Political campaigns (1939)

Unión Nacional de Veteranos de la Revolución

La Unión Nacional de Veteranos de la Revolución was created in June 1936 and headed by senior officers who saw their perks threatened, who opposed Lazaro Cárdenas organizing "irregular" military forces in the countryside and who condemned the "communist threat" sponsored by some spheres of government, such as socialist education. Its president General de división Cesáreo Castro and its secretario general Gabino Vizcarra.

This receipt for a contribution to campaign funds is signed by [                             ]^{[identification needed]} as Presidente, Gabino Vizcarra as Secretario General and [                            ]^{[identification needed]} as Tesorero.

Gabino Vizcarra

1939 campaign

Although initially, for the 1940 elections, Francisco José Múgica was seen as the likely successor of President Lázaro Cárdenas due to their shared leftist ideology, in the end President Cárdenas appointed Manuel Ávila Camacho as the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana's presidential candidate. The decision was made due to Ávila Camacho's perceived conciliatory nature and the fact that he was a devout Catholic, which was crucial to defuse tensions between the Party and the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the bloody Cristero War, as well as to appeal to the conservative sectors of the country which had fiercely opposed Cárdenas' social reforms.

Nevertheless, most Mexican conservatives chose to support an opposition candidate, which they found in Juan Andreu Almazán. A former revolutionary combatant who later served as Communications Minister under Pascual Ortiz Rubio's administration and accumulated great wealth from construction works, Almazán presented himself as a right-wing candidate who would put an end to the "Comunazi degeneration" of the Cárdenas administration, although he promised to maintain the social reforms if he won.

The campaign was very intense, with clashes between the supporters of Camacho and Juan Andreu Almazán becoming common throughout the electoral process. Clashes on election day resulted in at least 47 deaths and 400 people being injured.

The election was won by Camacho, who received 2,476,641 votes, 93.90% of the vote. Almazán received 151,101 votes (5.73%) and Rafael Sánchez Tapía 9,840 (0.37%).

Almazán refused to recognize the official results, claiming that the PRM had organized the violence against his supporters, as well as accusing it of stealing ballot boxes and preventing Almazán's supporters from voting for him. He fled to La Habana, unsuccessfully seeking support from the United States, which recognized Ávila Camacho's victory (although the US government had opposed Cárdenas' social reforms, they saw Almazán's alleged fascist sympathies as a bigger threat). When it became clear that it would be impossible to change the results, Almazán gave up on the idea of a violent revolt. He returned to Mexico and attended Camacho's inauguration.

Comité Directivo Nacional Pro Avila Camacho

Manuel Ávila Camacho (24 April 1897 – 13 October 1955) served General Lázaro Cárdenas as the Chief of his General Staff during the Mexican Revolution and afterwards. In 1929, he fought under General Cárdenas against the Escobar Rebellion, the last serious military rebellion of disgruntled revolutionary generals, and the same year, he achieved the rank of brigadier general. After his military service, Ávila Camacho entered the public arena in 1933 as the executive officer of the Secretariat of National Defence and became Secretary of National Defence in 1937. As president, he pursued "national policies of unity, adjustment, and moderation." His administration completed the transition from military to civilian leadership, ended confrontational anticlericalism, reversed the push for socialist education, and restored a working relationship with the US during World War II.

This bond has the signatures of M. [                 ]^{[identification needed]} as Secretario General and H. [                 ]^{[identification needed]} as Secretario Tesorero.

M. [                 ][identification needed]
H. [                 ][identification needed]

Bonos Electorales Pro-Almazan

Juan Andreu Almazán, of the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Nacional, issued bonos electorales to fiance his campaign. In an informe  on 31 December 1940 Almazán wrote: “In order to control public contributions to the election campaign, vouchers were printed to serve as receipts for contributors. These bonos were distributed to the State Committees and to the Chiefs of Party or Group, who unfortunately disregarded the constant recommendations for their placement, so this was a real failure. The Treasurer of the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Nacional, Francisco A. Cárdenas, has formed an exact statement of the people who received bonds, of those who returned them in whole or in part and of those who have distributed the funds collected for that concept; if necessary, I will ask Mr. Cárdenas to publish that statement^{Juan Andreu Almazán, Memorias del General Juan Andreu Almazán, Informe y Documentos Sobre la Campaña Política de 1940, Mexico City, 1941}. So somewhere a full financial statement of these bonos might still exist.

