Dwight Morrow and the Mexican Revolution

Abstract

HEN DEATH eame suddenly to Dwight Morrow in October, 1931, hardly more than a year after he had resigned his Mexican post, the eulogistic statements by Mexican officials and the editorial comment in the press went far beyond the requirements of international courtesy.' Indeed, they tended to reflect a genuine affection for the man and a perception that his mission had signalized a new era in Mexican-American relations. In 1935 officials in the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores suggested to the Secretaria de Gobernacioii the appropriateness of naming the street in Cuernavaca on which the Morrow house was located after the former Ambassador. The Morrows had felt very much a part of Cuernavaca and had a strong attachmenit for their Casa Manana on Calle Arteaga, the niarrow, cobble-stoned street which the poetic Mrs. Morrow had described as an unbroken line of painted adobe houses runlning from a pink church on a hill to a pink sunset on a mountain.... 2 The Interior Department passed the recommendation alonig to the Governior of Morelos who, in turni, issued a directive to the Ayuntamiento of Cuernavaca. The city fathers obediently, but enthusiastically, complied. The followinig year, two bank clerks removed the plaques bearing Morrow's name oni the street anid replaced thenm with anti-American sloganis.3 While the government ordered the plaques restored and those responsible for the vandalism punished, the incident suggests, perhaps, something more fundamental than the de-