MEXICO: Shorty

Other Mexicans hope for loans, treaties and boundary changes from the President of the U.S. on his visit this week. Shy, plump Genaro Corona Morales, the legless bootblack of the presidential palace, just wants to shine Harry Truman’s shoes.

Genaro was a Morelia carpenter just come to the capital when, on Oct. 3, 1920, he bumped his head getting off a streetcar and fell beneath the wheels. He lay in the street while Mexico’s Red Cross and White Cross (then hot rivals for every body found in the streets) argued about who should get him. A woman stepped from the crowd and applied a tourniquet; but gangrene set in, and when the doctors were through with Genaro, both legs were gone at the hips. With a hot rage against life in his heart, Genaro got a little wooden platform to wheel himself around, bought a shoeshine box, and went to the patio of the National Palace to earn his living. He remained silent and bitter as he bent his head over the shoes of ministers, generals, Supreme Court justices. But one day President Alvaro Obregon slapped him on the back, called him Chaparro (Shorty) and invited him to his office to shine his shoes. Genaro came out with shining eyes—he was the President’s bootblack.

Thereafter life was like new. Every day Obregon told him a new joke. He took him along when they went to fight down revolutions, and Genaro thanked God he was so short when bullets flew through the presidential train. On his last day in office, Obregon discovered he had got all this service free—Genaro was not on the palace payroll. He flipped Genaro a gold coin, promised: “When I come back I’ll see that you get a home of your own.” But he never came back. On the eve of his return to office he was assassinated.

Shining Career. But Genaro was established as presidential bootblack. He bent over the shoes of stern Plutarco Elias Calles, of genial Emilio Portes Gil, of absent-minded Abelardo Rodriguez. He went on the palace payroll ($45 a month). Courtly Pasquel Ortiz Rubio sent the presidential limousine for him. President Cardenas bought him a specially made English car that he could drive himself. Avila Camacho paid off a $300 mortgage on his house.

Genaro had become an important man in Mexico. Lots of history had been made over his head, and it is his proudest boast that he has never repeated a word he has heard in the presidential office. Teresa, daughter of an Army officer, was proud to marry him—and is prouder now of their nine children, six of them sons. Says Genaro with quiet assurance: “I have talked with our ambassadors who have seen the feet of many of the world’s rulers. They tell me my work is the equal of anything in Europe or America, superior to anything in China. I’m sure Mr. Truman will be satisfied.”