A Glowing Start

As Mexico's 60th President stepped out onto the balcony of the austere National Palace, the sun burst through the overcast, warming the sea of upturned faces below. But the most radiant face of all belonged to Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, the brainy backlands lawyer on whose slim frame outgoing President Adolfo Lopez Mateos draped the green, white and red sash of office. With arms outstretched in triumph and a huge, toothy grin creasing his dark, homely countenance, President Diaz Ordaz looked as if he would like nothing better than to hug the officials clustered around him.

The Fundamental Task. The fiesta mood was well founded. Of twelve Presidents who have taken office since Mexico's 1910 revolution, Diaz Ordaz, 53, is the first to inherit a prosperous and united nation that faces no immediate major problems. True to the Mexican pattern of orderly alternation between regimes that are to the left or right of center, Diaz Ordaz, who was Minister of the Interior under Lopez Mateos, is slightly more conservative than his predecessor, who nonetheless hand-picked him for the job. As the new President made clear in his inaugural address, his administration, like Lopez Mateos' regime, will put economic growth above doctrinaire politics. Emphasizing that "there is a vast field in Mexico for both public and private investment," Diaz Ordaz warned with characteristic caution: "The political and economic stability that we enjoy are not gifts. They are the result of a dynamic society that establishes economic development as a fundamental task."

Diaz Ordaz' Cabinet appointments suggested that the tough, down-to-earth President intends to handle that task with skill and imagination. His line-up boasts ten lawyers, four engineers, two doctors, two generals, a colonel, an accountant and a professor. In two key nominations, the new President reappointed Finance Minister Antonio Ortiz Mena, who is responsible for sustaining record economic growth along with a stable peso (121 to the dollar), and for Foreign Minister picked Antonio Carrillo Flores, who as Ambassador to Washington since 1959 had earned the respect of the State Department and the enmity of Mexico's Communist Party.

Solidarity First. The choice of Carrillo Flores, plus reports that Diaz Ordaz detests Fidel Castro, was taken by observers as an indication that Mexico may in time sever relations with Cuba, which, alone among Latin American nations, it persists in recognizing. Diaz Ordaz is unlikely to break with Cuba in the near future, however, lest he be accused of repudiating Lopez Mateos.

Nonetheless, Mexico's new President took pains to dispel any illusion that he will promote a Latino form of Gaullism that would seek to build nationalist prestige at the expense of hemispheric solidarity. Said Diaz Ordaz, "It is unfair to Mexico to be pointed at as wishful of becoming the leader of Latin America. It aspires to be just another member in the group that joins its efforts for common improvement."

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