Mexico's Macho Mood

It was an uncommonly revealing photographic session. Posing in the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office of the White House last week, President Carter and his guest, Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, 59, flashed toothy smiles and made an awkward attempt to stand together arm in arm. But the transparent effort to present a buddy-buddy image tailed to camouflage the uneasy relations between the circumspect Carter and the blunt, ebullient Mexican. Their lack of rapport mirrors the testy state of affairs between the U.S. and its angry, increasingly influential neighbor to the south.

For far too long the U.S. tended to take Mexico for granted--ignoring it when possible and otherwise treating it with the arrogant condescension usually reserved by big brothers for uppity younger siblings. No longer is that attitude possible or plausible, and one big reason is oil. Since 1972, when geologists drilling into the cactus-studded wasteland of Tabasco state tapped into the gigantic Reforma oil and gas field, Mexico has turned up one immense deposit of petroleum after another. In his state of the union address in early September, Lopez Portillo boasted that Mexico now had proven combined reserves of 45 billion bbl. of oil and gas. Officials of Pemex, the national oil com pany, predict that as many as 200 billion bbl. of crude may eventually be uncovered.

For Mexico these discoveries could not have come at a more propitious time. The U.S. is eager to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern crude, and proximity creates a natural market for Mexican exports. By helping to meet the U.S. demand for oil, Mexico could acquire the capital it needs to modernize its economy, thereby offering its impoverished masses the chance for a better life. But, riding a wave of nationalistic feeling at home, Lopez Portillo has made it clear to Washington that Mexico's response to America's energy needs will be dictated by a) his own country's special interests and b) the resolution of other nagging issues that cloud U.S.-Mexican relations.

Lopez Portillo pointedly reminded Carter of the new facts of hemisphere life when the President visited Mexico City in February, tongue-lashing his guest for treating Mexico with "a mixture of interests, disdain and fear." Caught off guard by that undiplomatic verbal assault, Carter responded with one of the more unfortunate utterings of his presidency, a rambling ac count of how, on a previous visit, he had been afflicted by "Montezuma's revenge."

Carter alluded to that embarrassing moment during a black-tie dinner for Lopez Portillo Friday night. Lifting a glass of water--White House servants had not yet filled the wine glasses--Carter promised: "I am determined to make the result of our toast better than in Mexico." He conceded that the U.S. and Mexico "have not always had happy and peaceful relations," but claimed that "the troubled and uncertain times between our two countries are gone forever." Lopez Portillo was slightly less euphoric in his response. He noted that "frank and open communication" was necessary to enhance "the possibilities of peaceful coexistence" between the neighbors. The Mexican leader could not resist a sly dig at America's unchecked oil consumption, chiding "people who often ask for absurd solutions that require no discipline."

The toast was yet another reminder to Washington that oil wealth has given Mexico a new clout, which Lopez Portillo is quite willing to use when it suits his purpose. In June a Mexican exploratory well in the Bay of Campeche exploded, uncorking millions of barrels of crude, some of which has washed up on beaches in Texas. The U.S. has argued that Mexico should help pay cleanup costs. Last August, Robert C. Krueger, who was designated Special Ambassador for Mexican Affairs to assist Ambassador Patrick Lucey in overseeing the broad range of issues that have arisen between the two countries, announced that the U.S. was seeking a $3 million contribution from Mexico for the oil cleanup. Alas, the announcement was made public before the Mexicans had received the request through diplomatic channels. A furious Lopez Portillo ordered his Foreign Ministry to issue a seven-paragraph statement flatly rejecting the request on the ground that it had no basis in international law.

In his state of the union message, Lopez Portillo complained that the worldwide press coverage had "whimsically" singled out Mexico for criticism. "There are ten wells out of control at this time," he said. "Seven are in the U.S., one in Canada and one in Iran. Yet we hear nothing of these wells and their spills polluting the oceans and ruining the ecology. The media have nothing to say about them, and it is strange."

Mexico's natural gas, which is often flared away in billowing clouds of flame that light up the sky, has been another source of conflict. Last December, then Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger brusquely rejected a Mexican offer to sell the U.S. 2 billion cu. ft. of gas a day at $2.60 per 1,000 cu. ft., a price then considered "exorbitant." Two months ago, Administration aides hinted that Lopez Portillo's long planned state visit to Washington might not be a useful exercise if a gas deal were not consummated. Apparently chastened by the threat, Mexican officials finally made an offer that seemed even more exorbitant but that U.S. bargainers quickly accepted: $3.63 per 1,000 cu. ft. for 300 million cu. ft., which is well above the price that domestic and even Canadian producers get.

