MEXICO: Wages of Defeat

In the Mexico City suburb of Coyoacan, not far from the house where Leon Trotsky was mortally hacked, stands a 25-acre, walled-in estate packed with recreations for a hearty body: a jai alai court, swimming pool, tennis court, club house with reducing machine, paths winding among citrus trees and flower beds, Turkish bath, barbershop, and seven residences for family and guests. Last week this estate was put up for sale for 52,000 pesos ($10,842), about one-tenth its assessed value. The sale and the cheap price symbolized the decline of a hope: the estate was the property of General Juan Andreu Almazan, defeated candidate for the Presidency of Mexico.

Last year General Almazan asked Reporter Frank Gibler, who had spent some 20 years shuttling between Mexico and the U. S., to be Almazanista liaison press agent between those two countries. After two months’ work, Frank Gibler quit, alleging that instead of salary his boss was paying him valueless Almazan election bonds. The Government Labor Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, affectionately anxious to support Government Candidate Maximino Avila Camacho and harass his opponent Almazan, awarded Frank Gibler salary not only for the two months he claimed, but for the entire period of nearly eleven months from the day he was hired until election day. Furthermore, in order that Frank Gibler might really be paid, the Board last week ordered the estate with all its recreations to be put on the auction block—which in this case was also an execution block. If the cause of Juan Andreu Almazan was dead, it was partly because Mexico has developed very legal means for political assassination.