Conservative-Clerical Utopia in Mexico: the Synarquista Movement

Abstract

The radical revolution 1910—1917 in Mexico, gave rise to a powerful conservative movement, supported by the masses in regions where revolutionary changes had conflicting results, contributing to the formation of a kind of Mexican “Vendée”. Such a region was the center of the country — Bajio, which became the scene of sharp clashes in the 1920s, which resulted in the civil war of the cristeros, who raised their arms after the adoption of anti-church legislation. After the defeat of the cristeros, the leadership in confronting the revolutionary government shifted to the Synarchist movement, which rejected violence as a form of political struggle. Synarchism in the 1930s — 1940s turned into the most influential and massive political force of the opposition, representing integralist Catholicism, hispanism, traditionalism in ideology and a combination of totalitarian practices with the rejection of the struggle for power. The movement declared itself a “crusade” against world Jewry, liberalism and communism, felt itself a messianic asceticism. It was able to mobilize, under millenarian slogans, the masses of the peasant and urban population of Mexico. The Synarchists embarked on their utopian social project for a truly Catholic society through the creation of the colony “María Auxiliadora” in Baja California. More than a thousand Synarchists took part in this venture. The collapse of this project and changes in the political situation in the country at the end of the 1940s led to the decline of the movement, and then its ban by the authorities. This work is devoted to the analysis of the ideology and political practice of Synarchismo, which occupied an important place in the history of the conservative popular movement in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular, in the 20th century.