Veracruz Mahomet

It is one thing for the Mexican Federal Government to expropriate property belonging to foreigners. But suddenly last week the whole Press of Mexico City joined in pointing out that for a mere Mexican state to snatch gringo capitalists' belongings is quite another thing, stupid and unconstitutional. Prominently the great independent daily El Universal featured an editorial from the New York Herald Tribune remarking how wrong it was for Governor Bartolome Vargas Lugo of the State of Hidalgo to seize a $300,000 cement plant from its British owners (TIME, June 6). For once it seemed that Wall Street and Mexico City could enthusiastically clasp hands, but the circumstances were very special.

In the State of Veracruz, where foreigners have invested more than $120,000,000, the State Legislature had just unanimously passed a sweeping expropriation law. The Governor of Veracruz must not sign that bill--but he had. Well then, he must not publish it in the Veracruz Official Gazette, thereby making it law. But the Gazette's press was already clanking and groaning last week when President Pascual Ortiz Rubio of Mexico finally decided to send an urgent, peremptory wire to Governor Adalberto Tejeda of the State of Veracruz.

Breathlessly Mexico City awaited the reaction of big-boned, hard-featured Governor Tejeda. Quick acting but slow thinking, he ordered all copies of the Official Gazette impounded, took his time to consider. To grease a few palms in Jalapa, the capital of Veracruz, to get a copy of the forbidden Gazette and publish photostats of the law was no trouble at all for the active, able journalists of Mexico City. Excerpts from Veracruz's law: "Property rights of all classes of possessions may be subject to enforced expropriation for reasons of social utility, with indemnification."

Sneered El Excelsior of Mexico City: "In one word, as if by witchcraft. . . . Governor Tejeda becomes as crafty a boss as ever was produced by the Asiatic continent . . . absolute sovereign over all property in Veracruz, a stupendous miracle which would have made Mahomet the prophet envious."

In Jalapa the more Governor Adalberto Tejeda thought about the law the better he liked it. Rumors from Mexico City that he would kill it only made him more stubborn. At last Governor Tejeda substituted for the word "social" the word "public" (a change of no importance ordered the revised law printed in a new edition of the Veracruz Gazette, had the old edition burned. In Jalapa and throughout Veracruz State poor persons promptly began to clamor for expropriation of everything, tenants asking that the houses in which they lived be turned over to them, farmers clamoring to own their rented acres. On international exchange the Mexican peso promptly slumped to 3.75 to the dollar, lowest this year.

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