God & Go-Getter

Delegates from the State of Tabasco rushed into the convention of Mexico's ruling National Revolutionary Party last week with a program as hot as their peppers.*

The Party was about to rubber-stamp Dictator-General Plutarco Elias Calles' choice of a new henchman to be shoved by the Party steamroller into the presidency of Mexico next July, but first the rubber stamp meeting was permitted to be roused to enthusiasm by Tabasco.

Despite the piety of his two dead wives, Dictator Calles is well known to rate in the Vatican's estimation as a ruthless enemy of Rome (TIME, July 26, 1926, et seq.). Cried Chief Tabasco Delegate Arnulfo Perez: "Where is the God who cannot see the lack of food and all the misery of the common people but can see the pomp and splendor of the Pope? . . . God did not create man. . . . God exists only in books, by which the priests exploit the poor! Man created God, and God only exists in petrified souls. . . . Mexico wants no God and our Party wants no God!"

Amid pandemonium the whole Tabasco delegation and a large section of the Convention leaped to their feet shouting "DOWN WITH GOD!" When quiet was restored the Convention voted that Article II of the Mexican Constitution, which already forbids religious instruction shall be extended to compel "Socialist instruction" in schools. As one delegate put it: "Someone has said that God has strong arms to guide the destinies of Mexico but we know that our farmers and laborer have still stronger arms and will shape their own destiny."

The Conference then rubber-stamped Dictator Calles' so-called "Six-Year Plan" which is little more than an intensification of his perennial efforts to prevent foreign capitalists from playing a dominant role in Mexico and to bring the country's enterprise under Socialistic State control. Dismayed by this evidence of General Calles' fresh intent to press his program strongly, the Bank of Montreal (which once exercised almost a monopoly in large scale Mexican credit and exchange operations) was reported by Mexico City's authoritative El Universal last week about to follow the example of the Anglo South American Bank which recently closed its branches in Mexico.

As its final rubber-stamp of the week, the Convention nominated for President by acclamation a pure-blooded Tarascan Indian,* General Lazaro Cardenas, the fierce, secretive go-getter who hunted Bandit Pancho Villa. General Cardenas' taciturnity is a Mexican byword. Since last spring, when Dictator Calles indicated that he would pick Cardenas (TIME, April 3), the general has been studiously "doing nothing," having resigned as Minister of War to comply with the Mexican law that no official can be a presidential candidate. Last week Candidate Cardenas not only did nothing but, anxious above all to retain his reputation as a loyal henchman of Boss Calles, he left the Convention as soon as he was nominated, retired to disport himself harmlessly in Aguascalientes, famous for its thermal baths.

*From which originated the American-made sauce.

*Mexico's present President, General Abelardo Rodriguez, is half Indian.

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