MEXICO: Decorous President

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In Mexico City's resplendent Palace of Fine Arts, a glittering throng gathered this week to witness the inaugural ceremonies of a new President. The leaders of Mexico and the envoys of 57 foreign governments, in braid-crusted uniforms or solemn full dress, watched as a gaunt man in a plain black suit stepped forth. Adolfo Ruiz Cortines had come to take his oath as President.

He swore simply to "protect and insure protection of the Constitution." Outgoing President Miguel Alemán turned over the green, white and red sash of office. Ruiz Cortines thereupon became the 48th President of Mexico. His inauguration address was low-voiced and prosaic, his only gesture a finger pointed straight in the air. "We will open a new era in the history of Mexico," he said.

Staid Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, 61, is a new kind of President; he is neither a general nor a lawyer, but a bureaucrat. His nickname is Cara de Calavera, or Skullface; though he looks like Actor Boris Karloff, in his make-up there is a little Milquetoast: in movies, he obeys no-smoking rules even when everyone around him is puffing away. His favorite pastime is dominoes, though he also likes to watch baseball and stroll to street-corner stands to sip tamarind juice.

Some call him the Calvin Coolidge of Mexican politics. His early career as a major in revolutionary armies, then as a government clerk with a passion for statistics, was honorable but undistinguished. His rise began in 1937 when he became Miguel Alemán's trusted aide. He followed Aleman right up the steps through the governorship of their native state of Veracruz and the Ministry of Interior to the presidency. But he is more than a protege of Alemán (who is twelve years his junior). Mexicans think that Ruiz Cortines, with his addiction to statistics, knows his country's problems, and that, as his frugal living testifies, he is completely honest.

A middle-of-the-roader in domestic affairs, Ruiz Cortines is expected to carry forward Alemán's big program of strenuous industrial expansion, but with more decorum, stability, efficiency—and less tolerance of corruption. He is a frequent, admiring visitor to the U.S. "I love to stroll in the streets of New York," he says, "lost among 8,000,000 people. There, one is just an atom." He intends to continue Mexico's policy of close friendship with the big neighbor to the north.