Aleman's Week

For Miguel Aleman the new week began like all others. As soon as he woke, he stretched out his hand, and a servant put a big glass of orange juice in his groping fingers. The President propped himself up in bed, and looked around. Senate President Carlos Serrano, his close friend and political G2, was already there. So was potbellied General Antonio Grijales, chief of Mexico City's police. El Presidents downed the orange juice, swung out of bed, and touched his toes ten times without bending his knees, while he listened to the two men talk.

Bathed, dressed and breakfasted (bacon & eggs), he climbed into his black Cadillac and drove to the palace. The week promptly fell into its usual complicated pattern. Some highlights:

P: For the fourth time this year he fired a state governor for incapacity. This time it was the turn of Hugo Pedro Gonzalez, governor of Tamaulipas, linked too closely with last fortnight's murder of Tampico Editor Vincente Villasana.

P: He drove to a Morelos seed-corn farm to learn about the war on corn pests.

P: When a delegation of Mexico City streetcar men visited him, he gave them a 7-c- daily wage increase. Indignant sugarcane workers tramped into his paneled office, complained that the unions in their industry were fighting among themselves. Aleman promised to look into it.

P: He asked Congress for permission to leave the country to visit the U.S.* got it on condition that he be gone only for the time "strictly necessary." (Senora Ricardo F. de Silva of Los Angeles, Calif, called to tell him that if he would visit L.A. he would be given a Mexican flag so big that 300 men would be needed to lift it.)

After office hours, he took home a silver porringer sent by the President of the U.S., was told by amused nurses that the porringer was very nice, but week-old son Jorge Francisco was for the time being on a liquid diet.

The week ground on. He visited the Bellas Artes palace, presented lettered gold rings to graduates in mechanical and electrical engineering, set the hearts of half the contractors in Mexico City aflutter by declaring that he would disclose the names of successful bidders on the Obregon dam in Sonora this week. Then he left town for Cuernavaca.

But this time it was not for golf. He went away to read three books that had been on his mind since the week's start: WPA guides to Washington, D.C., Kansas City and Tennessee.

* He is scheduled to reach Washington on April 29.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.