MEXICO CITY, Sept. 5 — Declassified files from Mexico’s defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS) document decades of ties between the far-right Catholic organisation the Knights of Columbus and the National Action Party (PAN), according to an analysis published Friday by investigative magazine Contralínea. The DFS, the political police of the authoritarian PRI regime, surveilled the group for years, compiling records held in box 16, file one of its master copies.
The files show the Knights of Columbus — founded in the United States in the late 19th century — built a network in Mexico linking PAN members with businessmen, Catholic hierarchs and foreign leaders. The activity went beyond charity and religious formation, extending into electoral campaigns, educational disputes and debates over national history.
Chihuahua convention and electoral brigades
A May 1962 record notes that nearly 1,000 Order members held their national convention in Chihuahua in a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant auditorium. A few blocks away, PAN printed propaganda and organised youth brigades and “lightning rallies” for candidate Cipriano Rubio Domínguez in the July local elections. DFS agents placed young Knights of Columbus members within the electoral brigades, though no institutional agreement was specified.
A March 1961 record describes the Order as a fraternal structure with 63 jurisdictions, approximately 1.2 million members and 4,200 councils worldwide. Members were selected for integrity, loyalty to the Church and willingness to fight “for God, for the Church itself, and for the homeland.”
Iturbide tribute and historical revisionism
The files also document a September 1971 tribute to Agustín de Iturbide at Mexico City’s Cine Teatro Metropólitan, attended by about 1,100 people. Those present included members of the Knights of Columbus, the Mexican Traditionalist Movement, the Bernardo Bergöend Group and PAN militants. The DFS reported attendance at about 600 and identified José González Torres, former national PAN president, among the leading figures.
Speakers included Edmundo Gurza, a regional PAN leader in Torreón, Coahuila, who accused “Masonic governments” of altering Mexico’s history, and historian Celerino Salmerón, who denied Vicente Guerrero’s role in drafting the Plan of Iguala and called for combating an “intellectual system of lies.” The vindication of Iturbide over liberal figures like Guerrero, Morelos, Gómez Farías and Juárez confronted the liberal tradition underpinning Church-State separation.
The files show the Order grew from about 8,000 members in 1964 to 10,000 in 1966, across more than a hundred councils, with local representatives — Grand Knights — in over 60 towns. José Cárdenas Stille was identified as supreme director of the Knights of Columbus in Mexico. Today, the Knights of Columbus state they have 18,250 local councils in Mexico.
The declassified record raises questions about how much of the Order’s historical political entanglement in Mexico has been acknowledged — and what remains in the archives. Watch for whether the organisation responds to the Contralínea analysis or whether further DFS files on the group surface.
