Free for All

Mexico City's oldtime cabbies, normally carefree and profane, were fighting mad: their tight little monopoly was being threatened. Under a decree handed down by President Lazaro Cardenas in 1936, licenses had been limited to 5,000 individually owned cabs. Mexico's Supreme Court threw the decree out last year. In moved a fleet of 150 smartly painted cabs called Marfil Marron (Ivory and Maroon), whose bonded, uniformed drivers were outrageously courteous to passengers, even providing them with electric shavers and the morning papers. When the newcomers, in a deft stroke of public relations, took residents of the Old Ladies' Home for free rides around town, the oldtimers found it too much to bear.

Last week, in a sarcastic gesture of their own, they retaliated. For a whole morning, members of the aggressively leftist Club de Choferes Lazaro Cardenas (1,200 drivers) invited everybody for free rides. That afternoon they drove en masse to Los Pinos to shout their grievances under the windows of the Casa Crema, Mexico's cream-colored White House, even though President Aleman was out of town. When police discovered that the drivers had no permit for any such demonstration, they arrested 111 drivers for disorderly conduct, brought up tow trucks to haul their cabs away.

To the Mike! As news of the police action spread, the remaining Cardenas cabbies raced downtown, began to stone and overturn Marfil Marron cabs. By threats and cajolery, they persuaded the larger, more conservative Cab Drivers Syndicate to join them in a strike. By nightfall there was not a cab to be hailed in all Mexico City.

Next morning 700 drivers, mostly from the Cardenas Club, gathered at the Trolleymen's Alliance hall for an indignation meeting. Just as things were boiling nicely, Mexico City's nail-hard traffic chief, General Antonio Gomez Velasco, drew up outside with two heavily armed riot squads. "Fifteen minutes to come out and get back to work," the cops warned over a portable loudspeaker. "We are protecting the public of Mexico!" When the cabbies stood firm, the police let fly with tear-gas projectiles.

To the Clink! As the drivers stampeded from the gas-filled hall, cops laid about them with clubs and rifle butts. Two drivers were trampled to death, 23 others badly injured. While the wounded were piled into waiting ambulances, 366 drivers were carted off to join their brothers in jail. Cooler and clearer heads soon prevailed. Spokesmen for the strikers promised that they would go peacefully back to work; the arrested drivers were released on probation. At week's end, the cabs had reappeared, but the cabbies had as many grievances as ever. The row between the old and the new Settled down to a war of dirty looks and dirtier names.

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