At the start of the 1920s organizations such as the Pro-Race Committee and the Anti-Chinese and Anti-Jewish Nationalist League were created in response to a large influx of immigrants to Mexico. This was a result of growing economic concerns among the Mexican working and middle class, as Chinese-Mexicans, and Jews had come to constitute a considerable portion of the merchant class. Mexican labour unions had attempted put political pressure to restrict Chinese and Jewish immigration to Mexico.
The Revolutionary Mexicanist Action (ARM) was on such organisation, founded on September 25, 1933 in Mexico City by former members of the cities Pro-Race Committee division. Its members were hardened military men from the Civil War and Cristero War and led by Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco. Inspired by the NSDAP in Germany and Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts it intended to put paramilitary action at the head of widespread opposition to migration.
Two years after it's founding the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action (ARM) party had already found a reputation for their fanatical anti-communist and anti-foreigner violence. Though miniscule in size they had by this point already burned down the Mexican Communist Parties' Mexico City headquarters, engaged in gun battles with the police and attempted assassinations of numerous leftist intellectuals and politicians. Their reputation made them a terror of the Mexican left aswell as a problem for the centre-right Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that took power in 1929.
This came to a head when in 1935 ARM announced they would march into Mexico Cities historic city centre Zócalo on Mexican Revolution Day where President Lázaro Cárdenas intended to speak. Both the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and Institutional Revolutionary Party made a pact to prevent an orderly demonstration of the Revolutionary Mexicanist Action Party (ARM) utilising any means they had in their power. By this time ARM had already created a fascist-styled paramilitary unit called the "Gold Shirts" and came to demonstration both armed with clubs and with a cavalry battalion to lead the demonstration.
Even before any ARM member had arrived in Mexico City the PRI government had already hired and armed Mexican communist paramilitary leader Valentín Campa to assassinate ARM leader Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco before he could arrive aswell as providing him with police cruisers with the intention of ramming the feared ARM cavalry when they arrived.
The ARM contingent foiled this assassination plan by arriving late when the communists had already taken over the square, they marched into the historic Zócalo square with 200 golden shirts and around a thousand ARM supporters and onlookers. The communists fired fireworks and threw caltrops infront of the cavalry, a whistle called out and ARM cavalry men charged the ten thousand strong communist mob providing space for the fascists to spill in, out of side streets police cruisers manned by communists appeared and rammed into the ARM cavalry contingent, leaving dozens of horses dead and their riders scrambling for safety. The hundred or so Golden Shirts and thousand supporters of ARM enraged took out their concealed weapons and engaged both the communist and police, tearing them out of their police cruisers and beating one communist party member to death.
Carrasco remained at the head of what was left of his cavalry and led his Goldenshirts in a 3 hour brawl with the mob while the President of Mexico Lázaro Cárdenas was evacuated to the National Palace which was barricaded and manned by machine gun nests. The Golden shirts eventually were met with police gunfire and retreated in disarray. Carrasco either fell off his horse or it was shot underneath him and he attempted to flee through back alleys, this only led him to run into spotters for Valentín Campa's gang. After an exhausting day of marching and battle Carrasco was found, injured by the fall from his horse and painting, finally meeting the 20 man squad organised with the sole purpose of his murder.
1.Mexico City Pro-Race Committee (1930)
2. Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco
3. Communists ramming into the ARM cavalry with government provided automobiles.
4. Goldshirts holding weapons after the Zócalo riot.
5. Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco wounded and in hospital.