Man with a Mission

Fortnight ago, "the only man in the Western Hemisphere who could sabotage the war effort in 24 hours"* slipped into Washington. Last week, he departed. He climbed into his grey sedan and headed south--a man on a mission.

The man was Vicente Lombardo Toledano, Mexican labor leader. Vice President Wallace remarked: "Hitler would be glad to hand 15 million dollars over to Lombardo Toledano, if he could be bought."

But if Lombardo could be bought, he would lose the one source of his strength--the devotion and faith of the peons. For four years of Cardenas' administration, he was the brilliant, aggressive and fluid leader of Mexican labor. With the help of Cardenas he formed and headed the restless, left-wing confederation of workers known as the C.T.M. until shortly after Avila Camacho became President of Mexico. Then Lombardo stepped down with the comment: "I leave office a rich man--rich in the hatred of the bourgeoisie." If he is also frequently feared in Mexico it is because of his influence among the workers. He has been called a Communist. He admits that he is a Marxist.

A slight, gentle little man with big ears and dreamy eyes, he has the calm, sad face of a moonstruck mystic. The look is misleading. A Puritan in his personal life, abstemious, logical in argument, part Indian, part Italian, philosopher, archeologist, scientist, scholar, Lombardo is a man of power. No longer head of C.T.M. , he is still leader of the C.T.A.L., the loosely knit Confederation of Latin American Workers. That fact, last week, was the key to his mission.

Passionate opponent of fascism, Lombardo wanted to put before the workers of all Latin America the simple proposal that all should work together. He is the one man who can do it. Far from sabotaging the war effort of the United Nations, Lombardo wanted to get a pledge of unity and cooperation from labor in all of Mexico, Central and South America, so that there would be no work stoppages from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego.

He did not call on the State Department in Washington. He held no press conferences. Newsmen did not even know he was there. But he did see Henry Wallace, John G. Winant, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Philip Murray and William Green, who were all enthusiastic for a Hemisphere Labor Front against the Axis. Only person who did not warm to Lombardo was Secretary of Labor Perkins.

In the next few months he will see obreros, mineros, Gauchos, banana pickers, oil drillers, dock-wallopers who live along the great river mouths and port towns, on the haciendas, in the mountains. All will listen to Lombardo.

The next few months will see the result of his mission, the answer of massed millions in the 20 American republics to Lombardo's appeal.

* According to a Latin American diplomat.

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