Connected Struggles

Nationalists from Quebec and Catholic militants from Mexico once shared a common cause, one that influenced international relations between their two countries. At a time when the Revolution and its aftermath in Mexico and world wars marginalized voices of political dissent in Canada, Catholics in both nations saw their cultural struggles as interconnected and worked to build transnational alliances as meaningful discourses of cultural identity. In Connected Struggles, Maurice Demers considers how and why groups from Mexico and Quebec actively sought to establish close cultural and political links. Drawing on extensive research in government, religious, and university archives in Mexico and Canada, Demers delves into the actors, their rationales, and the processes and meanings of such alliances. He proposes a reinterpretation of North-South collaboration in the Americas by analysing how the bonds created by Quebec's and Mexico's civil societies and religious communities influenced diplomatic relations, showing not only the Catholic origins of this solidarity, but its conservative - even reactionary - roots. Demers explains how the foreign ministries in Canada and Mexico both used and denounced these linkages, depending on the political gains to be made. Documenting the emergence of solidarity between French Canadians and Mexicans, Connected Struggles contributes to the understanding of the influence of civil societies in the history of international relations.

Maurice Demers is assistant professor of history at Universite de Sherbrooke.