LATIN AMERICA: Mexico

Personalities who loomed in the news last week as President Calles and his militant pan-Mexican henchmen continued to enforce the anti-Roman Catholic* Mexican Constitution (TIME, Aug. 9 et ante):

Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti (Pope Pius XI) announced last week that, in view of the Mexican crisis, he would postpone his vacation. As everyone knows, the Sanctissimus Pater, goes vacationing each year, despite his self-imposed “imprisonment,” by moving out from the stuffy Vatican to his cool Casino in the Vatican Gardens. During the week Bishop Diaz of Tabasco, Mexico, displayed to newsgatherers a communication from the Papal Secretary of State, Pietró Cardinal Gasparri, conveying the displeasure of His Holiness with the Mexican Constitution and President Calles’ enforcement statutes: “The Holy See condemns these laws (TIME, July 26) and every act which might be interpreted by the Mexican people as an acceptance or approval of them.”

Diamas Anguiano, Catholic priest at Alvarado, State of Vera Cruz, was excommunicated by Bishop Guizar y Valencia of Vera Cruz for “accepting the religious regulations of the Calles Government.”

Father Anguiano, 70, protested: “I did not mean to rebel against the Church. … I think the Holy See has been misinformed regarding the religious situation. . . .”

Rev. G. Warfield Hobbs, chief publicity secretary of the Episcopal Board of Missions, remarked to Manhattan newsgatherers: “We are adhering strictly to the Mexican law. . . . As (Episcopal) Bishop Frank W. Creighton said shortly after his arrival in Mexico, ‘Our Mission has nothing to do with diplomacy, industry or politics. . . . Mexico knows what is best for Mexico.'”

James A. Flaherty, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, declared before the Supreme Council of Knights at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia: “We are going to deal with the Mexican situation before this Convention is over.”

Before the Convention adjourned a motion was adopted:

“We call upon President Coolidge and the State Department to put an end to the ignominious contempt which has been shown by Calles for Americans. The period of ‘watchful waiting’ or any other such procedure is over. We, as American citizens, demand of our Government that this action be taken forthwith. Although our Government has for years emphatically refused to recognize the Soviet regime of Russia, it has continued to countenance, aid and comfort the Bolshevist forces of Carranza, Obregon and Calles.”

Augusto B. Leguia, president of Peru, “bantam Mussolini,” addressed to President Calles an appeal: “I view with deep sorrow the religious conflict which is developing in Mexico, that beautiful twin country of Peru. … I take the liberty of begging Your Excellency to incline your powerful will toward the re-establishment of harmony with the Church.

Plutarco Elias Calles, president of Mexico, replied to President Leguia: “I must take the message from Your Excellency as a purely personal expression, which can in no way signify the interference of a foreign power in a matter of exclusively domestic nature.”

To U. S. newsgatherers at Mexico City, President Calles unbosomed pugnacious thoughts: “I am broadminded. In my mind there is room for all beliefs. For me all religions are good—the Catholic, the Protestant,the Buddhist, the Jewish and the Mohammedan. They are all good, they are all respectable, for all of them have for their end morality. “But the Catholic religion has one great defect. According to Catholics, dogma cannot be discussed because the church has the gift of infallibility and therefore it cannot be mistaken. They have put this idea into the brain of the ignorant, provoking agitation of matters of little importance. It prevents people from thinking and deceives them with all classes of lies. “You have no religious problem in your country, but in our Latin-American countries foreign priests have meant calamity and especially the Roman Catholic priests, the Spaniards and Italians. All the outcasts of Rome and Europe have been sent to our countries—thousands of them come to make our people fanatics and to sink them in ignorance while taking away with them all they can get hold of. They have come to mix in our interior politics, to absorb our economic strength, to control all our activities, to disrupt our institutions, to counteract all the beneficent results of advantages secured at a cost of so many sacrifices and of so much blood. In the presence of this situation, we have been obliged to take radical measures to check the evil. “If the Roman Catholic clergy could end the existence of other religions they would do it. For them there is no other religion than the Catholic.” Developments. Aside from such verbal alarms and excursions the week passed quietly in Mexico. The Roman Catholic clergy made no inflammatory speeches, took no militant action, prayed secretly and in unison with Catholics throughout the world. Bishop Pasquale Diaz of Tabasco, designated as “spokesman” for the Roman Catholics of Mexico last week, contented himself with promulgating a peaceful announcement that the Papacy will not “compromise” with the Calles Administration unless the antireligious decrees are first withdrawn. During the week President Calles displayed no desire whatever to “compromise,” and a non-violent deadlock ensued. The Government made no display of its armed forces, seemingly convinced that it held the situation in perfect control. Organized resistance by Mexican Catholics took the sole form of a commercial boycott against anti-Catholic tradesmen. In Mexico City the boycott fizzled; in the provinces it proved more effective.

*The Constitution declares: “Only a Mexican by birth may be a minister of any religious creed in Mexico.” Though this clause affects foreign clergymen of all denominations, in theory, it was actually inserted as a weapon of suppression against the Roman Catholic Church, to which 90% of all Mexicans nominally belong, but which is believed by the united Calles (Laborite) and Obregon (Agrarian) parties to have become so potent in Mexico that it must be overthrown as a menace to the authority of the state.