Back to the Earth

(See Cover)

George Strausser Messersmith, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, last week addressed himself to an important oddity in Pan American relations. In the third year of the Good Neighbor policy, in Mexico's eleventh month of war on the U.S. side, at a time when the U.S. was spending many millions of dollars south of the border, suspicion of the gringos was again on the rise. The 13th Pan American Day was approaching, and Good Neighbor oratory was in order, but Ambassador Messer smith considered it necessary to play the stern mentor. Said he, in his most impor tant speech since he took over the Embassy in early 1942:

"I think it should be noted that there are those weak, timid and suspicious souls who believe that the nations now struggling for the preservation and re-establishment of democratic principles throughout the world, and for the sovereignty of states, may be so strong through the armaments they are building up for the achievement of victory . . . that the power, whether it be military or economic, or both, will be used unwisely and against the interests of the smaller states."

In brief, many a Mexican suspected that the U.S. meant his country no good. Ambassador Messersmith suggested that antidemocratic, anti-U.S. propagandists were responsible, and he recommended that they be placed "in the proper category," i.e., told to shut up. Propagandists had something to do with the matter. So did circumstances and wartime conditions which propagandists could use, but did not create.

These basic circumstances and conditions last week engaged the earnest attention of the U.S. and Mexican Governments. Most particularly, they engaged the attention and talents of Mexico's President Manuel Avila Camacho.

Higher Civilization. Eduardo Villasenor, head of the Banco de Mexico, keeps one shrewd ear attuned to business, the other to the mutterings of the people. A few days before Ambassador Messersmith spoke, Banker Villasenor warned: "If the U.S. does not dimmish the evils due to export restrictions [on U.S. manufactured goods and industrial supplies] it will directly cause a fall in the industrial and agricultural problems of a country whose collaboration is essential for the war. We must not risk the loss of our own culture without even acquiring a higher level of civilization."

That "higher level" was one goal of the U.S. Good Neighbor policy; and that policy was dedicated to the proposition that a strong, friendly Pan American part ner is better than a weak-sister satellite.

It was the keynote of President Avila Camacho's speech when he took office in 1940: "Each new epoch demands a rebirth of ideas. The clamor of the entire republic now demands the national consolidation of our social conquests. It demands an era of construction, of abundant life, of economic expansion."

Last week the abundant life had not yet come to the tough, dry soil of Mexico's high plateaus. Under Avila Camacho, the leftist revolution which he inherited was now--by his deliberate design--wandering down the middle of the road. But, to an ancient land, now feeling the pangs and exhilarations of industrial pioneering, war had brought millions of U.S. dollars.

Primarily, the dollars were to pay for the 519,000 tons of strategic war metals (compared to 221,000 tons in 1939) which creaked north last year on overstrained railways. At 45-c- an ounce, the U.S. took all but a fraction of Mexico's 80,000,000 ounces of silver, all of the copper, zinc, lead, tungsten, manganese, felspar and mica that could be dug out of the cordilleras (see map, p. 34). In addition the U.S. bought fibres, chickpeas, mahogany, fats & oils, sent new capital into Mexico's boiling petroleum industry, bought the usual foodstuffs (beef, beans, etc.) from the northern provinces.

Behind the exploitation of Mexico's buried riches was a $30,000,000 Export-Import bank loan for road building, $6,000,000 for Mexico's infant steel industry. At least $20,000,000, mostly private U.S. and Mexican capital, has gone into new mines and the rejuvenation of old ones. Another $100,000,000 will go into the industry. Some $10,000,000 in Lend-Lease military supplies has been sent south of the border.

High Finance. The mestizos--of mixed Indian and Spanish blood--are nervous. They are not yet sure of their ground. Yet they thirst for the industrial bounties of the Colossus of the North. And sometimes they grow impatient when the thirst is not promptly slaked.

