TROUBLE WITH MEXICO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23135, 6 September 1938, Page 10

TROUBLE WITH MEXICO

Relations between Mexico and the United States have been strained for many months. Now, as the outcome of an American demand and the Mexican refusal to comply with it, they are near breaking-point. The subject in dispute is the Mexican Government's expropriation of farm lands owned by Americans. Last March oil wells of British and American ownership were seized. The brunt of the dispute fell upon Washington. Protests and threats have been made without avail. Manifestly Washington, in keeping with its cherished policy of linking Central and South American States in a political covenant of friendship under its own surveillance, has been reluctant to aggravate Mexican hostility by taking strong measures. Probably the hope that President Cardenas would before long be compelled by unrest and disunion in Mexico to modify his policy of defiance led to an extension of patience. These t?-oubles have constrained him to listen, up to a point, to the severe admonitions sent from Washington. The latest of. these included a demand for arbitration or else payment for the expropriated farm lands, which had been given to peasants. On the Mexican reply to this demand it was intended that the whole controversy should turn. But the Mexican Government has gone back almost to its former obduracy.- The only concession has been an acceptance of a suggested bilateral commission to determine the value of the lands taken and to fix the terms of payment. This concession is practically worthless, since a reservation has been attached—Mexico will pay if she can and at a time suiting her own financial convenience. It is now for the American Government to decide upon the next step, which normally would be the recall of the United States Ambassador in token of a definite breaking of nominal friendship. That step may be hindered by the wish to continue efforts in the direction of a United States hegemony, but the situation cannot very well be left as it is. '