MEXICO DIVIDED

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4016, 23 February 1938, Page 11

MEXICO DIVIDED

STRUGGLE FOR POWER. CIVIL WAR POSSIBLE. Observers consider that present conditions in Mexico are such that a civil war is possible. Fighting between the Fascist Gold Shirts, which is reported in the cable news, may be the opening phase of a struggle between Right and Left forces. Lack of organisation has so far prevented Right supporters from offering much opposition to the “Social Revolution” of President Cardenas. Late last year, however, there were indications that Conservative elements were beginning to rally round General Saturnino Cedillo, a former Minister for Agriculture, who parted company with President Cardenas over the Government’s agrarian policy. Left supporters led by Vincente Toledano, Secretary-General of the Confederation of Mexican Workers, have for months been shouting “Fascist” at General Cedillo. President Cardenas offered General Cedillo a diplomatic post abroad, but this was declined. “I find conditions in Mexico much more interesting,” General Cedillo declared. First Act of Drama. The first act of the Mexican revolutionary drama was the period 1911-20, characterised mainly by bloodshed and destruction. The record from 1920 to the present has been described as “reconstructive.” In 1911, Francisco Medero, a Liberal idealist, overthrew General Diaz, under whose regime industrial prosperity has been built upon a basis of cheap and unorganised labour. The fall of Diaz created an opportunity for Labour to throw off its shackles. The Labour movement made extraordinary progress in a very short period, and drew up by 1917 the basis of a Labour code which was then more advanced than anything of its kind in the world. These rights, however, were only obtained on paper, and it was a long time before they became effective. The agrarian and Labour movements were the principal fruits of the 10 years’ armed struggle which followed Medero’s Liberal coup d’etat. They form the main plank of the

political programme of the present Government, which derives its support from the rural and urban masses. On the other side are the Conservatives, a mixture of landowners, whose properties are vanishing before the agrarian onslaught, capitalists, who see in the Labour movement a menace to their investments, and the Roman Catholic Church, which in Mexican history has traditionally found itself in the Conservative camp. The Dictatorship. Mexico, despite democratic forms, is still ruled as a dictatorship. This is the only form of government which works. The dictating power is at present vested in the National Revolutionary party, founded by General Calles. As he gained in administrative experience, and he and his friends grew rich, President Calles’s views slowly moderated. When he left the Presidency of the Republic he was still known as the “Chief of the Revolution.” A struggle developed later, however, with President Cardenas, a man of the people, who seemed to have the revolution truly at heart'. Cardenas won. General Calles was dethroned, and he and his friends were .banished from the country as undesirable reactionaries. This triumph of the Left much alarmed the Conservative camp. The fighting now taking place is their reaction to what they regard as the Left danger.