mustached German named Baron Ernst von Merck, who took the shipment to
General Saturnino Cedillo, former governor of the state[4] and a
well-known advocate of fascism. One week later the elderly German met
a carload shipment of "farm implements." When it was unloaded in San
Luis Potosi, the farm implements turned out to be dynamite.
Von Merck, who has been Cedillo's right-hand man, was during the World
War a German spy stationed in Brussels. A member of Cedillo's staff[5]
he traveled constantly between San Luis Potosi, where the arms were
cached, and the Nazi Legation in Mexico City.
On December 21, 1937, Baron von Merck flew to Guatemala--the same day
that a cargo of arms from Germany was to be landed off the wild jungle
coast of Campeche in Southern Mexico.
Guatemala, just south of Mexico, is the most thoroughly organized
fascist country in Central or South America. Its chief industries,
coffee and bananas, are virtually controlled by Germans, whose
enormous plantations overlap into the state of Chiapas, Mexico. But
President Jorge Ubico, who is not much of an Aryan, prefers
Mussolini's brand of fascism because the Nazi theory of Nordic
supremacy does not strike a sympathetic chord in the President's
heart. As a result, the Italian Minister to Guatemala is Ubico's
adviser on almost all matters of state.
Guiseppe Sotanis, a mysterious Italian officer who sits in the Gran
Hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, collecting stamps and studying his
immaculate fingernails, arranges for shipments of Italian arms into
Guatemala. A few months ago Sotanis, the Italian minister to
Guatemala, and Ubico met in Guatemala City. Shortly thereafter the
Italian arms manufacturing company, Bredda, sent Ubico two hundred
eighty portable machine guns, sixty anti-aircraft machine guns and
seventy small caliber cannon.
But President Ubico is not hopelessly addicted to one brand of
fascism. Nazi ships make no attempt to conceal their landing of arms
and munitions at Puerto Barrios. From there they are transported by
car, river and horse into the dense chicle forests in the mountain
regions, then across the Guatemalan border into Chiapas and Campeche.
During March, 1938, mysterious activities took place in the heart of
the chicle forests in Campeche. The region is a dense jungle inhabited
by primitive Indian tribes. There is little reason for anyone to build
an airport in this territory, much of which has not even been
explored. But if the Mexican Government will instruct its air squadron
to go to Campeche and fly forty miles north of the Rio Hondo and a
little west of Quintana Roo border, they will find a completed airport
in the heart of the chicle jungle; and if they will fly a little due
west of the small villages of La Tuxpena and Esperanza in Campeche,
they will find two more secret airports.
The Mexican Government knows that arms are being smuggled in through
its own ports, across the Guatemalan border, and across the wide,
sparsely inhabited two-thousand-mile stretch of American border. Both
American and Mexican border patrols have been increased, but it is
almost impossible to watch the entire region between Southern
California and Brownsville. Few contraband runners are caught,
apparently because neither the American nor Mexican Governments seem
to know the routes followed or who the leading smugglers are.
On February 12, 1938, Jose Rebey and his brother Pablo, who live in
the Altar district of Sonora and know every foot of the desert, drove
to Tucson, Arizona, where they met two unidentified Americans. On
February 16, 1938, Jose Rebey and Francisco Cuen, old and close
friends of Gov. Roman Yocupicio, drove a Buick to the sandy, deserted
wastes near Sonoyta, just south of the American border where one of
the two unidentified Americans delivered a carload of cases securely
covered with sheet metal. As soon as the cases were transferred into
Rebey's car, he turned back on Sonora's flat, dusty roads, passing
Caborca, La Cienega, and turning on the sun-dried rutted road to Ures,
which lies parched and dry in the semi-tropical sun.
Ures is the central cache for arms smuggled into Sonora by Yocupicio,
and the Rebey brothers and Cuen are among the chief contraband
runners. The load they carried that day consisted of Thompson guns and
cartridges, and the route followed is the one they generally use. A
secondary route used by one of Cuen's chief aids, a police delegate
from the El Tiro mine, lies over the roads to Ures by way of Altar.
