Salvador Abascal | |
---|---|
Born |
Salvador Abascal Infante 1910 Morelia, Mexico |
Died | 2000 (aged 90) |
Nationality | Mexican |
Known for | Politician |
Title | UNS leader |
Term | 1940-1941 |
Predecessor | Manuel Zermeño |
Successor | Manuel Torres Bueno |
Political party | National Synarchist Union |
Spouse(s) | Maria Guadalupe Carranza Pulido |
Children |
Carlos Abascal Salvador Abascal Carranza |
Salvador Abascal (1910–2000) was a Mexican politician and leading exponent of Mexican synarchism. For a time the leader of the National Synarchist Union (UNS), Abascal represented the orthodox Catholic tendency within the movement.
Born in Morelia into a landowning family, Abascal was the fourth of eleven children. Partly educated at a seminary, Abascal was sympathetic to the Cristeros from an early age. Indeed, his father was a member of the Popular Union, the Cristero party. As a result of these sympathies Abascal passed through a variety of Roman Catholic counterrevolutionary organisations during the 1930s.
He would complete his education at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo where he graduated with a law degree, subsequently serving as a judge in Ayutla. He was dismissed as a judge in 1933 after falling foul of local bosses when he made judgements in favour of claimants to land.
He was a founder member of the UNS in 1937 and became an organiser in Michoacán, before taking full charge of the movement in 1940 when it was at its peak with 500,000 members. Abascal succeeded Manuel Zermeño as leader, after Zermeño was removed from the movement for concluding an agreement with the government of Avila Camacho without securing approval of the UNS membership.
Accused of Nazism by opponents, Abascal officially denounced the system, although he was noted for his anti-Semitism. He was also noted for his opposition to electoral politics and rejected any attempts to convert the UNS into a political party. Instead Abascal called for 'Catholic social order' as the antithesis to his twomost hated ideologies - Marxism and liberal democracy - both of which he felt were closely related. He also resisted attempts by Manuel Gómez Morín to fuse the UNS with the National Action Party in 1939 as a result of these convictions.