Pivotal though it may be, energy is just one of the serious problems that divide the two neighbors. As Secretary of State Cyrus Vance declared to the Foreign Policy Association last week: "The range and diversity of issues in our relations are probably greater than with any other country in the world. Because we share a 2,000-mile border, because we share democratic perspectives, because our economies are both strong and interdependent, Mexico is one of the most important countries in the world for us."

One of the issues that Vance alluded to was immigration. For decades, the U.S. has served, albeit unwillingly, as a safety valve for Mexico's employment problem. The country has one of the Western Hemisphere's higher birth rates. Even taking oil wealth into account, the expected population growth (from 68 million today to an estimated 132 million by the year 2000) threatens to wipe out rapid increases in the gross national product ($92 billion in 1978). As a result, Mexican governments have tacitly encouraged the annual flight of at least 500,000 illegal immigrants to the U.S.

For the Carter Administration, the presence of this huge number of aliens poses a political dilemma: labor unions, whose support Carter needs for reelection, claim they take jobs from U.S. workers. On the other hand, the millions of Mexican immigrants add to the nation's fast-growing and generally Democratic population of Hispanics; they will probably displace blacks as the nation's largest minority by the next decade. In New York last week, Lopez Portillo met with a coalition of Spanish-speaking leaders, who urged him to put pressure on Carter for a relaxation of U.S. immigration laws. If Carter does not, the leaders implied, he might lose the solid Hispanic support that contributed to his victory in 1976.

Another problem is the "tomato war." Earlier this year, Florida truck farmers filed complaints with the Treasury Department that Mexican producers were "dumping" tons of sun-ripened tomatoes and other produce on the U.S. But Lopez Portillo has insisted that Mexican farmers need access to the lucrative U.S. market in order to bolster his country's agricultural economy. He has made it clear that future Mexican cooperation on energy supplies depends on a resolution of this issue, but it is not likely to come while Florida is playing a pivotal early role in the presidential primaries.

Although these major issues will take a long time to resolve, the U.S. and Mexico have agreed to cooperate on less sensitive problems. They have launched bilateral ventures in arid land management, water control and the pooling of science and technology. Tijuana and San Diego are working on a joint program to control air pollution, which may become a model for other twin cities along the frontier. New pacts have been signed that should lead to greater cross-border cooperation in dealing with such crimes as narcotics smuggling and auto theft. And, as one State Department official puts it, the recent gas deal "could serve as a symbolic link that will permit fruitful negotiations in other areas to proceed more rapidly."

That may be so, but Mexicans will insist that such negotiations involve a true and fair partnership, allowing both sides to profit. South of the border it is still remembered that Mexico lost half its territory to the U.S. in 1848. There is also the bitter memory of American companies that exploited the country's cheap labor and abundant resources during the 31-year reign of Dictator Porfirio Diaz, whose excesses touched off the revolution that led to the creation of the present republic. Those episodes have fostered a reflexive suspicion about yanqui motives that lingers to this day. Says a State Department official: "Mexicans are so sensitized by the past that it colors any overture from the U.S. They tend to see in normal conflicts much more sinster aspects than are really there."

If Americans have difficulty understanding Mexico, they have to a certain extent a valid excuse. In response to their country's tumultuous past, wrote Poet Octavio Paz in Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexicans have erected elaborate psychological "masks" to shield themselves from a world that they "regard instinctively to be dangerous." One such mask is machismo, the image of the ultramasculine tough guy who shows no emotion, whether fear, pity or love. Another is the country's political system, which is as impenetrable to outsiders as the inner workings of the Kremlin. It combines some of the best and worst features of democracy and despotism under a banner of revolutionary rhetoric that no one heeds.

That revolutionary rhetoric is the product of the 1910 revolution, which lasted eleven years, and, by some accounts, killed more than 1 million Mexicans. One of its lasting products was the constitution, written in 1917, that is still the country's basic charter. To prevent the rise of another Diaz-like strongman, it prohibits the re-election of most public officials, including the President. To protect the country's "patrimony" from foreign domination, it limits the ownership of land and natural resources to Mexican citizens. In the name of social progress, it promises free universal education and the restoration to the campesinos of the land that Diaz turned over to foreigners.