If in time of war it becomes necessary for guard or patrol work to
deflect any troops from the army, or ships from the navy, it is of
advantage to the enemy. If a coming war found the United States lined
up with the democratic as against the fascist powers and serious
uprisings broke out in Mexico, it would require several U.S. regiments
to patrol the border and a number of U.S. ships to watch the thousands
of miles of coast line to prevent arms running to American countries
sympathetic to the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis.
The three fascist powers that have cast longing eyes upon Central and
South America have apparently divided their activities in the
Americas, with Japan concentrating on the coast lines and the Panama
Canal, Germany on the large Central and South American countries and
Italy upon the small ones.
In Mexico, Nazi agents work directly with Mexican fascist groups, and
have undertaken to carry the brunt of spreading anti-democratic
propaganda to turn popular sentiment against the "Colossus of the
North," and to develop a receptive attitude toward the totalitarian
form of government.
Italy concentrates on espionage, with particular attention to Mexican
aid to Loyalist Spain. It was the Italian espionage network in Mexico
which learned the course of the ill-fated "Mar Cantabrico" which left
New York and Vera Cruz with a cargo of arms for the Loyalists and was
intercepted and sunk by an Insurgent cruiser.
Though Germany, even more than Italy, is utilizing her propaganda
machine in the Americas' markets, the Japanese are not troubling about
that just yet. Their commercial missions seem to be much less
interested in establishing business connections than in taking
photographs. The chief commercial activity all three countries are
intensely interested in is getting concessions from Mexico for iron,
manganese and oil--materials essential for war. President Lazaro
Cardenas, however, has stated his dislike of fascism on several
occasions. Since Germany, Japan and Italy must obtain these products
wherever they can get them, it would be to their advantage if a
government more friendly to fascism were in power. But, should that
prove impossible, the existence of a strong, fascist movement would
have, in time of war, tremendous potentialities for sabotage.
Hence, Mexico is today being battered by pro-fascist propaganda
broadcasts from Germany on special short-wave beams, and Nazi and
fascist agents surreptitiously meet with discontented generals to
weave a network throughout the country.
The radio propaganda is devoted chiefly to selling the wonders of
totalitarian government, and to the dissemination of subtle, indirect
comments calculated to turn popular feeling against the United States.
In addition to regular broadcasts, material printed in Spanish and in
German by the _Fichte Bund_ with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, is
smuggled into Mexico in commercial shipments. A Nazi bund to direct
this propaganda was organized secretly because of the government's
unfriendly attitude toward fascism. The bund operates as the _Deutsche
Volksgemeinschaft_ and its propaganda center functions under the name
of the "United German Charities." This organization, on the top floor
of the building at 80 Uruguay Street, Mexico City, is actually the
"Brown House," in direct contact with Nazi propaganda headquarters in
Hamburg.
Some of the propaganda distributed in Mexico is smuggled off Nazi
ships docking in Los Angeles, and is transported across the American
border by agents working under Hermann Schwinn, director of Nazi
activities for the West Coast of the United States. The propaganda
sent by Schwinn across the American border is chiefly for distribution
around Guaymas, where a special effort is being made to win the
sympathy of the people. Meanwhile Yocupicio caches arms in Ures and
the bland Japanese continue charting the harbors and coast lines.
The Nazis began to build fascism in Mexico right after Hitler got into
power. In 1933 Schwinn called a meeting in Mexicali of several Nazi
agents operating out of Los Angeles, including General Rodriguez, and
several members of a veterans organization. It was at this meeting
that the Mexican Gold shirts were organized. Under the direction of
Rodriguez and his right-hand men (Antonio F. Escobar was one of them),
the fascist organization drilled and paraded, but little official
attention was paid to them. Five years ago few people realized the
intensity and possibilities of Nazi propaganda and organization. The
only ones in Mexico who watched the growth of the fascist military
body were the trade-unionists and the Communists. They remembered what
happened in Italy and Germany when the Black Shirts and the Brown
Shirts were permitted to grow strong.
On November 20, 1935, Rodriguez and his organization staged a military
demonstration in Mexico City, and marched upon the President's palace.
Trade-unionists, liberals and Communists barred their way. When the
pitched battle was over, five Gold Shirts were dead, some sixty
persons wounded, and Rodriguez himself had been stabbed by a woman
worker, on her lips the furious cry, "Down with fascism!"
When the Gold Shirt leader was discharged from the hospital, he found
that his organization had been made illegal, and he himself exiled.
