Meet me in church:

...Virtually every papal utterance offered ammunition to Cardenas and his colleagues who claim to speak for "workers, peasants, slum-dwellers, and the dispossessed...

...In his speech, he said that "the modern state is that which maintains openness and modernizes its relations with the church...

...He grew up in a devout Catholic family, was baptized, received First Communion, and married in a church ceremony...

...And pro-Cardenas intellectuals lament the inexorable interlocking of the Mexican and U.S...

...A Los Angeles Times poll showed that two-thirds of Mexicans believe that Salinas actually lost to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of the most beloved president in modern Mexican history and leader of a nationalist-leftist coalition Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD...

...Meanwhile, Francisco Ortiz Mendoza, head of the Popular Socialist party that backed Cardenas's 1988 presidential bid, reportedly urged the application of the Constitution's Article 33 to remove the pope from the country...

...Cold and awkward at first, these sessions evolved into a constructive dialogue between traditional antagonists...

...Cardenas, the PRD, and other leftist groups had a golden opportunity to cash in politically on the pontiff's visit...

...This herculean task is somewhat easier given Cardenas's adeptness at shooting himself in the foot...

...Priests can't vote, hold public office, or wear vestments outside of religious buildings...

...Meanwhile, the tough-as-nails economist has pursued a "modernization" program by curbing bureaucratic growth, privatizing 600 state firms, and boosting tax collections...

...More important, by extending the olive branch to the church, Salinas may buy time for his version of perestroika and still avoid the upheaval that has beset other modernizing nations...

...and Japanese competitors seize more opportunities...

...He is baldheaded and diminutive and one swag-bellied labor chief lamented: "He just doesn't possess the background, looks, and bearing of ajefe maximo," To add insult to injury, the PRI had to cook the results to ensure Salinas's victory with 50.4 percent of the vote-a figure later adjusted to 50.7 percent...

...By pope-bashing, Cardenas, Ortiz Mendoza, and their associates demonstrated insensitivity to grassroots Mexicans, more than 90 percent of whom identify themselves as Catholics...

...Approximately 94 percent of all TV sets in the nation tuned in to the arrival ceremony...

...As Prigione recently told me: "I simply wanted to bring together people who didn't really know why they were supposed to hate each other...

...Before being tapped as the PRI's standard-bearer for the July 1988 election, the forty-year-old technocrat who boasts two advanced degrees from Harvard had never before held elective office...

...Next, his administration jailed Eduardo Legoretta Chau vet, a member of a powerful business family, for securities manipulation at the time of the late-1987 stock market crash...

...The PRI has rallied militants by warning of "alliances," "secret deals," and "plots" between bishops and fat-cat corporations-especially in the free-enterprise-oriented Monterrey area...

...Union leaders accustomed to sweetheart contracts decry obstacles to their achieving hefty salary increases...

...Instead of making common cause with the pope, Cardenas criticized the "squandering" of resources on the visit, as well as John Paul H's "meddling" in Mexican politics...

...De la Madrid's handpicked successor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has even more assiduously propitiated Mexico's episcopate...

...Still, as a progressive, he considers anticlericalism outmoded...

...The Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which has governed in Tammany Hall-style since 1929, has been second to none in vilifying the church...

...But Salinas's overtures to the pontiff combined with the left's insensitivity should enhance the PRI's appeal to the faithful-especially to campesinos, women, and slum dwellers who flocked to Cardenas in the 1988 election...

...The pope took the call on a red telephone that the president had given the apostolic delegate-a symbol of the open lines of communication that both wish to maintain...

...In addition, the pope expressed to a diplomatic assembly the "urgency" of resolving the Latin American debt crisis...

...Some bureaucrats fear the loss of bribes as market forces replace Byzantine regulations...

...economies-a process, they claim, that will cause the loss of national sovereignty...

...Moreover, like any embattled politician, he's constantly on the hunt for allies...

...Otherwise, he fears, Mexico will become a stagnant backwater while Europe and the Pacific rim emerge as dynamic trading blocs...

...Within forty-five days of taking office, he dispatched the army to arrest Joaqufn "La Quina" Hernandez Galicia, the supposedly "untouchable" leader of the nation's venal and wealthy Oil Workers' Union...

