War and the People

Mexico verged on war, and the Axis had only itself to blame. Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla had already sent the Axis a violent ultimatum on the torpedoing of the Potrero del Llano (TIME, May 25). Then last week off Cuba the Axis bungled into torpedoing the 6,607-ton tanker Faja de Oro, which Mexico had grabbed from Italy last year, and whose commander openly boasted last month that he had rammed and sunk an Axis sub.

High Tension. Mexico City observers who had said, "All they need is another sinking," now said, "Here they go!" The Government blocked all dollar exchange to prevent liquidation of Axis funds, ordered all troops in readiness. The Banco Germanico paid off all its depositors and employes. Some leaders of the Catholic-fascist Sinarquista movement whirled to a pro-war position and tried to get their puzzled stooges to follow their 180DEG turn. Axis stores were deserted and Axis nationals kept off the streets.

But despite the high tension. President Manuel Avila Camacho was really moving very cautiously. To be sure, war would give his rightist Government a chance to "unify" Mexico, extend controls over labor, prices, economic resources, keep the business boom from going hog-wild. He was being urged hard toward war by Foreign Minister Padilla, who saw it as the culmination of his hemispheric policy, and by the great Communist-led labor groups who wanted a crusade against Fascism in alliance with Russia.

Crossed Wires. But President Avila Camacho had to consider Mexico's businessmen, who feared high taxes and the end of their boom. More significantly, Mexican observers wired last week that "there has been no excitement yet . . . among the people. . . it is generally agreed that Mexicans want the Axis defeated, but wish to keep Mexico nonbelligerent . . . 85% of the rank-&-file have no stomach for fighting for Britain and the U.S." The President had to think more than twice about Mexico's rank-&-file, for it was no secret that many of them still fondly recalled the liberal regime of ex-President Lazaro Cardenas, now in command of the West Coast region.

Pro-war groups were trying hard to convert into pro-war sentiment the quite comprehensible rage of the Mexican people against the Nazis who had killed 13 of the Potrero del Llano's 35-man crew, 14 of the Faja de Oro's 41. A procession of the Potrero's survivors, bearing with them the body of Engineer Rodolfo Chacon Castro, who had died of wounds in a Miami hospital, moved south from San Antonio, Tex. It was predicted that 100,000 would greet the cortege when it arrived in Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, where President Avila Camacho and his ministers went to receive it. Actually the crowd numbered only 15,000.

Nevertheless, though worried and internally divided, the Avila Camacho Cabinet took the next step toward war, summoned a special session of Congress for this week to authorize a formal declaration.

It began to appear that the Government might not ask for open war against the Axis, but only a "state of war." Internally, this would permit enactment of war measures such as the seizure of all Axis property and close surveillance of suspects, the control of communications (i.e., internal censorship), the displacement of civil by military government, and the suspension of constitutional guarantees and civil liberties.

The P.R.M., only national party, tried to reassure the Mexican people by officially stating that no Mexican soldiers would be sent abroad. .

Those who hoped to bring about "national unity" predicted that ex-President General Cardenas would attend last week's Cabinet meeting, vote for a war declaration, be rewarded with the post of Defense Minister. Lazaro Cardenas did not attend, was rewarded with nothing.

Mexico had not yet declared war on the Axis. It was still on the verge.

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