Our Ally Mexico

by WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN

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MEXICO and Canada, our neighbors to the south and north, offer an interesting Study in striking contrasts. Canada is a land where the grass-roots American immediately feels at home, — except among the more remote French-speaking communities of Quebec, —among people who live and think and talk as he does, with minor variations. Mexico creates an exotic impression with regard to dress, language, and living habits as soon as one crosses the border. The impression is deepened as one sees more of the familiar aspects of the country: the vistas, at once stern and beautiful, of barren mountains from the high arid tableland, the open-air markets where blanketed Indians and mestizos chaffer with customers over fruit and vegetables and pottery and serapes, the burro trains that wind their way to and from the mountain villages, guided by drivers in picturesque broad-brimmed sombreros.

Canada’s politics are stodgily respectable. The votes are accurately counted. One would have to think back for a considerable period of time to recall a Canadian political murder. Mexico’s history, since the colonial link with Spain was broken, is shot through with violent changes of regime, usually initiated by the pronunciamentos of ambitious and disgruntled generals. Almost all the prominent figures in the early phase of the revolution which began in 1910 — Madero, Carranza, Obregón, Vilia, Zapata — came to violent ends. To be sure, the new regime has become milder as it has become more stable. A political opponent of the former President Lázaro Cárdenas, with whom I talked in Mexico, paid him this tribute: “Whatever may be said against Cárdenas, he did stop the practice of killing political opponents.”

And Mexico possesses a distinction that is rather rare in the present era of world history. So far as I could learn, it has no political prisoners. But if the government in recent years has been getting along without any terroristic means of repression, it is far from the pattern of an orthodox parliamentary democracy. Votes in Congress on important questions are frequently unanimous. The official returns in the presidential elections do not inspire confidence in seasoned observers. The group that is in control of the machinery of administration knows various ingenious ways of counting out undesired opposition candidates.

The contrasts between Mexico and Canada are especially vivid in my consciousness because I visited the two countries in fairly quick succession. But, while the dissimilarities between Mexico and Canada are numerous and striking (there is almost no illiteracy in Canada, about 50 per cent in Mexico; Canada’s eleven million inhabitants produce and buy and sell a great deal more than Mexico’s twenty million), there is a very important common denominator in our relations with our neighbors to the south and to the north.

Each represents a flank in our national defense system. Our interest in achieving the maximum degree of military and economic coöperation with both countries is constantly growing. The inescapable facts of war, blockade, isolation from Europe, and disruption of sea-borne commerce have done more to promote Pan-American economics than all the eloquent speeches that might have been delivered, or all the theoretical blueprints that might have been drawn up over decades. Our economy, the Canadian, and the Mexican must dovetail, even at the cost of some inconvenience, because foreign markets, in the commercial sense of the term, have ceased to exist for the duration of the war.

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The issues which loomed large in Mexico in 1938 and 1939 — the expropriation of foreign oil properties and land; the actual and proposed Mexican barter deals with Axis powers — have vanished from the diplomatic horizon.

This is partly because of the perceptible slowing down in the pace of social and economic change which has marked the administration of President Manuel Avila Camacho. But a still more important factor is the virtual obliteration of Mexico’s commercial contacts with every large country except the United States. The United States absorbed 91 per cent of Mexico’s exports and supplied 84 per cent of its imports in 1941.

At war with the Axis, cut off by lack of ships from the other countries of Latin America and from England, Mexico can only look north of the Rio Grande for a market for its surplus products: gold and silver, copper and lead, oil and henequen — the fiber, now in large demand for war purposes, which is a principal export product of remote and picturesque Yucatan. And it is only from this country that Mexico can hope to acquire the airplanes and tanks which its old-fashioned army needs for the eventualities of modern warfare, the rolling stock and rails to put its overloaded and somewhat obsolete railway system into more effective operation, the many goods which an undeveloped country must always import in order to keep its factories running and its people supplied with articles not produced at home.

