New Revolutionary

In Guadalupe, long ago, a peon named Juan Diego beheld a miraculous vision of the Virgin. Near that spot last week, a visionary Mexican industrialist, Antonio Ruiz Galindo, was starting an experiment that may likewise prove miraculous: a factory community, La Ciudad Industrial (the Industrial City). Mexican leaders and U.S. businessmen interested in Mexico are watching closely.

They are also watching Ruiz Galindo. A harddriving, self-made man, he and his business philosophy represent modern Mexico: the Mexico whose industrial revolution is just beginning. Ruiz Galindo is smart, tough and patriotic. He wants to make money for himself and he wants to see Mexico prosper. His formula: 1) industrialization; 2) higher living standards--to increase consumer demand; 3) Government protection for young industry. His contribution to jacked-up living standards: the $2,000,000 Industrial City, Mexican capitalism's first paternalistic workers' community.

The 1,000 employes of Ruiz Galindo's new steel-office-furniture factory in the Mexico City suburb will live in six ultramodern, rent-free apartment buildings, have free medical care, sports, movies, their own printing press. Free lunches and a cooperative grocery will discourage tortilla and chili diets. The clean factory has toilets, showers and quantities of mirrors. "If they look at themselves enough they will not want to be dirty," he says.

When Ruiz Galindo and men like him talk of tariffs, they reflect Mexico's industrial youth. Says Ruiz Galindo: "To have freedom of commerce it is indispensable first to have commerce." Therefore Mexico, he argues, must protect its growing industry, even if protection is theoretically unsound economics.

His own industry is Exhibit A. The steel office desk he makes sells at $40 more than the competing U.S. import. Without protection, he will have to lower prices, maybe lose money. Does an industry like his contribute enough to Mexican economy to warrant protection? Mexico's economic nationalists answer yes.

The new Mexican capitalist, unlike the old hacendado (landholder), is a self-made man. Take Ruiz Galindo. At 48 he is worth about $5,000,000; he started as a produce dealer, at 18 had his own small prospering business in tropical Cordoba. In his twenties he was star salesman in Mexico City for General Fireproofing Co. of Youngstown, Ohio, and sold the firm's largest order in Mexico: material for Mexico's West Point--Colegio Militar de Mexico.

By 1932, having formed his own distributing firm, Distribuidora Mexicana S.A., he began to manufacture steel office furniture. His capital was small but he got enough advance orders to start production. Salesmanship pulled him through a bad fire too; he sold new customers on furniture borrowed from old ones.

He expanded into other enterprises. Example: he turned his summer home at Fortin into a hotel, enticed tourists with a gardenia-filled swimming pool, has made the resort almost a tourist must. Ruiz Galindo weekends in Fortin, does business in bathing trunks at the pool's edge. In Mexico City he lives in new, garish Lomas de Chapultepec, the suburb of the newly arrived bourgeois.

Like most Mexican men of affairs, he has scant time for social life. Unlike most, he is at work at 9 a.m., but typically takes long business lunches lasting from 2:30 till 5, usually at the swank Bankers' Club. Also typically, he works late, often until 11:30 p.m.

Last Sunday, Ruiz Galindo and his era took a bow. In the main production room of his unfinished Industrial City, Mexico's National Industrial Chamber of Commerce opened a giant exhibition of Mexican-made products.

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