MEXICO: Union v. State

With Government Candidate Avila Camacho and Independent Juan Andreu Almazan both claiming they had won the July 7 Presidential election, both preparing to take office, both promising a full-dress Congress to support them, the lid last week suddenly popped off Mexican politics.

The first surprise was sprung by Alfredo Navarrete, general counsel of the Mexican Mine Workers Syndicate. Rugged, husky-voiced, audacious and experienced, Alfredo Navarrete is a conservative who is against political control of labor unions. He announced that his Syndicate, which claims 125,000 members, would break away from CTM (Mexican Confederation of Labor) and try to form a new Popular Front with 102,000 railway workers, 16,000 oil workers, 11,000 electrical workers, 8,000 sugar workers. He promised that his organization would be non-political and “free from radicalism”—free, that is, from the influence of Communists. Though there are only about 30,000 Communists in Mexico, the Party has had a big share in CTM counsels.

Next day, speaking in confidential tones to 60 visiting American educators sitting in a Cultural Relations Seminar, Foreign Editor Cesar Ortiz of the CTM organ El Popular made a fabulous charge. Conservative Candidate Almazan, he told them, is just a tool of exiled Leon Trotsky. Together, he confided to the educators, the two aimed “to wreck Mexico’s liberal education system. . . . Trotsky would like to go into the U. S. to destroy your institutions, also . . . exert his influence over all South America. You can count on that.”

President Cardenas moved the following day to cool off the labor revolt, which threatened to spread to Communist-dominated unions. He issued a stern ultimatum to workers on the railroads not to split from CTM. He warned oil workers that unless they reorganized the entire industry within a reasonable time, he would cut wages, drop bonuses and take “other steps to get the industry back on a paying basis.” The President’s warning went down badly and not only the oil and rail workers, but also Government employes in the communications services threatened a general strike.

Naturally this was linked in pro-Government minds to Oppositionist Almazan. Naturally all the elements which oppose the imposition of Avila Camacho were willing to see the labor blow-up go sky high. And that was a danger last week. If labor fell down on the Government, the Government would have to fall back on the Army. Once again the six-year-old NEW Revolution wabbled between the mastery of the State and the labor unions.

Even in the Army, trouble brewed last week. It was revealed that certain soldiers of the 38th Infantry Battalion, strategically posted on the fringe of the Federal District, and others “in the country,” had been caught with “visiting cards” on which was printed the legend: “Soldiers, take arms against your usurpers when Almazan orders it.”

Where was Almazan? When the answer became known, Camachistas made much of it. The man, they said, was craven, guilty, shameful. He was, in point of fact, sensible as a fox.

After the election, when it became clear that assassins were interested in his where abouts, he announced he was going on a “vacation.” His destination, according to planted rumors, was either his mountain eyrie at Monterrey, or Yucatan. Craftily, he got aboard the one train in Mexico which was almost certain not to be de railed or blown up—the one which carried the Mexican delegation to the Havana Conference. At Veracruz he gave newspapermen and dubious “admirers” the slip, and instead of boarding a boat for Yucatan, he turned up again on the ship with the Conference delegation. When he arrived in Cuba, he announced that he would return to Mexico by mid-August, and that on Sept. 1 he would be officially declared President-elect by his private Congress. About the same time, Avila Camacho will be declared President-elect by another Congress. After that, anything may happen.