The Wind that Swept Mexico by Anita Brenner

WE ARE NOT SAFE in the United States, now (1943) and henceforth, without taking Mexico into account; nor is Mexico safe disregarding us. This is something that Mexicans have long known, with dread, but that few Americans have had to look at.

We are interdependent for two reasons. The first is geography. The second is what has been happening in Mexico from 1910 to now. The first is quickly seen on the map. Mexico is a tapering continuation of the same land mass as the United States. It is the longest stretch between us and the Panama Canal, key to our defense of America's coasts. The largest, most secure deep-water harbor off California is Mexico's Magdalena Bay. Its rich oil deposits are part of the same Gulf belt that reaches from Louisiana and Texas south. All supplies moving north to us, south to the other Americas, must travel, overland, through Mexico; by sea, past Mexican waters; the urgent traffic of the air flies depending on Mexican landing fields. Physically we are most vulnerable through Mexico-and Mexico from us. In every war in which the United States has been engaged, the enemy has bent every effort to take advantage of this Mexican vulnerability.