Come Clean!

The Bolivian Government of President Gualberto Villarroel, suspected of totalitarian connections and unrecognized except by Argentina, tried to clean itself up last week. Finance Minister Dr. Victor Paz Estenssoro, intellectual leader of the December revolt which put the regime in power (TIME, Jan. 3), announced that the Government had expropriated all Axis firms. The day before, three members of the regime quit.*

The improvement was not great. The men who left were suspect, but so were those who replaced them. Two of the new men are members of the MNR (Mommiento National Revolucionario). Still in power is Mastermind Estenssoro, leader of the MNR. Still outside the Cabinet is Jose Antonio Arze, leader of the leftist PIR (Partido de Izquierda Revolucionario) and at present a favorite of the U.S. State Department.

In the State Department's recently stiffened opinion, the Villarroel regime still has to earn recognition.

*Major Alberto Taborga, strong-armed Minister of the Interior, was replaced by tall, serious Lieut. Colonel Alfredo Pacheco, chief of the Air Force, who once studied flying in the U.S. Twenty-nine-year-old Rafael Otazo, vehement against nearly everything, replaced Minister of Agriculture Carlos Montenegro, who has much the same reputation. Nervous, nationalistic Walter Guevara became Secretary General of the Government in place of Augusto Cespedes, moving spirit of the newspaper La Calle, once blacklisted by the U.S.

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