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The Good Times. Toward the end of the Alemán regime, the government's gay caballeros seemed to abandon all restraint. The smiling President, who loved the companionship of happy people and prided himself on his conviviality, went from one party to another. Sometimes the cronies would repair to an Acapulco yacht or to one of the ranches, and certain members of the inner circle would invite a planeload of high-spirited girls to join the party. At one time or another, the name of almost every well-known Mexican movie actress was whispered as a presidential party guest. When the blowouts were staged at the Lower California ranch, pretty Hollywood companions were also near at hand. In the end, the pace grew so dizzy that the President became involved in a notable indiscretion. Just after his retirement from office, he took off from his Lower California hideaway with a party including Leonora Amar, his Brazilian actress friend, for a week in Paris that was fully reported in Mexico, and, some Mexicans say, grievously dented his political influence.
Mexicans are tolerant of amor, and few higher compliments can be paid a gentleman than to call him "very manly." But Alemán and his pals got going so fast in their dizzy ride that the elder statesmen of the party decided things were getting out of hand. In Mexican politics, such former Presidents as Manuel Avila Camacho, and the enigmatic Lázaro Cárdenas, holed up in his western mountains, exercise great power in the background. When the time came to choose Alemán's successor, the party leaders did not interfere with Alemán's right to pick him. But they warned him that he had better not name any of his cronies.
Ruiz Cortines was no crony. His relationship with the President was a formal one based on mutual respect; they never used the intimate Spanish tu with each other. He was one Cabinet member who had stayed out of the big deals, had no bad name with the public and no private enemies. But in years of loyal service, Ruiz Cortines had never given Alemán trouble, and there was no reason to believe he would. On his record, Ruiz Cortines was honest enough to satisfy public opinion, and "safe" enough to satisfy the men around Alemán. So Alemán himself chose the cleanup man.
Everything about Ruiz Cortines' past career indicated that he was a follower rather than a leader. Because of the early death of his father, a customs official in the old port city of Veracruz, he never got more than elementary schooling, and went to work at 16 as a bookkeeper's apprentice. When revolution swept Mexico, he joined the army and served eight years as a paymaster and paperwork man for generals. After the revolution, he served 13 years as a government clerk, rising finally to the job of chief of the government's vital statistics department. Even in those low-paid years he lived on his salary. Once, when the offer of a bribe came his way, he said: "I think you have made a mistake. You have tried the wrong man."