Better in Mexico
PROFESSOR MADARIAGA openly and Mr. Cline more discreetly convey information which is slanted to their political viewpoints. Professor Madariaga's is a politics of 'if only': if only the US did not support selfish dictatorships, and Franco's in particular, Latin America would be wholeheartedly on her side and reliably hostile to the Communist powers. His panaceas are the breaking-up of the macro/undia and a thorough international inquiry into the crooked ways of American high-finance. His weakness is a tiresome habit of 'spotting the pinks.' There are newspapers by no means of the Communist observance whose supplements are in the hands of fellow-travellers,' he darkly asserts, as if Red revolution were being successfully fostered in the now discontinued literary supplement of Novedades.
Mr. Cline is far better informed on the sub- ject of Communism in Mexico which, as he says, offers 'few really novel ideas not already worked out in Mexican vernacular.' As a proof that its impact is slight, he quotes a typical entry in the visitors' book of the Soviet Trade Fair of 1960: 'A marvellous display . . but we produce better consumer goods in Mexico.'
Professor Madariaga's European preoccupa- tions prevent his examining movements of national importance which promise to save their countries from the menace of both eagle and bear. Obsessed on the one hand by the Spanish Past and on the other by foreign threats and influences, he has no time to consider President Frondizi's attempt to re-found Argentinian de- mocracy, or the prOgramme of social services in Mexico. Indeed, he neglects and seems to despise what he refers to as 'the native element' in Latin America. 'The trouble comes from the mestizo psychology,' he argues, after pleading for union in Spanish America on the basis of her common Spanishness."A mestizo is a Spaniard caught in the skin of an Indian, or vice versa. The two bloods are at war.' About 80 per cent. of Mexico's population, according to figures quoted by Mr. Cline, would count as mestizo, and an enormous percentage of the pre- dominantly white inhabitants of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay is of English, German and Italian descent. When the Spanish refugees arrived in the early Forties they found employment in teaching' and in the professions and contributed a great deal to the culture of the countries in which they settled. But even those who came as children remain unassimilated. Latin America has largely forgotten its Spanish origins.
Mexico's concern with Spain, for example, goes no further than a persistent refusal to recog- nise Franco's government. Its criterion of foreign relations is the ideal of its own revolution, which i3 the end-product of nineteentlfcentury anti- clerical radicalism. Its political organisation is not by. European standards democratic. The Mexican one-party system, admirably expounded by Mr. Cline, has evolved out of dictatorship, and in this it may serve as a model for other emergent democracies in its continent. Until 1934 no president came to power without bloodshed. Now elections are still managed, and the oppo- sition party (PAN), an upper-middle-class group with alleged clerical and even semi-fascist affilia- tions, exists rather to gain concessions than to offer an alternative government. On the other hand, civil liberties are on the increase. Accord- ing to a table quoted by Mr. Cline, Mexico now occupies fifth place among Latin American countries in this respect. But imprisonment with- out trial, principally in political cases, and police torture have still to be abolished. Mr. Cline is complacent about the former since it has been exercised against Communists and, exhaustive though his figures are for so many aspects of Mexican life, none are available for the latter.
Mr. Cline's book is packed with information
■ N'hich is presented in as lively a manner as possible. His historical introduction is brief and excellent, and his analysis of the agrarian situa- tion and education, of trade, investment, the labour movement and industrial organisation is excellent. He does not, however, pay sufficient attention to the new social benefit schemes or to the developments in rehousing. For him the `evolution' of his title is towards an 'institutional' State, hostile to Castrism and potentially friendly to the United States. From the Mexican point of view, however, when President Lopez Mateos said : 'Some countries are today fighting for ob- jectives that our revolution has already achieved,' he voiced a sense of achievement that is shared by all but that small group of his countrymen who are blind adulators of the North American way of life. The mestizo, in whose blood Madariaga sees a battle between two races, thinks of himself as the heir of two civilisations, which are older than those of the gagle and the bear and may well outlast both. For the Mexican has no sense of urgency; nor is he primarily, like both Professor Madariaga and Mr. Cline, concerned with his country's relationship to the outer world. For him 'it's better in Mexico.'
J. M. COHEN
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