MEXICO: Conservative Bent

Chosen by political insiders, the President of Mexico is a kind of surprise package that the electorate gets to know well only after he takes office. Last week, as Mexico City’s avidly progovernment press marked the first anniversary in office of Adolfo LÓpez Mateos with editorials boasting of triumphs in every field, the President’s own modesty and conservatism showed through. Just before climbing into a bus for a trip north to dedicate some typically modest public works (one road and one school) in Querétaro State, LÓpez Mateos declared simply: “The period of adjustment is behind us.”

The adjustment, which set the tone of LÓpez Mateos’ first year, was a tough and successful fight to save the peso from devaluation. In the first six months of 1958, under free-spending President Luis Ruiz Cortines, the country piled up a $96 million deficit abroad, a budget in the red by $66 million. LÓpez Mateos reversed course and slashed imports by $20 million a month by whacking public spending. The results: a severe crimp in the construction industry, a mild recession through much of the economy, but a nearly balanced budget and a favorable trade balance of $145 million so far this year. The peso has stayed at a sound 8^.

LÓpez Mateos’ conservative streak showed through, too, in his tough dealings with labor, notably in crushing a railroad strike and jailing the leaders for indefinite terms. More surprising, LÓpez Mateos has shed the suspicious isolationism traditional to Mexican Presidents. After a friendly trip to the U.S. and Canada, he is seriously considering a U.S. request for a tracking station, as a part of Project Mercury, on Mexico’s west coast. Soon he will visit Venezuela and Brazil, and he is thinking of a later visit to Moscow and other European capitals.

Last week, fielding questions from textile workers in Querétaro, LÓpez Mateos handled one of Mexico’s hottest issues: religion. Countering the violently anticlerical traditions of the Mexican revolution, he promised “absolute freedom of belief” and told a Roman Catholic worker that his convictions “should remain invariable, letting neither time nor intrigue shadow them.”