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Pedro Villaseñor political papers
mssVillaseñor  
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Administrative Information
  • Biography
  • Scope and Content
  • Indexing Terms

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Pedro Villaseñor political papers
    Inclusive Dates: 1925-1990
    Collection Number: mssVillaseñor
    Collector: Villaseñor, Pedro
    Extent: 3 boxes
    Repository: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
    Manuscripts Department
    1151 Oxford Road
    San Marino, California 91108
    Phone: (626) 405-2191
    Fax: (626) 449-5720
    Email: reference@huntington.org
    URL: http://www.huntington.org
    Abstract: The papers consist of materials that Pedro Villaseñor, a Mexican Roman Catholic nationalist, created and assembled that document the troubled church-state relations of Mexico and their effect in Los Angeles, chiefly in the 1930s.
    Language of Material: The records are in Spanish.

    Administrative Information

    Access

    Collection is open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, please go to following web site .

    Publication Rights

    The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.

    Preferred Citation

    Pedro Villaseñor political papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

    Acquisition Information

    Gift of Lucila Villaseñor Grijalva, María Elena Villaseñor, and Alicia O. Colunga, August 2017.

    Biography

    Pedro Villaseñor was born on October 29, 1907 in Coeneo, Michoacán, Mexico. Villaseñora, a Mexican Roman Catholic nationalist, was the Los Angeles leader of the Sinarquistas, a staunchly right-wing, nationalistic, and Roman Catholic organization. Before he worked with the Sinarquistas (which were founded in 1937 in León), he worked with the Asociación Católica de la Juventud Mexicana (founded in Mexico in 1913) in Los Angeles, and he established the Comité Popular de la Defensa Mexicana in Los Angeles in 1935. These too were Mexican right-wing Roman Catholic organizations opposed to the Mexican government's suppression of Roman Catholic practice and education. These activities reflect the impact of Mexico's Cristero War in Los Angeles, for Villaseñor's correspondents clearly had Cristero sympathies.
    Pedro Villaseñor married Celedonia Meza (1908-2001) on September 20, 1931. The couple had four daughters: Maria (b. 1932), Lucila (b. 1935), Alicia (b. 1939), and Maria (b. 1948). Villaseñor worked in several industries. He was a laundry-worker, retail grocer in East Los Angeles, and a supporter of Spanish-language theater in the 1970s. He passed away on April 29, 1996.

    Scope and Content

    This collection consists of materials that Pedro Villaseñor created and assembled that document the troubled church-state relations of Mexico and their effect in Los Angeles, chiefly in the 1930s. It documents transnational politics between Mexico and Los Angeles as well as politics and political organizing and activities within the Mexican community of Los Angeles in the 1930s. It also documents the intellectual and political thought of Mexican conservative Roman Catholicism in Los Angeles and beyond through correspondence from Mexico, Cuba, Peru, and throughout the United States; newsletters; poetry; books; essays; and flyers. Holdings in United States research libraries and archives related to Roman Catholic political resistance to the Mexican government, an important part of twentieth-century Mexican church-state history, are extremely rare. Of particular interest is the large amount of literary material that Mexican conservative Roman Catholics in this collection authored.
    Books accompanying this collection are assigned call number RB 646900.

    Indexing Terms

    Personal Names

    Villaseñor, Pedro

    Corporate Names

    Catholic Church -- California -- History -- 20th century
    Catholic Church -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century
    Unión Nacional Sinarquista (Mexico)

    Subjects

    Nationalism -- Mexico -- History -- 20th century
    Synarchism -- Mexico
    Church and state -- Mexico

    Geographic Areas

    Los Angeles (Calif.) -- History -- 20th century

    Genre

    Essays
    Letters (correspondence)
    Newsletters
    Photographs
    Poems