Lobsters, Pigeons, Parades

In Valparaiso, Chile last week half a ton of live lobsters were loaded on a plane, sent scudding across the jagged Andes to Argentina. The city of Buenos Aires, on the muddy River Plata where there are no lobsters, was having a party.

The occasion was the state visit of paunchy, pompous Senhor Getulio Vargas, President of Brazil, to big, soldierly President Agustin P. Justo of Argentina. In 1933 President Justo paid a call on President Vargas in Rio de Janeiro which was notably successful in furthering trade and tourist traffic between the two countries. Now with suggestions from the Silver Jubilee in London, and a few original ideas of her own. Argentina was set to give her Brazilian neighbors a return welcome they would not soon forget.

The thousand pounds of lobster were a mere nothing. Up the broad Plata nosed the Brazilian battleship Sao Paulo with President Vargas aboard, the cruisers Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul, escorted by two Argentine battleships, six cruisers and a squadron of destroyers. High overhead zoomed a squadron of 13 Brazilian naval planes that had flown all the way from Rio de Janeiro. There should have been 18, but three were forced down at Rio Grande do Sul and two were reported missing. Crowds along the waterfront cheered the survivors to the echo.

Already in the harbor was the Brazilian transport Siqueira with 600 army and navy cadets aboard, and Brazil's pride, the brass band of the Brazilian Military Academy. Up to the dock where waited President Justo, and in their shiniest toppers, his entire Cabinet, warped the great Sao Paulo. Guns belched out national salutes, and in the midst of the hubbub there was suddenly a great banging of crate lids and fluttering of wings. Members of the Buenos Aires Pigeon Society were releasing 10,000 bewildered white birds, each with one wing striped blue and white for Argentina, the other yellow and green for Brazil.

In a State carriage, escorted by Argentine grenadiers, the two Presidents drove along the boulevards to the Presidential palace and a lobster dinner. After that the week was on.

Twenty-seven thousand Argentine school children, piping Brazilian patriotic airs in Portuguese, marched in one parade. President Vargas snipped a ribbon to open the newly widened Avenida Corrientes, driven at great expense through the middle of the business district. For eight city blocks it was roped off from traffic while 14 tango bands kept citizens dancing till dawn.

Violinist Fritz Kreisler opened his South American season with a recital. Belle Didjah, U.S. interpretative dancer, gave a performance of mechanistic eurythmics, and Ettore Panizza, fresh from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, conducted Gluck's Alceste. To entertain the swarms of Brazilian tourists that followed the fleet half a dozen road companies were giving dramatic performances in Portuguese.

Saturday was Argentina's Independence Day in memory of that May day in 1810 when crowds in Buenos Aires forced the resignation of the last Spanish viceroy and set up a native junta to govern the country. Presidents Justo & Vargas reviewed Brazilian cadets, aviators and most of the Argentine army from a stand in Congress Square. President Vargas was groggy on his feet and suffering from a bad cold but he kept bravely on with the celebration.

Lobster suppers, parties and parades were only a part of the Presidents' week. Together they witnessed the signing of treaties providing for a yearly interchange of professors, lecturers and students, the construction of an international bridge across the Uruguay River, a revised extradition pact, and the safeguarding of the two countries in case of internal conflict by barring conspirators and arms exports. They did their best to further the latest peace conference to end the interminable Chaco War (see p. 60). The Sao Paulo kept steam up, for this week it will ferry President Vargas across the river to Uruguay, where he will go through the whole routine again with President Gabriel Terra.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.