Bad Neighbors

The Mexican Foreign Office recently announced that 90,000 Mexicans had been allowed to go to work in the U.S.--a welcome boost for a manpower-hungry nation. There would have been tens of thousands more if Mexico had not forbidden its citizens to work in Texas.

"No Mexicans" signs can be found in other border states. But big, bumptious Texas is the most assertive in maintaining the doctrine that anyone with a dark skin, however cultivated, industrious and well-behaved, is forever inferior to any light-skinned person. (Mexicans have practically no Negro blood; most of them are part or full-blooded Indians.) There are about a million people of Mexican extraction in Texas. In much of the State they are forced to ride in Jim Crow cars, use Jim Crow toilets, go to separate "Spik" schools and restaurants. Even Mexican consuls have been treated as if they were unfit to associate with any white Texan.

This doctrine has not gone unnoticed in Mexico (or in other parts of Latin America). Many leading Mexicans will never forget or forgive the insulting treatment they have received in Texas. Said Manana, a Mexican weekly: "The Nazis of Texas are not political partners of the Fuehrer of Germany . . . but indeed they are slaves of the same prejudices and superstitions. Mexicans have become the victims of ignorant rabble who see in blond hair and blue eyes their pretended racial superiority." In Mexico City's Novedades, Cartoonist Garcia Cabral scornfully, resentfully showed Mexican Comic Character Cantinflas tolerating "even Texans."

Before the war Texans paid little attention to the bitterness and hatred which their attitude spread below the border. But when wartime labor shortage threatened their crops last year (and Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho let it be known that they would get no help from Mexico), they took belated notice. In a broad-brimmed sombrero Governor Coke Stevenson made a tour of Mexico, spreading buttery words, sparring with Mexican newsmen. On his return he organized the Texas Good Neighbor Commission to soften Texas prejudice.

Roberto Medellin of the Ministry of Labor said last week that no laborers will be sent to Texas for the time being because "cases of extreme, intolerable racial discrimination" were continuing.

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