Showing Them Who's Boss

At first, officials tried to play it down as just another street battle between left-wing students and right-wing bullyboys --even though it left at least twelve dead and hundreds injured. But the bloody clash, which erupted two weeks ago when armed thugs calling themselves "Falcons" tore into a peaceful protest march in Mexico City, is shaking the country's government to its foundation.

Attributing the attack to "mercenaries in complicity with inferior authorities," President Luis Echeverria Alvarez last week announced the resignation of the country's second most powerful figure: Mexico City Mayor Alfonso Martinez Dominguez, the former boss of Mexico's long-dominant Partido Revolucionario Institutional (P.R.I.). The capital's police chief, Colonel Rogelio Flores Curiel, also resigned. The resignations followed Echeverria's announcement that the city government would be investigated. The Falcons are believed to have been groomed at city expense as a secret army to embarrass and thwart Echeverria's reformist policies.

A Million Krakatoas. By his quick assertion of authority, Echeverria adroitly weathered his worst crisis since taking office six months ago. "The President has shown who is President of Mexico," said Novelist Carlos Fuentes. Echeverria, 49, also seemed to have won over many students, who have distrusted him since the 1968 Tlateloco massacre when he served as Interior Minister in the government that ordered in riot police and federal troops; their indiscriminate firing caused at least 33 deaths.

Since taking office, however, Echeverria has assiduously sought a dialogue with students. He has also pressed for social and economic reforms for Mexico's rural poor, who number nearly half of a population of 50 million. "There are a lot of unhappy politicians around who see the end in sight for their patronage deals and privileges," said a high government official last week. "They are a shortsighted lot and don't see that Mexico is a volcano, and if social justice is not instituted to bring those rural millions and urban poor into the economy, this place could go off like a million Krakatoas." Echeverria's most troublesome task now is convincing Mexico's traditionally conservative business community--the bulwarks of his own party--of the urgency of his reforms.

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