ARGENTINA: Props into Prods

When he was elected President of Argentina in 1946, Juan Domingo Perón had two visible means of political support. One was the army, whose ruling clique he headed. The other was labor, especially what he dubbed the descamisados (literally: shirtless ones), whose favor he had won (by wage boosts, social benefits, etc.) in a shrewdly realistic move to offset any fickleness among his army pals. In the past month many Argentines had noted that the army, fed up with mounting inflation and the politicking of Perón’s wife Eva, had ceased to be the prop it once was. When the third anniversary of Perón’s popular election fell last week, it became equally clear that Perón’s labor prop was also slipping.

There were none of the boisterous des-camisado parades and mass meetings which have usually marked the great day. Instead, hardly a newspaper appeared throughout all Argentina to remind the workers what day it was. To protest the government’s failure to settle the three-week-old strike of Buenos Aires’ newspaper typographers (TIME, Feb. 21), printers had chosen that day to call a nationwide stoppage.

Squirrels & Scabs. The night before, the government had rounded up workers from the mint and other government printing offices, rushed them down to the plants of the pro-government El Mundo and La Fronda. While police guarded the buildings with machine guns, and Evita Perón’s Social Aid Foundation (for the destitute and aged) rushed in bedding and food, the esquiroles (squirrels, i.e., strikebreakers) kept the newspaper blackout from being complete. But the single editions they turned out contained little more than cheesecake pictures and ready-made material including an editorial entitled “Three Years of Legality.” Neither paper mentioned the strike.

With prospects of a settlement dimmer than ever, other big unions talked of joining the printers’ protest. Their common complaint: Peronista union bosses refused to negotiate for the raises which rank & filers thought they needed to meet the rising cost of living.

By week’s end, workers were voicing thoughts which would not even have popped into their heads a few months ago. Said a mechanic, grumbling over an announced renewal of gas rationing: “Why should we have gas rationing when the rest of the world is doing away with rationing? We are a rich country. We must have been badly governed.” Many an Argentine worker would nod in solemn agreement.

Resignations & Refusals. Meanwhile, the army collected a fresh token of prestige as the War Minister, General José Humberto Sosa Molina, was named to the new post of Defense Minister, in charge of air, naval and ground forces. Army pressure unquestionably had been a decisive factor in forcing onetime Economic Czar Miguel Miranda out of office and probably could do the same thing to Perón, if the army chose to. At week’s end, Buenos Aires sources reported that the President had already suggested that he resign, only to be told to stay where he was and see the trouble through. The army might fire a president when it was good & ready; last week army chiefs may have suspected that Perón would like to get out from under now, shift the blame to other shoulders, then brace himself for a smashing comeback in the next elections.