MEXICO: Silent Victory

Last week Mexico forgot war for the nonce as the P. R. M. (Party of the Mexican Revolution) convened to choose a candidate for next July’s presidential election, and to build him a platform. Usually the selection of a P. R. M. candidate is all that is needed to assure his election.

This year conservative opposition is headed up by the Independent nominee, General Juan Andreu Almazán, running on a platform which promises to slow down the rate of change but to keep some of the more important recent reforms—i.e., the agrarian program, nationalization of oil, etc. Normally an opposition nominee has about as much chance in a Mexican election as a dray horse in a sulky race, but Candidate Almazán has picked up much support and he is given an outside chance to win. The P. R. M. did not have to think even once last week before it nominated President Lázaro Cárdenas’ favorite, a popular oldtime fighter who subdued the Catholic rebellion of 1928 and the Cedillo revolt last year, onetime Minister of National Defense General Manuel Avila Camacho. Since January 1938 he has been training for the presidency on a regime of “silence on important issues.”

Since the nomination was such a pushover, U. S. interest centred on the proposed platform. The convention drafted a plan to nationalize the oil industry completely within the next six years. If the plan is endorsed, all petroleum holdings will be seized, and compensation paid only “in the event that it should be absolutely indispensable,” and only if it is proved that the original concession was not fraudulently obtained. Land expropriation will also be continued as vigorously as possible.