MEXICO: Border

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Typical was the condition last week of Tamaulipas State, where incipient outbreaks occurred. Thousands of peons found that bank credit for Mexico's late cotton-planting season was nonexistent. Suddenly, the Government suspended irrigation public-work projects for lack of cash. Discontent was widespread and the Gold Shirts decided on their abortive attempt to stir the unrest into mass revolt. At week's end the President ordered Government jobs provided for them on the Matamoros-Ciudad Victoria highway construction.

Informed Mexican observers believe that the greatest threat of a turn to the Right in Mexico comes not from the disorganized conservatives and dispossessed landlords but, paradoxically, from within the Cárdenas regime itself. President Cárdenas came in on a program of "social revolution" for Mexico's proletariat which is now encountering rough weather. For three years of his six-year term he insisted he was still pointing Left. Suddenly, two months ago he pushed through measures which smack of a totalitarian state and make him virtual dictator of Mexico. In rapid succession he dissolved his and Mexico's majority party, reorganized it to give the peasants and the army control, thus pulling labor's teeth. Next he shook up his Cabinet to make it 100% Cárdenas, shifted army heads to tighten his hold on the military and cracked down on labor by deciding that "useless" strikes are outlawed and he personally will determine which strikes are "useless."