s 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 M