Jim Hougan

Manuel Aceves is so hip that a leading Mexico City newspaper has suggested that the death penalty should be invoked in his case despite the fact that Aceves has committed no crime. Aceves is the publisher and editor of Piedra Rodante, a semi-slick bi-monthly magazine that champions Mexico’s budding youth-culture. Manuel Aceves While the circulation of his magazine climbs dramatically (its most recent edition of 50,000 sold out almost immediately), its advertisers retreat from the controversy it stimulates. Street vendors selling the publication are sometimes harrassed, and government authorities have several times threatened to stop the periodical from being published. Aceves is himself the target of telephone threats from policemen, and he is variously smeared in the national press as a “pornographer,” a “popularizer of drugs,” and a purveyor of what the political Left here calls “cultural or psychic colonialism.” In addition, both his manhood and family origins have been questioned in a frank way not usually found in newspapers delivered to families. Attacked by the Right, the Left, and the middle-class as well Aceves