MEXICO: Regular Pogrom

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The prime factor that makes a nation fertile for fascism is a desperate internal situation. A minor prerequisite is a scapegoat minority population on which the fascist leaders can blame the nation's troubles, unite the nation behind them and against it.

No nation is so palpably lacking in minorities on which to blame its troubles as Mexico. But because some people think that Mexico has yet to bring an effective Government and a sense-making economy out of its 28-year-old "Revolution," because it proclaims itself a proletarian State, harbors Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and at the same time barters oil expropriated from the democracies with Germany and Italy, thoughtful observers have picked it as a place where anything might happen. Last week something unique on the American continent did.

One night last week, outside Mexico City headquarters of the Fascist Front for Unifying the Revolution, 3,000 Mexicans crowded to hear tirades by anti-Cárdenas speakers, one of whom was Juan Moran, a member of the dissolved Mexican Gold Shirts. They upbraided liberal President Lázaro Cárdenas, stormed against the Government's admission of 1,400 Italian and German veterans of the Spanish People's Army. But the bitterest of their abuse was directed against Mexico City's 15,000 Jews. "Jewish blood and more Jewish blood must flow!", screamed handbills which were passed through the crowd. Jews were responsible for the millions of U. S. unemployed, "Now they seek the ruin of Mexico!"

Intoxicated by the rabble-rousing, a young Fascist dashed from the crowd and slugged a passing Jew, Jacobo Glantz, a naturalized Mexican citizen who is literary editor of the Yiddish newspaper, The Pathway. Glantz took refuge in the nearby hat shop of his wife but before the police could get to him, the Jew-hating crowd had wrecked the storefront.

Chanting "Kill Jews! Kill Jews!", the crowd marched off through the streets, smashed Jewish-owned store windows, stoned a Jewish pool hall, converged on the auditorium of the Jewish Chamber of Commerce. There many of Mexico City's Jews had gathered to hear a lecture by Leon Forem, a Yiddish novelist from The Bronx. Prevented from entering by a barricade of tables and chairs hastily thrown up by the audience, the demonstrators besieged the building and hurled rocks through the windows. Finally police and firemen, armed with submachine guns and fire hoses, forced the mob to disperse.

Said Novelist Forem of this first big anti-Semitic riot in the New World: "It was a regular pogrom. I could feel it in the air. ... I think a big change has come over Mexico. My personal opinion is that all this was done under German Nazi influence. It was said that Germans were in the mob but I didn't see them."

Neither did anyone else, but the anti-Jewish handbills scattered by the mob were obviously not prepared by Mexicans. They were written in Castilian Spanish style, which few Mexicans use. They were signed by Ruben Moreno Padres, president of the Nationalist Vanguard, who boasted few months ago that his anti-Semitic activities had the support and the sympathy of the German Legation in Mexico City.