Word: az
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Whatever else he was, Pancho Villa was a born leader. In the revolution of 1910, the black-tempered peasant led the first uprising against President Porfirio Díaz, later joined that other hard-riding bandido, Emiliano Zapata, against the government of the opportunist Venustiano Carranza. Along the way, Villa's cavalry of bearded, wild-eyed "Dorados" (Golden Ones) shot up and looted villages, left the bodies of priests strung on barbed wire; they later defied the U.S. by killing 19 in a raid on a New Mexico border town, eluding a punitive force led by General John...
Sweet Sounds. Johnson, standing with Díaz Ordaz throughout the 2½-hour ride, fairly floated in the tumult, holding his hands above his head like a victorious prizefighter or making an "O.K." sign with circled thumb and forefinger. "I've never seen anything like this anywhere," he exulted from the steps of Los Pinos, home of Mexican Presidents. "I've always known the Mexican people were generous, stimulating people, but I never saw such inspiration and stimulation as in those faces. I think it was the most wonderful reception I have ever had anywhere...
...Mexicans responded in kind. Some 25,000 greeted the President, Lady Bird, Lynda and Luci at the airport, and enthusiastic shouting crowds of more than 1,000,000-the polite official estimate was twice that many-lined the 9½-mile motorcade route to Mexican President Díaz Ordaz's residence in Chapultepec Park. The procession was often forced to crawl, and Secret Service agents, already tired by the rarefied (7,800 ft.) atmosphere, dropped back in relays for rejuvenating whiffs of oxygen from their own cars...
Next stop was San Salvador, where he was almost mobbed by a cheering crowd as he rode along in an open, unprotected car (a rarity for any Latin American President). There, Díaz Ordaz promised technical assistance, preferential tariffs, private Mexican venture capital for developing Salvadoran industries. Also announced: a $6,000,000 loan to the four-year-old Central American Bank in Honduras...
...about superior competition from what they refer to as the "Colossus of the North," to grumble about Mexico's "imperialistic" intentions-precisely as generations of Mexican anti-gringos have fretted in the shadow of Mexico's neighbor across the Rio Grande. To soothe their fears, Díaz Ordaz specifically promised no economic or political interference. Said he crisply: "Mexico does not seek for other nations what it is not disposed to accept for itself...