Rodriguez went to El Paso, Texas, and immediately, working through
Escobar, set about establishing the "Confederation of the Middle
Class" to take over now the illegal Gold Shirt work and consolidate
the various Mexican fascist groups. Its headquarters was established
at 40 Passo de la Reforma.
Rodriguez kept in touch with Schwinn through Henry Allen, a native
American of San Diego, who acts as liaison man. It was Allen, on
orders from Schwinn, who last year secretly met in Guaymas Ramon F.
Iturbe, a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Iturbe is in
constant touch with the fascist groups in Mexico City.
The Gold Shirts smuggled arms into Mexico along the border between
Laredo and Brownsville, and cached them in Monterrey. On January 31,
1938, Gold Shirts attempted to attack Matamoros, near Brownsville. A
Mexican policeman was killed and another wounded in the fighting. Two
days later Gold Shirts surrounded Reynosa, some distance west of
Matamoros, but met peasants armed with rifles, pistols and knives. The
fascists withdrew and Rodriguez vanished, only to appear in San Diego,
California, on February 19, 1938 for a secret meeting with Plutarco
Elias Calles, the former President of Mexico. After a three-hour
conference Rodriguez went to Los Angeles, met Schwinn, and proceeded
to Mission, Texas, where he established new headquarters.
A few days after these conferences, he sent two men into Mexico under
forged passports to discuss closer cooperation among the fascist
leaders. The men sent into Mexico were an American named Mario
Baldwin, one of Rodriguez's chief assistants, and a Mexican named
Sanchez Yanez. They established headquarters at 31 Jose Joaquin
Herrera, apartment 1-T, and met for their secret conferences in Jesus
de Avila's tailor shop at 22 Isabel la Catolico.
In the latter part of June, 1935, an amiable bar fly arrived in Mexico
City from Berlin as civilian attache to the German Legation. A
civilian attache is the lowest grade in the diplomatic ranks and the
salary is just about enough to keep him going. Nevertheless, Dr.
Heinrich Northe, at that time not quite thirty, and not especially
well-to-do, established a somewhat luxurious place at 64 Tokyo St. and
bought a private airplane for "pleasure jaunts" about Mexico. Northe
is seldom at the Nazi Legation. He is more apt to be found in Sonora,
where Yocupicio is storing arms and where the Japanese fishing fleet
is active, or in Acapulco, whose harbor fascinates the Japanese. He
used to make frequent visits to Cedillo just before the General
started his rebellion. On March 4, 1938, Northe took off "for a
vacation" in the Panama Canal Zone. He stopped off in Guatemala on the
way down.
The persistently vacationing commercial attache, before coming to
Mexico, was part of the Gestapo network in Moscow and Bulgaria.
Immediately after the Nazis got control of Germany, Northe went into
the German "diplomatic service," and was one of the first secret
agents sent to the German Embassy in Moscow. The Russian secret
service apparently watched him a little too closely, for he was
shifted to Sofia, Bulgaria, where he bought a private plane and flew
wherever he wished. In 1935, when the signers of the "anti-Communist
pact" decided to concentrate upon Mexico, Northe was transferred to
Mexico City.
One of Northe's chief aids is a German adventurer who was a spy during
the World War. When the War ended, Hans Heinrich von Holleuffer, of 36
Danubio St., Mexico City, worked hard at earning a dishonest penny in
Republican Germany. When the law got after him, he skipped to Mexico,
where, without even pausing for breath, he went to work on his fellow
countrymen in the New World. Berlin asked for his arrest and
extradition and von Holleuffer fled to Guatemala. That was in 1926. He
came back to Mexico in 1931 under the name of Hans Helbing.
When Hitler got into power von Holleuffer's brother-in-law became a
high official in the Gestapo. Since there was no danger of the Nazis
extraditing him on charges of fraud and forgery, Hans Helbing became
Hans Heinrich von Holleuffer again and, without any visible means of
support, established a swanky residence at the above address, got an
expensive automobile, a chauffeur, and some very good-looking maids.
Since he has not defrauded anyone lately, the German colony in Mexico
still wonders how he does it.
