Word: portillo
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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...
...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 and his personal probity. Few of those qualities were associated with his predecessor, López Portillo, by the end of the latter's six-year term...
...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...
...Portillo too was an optimist. When he took power in 1976, inflation was 30%, and Mexico already owed some $20 billion to foreign banks. But geologists were discovering that in vast fields located in Chiapas and Tabasco states, as well as off the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico possessed proven oil and gas reserves that are now estimated to total 72 billion bbl., second only to Saudi Arabia. The fields were quickly exploited, and by 1981 Mexico was pumping 2.5 million bbl. per day, making it the world's fourth largest oil producer. Mexico earned $14 billion from its wells...
Instead, López Portillo launched a series of grandiose development schemes, including a national system of support for basic agriculture and a plan to build 20 nuclear reactors. To finance these projects, he went on an international borrowing spree. Never stopping to think that Mexico's oil revenues could one day prove inadequate, American, European and Japanese banks were only too happy to oblige, in some cases offering Mexico even more money than it was asking...