El Mexicano

In Lima's red-carpeted Chamber of Deputies, the first conference of the new anti-Communist C.I.T. (InterAmerican, Federation of Labor) whisked to a successful close. There had been only a few bad moments.

The Mexican delegate, oldtime Labor Boss Luis Morones, had tried to kick up a row by accusing the A.F.L. of keeping Argentines away from Lima. He got nowhere. A tactless resolutions committee had brought in pronouncements for planned economy and against the "imperialistic manifestations of U.S. economic policy in Latin America." They were tabled after the A.F.L.'s Serafino Romualdi urged "editing down those socialistic ideas."

In the editing of the resolutions, C.I.T.'s newly elected president, mild-mannered Chilean Socialist Bernardo Ibanez, would have a big voice. Said he: "We are absolutely not going to use C.I.T. as a political instrument . . . the way Lombardo and the Communists used C.T.A.L. [the Latin American Federation of Labor]. We aim only at bettering the workers of America."

Rumpled, dark-eyed Bernardo Ibanez has worked most of his 45 years at bettering the workers' lot. As a country schoolteacher, he organized Chile's first teachers' union. Back in Chile in 1936, after he had been wounded fighting the Franco forces at Madrid, he organized the Chilean Workers Federation (C.T.Ch.), which he soon made one of the most powerful in Latin America. At a labor conference in Mexico he became a friend of Vicente Lombardo Toledano, and returned to Chile with such a Mexican accent and so many scrapes, that Chileans still call him El Mexicano.

Two years ago, Chile's Communists cracked the "popular front" and walked out of Ibanez' C.T.Ch. to found a federation of their own. Ibanez fought back, breaking with Lombardo and C.T.A.L., but he would probably have been licked if Chilean President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla had not jettisoned the Communists and become his friend. Last week's conference was the payoff. C.I.T.'s new president knows better than to tie up with the Communists again. Says he: "The Commies are going to use every dirty trick in the bag. We are ready for them."

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