MEXICO: Presidential Plagues

In his first nine months in office, President Miguel Aleman has been visited by a Job-like succession of “acts of God.” Foot-&-mouth disease wrecked the cattle industry, grasshoppers stripped the fields of southern Mexico, storms blocked main highways, drought left fields barren and brown. Last week he said: “One of my Cabinet ministers told me that all we needed to make the story of disaster complete was a fire in the Poza Rica oilfields. Pronto a phone rang. I picked it up. It was a man saying Well No. 6 at Poza Rica was afire.” Last week, 13 days after it started, the Poza Rica fire was finally out.