Dreamed-Up Award

Mexican Labor Leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano had been repeatedly termed a Soviet "tool." Communist-line Lombardo had paid little heed.

During the past year he had consolidated his position as No. 1 Latin American labor chieftain, President of the Confederation of Latin American Workers, the only international labor union south of the border. Last December he returned from Paris as a vice president of the newly formed World Federation of Trade Unions. But immediately Lombardo got into new trouble. He charged that reactionary Sinarquistas were smuggling arms from the U.S. into Mexico, failed to furnish proofs. The Mexican Government disavowed him (TIME, Dec. 31).

As a result of the ensuing storm, his friends decided that he had been "abused" long enough. Last week 500 left-wingers, including Diego Rivera and Dolores del Rio, who extended the hand of fellowship (see cut), gathered in big, drafty Chapultepec Restaurant in Mexico City, gave Lombardo a dreamed-up award: "Decoration of the Combatant." Citation: the Mexican "most assailed by reactionaries and imperialists."

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