Six Weeks With the General

General Manuel Avila Camacho had last week been President for precisely six weeks, but he had already set the pendulum of Mexican politics swinging in a new direction. In Mexico's turbulent history since the 1917 revolution the pendulum has swung alternately left and right. Between 1924 and 1927 President Plutarco Elias Calles made Mexico nationalistic, anticlerical, anti-U. S. Then Calles grew conservative and the pendulum swung to the right until another strong-man President, Lazaro Cardenas, gave it a violent heave to the left. Avila Camacho had not only started it rightward again but with considerable momentum:

> No sooner had he assumed office than the President thrust down the throat of Congress a railroad reorganization bill, taking control of the railways out of workers' hands and putting it into the hands of the Government.

> He proposed a Constitutional amendment to increase the terms of Supreme Court Justices from six years to life. Under the six-year provision successive administrations have always influenced the Court. When three of his appointees were rejected by the Senate as "reactionaries," Avila Camacho insisted on their approval. Next day they were approved.

> The President registered his property and possessions with the Attorney General (assets $22,000), issued a decree requiring all Government employes to register their wealth on entering and leaving office.

> To workers on communal farms he gave full title to the lands they till, thus replacing the Cardenas communal-farm plan with a class of small homesteaders. Confiscated property was put under the Attorney General's control. Persons whose property was confiscated for anti-religious motives may now contest the confiscation.

Last week President Avila Camacho called a special session of Congress for February to go still further--to enact a series of conservative reforms. Marked for revision were: the General Law of Labor (by outlawing what the President calls "crazy strikes" and increasing the Government's power to intervene in labor disputes); the Law of National Education (by abolishing compulsory Socialist education and giving a share of public education to the Catholic Church); the law implementing Article 27 of the Constitution on nationalization of the subsoil (by modifying the present ban on the possession of oil concessions by foreigners). Considered sure to pass a Congress which now eats out of the President's hand, this reform would remove the last big cause of friction between Mexico and the U. S.

Not only is Congress behind Avila Camacho, but the press in Mexico loudly sings his praises. Just before he took office, ex-&-exiled President Calles announced from California that he was behind him. Almazanistas have boarded the bandwagon. That wry little labor leader, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, whom Avila Camacho repudiated before his election, has echoed his disapproval of "crazy strikes" and begun trying to negotiate a settlement of a miners' strike in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila.

But by last week the opposition to the Avila Camacho counterrevolution had become both vocal and violent. Since the new President's inauguration a steady stream of Nazi agents has filtered into the country. Last week Nazis and Communists were distributing pamphlets denouncing the "counter-revolution backed by Yanqui Imperialism." The Government had to call out police armed with rifles and tear gas to keep an eye on the demonstration in Mexico City.

At week's end a red-&-black strike flag was hung across the entrance to Mexico City's two tramway terminals, where 500 streetcars idled. The Capital awoke the first morning of this week to find its transportation system crippled. President L. M. Spiers of British-owned Mexican Tramway Co. asked Avila Camacho to declare the strike illegal, accused Nazis and Communists of fomenting it. It seemed probable that Avila Camacho, in the seventh week of his administration, faced a showdown with organized labor.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.