Like Canada; Mexico has been thrust by the war into an almost exclusively United States economic orbit. The Mexican government can no longer play off European countries or Japan against the United States in its commercial dealings. It is under the strongest kind of economic pressure to play ball with Washington. With priorities limiting the normal United States export capacity, a system has been established under which Mexican orders for American goods must be certified as essential to the national economy by the Mexican government. Concrete evidences of American good-will are the steady southward flights of bombers for patrolling the Mexican coasts, and the advance of six million dollars by the Export-Import Bank to help finance the construction of a big steel works at Monclova, near Monterrey, in Northern Mexico. Mexican and American military experts in Washington have been discussing means of providing matériel for the larger and more modern army which Mexico proposes to raise, now that a system of compulsory training, which is expected to produce 200,000 trained reserves within two years, has replaced the old voluntary system. This had given Mexico an army of about 50,000, the cavalry being the best branch of the service. An old Mexican failing, the lavish granting of high military titles, is reflected in the fact that this modest army had about ninety “generals of division” and a still larger number of major generals.

And, if Mexico needs a benevolent Washington, we need a friendly Mexico to help safeguard our southern defenses and to serve as a bridge to Central America. The indentations of the long coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, especially some of the wild jungle stretches in Yucatan and Tabasco, furnish excellent natural hide-outs for enemy submarines. The Japanese are now occupied in the Western Pacific. But the elongated barren tongue of land known as Lower California and the whole West Coast of Mexico, carefully explored and surveyed in pre-war days by versatile Japanese “fishing” expeditions, also require a carefully organized patrol system against possible future ventures of Japanese submarines and raiders. It obviously makes a good deal of difference whether Mexico is giving willing or grudging coöperation in the performance of these common defense tasks.

A war economy, like Oliver Twist, is always asking for more. Mexico s mineral resources are a welcome supplementary source of supply for us. And these resources are more favorably located than those of South America, because they are within range of railway transportation.

Mexico is also a valuable strategic and economic bridge between our southern frontier and the little countries of Central America, including Panama — that vital link in our system of defense and communications. There is a good automobile road from the American frontier to Mexico City. Unfortunately the projected Pan-American Highway, which should provide swift and secure motor communication between the United States and Panama, has not been completed. There are several stretches, in Southeastern Mexico, near the border of Guatemala, and in some of the jungle districts of Central America, which are still under construction, but it is hoped that the highway will be ready for use next year.

A railway is more valuable than a road as an agency of transportation. A technical mission, headed by an American military transportation expert, Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Hill, has been studying the Mexican railway system with a view to suggesting means of improving its carrying capacity. The difficulty in this connection, one of many which are perplexing the all-out war planners in Washington, is that Mexico cannot itself turn out any large quantity of locomotives and cars. Such equipment must come from the United States, already suffering from a shortage of steel and other materials which enter into the making of rolling stock.

Whatever can be released for Mexican use will pay dividends in larger shipments of strategic products not only from Mexico but also from Guatemala and other “banana republics” of the Central American isthmus. The construction of a railway bridge across the Suchiate River, the boundary between Mexico and Guatemala, will also speed up communication. At the present time freight shipments must be unloaded, ferried across the river, and then reloaded. Rail communication is of special importance because of the paralysis of shipping, which has produced a condition of serious economic depression in Mexico’s principal Gulf ports, Vera Cruz and Tampico. Mexico has almost no merchant marine of its own, and the Ward Line and other United States companies have withdrawn their vessels from the Mexican and Central American run.

Air communication with the Panama Canal Zone necessarily traverses Mexico. The Mexican government has been coöperative in permitting American military airplanes to use Mexican airports freely. The airplanes are serviced by American ground crowds.

This is only one of many indications of a disposition, both in Mexican and in American circles, to put aside old grievances and disputes in the interest of the common war effort. The two controversies that were most acrimonious a few years ago, the expropriation of American-owned oil properties and land, have been settled on the basis of the Mexican government’s promise to pay compensation: about 24 million dollars in the case of the oil holdings, about 40 million dollars for the land. And the more moderate economic policies of the Camacho regime have given less cause for complaint to capital, both foreign and Mexican. The number of strikes has markedly diminished.

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Both before and after Pearl Harbor the Camacho administration pursued a foreign policy that was closely coöperative with Washington. Mexico was quick to follow the American lead in such matters as the seizure of Axis shipping, the closing of consulates, and the enforcement of black-list regulations against Axis-affiliated firms.

