The Hemisphere: Embracing the Church

During his last days in office, Mexico's President Miguel Alemán seemed at the height of his magnetic appeal. Wherever he went, dedicating public works (many of them unfinished) that he wanted identified with his regime, crowds collected and cheered. At his residence one morning, 10,000 civil servants serenaded him, then presented him with an unofficial medal of gratitude. Later a 200-car caravan, filled with nearly 1,000 men, women & children, arrived outside the palace from Nogales, on the Arizona border, to thank the retiring leader for his public works.

Of all his ribbon-cutting jaunts, none was more significant than his brief journey to dedicate a plaza being cleared by the government in front of the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexican Catholicism's national shrine in one of the capital's northern suburbs. The ceremony over, the smiling President turned and flung his arms around grizzled old Archbishop Luis Maria Martinez in an emotional abrazo. That gesture to the-primate of Mexico dramatically told the approving crowd of thousands—and all Mexico—how much the historic breach between church & state in Mexico has been healed.