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who went to department stores to protest the new fashion that had turned from miniskirts toward the long-skirted “maxi.” They threatened to picket department stores with signs that read, “Maxis Are Monstrous.” In the early spring, Time magazine fashion writers were predicting the summer season to be “the barest in memory”—with see-through blouses with nothing underneath, bare midriffs, wide and plunging necklines, and backs open, as Time put it, “right down to the coccyx.” Rudi Gernreich, who in 1964 came out with the topless bathing suit, which the Soviets called “barbarous” and was even banned in the south of France, now predicted that “the bare bosom look” would gain complete acceptance in the next five years. Chicago designer Walter Holmes came out with the miniskirted nun’s habit, also a miniskirted monk’s cowl, both with removable hoods to show plunging necklines, with neither design intended for nuns.

But by the end of the year, to the consternation of many men, the pantsuit had become the “in” look. Women wanted to be taken seriously and compete with men, and that is more difficult to do in a miniskirt. Few noticed that in society something new and exciting was about to happen for women even if it translated badly into fashion. Somehow it seemed that both the unfairness and the fun were going to be over, that the sixties were drawing to a close. William Zinsser wrote in Life magazine, “The city pantsuit is the Richard Nixon of high fashion. Send it away once, unwanted. Send it away twice, unloved. No matter: it will return in slightly different form, to beg approval still another time. Nixonlike, the pantsuit knows that it’s now or never, and I’m very much afraid it’s now.”

CHAPTER 19

IN AN AZTEC PLACE

All the history of every people is symbolic. This is to say: history and its events and its protagonists allude to another concealed history, are the visible manifestation of a hidden reality.

—OCTAVIO PAZ, Posdata, 1970

GUSTAVO DíAZ ORDAZ was a very ugly man. Mexicans were divided into two camps about their president: those who thought he resembled a bat and those who thought he was more like a monkey. His small frame, little snipped nose, long teeth, and thick-lensed glasses that magnified his irises to a primordial size all contributed to this debate. The monkey side gave him his nickname, El Chango, a Mexican word for a monkey, though his long, flapping arm gestures were suggestive of bat wings. But he was credited with a good sense of humor and reputedly once responded to the accusation of being “two-faced” by saying, “Ridiculous, if I had another one don’t you think I would use it?” And though not especially skilled with language, he had a powerful, booming speaking voice. His voice was the only physical attribute in his favor. But a good voice is an important attribute for a president of Mexico. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote, “Accustomed as they are to delivering only monologues, intoxicated by a lofty rhetoric that envelops them like a cloud, our presidents and leaders find it well-nigh impossible to believe that aspirations and opinions that are different than their own even exist.”

In 1968 the president of Mexico was worried. Some of the things that worried him were in his own mind and some were real. He had reason to worry about the Olympics. So far this year, almost every cultural and sporting event had been disrupted. The winter games in Grenoble, France, had gone well, though perhaps too much attention had been paid to Soviet-Czech competition. But the games had taken place before April, when the French were still bored. The April Academy Awards were postponed two days to mourn the death of Martin Luther King and then were overshadowed by politics. Bob Hope, not well liked on the Left for his girlie shows for the troops in Vietnam, appalled the audience with jokes about the postponement. Two films about race relations, albeit simplistic stories almost silly with didacticism—In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner—won awards. In a positive touch of the times,