Communists' Corner

Fidel Castro's Caribbean island is the most conspicuous display of Communist penetration in Latin America, but it is far from the whole show. In remote corners and pockets of the hemisphere, there are places where the Communists are either in effective control of a region or very near to it. One such corner is the ruggedly scenic Mexican state of Michoacan, on the Pacific coast north of the resort town of Acapulco (see map). Admits one of the state's own officials: "What we have here is a well-cultivated Communist zone."

A land of spectacular volcanoes, but little industry to support its 2,200,000 people, Michoacan has long been the stronghold of Lazaro Cardenas, 68, the fiery far leftist who nationalized foreign oil companies as Mexico's President from 1934 to 1940. Attempting to undercut Cardenas' control, the country's dominant P.R.I, party installed an anti-Communist as state Governor last June. But many lesser officials are Cardenas supporters and strongly proCommunist. Why not? The Russians have been busy in Michoacan for years, and their influence spreads from back-country schoolhouses, where maps of Russia outnumber maps of Mexico, to the capital of Morelia, where the Russian Institute wields far more influence than the U.S.-supported American-Mexican Cultural Institute.

Three-Headed Monster. Bankrolled by the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the Russian Institute offers free Russian lessons, lectures, movies and a well-stocked Spanish-language library, where citizens can read magazines describing the U.S. as a "three-headed monster that thinks on Wall Street, roars in the Pentagon and brays in the White House." The state's biggest and noisiest newspaper, La Voz de Michoacan, shrills away in Cardenas' best gringo-baiting style. No wonder that last year, after a visit to Washington, Khrushchev's son-in-law, Izvestia Editor Aleksei Adzhubei, spent 25 minutes with President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, then hopped down to Morelia for lengthy conferences with local Reds.

Communist penetration is most evident at Morelia's University of Michoacan. By conservative estimate, about 25% of the 7,500 students are Communist in everything but card. Michoacan recently sent a dozen students off to Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University, and two years ago, during the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, rioting students burned the American-Mexican Institute. By no coincidence, two members of the Russian embassy had traveled from Mexico City to Morelia just before the riots.

Act of Courage. Until last March, an avowed Communist, Eli de Gotari, 41, was rector of the university. In an act of courage, Michoacan's anti-Communist Governor, Agustin Arriaga Rivera, dismissed De Gotari, after 40 days of student riots that ended only when a student was killed and the federal government sent troops to surround the school and jets to buzz the city. Last month an audit of the university's books showed that during his 17 months in office, De Gotari had doled out $51,600 in university funds to anti-U.S. or pro-Communist organizations and publications. Even so, there are still ten confirmed Communists on the faculty. Their teaching echoes across the campus--in a law student who says, "Half of Mexico is owned by the U.S.," or in others who say, with the ease of lessons well learned, that "capitalism is dying."

U.S.-style capitalism might already be dead, to judge by the absence of any official U.S. presence in the state. "We're not too much up to date in Michoacan," admits U.S. Ambassador Thomas C. Mann, who has yet to set foot there after nearly two years in Mexico. The burned-out American Institute has been rebuilt, but it is classified as "B Grade" by the U.S. embassy. The U.S. attitude seems to be that greater emphasis would only serve to provide a larger target for Morelia's Communists to throw rocks at. This may be practical wisdom, but the result has been to ignore a fief the size of West Virginia, and to have little effect on a university that calls itself the second oldest* in the New World.

* The University of Santo Domingo, founded in 1538, is the oldest. Michoacan was founded in 1540.

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