He does it by being in charge of arms smuggling from Germany to
Mexican fascists. During the latter part of December, 1937, he
directed the unloading of one of the heaviest cargoes of arms yet
shipped into Mexico. Northe had informed von Holleuffer that a German
vessel whose name even Northe had not yet been given, would be ready
to land a cargo of guns, munitions and mountain artillery somewhere
along the wild and deserted coast of Campeche where there are miles of
shore with not even an Indian around. Von Holleuffer was instructed to
arrange for unloading the cargo and having it removed into the
interior.
On December 19, 1937, von Holleuffer arranged a meeting in Mexico City
with Julio Rosenberg of 13 San Juan de Letran and Curt Kaiser at 34
Bolivar, the latter's home. He offered them fifty thousand pesos to
take the contraband off the boat and transport it through the chicle
jungles to the destination he would give them.
Shortly after the Japanese-Nazi pact was signed, the Japanese
Government arranged with the somewhat naive Mexican Government for
Japanese fishing experts to conduct "scientific explorations" along
Mexico's Pacific Coast in return for teaching Mexicans how to catch
fish scientifically. The agreement provided that two Japanese, J.
Yamashito and Y. Matsui, be employed by the Mexican Government for the
exploratory work.
Matsui arrived in Mexico in 1936 and immediately became interested in
the fish situation at Acapulco, which from a naval standpoint has the
best harbor on the entire long stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast line.
In February, 1938, he decided that it was important to the west-coast
shrimp-fishing studies for him to do some exploratory work along the
northeast part of the Mexican coast, near the American border, and
there he went.
Immediately after the agreement was signed, three magnificent fishing
boats, the "Minatu Maru," the "Minowa Maru" and the "Saro Maru," which
had been hovering out on the Pacific while the negotiations were going
on, appeared in Guaymas. Their captains reported to the Nippon Suisan
Kaisha, a fishing company with headquarters in Guaymas. Eighty per
cent of this company's stock is owned by the Japanese Government.
Each ship is equipped with large fish bins which can easily be turned
into munition carriers, each has powerful short-wave sending and
receiving sets; and each has extraordinarily long cruising powers
ranging from three to six thousand miles. These boats do not do much
fishing. They confine themselves to "exploring," which includes the
taking of soundings of harbors, especially Magdalena Bay. Apparently
the explorers want to know how deep the fish can swim and whether
there are any rocks or ledges in their way.
That Germany, Japan and Italy are not working toward peaceful ends in
Mexico is slowly dawning upon the Mexican Government. Influential
government and trade-union leaders have repeatedly shown their dislike
of Nazism and fascism and have urged propaganda against them.
On the morning of October 5, 1937, Freiherr Riedt von Collenberg, Nazi
minister to Mexico, telephoned the Japanese and Italian ministers to
suggest a joint meeting to discuss steps to counteract the attacks on
fascism and their countries. The Japanese minister, Sacchiro Koshda,
suave and skilled in such matters, thought it would not be wise to
meet in any of the legations. The Italian minister suggested the
offices of the Italian Union on San Cosne Avenue.
At half past one in the afternoon of October 7, the ministers arrived,
each in a taxi instead of the legation car which carries a conspicuous
diplomatic license plate. At this secret meeting which lasted until
after four, they concluded that it would be unwise for them personally
to take any steps to counteract the anti-fascist activities--that it
would be wiser to work indirectly through fascist organizations like
the Confederation of the Middle Class and its associated bodies. A few
days earlier each minister had received a letter from several
organizations allied with the Confederation of the Middle Class. It
was an offer to help the Berlin-Tokyo-Rome combination. A free
translation of the passage which the ministers discussed (from the
letter received by the Japanese minister which I now have) follows:
"We, exactly like the representatives of the three powers, love our
Fatherland and are disposed to any sacrifice to prevent the
intervention of these elements [Jews and Communists] in our politics,
in which, unfortunately, they have begun to have great influence. And
we will employ, and are employing, all legal methods of struggle to
make an end of them."
The phrase "legal methods" is frequently employed by those who suggest
illegal activity. The German Minister knew that the _Union
Nacionalista Mexicana_, one of the signers of the letter, was run by
Escobar, and that Carmen Calero, 12 Place de la Concepcion, Mexico
City, an elderly woman physician active in many fascist organizations,
was a member of the _Partido Anti-reelectionista Accion_, another of
the signers.