The bonds were issued with a range of portraits of Almazán and a number of series. Did the portraits collate with the series, or was a variety of portraits used for each series?

These carry the signatures of [             ] as Vocal Secretario, Juan Andreu Almazán as Presidente and [                  ] as Vocal Tesorero.

Juan Andreu Almazán

In his informe Almazán added: "As for me, it was rare that a friend who gave me some amount accepted bonds for it and, then, I used to sign them as proof on the back and if in the first days I did not do so with someone, I am in the best disposition to sign now so that the respective bonds serve as receipts and as a reminder of an exemplary civic movement."^ibid. so some notes will have had Almazán's manual signature on the reverse.

Finally, Almazan recalled: "It was not only in the United States that I was attacked by American individuals, but also in Mexico, as can be seen from the weekly Time of 28 October:

In the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacan, not far from the house where Leon Trotsky was mortally hacked, stands a 25-acre, walled-in estate packed with recreations for a hearty body: a jai alai court, swimming pool, tennis court, club house with reducing machine, paths winding among citrus trees and flower beds, Turkish bath, barbershop, and seven residences for family and guests. Last week this estate was put up for sale for 52,000 pesos ($10,842), about one-tenth its assessed value. The sale and the cheap price symbolized the decline of a hope: the estate was the property of General Juan Andreu Almazan, defeated candidate for the Presidency of Mexico.
Last year General Almazan asked Reporter Frank Gibler, who had spent some 20 years shuttling between Mexico and the U. S., to be Almazanista liaison press agent between those two countries. After two months’ work, Frank Gibler quit, alleging that instead of salary his boss was paying him valueless Almazan election bonds. The Government Labor Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, affectionately anxious to support Government Candidate Maximino Avila Camacho and harass his opponent Almazan, awarded Frank Gibler salary not only for the two months he claimed, but for the entire period of nearly eleven months from the day he was hired until election day. Furthermore, in order that Frank Gibler might really be paid, the Board last week ordered the estate with all its recreations to be put on the auction block—which in this case was also an execution block. If the cause of Juan Andreu Almazan was dead, it was partly because Mexico has developed very legal means for political assassination.^{Time, 28 October 1940}.

Frente Constitucional Democrático Mexicano

The Frente Constitucional Democrático Mexicano was organised by the deputy Bolívar Sierra and General Ramón F. Iturbe and composed of small landowners from the North and former Obregonista soldiers. It supported the candidature of the perennially opportunist and optimistic General Rafael Sánchez Tapia.

This bond has two printed signatures: [                 ]^{[identification needed]} as Secretario de Accion Económica and Ramõn F. Iturbe as Presidente, and spaces for handwritten signatures for Tesorero and Socio Colector.

Ramón F. Iturbe
José

Partido Revolucionario Anti-Comunista

The Partido Revolucionario Anti-Comunista was formed of former Callistas. In 1939 issued a series of "civic bonds (bonos cívicos)” that were being placed among friends and coreligionists, with "discretion and integrity." The bonds were $10.00, $25.00, $50.00 and $100.00 per month. The leaders of the party thought that the big capitalists supported their program, since they guaranteed their investments, but General Joaquín Amaro said, with enormous naivety "in their hearts, they want our victory, but they are afraid and do not decide to provide us with economic cooperation, for fear of compromising their interests in the face of the impulsiveness of the official forces and their arbitrariness."^{Archivo Plutarco Elías Calles, Exilio, exp. 5, Fernando Torreblanca, 12 June 1939}. Amaro commented that, if it were true that politics could only be done by having large sums of money, we would come to the conclusion that there would only be two candidates: "the one of the government, supported by the money of the people and the conservative, and perhaps reactionary, supported by the money of the rich and of course subordinated to those great interests"^ibid.. Deep down the Partido Revolucionario Anti-Comunista knew perfectly well that without money they were lost and they were doing everything possible to get it; even Calles eagerly sought to obtain economic support for the party among his friends in the United States without much success. However, he sent $150.00 a month as a personal contribution^{Archivo Plutarco Elías Calles, Exilio, exp. 5, Fernando Torreblanca, 10 October 1939.}. The party could not sustain its campaign up to the elections and ended supporting Almazán.

Partido Antirreeleccionista Acción

The Partido Antirreeleccionista Acción struggled to fight communism in its various manifestations, and in general shared the views of the Partido Revolucionario Anti-Comunista^{El Universal, 16 February 1939}. It also ended up supporting Almazán.