Mexico's National Synarchist Movement

What defines the National Synarchist Movement? Why does it generate such profound opposition from powerful sectors? What makes major business interests and pro-capitalist factions through their political parties and associations target it so intensely? Why do groups connected to the old regime, with their supposedly social but genuinely authoritarian rhetoric, attack it so fiercely? And despite censorship, repression, and smear campaigns, how does it continue to emerge renewed, like the mythical Phoenix rising from its ashes?

The Movement was established on May 23, 1937, as a comprehensive POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND COMMUNITY organization.

Its ideological foundation rests on NATIONALIST, DEMOCRATIC, POPULAR, AND SOCIAL-COMMUNITY principles.

Historical Background

The established regime under Porfirio Díaz unified liberal and conservative forces to industrialize and modernize the nation. While technocrats successfully laid the groundwork for industrial capitalism, progress brought severe social injustices that were never adequately addressed.

Among the critics emerged the so-called "Social Catholics," a sector of social activists from Christian communities. Through unions, agricultural leagues, cooperatives, and mutual aid associations, along with independent media outlets like the newspaper El País, these groups fought back. They faced repression, exile, imprisonment, and even censorship from hierarchs who preferred to ignore the grave social injustices.

These groups, active in streets and rural areas, represented a minority within a Mexican Church that was financially ruined and focused during those years on reorganizing its structures after years of warfare and hostility from liberals, as well as opportunism from conservatives. Both factions eventually unified, as mentioned earlier.

In 1913, following Francisco I. Madero's Revolution, they convened what was then called the "Diet" (Parliament) of Zamora.

They proposed various measures to present to President Madero: the first laws protecting workers, medical services in mines and estates, mass literacy programs, and protection for children and widows.

These measures were constantly sabotaged by a pro-conservative sector concerned only with protecting their interests.

Madero's sudden assassination through General Huerta's coup d'état, a Porfirist general falsely allied with Madero, interrupted the assembly and divided Catholic sectors.

Fighting resumed. Zapata demanded agrarian rights, Villa in the north, Carranza allied with the Sonora Group, radical Jacobin liberals.

This group achieved victory at great cost in blood. They treacherously assassinated Zapata, Angeles, Villa, and many other popular leaders. Carranza unified all forces and proclaimed himself First Supreme Chief of the Revolution, supposedly under the constitutionalist banner allied with the Sonora Group.

Carranza was treacherously assassinated by Obregón, leader of the Sonora Group.

This group led a pro-capitalist Revolution with "popular" rhetoric. The generals acquired economic monopolies and political power in the regions they governed. Thus emerged the Revolutionary Caste that quickly became thoroughly corrupt.

Repression, cooptation, massacres, censorship characterized the era. (In 1922, Mexico City residents approached the then-mayoralty requesting potable water being sold by former generals turned businessmen. The mayor's response was to send police and soldiers. It became one of the first major massacres of the "revolutionary" Regime. An estimated 42 died, though exact numbers remain unclear as the press was co-opted by the Regime).

Calles was appointed president by the Sonora Group and founded the PNR (National Revolutionary Party). Under Lázaro Cárdenas, it would change its name to the Party of the Mexican Revolution and later to its current name (PRI), the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The 1917 Constitution promulgated by Carranza contained highly commendable social articles supported by most of the population. However, others were quite repressive or, in military hands, became tools of state control over communities.

One such article was Article 24 on religious freedom. Others concerned economic monopolies and the State's role.

Regime propaganda led people to believe these articles protected the "popular revolution" from clerical interests and capitalist classes.

However, the Regime created or protected its own religious groups and also protected economic monopolies owned by generals or civilian frontmen. Obregón, for example, owned banks and large companies in his home region. The same was true of the Tejeda family in Veracruz, or the landowners of Chiapas, or in Tabasco under Canabal's control.

This curious mixture of millionaire revolutionaries provoked several uprisings and growing opposition between authentic revolutionaries and social sectors not controlled by the Regime.

De la Huerta, Escobar, General Mujica, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, among others. The armed uprising of the so-called Cristeros stands out. Also notable was the civic opposition of Vasconcelos, De La Huerta's struggle demanding democratization and "regeneration" of the Revolution, accusing the Regime of appropriating the struggle and becoming millionaires with "socialist" rhetoric.

In this context, Lázaro Cárdenas assumed government in 1936 and, after feigning blind obedience to the Maximum Chief of the Revolution, General Calles, like three previous presidents.

