The President's Other Brother

In Mexico City, before dawn one morning last week, 34-year-old Captain Gabriel Avila Camacho stopped for breakfast at Wimpy's, a hot-dog tavern on the Avenida Oaxaca, near the U.S. Embassy. He was on his way to Texcoco, 25 miles away, where he was building a factory. Gabriel is the youngest of four Avila Camacho brothers. His older brother, Manuel, is President of Mexico.

According to the account which he gave afterwards, he was sitting there, eating his breakfast, when a young man he had never seen before came in. The young man took one look at Gabriel Avila Camacho, drew a gun and cried: "I've been looking for you!" Then he began to beat Captain Avila Camacho about the head with the butt of his pistol. Young Avila Camacho seized the gun, turned it on his assailant, shot him dead. Then he drove away.

Later that morning Captain Avila Camacho stopped at a police station to report the shooting. Sympathetic police officers heard his story, released him on his own recognizance. But for Brother Manuel Avila Camacho, striving to give Mexico a just administration, the problem was not so simple.

The young man who had attacked Brother Gabriel was Manuel Cacho Ramirez, 28, son of a well-to-do Mexican merchant. Father Cacho, owner of Mexico City's two Princesa jewelry stores, was also a friend of President Avila Camacho. He sent word to the President, asked that the case be closed without further investigation. For Brother Manuel it must have been a sore temptation: like most Latins, he is devoted to his brothers. But he was President of Mexico. Said Manuel Avila Camacho: "I desire that strict justice be observed."

That afternoon a squad of police took Brother Gabriel in charge, locked him up in the Federal penitentiary. To Francisco Moreno Sanchez, chief of the Investigation Division of the District Attorney's office, he told his story again. Young Cacho Ramirez, he thought, had mistaken him for another man with whom the jeweler's son had quarreled earlier in the night. The gun had gone off accidentally. Witnesses at the tavern said they saw nothing.

At week's end the President's brother still sat in prison, waiting for a judge's decision whether to order trial, and, if so, for what degree of homicide.