Few of these ambitious social goals have been fulfilled. Instead, Mexico has become one of the world's most stratified and unequal societies. Ironically, much of the blame for Mexico's failure to achieve its constitutional goals must be placed on the unique political instrument that is supposed to embody the ideal of the permanent revolution: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the P.R.I.

Founded in 1929 by the republic's second postrevolutionary President, Plutarco Elias Calles, and shaped by a leftist successor, Lazaro Cardenas, the P.R.I, was designed to prevent political disagreements from bursting into violence by drawing organizations that represented workers, campesinos and civil servants into its leadership. This corporatist approach has enjoyed remarkable success at the polls: the P.R.I, has never lost a major election, or even been threatened by the country's feeble opposition parties. But the price of P.R.I, dominance has been high. Says a prominent Mexican lawyer: "Politics has been the restricted domain of the official party for so long that most people are completely turned off. They have absolutely no interest in the outcome of elections that have been a foregone conclusion for more than 50 years."

Mexico's "guided democracy" has become so ossified that presidential election campaigns every six years are little more than repetitions of what voters cynically dismiss as "the great paint job." P.R.I. campaign workers plaster every available wall, hut and bridge with absurd slogans (TO NATIONALIZE IS TO DECOLONIALIZE) that make a mockery of the party's claim to be revolutionary. In fact, the campaign is a sham: since the reign of Calles (1924-28) every P.R.I, nominee has been personally selected by his predecessor. The decision is made after secret consultations with a tiny clique of labor leaders, senior civil servants, big businessmen and state governors. In the end, it is the President alone who makes the choice.

Because there is no other route to power, those with political ambitions must work their way up the P.R.I, ladder, slavishly following the policies of their superiors until a leader who shares their ideology assumes the presidency. As a result, new presidents are assured the unwavering support of the P.R.I, party structure and the bureaucracy as soon as they take office. For six years, Mexico's chief executive rules more as a monarch than an elected leader of a democratic society. Says a ranking U.S. diplomat: "You look at the Mexican constitution and you see three branches of government. But they are not what they appear to be. The President has virtually all the power."

There are some checks and balances, but in typical Mexican fashion, they operate indirectly. If a President leans too far to the left, as did Lopez Portillo's predecessor, Luis Echeverria, businessmen can express their displeasure by withholding investments; if he leans too far to the right, as did Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, who ruled from 1964 to 1970, labor leaders and peasant organizations can protest with crippling strikes. To accommodate such pressures, Mexican Presidents usually swing away from the direction of their predecessors, in an effort to appease whatever faction was left most dissatisfied by the previous administration. Echeverria, for example, was considered a conservative before assuming office; but he launched a leftist "democratic opening" to defuse the mounting pressure for social and economic reform that had exploded into riots and bloodshed during Diaz Ordaz's regime. Lopez Portillo, in contrast, has worked hardest at wooing disaffected conservatives who were angered by Echeverria. But he has also sought to create new opportunities for opposition political parties--without, of course, threatening the P.R.I.'s overwhelming power. A minimum of 100 of the 400 seats in an expanded chamber of deputies was set aside for opposition groups. In the July election the P.R.I, wound up with 296 seats.

This system has resulted in a political stability rare for Latin America; Mexico has not faced an attempted coup in more than 60 years. But the P.R.I.'s dominance has also provided ample documentation of Lord Acton's dictum that power tends to corrupt. Says an experienced Mexican attorney: "When a Mexican official gets an important post, he steals from it instead of serving in it. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is." From policemen to Cabinet officers, officials routinely ask for and get bribes, ranging from the $2 that will persuade a traffic cop to tear up a ticket to the multimillion-dollar fraud allegedly perpetrated by the former head of a government tourist fund.

Last May the Lopez Portillo government began a well-publicized series of crackdowns on corrupt officials. The federal attorney general, Oscar Florez Sanchez, declared that he would investigate "everybody from the governor of Coahuila on down" after $6.6 million worth of denim dyes were smuggled into Mexico aboard a plane owned by the state government; the digging finally focused on the pilot and an associate. The Mexican information agency announced last spring that 900 investigations into public corruption had begun. So far none of those investigations has produced even an indictment, much less a conviction. Charges Hero Rodriguez Toro, editor of the weekly newsmagazine Proceso: "We have a curious method of punishing the offense, a method which operates in frank favor of the delinquent. When a large-scale offender is apprehended and charged, it is demanded that he return the stolen money. Once this is done, the delinquent suddenly recovers his lost liberty."

