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Porfirio Díaz, the great dictator who imposed ironhanded stability on the country in the last century, once bitterly said: "Poor Mexico: so far from God, so near the U.S." Yet it is Mexico, in part because it is so closely subject to U.S. influence, that has pioneered the way to mature independence and independent nationality in Latin America. Proud of its mestizo origins, without need either to brag or apologize for them, the country is visibly experiencing some of the creative results of having found itself. Ruiz Cortines, with the backing of the rising middle class, has already changed the republic's standards of public morality. Last week, after his frank survey of Mexico's unsolved food and literacy problems, the magazine Siempre proclaimed it: THE ERA or TRUTH. As such revolutionary ideas as honesty and truth spread through the government, the new President and the new Mexico can look ahead toward an even more fully developed democratic life.
* Ruiz Cortines considers the morning lime juice indispensable for good digestion. Once, when he was in New York, he ordered it for breakfast. The waiter was dumfounded. "He looked at me," says Ruiz Cortines, "as if I were ordering a dose of dynamite."