Mexico Shaking Hands, Not Fists

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When Presidente Carranza, the Mexican President's Boeing 727, took off for Washington last week, the mood among the Mexican Cabinet members inside was decidedly buoyant. True, the last four meetings between Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado and Ronald Reagan had ended with both leaders, who enjoy warm personal relations, agreeing to disagree on most issues. True, since their last meeting in January, the collapse in the price of oil, the major export of Mexico, had pitched the country deeper into its worst economic plight in 50 years. True, the crisis had aggravated pressures on Mexico's northern border and brought tensions between the uneasy neighbors out into the open.

Still, even before last week's specially scheduled get-together between the two Presidents at the White House, Washington had agreed to mend fences by focusing on the bilateral issues that bind the two countries rather than on the problems that set them apart. "The Americans called and virtually asked us what we would like to have happen during the meetings," said a close aide to De la Madrid before the meeting. "We are very encouraged because they have never behaved in this way before."

The Mexican optimism was well founded. After a talk that lasted nearly three hours, Reagan and De la Madrid stepped onto the South Lawn of the White House eager to stress the positive. Applauding the "determined and valiant effort" of the Mexican government and people to reverse their economic misfortunes, Reagan said the "Government of the U.S. is ready to extend a hand whenever and wherever it is necessary." In response, an unusually relaxed De la Madrid extolled "an extraordinary effort to better the atmosphere of our relations." As a small symbol of their neighborly feelings, Reagan and De la Madrid announced the settlement of a six-year-old dispute over tuna-fishing rights.

Yet hardly had the assurances of goodwill been exchanged when another bitterly divisive issue surfaced that helped to explain why U.S. views of Mexico, as shown in the results of a Yankelovich, Clancy, Shulman poll taken for TIME, tend to be so critical. One day after the presidential meeting, Washington officials reported that Victor Cortez Jr., 34, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, had been kidnaped in Guadalajara and brutally tortured by Mexican state officials before being released. An incensed Attorney General Edwin Meese responded to the news of the Cortez detention in a television interview by serving notice that the U.S. "is not going to stand for this kind of conduct."

The abduction cast a disturbing shadow over the Administration's announcement earlier that day of "Operation Alliance," an antidrug effort that will cost more than $266 million and is designed to tighten enforcement along the entire 2,000-mile border. Under the new policy, roughly 600 additional U.S. officials with more than $100 million in new equipment will join the border war against drugs. Indeed, said Meese, the effort was the "most widespread interdiction program on our land borders in law- enforcement history." In calling for invigorated efforts to crack down on drugs, President Reagan tactfully acknowledged the Mexican view of the problem by promising to fight consumption within the U.S. as well as production abroad.