Crom Crisis

Around Mexico's great Federation of Labor, the C. R. O. M., there was generated, last week, a menacing crisis. Without prior hint of trouble the Congress of the Crom met and passed two fateful resolutions. The first gave notice to Mexico's new President, Senor Emilio Fortes Gil, that provincial officials are "persecuting" members of the Crom, and asked that these persecutions be stopped. The second resolution requested President Fortes Gil to padlock the Teatro Lirico in Mexico City, where a gross buffoon has been impersonating and holding up to ridicule, night after night, the President of Crom, paunchy Luis N. Morones.

Speedily the President made reply. He recalled that in his inaugural address (TIME, Dec. 10) he had pledged himself to uphold the right of free speech and therefore could not muzzle the buffoon. Instead, the President sent 50 riflemen to protect the Teatro Lirico from possible Crom mobs. To the Crom's charge of "persecution," square-jawed Senor Fortes Gil returned a flat denial. Thereupon the Crom Congress ordered all Crom members* throughout Mexico to resign from any State or Federal post which they may hold.

By most Mexicans this was interpreted that the Crom had declared political war on the Obregonistas or agrarian party--the party of President Fortes Gil. Simultaneously it became known that Ex-President Calles had been elected Honorary President of the Crom, thus looming in the role of a crony of Crom President Luis Morones. The shattering effect of this news upon Obregonistas may be judged from the fact that their various party groups had pledged united allegiance, only last fortnight, to the new Great National Revolutionary Party headed by Ex-President Calles. That night possibilities were aired and thrashed into a lather of fury in the halls of Congress.

The sheer frenzy and unprintable vilification of debate in the Senate was barely eclipsed by that in the House. Deputy Manuel Mijares shrieked: "Morones is a octopus sucking the blood of the laboring classes, vulturing and gorging on the dupes who have elected him President of the Crom!" Deputy Aurelio Manrique began by calling President Calles a Judas and worked down through comparisons which finally became obscene. Senator Lauro C. Caloca hurled thoroughgoing curses and charged that Senor Calles when President had connived with Luis Morones in stupendous graft. Meanwhile in the Chamber of Deputies Melchor Ortega and Aurelio Manrique had pulled guns on each other, but were overpowered by friends and disarmed before they could commit murder.

Next day Ex-President Plutarco Elias Calles issued a short and momentous declaration. His intentions and acts had been misunderstood, he said; and upon pondering the situation he was determined not to explain but to withdraw perpetually from any political activity whatsoever.

Dazed observers could only recall that not five days previously Plutarco Elias Calles had been nationally regarded as the only man capable of putting Mexico's revolutionary house in order, following the assassination of President-Elect Alvaro Obregon (TIME, July 30). Under the shadow of that tragedy President Calles announced that he would not seek re-election (TIME, Sept. 10) although he could easily have won. In a moving and masterly speech of renunciation he called upon all factions to unite in the Great National Revolutionary Party which he would found to give the Mexican masses a truly democratic expression of their will. Possibly the Ex-President's "intention" was to associate the Crom with his Great National Revolutionary Party. If so, never was a patriotic move more perniciously misconstrued. Amid the shattering of all programs Mexico reeled last week.

*CIaimed to number 2,000,000.