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In the Middle. The people that López Mateos pledged himself to serve range from Mexico's idle rich to Mexico's idle poor. The lower class—still more than two-thirds of Mexico's population of nearly 33 million—is made up of slimly nourished Indians, peons and drifters who barely manage to stay alive on beans and tortillas, who wear huaraches or go barefoot, who live in Mexico's 2,000,000 adobe hovels, who never spend more than a few pesos from the time they are born until they die. The upper class, socially defined, consists of between 300 and 500 families who are the remnants of the old Spanish hacienda-owning aristocracy. Across the gulf between rich and poor stretches the growing middle class, a healthy 9,000,000 strong, born of industry and fed by solid paychecks and hope. It is so new and changing that Mexicans vie to define it. A man enters the middle class—according to typical definitions—when he:
¶ Puts shoes on his feet and buys a second shirt.
¶ Leaves the barter economy and enters the money economy.
¶ Begins to eat eggs, meat and butter and wash with hot water.
¶ Hires a member of the lower class as a servant.
President López Mateos defines the middle class as "that group which works and lives on a regular salary at a regular job. Its members are literate, ambitious, with dreams for their children and their country. All the dreams may not come true, but these families struggle and never stop hoping."
Statistics show that many of the dreams are coming true. Mexico now prefers bread to the corn tortilla. In 1937 the average consumer ate 41 lbs. of wheat bread a year; now he eats 62 lbs. He switches from pulque (the fermented juice of the century plant) to beer. In 1941 per capita consumption of beer was 97 quarts; today it is 25. He spends money to see movies, bullfights and soccer games. In 1936 the average Mexican spent 1.42 pesos on entertainment; last year it was 7.05. He begins riding, if only a bicycle. Bike registrations climbed from 80,082 in 1946 to 386,782 last year.
The rewards of the switch to the middle class are enticing. In San Cristóbal de las Casas, Erasto Urbina, once a barefoot peon on a southern coffee plantation, now runs a store that amply provides for his family of 8. Juan Carrasco, bellhop and car-parker at the capital's Continental Hilton, proudly drives his own green 1947 Plymouth.