Padilla Out

Stalwart Ezequiel Padilla, Mexico's Foreign Minister since 1940, resigned last week as the result of a campaign of backstage intrigue and a storm of public criticism. Rivals within the Mexican foreign service, notably Francisco Castillo Najera, Ambassador to the U.S., had long been gunning for 6-ft., spruce Ezequiel, sometimes called "the black Narcissus" because of his darkish skin and elegant attire. Other political opponents may have undermined him with President Avila Camacho, hoping to head him off as a candidate in next year's presidential election.

These maneuvers were on the quiet. Far from quiet was the clamor against Padilla as a too obedient friend of the U.S. State Department. In the interest of Pan-American unity, he had favored admitting Argentina to the United Nations conference at San Francisco. Anti-U.S. feeling, always smoldering in Mexico, recently burst into flame with a series of speeches and newspaper articles against Padilla. His collaboration with the U.S., they charged, had turned into "entreguismo" (selling out). A damaging rumor went the rounds--that U.S. Ambassador George S. Messersmith was urging President Harry S. Truman to use U.S. influence to make Padilla President of Mexico.

The leading Padilla-baiter was Vicente Lombardo Toledano, loud-speaking leftist chief of the powerful Latin American Federation of Labor. At San Francisco, declared Lombardo, Padilla had stooged for the U.S. State Department. He had an "anti-Soviet phobia"; his attacks on the Russian delegation had followed the propaganda line of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, pet hate of Latin American labor.

Hurt and indignant, Padilla denounced his critics for "constant attacks and slander." The same day he resigned.

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