"Everybody accepts the fact that Presidents grow rich in office," says a university professor. Indeed, the President's salary is one of Mexico's best-kept secrets. Miguel Aleman Valdes, for example, made multimillion-dollar investments in Acapulco real estate that turned the Pacific Coast city into a famous tourist attraction.

The disparity between P.R.I, proclamations and performance is nowhere more glaring than in Mexico's long heralded land redistribution program. Since the 1910 revolution, about 38 million acres have been expropriated from huge haciendas and given to 25,000 communal ejidos (peasant associations) composed of families who have occupied the land for centuries. Nevertheless, there are still 4.5 million landless campesinos. The gap is partly attributable to the fact that the rural poor are among the fastest-growing segments of Mexico's population. But the plight of the campesinos has been made worse by government support of agribusiness. Only about 15% of Mexico's land is suitable for cultivation. Most of this is farmed by huge agrarian combines that produce tomatoes, eggplants, chick peas, strawberries and asparagus for the export market rather than less profitable staples for domestic consumption. Mexico sells $1.1 billion worth of foodstuffs to the U.S. each year, but has to import 4.5 million tons of grain to feed its people.

One legacy of Emiliano Zapata's battle cry, "Land and Liberty," is sporadic violence. Peasants who protest the ruthless domination of local rural political bosses are routinely shot by their oppressors or harassed by the army. Land redistribution has apparently reached a dead end, as Lopez Portillo conceded during his state of the union address a month ago. Said he: "The land available for distribution is becoming exhausted, but the number of campesinos with the right to the land is growing."

Mexico has cut its population growth from 3.5% to 2.9% by a birth control program that one American expert describes as "the most far-reaching and innovative in the non-Communist world." It will spend $530 million on the program this year. Contraceptive devices and surgical sterilization are provided free in clinics throughout the country. Some 12,000 women, many drawn from the ranks of furanderas (herb doctors), have visited 60% of Mexico's remote villages. Roughly 40% of the country's 15 million women of child-bearing age have been persuaded to use some form of contraception. Although the Catholic church has not directly attacked the program, population control is resisted in some parts of Mexico. There are men who feel that having many children is a proof of virility. Village mores still dictate that girls should be married at twelve and have large families before they are out of their teens.

Millions of Mexicans from rural areas have fled the countryside to find work in the burgeoning industrial areas along the Texas border as well as in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City. Some 64% of the population now dwell in cities and towns. For a fortunate few, like Salvador Reyes Garcia, 28, the trip to the city has been worth it. Nine years ago, Reyes left a remote village in the Chihuahua desert for Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. There he landed a job as a sewing machine operator in a clothing factory at the minimum rate of $2.95 an hour. "I don't like the work, which is dull and boring," he says, "but on my salary I have been able to marry, rent a small apartment and buy a car."

All too often, however, the new arrivals join the jobless masses. Unemployment is officially listed at 19%; unofficial estimates put it as high as half the work force. With no other prospects, tens of thousands of Mexicans today wrest a living from the junk heap. In Mexico City, occupants of $250,000 houses in posh suburbs like Bosques de las Lomas daily witness scenes that evoke images from Dante's Inferno. Beneath a perpetual mushroom cloud of pollution rising from a huge garbage dump called Santa Fe, 1,000 pepenadores (those who pick things up) sift through a pile of rubble 1.6 miles long and hundreds of feet high for bones, paper, glass and other recyclable items. By selling this refuse to a trash king, the pepenadores can earn more than the daily minimum wage of $6.25. As a consequence, this wretched work has become a hereditary plum; generations of pepenadores have been born and will die in the squalid settlements built on the fringe of the heap. The shanties are often decorated with plastic flowers because, as one trash collector explains, "nothing grows here." The pepenadores consider themselves lucky to have any employment at all. Says a denizen of Sante Fe: "It may not be clean work, but it is an honest living."

Meanwhile, the hacendados (estate owners), who once were undisputed masters of million-acre game preserves and cattle ranches, have been displaced from the top of the social pyramid by a new elite of rich cosmopolitan entrepreneurs and a growing middle class. Mexico City's Bernardo Quintana, for example, built the capital's famous subway system and now handles construction projects all over Latin America. Another highly successful family is that of Garza Sadas of Monterrey, whose investments in tourism and Grupo Industrial Alfa, an industrial conglomerate, are estimated to be worth $1 billion.