There have been delays. Some were caused by bumbling in Washington, some by actual shortages in the U.S., others by lack of transport. All could be blamed on the tight U.S. control of priorities on exports. Cement plants, putting almost 50% of their output into the Pan American highway, stormed that lack of vital machinery was slowing them down. The Altos Hornos steel mills were ready to operate--if a few more vital parts could be obtained. Even Lend-Lease supplies were considered insufficient. When former President Lazaro Cardenas (now Minister of National Defense) was asked if his soldiers would fight outside the hemisphere, he asked: "With what? Arrows? Rocks?"

These instances, when multiplied, created a feeling of frustration in Mexico. They contributed to the apathy of solemn-faced Indians, who see no glory in waging a production war for the gringos. Also, the total effect of the inflooding U.S. capital was not altogether healthy. Much of it was adventure capital, out for quick & easy profits. This money seldom found its way into such needed, long-term projects as dairies, soybean culture, ice plants, insecticides.

Adventure money came in with such promoters as Ben ("Sell 'Em") Smith, a onetime Wall Street operator more recently connected with Canadian gold mines; Contractor Sam Rosoff, Oilman Edwin Pauley, and Mr. Roosevelt's friend, Politico Ed Flynn (who did not go to Australia). "Sell 'Em" Ben is now a principal backer of the new $1,400,000 Hipodromo de las Americas race track near Mexico City. Before Flynn also entered this deal, someone told him that horses do not run well in Mexico City's high altitude. Said Ed Flynn: "They pay well, don't they?"

Higher Prices. American dollars put pesos in the pockets of Indian laborers, created new wants in consumer goods. The influx brought a flush of new funds to the Mexican middle class, many of whom dabble in mining stocks-- and wonder how long the boom will last. Like the U.S., Mexico is suffering the irritations and the ills of inflation.

The cost-of-living index (foodstuffs, consumer goods, medicine) has risen from 81.6 in 1934, to 166.5 in 1943. Luxury goods are expensive, and some are rare. In a land where 75% of the people have always managed a meager living on the trinity of corn, beans and chili, food prices have sprinted up.

Screaming headlines in the Mexican press last week caused the Government to brace its feeble and insufficient price controls. Hoarding speculators, a shortage of transport, Mexico's ancient toleration of what U.S. citizens call graft, all complicated the control problem.

Lush spenders in Mexico City's nightclubs, the daily spectacle at Ben Smith's race track, stimulated discontent and suspicions among the poor. Labor demonstrators shouted last week: "If the price of meat does not go down, we will eat the horses at the Hipodromo!"

Agents of the Spanish Falange, leaders of the domestic fascist-patterned Sinarquista peasant movement made the most of these causes and symptoms of unrest, turned them against the U.S. and against Mexico's participation in an "imperialist war." All of these pressures touch Avila Camacho, for to his people he symbolizes the war, and its impacts on Mexico.

High Esteem. Negotiating, placating, gently prodding, wisely restraining Mexico's turbulent affairs is Manuel Avila Camacho. He is a sober, plodding man. His special talent and achievement is that, in a country famed for its violent schisms, he has managed to retain the friendship and respect of his people and their firebrand politicians. Rich & poor, radicals & reactionaries, friends & foes of Avila Camacho hold a common opinion of him. He is a fair and honest man. In the gently cynical estimation of his people, he is well-nigh unique.

Born on a century-old homestead, trained to be an accountant, Avila Camacho turned revolutionary, then military administrator. In the elections of 1940, he rose from Minister of National Defense under Revolutionary Lazaro Cardenas to the Presidency. Since then Cardenas has not interfered with his successor. Like most leaders of the left and right he is personally fond of the President.

A junketing journalist once observed that big-shouldered, heavy-jowled Avila Camacho had as much color as a slab of halibut. Mexicans have nicknamed him: El Buchon (The Double-Chinned). But they applaud his belief that Mexico must be "governed for all," admire his moderation in all things.

Avila Camacho's moderate day begins at 6:30 a.m. with a few practice putts on the lawn of "Los Pinos," the walled estate he built eleven years ago in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec suburb. With him live his devout wife and their adopted son, Manuel Piedra. On free evenings Avila

Camacho plays billiards, translates French military works into Spanish, smokes por trait-banded cigars which are shipped to him in 200 lots by Cuba's President Fulgencio Batista.