One month later the various fascist groups got enough money to launch
an intensive pro-fascist drive under the usual guise of fighting
Communism. Jose Luis Noriega, Secretary of the Nationalist Youth of
Mexico, which also signed the letters to the ministers, left for the
United States to organize an anti-Cardenas drive. At the same time,
Carmen Calero left on a mysterious mission to Puebla on November 12,
1937, with a letter from Escobar to J. Trinidad Mata, publisher of the
local paper _Avance_. She carried still another letter addressed to
their "distinguished comrades," without mentioning names, and signed
by both Escobar and Ovidio Pedrero Valenzuela, President of the
_Accion Civica Nacionalista_. The "distinguished comrades" to whom she
presented the letter were the Nazi honorary consul in Puebla, Carl
Petersen, Avenida 2, Oriente 15, and a Japanese agent named L.
Yuzinratsa with whom the consul has been in repeated conferences.
Six weeks after the secret meeting of the Japanese, German and Italian
ministers, and one week after she went to Puebla, Dr. Carmen Calero
got twenty-two kilos of dynamite and stored it in a house at 39 Juan
de la Mateos, in Mexico City. She, her sister, Colonel Valenzuela, and
four others, met at her home and laid plans to assassinate President
Cardenas by blowing up his train when he left on a proposed trip to
Sonora.
On November 18, 1937, the secret police made a series of simultaneous
raids upon Dr. Calero's and Valenzuela's homes and the house where the
dynamite was cached. They arrested everyone in the houses. But once
the arrests had been made, the Mexican Government found itself in a
quandary. To bring the prisoners to trial would involve foreign
governments and create an international scandal; so Cardenas
personally ordered the secret police to release them.
The arrests, however, scared the wits out of the ministers, and their
horror was not lessened when they discovered that the letters from the
fascist organizations had vanished from their files. They wouldn't
even answer the telephone when one of the released fascist leaders
called. It was then that the Mexican fascists decided to send a
special messenger to Francisco Franco in Spain (November 30, 1937)
with the request that Franco intercede to get money from Hitler to
help overthrow Cardenas, since the Nazi minister was too scared to
cooperate. The special messenger was Fernando Ostos Mora. He never got
there.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] In May, 1938, Cedillo launched an abortive rebellion and is now
being hunted by the Mexican government.
[5] After Cedillo's defeat von Merck fled to New York and went to
Germany.
V
_Surrounding the Panama Canal_
There is a little shirt shop in Colon, Panama, on Calle 10a between
Avenida Herrera and Avenida Amador Guerrero, whose red and black
painted shingle announces that Lola Osawa is the proprietor.
Across the street from her shirt shop, where the red light district
begins, is a bar frequented by natives, soldiers and sailors. Tourists
seldom go there, for it is a bit off the beaten track. In front of the
bar is a West Indian boy with a tripod and camera with a telescopic
lens. He never photographs natives, and wandering tourists pass him
by, but he is there every day from eight in the morning until dark.
His job is to photograph everyone who shows an undue interest in the
little shirt shop and particularly anyone who enters or leaves it.
Usually he snaps your picture from across the street, but if he misses
you he darts across and waits to take another shot when you come out.
I saw him take my picture when I entered the store. It was almost high
noon and Lola was not yet up. The business upon which she and her
husband are supposed to depend for a living was in the hands of two
giggling young Panamanian girls who sat idly at two ancient Singer
sewing machines.
"You got shirts?" I asked.
Without troubling to rise and wait on me, they pointed to a glass case
stretched across the room and barring quick entrance to the shop
proper. I examined the assortment in the case, counting a total of
twenty-eight shirts.
"I don't especially like these," I said. "Got any others?"
"No more," one of them giggled.
"Where's Lola?"
"Upstairs," the other said, motioning with her thumb to the ceiling.
"Looks like you're doing a rushing business, eh?" They looked puzzled
and I explained: "Busy, eh?"
"Busy? No. No busy."
There is little work for them and neither Lola nor they care a whoop
whether or not you buy any of the shop's stock of twenty-eight shirts.
Lola herself pays little attention to the business from which she
obviously cannot earn enough to pay the rent, let alone keep herself
and her husband, pay two girls and a lookout.