Politics Makes Strange Envoys

A movie actor, an insurance man and other U.S. ambassadors

He speaks Spanish, rides horses and has had leading roles in such films as Psycho, Spartacus and Romanoff and Juliet. He is also an acquaintance of Ronald Reagan's. It is not difficult to guess which of those qualities makes him the Reagan Administration's most probable choice as the new U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. While nothing official has been announced, John Gavin, 52, apparently feels so sure of the appointment that he quit the cast of the musical Can-Can, which has been in rehearsal for a Broadway opening next month. But if he gets the nod, it will take all of Gavin's stage and screen skills to warm up a hostile audience awaiting him south of the border.

Though Gavin wrote his senior thesis at Stanford University on the economic history of Latin America, many Mexicans are irked that Reagan would send them an actor. To make matters worse, Gavin had given a speech in Los Angeles last May in which, according to a Mexican newspaper, he called farming in Mexico "a disaster." The newspaper printed that he also attacked the country's ejidos, a system of government-owned farm cooperatives, as "inefficient" and "existing solely for political purposes."

Officials of the nation's dominant political party assailed Gavin's views. Faustino Alva Zavala, acting head of Mexico's organized labor movement, said that the remarks "showed little tact and demonstrated hardly any diplomacy." But according to the text of the Gavin speech, his strongest comment was that "agriculture is not flourishing" in Mexico. The Mexican government, which could in effect veto the Gavin appointment, has not commented officially on the nomination.

The fuss over Gavin illustrates the dangers in the practice of all recent Administrations to reserve some diplomatic posts for political fund raisers and friends. Of the 100 or so new ambassadors Reagan will have an opportunity to name, none had been chosen before last week. Reagan had picked California Real Estate Magnate William A. Wilson, 66, as his personal envoy to the Vatican, a nonambassadorial post. He had also asked former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, 78, a Carter appointee, to stay on as Ambassador to Japan. A number of career foreign service officers will also stay on. Many of the career posts are in such sensitive spots as Warsaw, Cairo and Tel Aviv, where experienced diplomats are required, or in posts like Kabul or Lilongwe, which few presidential friends covet. Yet for the 30 or so ambassadorships to friendly nations where the living is good—Britain, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the like—a wealthy American who likes to entertain is acceptable.