ARGENTINA: Back to Normalcy

Argentina was back to normal. Anybody who was anybody was in jail. After 52 days of abnormal freedom, Vice President Juan Domingo Peron had again imposed the repressive “state of siege” under which Argentines had suffered for almost four years.

Bathroom Scene. Ostensible excuse for PerÓn’s new wave of terror was an abortive coup instigated in CÓrdoba by brave but bumbling ex-President General Arturo Rawson. But the resounding demonstration staged in the streets of Buenos Aires last fortnight by 500,000 irate Argentines, some of them bearing a placard of famed Patriot Rogue Saenz Pefia was the tip-off to PerÓn that he had better get tough or get out.

Police Chief Filomeno Velazco gave the signal for mass arrests (“the revolution is only beginning”). Then Argentine democrats started ducking. The more practiced scooted for free Uruguay or the haven of foreign legations.

CÓrdoba police ignored a writ of habeas corpus, shipped a college president off for Buenos Aires by train. Furious, the judge who had granted the writ overtook the train in a car, had the prisoner freed. In Buenos Aires, a Radical Party leader locked the arresting officer in a bathroom.

But the 1,000 nabbed by Velazco’s police included party leaders. ex-Cabinet ministers, newspaper editors, university presidents, heads of the powerful industrial and agricultural associations. High & low were herded into central police headquarters or famed Villa Devoto prison. PerÓn himself gave many of them the once-over. Later all but a handful were released.

By the looks of the Buenos Aires press next day, PerÓn’s intimidation had worked wonders. The anti-Government attacks had stopped dead. One rumored reason for the reimposition of strict press control: the former German Ambassador to Argentina, Baron Edmund von Thermann, had squealed in Germany and implicated, as Nazi connivers, Argentina Army officers, from General of the Army Carlos von der Becke on down.

Stiffening Lip. In Washington, where Ambassador Spruille Braden had arrived from Argentina to take over the direction of Latin American affairs, the mood was for a stiffer U.S. policy toward the dictators. After a talk with Braden in Rio. U.S. Ambassador Adolph Berle informed Brazilians (and President Getulio Vargas was listening) that the U.S. expected the upcoming Presidential elections to go through on schedule. This statement, coupled with Braden’s spectacular campaign against Peron, augured a vigorous U.S. policy at the imminent (Oct. 20) Inter-American Conference in Rio.