Celebration

The Japanese surrender offer sent crowds surging through the streets of Buenos Aires, waving Allied flags, shouting democratic slogans, denouncing Peron and his militarists. With the official surrender, a cheering throng streamed past the Subsecretariat of Press and Information. Pistols spat from the windows, killing two paraders and wounding many more. Police charged the democrats.

Like the Brown Shirts. This gunplay touched off four days of rioting, unsurpassed in Buenos Aires for 26 years. The same day, while the victory celebrants were whooping it up elsewhere, a score or so of pro-Government hoodlums, "uniformed" in white raincoats and armed with brass knuckles and revolvers, marched down the Calle Florida, Buenos Aires' Fifth Avenue. They shouted "Viva Peron!" "Down with democracy!" "Down with the Jews!" They smashed the windows of pro-Allied shopowners, and looted their window displays.

Soldiers also rioted. When Dr. Alberto Maria Candioti, former Argentine Ambassador to Mexico, reprimanded them, he was told that they were obeying "superior orders." Said a diplomat who had been in Berlin during the early days of Hitler: "Just like the brown shirts."

The next night, backed by soldiers, the hoodlums in white attacked the newspaper Critica and tried to burn its building. Critica telephoned for police, but none came. So the newspaper sounded the siren on its roof. The victory crowd rushed up, drove out the Government forces at the cost of two dead, many wounded.

Cold Rain & New Friends. For several days, the crowds surged back & forth across the city. At last police charged the demonstrators with sabers, dispersed them with machine guns. A deluge of icy rain helped to clear the streets.

With the rioting over, recriminations began. The press blamed the Government; Peron blamed "the Communists." The Minister of the Interior, Hortensio Quijano, threatened "extreme measures."

U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden, speaking at a victory celebration of the American colony, left no doubt about the U.S. attitude toward the Argentine militarists. "Victory," said Braden, "has brought us new and surprising friends. The victorious United Nations are now being acclaimed in some high places by those who in the past . . . attached themselves and their destinies to the Axis. . . . The peoples of the world have learned that Fascist militarists . . . will stop at nothing. ... To defeat them we have paid a staggering price. . . . We shall not forget this lesson merely because petty tyrants are now assuming the disguise of spurious democracy. No longer can a self-respecting world . . . accept a government that rules through violence. ..."

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