Good Friend

(See Cover]

On the lofty plateau of Mexico the rains had begun to fall. They heralded the end of the dry season and of the dust clouds raised by the afternoon wind from the cornfields and the green rows of the maguey. At Balbuena Airport, aerologists scanned their weather charts, for next week Miguel Aleman, 47th President of Mexico, will board the Sacred Cow to fly north on a friendly visit to Harry Truman, his guest last month in the ancient City of Mexico.

For Miguel Aleman a reception has been laid out that will befit his position and the new friendliness between his nation and the U.S. He will sleep in the White House, be honor guest at a state dinner. He will address a joint session of Congress. In New York City, before swinging south for an inspection of TVA, he will get a ticker-tape reception, dine with government, financial and business bigwigs at the Waldorf-Astoria. But President Aleman, the first Mexican President to visit the U.S. capital, is headed for Washington and New York on more than white-tie business. His Government, only five months in office, wants U.S. money to help along a half-billion-dollar program to raise the standard of living for Mexicans. Miguel Aleman is the sponsor of the plan and its fund raiser.

Mexico's program is based on the conviction that the Revolution is over, and that now Mexicans have a job of modernization to do. Aleman agrees with such old revolutionists as ex-President Lazaro Cardenas that the basis of national prosperity lies in a prosperous countryside. But he argues further that people cannot have the good things of life till they have produced enough of them. That means that Mexico must make better use of its land. It also means that Mexico must get in step with the modern world by industrializing itself.

Since 1911, when Emiliano Zapata raised the historic cry of tierra y libertad (land and liberty), more than 47% of Mexico's crop lands have been divided among the peasants under the ejido system. Each head of a family receives the right to till some 40 acres owned not by himself, but by the community. Seven years after Cardenas, this socialistic system seems to work reasonably well, at least in the great collective farms of the Laguna and the rich plots of the Yaqui valley. But there is not enough land. Half a million people are still after ejido grants; half a million more are eligible to apply for them.

Aleman's ambitious plan for solution of this problem, blueprinted on the TVA model for the states of Sinaloa, Vera Cruz and Oaxaca, is to add thousands of square miles of newly arable land (see map). That, he hopes, will not only ease the pressure of population, but will yield corn and wheat enough to enable Mexico at last to feed itself. Chances are that most of these acres will be developed as small tracts, under private ownership. Significantly, Aleman's first agrarian measure was a law protecting the medium-sized farms that survived the land expropriations from the threatening encroachment of ejidos.

Dynamos & Dollars. When Miguel Aleman talks industrialization, his brown eyes glow. He wants to lift the submerged 16 of Mexico's 22 millions and draw them into the new life that has flowed out of the Revolution. These millions are now unable to raise a cash crop to sell in the cities, and unable to buy the city's products. More than 1,115,100 of them walk barefoot, more than 4,500,000 have only huaraches. There is only one radio set for every 70, only one bed for every four.

Aleman hopes to encourage sound new enterprises by providing cheap and plentiful power. He wants private U.S. capital to help, and to take a fair profit. But he wants no exploitation. Says he: "History shows that foreign private capital fares best when working side by side in the same enterprises with Mexican capital."

Mexico cannot pay for all, or even half, of Aleman's $656 million program. That is where the U.S. comes in. The dams, hydroelectric and irrigation projects, roads, railways and docks on Mexico's blueprint are planned to pay for themselves. So to the U.S. Export-Import Bank they seem to be sound investments. President Aleman may get from the Bank's depleted kitty somewhere between $50 and $100 million. That will get his program started.

But a far richer lode will be tapped if private U.S. capital can be lured back into Mexico. Last fortnight at Monterrey, Treasury Minister Ramon Beteta urged U.S. bankers to invest in Mexican Government bonds--"as safe and secure as any in the world." The bankers listened respectfully. But U.S. capital, once grievously burned by expropriation in Mexico, still fears the heat from the Revolution's embers.

Neighbors & Partners. The State Department hopes to settle that issue by writing a special clause into a new treaty of friendship & commerce, protecting U.S. investment in Mexico from expropriation. For Mexico's mines, factories, oilfields and tourist hotels, such a guarantee can mean millions in new capital.

The best reasons for believing that the two countries can work out these differences are 1) their growing identity of eco nomic interest, and 2) the Aleman administration's recognition of the fact. Mexico needs U.S. scrap for steelmaking, U.S. autos for transport, U.S. dollars for expansion. "Poor Mexico," many a Mexican has sighed, "so far from God, so near the United States." Time has taken much of the sting out of his complaint.

