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Las Falsas Derechas: Conflict and Convergence in Mexico's Post-Cristero Right after the Second Vatican Council

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2022

Luis Herrán Ávila
Luis Herrán Ávila*
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico [email protected]
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Abstract

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Mexican traditionalist Catholics mobilized in apparent unity against Catholic “progressivism” and the Left. Yet, they succumbed to their own internecine fights. This article examines the conflicts within Mexico's post-Cristero Right during the 1960s and 70s by tackling the ruptures and realignments surrounding the excommunication of Fr. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, a traditionalist Jesuit famed for attacking conciliar reforms and the legitimacy of Paul VI's papacy. I argue that the ensuing debates put into question the apparent coherence of conservatives in the face of social unrest after 1968, highlighting the long-standing entropy of right-wing Catholicism, as traditionalists clashed over matters of orthodoxy, Catholics’ historical relationship with the postrevolutionary state, and the contested memory of the Cristero War, which they used to legitimize their positions and define the terms of their traditionalism. Using anticommunism and anti-Semitism to wage their battles, these traditionalists occupied important spaces in the public sphere, contributed to Mexico's Cold War polarizations, and shaped the Mexican Right's international outlook. Their conflicts attest to the contentious plurality of the Mexican Right during this period, which invites further study to better understand how these actors situated themselves in a rapidly changing world.

Keywords

anticommunismCatholicismanti-SemitismMexicoCold War
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 321 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

I thank my colleague Gema Kloppe-Santamaría for her thoughtful editing and comments, Matthew Butler for his feedback and insightful introduction, and my co-contributors for enriching my understanding of Catholic Mexico. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers at The Americas for their generous reading and suggestions to improve this article. I am also thankful to Federico Finchelstein for discussing various aspects of this work over the years, and to Ernesto Bohoslavsky, Magdalena Broquetas, and the late Olga Echeverría for the opportunity to test some of my ideas about conspiratorial right-wing politics at a workshop that took place in Montevideo in 2015.

References

1. Arriaga, Joaquín Sáenz, Las falsas derechas (Mar del Plata: Editorial Montonera, 1969), 1Google Scholar.

2. I am using “traditionalist” and “progressive” as two camps, defined respectively by their opposition or support for the reforms of Vatican II, with the “progressive” camp encompassing also liberationist interpretations of Christianity.

3. Throughout the article, I use the term “post-Cristero” and “post-Cristero Right” to point out the continuing influence and presence of Cristero identity in the distrust of the postrevolutionary state and the communitarian defense of Catholicism as the popular foundation of Mexican national identity.

4. Zolov, Eric, The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021)Google Scholar; Keller, Renata, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pensado, Jaime, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zolov, Eric, Refried Elvis: The Rise of Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Zolov, Eric, “Expanding Our Conceptual Horizons: The Shift from an Old to a New Left in Latin America,” A Contracorriente 5:2 (Winter 2008): 47–73Google Scholar; Pensado, Rebel Mexico.

6. Xóchitl Campos López and Diego Martín Velázquez, coords., La derecha mexicana en el siglo XX: agonía, transformación y supervivencia (Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla [hereafter BUAP], 2017); Carmen Collado, coord., Las derechas en el México contemporáneo (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2015); Hernández, Tania, Tras las huellas de la derecha: el Partido Acción Nacional, 1939–2000 (Mexico City: Itaca, 2009)Google Scholar; Loaeza, Soledad, El Partido Acción Nacional: la larga marcha, 1939–1994 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000)Google Scholar.

7. José Miguel Romero de Solís, El aguijón del espíritu: historia contemporánea de la Iglesia en México (1892–1992) (Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social Cristiana, 2006); Blancarte, Roberto, Historia de la Iglesia católica en México, 1929–1982 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993)Google Scholar.

8. Meyer, Jean, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People Between Church and State, 1926–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Weis, Robert, For Christ and Country: Militant Catholic Youth in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, Matthew, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico's Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927–29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and González, Fernando M., Matar y morir por Cristo Rey: aspectos de la Cristiada (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 2001)Google Scholar.

