On November 20, 1935, Rodriguez and his organization staged a military demonstration in Mexico City, and marched upon the President's palace. Trade-unionists, liberals and Communists barred their way. When the pitched battle was over, five Gold Shirts were dead, some sixty persons wounded, and Rodriguez himself had been stabbed by a woman worker, on her lips the furious cry, "Down with fascism!"
When the Gold Shirt leader was discharged from the hospital, he found that his organization had been made illegal, and he himself exiled. Rodriguez went to El Paso, Texas, and immediately, working through Escobar, set about establishing the "Confederation of the Middle Class" to take over now the illegal Gold Shirt work and consolidate the various Mexican fascist groups. Its headquarters was established at 40 Passo de la Reforma.
Rodriguez kept in touch with Schwinn through Henry Allen, a native American of San Diego, who acts as liaison man. It was Allen, on orders from Schwinn, who last year secretly met in Guaymas Ramon F. Iturbe, a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Iturbe is in constant touch with the fascist groups in Mexico City.
The Gold Shirts smuggled arms into Mexico along the border between Laredo and Brownsville, and cached them in Monterrey. On January 31, 1938, Gold Shirts attempted to attack Matamoros, near Brownsville. A Mexican policeman was killed and another wounded in the fighting. Two days later Gold Shirts surrounded Reynosa, some distance west of Matamoros, but met peasants armed with rifles, pistols and knives. The fascists withdrew and Rodriguez vanished, only to appear in San Diego, California, on February 19, 1938 for a secret meeting with Plutarco Elias Calles, the former President of Mexico. After a three-hour conference Rodriguez went to Los Angeles, met Schwinn, and proceeded to Mission, Texas, where he established new headquarters.
A few days after these conferences, he sent two men into Mexico under forged passports to discuss closer cooperation among the fascist leaders. The men sent into Mexico were an American named Mario Baldwin, one of Rodriguez's chief assistants, and a Mexican named Sanchez Yanez. They established headquarters at 31 José Joaquin Herrera, apartment 1-T, and met for their secret conferences in Jesus de Avila's tailor shop at 22 Isabel la Catolico.