Revolution's Son. The man who conies to the U.S. to speak for Mexico talks (in Spanish) an economic doctrine that successful Americans will find familiar: encouragement of private industry, more production, wider sales to make still more production. Yet equally, Miguel Aleman Valdes at 43 belongs to the Revolution. He is its product, perhaps its end product.

He is no radical, yet he is not a conservative. A Mason, he feels himself influenced by Catholic education and philosophy in a country where, after its long war with the Revolution, the Church is again on firm ground.

By the time he was an adolescent, the Revolution had shaken the tight social system which Mexico had inherited from Spain, and opened wider horizons to young men. It wrenched power from the cautious hacendados (landed gentry), who seldom took a chance with a peso-- except over a gaming table. It handed power and wealth to half-educated generals and to adventurous businessmen not greatly different from the men who built the U.S. Whatever their sins, the new bosses were willing to bet the wad on Mexico-- at least, the part they did not keep for themselves. They took such sleepy colonial cities as Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City, and turned them into bustling places with smoking factories and modern buildings.

In 1910, when Miguel Aleman Sr., a grocer in the steaming Vera Cruz village of Sayula, took up arms against Dictator Porfirio Diaz, the wind that was to sweep Mexico was hardly a breeze. The next year the Revolution burst forth and churned the country in bitter, bloody civil war. But the Sayula grocer always managed to come out on the right side. He became a general. After the manner of Mexican generals, he also became prosperous. The Aleman family moved to Mexico City.

Battle Ground. The National University, when young Miguel Aleman entered in 1924, was a boiling place where students fought in the corridors and in their newspapers debated every idea spawned by the Revolution. Aleman was in the midst of it all, editing a paper called Eureka. "Good laws should not perish in the country," he wrote, "but when the needs of the people are stronger than good laws, then the laws must go. The Revolution has overthrown law because law failed the people." Ramon Beteta taught Aleman economics that year. "He wasn't a very good student," Beteta recalls. Even so: Aleman finished the five-year law course in four.

There was another reason for Aleman's poor marks in Beteta's course--a girl, Beatriz Velasco, a pupil in a nearby domestic science school. Aleman used to rush through his studies, meet Beatriz and carry her books home. In time Miguel's friends visited the Velascos and, in the ceremonial Mexican fashion, argued that he was a fine boy, with a good reputation and good prospects. After due investigation, he became her novio oficial, with the right to come to dinner occasionally, to sit in the sala afterwards with Beatriz (and parents), and talk of serious things. In 1931 they were married.

Death of a General. Two years before that, Aleman had opened a scrubby little law office in Mexico City, and death had come to his father. The old General had broken with Strongman Obregon and turned guerrilla. For two years he held out in the jungle, until betrayed. Then, surrounded by government troops, he fought with his handful of men until ammunition ran out. With the last bullet he killed himself. In Mexico City. Miguel put his father's picture above his desk. It has been there ever since.

Young Attorney Aleman found success quickly in the person of a little old man with a racking cough. Aleman first saw him under the Caballito monument at the head of the Paseo de la Reforma, and took him for a beggar. But the man refused money and said he was a miner far gone with tuberculosis. Aleman questioned him, took him home, persuaded him to see a doctor. The verdict: not TB, but silicosis. In the name of the old man, Pedro Aguayo, Aleman filed suit against the mining company.

Mexican judges knew little of silicosis in 1929; company lawyers cried that Lawyer Aleman had invented it. But Aleman had studied a report on silicosis in South African mines. For Pedro Aguayo he won a 4,900-peso verdict. A week later he had 3,000 more such cases. A week after that he had a brand-new car. By month's end he and his partner--chubby Gabriel Ramos Milland, now a senator--had 16,000 cases. They got 25% of all judgments, figured half of that clear profit.

The partners bought fine houses and cars. They started buying real estate just in time to cash in on Mexico City's real-estate boom. Five years after leaving the university, the grocer's boy was rich.

Up the Ladder. Success in politics took Aleman somewhat longer. Three times between 1929 and 1935 he ran unsuccessfully for Congress from Vera Cruz. Then he renewed acquaintance with young Lieut. Colonel Carlos Serrano, a dark and devious little man with a passion for politicking. Serrano had drifted from the army into politics, watching closely as the powerful Calles maneuvered Presidents in & out of the National Palace, and the more powerful Cardenas in 1934 maneuvered

Calles right out of the country. Serrano yearned to be a kingmaker. He saw a good prospect in the bright intelligence, personal charm and gleaming smile of Miguel Aleman. He got to work, and in two years Aleman zoomed from private citizen to Justice of the Superior Court of the Federal District to Senator from Vera Cruz to Governor of the state. (His predecessor had been killed in a cafe murder.)

