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