People's Candidate

One candidate was thoroughly enjoying Mexico's presidential election campaign last week. He was a squat, rumpled gum-chewing artist, palmist and poet named Pedro RendOn.

The RendOn campaign began when a group of coffee-drinking intellectuals, who daily lounge in the wicker easy chairs of Mexico City's Cafe Paris, decided to nominate a "people's candidate." Candidate RendOn decided to take the nomination seriously.

Now RendOn meets nightly with his rapidly increasing following in the Cafe Paris campaign headquarters, enthusiastically talks politics, even more enthusiastically passes the hat for the "campaign fund." The "fund" provides a better living than RendOn's pick-me-ups as palm-reader, indifferent painter and author of paid panegyrics for real politicos. (He has gained eight pounds since his nomination.)

On the street, fun-loving Mexicans greet RendOn with earnest inquiries about his campaign's progress. The press, which has dubbed him "the picturesque presidential candidate" (in contrast to the Mexican Revolutionary Party's dull favorite, former Interior Minister Miguel Aleman), has gaily promoted his Mexican Rendonian Party (Partido Rendoncista Mexi-cano). Mexico City's weekly picture magazine AS (Ace) ran the campaigning artist on its cover.

RendOn's first formidable program included twelve points. Since then he has added 125 more. Some of them: 1) congressional candidates must be able to produce certificates of grade-school attendance; 2) the Mexican constitution should be rewritten in verse and set to music; 3) anemic Mexican Indians shall be painted a healthy red to please the tourists; 4) the money stolen by labor-union leaders shall be used to buy coffins for the poor; 5) so that all may be equal in death, Mexicans shall be buried under a standard-model tombstone.

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