Mexico severed diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy, and Japan immediately after America entered the war. And formal entrance into hostilities followed the sinking of several Mexican tankers and other vessels by submarines. This has made it easier to take strong measures against the dangers of sabotage, espionage, and economic warfare. An official in the Ministry of the Interior who is in charge of repression of subversive activities gave me the following summary of measures which wore put into effect during the first months after Mexico’s entrance into the war: —

Axis nationals have been removed from the coastal areas and required to settle in the Federal District (the region which includes Mexico City and its environs) and in other places in the interior where they can be kept under close observation. (There are about 7300 Germans, 4300 Japanese, and 5000 Italians in Mexico.) Axis properties are being managed by state administrators, the profits being paid into a blocked fund in the Bank of Mexico. This applies principally to chemical and hardware firms in the towns and to coffee plantations in the state of Chiapas. Mail is censored and there has been a thorough shake-up in the bureaus of the Ministry, with a view to developing an efficient intelligence service. One proof of the activity of the Mexican police in apprehending Axis agents was the arrest of the Bund leader, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, in a Mexican coastal town from which he proposed to escape in a submarine.

The Mexican government has complied with a request from Washington to outlaw the circulation of dollar bills (the rare twodollar notes excepted) in the country. There had been a suspicious inflow of American currency from Argentina and other countries through channels that were suspected of serving as Axis paymasters. So a ruling was issued in August requiring the immediate conversion of dollar bills into pesos, and further importation of United States currency into Mexico was forbidden. Another recent coöperative economic step was the prohibition of the private exportation of silver, in currency or in bars. This was in line with the spirit of the American—Mexican silver purchase agreement. The United States Treasury had raised the purchasing price from thirty-four cents to forty-five cents an ounce; but the commercial price had shot beyond forty-five cents.

It is the general testimony of people who have lived in Mexico during the last few years that the American position has been greatly strengthened since the fall of France. At that time German propaganda was open and aggressive. The German press attaché spent money lavishly where he thought it would do the most good. The resident German colony, with its many ties of intermarriage with prominent Mexican families, was pressed into service as a propaganda agency and was levied on for contributions. German agents, among whom two men named Nicolaus and Schleebrugge were prominent, were able to form contacts with influential Mexicans and toured the country at will, surveying the coasts and other places of strategic interest. Anti-American agitation in the press was common.

Now this picture has entirely changed. Open pro-Axis propaganda has been forced underground. Its sources of finance have been curtailed, although probably not cut off altogether. By committing themselves to a declaration of war, Mexico’s present leaders have identified their country’s destiny with a United Nations victory.

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So far I have emphasized the favorable aspects of Mexican-American relations, because these seem to be the most important at the present time. In the struggle that is going on between the United States and the Axis in Mexico we Hold all the best cards: the airplanes, the rolling stock, the capital for new steel mills and electric power installations. While the Axis diplomatic centers of intrigue have been compelled to shut up shop, the American Embassy has been steadily expanding until it now employs a staff of more than two hundred persons.

Yet it would be a grave mistake to assume that American—Mexican relations from now on will take care of themselves, that they will run smoothly without tactful and attentive handling. For German attempts to influence Mexican public opinion have not ceased. They have only gone under cover. It would take a catastrophic change for the worse in the military situation to bring an anti-American change of regime within the range of political probability. But there are always possibilities for pinpricking intrigue and for sabotage, in the broader sense of that word, on the part of Axis agents.

Mexico is perhaps the easiest of the larger Latin-American countries for us to win economically. It is right next door. There are three railway lines which run from the American border to Mexico City. So the shipping crisis, while it is embarrassing, does not disrupt normal trade as it does with the more remote lands of South America. Moreover, the Mexican economy, especially in time of war, fits in pretty well with our own. We can absorb almost everything that Mexico produces. There is more “take” in the give-and-take process between America and Mexico than there is, for instance, between America and Argentina.