High Politics. To Avila Camacho's office in Mexico City's National Palace comes a continual parade of military men, Cabinet members, political advisers, personal friends. He listens to all of them. He counsels against sudden changes. He keeps Mexico in the middle of the road.

All this takes some doing, for the men around Avila Camacho personify all the varied extremes of Mexican politics:

> A successor to Mexico's rough, tough type of politico is the President's older brother, Maximino Avila Camacho. Rich, shrewd Brother Maximino has an interest in Mexico City's bull ring, as Minister of Communications has his hand in many other ventures. He is Manuel's hatchet man, the fixer, "the man to know" in Mexican politics and finance. Yet no man ever traced any venture of Maximino's to the President's door, and certainly not to his pockets. Labor distrusts Maximino, the peasants sometimes confuse him with Manuel. The President once pointed to the grey hairs in his head and sighed: "Maximino put them there."

> Pamphleteers and Fascists sometimes accuse Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla of being a public-address system for Wash ington. But Author Padilla has greatly raised Mexico's world diplomatic standing. This week his fourth book, Free Men of America, was published in the U.S. Wrote Minister Padilla: "Freedom is America's vocation. . . ." To him, democracy is good "not because it makes no mistakes . . . but because it can remedy them by peaceful means."

> Minister of Government Miguel Aleman looks upon Maximino and Padilla as possible rivals for the Presidency in 1946. Smooth, quick-witted Miguel Aleman cleaned up the Axis spy ring in Mexico, ran the propaganda campaigns which helped swing public opinion behind Mexico's entrance into the war. He controls the inbred Government bureaucracy, is now mending fences for summer elections.

> Vibrant, gimlet-eyed Octavio Vejar Vasquez succeeded leftist Luis Sanchez Ponton as Minister of Education. He is a conservative, close to Mexico's powerful Catholic Church. To him goes the praise, and the blame, for abolishing coeducation in Mexican schools. He also recently ordered all schoolteachers to abandon their political activity.

> Fidel Velazquez, a sincere and able democrat, replaced exotic, eloquent, brilliant Vincente Lombardo Toledano (a school mate of the President's who still calls him by his first name) as secretary of Mexico's most powerful trade-union alliance (the C.T.M.). Under Velazquez the C.T.M. has been purged of Lombardo's Stalinist influence.

> Lazaro Cardenas returned to the Government as Minister of National Defense when Mexico entered the war. His revolutionary, agrarian reforms have been modified under Avila Camacho, but in the main they survive. Busy with war work, Cardenas maintains his mystical quiet, seems unperturbed when his leftist supporters scream that some of his pet projects have been butchered.

High Hopes. For six years (1934-40) before Avila Camacho brought moderation into Mexican politics, Lazaro Cardenas spread revolutionary fire & brimstone over the land. Cardenas distributed over 45,000,000 acres of land to the peasants. With the backing of labor and the Indian peasantry, which still worship him, he built up the first socialist state in the Western world. Stubborn as a burro, Cardenas fought for Mexico's sovereign right to control its own subsoil treasures of ore and oil. He nearly broke Mexico doing it. When he bequeathed his errors and accomplishments to Avila Camacho, it was as if a volcano had subsided.

Where Cardenas meant upheaval Avila Camacho meant the sun and the wind, which would heal wounds and quiet a torn land. Mexico was sick of being pulled leftward by Communists, rightward by Fascists. To deeply religious Mexicans, Avila Camacho stood for the middle way, the return to quiet, earthy values. They listened when he said "Soy creyente" ("I am a believer"), a profession of faith which no Mexican President had publicly voiced since Benito Juarez nationalized the church's properties during the 1856-59 reform laws. They listened when he said "Los que no se obtiente por la buena es negativo" (That which is not obtained by good will is negative).

That made sense. So did Avila Camacho, sanely serving a land which in the past had prided itself on being "close to music and madness."

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