Octaviano ("Chito") Longoria, 73, who started out selling gardenias on the streets of Nuevo Laredo, built a commercial empire that included banks, cattle ranches, movie theaters and a vegetable oil factory. His house in Bosques de las Lomas, he boasts, would rival any in the world. The mansion has a chamber bedecked with the heads of animals Longoria acquired on his 20 African safaris, and a "pink room" that is dominated by a huge rug of that color given to him by Morocco's royal family. Unlike many of Mexico's new rich, Longoria makes generous donations to charity. He has built a church and an elementary school in his home town, and his wife Jeanette is a member of Mixteca de Cardenas, an organization that helps rural women market their handcrafted products. Says Longoria: "There is mobility in our society, and I am proof of it."

During the erratic presidency of Luis Echeverria, the system came closer to breaking down than at any other time since the 1910 revolution. Frightened by his leftist economic proposals, like forming state enterprises and financing them with freshly printed money, many businessmen quietly transferred funds to safer havens, in Europe and the U.S. Inflation and a declining balance of trade forced Echeverria to devalue the peso in 1976 by about 50%, incurring the anger of the P.R.I.'s middle-class supporters, who saw their savings and life-styles threatened. Mexico's support for a 1976 U.N. resolution equating Zionism with racism provoked a short-lived boycott of Mexican resorts by American Jewish tourists, thereby staggering an industry that is the nation's largest employer (460,000 jobs). Echeverria's unpopularity had its impact on the election of his successor. In an expression of discontent with the P.R.I., voters ignored the party's customary flamboyant campaign; only 50% of them bothered to cast their ballots.

Even today, Mexicans remain puzzled as to why Echeverria chose Lopez Portillo as his successor. Although the two had been friends since their student days at the National University, they had little in common. Echeverria was a politician to his ringer tips, and something of a political demagogue. Lopez Portillo was an unknown technocrat and law professor who had never run for public office. The outgoing President was almost strident in his efforts to establish Mexico as a leader of the Third World. His successor appeared to be a dedicated academic, most comfortable when studying archaeology or writing a novelette (Quetzalcoatl) about Mexican history.

Appearances deceive. "Don Pepe," says an admiring countryman, "is a real he-man." Far from being an otherworldly intellectual, Lopez Portillo is a tough-minded leader with an abrasive streak and a bent for professorial oratory: he often salts his speeches with fire-and-brimstone references to the Aztec past. During his state of the union address, for example, in speaking of the oil spill in the Bay of Campeche, he made references to an ancient god and the Aztec mistress of the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes. "In the depths of this flaming well," he intoned, "we Mexicans have seen ourselves reflected in Tezcatlipoca's black mirror. Malinche emerged from those depths howling for human sacrifice to satisfy the god of fire." A physical fitness buff, he keeps in shape with a vigorous regimen that includes swimming, archery and javelin throwing. Mexico, in fact, has never had a President with such wide-ranging interests: he plays the guitar, loves to ride horses, and his bedroom is decorated with his own paintings. He has a reputation as an early rising hard worker--he avoids siestas and can be curt with aides who lack his sense of punctuality. Last week he caused mild pandemonium at the U.N. by arriving 14 minutes early for a meeting with Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. He is fond of attractive women but is close to his family: Wife Carmen Romano, an accomplished pianist, Daughters Paulina, 20, and Carmen, 23, and Son Jose, 25.

One theory, prevalent at the time of his nomination, was that after leaving office Echeverria secretly hoped to manipulate Lopez Portillo from behind the scenes. A more plausible explanation is that the former President recognized how deep Mexico's malaise really was, and in a statesmanlike manner settled on a capable economist who could restore business confidence. When he handed over the sash of office on inauguration day, a newsman asked: "What is going to happen to the Echeverristas now?" The ex-President answered: "There are no Echeverristas, only Lopez Portillistas."

That quickly proved to be the case. Within months of taking office, Lopez Portillo virtually forced his predecessor into exile by appointing him Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand. Echeverria accepted the modest post without demurral. Lopez Portillo then set about reversing many of Echeverria's policies. To regain the support of the business community, he announced stern anti-inflation measures that stabilized the value of the peso, and threatened to impose limits on price and wage increases. He also announced an "alliance for production"--a heavily funded, ten-point investment program involving both government and private industry that is supposed to create 600,000 new jobs by 1984.

