An Army's Appetite

The million-odd citizens of agricultural Paraguay have taken great pride in their Army. Trained by a French mission, it had thrashed Bolivia (pop. about 3,000,000) in the bloody three-year Chaco war beginning in 1932 had come home to barracks a triumphant fighting force. But by this week some Paraguayans were taking a different view of their soldiers: they were eating the country out of house & home.

The man who finally voiced this view was Paraguay's round-faced, Dutch-descended Juan Plate, Minister of Finance. Last week, fed up, Juan. Plate resigned, gave his reasons in an angry document addressed to President Higinio Morinigo. A copy got out to Montevideo, and Dutchman Plate's blast against the Army be came public property.

The Spiraling Budget. What Minister Plate had to say was that the Army's insistent demands were driving Paraguay's budget clear out of sight; the Army was spending more annually than it had spent during the Chaco war. Under French-trained President Jose Felix Estigarribia, the Army had been kept in its place, but since Morinigo had taken office (1940), the colonels had got out of hand. Particularly rambunctious was the Chief of Staff, Colonel Bernardo Aranda, who had shown signs of liking the way the colonels did things down in Argentina. This year the Army's budget was 25 times what was given to the Ministry of Agriculture, 35 times as much as the Ministry of Commerce & Industry could get.

What finally burned Juan Plate to a crisp, it appeared, was what Chief of Staff Aranda had to say about a proposal to build schools for 74,000 Paraguayan children. The Colonel's answer: the Army's needs were more urgent; the children could wait. The Army would see to their education (the boys, anyhow) when they got to be 18.

When Colonel Aranda read Juan Plate's statement last week he thundered: "Paraguayans' patriotism must be protected from exotic ideologies and from political excesses. The crucible where this gift [patriotism] is forged is in the barracks."

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