Psychologically, however, the balance sheet is not so favorable. We have more to live down in historical unpopularity and distrust in Mexico than in any other large Latin-American country. We annexed a huge expanse of Mexican territory after the war of 1846-1847. And what the average Mexican has learned in school about that war is naturally not what we have learned. Before I went to Mexico I had never heard of the cadets who defended the castle of Chapultepec, just outside Mexico City, against the invading American army until the last survivor leaped over the parapet to death, rather than surrender. But in Mexico the exploit of these cadets is one of the most cherished national memories.

There have been more recent events that have helped to keep alive Mexican fear and suspicion. There was the bombardment and occupation of Vera Cruz by American forces in 1914. There was Pershing’s futile chase over Northern Mexico in pursuit of that picturesque guerrilla, Pancho Villa. It is true that the provocation in the case of Vilia had been extreme; he had not only been killing Americans whom he caught in Mexico, but he had been conducting raids across the border into United States territory. But what counts in Mexican psychology is the memory of American troops on Mexican soil.

One reason Americans are not so well liked south of the Rio Grande as they might be is that the American long-term resident often takes little part in Mexican life. A good mixer in his native Akron or Syracuse, the American businessman in Mexico is often inclined to remain within the shell of his own group. He is likely to be slower than the average European in acquiring a fluent knowledge of Spanish; he seldom gives the impression of settling down in Mexico for life, of regarding the country as a permanent home.

The Germans in Mexico have often displayed more capacity for winning friends and influencing Mexicans. Unfortunately for our interests in the present war of propaganda, these Germans have not behaved in the least like Nazis in the occupied countries of Europe. They have usually adjusted themselves successfully to Mexican customs and psychology, have learned to speak fluent Spanish, and have not infrequently intermarried with old established families. Some of them have entrenched themselves socially to such a degree that not even the war has dislodged them.

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In considering the psychological background against which the Axis agent carries on his work in Mexico, it is worth while to remember that Germany is the only great power against which the Mexican has no particular historical grudge. He can never altogether forget Texas and California when he is dealing with Americans. France is associated with Napoleon III’s futile scheme of setting up the Hapsburg Maximilian as a Mexican emperor — an experiment which cost Mexico many years of disorder and bloodshed and also gave it the military victory of which it is perhaps most proud. The Cinco de Mayo, or Fifth of May, one of the principal streets of Mexico City, commemorates the date of the defeat of the French invaders by Mexican nationalist troops at Puebla. England participated in more than one of the naval debt-collecting expeditions which sometimes envenomed Mexico’s relations with the outside world in the nineteenth century.

Germany, on the other hand, has never figured as an aggressor against Mexico until the present time. An American woman who was born in Mexico told of a suggestive incident which occurred in the first stormy years of the revolution. Bandits broke into the town where she was living with her family, with the avowed intention of killing every gringo they could lay their hands on. Her father, a quick-witted and resourceful businessman who had been in other tight scrapes, extricated the family from a dangerous predicament by convincing the bandits that they were Germans.

I heard a Mexican music-hall quip which was directed against the pro-American Foreign Minister, Ezequiel Padilla. A Mexican comes to the United States border carrying a parrot. When he is told that such birds are not admitted to the United States he retorts: “Then how did Padilla get in?”

These are just small straws in the wind. But they show that an astute Axis agent has material, in the shape of old grudges and suspicions, on which to work.

When one tries to gauge the amount of covert pro-Axis activity that is now going on, one receives very divergent estimates, depending on one’s sources of information. Partisan feeling runs high. A Mexican leftist is likely to suspect and sometimes to assert that almost everyone with conservative clerical sympathies is on Hitler’s payroll. By the same token, Mexican (and foreign) conservatives often use the term “communism" to damn anything they may not like in the way of social and economic change.

There are two organizations in Mexico which are potential pipelines for Axis propaganda. One is the Spanish Falange. The other is the Sinarquist movement. The Falange is associated with the ruling party in Franco’s Spain. Its membership has been recruited from Spanish residents in Mexico, of whom there are about 50,000. Its policy was pro-Franco; its publications, of which the most influential was a magazine called Hispanidad, were anti-United States, antiSemitic, pro-Axis under a general cover of emphasizing Mexico’s Spanish heritage. Members of the Falange went in for black shirts and other distinctive emblems; they were suspected, although never definitely convicted, of secret drilling.

