The story of how the National Action Party (PAN) was founded is linked to the radical far-right, a movement which, at the end of the 1930s (when the party was founded), was associated with fascism.
This claim was made during our interview with Jorge Márquez Muñoz, Coordinator of the Department of Governance and Globalisation Studies at the Political and Social Sciences Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who has been researching the PAN party in relation to Rafael Barajas’ (El Fisgón) essay on the PAN’s Nazi roots, published on the 9th of June in the La Jornada Semanal supplement.
The university academic suggested that although the PAN founders did not necessarily sympathize with the ideas of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, those to the right of the party were more closely affiliated with Francisco Franco.
This was a ring-wing faction which fought against President Lázaro Cárdenas, a pro-Franco right which supported above all the influence of the Catholic Church, and whose most radical foundations were established during the Cristero War (1926 – 1929 [a battle between conservative Catholics and the anti-Catholic government after the Mexican Revolution]). This is the origin of the PAN and its connection to the radical right.
In its early days, the PAN emerged to counter the liberal and progressive ideas and policies of ex-President Lázaro Cárdenas.
One should consider key events such as the expropriation of the oil industry (finalized in 1938, a year before foundation of the PAN), when various foreign and some Mexican companies were expropriated. One of the PAN founders, Manuel Gómez Morín, was the defense lawyer for several of the companies involved in the case, such as El Águila.
Márquez Muñoz noted that Gómez Morín’s defense of foreign interests is one of the clearest examples of anti-Cárdenas sentiment among future PAN members, which would be expressed not only in social projects, but also in their views on capitalism and the use of foreign investment.
With time, the academic explained, the PAN have modified their radical founding principles, in part due to the defeat of fascism and the fact that the majority of Mexicans are unsympathetic to these ideas.
“It was one thing to be fascist before the Second World War, but it was another to be fascist with full knowledge of what Hitler did in the concentration camps. It was something that could discredit the party, which is why the PAN sought compromises while retaining certain principles, in particular those linked to the Catholic Church and backward ideas about social rights, such as their radical opposition to abortion.”He suggested, however, that one of the groups within the PAN, the Yunque, based mainly in the Bajío region [central highlands], still holds radical right-wing views. There are at least two other groups within the party: Calderón supporters and Madero [Gustavo Madero, party president] supporters.
With regard to the praise of the party founders expressed by the PAN federal administrations under Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, the UNAM expert suggested that it had been necessary to create their own mythology. As the party had neither been in government nor been involved in great social causes, they needed to create their own myths and heroes. They took advantage of the fact that most of these people had notable political careers, such as Gómez Morín himself, who, despite his darker side, laid a base for many national institutions, such as the articles of incorporation of the Bank of Mexico.
For the university academic, an understanding of a party’s history is important, with regard to the PAN or the other political parties, along with self-criticism of that history in order to reassess unfavourable periods. Spanish Original