Cárdenas called to reestablish revolutionary principles and cleanse public offices of corrupt opportunists, of "rightists" and "Traitors to the workers."

Cárdenas relied on unions and unified them under absolute State control. He did the same with the Press and Communications Media, notably radio, which came under control of what is now Televisa.

Business chambers, professional associations, neighborhood unions, agrarian entities, ejidos... everything under the control of the Official Party, the PRM.

Faced with the Stalinism (dogmatic Marxism) of many sectors affiliated with the Cardenist regime, young students proposed a social movement with social ideas as well, but with a democratic approach.

Consider the context: in 1937, Soviet socialism was the only correct path of dogmatic Marxisms.

Those opposed to Stalin were assassinated (like Trotsky). Promoters of democratic socialism or at least more participatory approaches were still far off.

But also, from the pro-capitalist Empires came grave threats: brutal and blatant interventionism by the United States, England, France against exploited and colonized nations.

Capitalism with a "human face" in advertising had a dirty soul: racism, labor exploitation, violence, corruption, human trafficking, mafias protected by politicians, corrupted parties.

In this scenario, the National Synarchist Movement emerged.

Foundation

Several groups converged for the Movement's foundation.

In the tense, clandestine environment, an organization called "La Base" (The Base) was born. It aimed to restore a democratic regime. However, its leaders lacked a concrete idea, platform, or anything that could be called a Political Project.

One of those branches, the 11th, focused on peasant organizations. One of the local leaders was Jose Antonio Urquiza Septién, son of small landowners. Educated, he had traveled to Europe for business and knew firsthand the various ideologies in vogue: fascism, national socialism, liberalism, still-functioning monarchies...

Ignored, tired, weary, he decided to seek another direction. He met Juan Ignacio Padilla and the Trueba Brothers.

These were from the Social Catholics line. Young students from the College of Guanajuato, they made time to organize artisans into cooperatives.

Urquiza invited them to meetings where enthusiasm grew for organizing a Party or Movement that would consider the longstanding proposals from the Diet of Zamora, cooperativism, and pro-democratic struggles already known in Mexico.

They contacted independent union fighters from León, and indigenous communities and ejido members or small rural landowners, displaced persons and landless peasants.

They also contacted student sectors promoting more active university participation in the nation's political and social life.

The composition was:

• Christian groups on a social line, cooperatives, promoters of agricultural leagues independent of the regime. Along this line were also some congregations like the Josephites or some Jesuits who in 1937 already proposed a much more committed stance with popular classes. However, it's important to emphasize the absolute separation and independence from the Catholic Church's hierarchical line. Such separation was always a fact, sometimes reaching conflict. As now, many clergy found union organizing and social struggles unbearable and "dangerous."
• Independent Unionists. Many workers refused to be used as crowds for official rallies, didn't want abuses from their "Leaders" who were often accomplices of the Boss, and when he expelled them, the official union backed the company and left the worker alone. Therefore, many excluded, unemployed workers decided to organize independently. There's a notable lack of bibliography on this, but it's worth reading authors like Chantal López and Omar Cortéz, or historian Nohemí Orozco, who describe the conflict between autonomist workers against official unions controlled by Cárdenas' Regime. In parallel, cooperativists, self-managers, mestizo or indigenous peasant communities.
• Indigenous and mestizo rural communities suffering under caciques of the Official Party (PRM-PRI).
• Political groups of nationalist line, concerned about American imperialism (Manifest Destiny Doctrine), Soviet interventionism, and nascent shows of militarism from powers like the Axis (1938).
• Citizens in general who believed a Social but democratic Regime was necessary.

On May 23, during a meeting of the local shoemakers' union, the promoters of the Idea took the floor: José Antonio Urquiza, Juan Ignacio Padilla, and a few others accompanying them. Juan Zambrano, the house owner and union promoter, proposed "New Mexico Party" as a name, but José Antonio had a proposal from a philosopher from San Luis Potosí, who suggested the Arkhé. The doctrine of the Just Medium, of social balance from the pre-Socratics.

He proposed calling it Synarchism as a movement that would strive for the Just Medium, balance, and as the new principle of a new society "on foundations of greater justice."

The Movement was defined as POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL

Its ideological line, as later embodied in the Manifesto, in the Basic Points, in the Platform of its historic Parties, the Popular Force (1946 to 1949) and the Mexican Democratic Party (1971-1996).