Officially the Falange has now been suppressed. But it is probably carrying on some discreet underground activity. Because Spanish families often occupy prominent positions in the government service and in business, the Falange might be expected to pick up useful bits of information for the Axis. There is no Spanish embassy in Mexico because Cárdenas, a leftist in foreign as in domestic affairs, never established diplomatic relations with Franco’s regime. However, the Spanish dictator has nominated a Spaniard living in Mexico, Augusto Ibáñez Serrano, as his personal representative. A full record of Mr. Serrano’s activities might include a good many matters of interest to the intelligence services of the United Nations.

In contrast to the Falange, the Sinarquist movement is Mexican in leadership and membership. The name means “Without anarchy,”and the movement, which claims 800,000 followers, represents a reaction against the radical labor and agrarian policies of the Cárdenas period. The Sinarquist program sets forth as its first ideal: “The restoration in Mexico of the Christian Social Order, destroyed by anarchy.”

The leadership of the Sinarquists is vested in a secret directory. They repudiate the idea of forming a political party, and profess to aim at the regeneration of the country through moral propaganda. The movement is strongly Catholic in ideology, although priests are not supposed to be admitted as members, perhaps with a view to sparing the Church embarrassment and persecution in the event that the movement should lead to clashes. Professing to seek social peace and an end of class war, the Sinarquists are bitterly hostile to two of the pillars of the Cardenas regime: the CMT (Confederation of Mexican Workers) and the peasants who have gone in for a communal form of land ownership.

The Sinarquists are strongest in the country districts and in some of the provinces of the high tableland north and west of Mexico City, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Zacatecas, where the Church has always maintained a strong grip on the loyalty of the Indian masses. They seem to be in a fairly direct line of political descent from the Cristeros, who raised a short-lived but sanguinary rebellion in this part of Mexico in 1926 as a protest against the anticlerical measures of the government and under the slogan: “Long live Christ the King.”

The growth of Sinarquism has created a dilemma for the more moderate members of the Mexican hierarchy, including Archbishop Luis Martínez, of Mexico City, the primate of the country. As devout Catholics, the Sinarquists cannot very well be repudiated. Yet the present more satisfactory status of the Church (President Camacho is a practicing Catholic and has allowed some of the anticlerical laws enacted by earlier regimes to become dead letters) would be jeopardized if Sinarquism should lead to a renewal of civil strife.

There is no positive proof that the Sinarquist leaders, some of whom are obscure provincial lawyers, are Axis agents. The movement might have come into existence as a purely Mexican phenomenon if there had been no Axis. A well-known Mexican publicist whose original revolutionism has given way to conservatism told me that the typical Sinarquist is “a peasant of the better type, a man with a horse and a gun.”

Some Sinarquist stock phrases, however, suggest borrowing from totalitarian sources. And the movement, with its secret leadership and its strict discipline, could become dangerous if control should pass into unscrupulous hands. It is always part of Axis strategy to fish in troubled waters. Even if German agents cannot use the Sinarquists directly, they might be expected to help along any tendency toward serious friction between the Sinarquists and their enemies of the radical labor and agrarian groups. Any outburst of disorder or civil strife that would divert attention from the war and disrupt production would be so much clear gain, from the Axis standpoint.

Axis propaganda in Mexico now is largely a hole-and-corner whispering affair. It still finds expression in two comparatively obscure newspapers, Hombre Libre and Omega. They specialize in denunciations of communism, in big headlines announcing overwhelming German victories, in advertisements of books purporting to prove that America is run by the Jews. There is some home-grown anti-Semitism in Mexico, partly attributable to the success of some Jewish immigrants in trade. One may be reasonably certain that the Axis propaganda agencies have methodically listed every item that could conduce to division and skepticism in Mexican public opinion, from the cadets of Chapultepec to the bitterness of the small Mexican shopkeeper in Guadalajara who may have been beaten in business competition by some Jewish or East European merchant. 6

When I talked with Mr. Padilla, the Mexican Foreign Minister, whose fluent and scholarly English reflects his years of study at Columbia, my first question was what Americans should bear in mind when thinking of Mexico. This elicited a brief lecture on the course of the Mexican revolution. In Mr. Padilla’s judgment, this movement pursued three principal objectives which have now been mainly if not entirely achieved. These were the elimination of agrarian feudalism, the repression of clericalism (not, as the Foreign Minister was careful to indicate, of the Catholic religion), and the suppression of adventurous militarism. Now, as Mr. Padilla pointed out, sixty million acres of land have been transferred from big landholdings to peasant possession. The Church has been excluded from politics. The army has been placed under such centralized national control that it is impossible for a disgruntled provincial war lord any longer to carry his troops with him and start a rebellion.

