SECRET ARMIES
44
New York
with a mysterious cargo consigned to one Armeria
as she docked, the cargo was quickly trans
ferred to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad freight
car No. 45169, which was awaiting it. A gentleman known
around the freight yards as A. M. Cabezut, arranged for the car
to leave immediately for the state of San Luis Potosi in the
Estrada.
As soon
heart of Mexico.
There was no record on the bill of lading to show that the
shipper was the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New
Haven, Conn., and that the cargo, ordered on January 23 and
February 23, 1937, by an Italian named Benito Estrada, was a
large quantity of rifles, pistols and one hundred and forty cases
of cartridges for various caliber guns.
When the car arrived in San Luis Potosi,
elderly,
it was met
by an
mustached German named Baron Ernst von Merck, who
took the shipment to General Saturnino Cedillo, former gov
ernor of the state* and a well-known advocate of fascism. One
week
later the elderly
German met
a carload shipment of "farm
was unloaded in San Luis Potosi, the farm
implements."
implements turned out to be dynamite.
Von Merck, who has been Cedillo s right-hand man, was dur
When
it
ing the World War a German spy stationed in Brussels. A mem
ber of Cedillo s stafff he traveled constantly between San Luis
where the arms were cached, and the Nazi Legation in
Mexico City.
On December 21, 1937, Baron von Merck flew to Guatemala
the same day that a cargo of arms from Germany was to be
Potosi,
landed
off
the wild jungle coast of
Campeche
in
Southern
Mexico.
* In
May, 1938, Cedillo launched an abortive rebellion and is now being
hunted by the Mexican government.
t After Cedillo s defeat von Merck fled to New York and went to Germany.