Coming Soon

A successor for Lopez Portillo

The expectant throng that gathered last week in Mexico City's Zdcalo, the vast stone plaza fronting on the presidential National Palace, included labor leaders, congressmen, bankers, politicians--a virtual cross section of Mexico's power elite.

They thronged to take part in an old political ritual: los besamanos, or hand-kissing, congratulations for the man chosen to run the country for the single six-year term that Mexico's constitution allows.

Even though presidential elections will not be held until July 1982, the name of the President-to-be had just been made known. He is Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, 46, the government's Secretary of Programming and Budget. His selection by the country's monolithic Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) had been announced a month sooner than expected by the incumbent, President Jose Lopez Portillo.

De la Madrid still must run for the job, but it is a foregone conclusion that he will succeed; the P.R.I, has held a monopoly on political power in Mexico for 52 years. The real surprise was the stepped-up scheduling for Lopez Portillo's announcement, which may mean that the patrician author-statesman has come to realize that he is in deep political trouble. Despite a booming economy and 72 billion bbl. of proven oil reserves, Mexico has been spending money so fast that the country faces a balance of payments deficit of as much as $.10 billion this year. On the diplomatic front, Lopez Portillo greatly irritated the Reagan Administration in August when, along with France, Mexico recognized the Marxist insurgents in El Salvador as a "representative political force," implicitly undercutting U.S. support for that country's civilian-military regime.

In both economic and diplomatic terms, De la Madrid is an almost ideal antidote to Lopez Portillo's problems.

Harvard educated, he is the chief author of Mexico's 20-year development plan and thus in a good position to ponder austerity measures. Well known and well liked by the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, he is considered unlikely to repeat Lopez Portillo's recent diplomatic wave making.

In his first public address, De la Madrid told a cheering, banner-waving throng that his chief task will be to "choose the correct route that benefits the Mexican people." As Lopez Portillo has discovered, even with the advantages of oil wealth, that is not always easy.

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