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In the campaign for the forthcoming election Führer Dietrich does not openly support either President Cárdenas' hand-picked candidate General Manuel Avila Camacho, or his more conservative opponent, General Juan Andreu Almazán. He is banking on a revolution and his man is believed to be General Joaquín Amaro, dark, chunky, glass-eyed ex-War Minister who is known as "the toughest hombre in Latin America." A pure-blooded Huichol Indian from Zacatecas, Amaro hates gringos but carries on affable intercourse with German agents who frequent his elegant villa at Calzada de la Exposición. Uncommitted politically, he is regarded by the Nazis as a Putsch possibility and convenient dark horse that could be ridden to power after pistoleros had done their work in the two opposing camps.
Meanwhile the Nazi organization is Mexico's most vociferous exponent of "neutrality as in the days of Carranza."* Chief local firebrand working for Führer Dietrich is the leader of the Vanguardia Nacional, militant Adolfo León Ossorio, who once led a mob assault on the American Embassy, and 200 police had to be called out to protect the premises. He repeats his master's assurances that the U. S. plans to throw Latin America into the European war and then to annex Mexico. Against this menace the only safeguard is close cooperation with Germany.
Reds. Working at cross-purposes until the Soviet-German Pact clarified the atmosphere, Communists and Nazis in Mexico now have a common aim: to smear the U. S., Great Britain and France. The aggressive Mexican Communist Party figures chiefly in its control of the all-powerful Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), whose organ El Popular lambasted Hitler and Mussolini until the day of the Pact, now reviles Roosevelt and the imperialists intent on "dragging Mexico into war." Vicente Lombardo Toledano, dynamic leader of the CTM, has organized and uniformed a formidable army of 200,000 storm troops, drilling them morning and night with broomsticks until more effective weapons are forthcoming. In an election revolution, his troops might fight for Candidate Camacho, or maybe just replace him with Lombardo.
With the caldron beginning to seethe last week and warning lights flashing across the border, strangest reaction was that of the Mexican Government leaders. They were singularly unperturbed. Conditions were "absolutely satisfactory" and "absolute neutrality" was assured, purred usually gruff President Cárdenas. "There are no fifth-column activities in Mexico," snapped Ambassador Francisco Castillo Nájera in Washington when Chairman Martin Dies of the Dies Committee said he had "incontrovertible information" that German experts had laid out and equipped 26 camouflaged airplane landing fields along the border. Mexicans from President Cárdenas to the poorest peon knew that a fifth column was on the march south of the Rio Grande. They also knew that its immediate object was not to prepare Mexico for the advent of Adolf Hitler but to keep Uncle Sam out of Europe by keeping him busy in his own backyard.
* With Venustiano Carranza as President in 1915-17, Mexico was a famous centre of pro-German, anti-U. S. intrigue, even conspired with German agents to invade Texas.