Word: madrid
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...Madrid is also modest in his private activities. Where López Portillo was an outgoing sportsman and ban vivant, De la Madrid prefers recreations like reading at home in his library or in the garden (among his favorite authors: Hermann Hesse, Morris West and Mexico's Carlos Fuentes), listening to music (Mozart and Mexican romantics like Agustin Lara), or playing dominoes. Every two or three weeks he travels to his family's country home where he enjoys swimming, badminton and walking. He keeps in shape by doing calisthenics every day; he also jogs. He admits...
This situation cannot change until the Mexican economy substantially improves. The man who must make that happen is a paradox: a politician who has never before held elective office. Virtually all of Miguel de la Madrid's adult life has been spent within the Mexican bureaucracy, usually in financial or planning positions. He is a lawyer-technocrat who is known as a pragmatic and quiet but firm negotiator rather than an inspired political leader for difficult times. De la Madrid's reputation is based on his mastery of the details of economic planning, his simplicity of style...
Born in the small Pacific state of Colima, De la Madrid had a conventional middle-class upbringing by Mexican standards, with one important exception. His father, a prominent local attorney, died when De la Madrid was only two; he was shot by an irate enemy of one of his clients. De la Madrid, his mother and only sister moved to Mexico City, where Miguel was a diligent student, working part-time as a bank's legal clerk to help support the family. De la Madrid now credits his mother Alicia Hurtado de la Madrid with having given...
...Madrid returned to banking on a full-time basis as a lawyer with the state-run National Bank of Foreign Commerce, one of many institutions set up after the Revolution to control the country's economy. In 1960 he moved to the Bank of Mexico, the country's central bank. Four years later, he spent a year at Harvard on a scholarship, earning a master's degree in public administration. (Among De la Madrid's professors: Liberal Economist John Kenneth Galbraith.) After he returned to Mexico, he became assistant director of public credit in the country...
...Portillo was both a teacher and a novelist; De la Madrid's writings are infinitely drier and more technical. Sample titles: Studies on Constitutional Law; Today's Great National Problems, The Challenge of the Future. Nonetheless, those who know the new President well say that he is also suave, self-assured and possesses a warm sense of humor. Says a Mexican banker: "He is soft in form but hard in substance. I've never heard him raise his voice, but he can be very tough." Says one of De la Madrid's advisers...