9. Robert Curley, Citizens and Believers: Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Jalisco, 1900–1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018).

10. As most of the scholarship notes, sinarquismo was a heterogeneous movement that reflected the localized politics of the Cristero War and wherein former fighters embraced civic activism. On the UNS, see Héctor Hernández de León, Historia política del sinarquismo, 1934–1944 (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2004); Daniel Newcomer, Reconciling Modernity: Urban State Formation in 1940s León, Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Rubén Aguilar and Guillermo Zermeño, Hacia una reinterpretación del sinarquismo actual (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1998); Pablo Serrano Álvarez, La batalla de espíritu: el movimiento sinarquista en el Bajío, 1932–1952 (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1992); and Hugh Campbell, La derecha radical en México, 1929–1949 (Mexico City: SEP, 1976).

11. Ben Fallaw, Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). Fallaw convincingly argues that Catholics were successful and effective in resisting the policies of Lázaro Cárdenas, by favoring civic action rather than armed rebellion and by gaining spaces, especially regional ones, within the postrevolutionary political system.

12. The Mexican Social Secretariat (SSM), the Union of Mexican Catholics (UCM), Catholic Action of Mexican Youth (ACJM), and the Union of Mexican Catholic Ladies (UDCM) are examples of lay organizations linking Catholic mobilization during the Revolution and the Cristero War with the post-Cristero period. María Luisa Aspe Armella, La formación social y política de los católicos mexicanos (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2008), 211–220; Stephen Andes, “A Catholic Alternative to Revolution: The Survival of Social Catholicism in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” The Americas 68:4 (April 2012): 529–562. Also see David Espinosa, Jesuit Student Groups, The Universidad Iberoamericana, and Political Resistance in Mexico, 1913–1979 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014); Schell, Patience, “An Honorable Avocation for the Ladies: The Work of the Mexico City Unión de Damas Católicas Mexicanas, 1912–1926,” Journal of Women's History 10:4 (1999): 78–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. A notable compilation can be found in María Martha Pacheco, Religión y sociedad en México durante el siglo XX (Mexico City: INEHRM, 2007). Also see Fernando M. González, Secretos fracturados: estampas del catolicismo conspirativo en México (Mexico City: Herder, 2019); Edgar González Ruiz, MURO: memorias y testimonios (Puebla: Gobierno del Estado de Puebla, 2004); Nicolás Dávila Peralta, Las santas batallas: la derecha anticomunista en Puebla (Puebla: BUAP, 2003); and Rubén Aguilar and Guillermo Zermeño, coords., Religión, política y sociedad. El sinarquismo y la Iglesia en México (Nueve Ensayos) (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1992).

14. In his well-known study of the Catholic Church in Mexico, Roberto Blancarte mentions Sáenz's sedevacantism in passing and acknowledges the dearth of in-depth studies on Catholic integrism. Blancarte, Historia de la Iglesia, 283–284. On conservative reactions (including Catholic ones) to leftist politics and countercultural movements, see Pensado, Rebel Mexico; Keller, Mexico's Cold War; and Zolov, Refried Elvis. A more systematic examination is Jaime Pensado, “To Assault with the Truth”: The Revitalization of Conservative Militancy in Mexico During the Global Sixties,” The Americas, 70:3 (January 2014): 489–521.

15. María M. Pacheco, “Tradicionalismo católico posconciliar. El caso Sáenz y Arriaga,” Religión y sociedad en México durante el siglo XX (Mexico City: INEHRM, 2007), 337–368; María del Carmen Ibarrola Martínez, “Rupturas en el integrismo católico mexicano posconciliar. Una mirada desde el caso de Antonio Rius Facius,” in Intelectuales católicos conservadores y tradicionalistas en México y Latinoamérica (1910–2015), Laura Alarcón Menchaca, Austreberto Martínez Villegas, and Jesús Iván Mora Muro, coords. (Zapopan: El Colegio de Jalisco, 2019), 165–179; Austreberto Martínez Villegas,“Tradicionalismo y conservadurismo integrista en el catolicismo en México después del Concilio Vaticano II: continuidades y transformaciones en Guadalajara, Jalisco y Atlatlahucan, Morelos (1965–2012)” (PhD diss.: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. Jose María Luis Mora, 2016; Austreberto Martínez Villegas, “La conformación de corrientes identitarias en el tradicionalismo católico en México en los años posteriores al Concilio Vaticano II,” Caleidoscopio 32 (January-April 2015): 19–42; González, Secretos fracturados.

