Dynamite Under Mexico

Most people in the UNITED STATES feel secure from European or Asiatic aggression since wide oceans apparently separate us from the conquering ambitions of a Fuehrer or a Son of the Sun. However, despite our desire to be left in peace, the Rome-Berlin axis, which Japan joined, has cast longing eyes upon the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is of value only so long as aggressor nations feel we are too strong for them to violate it; recent history has shown what pieces of paper are worth.

In the process of trying to get a foothold in the Americas, the Nazis have sent agents into all of the countries, but because most of the Central and South American republics are still resentful of past acts by the “Colossus of the North,” they offer the most fertile fields.

The two spots on the Western Hemisphere most vital to the United States are the Panama Canal Zone and Mexico the Zone because it is our trade and naval life line between the oceans and Mexico because potential enemies could find in it perfect military and naval bases.

Let us see what the totalitarian powers are doing in Mexico:

On June 30, 1937, the S.S. “Panuco” of the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Co. steamed into Tampico, Mexico, from New York with a mysterious cargo consigned to one Armería Estrada. As soon as she docked, the cargo was quickly transferred to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad freight car N, which was awaiting it. A gentleman known around the freight yards as A.M. Cabezut, arranged for the car to leave immediately for the state of San Luis Potosi in the heart of Mexico.

There was no record on the bill of lading to show that the shipper was the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Conn., and that the cargo, ordered on January 23 and February 23, 1937, by an Italian named Benito Estrada, was a large quantity of rifles, pistols and one hundred and forty cases of cartridges for various caliber guns.

When the car arrived in San Luis Potosi, it was met by an elderly, mustached German named Baron Ernst von Merck, who took the shipment to General Saturnino Cedillo, former governor of the state 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 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 Cantábrico” 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 Católico.

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 naïve 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 Acción, 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 Acción 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.