Opinion 51 | Guest Column

Group twenty women and one man... (part III)*.

A source who prefers to remain anonymous told me that "they lined up", that Echeverría, by paying for that first breakfast, marked his territory.

By Claudia Pérez Atamoros

"I really wish

that all the press interviews

were of the quality and stature of those that make

those that I would dare to call

my dear friends of the Group

'20 women and one man'"

Alfondo García Robles, 1976.

Twenty women and one man...

This time Echeverría and pig's hand?

III - May '68.

What is it all about? was the question Luis Echeverría Álvarez, then Secretary of the Interior, asked Hylda Pino when she asked him for an interview. The Group had not even been formed for a year but, from the beginning, she was a big shot. She explained the reason for the group and the interest in interviewing him.

I think that the journalistic nose of so many of them was already so developed that, somehow, I sensed that he was the cover-up.

He set two conditions:

1.- To talk to all of them, without a press interview.

2.- That he would pay for breakfast.

-Herethe matter became difficult because if we already accepted without an interview, this second condition was not fair, I let him know.

I believe that when he saw my distress he told me "okay, I will have breakfast with you on Thursday, May 9".

He arrived punctually to the appointment at the Sheraton Reforma. 8:30. He was the sixth man to agree to meet with Las Veinte.

The breakfast took place in harmony, they talked about culture, painting, etc. and it served the Group to create important bonds with the man who would eventually become the President of Mexico. They interviewed him on 6 more occasions. One as a candidate and five as

President.

"He interviewed each of us," wrote Pino Desandoval, "and asked us if we were mothers: some of us said yes and the others he suggested we would be soon.

"At the end of breakfast I went to the person in charge, Mr. Zapata, to settle the account and he told me that it had already been settled. I demanded that the money be returned immediately to the Secretary of the Interior, to which he replied: "It will be the first and only time we do this, I promise it will not be repeated. How do you think I will return the money to the future President of Mexico? -Zas! I did not know what to answer.

Las Veinte reports every interview, nothing about 1968 or the "halconazo". During his six-year term, the breakfasts were moved to Los Pinos.

A source who prefers to remain anonymous told me that they "lined up", that Echeverría, when paying for that first breakfast, marked territory and for the other six, he led the orchestra. The proof is in the newspapers and reviews of the time that published the meetings of Las Veinte.

Those were the times when the press was with the President or they would abide by the consequences. I have in front of me the words Hylda Pino Desandoval addressed to Echeverría during their meeting in 1974 in which she ends her speech with "With you, Mr. President. Up and forward!

At that breakfast, President Echeverría outlined his plan to restructure the economy (and at the time, it sounds so familiar...):

1.- Raising wages to recover lost purchasing power.

2.- Food price control.

3.- A severe adjustment in public spending and at the same time, an increase in credits to the countryside.

-And what does austerity in public spending consist of?

-Austerity will consist of making sure that every peso spent translates into profit and in a greater control of superfluous expenses. Some employers' groups want freedom for excessive speculation, but this will not be possible. The economic crisis comes from outside but is reflected in the country. Fiscal Reform is necessary for the State to be a better distributor of social wealth and for there to be better communications.

Another source also shared with me an "anecdote" that I had already heard from several women journalists who had suffered (whom I still love and admire, but whose names I prefer to keep to myself out of respect for their memory and because I never thought I would write about it).

It turns out that in the Echeverrista era, Mexicanness sprang from the verb of the presidential couple. So, one September 15, after the customary gala dinner, Doña María Esther, "la compañera", passed the tray among the special guests(obviously, there were Las Veinte, (how many of them?, at least half of them) well dressed up, with their best jewelry to match the wives of the secretaries and other political elite) and asked them to part with those riches, that the people of Mexico would thank them...