At the Palacio Nacional

To anxious throngs who crowded into Mexico City's Palacio Nacional this week, bland President Manuel Avila Camacho displayed a two-inch swath burned in the jacket of his grey-and-red striped suit, a similar powder burn in his white shirt beneath. The burns were over his heart.

A jiu jitsu trick and somewhat erratic marksmanship were all that had saved the President. When Avila Camacho stepped from his Cadillac limousine at the ground-floor entrance of the Palacio Nacional, he was accosted by 1st Lieut. Jose Antonio de Lama y Rojas, son of a wealthy merchant from the President's home state of Puebla. As the President turned to enter the private elevator, the 32-year-old lieutenant pulled a .45 revolver, blazed away. Before a second shot could be fired, the President grasped the assassin's wrist, twisted it until the gun clattered to the floor. In jail, Avila Camacho later talked to his attacker, let it be known through a spokesman that Lieut. Lama y Rojas was a "Nazi sympathizer." Lieut. Lama y Rojas complained: "There is no justice."

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