Word: portillo
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...source of conflict. Last December, then Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger brusquely rejected a Mexican offer to sell the U.S. 2 billion cu. ft. of gas a day at $2.60 per 1,000 cu. ft., a price then considered "exorbitant." Two months ago, Administration aides hinted that López Portillo's long planned state visit to Washington might not be a useful exercise if a gas deal were not consummated. Apparently chastened by the threat, Mexican officials finally made an offer that seemed even more exorbitant but that U.S. bargainers quickly accepted...
...take jobs from U.S. workers. On the other hand, the millions of Mexican immigrants add to the nation's fast-growing and generally Democratic population of Hispanics; they will probably displace blacks as the nation's largest minority by the next decade. In New York last week, López Portillo met with a coalition of Spanish-speaking leaders, who urged him to put pressure on Carter for a relaxation of U.S. immigration laws. If Carter does not, the leaders implied, he might lose the solid Hispanic support that contributed to his victory...
Another problem is the "tomato war." Earlier this year, Florida truck farmers filed complaints with the Treasury Department that Mexican producers were "dumping" tons of sun-ripened tomatoes and other produce on the U.S. But López Portillo has insisted that Mexican farmers need access to the lucrative U.S. market in order to bolster his country's agricultural economy. He has made it clear that future Mexican cooperation on energy supplies depends on a resolution of this issue, but it is not likely to come while Florida is playing a pivotal early role in the presidential primaries...
There are some checks and balances, but in typical Mexican fashion, they operate indirectly. If a President leans too far to the left, as did López Portillo's predecessor, Luis Echeverria, businessmen can express their displeasure by withholding investments; if he leans too far to the right, as did Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, who ruled from 1964 to 1970, labor leaders and peasant organizations can protest with crippling strikes. To accommodate such pressures, Mexican Presidents usually swing away from the direction of their predecessors, in an effort to appease whatever faction was left most dissatisfied by the previous administration. Echeverria...
Last May the López Portillo government began a well-publicized series of crackdowns on corrupt officials. The federal attorney general, Oscar Florez Sanchez, declared that he would investigate "everybody from the governor of Coahuila on down" after $6.6 million worth of denim dyes were smuggled into Mexico aboard a plane owned by the state government; the digging finally focused on the pilot and an associate. The Mexican information agency announced last spring that 900 investigations into public corruption had begun. So far none of those investigations has produced even an indictment, much less a conviction. Charges Hero Rodriguez Toro...