Evening star., 1924-09-14
LEADER MIRANDA
"MEX|CO'S BRYAN"
Presidential Candidate Lik-
: ened to Distinguished
American.
special Dispatch to The Star


MENICO CITY, September 13.-Mex-
lco's motto, Effective suffrage. no
re-eiection." a rather inconsiderate
Destiny has twisted. for Senior zuniga
Miranda. self-styled perpetual can
oioate for the presidency. into EFF
iectiVe suffrage and no election"
for the last Is years his name has
peen on the list of candidates. and all
tne legal requirements have been
iuinlled to the dot. The candidate
mas oeen hs punctilious and exact
ABOUT his position in the elections as
ne Is about his high noon promenade
oown Avenida Francisco !. Madero.
Mextco's Fifth avenue, in formal tail
coat, top hat and gold-headed Malacca
cane. Destiny has been equally exact,
LOT today, as when Zuntga y Miranda
opposed Porfirio Diaz four times,
through the list of elections from
francsco !. Madero. Victoriano Euer-
"a, Venustiano Carranza, Gen. Alvaro
ooregon to the recent Fiores-Calles
contest, she has awarded her stepson
traditional zero number of votes.
MeXico's Bryan" is the journalistic
title Zuniga Miranda has won. Per-
maps parallel exists in political am
oiuons, but Zuniga Miranda is a
bryan minus the anti-alcoholic ten
dencies and vociferation, and plus a
quantity serious idealism that makes
him, in spite of the position he holds
as highly respected leading and COM
petentslawyer for the poor, a rather
pathetic individual. He is more of a
Don QuiXote than a William jennings
for his platforms, announced formally
ana campafgned for seriously, though
certainly unobtrusively, bear all the
earmarks OF resemblance to the
famous windmills the Spanish cru
sader battled against
Would Lower Prices.
Senior zuniga Miranda would
lower the prices Of foods and prime
necessities to beautifully absurd
ieVei. He proposes that maize be sold
AT cent a kflo, eggs at l cent each,
ana Deans practically given away. for
1t Is beans and tortiallas-fiat maize
cakes-that feed the majority of Mex
lcans. He happily ignores the threat
ehlng agrarian situation, the oil scan
oals, ABOUT which President Obregon
mas lamented that 'if there were not
so much oil in the wheels, the ma
chinery of Mexico's government would
run much more smoothly"
Ihe physical resemblance to the
nero of Cervantes makes Zuniga al
most comic opera figure He Is un-
usually tall, thin, and his habits and
ideals are as chronologically mis-
placed as were those of Quixote, for
while the knight would practice chiv-
airy long after tournaments had
ceased, Zuniga would govern a mod
ern, complicated Mexico through cour-
tesy and a great many ideas that have
been relegated to the attic of lace
paper valentines.
He is the synthesis of certain old
fashioned type of dreamer. Every Sat
urday evening horde of beggars
come to his sober, TRANQUILITY ordered
home to receive the gifts of food,
money and clothing that are as much
Saturday night institution to the
beggardom of Mexico as is the bath
to the labordom of the United States.
Hero of Many Ballads.
He is the hero of popular ballads
and music hall songs and a frequent
figure in "zarzuellas" or vaudeville
skits. The respect rendered him is
tinged with a plying consideration,
and yet partakes of the same spirit
that makes a tourist remove his hat
before a saint he considers hardly
more than painted wood.
Zuniga Miranda is an institution.
a candidate who as such has never
been taken seriously, part of the
Mexico that rode in victorias on the
Boulevard Pasco de la Reforma on
Sunday morning and kept its daugh-
ters behind ironbarred balconies al
most beyond the reach of amorous
troubadors. He is paradox in a
street shaking with the rush of 3it-
neys and the screech of electric cars.
During the recent election Zuniga
Miranda declared he was the only
candidate who could hold the presi-
dency, because neither Gales nor
Flores were genuinely Mexican. He
is not vociferous about his reform
measures, and neither is he startling
1y practical. He has a simple, almost
childish, confidence in his eventual
triumph as head of the country, and
in the meantime he continues in his
role of an artstocratic, patriotic don,
bowing to the proper members of the
proper families, and in the midst of
pistol shots and strange doctrines
predicting for his tortured country a
beautiful, rosy, Utopian "manana-"