Eduardo Hay

Eduardo Hay in October 1914 at the Convención de Aguascalientes

Monument at Mexikoplatz in Vienna

Eduardo Hay (born January 29, 1877 in Mexico City ; † December 27, 1941 there ) was a Mexican general, diplomat and politician. He took an active part in the Mexican Revolution , where he was wounded and lost an eye at the Battle of Casas Grandes . From 1935 to 1940 he was Mexican Foreign Minister in the left-wing government of Lázaro Cárdenas . He supported the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War , later campaigned for Mexico to accept refugees from Europe and protested in March 1938 in front of the League of Nations against the annexation of Austria . The protest note is based on a draft by Isidro Fabela , Mexican delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva.

Life

Hay studied technology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana , USA and graduated there in 1900. In 1909 he became involved in politics for the first time and was one of the founding members of the Partido Antirreeleccionista and supported Francisco Madero in his fight against the authoritarian ruling President Porfirio Díaz . In 1911 he was wounded and lost an eye in the battle of Casas Grandes in northern Chihuahua state . He was then a prisoner of war for two months, but was able to escape and make his way through the desert to El Paso , Texas, with a ten-day march . In August 1911, at an agreement between Madero and Emiliano Zapata, he was briefly under discussion as governor of the state of Morelos , but this failed due to resistance from General Victoriano Huerta and interim president de la Barra . After the murder of Francisco Madero, Hay joined the constitutionalist army ( Ejército Constitucionalista ) under Venustiano Carranza and in 1914 became Minister of Defense ( Secretario de Guerra y Marina ) in his government .

In the following years, Hay worked mainly as a Mexican diplomat abroad and represented the country in Italy (1918–1923) and Japan (1924–25), among others. In the government of Plutarco Elías Calles, he was briefly State Secretary for Communications and Public Buildings ( Subsecretario de Comunicanciones y Obras Públicas ) in 1927 . In 1935, the newly elected President Lázaro Cardenas appointed him foreign minister in his cabinet, an office which he held until the end of this government in 1940.

Eduardo Hay died a year later on December 27, 1941 in his hometown of Mexico City. He left a son, Eduardo Hay Sais, who later became a doctor and member of the Mexican Olympic Committee and was involved in organizing the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico.

Mexican Foreign Minister 1935–1940

Eduardo Hay was appointed by Lázaro Cárdenas as Foreign Minister ( Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores ) in his cabinet in 1935 , an office he held until the end of the legislative period in 1940. In addition to the President, he was primarily responsible for Mexico's foreign policy at this time, which was shaped by the escalation of the conflicts in Europe. At the time Mexico sympathized with left-wing governments, but advocated a line of argument that was strictly based on international law and the provisions of the League of Nations . Mexico therefore condemned General Franco's uprising against the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic in 1936 and supported it diplomatically during the Spanish Civil War . On March 29, 1937, 807 people who had fled from Franco's troops to the Mexican embassy in Madrid were able to leave Spain under diplomatic protection. In June of the same year, Mexico accepted 500 Spanish warriors. Asylum was also granted to Leon Trotsky who arrived in Mexico on January 9, 1937 from Norway. Between 1937 and 1938 the Mexican railways and the oil industry were also nationalized, which briefly led to the severance of diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom , which protested against the interests of British shareholders. The resulting state-owned oil company PEMEX still exists today.

After the end of the Spanish Civil War, Mexico took in more refugees, the number of which increased at the beginning of the Second World War, as Jews and anti-fascists from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and France came to Mexico to seek asylum in some cases via the USA. Mexico City became a center for European emigrants during this period. Well-known German-speaking intellectuals in exile in Mexico at the time were Egon Erwin Kisch , André Simone , Ludwig Renn , Leo Katz , Bruno Frei , Paul Merker and Bodo Uhse . In March 1938, Mexico was also the only country that lodged an official protest against the annexation of Austria to the German Reich before the League of Nations . The Mexican diplomat Isidro Fabela delivered a protest note on March 19, 1938 in Geneva on behalf of Eduardo Hays . Only the Soviet Union protested against it, but only against the later Western Allies, since they had already written off the League of Nations as an effective peacekeeping body. On April 5, 1938, the envoy of the German Reich in Mexico, Heinrich Rüdt von Collenberg, called on Hay and demanded that the protest note be withdrawn under threat of a possible unfavorable development in economic relations between the two countries, which was refused.

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Mexico remained officially neutral. Because of the boycott of oil imports by the USA and the United Kingdom caused by the nationalization of the oil industry, Mexico still exported oil to Germany until 1940, despite all ideological differences. It was not until the next government of President Manuel Ávila Camacho that Mexico entered the war on the side of the Allies in May 1942.

Individual evidence

1. ^ The protest note from Mexico to the League of Nations ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (German translation of the French version)  
2. ↑ New York Times, archive of January 22, 1915: New Mexico Policy may be demanded
3. ↑ DÖW - Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance: The Mexican Protest and its Prehistory ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Franz Pohle: German speakers in Mexico - Between the swastika and the star of David ( Memento of the original from August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.