Brave Protest

Hopeful news leaked out of tight-sealed Paraguay last week. A courageous manifesto signed by 3,000 citizens requested President Higinio Morinigo to abandon his dictatorship, call popular elections so that Paraguay might align herself with the rest of the continent in the democratic way of life. First in the list of signers was revered Dr. Juan Boggino, poet, physiologist and Dean of the University of Asuncion. Morinigo answered the appeal with a wave of arrests and deportations of democratic elements. But he did not dare touch Dr. Boggino, for fear of nationwide resentment.

The manifesto was also a slap at Argentina, for Morinigo and the soldier politicians around him were a smudged carbon copy of Argentina's military Government. Unidad National, Argentine underground newspaper, claimed that Vice President Juan Domingo Peron had made a secret agreement with Paraguay's militarists, looking toward a "total customs union" with Argentina. The manifesto was a hint that the Paraguayan people might have something to say about that. The move would reduce Paraguay to an Argentine dependency, tend to bolster her unpopular military government.

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