GUATEMALA: Stage Trick

The slatternly Mexican border town of Tapachula had spruced up for the occasion. At the airport, under a brassy sun, Mexico's President Manuel Avila Camacho and Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo slapped each other's broad backs in warm Latin embrace. Their wives embraced also (see cut). Never before had Mexico's relations with its southern neighbor been so cordial.

Amidst the flowery courtesies bandied over the luncheon table at the Hotel Continental, Arévalo hailed Mexico's 1938 expropriation of foreign oil companies as a "continental guide" for the assertion of national sovereignty. To some...

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