MEXICO: State of Semi-Siege

Since World War II, Mexico has been an island of stability and increasing prosperity in Latin America, a model of an underdeveloped, peasant society's coming peacefully into the modern world. No more. The country is not only showing the common strains of inflation—now running at about 30% a year, or about triple the U.S. rate—but is also troubled by terrorism and guerrilla warfare. In the past year, several prominent Mexican industrialists and politicians and a U.S. diplomat have been kidnaped by the terrorists. The diplomat, Terrance Leonhardy, consul general in Guadalajara, was later released after his abductors' demands were...