Our Art department's eight-column story on the life & works of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mexican painter-soldier-politician, in the Nov. 10 issue is, to a large extent, the result of a year's acquaintanceship between Artist Siqueiros and John Stanton, chief of TIME Inc.'s Mexico City bureau. Because the detail and sound analysis of Stanton's research also showed a warm understanding of Mexican ways, I asked him to tell me about the business of being a correspondent in Mexico as it applied to the Siqueiros story. This is his reply:

"Remember that Mexicans, generally, are warm, sympathetic and charming people. If a correspondent is willing to forget his own way of doing things and concede that in Mexico one must proceed in the Mexican way, he will find the average Mexican approachable, friendly, and lots of fun. The first sign that he understands how things go in Mexico comes when he decides that a watch is irksome to the wrist, puts it away and depends thereafter on brief glimpses of street clocks, which are almost invariably wrong.

"Early in my tour here a Mexican patiently explained to me that whenever I made an appointment for eleven o'clock in the morning, I must assume one of two things: either the Mexican who gave me the appointment is a proud, sensitive soul who is thinking, 'why should I arrive at eleven and give this guy a chance to come later than me; I'll come at eleven-thirty.' Or he is a sympathetic character who is saying to himself, 'Why should I force this poor fellow out at eleven; I'll come at twelve and give him more chance to sleep.' It doesn't make much difference what he's thinking; in both cases the appointment will start promptly at one-thirty.

"It must not be supposed that a national unbelief in what the minute .hand says means that Mexicans don't work hard. If the average Mexican finds conversation with one fellow so interesting that he lingers on, and thus misses appointments with two other fellows, he makes up for it later in the day. This is the only place I have been where a public official has given me an appointment to meet him in his office nine o'clock in the evening.

"After a while you get to know certain things and govern yourself accordingly. You do not, of course, just drop in on President Aleman. But once you are with him, he sits back for a long chat with you as if he had nothing on his mind but to solve your problems. He has an extraordinary amount of that Mexican charm I was speaking about.

"All of which brings us to Siqueiros. I may be prejudiced, but I think that he and his wife, Angelica are two of the warmest, most honest, interesting people I have met. I remember a Sunday afternoon in Cuernavaca when he took over a Mariachi band and gave us a concert of the lusty songs of Obregon's armies; an evening in the California bar when he hunched forward over a cafe table and practically mesmerized Orozco into sponsoring an exhibit of young Mexican artists; a night in my apartment where he kept a roomful of people silent until four-thirty in the morning, forgetting even their drinks, while he told how it was in Mexico during the Revolution; an evening at his house when he spoke of how a carburetor defied all reasoning power.

"Siqueiros is a complete, modern man, eagerly welcoming each new development in science, mentally exploring its cultural possibilities. But when he goes out in his car he is likely to forget to put gas in it and can frequently be found sitting disconsolately by the roadside waiting for someone to rescue him. Mostly, his car works well -- because Angelica drives. She pilots it skillfully through traffic while he sits beside her explaining the fundamental principles of a motor car, two or three new ideas for traffic control, how landscapes can best be painted as seen from the window of a speeding automobile. She sees to it that when he is painting a mural he actually gets to the wall and does not tarry somewhere along Juarez in an interesting discussion of the latest method of crime detection with the last policeman who arrested him. Then he is being Mexican to the core."

Cordially,

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