MEXICO: Solution Without Blood

A heavy, slit-eyed man with an unshaven, greenish face got out of a plane one afternoon last week at the San Antonio, Tex. airport. Behind him trailed five swarthy followers only slightly less formidable-looking. The first man was Mexico's onetime President and longtime Boss Plutarco Elías Calles, who had just been forcibly exiled from Mexico by President Lázaro Cárdenas. Sick, sleepless and broken, the 58-year-old exile turned on newshawks an impressively bitter face:

"General Rafael Navarro and three policemen came into my bedroom at midnight where I was reading. I was not surprised. I said, 'I am at your orders.' General Navarro said solemnly, 'By order of the President of the Republic you are under arrest. . . .' I got out of bed and said, 'I consider myself your prisoner. I have no forces at my disposal and I do not need them. You may take me in an airplane or before a firing squad. . . .' General Navarro replied, 'I request you to prepare to accompany me at 6:30 to the Central Airfield.'"

Thus departed Mexico's strongest Strong Man since the late Dictator Porfirio Diáz.

Plutarco Elías Calles roared into Mexican politics in 1920 as one of the "Sonora triumvirate" of Obregón, de la Huerta & Calles which overthrew and assassinated President Carranza. Calles, a superb executive during his four years (1924-28) as President, built up a potent political machine. After Obregón's assassination in 1928 he could afford to put in a Presidential puppet, Emilio Fortes Gil, and invent the National Revolutionary Party, a tight Fascist organization with a highly Socialistic program of paper promises for the people. Calles and his henchmen unionized Mexican labor, attacked the Catholic Church, quietly amassed huge fortunes, trained an oversized army.

General Lázaro Cárdenas was to be another Calles puppet as President of Mexico. But at last the Party had found a man who sincerely believed in its program. Impassively, almost imperceptibly, prim-faced Cárdenas undercut Calles by giving the people some of the things Calles had promised them. When, last year, Calles suddenly tried to crack down on his man, he found that Cárdenas had sewed up the loyalty not only of the peasants and workers but of the Army as well.

Of the man who had proved stronger than Strong Man Calles, the exiled Mexican said last week: "I have always considered General Cárdenas a just, honest and sound man but the moods of Cárdenas change from day to day. If there is anything that can save Mexico now, it is for labor and the middle classes to organize and fight Communism. . . . But right now Mexico is a boiling caldron of dissatisfaction. I blame Cárdenas for my exile. I will spend the remainder of my life resting. I hope to find peace in California. . . . I had nothing to do with the bombing of the Vera Cruz train [see p. 66]. If the Government had thought so they would have executed me, not exiled me."

The old man drank a bottle of soda. Presently he and his friends boarded a plane for Dallas.