Death in the Z

In Leon's bright, sun-spattered zocalo (public square), the air was electric with resentment. Thirty thousand Mexicans stood silent and dry-eyed as pyjama-clad workmen bore past them the 27 flag-draped coffins. Behind the coffins trudged women, heads covered and bowed, some with armloads of white lilies, others with dark rebozos draped over nursing child and naked breast. At the cemetery an angry, white-faced priest shouted: "Long live Christian democracy!"

Like most of the 27, basket maker Luterio Alcaraz had been no Sinarquista, only a devout Catholic. With his wife he had gone to the square to shout a protest. The pro-Catholic Civic Union was demonstrating against what it considered the fraudulent election of the Government's official P.R.M. (Mexican Revolutionary Party) candidate for mayor. Soldiers, on hand to guarantee the P.R.M. mayor's tenancy in office, opened fire. Luterio fell: So did the young daughter of Pedro Ramirez (see cut) and 25 others.

One who saw last week's shooting in the Leon square was slight, gold-toothed Jose Valades, national organizing secretary of the Sinarquistas. He thought it would boost Sinarquista membership. In national political terms, the massacre would cost P.R.M.'s probable candidate, Miguel Aleman, some votes in the July presidential elections, gain some for ex-foreign minister Ezequiel Padilla, who is supported by Catholic rightists.

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