Foreign News: Sixty Mexicans

Round a portly, florid French chef in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on rue de Longchamp clustered 60 homesick Mexicans. The peppery air crackled and popped with counsel on the making of tortillas and chile relleno on current Paris rations.

Of chopped beef, there was enough; of vegetables, a slight deficiency. Soon the pungent odors brought grins of delight to 60 swarthy faces.

After dinner and the twanging of guitars the group trooped across the street to the imposing Mexican Legation, gleaming in white cement. Upstairs, on 60 cots neatly placed in the plushy conference rooms, they drew off their boots, slept and waited for news—news of going home. Downstairs the Mexican Minister to France, General Antonio Rios Zertuche. slightly annoyed but helpless, sat waiting too— for the same news.

The 60 were the city’s most colorful exiles, the remnants of the few hundred Mexicans who had volunteered to fight with France. There was no space for them on returning troopships. The others had been able to get back in ones and twos, as passage offered. The 60 were still waiting.