INTERVIEW WITH JUAN DE LA CABADA, WRITER, SCREENWRITER, MAN OF FILM. 85 years after the Oil Expropriation, the book: What happened to that expropriation?, recently published, updates the interviews carried out 42 years later with participants and direct witnesses of that historical event. The opinion was heartbreaking at the time, due to the way in which those resources had been channeled. Given the rescue that is currently being carried out of this national asset, I considered it important to bring back these interviews that I conducted, published in a supplement to the Unomásuno newspaper on March 18, 1980.
In Europe, the Mexico of 1938 was not understood, recalls Juan de la Cabada
“I was not in Mexico in March ’38; therefore, I cannot give you my impression ”Juan de la Cabada denies his presence by phone, but he ends up inviting us to his house. There, among old books, full of dust, newspaper clippings, and magazines with skulls that try to imitate Posadas, Juan reviews the documents that portray the fight against the Pearce, International Gulf, La Huasteca, Royal Dutch, and many other companies. Dutch, English and American origin that had seized Mexican oil. Some had concessions from the beginning of the century.
A magazine of resurrected skulls, made by the Taller de la Gráfica Popular, tells the Corrido del Chapopote between refrains that unmask the traitors.
Our black chapopote
sprouts with such freshness
that cracks the neck
of the entire brotherhood.
reactionary folks
old porfiristas
huertistas, rosarios
of capitalists
come help
we want the wells
we are going to give them…
“I was in Spain at that time -Juan confesses-, Octavio Paz, Elena Garro, José Mancisidor and others had gone to a congress of anti-fascist writers, which among other things had the purpose of supporting Spain. In Madrid and other cities we held rallies, spoke on the radio and presented the position that led us to the country. But in passing we talked about Mexico and, how could it be otherwise, because it was an obligatory subject, we talked about oil”.
“On March 18 the comrades had already come and I had stayed alone in Spain, from where I left until the end of 1938. Naturally, the news shocked me. It was in big headlines and had a special meaning when it came to Mexico. The people, the workers, both French and Spanish, could not understand how a country that was supposed to be revolutionary had cases like those of the oil companies. And much less understood what happened to Saturnino Cedillo, when it happened months later.
“Shortly after I moved to France and was present on the tour that Vicente Lombardo Toledano made to explain the oil. I attended two lectures he gave, one at the Paris workers’ union and the other at the chemical society. With Lombardo, almost all the leaders who later institutionalized oil were in Europe. Fidel, Yurén, Carrillo Marcor and some of them had gone to Belgium for a congress.
— What was your personal impression of all that?
— Look, I was amazed. In one way or another, since my youth, I had been linked to the issue of the oil tanker. At the age of 20 I worked at the International Petroleum Company and I knew what that was. In 1922, I remember that I had just arrived from Cuba and he was very dandy, in a suit and tie and so, all right, I applied to ask for a job in the company. And they gave it to me on the recommendation of a friend, an engineering intern. It is useless to tell you that in my life I had never known what that was. I didn’t even know what a theodolite was. However, when the technicians found out, they liked me and left me.
“Well, I remember that I worked next to the Pánuco River, on some flat land, from where I could see the red-red houses of the oil workers. And next to those miserable red houses, the luxurious chalets of the gringos from the companies, jealously guarded by white guards. I remember that I was looking at myself and I couldn’t understand so much contrast”.
“All that was recorded in me and later, when I read works like The White Rose by Traven, I could understand the great impression that this absurdity caused on others.”
— Have you participated in the political acts prior to the expropriation?
—I joined the Communist Party in 1928 and from the fronts that the party had I participated in demonstrations, rallies, strikes. I wrote some allusive things together with other colleagues. I remember that from the Unitary Union Confederation in Mexico (CSUM), we were repeatedly asking for the nationalization of oil. In such a way that with these impressions, imagine what I feel there, in Europe, seeing something of what our struggle had been carried out in part.
But hey, finish reading.
The skull has been dusted off.
The oil souls
looking so bad stops
they got very rude
and they even threw
— And when did you come back?
—Back in May 1939, just when they were closing the doors of all the cities of Europe and in the whole continent you could see the disgusting alliance of the bourgeoisie with the Nazis and the fascists. Four months after my arrival, on September 1, 1939, war broke out.
“Here, everyone was euphoric: it was the eve of the elections and the self-righteous Ávila Camacho was praised by everyone, as every regime change happens in Mexico. And even those who burned them upside down during the Calles era, took them out and went to exhibit themselves at mass for the future president to see. The Expropriation thing had passed into the background”.
-And now?
-Now I do not know. Many years have passed and things remain practically the same. I was recently in Campeche and saw an excellent Mexican technician who earned 23,000 pesos and a gringo master driller who earned 50,000 pesos. That is, the contrast that impressed me so much remains the same. In addition, the result is in sight. Perhaps the final part of the Corrido del Chapopote has not been completed, which, on the other hand, was done by my fellow skulls, with great optimism.
This is how companies sing
but nothing will achieve
they will turn to their bones.
and this war will lose
and full of worms
to hell they will drag
to the bad Mexicans.
Unomásuno supplement
Tuesday March 18, 1980.
