MEXICO: New President, Old Job

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But he is not just a hearty soldier. He collects Mexican art and fancies symphonic music. Though sociable he is not avidly social. He and his wife have friends to dinner most evenings, but directly dinner is over the friends are packed off home, and Avila Camacho goes to bed to study statecraft out of books.

One of his most attractive qualities—the one which appeals most to Mexicans —is his greatness as a family man. Avila Camacho has very little if any Indian blood, and among white Mexicans family means two things, mother and food. Manuel's late mother, Eufrosina, was a prodigious little woman. She was matriarch of the whole town of Teziutlan, and peasants for miles around took their troubles and sicknesses to Mama Camacho. She promoted the district's excellent school.

Avila food is famous in Mexico. The table is always garnished with nuts and pickles, and if guests drop in uninvited, a huge copper tray is quickly produced, burdened with half a dozen hot roast chickens. Next to the table, within reach of the eager, is a showcase with sliding plate-glass doors, its shelves always crammed with pies, Spanish coffee cake, bowls of apples baked in sirup, stewed peaches, fresh figs and pineapples.

After their heavy meals, Mexicans take a nap, but Avila Camacho had no siesta last week. Day & night the streets around his Mexico City house were jammed with cars for two blocks. Each morning there were close to 150 names on his waiting list—people waiting for positions, men with axes to grind and hates to vent. Through it all, Avila Camacho remained calm, and kept the pleased expression of a man with a fish on his line.

Compromise. Behind this happy front tangled the horns of forces that some day might grow bigger than Avila Camacho. Avila Camacho has surrounded himself with a coterie of military and political strong men. Most important among his brawn trusters are:

Suave, thick-set Emilio Fortes Gil (pronounced heel), who was Provisional President after the assassination of Alvaro Obregon in 1928 and who helped Cárdenas into power only to be squeezed out by machinations of Labor Leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano and the Government's extreme left wing.

Fidel Velásquez, a comparatively conservative labor leader who is expected to succeed Lombardo as head of the principal labor organization, CTM.

Tough older brother Maximino Avila Camacho, boss of the important State of Puebla.

General Rodrigo Quevedo, another old-school warrior, boss of Chihuahua.

These are the machine bosses of Mexico, tough, realistic, ruthless politicians with no particular political bias, but with a great yen to build things, run things efficiently and just incidentally do a spot of getting. Also around Avila Camacho have gathered a group of brash young conservatives typified by Miguel Alemán, 36, Governor of Vera Cruz.

But Avila Camacho also realized last week that he would not be President were it not for the fact that Lázaro Cárdenas had backed him, that the extreme left wing had put their machines behind him and their machine guns in front of him. So in last-minute dickering Avila Camacho agreed to form an interim Cabinet, with several holdovers from the Cárdenas regime. It looked as if for the time there would be a government of compromise.