16. Pacheco, “Tradicionalismo católico posconciliar,” 340–342.

17. Pacheco, “Tradicionalismo católico posconciliar,” 346–347.

18. Martínez Villegas, “La conformación de corrientes identitarias,” 27–36.

19. Antonio Rius Facius, ¡Excomulgado! Trayectoria y pensamiento del Pbro. Dr. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga (Mexico City: Costa-Amic, 1980), 36.

20. On the trajectory of UNEC, see Aspe Armella, La formación social y política. On the Jaliscan Cristeros and their role in creating the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, see John W. Sherman, The Mexican Right: The End of Revolutionary Reform, 1929–1940 (Westport: Praeger, 1997).

21. Born in Mexico City in 1912, Rius Facius was a youth activist for the ACJM and later became a well-known historian of that organization, chronicling its origins in the Revolution and its role in the Cristero War in two famous books, De don Porfirio a don Plutarco: historia de la ACJM, 1910–1925 (Mexico City: Jus, 1958); and Méjico cristero: historia de la ACJM, 1925–1931 (Mexico City: Patria, 1960). He was also a columnist for several newspapers including El Norte and El Sol de México, where he penned editorials against the conciliar reforms. For a selected compilation of these writings, see Antonio Rius Facius, Lanza en ristre: contra los ataques del progresismo marxista (Mexico City: Jus, 1968). On Rius Facius as a traditionalist intellectual, see Ibarrola Martínez, “Rupturas en el integrismo católico mexicano posconciliar,” 165–179.

22. Rius Facius, ¡Excomulgado!, 50–53. Navarro Flores was a leading figure of the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty, the urban-based activist organization that steered the Catholic resistance and rebellion against Plutarco E. Calles's anticlerical laws of 1926, largely seen as a triggering cause of the Cristero War.

23. Rius Facius, ¡Excomulgado!, 52–55, 59–60. Aspe Armella notes that the subordination of UNEC (the student federation) to the mandate of the ACM was partly impeded by the former's confederated structure and its goal of “coordinating,” rather than directing or disciplining, as the ACM would have it, “the living forces of the student youth.” This difficulty, according to Stephen Andes, was rooted in a legacy of intransigence among Catholic students due to the combative role of ACJM cadres during the Cristero War, which contravened the “pacification” goals of the ACM regarding church-state relations. Aspe Armella, La formación social, 292–293; Stephen Andes, The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 147–148.

24. Rius Facius, ¡Excomulgado!, 94–95.

25. On the Jalisco-based conflicts in which Sáenz participated, see Fernando M. González, “Un conflicto universitario entre católicos: la fundación del Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO),” Vetas. Revista del Colegio de San Luis 20-21 (May-December 2005): 9–37. On the origins of FUA in the autonomy movement in Puebla, see Alfonso Yañez Delgado, La manipulación de la fe: fúas contra carolinos en la universidad poblana (Puebla: Imagen Pública y Corporativa, 2000); and Juan Louvier Calderón, Manuel Díaz Cid, and José Antonio Arrubarrena, Autonomía universitaria: luchas de 1956 a 1991. Génesis de la UPAEP (Puebla: UPAEP, 1991).

26. María Martha Pacheco, “¡Cristianismo sí, Comunismo no! Anticomunismo eclesiástico en México,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 24 (July-December 2002): 143–170. On the broader context of national and international agitation in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, see Keller, Mexico's Cold War.

