Part 10

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 Catolico.

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 naive 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 Accion, 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 Accion 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.

FOOTNOTES:

In May, 1938, Cedillo launched an abortive rebellion and is now being hunted by the Mexican government.

After Cedillo's defeat von Merck fled to New York and went to Germany.

Surrounding the Panama Canal

There is a little shirt shop in Colon, Panama, on Calle 10a between Avenida Herrera and Avenida Amador Guerrero, whose red and black painted shingle announces that Lola Osawa is the proprietor.