Cheers for Kennedy

Jack Kennedy had seen crowds before.

Nearly a million people cheered his entry into Paris to visit France's Charles de Gaulle; 300,000 were on hand when he arrived in London; another 1,000,000 lined the streets of Bogota, Colombia, when he traveled south last year. And he got some massive turnouts in Manhattan during his 1960 campaigning. Last week Kennedy's orange-nosed Air Force jet carried him across the U.S. border for a three-day visit to President Adolfo Lopez Mateos and the fiercely independent, sometimes cantankerous southern neighbor, Mexico.

But if there was as much anti-gringoism in Mexico as people say, the U.S. President saw little of it. By the uncounted millions, Mexicans gave him and his pretty wife the warmest abrazo and the greatest outpouring of good will he had yet seen on his travels.

"Call Me Meester." From the moment Kennedy touched down at the mile-high capital, a city once occupied by U.S. troops in the war of 1846-48, Mexicans made it clear that their feelings were good neighborly. A solid ribbon of people lined every inch of the seven-mile ride into town, packing the curbside 20-deep, clinging to billboards, perched on rooftops, statues and lampposts. Mexico City's cops estimated the throng at 1,500,000. There had obviously been plenty of government organization to get out the crowds, but such enthusiasm could not be feigned, or done on order. Gnarled old peasant women thrust bunches of white flowers at the cavalcade as it passed; urchins broke from the throng, squealing "Meester Kennedy. Meester Kennedy." One youngster even carried a reassuring sign: "We play touch football." Above the shouts came the wild music of 300 Mariachi bands--along with the tootles of a platoon of organ grinders lined up at one intersection cranking out their own hurdy-gurdy serenade. As the presidential procession headed toward the Avenida de la Reforma, 10,000 troops presented arms, and rows of firemen snapped to salute with brass shovels. At historic Zocalo Square, the bells of the 16th century cathedral pealed a clarion welcome. And then came the confetti. 16 tons of the stuff, in a blizzard never before seen in Mexico.

"We Seek to Assist." In the round of tours and state dinners and in the four hours of private talks with Lopez Mateos, a Kennedy recently buffeted at home obviously enjoyed the tonic of adulation.

He had, as usual, come well briefed for the problems to be discussed: the longstanding Chamizal border dispute, arising from a slight shift in the course of the Rio Grande, Mexican complaints that U.S. irrigation projects were making the upper Colorado River too salty for Mexican farmers. Kennedy had planned to bring up Mexico's adamant hands-off stand on Cuba if he got on well with Lopez Mateos--and he did. But he did not press too hard. Castro and Cuba were not why he was in Mexico.

The real purpose of the trip was to declare and to demonstrate U.S. good faith in the Alliance for Progress. Again and again throughout the visit, he referred to the aspirations of the Mexican revolution.

"We are both children of revolution." said Kennedy in his airport speech. At the state luncheon given by Lopez Mateos on his first day, he quoted the Mexican President himself: the Mexican revolution would not be fulfilled "while there is even one child without a school, one illiterate adult, one family without a home." The U.S., said Kennedy, "does not seek to change or direct any nation's political system. But we do seek to assist the Latin American nations to make fundamental changes in the life of their peoples--and thus change the course of human history." To illustrate his point before he flew home. Kennedy announced a new $20 million agricultural loan to help Mexico get on with its land reform program.

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