The Old Guard

Every morning, promptly at 5:30, a burst of gunfire rattles the Colonia Juarez section of Mexico City. Old Don Carlos Rincon Gallardo y Romero de Torreros, Grandee of Spain, Marquis of Guadalupe, Duke of Regla, holder of 15 knighthoods, member of the Royal Corps of Gentlemen of Nobility of Madrid, last commander of President Porfirio Diaz' rurales,* is still waging symbolical battle against the Revolution of 1910.

Propped up in his antique fourposter, with a monocle screwed in his eye, the duke blasts through the open bedroom window at a target on the other side of the patio. After the fusillade, the duke lays down his pistol, ducks into an ice-cold tub. After he has worked himself into his silver-mounted charro (cowboy) outfit, he starts for church on the run, shadow-boxing vigorously.

Well-Preserved Ruin. After breakfast Don Carlos reads for a while; one day it may be a chapter from Don Quixote, the next a treatise on heraldry. Then he mounts one of his two horses, rides out to the Rancho del Charro, puts the horse through its paces. Eleven o'clock finds him downtown at the Banco de Mexico, in spats and morning coat, checking over his investments. Sometimes he growls: "The Revolution has stripped me!" (In 1910 he owned 4,000,000. acres, now has ten.) The atmosphere of ruin is somewhat dissipated when he adds: "Only six servants in a house that once had 20!"

Don Carlos is the classic survivor of the old regime, but many another of the old Diaz aristocracy has weathered the revolutionary storms. Well-heeled Genaro Diaz Raigosa, grandson of the President-Dictator who ran Mexico for 35 years, now amuses himself with a gasoline station.

Weil-Heeled Heirs. Jose Yves Liman-tour III, grandson of Diaz' nimble-witted Secretary of Treasury, conducts the Jalapa Symphony Orchestra (TIME, Oct. 4); his father, Guillermo Limantour, is Mexico City's top real-estate operator, and owns large chunks of Avenida Juarez. Rivaling Guillermo in real estate is Pedro Corcuera, the sugar king of Jalisco, who saw the Revolution coming, cannily swapped his country estates for city holdings.

Ignacio de la Torre, whose family once owned much of the state of Morelos, is sometimes regarded by the oldtimers as false to his class. After flying for France in World War I, he came home, served as secretary to revolutionary President Alvaro Obregon, became one of Mexico's best engineers. Now he often gives parties on the family's half-ruined hacienda at Yautepec. and sometimes makes old family friends squirm by assuring them that Mexico's progress began when the great haciendas were destroyed.

Such heresy means nothing to old Don Carlos, busy at his afternoon literary labors. As the first charro of Mexico, he has written five books and 700 articles on charro horsemanship. Last week he took time out from writing to lead the parade at a benefit charro show and expertly toss a few steers by their tails.

*The dictator's elite mounted police.

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