El Yunque (organization)

The National Organization of the Anvil or simply El Yunque (in English: The Anvil) is the name of a purported secret society of Mexican regional origin but alleged to now be a national political force and whose purpose, according to the reporter Álvaro Delgado, "is to defend the Catholic religion and fight the forces of Satan, whether through violence or murder" and establish the kingdom of God in the land that is subject to the Mexican Government to the mandates of the Roman Catholic Church through the infiltration of all its members at the highest levels of political power. The organization was allegedly formed in Puebla in the early 1950s.

Wealthy businessmen and politicians (mostly from the National Action Party (PAN)) have been named as alleged founders and members of The Anvil. The father of Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of Televisión Azteca, and one of the wealthiest men in Mexico, Hugo Salinas Price describes sponsoring and supporting Movimiento Universitario de Renovadora Orientación (MURO) a supposed Yunque front group, in his autobiography. It is unclear to what extent the sponsors of MURO knew of the supposed organizational structure and goals of its theoretical affiliation to El Yunque.

One of the most prominent critics of The Anvil, investigative reporter Delgado (see References) says that The Anvil was founded to "defend the Catholic religion and fight against the forces of Satan, even by force and murder". He also claims that top members of PAN and former President Vicente Fox's cabinet are also members of El Yunque. PAN president Manuel Espino Barrientos talked in an interview in 2002 without inconvenience about the membership to El Yunque of some acquaintances of his. Members of PAN have condemned Delgado's claims as "pure fiction", comparing it to the mythical monster, chupacabra, and saying that El Yunque has nothing to do with the party. A former PAN Presidential candidate and party head, Luis H. Alvarez, says that the organization is real but has infiltrated only a negligible portion of the party.

Since it is allegedly a secret organization, most reports about it comes from its critics and alleged ex-members. One noted, purported ex-member is the former mayor of Puebla, Luis Paredes Moctezuma who has led demonstrations against the organization, demanding the expulsion of all heads of PAN who are also affiliated to El Yunque. Paredes Moctezuma has also explicitly pointed current party leader Manuel Espino Barrientos as a yunquista. He has said that El Yunque played a role backing Vicente Fox's campaign in 2000.

In 2007, Paredes claimed the group controlled four state governments in Mexico and that it establish cells in the United States in the early 1990s, saying, "They're in Dallas, in Boston, in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, in Miami."

Parades claimed The Anvil was formed in the early 1950s as a reaction to anti-Catholic sentiment under the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He says it attracted religious students who sought to the leftist influence reflected in the Cuban revolution and communist China and Russia. He says the group opposed Calderon's Presidential candidacy and is thus in a poor position to influence him.

According to Andres Manuel López Obrador and his supporters, El Yunque was specifically pointed as the mastermind behind the organization of the highly successful march against crime in Mexico City (June 27, 2004); because of this supposed connection, the leftist mayor of Mexico City at the time, Lopez Obrador, saw the march as a political attack against him by El Yunque and downplayed its importance.

According to its critics, the secret organization of El Yunque was supposedly paramilitary in nature, performing its actions (including political assassination mostly through a set of front organizations, and, according to the magazine Contralínea, this included the student organization MURO at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the 1960s.

One political commentator dismissed claims about the group as an easy way to smear political opponents, "I have never found anyone who admits to being a member of El Yunque. All I see are attacks from the left. It's an easy way to dismiss someone."