MEXICO: Divorce Tycoon

Senor Arturo del Toro returned to Manhattan from Mexico City last week, and, seated in his chambers at No. 36 Park Ave., smiled sagaciously at the lurid resurgence of publicity that burst forth on his arrival.

Every Manhattan news organ has now noticed this divorce broker. The small-town press has ballyhooed him in syndicated feature stories. Tabloid editors have gleefully plastered up headlines to the effect that Arturo del Toro is the "enemy of Cupid, the "king of divorce," the "boss of the Border bright lights."

In the outrageous mass of fiction about del Toro there are some essential facts:

1) Arturo del Toro is not, and does not claim to be, a lawyer. He is a mine operator and rancher in the State of Sonora, Mexico.

2) In 1925 he noticed that times were growing especially hard for persons unhappily married. Throughout the U. S., courts were denying the legality of decrees obtained in certain Mexican states, previously havens for the fretfully wedded. Some Reno divorces were even questioned. And the French government, having discovered that U. S. divorces were bringing Paris much questionable publicity, and money for no one but U. S. lawyers, had drastically stiffened French requirements. Therefore Arturo del Toro determined to do something for persons shackled to distasteful mates; something also for the State of Sonora, and something for himself.

3) Rancher del Toro held a conference with the best known divorce lawyers in the U. S. Stuffing the results into a formidable briefcase, he returned to Sonora, where with practically no trouble the Sonora Congress was persuaded to change the divorce laws of the State to read in this sense: A) Any ground for divorce recognized by any State in the U. S. is cause for divorce in Sonora. B) Three new grounds were added: 1) Mutual consent (Senor del Toro avoids this ground because U. S. courts might consider that it smacks of collusion). 2) Irreconcilable incompatibility. 3) Absence of marital relations for more than six months. The Sonora law is now a symposium of "grounds for divorce" so complete that, in the opinion of Señor del Toro, it will be found applicable to almost any couple really mismated.

"I am not the enemy of Cupid!" cried he last week. "I am the friend of Cupid— I give him another chance!"

Rumors to the contrary, it is not true that a man or woman can obtain a Sonora divorce in a week, or that neither the plaintiff nor defendant need appear. The average time for a Sonora-del Toro divorce is two months from the initiation of the suit in the Señor's New York office. The plaintiff must appear in person, in Sonora, and must remain in the State for 48 hours. Only in exceptional cases can this be avoided. The defendant need not appear per sonally. But to strengthen the legality of the Sonora decree in the U. S. he or she should recognize the jurisdiction of the court by a power of attorney.

"Quick action without public washing of 'soiled linen' and without ruining the defendant's character, that is my motto!" says Señor del Toro.