27. Originally based in Mexico City and Puebla, MURO was one of the “seed” groups for El Yunque. It featured a militant Catholicism, stoked by initiation rituals and a semi-secret militarized structure, a strong presence in university student activism, and a flair for street violence that gave the organization considerable exposure in the press. For a journalistic account of El Yunque, see Álvaro Delgado, El Yunque: la ultraderecha en el poder (Mexico City: Plaza y Janés, 2003). On MURO and its links to El Yunque, see Mario Jiménez Santiago, “Anticomunismo católico. Origen y desarrollo del Movimiento Universitario de Renovadora Orientación (MURO), 1962–1975,” in Las derechas en el México contemporáneo, Carmen Collado, coord. (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2015), 187–254. On MURO, see Jaime Pensado, “To Assault with the Truth”; and González Ruiz, MURO: memorias y testimonios.

28. Rius Facius, ¡Excomulgado!, 98–99. The book in question is Maurice Pinay, Complotto contro la Chiesa (Rome: n.p., 1962), which Sáenz attributed to a “syndicate” of traditionalist cardinals. According to reliable sources, “Maurice Pinay” was in fact an unnamed collaborator of Sáenz from Los Tecos. Handwritten notes by Andrée Marie González, 1974, Hoover Institution Library and Archives [hereafter HILA], Stefan T. Possony papers, box 55, folder “Tecos material.” The leaflet distributed by Sáenz accused the council of attracting communist sympathies toward its progressivism and yielding to Masonic and Jewish pressures to adopt religious ecumenism.

29. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga to Dr. Ku Cheng-Kang, December 12, 1974, HILA, Kyril Drenikoff Papers, box 56, folder 1.

30. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, Con Cristo o contra Cristo (Hermosillo: n.d., 1966), 5.

31. Rius Facius, Excomulgado!, 102–104.

32. González Ruiz, MURO, 337–338.

33. The meager engagement with Rerum Novarum in Sáenz's and other traditionalists’ writings could possibly be related to the steady decline of Catholic Action groups during the period in question, and the association of the “social question” with the progressive interpretations of the church's social doctrine that traditionalists were combatting. I thank the anonymous reviewer who pointed out this oddity.

34. Sáenz Arriaga, The New Montinian Church, 135–140.

35. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, The New Montinian Church (La Habra, CA: Edgar Lucidi, 1985), 480, 510–511. For Sáenz's earlier anti-Semitic charges, see Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, El antisemitismo y el Concilio Ecuménico (Buenos Aires: Nuevo Orden, 1964).

36. Sáenz Arriaga, The New Montinian Church, 86.

37. Sáenz Arriaga, The New Montinian Church, 387.

38. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, Sede vacante: Paulo VI no es legítimo Papa (Mexico City: Editores Asociados, 1973), 106, 309–333.

39. On CIDOC as a point of encounter for progressive thought, including liberation theology, see Todd Hartch, The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

40. See Iván Illich, “The Seamy Side of Charity,” America: The Jesuit Review, January 21, 1967, 88–91.

41. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, “No una iglesia ibero-americana, sino una iglesia católica y romana,” La Prensa, January 3, 1967.

42. Memorandum. “Aspectos políticos, económicos y sociales del estado de Jalisco,” July 13, 1970. Archivo General de la Nación, México (AGN). Tecos Asociación Fraternal de Jalisco (Versión Pública), f. 18, 100-12-18 L2. ; Memorandum, “Asunto: Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara – Tecos,” August 10, 1970. AGN. Tecos Asociación Fraternal de Jalisco (Versión Pública), f. 21-25.

43. Diego Marcos, “Información sobre el progresismo,” Réplica (Guadalajara) 14 (June 1969): 5–10; Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, Cuernavaca y el progresismo religioso en México (Mexico City: n.p., 1967). On the link between Los Tecos and FEMACO, see Mónica Naymich López Macedonio, “Los Tecos en el México de la primera mitad delos años setenta y su proyección internacional anticomunista” (MA thesis, Instituto Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2007).

