MEXICO: Split Personality

In cell No. 20 in Mexico City’s Lecumberri Prison last week, a grey-haired prisoner lay on his bunk and refused all food, though he occasionally took a swig of water to ease his hunger pains. At 64, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexico’s No. 1 Communist and No. 1 living artist, was on a hunger strike. His stomach troubled him, but Siqueiros was adamant: “I will continue until we get justice.”

Jailed three months ago on a technical charge of “social dissolution,” i.e., stirring up trouble with Communist propaganda, Siqueiros is not striking because of poor treatment: he gets all the comforts, enjoyed himself immensely painting magnificent scenery for a prison show titled Lawyer, Take It Easy (see cut). The “justice” he demands concerns Mexico’s somewhat baffling foreign policy. In what it proclaims publicly, the Mexican government appears to be among Castro’s firmest friends; in its own affairs, however, no one cracks down harder on Communists and leftists—often illegally.

Quiet at Home. In the pokey with Siqueiros are 130 other veteran Reds and agitators. The list is a Who’s Who of trouble: Demetrio Vallejo, railroad union strike leader, Communist Leader Dionisio Encinas, Red-lining Newspaperman Filomeno Mata. The Mexican constitution states that for such crimes as social dissolution the interval between indictment and trial can be no longer than twelve months. Yet Unionist Vallejo has been in jail for 20 months without trial, and some of the others have been out of action even longer.

Where it can, Mexico also gives Castro’s Cubans as little rope as possible. The Mexican government keeps a watchful eye on Castro’s diplomats, grants very few visas to Cubans, either pro-or anti-Castro. Pemex, the state oil monopoly, turned down a Cuban request for technicians to help operate the refineries that Castro had seized from U.S. companies.

Noisy Abroad. What Castro does get is assistance in his propaganda war against “Yankee imperialism.” In Washington last year, President López Mateos called the Cuban revolution nationalist nonCommunist. Eight months later, when Cuba’s touring puppet President turned up in Mexico after having been rebuffed en route by Argentina’s President Frondizi and Venezuela’s Betancourt, López Mateos went down to the airport, gave him a warm abrazo and a warm word: “We are linked to Cuba by similar aspirations for justice.” At the Organization of American States’ San José meeting last August, Mexico’s Foreign Minister was a leader in cutting the heart out of the U.S. resolution criticizing Cuba.

The Mexican government has not done this out of any affection for Castro or belief in his system. It fears his appeal to its own poor peasant masses. But to come right out and say so would be going too far. The spark of the 1910 revolution still flickers, and Mexicans rarely let an opportunity pass to demonstrate their independence from Washington. But meanwhile, the streets are quiet.

At the end of last week, the Mexican government yielded a little to the hunger strikers, conditionally freed 19 small-fry railroad workers illegally held for 20 months, but released none of the important Reds. Grateful for the out, Siqueiros and his other hungry comrades gave up the strike and the painter started sipping consommé and apple sauce every three hours.