attempt to form a political party—Partido de la Unidad Nacional (Party of National Unity)—but it was denied recognition on Oct. 28, 1954, because it did not have the number of members required by law. On May 23, 1954 the Synarchists celebrated their 17th anniversary. Padilla was succeeded as national chief of the UNS by Martínez Aguayo, who himself was followed by Ignacio González Gollaz, David Lomelí Contreras, and David Orozco Romo.

In 1954, according to Gill: "The UNS has been converted into an organization more dangerous than before." The UNS created a series of primary schools and initiated the following institutes: el Instituto Nacional de Capacitación y Adiestramiento Sinarquista (INCAS) Adrián Servín, in Mexico City; the Instituto Regional de Capacitación José Antonio Urquiza (IRCJAU), in the city of Querétaro; and the Instituto Regional de Capacitación Teresita Bustos (IRCTB) for women in Celaya, Guanajuato.

According to Gill, the synarchist institutes were military, confessional schools of the medieval type, and the purpose of the synarchist reorganization in 1954 was to take Mexico over from within, and to impose a form of clerical synarchist fascism.

The UNS Today
Today, the 1945 split in the UNS continues, as is reflected in the fact that there are two UNS websites. The first, http://sinarquismo.americas.tripod.com, is the website of the UNS-MTB faction, which was headed by Padilla in 1951. Their publication continues to be Orden. This faction provides the following brief history:

In 1971 they promoted the Partido Demócrata Mexicano. In 1982 its Presidential candidate, Ignacio González Gollaz received more than 500,000 votes. In 1988, Magaña Negrete received almost 700,000 votes, but "Salinas the Usurper" (Carlos Salinas de Gortari) threatened that if the UNS did not recognize him as the elected President, the party would lose its registration. When they refused to to so, they lost their registration.

In 1992-96, a group of leaders corrupted the internal life of the UNS and provoked a crisis. This resulted in the disappearance of the PDM. They renounced the UNS and formed a new party, the Party of Social Alliance (PAS), with ex-PANistas, and followers of ex-President José López Portillo.

In 1996, Leonardo Andraca Hernández became the national chief. Under his leadership, this faction of the UNS focussed on the reconstruction of the movement, with the aim of recovering the nationalist and popular vision of the movement.

In 2000, it was determined that the movement would end electoral participation and focus on internal reconstruction and on returning to its foundations. In 2002, they opened a new period of intense social action. Lic. Magdaleno Hernández Yáñez is the current national chief.

The other group, which is a continuation of the Base-controlled UNS-CAC faction and continues to publish El Sinarquista, has the following website: http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/Senate/9136. [Editor's note: this website was inactive as of July 15, 2004.] In April 1996, Clemente Gutiérrez Pérez became national chief.

Gutiérrez Pérez gave an interview on June 27, 2002 to FalangeHoy (Falange Today). Virtually all of the views expressed in this interview are identical with those advocated by Fernando Quijano and Marvilia Carrasco of the MSIA. Gutiérrez Pérez said that the aim of the UNS is to restore the Christian Social Order, based on the social doctrine of the Church. The UNS rejects Liberation Theology and claims to reject the sede vacante ("empty chair") position that Pope John Paul II is not legitimate. They have inherited the ideals of the Cristeros and the ACJM, and regard the Mexican Revolution as Satanic and Jacobin.

Asked about the attitude of the UNS toward Mexican President Vicente Fox, he said that members of the UNS looked favorably on Fox, who is a member of the PAN, but Fox has not fulfilled any of his promises. Specifically, Fox has obeyed the dictates of internationalist groups and has not acted against the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Gutiérrez Pérez says only benefits the neighbor to the North. (Actually, as EIR has shown, NAFTA benefits neither the United States nor Mexico, but only the bankers and corporate looters that are preying on both nations.)

Like Abascal and the early Synarchists, he blames 19th-Century U.S. Ambassador Poinsett for establishing masonic lodges in Mexico, which imposed a republican system totally foreign to the Mexican form of corporative life, which derives from the colonial epoch.