NATIONALIST, DEMOCRATIC, POPULAR, SOCIAL, COMMUNITARIAN

Three Enemies

1. The Cárdenas Regime and the so-called revolutionary court did not look favorably upon a popular, social movement that displaced their monopoly on union, communal, and popular participation.

So taking advantage of the pre-war atmosphere, they accused the MNS of being allies of Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, the United States, the Clergy, disgraced politicians, etc. By controlling the Press and Communications Media, as well as universities, the Regime managed to create the black legend that some naive people still believe despite Cárdenas himself never believing them. Here's evidence of Cárdenas visiting a Synarchist program a few years after leaving the Presidency of the Republic.

At this point in History, it should be clear that the PNR-PRM-PRI Regime had undeniable social advances (IMSS, INFONAVIT, labor legislation, among others). But it was also repressive, censorious, corrupt to the core. It had bloodthirsty caciques and brutal methods to destroy enemies.

Synarchism was clear in declaring it supported social reforms... But that they be implemented with dignity, authenticity, autonomy, and adherence to law.

The Regime's response and its official groups was brutal repression with over 300 synarchists murdered in the first 10 years of existence. Prisoners, exiles, expelled from their work or their plot, censored, attacked, repressed. Mutilated, beaten... The first to fall was José Antonio. Assassinated in 1938. On April 11.

When they saw all this didn't work, the Regime's henchmen turned to their allies.

2. The Right as Prostitute

Synarchism's ideological position, against dogmatic Marxism, was never one of defending privileges, nor capitalism, nor liberal democracy, nor traditional Right-wing claims.

No doubt sometimes the premise confused: "Neither left nor right, we will protest if we are pigeonholed in either revolution or counter-revolution, neither the red star of communists nor the swastika of Nazism. Mexico has its own symbols"

Because the ordinary thinking of the common citizen was (is) accustomed to seeing black and white, blue or red, capitalist or communist, left or right. Thus, without other alternatives or options.

The Right is understood as the stance and groups that assume defense of individual rights over community rights. That demands total economic freedom but with a State guardian of those rights. The Right assumes values of individuality and in a way, linked to puritanism and public sexual morality (because privately, they can be the greatest libertines without feeling any shame).

It's understood therefore that the Right is pro-capitalist, insofar as capitalism assumes such programs. Even so, there is a Social Right that cannot be labeled with this observation.

Moreover, in Mexico, no such thing existed.

Cárdenas' Regime ends and Manuel Avila Camacho follows. Classic representative of the Business Right, but with "leftist" political rhetoric. So for many years.

However, in 1939, a group of bankers, lawyers, and small businessmen, also heirs of La Base, decided to found a Party. The PAN.

This group had warned of the "danger" of Synarchism becoming independent from La Base. They, accustomed to conspiring from the comfort of their offices and used to negotiating with the Regime and caciques without any problem, saw it as foolish that the "boys" were organizing workers and peasants. They saw no sense in self-management struggles and even judged them dangerous.

Juan Ignacio, Salvador Abascal, Los Trueba, were accused of being mass agitators. Dangerous radicals. Even "red Christians."

Faced with that "danger," a gray but scheming character called "Don Antonio" dedicated himself to sabotaging the work.

He went to government offices and delivered real or invented information about the Movement. From him comes the famous "proof" spread by the CTM that Prof. Schreiter, an elderly German who had lived in Mexico since 1919 and taught accounting at the College of Guanajuato, was a dangerous Nazi spy.

He visited Bishops asking for excommunication of Synarchists. He visited the American Embassy demanding expulsion of Synarchists who were already organizing Mexican migrants in California and Chicago. (Among them, one would become famous later. Named César Chávez).

Don Antonio claimed to be very devout and asked that Synarchism become a pious association. That it evangelize and do prayer apostolates to "change Mexico."

Juan Ignacio said that the devil himself wouldn't hesitate to use Scripture to tempt the Savior, much less to use such noble ends as reason to fold arms and abandon the political-social struggle for Social Justice.

Don Antonio's few followers were nicknamed "rats." For being gray, conspirators in darkness, small-minded, and accustomed to filth.

Both the PAN and the Rats always waged a sometimes subtle and other times blatant fight against the National Synarchist Movement.

Although within the PAN there were MNS sympathizers. PAN nuclei that looked favorably upon a Social, Patriotic Movement, without Marxist dogmatisms, but with positions of self-management and democratic nationalism.

