New Pattern for Pemex

Mexico's high-riding oil workers got a jolt. When riggers and refinery men walked out last week, in one of their periodic 24-hour stoppages to force wage concessions, the new Aleman Government cracked right back. Troops were called out to guard property of Pemex, the Government's oil monopoly. Furthermore, deliveries went on: jeeploads of soldiers with machine guns at the ready convoyed gas trucks through the capital's streets.

New Secretary of Labor Andres Serra Rojas called the strike illegal, said he would have the law on its leaders. At week's end the new chief of Pemex, Antonio Bermudez, went farther, fired 50 leaders of the lawbreaking union. Said he: "There are 20,000,000 men to take the places of 20.000. I have the Federal Government backing me and I was never more confident or optimistic in my life."

Adios! The man charged with cutting this new pattern for the oil industry bears a stamp new to Mexican politics. When sad-eyed, ramrod-backed Antonio Bermudez was treasurer of the state of Chihuahua, an acquaintance went to him and said: "Antonio, my friend, I want to import several carloads of alcohol from the U.S., and if I pay taxes on it it will be very expensive. . . ." Bermudez usually low-pitched voice rose to a roar: "If I invite you to my house for dinner then you can call me Antonio and call me your friend. Here you address me properly as an official of the state. You will of course pay taxes like everybody else--adios!"

Such incidents gave Bermudez a reputation for a close sense of duty almost from the day he entered politics in the sleazy border town of Ciudad Juarez, where he had made a $6 million fortune distilling Waterfill Frazier bourbon whisky. Within two weeks of his election as mayor in 1942, he had launched such a housecleaning as Mexico had rarely seen. He cracked down on a free-flowing traffic in narcotics, stolen autos and women, kicked grafters out of the city hall. He was the sort of independent President Aleman wanted to bring order out of the Government's inefficient, graft-ridden petroleum monopoly. Said Bermudez when he took the job three weeks ago: "I am going to put Pemex on a businesslike basis."

Win with Wildcats. Labor was only the most immediate of the tremendous problems facing Bermudez. Pemex had fallen far behind on distributing its oil, and in discovering and developing new fields. On distribution, Bermudez was hamstrung by the sad state of Mexican railways, but he had schemes to overcome that disability. One top-priority project: an $8,000,000 pipeline to bring natural gas from Poza Rica on the Gulf to Mexico City's industries and households. He also hopes to develop new fields that will give Mexico oil for at least 50 years to come. The reported program for 1947: 50 new wildcat wells, compared with 15 drilled in the eight years since the Government expropriated oil.

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