MEXICO: Squeeze

Brushing aside an international agreement and overruling a decision of the Mexican Supreme Court rendered year ago, President Lazaro Cardenas last week nationalized by decree 2,000,000 acres of oil lands held largely by foreign concerns in the States of Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas. A sweeping decree, employing Article XXVII of the Constitution, which makes all subsoil wealth the property of the Government, turned over to the National Petroleum Administration some 100,000 acres subleased by Standard Oil Co. of California, 250,000 acres leased by the Richmond Petroleum Co. of Mexico, Standard Oil Co. of California subsidiary, and 500,000 acres leased to the French-financed Compania Agricola y Colonizadora de Tabasco. Nationalization of oil lands not under lease has been proceeding apace for some months but last week’s seizure was the first to hit lands already under private contract.

During the first three years of his “social revolution,” President Cardenas has not been actively thwarted by Mexico’s judiciary, Supreme Court Justices even going so far as to promise “cooperation” with the Administration. Last week a Federal district court judge in the capital evidenced the first outright fulfilling of such promises when he refused to hear the initial case challenging the constitutionality of Cardenas’ land-division program.

An injunction was refused to the Longa Co. and Hacendado Alberto Danadieu: who sought to stop further land expropriation in the State of Sonora. Pudgy-cheeked President Cardenas made plans to supervise personally the land-division in Sonora, where are located the haciendas of such newsmaking names as Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, the John Hays Hammond estate, the Richardson Co. of Arizona.

Every Mexican President since 1910 has claimed that he was taking land from the rich and “returning” it to the poor. But last week President Cardenas accurately claimed that he has split up more land than all the Presidents of the past 15 years. Some 24,000,000 acres have been divided among Indian, mestizo farmers by President Cardenas since 1934 while only 20,000,000 acres were distributed in the 15 years preceding him.