44. Roderic Ai Camp, Crossing Swords: Politics and Religion in Mexico (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 85–94. Some rural communities resisted conciliar “corrections” to popular religiosity, such as the devotion to local saints, leading them to reject the progressives’ Christian Base Communities and side with traditionalism. See Jennifer Scheper Hughes, “Traditionalist Catholicism and Liturgical Renewal in the Diocese of Cuernavaca, Mexico,” in Catholicism in the Vatican II Era: Local Histories of a Global Event, Kathleen S. Cummings, Timothy Matovina and Robert Orsi, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 64–85.

45. Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga, Cisma o fe. ¿Por qué me excomulgaron? (Mexico City: n.p., 1972), 263–265.

46. “El Cardenal Darío Miranda no excomulgó al Sacerdote Sáenz,” El Informador, January 25, 1972.

47. Antonio Brambila, “Sobre una excomunión,” El Sol de México, January 22, 1972.

48. “Sáenz Arriaga se ha convertido en bandera de minorías subversivas,” El Heraldo de México, January 21, 1972.

49. “‘Miranda traidor’, pintan en la residencia del cardenal,” Universal Gráfico, January 10, 1972; “Opinan sobre la destrucción de un escudo del Cardenal Darío Miranda,” El Informador, December 30, 1971.

50. Martínez Villegas, “Tradicionalismo y conservadurismo,” 272–273, 283–301.

51. “No son intocables los católicos que apoyaron al comunismo en la fracasada rebelión estudiantil,” La Prensa, January 6, 1969.

52. “Bishop Defends Himself Against Charge He Incited Violence,” Catholic News Service – Newsfeeds, December 31, 1968; “Histórico 1968: dan marcha atrás al diálogo público,” Excélsior, September 15, 2018.

53. “El clero provoca al estado para presentarse como víctima de persecución y justificar su traición a México,” El Universal, February 18, 1972.

54. “Falso cristianismo crea agitación en la sociedad,” El Heraldo de México, October 20, 1971; “Clérigos revolucionarios desvirtúan el mensaje de Cristo,” El Heraldo de México, October 16, 1972.

55. The book in question is José Porfirio Miranda, Marx y la Biblia: crítica a la filosofía de la opresión (Mexico City: n.p., 1971).

56. Rius Facius, Excomulgado!, 124–125.

57. “Católicos mexicanos patriotas, sí; excomuniones papólatras, no,” El Heraldo de México, January 6, 1972.

58. Arturo Pedroza, “División del catolicismo en la República. La excomunión del Padre Sáenz Arriaga,” El Universal, December 30, 1971.

59. “Declaraciones del Presbítero Doctor Joaquín Sáenz Arriaga respecto a su supuesta excomunión,” El Universal, December 28, 1971; “Condena un sacerdote la postura socio-política del llamado clero progresista,” El Día, December 22, 1971.

60. Sáenz Arriaga, Las falsas derechas, 4.

61. Sáenz Arriaga, Las falsas derechas, 5–6.

62. Sáenz Arriaga, Las falsas derechas, 4–5.

63. Juventudes Nacionalistas de México, Deslices de la TFP y contubernio FUA-MURO-GUIA (Mexico City: n.p., 1975), 24–26.

64. Sáenz Arriaga, Las falsas derechas, 6; Rius Facius, Excomulgado!, 95–96.

65. Juventudes Nacionalistas de México, Deslices, 1–5.

66. On the role of Mexican anticommunists in the WACL, see Mónica Naymich López Macedonio, “Historia de una colaboración anticomunista transnacional: los Tecos de la Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara y el gobierno de Chiang Kai-Shek a principios de los años setenta,” Contemporánea 1:1 (2010): 133–158. Also see Pierre Abramovici, “The World Anticommunist League: Origins, Structures, and Activities,” in Transnational Anti-Communism and The Cold War: Agents, Activities, Networks, Luc Van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin, and Gilles Scott-Smith, eds. (London: Routledge, 2014), 113–129; and Scott Anderson and John L. Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1986).