However, the PAN in general acted in very bad faith. In part, they participated in the fall of the PDM. The rats, in reality, never did anything. Except be the desired caricature by the Movement's adversaries to show it as "Proof" of the fanaticism, ignorance, and mediocrity of (pseudo) Synarchism.

For many years, in the General Archives of the Nation, existing information came from the rats, despite them never really doing much. For many years, they barely exceeded 100 members (one hundred). They managed to have two schools and gave some lectures.

The MNS reached 500,000 militants, we had cooperatives and some self-managed SMEs, we had unions, we had impact on social movements, for human rights, for democratic freedoms, etc. And curiously, there was NOTHING in the official archives.

Some authors, already in the 80s, wrote something. Meyer, Alonso, Serrano.

However, they mistake the rats for the Movement.

3. Ourselves

The Movement made several mistakes in its history. One of them was the lack of a solid layer of organic intellectuals. Intellectual doesn't mean an "enlightened one" who arrives, preaches, and leaves. Organic intellectual refers to the sector of idea production.

Although INCAS (National Institute of Adrián Servín Training) emerged, and others, we didn't manage to create a distinctly synarchist current of thought.

There were few outstanding thinkers: Magaña Negrete, for example. And it wasn't due to lack of talent, but because social militancy led many to privilege grassroots work over idea production. Publicly acknowledging this doesn't reveal weakness. Rather, it explains why we went through the crisis that almost led us to disappear and that fortunately, we are managing to rise from.

We are attempting to remedy this as part of the National Reconstruction Process.

Synarchism Today

In 1971 the PDM (Mexican Democratic Party) emerged. In 1979 it participated for the first time in elections and achieved local deputies and some mayors. By 1982, it participated with presidential candidate Ignacio González Gollaz, reaching 4th place in voting.

We governed several municipalities where a process of transparent, ethical, and community citizen participation developed.

With social, democratic vision, the tequio was implemented, budgets and decisions open to citizen participation, council sessions were opened for the first time in history.

When electoral victories weren't respected, comrades didn't hesitate to occupy town halls, to march, to peacefully take over city governments.

Repression, censorship, infiltrators... could do little. The PDM was advancing.

In 1988, Magaña Negrete was a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic.

The overwhelming victory of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas displaced us. Cárdenas won, but Salinas and the PRI committed electoral fraud. Faced with threats against the PDM, independence was chosen at whatever cost.

The cost was losing registration. And the plan was to give power to the PAN, much more aligned with Salinas and Neoliberalism than the PRI itself.

So it happened.

The Regime's plan was to fill the PDM with pseudo-leaders who pretended to be loyal PDMists, but who attacked Synarchism. And on top of that, in elections, worked for other parties.

From 1992, the PDM fell. Acts of corruption. Defections. Conflicts provoked from outside. In 1997 it participated for the last time in electoral campaigns.

The PAS. One sector founded the PAS.

Another sector decided to initiate a process of evaluation, analysis, study, about the MNS, its objectives, new scenarios and roles to play.

The PAS currently continues as a sector originating in Synarchism, but with a very different scheme. They've had ideological fluctuations that they'll have to explain.

They still keep trying to create another party, other local political groups, etc.

We, as the National Synarchist Movement, initiated a National Reconstruction Process that has allowed us to consolidate step by step a National Union of Rural Workers, cooperatives, solidarity economy projects, neighborhood unions, cultural work groups, critical education, among others.

We have much to achieve. But we keep advancing.

Among action programs is consolidating a Cadre School, improving work schemes and professionalizing community leadership.

In general, we call it SELF-MANAGED COMMUNITIES.

Conclusion.

We remain faithful to the original action principles:

We remain a POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL Movement.

We remain an Idea and Action:

• NATIONALIST
• DEMOCRATIC
• POPULAR
• SOCIAL-COMMUNITY

THE CURRENT SCENARIO:

OUR GLOBAL STRATEGY

Social-Solidarity and Sovereign Republic based on self-management struggle:

Brief Bibliography

1. The Goad of the Spirit. IMDOSOC.

2. Synarchism Counter Revolution. Juan Ignacio Padilla.

3. Chantal López and Omar Cortéz. Anarchist intellectuals, wrote a brilliant and well-documented text about the January 2 massacre. http://antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/politica/definicion/anarquismo.html