MEXICO: Palm Down

At the swearing in of a President of Mexico no Bible is possible. Last week, as though going to a bull fight, those affable, spur-clinking atheists, President Abelardo Rodriguez and President-elect Lazaro Cardenas (TIME, Dec. 3), drove through a frantically cheering rabble to the National Stadium, packed with 50,000 inauguration addicts.

“Do you swear to observe and enforce the Constitution of the United States of Mexico, as well as the laws emanating therefrom?” rumbled Don Enrique Gonzalez Flores, President of the Congress.

General Cardenas stretched forth his right hand, empty and palm downward: “I do!”

“Then, should you fail to do so, the Nation will demand from you an accounting!”

Just in case somebody should be assassinated, the Mexican Congress had rushed through a law providing that for twelve hours General Cardenas and General Rodriguez should both be President. They embraced handsomely amid huzzahs.

Since more than 3,500,000 pesos really had to be paid last week to U. S. and British oil companies on loans they had made to the Mexican Government, and since no new Mexican President would like to authorize a thing of that sort, the retiring President obligingly squiggled the necessary decree and everyone seemed happy. New President Cardenas announced his Cabinet:

Foreign Affairs—onetime President Emilio Portes Gil.

Interior—Juan de Dios Bojorquez.

War—onetime War Minister General Pablo Quiroga.

Finance—Narciso Bassols.

Communications—Rodolfo Elias Calles, smart son of Mexico’s big boss General Plutarco Elias Calles.

Agriculture—Tomas Garrido Canabal.

Education—Ignacio Garcia Tellez.

Governor of Mexico D. F. (the Federal District)—Aaron Saenz, rich and saturnine “Shadow of Calles.”

The big Cabinet news was just one name: CANABAL. Handsome as the Hollywood villain of Mexican cinema, His Excellency Tomas Garrido Canabal has been the terror of Catholics as Governor of the State of Tabasco. “What is God?”, Canabal is fond of sneering. “Nobody can tell me, but God has cost Mexico billions! We are going to stop that waste.”

Most people thought Canabal would pop up in the Cardenas Cabinet as Minister of Education, to scourge the pious with fresh assaults of Godless teaching. When President Cardenas last week gave Canabal the portfolio of Agriculture a good many people breathed easier. They thought it meant that the new Administration will lean toward more drastic enforcement of Mexico’s radical expropriation laws (“Land to the peons!”) and ease up a bit on the Church. Taking no chances, pious mobsters showered Canabal with stones when they caught his motor car leaving the home of ex-President Calles at Cuernavaca, screamed “Curse Canabal! Curse him!”