Terror

LATIN AMERICA

Argentina's military Government last week treated the nation to a reign of terror unparalleled since the days of the 19th Century tyrant, Juan Manuel de Rosas. Vice President Juan Domingo Peron is reported to have told President Farrell: "We can govern either with freedom or through fear. We shall govern through fear." Now, few Argentines doubted that Colonel Peron meant to keep his word.

Slapped into Buenos Aires' Villa Devoto prison, into typhoid-scourged Martin Garcia concentration camp, and into bleak Neuquen prison in the Andean foothills were hundreds of conservatives, socialists, Communists, nationalists and many Argentines with no political convictions at all. When the jails bulged until they could take no more, the Peron police requisitioned private houses. Soon, prisoners were packed into spacious, tightly shuttered mansions in the swank suburbs of once-carefree Buenos Aires.

Then shrewd, jolly Spruille Braden, the new U.S. Ambassador, chatted with correspondents. Ambassador Braden flatly denied that the U.S. and Britain preferred to deal with the Farrell Government because they believed they could get more from them than from a democratic regime. He added in nondiplomatic language that no dictator could misunderstand: "We are fighting throughout the whole world for the cause of democracy, and when we say fighting for democracy, we mean just that. It is our purpose to support all democracies and we would like to see democratic governments in all parts of the world."

Braden's statement left startled Argentine officialdom agape. It also gave fresh heart to democratic Argentines of all classes. Newspapers which dared to speak hailed Braden as the instrument of a real Good Neighbor policy. But the wave of arrests continued.

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