Poets, President and Mexico

In the Grillon, Mexico City's ultra-posh nightclub, 300 poets and writers of every political stripe gathered to meet Manuel Avila Camacho over absinthe cocktails, lobster a la Newburg and a succulent melee of chicken, turkey and duck washed down with rare wines. Mexico's querulous intellectuals were being reconciled; the bile of the inkpot was being washed away in the blood of the vine. At the same time they were making the acquaintance, firsthand, of the President who, succeeding to the far-Left regime of Lazaro Cardenas, had led Mexico back to the middle of the road in a new era of "evolution."

Soft-voiced, sentimental Manuel Avila Camacho, the man of harmony, sat between doddering Ezequiel Chavez and post-reactionary Gonzalez Martinez. At the same table were ex-Fascist Jose Vasconcelos, onetime Presidents Pascual Ortiz Rubio (his qualifications for entry: love poems scribbled in youth) and bull-necked Portes Gil. There was almost no talk of politics; the wine and the company prompted sublimer subjects.

Mexico, entering its third year under Avila Camacho's rule, had found that he had fulfilled his promises made on election eve after a bloody campaign (TIME, Dec. 9, 1940). He and war had brought unity; he had pacified both Left and Right; he had brought back the Church (some thought to too great power). He had not hugged the Indians to death, but he had paid attention to their problems, had undertaken the redemption of the poverty-racked Otomi Indians of Hidalgo State, overlooked even by Cardenas. Under his rule collaboration with the U.S. was closer than Mexico had ever known: The surly oil question, the creaking state of the railways, the migraine of foreign debt were all yielding their terrors.

Mexico, for centuries the battleground of conflicting Old and New World ideologies, had "come of age." The moderate trend, the awakening national consciousness and new self-confidence were evident last week in many things:

> Lombardo Toledano, Leftist labor leader, was fighting for control of the powerful CTM (Mexico's C.I.O.) against Fidel Velasquez, its secretary and representative of moderation. Avila Camacho's hand, as usual, was taking the edge off the controversy: betting odds favored Velasquez.

> The Government decreed surrender to a joint Government-refugee commission of the fabulous Vita treasure, smuggled from Spain by Juan Negrin, hijacked at sea by Negrin's onetime mentor Indalecio Prieto, and subsequently the cause celebre of Spanish refugee politics. Valued between 70 and 300 million dollars, the treasure is coveted by the Franco Government, as well as by the refugees.

As able Correspondent Betty Kirk (Covering the Mexican Front) observed, Mexico had found nationalism under Avila Camacho and war. Mexico's wholehearted war effort was testified to last week by the STational Defense Ministry. Summing up the military achievement, the Ministry forecast that by the end of next year 1,600,000 Mexicans will have had military training, the bulk of them as a citizens' militia, with weekly practice sessions. Day by day thousands of Mexicans not yet eligible for induction are volunteering. Consignments of equipment are arriving from the U.S. The Mexicans have already found a name for U.S. jeeps: they call them "las cucarachas."

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