Don Pepe at the Helm

Presidential candidates chosen by Mexico's dominant P.R.I. (Partido Revolucionario Institutional) are as certain of election as machine aldermen in Chicago. For that reason, power tends to drain rapidly from their lameduck predecessors as Presidents-elect stake out their policies. Since he was tapped to succeed Luis Echeverria as Mexico's President 14 months ago, Jose Lopez Portillo has broken with that tradition. Even though he carried out a grueling 40,600-mile campaign from the oilfields and swamps of Tabasco to the high sierra, "Don Pepe" has promised only to govern by the "laws of the country." His suitably vague campaign slogan: "La solucion somos todos--The solution is all of us."

The new President's style, though, contrasts sharply with that of his dour, ponderously rhetorical predecessor. Tall, barrel-chested and robustly athletic, Lopez Portillo flashes ear-to-ear grins and laces his refreshingly brief speeches with humor. His inaugural address will probably be the longest oration of his life. He enjoys soccer or boxing as much as talk of public administration, economics or Mexican mythology. His writings include studies of both legal theory and Mexico's legendary god-king Quetzalcoatl.

Born in 1920 to what he describes as a "typically middle-class family," Lopez Portillo has lived all his life in Mexico City. There, as a student at the University of Mexico, he became a close friend of Echeverria's. After practicing law and lecturing on political science at the university, Lopez Portillo began a series of technical appointive jobs for government ministries in 1958. His briefs laid the legal foundation for President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz's administrative reforms in the 1960s and earned him a reputation as an effective troubleshooter. In that capacity, Lopez Portillo served as

Echeverria's Under Secretary for Natural Resources and as reform administrator of the chaotic Federal Electricity Commission before receiving the Finance Minister's portfolio in 1973. Though he took responsibility two years ago for pushing through Echeverria's modest tax increase on high incomes, Lopez Portillo gained the respect of Mexican businessmen. Most of them, after six years of polemics with Echeverria, look forward to Don Pepe's presidency with relief.

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