Gutiérrez Pérez then reviewed the organizations in Mexico and internationally with which his faction of the UNS works. In Mexico, they have relations of solidarity, mutual support, and some activities in common with the Catholic Party and the National Catholic Movement of Christ the King.

In Spain, they work with an entire array of Falangist organizations: the Falange Española Tradicionalista de las JONS (Juntas Ofensivas Nacional-Sindicalista), Falange Española Independiente, la Comunidad Tradicionalista, Juventudes Tradicionalistas Españolas, and Fuerza Nueva.

In Argentina: Patria Argentina.

In the United States: groups of radical Mexicans and a group of exiled Cubans.

In England: the International Third Position and the Voice of St. George.

The significance of this network identified by Gutiérrez Pérez, is that it parallels the network of the MSIA. Of particular importance is the fact that the UNS collaborates with Fuerza Nueva, which is the pro-Franco fascist party of Blas Piñar, which he founded in 1966 with the idea of "keeping alive the ideals of July 18, 1936," the date on which Francisco Franco Bahamonde led a mutiny in Spanish Morocco against the Republic of Spain, which launched the Spanish Civil War. During Franco's lifetime, Piñar, who was a protégé of Adm. Carrero Blanco, second in command after Franco, headed the Hispanic Culture Institute.

As EIR has documented, after the Tlaxcala, Mexico conference in 1992 during which the MSIA was founded, Marivilia Carrasco travelled to Spain to meet Blas Piñar. Afterwards she returned to Mexico and, along with her controller in the United States, Fernando Quijano, steered the MSIA in the direction of an alliance with Blas Piñar and his network of European and Ibero-American synarchist fascists, who currently represent the terrorist threat to the U.S. identified by Lyndon LaRouche.

The International Third Position is the organization of Roberto Fiore, who fled to Great Britain after the 1980 train bombing in Bologna, Italy. Fiori has since founded a new organization in Italy called Forza Nuova, which is close to Blas Piñar's Fuerza Nueva, and in Italy is allied politically with Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Il Duce.

On Nov. 16-17, 2002, the Falange Española and Blas Piñar's Fuerza Neuva held a meeting in Madrid, attended by Roberto Fiori and also by former Argentine Army Capt. Gustavo Breide Obeid of the Popular Party for Reconstruction, whose brother had attended the Tlaxcala MSIA conference. Alejandro Peña of Venezuela sent a message of support to a follow-up meeting on Jan. 26, 2003.

The MSIA is also known to have been in contact with the director of Patria Argentina.

Moreover, it is now confirmed that during the 1990s, Marivilia Carrasco and the leadership of the MSIA were in direct contact with Salvador Abascal, who visited their office in Mexico City on several occasions before his death in the year 2000.

The MSIA also maintained direct contact with Salvador Borrego, the leading anti-Semitic synarchist ideologue in Mexico today, who was a close collaborator of Abascal. Borrego wrote for Abascal's bimonthly publication La Hoja del Combate (Combat Newsletter), which was established in 1968. The prologue to one of his most popular books, Derrota Mundial (World-wide Defeat), was written by José Vasconcelos, the pro-Nazi member of the secret Falangist Council of Hispanidad, which controlled the UNS.

To continue with the interview, Gutiérrez Pérez, as could be expected, expressed total opposition to the atheistic Marxist system and to liberal capitalism. His alternative is the Spanish Falange, whose founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was also a favorite of Fernando Quijano, who used to have a photo of Gen. Francisco Franco on his office wall.

Although supportive of Spain's former Prime Minister, José María Aznar, Gutiérrez Pérez criticized Spain for working with Anglo-Saxons and Arab countries, rather than focussing on the relation of the Spanish motherland with its former colonies.

Like the MSIA leaders, he looks favorably to the period of the Spanish Reconquest against the Moors, and attacks the Bourbon Monarchs, i.e., Carlos III, for what he says was their purely mercantile emphasis.

Gutiérrez Pérez said that he cannot deny that Synarchism took some elements from the Nazis and