Quieter Mexico

The deportation of non-Mexican priests and nuns, begun a fortnight ago (TIME, Feb. 22), was proceeding as the week opened, and in a test case-- one Mexican court held that this action by the Calles Government was strictly constitutional.

Abroad, however--at Washington, London, Madrid--a notable furore was created, and the representatives of the U. S., Britain and Spain in Mexico City were instructed to employ harsh language at the Mexican Foreign Office.

They did so. The deportations were halted overnight. Chastened Mexican police liberated such clergymen as they had locked up prior to deportation. Assurances were given that the religious clauses of the decidedly "advanced" Mexican Constitution will not be enforced, at least for the present.

The Constitution. Historians recalled that this much-maligned document may be looked upon as the written expression of the spirit of nationalism, which has continued to smolder fiercely in Mexico through centuries of foreign oppression and exploitation. Mexico City was actually founded almost a century before Europeans were informed that there existed an American Continent. Long before the Pilgrim Fathers arrived to dwell in bigoted rusticity among savages, the American tribes calling themselves Mexica or Azteca had created the Mexican Empire and evolved a high and urban state of civilization, with courts of justice, a highly developed agricultural, mechanical and artistic technique, and a stone architecture which commanded the respect of the luxury-loving Spaniards when they arrived.

All this vanished amid the ensuing centuries of cutthroat European misgovernment, during which Spanish Catholicism was imported and constituted a serious drain upon the purses of the ungently "converted" Mexicans. The Spaniards were followed by equally unscruplous adventurers, many in foreign pay. With the decades, such Mexicans as retained a national consciousness acquired a bitter hatred and distrust of all foreigners. They also developed the unlovely characteristics of a people too long oppressed.

When the present Mexican Constitution was promulgated in 1917 it was deliberately worded in such a way as to make it constitutional for Mexicans to drive out foreign nationals--churchmen, business men, almost everybody--and to preserve the natural resources of Mexico from further foreign exploitation. Foreign nationals consider that they have "vested rights" in Mexico, after being there all these years. In a sense all "rights" are perhaps matters of usage. It is however the determination of the Mexican Nationalists to enforce their Constitution as soon as they are strong enough to do so. They consider that their ancestors have bequeathed to them pre-European "vested rights" in Mexico.