Whether or not one would accept this as a full and accurate statement of the balance sheet of the Mexican revolution, there can be no doubt that our neighbor to the south has experienced a series of interesting and important social and economic changes and experiments. And it is not unlikely that some features of these changes will be repeated in other Latin-American countries.

The war has thrown us into such close contact with Mexico that our policy toward that country, as toward Latin America in general, can no longer be regarded as a matter of secondary importance. Mexicans are sensitive to foreign criticism and comment. They do not like the snap judgments of quick trippers or the suggestion of condescension that sometimes unconsciously creeps into the doings and pronouncements of our more amateurish would-be dispensers of good-will. It was the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Oswaldo Aranha, who remarked, in a joke that carried a little sting, that Brazil would positively declare war after the arrival of the next “good-will mission" from the United States. I heard more than one echo of this sentiment in Mexico. I was occasionally asked whether I proposed to repair the harm which, Mexicans felt, had been done by hastily written and inaccurate books on their country; I could at least give my questioners the negative consolation of assuring them that I had no intention of turning out a book on the basis of a short visit.

On the other hand, there are some contacts and activities which have worked out very satisfactorily for American-Mexican relations. Yellow fever has been eliminated from the Vera Cruz district with the help of money and specialists supplied by the Rockefeller Foundation. And this same organization is coöperating with the Mexican health authorities in combating the intestinal parasite diseases that are the curse of the poverty-stricken, unsanitary Mexican countryside.

Another type of American visitor who is welcome in Mexico is the young man or woman who enlists for one of the work projects which are sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee in consultation and agreement with Mexican state and private organizations. Hundreds of idealistic young people have gone to Mexico for this purpose during recent years, paying their own expenses, doing their own cooking and house cleaning on a communal basis, and turning their hands to whatever social chores seem most useful and necessary. Among other things, these groups have helped to rebuild a town that had been shattered by an earthquake, drained a malarial swamp, dug privies for villages where the complete absence of sanitation was a main cause of hookworm, helped to build a new model village, taught games to Mexican youths and children, and picked cotton for the benefit of a village school.

The physical amount of work these internationally-minded social volunteers could accomplish is limited. But the spirit is immensely valuable. It may be that work of this kind, vastly multiplied by the backing of government resources, will make an important contribution to reconstruction after the war. And the effect of this simple, unpretentious, friendly movement on the Mexican people’s ideas of America and Americans has been all to the good.

On the larger issues of state policy it would seem to be most important to take full account of the depth and reality of Mexican nationalism. The gains which we have made in the last two years could be jeopardized by some such indiscreet move as an attempt to demand the stationing of American troops on Mexican soil, unless of course some new threat of actual invasion should induce the Mexican government itself to request spontaneously such a form of help. We should stand aloof from Mexican internal affairs, letting the pace and the course of Mexican political and social change be determined by the free play of Mexican political forces. We should not play ideological favorites among Mexican politicians and groups.

The building up of a stronger Mexico, with a more modern, better-balanced economy, is in the interest of both countries. We should have our hands much freer to strike blows in Europe and in the Pacific if Mexico and other Latin-American countries had been able to construct the munitions factories, the steel mills, the shipyards which are the sinews of modern war.

Our ideal for this hemisphere has nothing in common with the German and Japanese schemes for the domination of Europe and Asia. Far from wishing to concentrate all military and industrial power within our own frontiers in order to dominate our neighbors to the south, we are doing what we can, by furnishing materials and technical aid, to enable these countries to build up their own defenses. Because Mexico is the most accessible of the Latin-American states, in view of the overland communications, it is in Mexico that this policy should have the swiftest and widest possible application.