To anxious throngs who crowded into Mexico City's Palacio Nacional this week, bland President Manuel Avila Camacho displayed a two-inch swath burned in the jacket of his grey-and-red striped suit, a similar powder burn in his white shirt beneath. The burns were over his heart.
A jiu jitsu trick and somewhat erratic marksmanship were all that had saved the President. When Avila Camacho stepped from his Cadillac limousine at the ground-floor entrance of the Palacio Nacional, he was accosted by 1st Lieut. José Antonio de Lama y Rojas, son of a wealthy merchant from the President's home state of Puebla....