MEXICO: Society of Dupes

Forty people who could not forget a charwoman gathered at her grave on the outskirts of Mexico City last week. In honor of the 14th anniversary of her death they sang, made speeches, and organized a society of her worshipful dupes.

For the first 60 years of her life the charwoman so honored was Conchita Jurado, a born actress who never got a chance to act. One day in 1926 she forsook her scrubbing brush. She donned trousers, overcoat, slouch felt hat, a false-diamond stickpin and a false black mustache, and sortied into Mexican society. That day and until her death five years later, she was Don Carlos Balmori, an eccentric bachelor grandee with vast fortunes and castles in Spain.

With a fat checkbook and telepathic adroitness, "Don Carlos" promised people anything—usually what they wanted most. As fast as they succumbed and took the worthless checks, "Don Carlos" swore them to secrecy and admitted them to the society of the greedy but gullible. Most of them loved it. The late, onetime President Plutarco Elías Calles was said to have attended one of the meetings, called Noches de Balmori. The initiates included bankers who sought power, generals who grasped for office, musicians who wanted a career, women who wanted palatial homes. More than 100 women reportedly married "Don Carlos."