In Vera Cruz, hotbed of the Revolution, Aleman began to show the stuff that Presidents are made of. For 16 years no rents had been paid in the state because the law forbade evictions. The result was a land war in which renters and landlords often shot each other in the street. Then Aleman moved in, got a new law passed permitting evictions after six months' nonpayment of rent. His foes shrilled that he had sold out the Revolution. Aleman replied that his law was more revolutionary than the two-month eviction laws in other states.

Other things were done in Vera Cruz. Roads were built. More than half the budget the second year went for education and new schools. But the most spectacular thing was settlement of the land war. It caused real estate in Vera Cruz to boom. Aleman was smart and in the right place. He and Serrano invested in Vera Cruz hotels.

A Nod from Camacho. But they never forgot the capital. When Cardenas expropriated the oil companies in 1938, Aleman wired the 27 other Governors, hailing the move as "liberation of the country," and demanding support. They responded by electing him chairman of the President's Advisory Council of Governors. In 1939 he moved to the capital to manage Manuel Avila Camacho's presidential campaign against Juan Almazan. Mexicans recall the ruthless drive with which he carried through the election; to this day many insist that Almazan really won and was counted out by the Aleman organization.

Avila Camacho made Aleman Secretary of Gobernacidn (Government), the key Cabinet post. But Aleman was not the ranking minister. That was the job of Maximino Avila Camacho, the President's rich, powerful brother, who as Minister of Communications was the big shot and profited to the scandal of all. Maximino hated Aleman, but he did not live long enough to hurt him. One day Maximino dedicated a new health center, went home and died.

Meanwhile, Aleman traveled all over the country meeting people and making friends. He went to Hollywood, loved the girls, won the hearts of Hollywood's party-lovers. They called him "Mike." Aleman today wears suits made by Oviatt's of Beverly Hills, tailor to the movie trade.

In Mexico City, Miguel golfed almost weekly with the President. Another hopeful politico, Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla, was usually in the foursome. The President liked both "boys," but he liked Miguel a little better and he gave him the nod for the 1946 presidential race.

If there was any doubt about Avila Camacho's election in 1940, there was none about Aleman's last year. He won on a fair count. Mostly he won because more Mexicans knew him better than they knew his professorial opponent, Padilla. During the campaign he had visited every state, called people in and asked to hear their troubles.

Government of All the Talents. As the result of the campaign "roundtables," Aleman came to office the best-briefed President in Mexico's history. He proceeded to surround himself with strong men. Some were old university friends, such as Gobernacion Minister Hector Perez Martinez and Treasury Minister Ramon Beteta. Some were political veterans. Strapping Antonio Bermudez, a former treasurer of Chihuahua, marched out of the President's office with an armload of reports and charts, the new boss of Mexico's oil resources. Others were new to the game of politics. Antonio Ruiz Galindo, millionaire manufacturer of office furniture, was made' Minister of National Economy and placed in command of industrialization. Adolfo Orive de Alba, top-notch irrigation engineer, was appointed first Minister of Hydraulic Resources, allocated $200,000,000 and told to get started.

The first man Aleman sees each morning at his great white-walled house near Chapultepec Park is Carlos Serrano. President of the Senate now and second most powerful man in Mexico, Serrano hurries up the walk from his house next door to report on the state of the nation. Often there is trouble. Now, as always since the

Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a single political party currently called the Party of Revolutionary Institutions. Four times this year the President has had to remove Governors as the result of local uprisings. Says Aleman, no proponent of the two-party system: "They were all isolated instances."

Dissatisfaction in the country over inflated prices, corrupt officials and monopolistic politics that often breeds corruption in high places obviously has something to do with it. But Aleman is unperturbed. "We have demonstrated our ability to correct mistakes," he says, "and we remain in control."

The Day's Work. The quick-witted labor lawyer from Vera Cruz thrives on such fare. Mornings he works at the palace. Not till 3 does he break off for lunch. Afterwards he works, with sleeves rolled up and collar open, in the law-book-lined office of his Chapultepec-home. Sometimes the biggest issues get settled there.

After five months in the presidency, Aleman has not forgotten how to relax and have fun. Sometimes he goes to his house in the play-town of Cuernavaca for a round of golf (85 to 90). Recently he has spent more & more of his weekends at Ramon Beteta's Acapulco house, flying down in his own DC-3 for swimming and fishing. Usually his family is with him--wife Beatriz, .son Miguel, 15, daughter Beatriz, 14; for the present, month-old Jorge Francisco stays in the Mexico City nursery. On Monday Aleman is back at his palace desk by 9, tanned, rested and smiling the famous smile. "Mexico has had its Revolution," he is apt to say then. "It is time to go to work."

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