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In 1937 a boat carrying 450 Spanish children, aged between five and 15, docked at the sultry tropical port of Veracruz on Mexico’s Atlantic coast. The children – not, in most cases, orphans, but refugees whose families had sent them across the world to escape the civil war then ravaging Spain – were feted on arrival and taken, via Mexico City, to a boarding facility in Morelia, a conservative Catholic town in the western state of Michoacán. Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), who was a native of Michoacán, and his wife Amalia Solórzano, played a prominent role in welcoming the so-called ‘Niños de Morelia’ (‘Children of Morelia’). But, after the official junketing was over, the children faced a tough challenge. Life in the facility was spartan and discipline was lax. Some of their Mexican minders regarded them as hooligans. The children complained about the Mexican food – tortillas (maize pancakes) and frijoles (beans) – and asked for bacalao (cod) and vino tinto (red wine), which they did not get. They also offended conservative Catholic opinion by ostentatiously saluting with the clenched fist of communist solidarity.
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