...Despite a public donnybrook over election irregularities in Chihuahua in the mid-1980s, church-state relations began to improve under the last chief executive, Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (1982-88...

...Prigione, a shrewd, skillful negotiator, began convening meetings between key bishops and the then-Secretary of Interior, Manuel Bartlett Diaz...

...Several months later, he replaced Carlos Jongitud Barrios, a former senator, and since 1972 leader of the large and politically antagonistic National Teachers' Union...

...In February, he dispatched a personal envoy to the Vatican with which diplomatic relations were broken in 1859...

...REPORT FROM MEXICO MEET ME IN CHURCH SALINAS, THE POPE & THE LEFT Though often ignored, provisions of Mexico's 1917 Constitution prohibit the Roman Catholic church or any other church from owning property, conducting outdoor services, or participating in public education...

...Earlier this year, Transaction Press published his latest book, Prospects for Democracy in Mexico.or Democracy in Mexico...

...Sweeping constitutional amendments are unlikely because of the bitter conflict they would spark...

...Although baptized, confirmed, and married in church, Salinas is not a practicing Catholic...

...The evening before John Paul II left, Salinas personally bade him farewell in a phone call to the Apostolic Delegation...

...and Canada...

...Even during his campaign, he met with northern bishops who had lambasted PRI's electoral chicanery...

...Acting in a "personal capacity," Salinas warmly praised the "pilgrim of peace" for "promoting more justice, more participation, more attention-especially with respect to the poor whose destiny is ours...

...Businessmen accustomed to monopolies and 35 percent annual profits bemoan "unfair" competition as U.S...

...The government spent billions of pesos on security, transport, road improvements, and medical care to facilitate the pope's visit to ten states, where he attracted some 30 million people...

...Salinas gave impetus to this church-state rapprochement by rolling out the red carpet for John Paul II on his May 6 arrival in Mexico City...

...While decisive leadership has increased the chief executive's personal popularity, the scope and velocity of his initiatives have alienated and disoriented many people...

...As Sergio Sarmiento, a writer for the daily El Financiero, stated: "Rather than pay attention [to the public's adoration of the pope]...the left preferred to stir up old dogmas that insist that religion is the opiate of the people...

...And long before the pope's recent visit was confirmed, he invited Mexico City's Cardinal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, Prigione, and other senior churchmen to his inaugural address...

...TELEVISA, the state-influenced TV network, fully ventilated the left's carping, allowing the left to hang itself with the rope of anticlericalism...

...After all, the pope focused on the plight of Mexico's have-nots, excoriated bureaucratic corruption, called for improved nutrition in a country where one-third of the population goes to bed hungry, and lamented the fact that affluent entrepreneurs do so little to help the poor...

...He has also trimmed subsidies, brought down sky-high import barriers, and courted foreign investors...

...For them, the early June agreement of Salinas and George Bush to explore a Free Trade Accord is the political equivalent of fingernails clawing a blackboard...

...The Virgin of Guadalupe eclipses the national flag as a unifying symbol in Mexico...

...Paloma, his wife, even invited the apostolic delegate, Jeronimo Prigione, to say Mass in the Los Pinos presidential residence...

...Since swearing the presidential oath a year-and-a-half ago, Salinas has shown considerable leadership qualities...

...Besides, he added, "now that the Berlin Wall has fallen, so many new relationships are possible in the world...

...The PRD leader and his allies should have wrapped themselves in the pope's speeches, while blasting Salinas's neoliberal government for stressing debt repayments, market mechanisms, and preference for the private sector at the expense of those who eke out a living at the bottom of a distended social pyramid...

...As a result of his attentiveness to the pontiff, the president's personal standing shot up four to six points in the polls...

...GEORGE W. GRAYSON George W. Gray son is professor of government at the College of William and Mary...

...In contrast, Cardenas and his PRD are committed to protectionism, central planning, and Yankee-baiting...

...In addition, authorities threw drug kingpin Felix Gallardo in jail...

...Salinas is determined to streamline Mexico's statist, corrupt economy in order to integrate it with those of the U.S...