MEXICO: New President, Old Job

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"The Army represents the honor and manly virtues of the country. Compulsory military service will augment chances in life for the youth. The urgency of making our merchant and naval marines respectable units has made it necessary for us to create their respective departments into a State Ministry. With this we shall be able to respond better to the responsibility of maintaining intact the sovereignty of our nation. . . ."

Three minutes of ceremony had made Manuel Avila Camacho President at last —after many months of anxious battle. The story of how he came to the Presidency is one of the weirdest in all the fantastic history of Mexican politics. Avila Camacho, a conservative soldier, was imposed on the Mexican people by the Government of Lázaro Cárdenas, a liberal idealist who picked Avila Camacho because he was his old War Minister and seemed to be the strongest man for the job. He was chosen last July 7 in an election which mocked democracy—in which both sides kept their opponents away from the ballots, in which electioneers used tear gas and brickbats and lead. So controversial was his right to claim the Presidency that the real campaigning did not begin until after the election. For a time it looked as if General Almazán would surely assert his right in the old-fashioned Mexican way, by revolt.

But gradually Avila Camacho caught hold. He did so by playing a master game of politics, left against right and middle against both. He alienated the Almazán capitalistic following by claiming Almazán's program for his own, and he neutralized the atheistic Government position on religion by declaring himself a believer. But he also caught hold by being the Mexican version of a good guy.

As is true of many Mexicans, the seat of Avila Camacho's attraction is his eyes. They are brown and full of comradely humor. His body is vaguely reminiscent of various ripe fruits—his face of a pear, his torso of a papaya. Last week the sophisticated began calling him El Buchudo, he of the double chin. Pudgy though he is, Avila Camacho keeps himself in good condition, mostly by riding and walking. A Mexican is nothing if he cannot make himself look like part of a horse. Avila Camacho's "highschool" horse Pavo (Peacock) went through his dance steps in the New York horse show last month, and the new President has made many gringo friends by way of his two-goal polo, which is sharpened to the verge of three-goal by clever, tricky play. His favorite polo pony is named Lady Hitchcock, after Poloist Tommy Hitchcock.

Mexicans cannot deeply love a politician who was not a soldier in some revolution. Avila Camacho is primarily an Army man and went off to his first revolution when he was 17, but he is a very special kind of soldier—so special that his enemies nicknamed him El Soldado Desconocido, the unknown soldier. His specialty was persuasion. Instead of meeting rebels in frontal conflict, he would take an airplane, fly straight to their camp, sit them down on a log and pacify them with sympathetic conversation and promises—which, surprisingly enough for a Mexican general, he kept.