67. Documento 3, Una larga cadena de mentiras contra FEMACO caracterizan la más incomprensible e intensa actividad ‘anticomunista’ de la relevante obra de la TFP de Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira,” January 13, 1975, HILA, Kyril Drenikoff Papers, box 58, folder 5.

68. José Lucio de Araujo Corrêa to Gral. Thomas Lane, May 24, 1974, HILA, Kyril Drenikoff Papers, box 57, folder 7.

69. René Capistrán Garza, “Destruirlo todo para crearlo todo,” Atisbos, March 12, 1951, 7.

70. René Capistrán Garza, Prontuario de ideas: la Iglesia católica y la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: Atisbos, 1964), 120.

71. René Capistrán Garza, “La tormenta pasará,” Atisbos, December 12, 1950, 1.

72. Capistrán applauded the Revolution's appropriation of the banners of Catholic social doctrine with respect to labor, anticommunism, and patriotism, which, he wrote, “were taken directly from Christ,” and not, as the sinarquistas argued, “robbed” from Catholics. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 130. On the broader pattern of Catholic resistance to, and accommodation with, the postrevolutionary state after the Cristero War, see Fallaw, Religion and State Formation, 2–9.

73. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 41.

74. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 32–33, 52, 62.

75. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 41.

76. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 72.

77. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 51.

78. Jesús Guisa y Azevedo, Los católicos y la política: el caso de René Capistrán (Mexico City: Editorial Polis, 1950), 69.

79. Capistrán Garza, Prontuario, 53.

80. René Capistrán Garza, “Solidaridad con el Presidente,” El Sol de Puebla , August 24, 1968.

81. Sáenz Arriaga, Sede Vacante, vii-xvi.

82. “Tlatelolcos” is a reference to the violent repression of a student rally in Tlatelolco square on October 2, 1968. “Diez de junios” refers to the events of June 10, 1971, when a protest by students at the National Teachers’ School in Mexico City was met with state-sponsored paramilitary violence.

83. René Capistrán Garza, “Defensas fraudulentas de la excomunión a Sáenz Arriaga,” El Universal, January 31, 1972.

84. James Wilkie and Edna Monzón Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana. 17 protagonistas de la etapa constructiva, Vol. 3: Los ideólogos (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2002), 15. On Abascal's anti-revolutionary positions, see Salvador Abascal, La revolución antimexicana (Mexico City: Tradición, 1978).

85. Wilkie and Monzón Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana, 41–46.

86. Wilkie and Monzón Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana, 87–88. On Abascal's experience at the colony, see Salvador Abascal, Mis recuerdos: sinarquismo y la colonia María Auxiliadora, 1935–1944 (Mexico City: Tradición, 1980).

87. Wilkie and Monzón Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana, 82–84.

88. Salvador Abascal, “Siempre con el Papa,” La Hoja de Combate [hereafter LHC] (September 1972): 1–2; Salvador Abascal, “Sáenz Arriaga, fuera de quicio,” LHC 67 (April 1973): 1–6; Sáenz Arriaga, Sede Vacante, 328.

89. Salvador Abascal, Contra herejes y cismáticos (Mexico City: Editorial Tradición, 1973), 194–206.

90. “Qué es la Revolución,” LHC 15 (December 1968): 8.

91. Salvador Abascal, “Atenta invitación a mis enemigos,” LHC 71 (August 12, 1973): 1–2.

92. Celerino Salmerón, “Anacleto II, reputado maestro de la intriga y la calumnia,” LHC 73 (October 1973).

93. Wilkie and Monzón Wilkie, Frente a la Revolución Mexicana, 121.

94. Elba González, “La moda, arma del comunismo,” LHC 71 (August 1973): 12–13; “Edicto del cardenal de Guadalajara sobre la desnudez de la mujer moderna,” LHC 7 (April 1968): 7.

95. A transcription of one of these debates, which revolved around the purported compatibility between Marxism and Christianity, can be found in “¿Fue Cristo un guerrillero o un revolucionario?” LHC 47 (August 1971): 1–13.

