Tuesday, July 18, 1961 Summer Session Kansan
From the Newsstand
Page 3
College Conservatism
In a New England city, a college president, a newspaper editor, and I were recently talking about the growth of conservative clubs in some of our colleges. It is by no means spectacular, but it is an interesting phenomenon because it is unprecedented.
While political clubs in colleges are an old story, more or less permanent conservative clubs are new. Even in the depression years they were never considered necessary, so rooted were the great majority of students in acceptance of the status quo. The very existence of the clubs argue that doubt is stirring.
They belong or confidently expect to belong to the middle, probably the upper-middle class. They are not alarmed at being "organization men"—so long as they are in the service of private rather than public bureaucracies. They expect the privileges of their class, and are sure that they, like their prosperous fathers, have earned all they may acquire by inheritance, luck, successful speculation or real work; the government is robbing their fathers and will rob them by high income taxes.
IT IS FOR THEM a somewhat unexpected pleasure to find their self-interest endowed with a conscience by Barry Goldwater and armed with some sort of social philosophy. A little sense of moral indignation is always a satisfactory asset and this is provided by contemplation of the sins of labor unions, always so much better publicized than those of corporation executives whose costly vacations bear no resemblance to featherbedding by certain railroad workers. There is, I admit, a type of young conservative in our colleges to which this is scarcely fair. They are the exceptions.
WE CAME AT least tentatively to the conclusion that there was nothing in the conservative movement in colleges to differentiate it from a conservative movement outside colleges. Our college student body is made up largely of the sons and daughters of men and women to whom Barry Goldwater offers his impossible utopia.
(Excerpted from an article "Conservatives" by Norman Thomas in the April 21, 1961, New America.)
Washington has become a town where Yale locks are good but only Harvard keys will open them.—Kenneth B. Keating
Worth Repeating
Our drive for outward techniques is not enough to save us . . .
We are paving our road to hell with good inventions.—Peter R.
Viereck
Mexicans Have Own Revolution Unimpressed With Fidel Castro
By Jerry Knudson
(Editor's Note: A former instructor in journalism here, Jerry Knudson has toured Mexico and Guatemala this summer. This is the first of a (two-part series.)
The most important concrete result of the revolution, which came to a close in the war years of the early forties, was the change in land ownership. By 1940, about 1,750,000 peons had become members of ejidos, communal lands farmed on a commercial basis, and there were also about 900,000 small independent farmers—a class virtually nonexistent before the revolution.
Elsewhere, agrarian reform was quite slow. By 1933, only 19 million acres had been distributed to 750,000 families in 4,000 villages. Then President Lazaro Cardenas announced his Six-Year Plan in 1934, and by 1940 he had parceled out 45 million acres of badly needed land.
All of the Zapatistas with whom I spoke, men and women in their late seventies, now own land. Division and apportionment of the great haciendas was most complete in Zapata's home state of Morelos. There it was done by decree, in accordance with the leader's pronouncement that "The land belongs to those who work it with their own hands."
MEXICO CITY — Most Mexicans are unimpressed with their blustering neighbor Fidel Castro of Cuba, for Mexico itself has staged a revolution which in many respects has redeemed its 1910 slogans.
A project for a Latin American history class at the University of Virginia took me to the small Mexican town of Cuautla to interview descendants and acquaintances of Emiliano Zapata, revered agrarian reform leader of the turbulent days of the revolution.
Still, one sees revolutionary slogans mouthed during each electoral contest. State elections were held July 2, and in villages throughout the country one could see walls
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plastered with signs proclaiming "Land, water and peace."
Bamford Parkes points out in his "History of Mexico" the meaning of the revolution was that "Mexico was primarily an Indian nation and that only on the basis of her Indianism could she create a civilization of her own."
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This attitude was apparent in the recent Mexican film, "The Roots," which bitterly complained about the degradation suffered by the Indians, who make up 15 per cent of Mexico's population in 56 different language and culture groups.
Sentiment toward Fidel Castro seemed evenly divided in public posters. For every "Cuba si, Yanqui no" sign, there were also such moderate opinions as "The attitude toward Cuba should be peace."
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Tourist business has fallen off sharply this summer, perhaps because of unsettled conditions throughout Latin America. Hotels were only 20 per cent full, despite the benevolent prices and many attractions of this beautiful country. huge Aztec calendar stone and rich artifacts.
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In my opinion, the destiny of Latin America will be controlled by its Indian elements. If this is so, the drama of the New World has only begun.
The most encouraging sign in Mexico today is a renewed awareness of its Indian past. As Henry
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