Today, Lopez Portillo is counting on oil to fuel his ambitious schemes for propelling Mexico headlong into modernization. Says he: "With oil we have our first historic opportunity--and it may be our only chance--to solve our problems." Minister of Finance during Echeverria's administration, the former economics professor was one of the first Mexican officials to appreciate the size and potential of the country's oil reserves. His goal is to extract the maximum benefit for Mexico from the oil while avoiding "Venezuelization," meaning a rapid expansion of exports that could touch off a new round of inflation and generate cash infusions too great for Mexico's constricted economy to absorb. Says Jose Andres de Oteyza, Minister of Government Properties and Industrial Development: "We don't want to be a typical oil-exporting country that sells oil and imports everything else. We have programmed our industrial development plans so that we can convert oil, a nonrenewable resource, into a permanent source of wealth and employment."

In essence, Lopez Portillo's plan calls for Pemex to limit exports of crude and to sell oil, if possible, at rates well above OPEC levels. (Mexico is not a member of OPEC, but its prices are comparable.) Though U.S. experts maintain that Mexico could easily pump up to 10 million bbl. of crude a day by 1982, production will go no higher than 2.2 bbl. Even so, those barrels will produce a gusher of cash, now estimated at $20 billion annually, within the next two years.

The new wealth, which amounts to roughly one-quarter of Mexico's current gross national product, will be used to finance an industrialization program. Eleven new industrial zones will be established, scattered throughout the country. Firms that put up new plants in these zones will get a 25% federal tax credit and a government subsidy for one-fifth of their work force. Mexico's antiquated transportation system, which still depends on ports and railroads built before 1920, will be upgraded, at a cost of billions.

Lopez Portillo has firmly rejected the idea of a North American "common market" for energy, which is favored by some Carter Administration advisers as well as by politicians as disparate as California Governor Jerry Brown and John Connally of Texas. In theory, the energy common market would allow the U.S. access to the oil resources of Mexico and Canada, in exchange for guaranteed markets and capital. Acceptance of this proposal, argues Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, "would mean that we would subject our energy policy not to our own needs, but to the consumption needs of the U.S., which are too high." In fact, Mexico plans to reduce its sales to the U.S., which now buys 85% of Pemex's imported crude, to 60% or less--even though the U.S. can offer a higher price for Mexican oil because shipping costs to American ports are lower than to more distant destinations.

Says Political Scientist Jorge Bustamante: "We know we own the oil, and we are ready to defend it with our lives. But it has not touched our lives as yet." Just how much oil wealth will affect the average Mexican is uncertain. One worry is to what extent endemic corruption will siphon off some of those billions. Another is whether Lopez Portillo's ambitious dreams of industrialization will really benefit the impoverished millions desperate for work, social services, or both. The 600,000 jobs promised by Lopez Portillo, to cite one example, are 200,000 fewer than the number of youths who enter the work force every year. On balance, though, U.S. policymakers believe Mexico can surely avoid the kind of wrenching upheaval that led to revolution in Iran. Corrupt and sluggish though the P.R.I, may be, it is also a broadly based force for political stability. And for the next three years, it will be controlled by a President who, U.S. officials agree, is a strong, talented and well-meaning administrator.

Oil has already elevated Mexico into the ranks of what National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski calls "the regional influentials," with an increasingly activist foreign policy. Last spring Mexico led the opposition that defeated a U.S. plan for an inter-American peace-keeping force to intervene in the uprising against Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza Debayle; instead of supporting Washington's effort to find a compromise solution, Mexico broke relations with the dictator and recognized the revolutionary junta that soon overthrew him.

Even so, Washington policymakers are encouraged by Mexico's more active role in foreign affairs--notably in Lopez Portillo's expressed interest in working out bilateral aid programs with and for other democratic nations in Latin America. Says a State Department official:

"After Nicaragua and the threat of new revolutions elsewhere in Central America, it is encouraging to see Mexico taking a more assertive stance in the defense of democratic interests." That assertiveness, Lopez Portillo has made clear, extends to establishing a new relationship with Mexico's powerful northern neighbor. The prickly encounters between Don Pepe and Jimmy Carter suggest that the relationship will not be an easy one. Yet in the long run, a partnership based on mutual respect, rather than on force majeure, should be as beneficial to the U.S. as to Mexico. -

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.