MEXICO'S DILEMMA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23010, 11 April 1938, Page 10

MEXICO'S DILEMMA

Official circles in Mexico City are reported to be shocked by the British Government's formal request for the restoration of the expropriated property belonging to the Mexican Eagle Oil Company. Forcible conversion to the State of private property has become so normal a proceeding in Mexico under the Cardenas Government in the last three years that apparently official morality regards it as normal. Hence the British protest comes as a shock. In Mexico the Government is proceeding to nationalise everything. The process was begun on November 30, 1934, with the adoption by President Cardenas of the SixYear Plan, which sought to establish as complete control of the national economy as obtains in Soviet Russia under Communism. A beginning was made with the large estates, many of them foreignowned, which were expropriated and turned over to the peasants. The result has not been propitious. The communes are not returning anything comparable with the yiejtd of the old estates, the villagers are impoverished, and the State's revenues are non-existent. In the industrial field the policy has failed almost as regularly and the workers have suffered. Now the oilfields have been taken over and, for lack of markets for the output, the workers have once again cheated themselves by violence. The national appeal launched by the President cannot conceivably satisfy the companies' just claims. Mexico is therefore faced with the alternative of repudiating her immoral economic policy and restoring American and British property rights, or calling in German and Japanese interests. Even if the United States would tolerate the latter course, Mexico could scarcely hope to gain by such a change and might lose a very great deal.