State of the Nation

With crops in good shape and the peso at its perkiest in years, Mexico was in fiesta mood for President Miguel Aleman's fourth annual state-of-the-nation message last week. As the President rode to the Chamber of Deputies at the head of a 50-limousine caravan, office girls showered him with red, green and white confetti. When Aleman entered the Chamber, 50 men from the musicians' union rose and thundered the national anthem. Outside, thousands of Mexicans saw and heard their President speak over hundreds of television sets installed in cantinas, clubs and the Merced market. It was Mexico's first big-time telecast, over the capital's new station XHTV.

For two hours the President recounted the happy details of Mexico's new prosperity: production and employment up, aftosa finally defeated, agriculture thriving. Then he paused, cleared his throat and in a dramatic voice announced the day's special surprise: "Only today we have been informed that the [U.S.] Export-Import Bank has assigned $150 million for our credit ... to be applied to railway improvements, highways, agricultural works including irrigation, and the expansion of electric power and communications."* The news of the biggest single U.S. loan to a Latin American republic in five years, kept secret till that moment so that Mexico's President might have the satisfaction of announcing it, fell flat. The audience seemed to miss the significance of the statement. Aleman looked disappointed.

It was different when the President took his stand on the big political question of the hour. Said Aleman: "Talk has begun, against my expressed wishes, of my re-election as President of the republic (TIME, June 5). I wish to state firmly once more my unbreakable decision . . . not to accept such an intent, and to call on persons working for that end to desist." The Congressmen's responding roar was the day's most deafening. Every ambitious politico among them heaved a great sigh of relief as he saw the track cleared for the 1952 race. Very likely one of the aspirants present in the hall might be the winner. All he had to do now was go out and get the right backing--most particularly the backing of Miguel Aleman.

*One item significantly missing from this Aleman program: petroleum development. The U.S. currently refuses to lend money for oil development and exploration abroad. "Our position," explained Ex-Im's Chairman Herbert Gaston crisply, "is that there is adequate money available in private capital for oil development."

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