A Damp Firecracker

The prophecy had been of riots, bloodshed, even civil war. Instead, like a damp firecracker, there had been nothing. Under the hot sun of the southern summer, Argentines, some 3,000,000 of them, had gone to the polls in orderly fashion; 250,000 soldiers, sailors and police stood guard to guarantee the Army's pledge of a free and honest Presidential election.

Had the Army actually plumped for democracy? Or was it so sure that Strong Man Juan Domingo Peron would win anyhow that it could stage an honest election without risk? Or had Peron himself, confident in victory, decided that an outwardly fair election would be his best answer to charges of fascism? And if the election had been fair, was it not possible that, despite Peron's apparent strength, the Democratic Union's candidate Jose Tamborini might be the victor after all?

Argentines, the voting over, kept their fingers crossed. The nation had an unenviable history of vote-counting frauds. In the weeks before the final tallies, ballot boxes could be stuffed, stolen, switched.

The city and province of Buenos Aires, which controlled almost half of the nation's 376 electoral votes, would swing the election. Peron would show his chief strength among country peons and unorganized workers of the cities. Tamborini depended on the upper and middle classes and an unknown sector of organized labor. A potent, unmeasured factor: the Church, which took a jaundiced view of Tamborini's Communist support.

The U.S.'s Blue Book blast at Peron had apparently had little effect on the voting. Argentines, resentful of previous advice from abroad, did not welcome the latest installment with vivas. But neither did they let Peron use it as a red herring. The chief issue remained Peron's fitness to be President.

Devil or Saint? No Argentine had been such an international figure as Peron. Few had so dominated the Argentine horizon. The Argentine Who's Who of 1943 did not mention him. Yet two years later his name had become one to conjure with.

Peron, a swashbuckling, 50-year-old glamor boy, had more to him than the demagogical charm that caused a swoon ing woman to cry, "We want sons by Peron." More intelligent than his fellow militarists and politicians, he had noted the cracks in Argentina's feudal structure, turned them to his own ends. His method -- the Putsch, suppression of civil liberties, apparent social benefits to the under privileged -- was fascist. He had stirred up in the Argentine masses both hope and unrest that would not soon be stilled.

Peron had also been busy in international politics. His relations with the British, if not cordial, were polite; the British had to think of their huge investment in Argentina. He had flirted with the Russians, and at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco, Soviet Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov reportedly toyed with a Peron offer to enter diplomatic and trade negotiations, was persuaded that an attack on fascist Argentina was better international politics.

With Brazilians, Peron was said to have this understanding: they would support him in Inter-American circles just to the extent that he threatened continental security. Brazil would then continue to get help from the U.S. to combat the Argentine threat.

Peron had hoped to steer clear of trouble with the U.S. As a textbook apologist for German defeat in World War I, he had once advised: never go to war without insuring U.S. neutrality. For a time, when the U.S. brought about Argentina's admission to the UNO, Peron believed that neutrality had been achieved. But in defying the U.S. and its Ambassador Spruille Braden, Peron the Strong Man had disregarded the advice of Peron the strategist. That defiance might in the end be his undoing.

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