Los Angeles Aftermath

Four hundred Mexican students gathered before the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City one day last week, tossed up insults at Pan-American-minded Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla. Reason: he had failed (they claimed) to protest firmly enough against the attacks by U.S. sailors on Los Angeles zoot suiters of Mexican blood (TIME, June 21).

Pushing on toward the U.S. Embassy, the demonstrators found their path blocked by police squads. In Mexico City's busiest tourist section, they booed at shops displaying U.S. signs, cheered those with German names. At Sanborn's, a U.S. restaurant, they stopped. A student entered and roughed one U.S. visitor at his lunch.

It was the first anti-U.S. demonstration in Mexico since 1940 (when disgruntled Almazanistas stoned the U.S. Embassy building where Vice President Henry A. Wallace was dining). Mexican newspapers carried full accounts of the incident, considered it a protest against U.S. racial discrimination against Mexicans. Vicente Lombardo Toledano, president of the Confederation of Latin American Workers, saw it as part of "gigantic Nazi maneuvers" in the Western Hemisphere.

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