THE AMERICAS: Problem for Superman

In Mexico inflation is a grim reality.

Food prices are almost double what they were in 1939; clothing prices are more than double. And they are still climbing. Wages, always low, are far behind.

For moderate President Manuel Avila Camacho, the problem has ramifications unknown in the U.S. Mexico’s small, widely scattered population centers and poor communications make effective rationing impossible. Speculation has wrecked all attempts at price control. Said

Senator Rafael Avila, head of Mexico’s Truman Committee: “Nobody but a superman could solve the whole problem.”

Last week kindly, determined President Avila Camacho took supermannish steps to bring the cost of living and income into line. He ordered: 1) measures to increase production of corn and sugar; 2) another attempt to freeze basic food prices;

3) prohibition of unauthorized strikes;

4) 5 to 50% increases of all wages under ten pesos ($2.05) daily, then a freeze.

More Corn, More Money. Most important of the decrees was the one aimed at increasing corn production. For Mexicans, corn is the staff of life—they eat it in tortillas, as cereal, and on the ear in season—and corn is critically short.

Avila Camacho ordered 250,000 acres on the tropical coasts planted in corn, the planting of more corn on lands not used for sugar. Border states put a stricter watch on bootlegged corn liquor trickling across to the whiskey-short U.S. Sole purchaser of corn will be the Government, which will distribute it on a zonal basis.

Employers who violate the wage orders may be punished by jail sentences or Government operation of their plants. Price violators may be jailed or fined. Avila Camacho’s difficult task now is to make these decrees work where others failed.