National Synarchist Union

The National Synarchist Union (Spanish: Unión Nacional Sinarquista) is a Mexican political organization. It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, similar to clerical fascism and Falangism, implacably opposed to the policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and from 2012 to 2018. The organization was notably the only explicit right-wing movement in Mexico to garner such nation-wide support and influence during this era. At its peak in 1940, there were approximately 500,000 registered members. Mostly active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, its support for the Axis in World War II damaged its reputation. The organization experienced intense infighting in the mid-1940s which ultimately led to multiple schisms. The organization was dissolved as a political party in 1951 and largely faded into obscurity outside the city of Guanajuato, where it retained some local influence. In the 1980s, the UNS was reconstituted as the Mexican Democratic Party, which held seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1988, peaking at 12 Deputies in the 1982 election but losing its presence in 1988; the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM) dissolved in 1997, though two groups both claiming to be the legitimate UNS continue to exist.