Promised Land

Mexico's new President dealt vigorously with the country's most pressing problem: agriculture. His proposed laws to secure the peasants' titles to their lands (TIME, Dec. 16) were already before Congress. Last week, his second in office, Miguel Aleman sent Congress a bill overhauling Mexico's irrigation program.

By its terms the Government would take all the responsibility (hitherto shared with private capital) for developing the country's irrigable lands. Five million acres already have been reclaimed. New projects would reclaim an additional 50 million acres, which would be subject to Government supervision. For the elaborate new program of dam building, power development, soil study and land colonization. Aleman allotted the newly created Ministry of Hydraulic Resources a big chunk of the federal budget.

Modest, young (39) Adolfo Drive Alba, the new minister, seemed just the man for the job of spending it. A serious-minded crusader who specialized in hydraulic engineering at the University of Mexico and had thought of practically nothing else since, Orive Alba was a top example of the nonpolitical character of most of Aleman's new Cabinet.

Because only 12% of Mexico's land will ever be fit for cultivation (though two-thirds of the people now try to live on the land), Orive Alba would be happy if Mexico succeeded only in growing enough to feed herself. But he also holds that opening up new lands will raise the rural standard of life. By providing hydroelectric power, the impressive new dams would also speed up industrialization, thus balancing the ratio of urban to rural population.

From Gulf to Gulf. This year three huge irrigation plants and half a dozen smaller projects have been completed. The "Lazaro Cardenas," fourth largest earthen dam in the world, held back the waters of the Nazas River ia September 1944, during the worst flood in 53 years, protected the cities of Torreon, Lerdo and Gomes Palacio in the plains of northern Mexico. This more than compensated for the $16 million the dam has cost to date. On the 280,000 acres it irrigates live 35,000 peasant families.

Some of the projects on Orive Alba's calendar are called Mexican TVAs. One will dam the picturesque Papaloapan River near Veracruz, another will use the waters of the Rio del Fuerte, near the Gulf of California, in northwest Mexico. A third project: a joint U.S.-Mexican scheme to use waters from the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) to irrigate 500,000 acres on each side of the river and generate 200 million kilowatts for joint use. Of the three dams to be built, the first alone will cost more than $35,000,000, of which the U.S. will pay nearly $23,000,000.

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