MEXICO: The Visitor

A great grandstand rose at Mexico City's Balbuena Airport. Along the road to town, workers paved the walks and turfed the unkempt fields. In the city, little groups of men labored past midnight, filling in every last crack in the pavement that Harry Truman would ride over. Every boulevard shrub had been freshly manured to make the capital a little greener for its first visit, this week, from a U.S. President.

A civic fiesta, a flight over the four-year-old volcano Paricutin, and lunch among the pyramids of Teotihuacán were not all the Mexicans had programmed for Harry Truman's three-day visit. They...

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