State of War

In the broad valleys, high among the peaks, where once strode conquistadors in clanking metal, in the rugged mountain haunts once occupied by bewhiskered revolutionaries, the rumble of a new war was heard. It was being fought by men and machines on continents separated from Mexico by thousands of miles of blue water, in places where Mexicans had never fought. But Mexico, like the U.S. in 1917, rose to meet a challenge to her right to use the seas; the 28th nation to declare its enmity to the Axis, she voted war against Germany, Italy and Japan. Now the whole of North and Central America, from Hudson's Bay to Panama, has entered the war.*

Weighing the costs and responsibilities of preserving "the honor of the fatherland, the unsullied name of Mexico," President Manuel Avila Camacho asked and won approval of a declaration that a state of war has existed since May 22, the expiration date of a Foreign Office protest demanding "complete satisfaction" and a guarantee of reparations for the sinking of the Mexican freighter Potrero del Llano, torpedoed off the Florida coast. The Chamber of Deputies approved, 183-to-0, the Senate 53-to-0 (with five members absent).

Internally the state of war gives Mexico the opportunity to clean out Axis fifth columny, both political and financial. It also gives President Avila Camacho new powers to tackle the serious economic disruptions brought about by the closing of world export markets and the slowdown on imports.

A state of war, the President explained as carefully as he promised no misuse of emergency powers, did not mean that Mexico would send expeditionary forces abroad. It meant that, in helping to guard the Western Hemisphere, the proud people of Mexico were willing to play their part.

* No nation in South America has entered the war, but all except the two southernmost (Argentina and Chile) have broken diplomatic relations with the Axis.

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