96. Both authors wrote extensively about Mexican history, with Borrego stressing the role of liberalism, Marxism, and Judaism as obstacles to the unfolding of the authentic Mexican nation. Salmerón defended the colonial past as the core of national identity and deemed conservative icons such as Agustín de Iturbide to be the true makers of the nation. See Celerino Salmerón, En defensa de Iturbide: tres artículos periodísticos y un discurso en el Metropolitan (Mexico City: Tradición, 1974); and Salvador Borrego, América Peligra (Mexico City: Aldo, 1966).

97. Celerino Salmerón, “El porvenir de Méjico,” LHC 20 (May 1969): 1–2.

98. Antonio Rius Facius, “Infiltración marxista en el clero de Hispanoamérica,” LHC 8 (May 1968): 1–4. Gloria Riestra, “Tormenta sobre la iglesia,” LHC 43 (March 1971): 16–20. On the earlier convergence of competing traditionalisms in La Hoja de Combate, see Martínez Villegas, “Tradicionalismo y conservadurismo,” 260–261.

99. “Proclama del Movimiento Cívico Tradicionalista,” LHC 35 (August 1970): 24.

100. “Movimiento Cívico Tradicionalista de México. Boletín informativo,” LHC 42 (March 1971): 4; Celerino Salmerón, “Avanza el Movimiento Cívico Tradicionalista,” LHC 5 (August 1972): 11–12.

101. Eventually this coexistence became untenable, given the embrace of another traditionalist schismatic current (Lefevbrism) by the leadership of Integridad, and a deep conflict with the Vatican in the 1980s. Martínez Villegas, “Tradicionalismo y conservadurismo,” 256–257, 288–289.

102. Jesús Urteaga, “Intransigencia,” Integridad 1 (November 1968): 3.

103. See Walker, Louise, Waking from the dream: Mexico's Middle Classes after 1968 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar, chapt. 2.

104. Salvador Abascal, “Dos grandes triunfos del marxismo,” LHC 38 (November 1970): 20.

105. Salmerón, Celerino, “Méjico y Chile: ¿ambos de la mano hacia el desastre?” LHC 71 (August 1973): 14–15Google Scholar.

106. Salvador Abascal, “El golpe de estado militar en Chile,” LHC 73 (October 1973):, 1–2.

107. “Proclama de las Falanges Tradicionalistas Mejicanas,” LHC 71 (March 1974): 8–9.

108. “Los mejicanos con jota,” Contenido, June 1981, 28–37; Edgar González Ruiz, Los otros cristeros y su presencia en Puebla (Puebla: BUAP; Cuadernos del Archivo Histórico Universitario, 2004), 393–394.

109. Anti-Semitism remains understudied in the Mexican context, at least in comparison to other Latin American cases. For valuable studies, mostly pertaining to the pre-Cold War period, see Laura Pérez Rosales, “Anti-Cardenism and Anti-Semitism in Mexico, 1934–1940,” in The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America, David Sheining and Lois Baer Barr, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2019), 183–198; Yankelevich, Pablo, “Extranjería y antisemitismo en el México posrevolucionario” Interdisciplina 2:4 (2014): 143–159Google Scholar; Claudio Lomnitz, Antisemitismo y la ideología de la revolución mexicana (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010); Judit Bokser, “El antisemitismo: recurrencias y cambios históricos,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales 44:182–3 (2001): 101–132; and Alicia Gojman de Backal, Camisas, escudos y desfiles militares. Los Dorados y el antisemitismo en México, 1934–1940 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000).

110. As Ibarrola notes in her study of Rius Facius, many Catholic intellectuals did not operate in academic or state-sponsored cultural circles, limiting the broader dissemination of their ideas and views about history and society. Ibarrola Martínez, “Rupturas en el integrismo,” 166–167. Manuel Gómez Morín and Efrain González Luna, who were part of the core group that founded the National Action Party, are notable exceptions to this exclusion of right-wing figures from the “public intellectual” label.

111. See Pensado, Rebel Mexico; and Walker, Waking from the Dream.