Enrique Mendoza Morales, right arm and loyal man of engineer Jorge Díaz Serrano, telephoned me: “The engineer and Mrs. Elvia Martínez invite you to dinner. They will go to an Italian restaurant on Mariano Escobedo Avenue. It is close to Deportivo Chapultepec. ‘La Trattoria’, it’s called. The engineer likes it a lot. In his days as Director of Petróleos Mexicanos he frequented the place. He was with his friend Abel Quezada. The main room has sketches, notes and I think even a photograph of the engineer. The author of the sketches, of course!, hahaha, is Abel Quezada. I’ll tell you the time of the meeting. Or I’ll pick you up at your house. Maybe the engineer will send you a driver… The fact is that they want you to accompany them to dinner. Don’t be surprised that I’m also present…”
Enrique Mendoza Morales: joker, joker, mocker, witty. He entertained with funny imitations. He adopted the personality of Miguel Inclán – the blind man from the movie “Los Olvidados”, by Luis Buñuel, or that of President Benito Juárez in his exile from New Orleans or that of a hacienda foreman in “El 7 Machos”, by Mario Moreno. “Cantinflas” and Alma Rosa Aguirre.
Abel Quezada. “I did not get rich in the years in which I made the caricature for the center pages of Excelsior,” he told me in an interview given in the mansion he owned in the south of the city. Huge farm. A button – a click – brought out dozens of size 42R jackets. Another, dozens of neatly arranged pairs of “Nunn-Bush” shoes. Another more complete suits. Thus, empty they seemed like puppets; scarecrow. Abel Quezada was the owner of those assets…
“López Mateos liked me when I transformed the railroad leader Demetrio Vallejo into a little guy who mistreats the cars of a ‘Lionel’ train. Dressed as a kindergarten pupil, he seems prey to obsession to destroy him. The President invited me to Los Pinos. And after a while we became friends. Out of ‘pure lambiscón’, I started visiting him. He smoked a lot and his teeth were stained from nicotine, but he was very cultured and a good conversationalist. Very nice man. ‘I am at your service, Abel,’ he told me, ‘for whatever is offered to you.’
“I’m in oil. And I am a very good friend of Jorge,” he told those close to him.
Abel Quezada was part of the entourage that accompanied President José López Portillo on a trip to France, Germany, Sweden and Canada. It was in mid-1981. “Oilers” the world called that group. Envied clique: Mexicans produced a lot of oil. They were already in fourth place in the world of suppliers. In Canada, Abel Quezada hooked up with Fernando Alcalá. In accordance with his manners, the audacious 24 Horas reporter – owner of Jacobo Zabludovsky’s heart – blurted out: “Whoa, Abel. What do you think, brother? From Comales to Toronto! Things of life right?”.
The next morning, at breakfast with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and President José López Portillo, Fernando looked at Abel’s plate. Two fried eggs with strips of appetizing bacon… “The amount of cholesterol you’re getting, Abel. What a scrub, man!”
That morning there were “long faces” among the members of the presidential cabinet caused by the newspaper The Citizen. Eight columns, main photo on the front page. Banquet table, next to López Portillo, the secretary Rosa Luz Alegría. The caption alluded to her: Mexican First Lady.
With an imposing personality, grace, intelligence, vision, ambition, Mrs. Rosa Luz Alegría attracted national attention from the moment she assumed responsibility for an entity called CEMPAE. She stayed in the direction of Río Mixcoac. Near the Manacar cinema. She depended on the Ministry of Public Education, of Mr. Víctor Bravo Ahuja. From President Luis Echeverría Álvarez.
It was my source. And also that of Mercedes Aguilar Montes de Oca, from the newspaper El Heraldo de México. Luxury reporter. Woman of laughter and a lot of work and more laughter. Went. Lovely.
“Look guys,” he told us, “at my name. Rosa Luz Alegría… They almost baptized me ‘pachanga’. What do you think? Ha ha ha”. CEMPAE, Center for Studies and Methods for Education.
There were versions about teacher Rosa Luz Alegría in mid-1974 about her participation in the National Strike Council, the brain of the Student Movement of 1968. She was a very brilliant student at the Faculty of Sciences and a classmate, first, then girlfriend of Luis Vicente Echeverría, the eldest son of the President of the Republic.
That tour of Europe and Canada had a very unpleasant end. Some reporters were so dazzled by the beautiful German Olimpia typewriters that they decided to take them over. Their owners met them at the airport. They demanded its return.
Enrique Mendoza Morales reiterated: “Before the session of the violation of Senator Engineer Jorge Díaz Serrano occurs, you will have dinner with him and the lady. Don’t even think about missing it, Reyes Razo. We’ll all have dinner, Enrique. We’ll see you there. The day before the imprisonment of engineer Jorge Díaz Serrano.
To be continue