Man with His Pants Off

"The people of Ecuador," said Senator-elect Galo Plaza Lasso, 41, "are tired of traditional parties. That's why they voted for us."

Debonair Galo Plaza and his "Democratic Civic Movement" had won an unexpected victory in last week's congressional elections. Organized just three weeks ago, running only in Quito, Ecuador's newest party had racked up a two-thirds majority, elected two Senators and picked off four out of Quito's five Deputies' seats. The Conservatives, hitherto dominant in the capital, were routed. Jubilantly, the new coalition of liberals, leftists and anticlericals set their sights for next year's presidential contest.

It was obvious that an old name still worked magic in Ecuador. The man who led the ticket last week was the ex-playboy son of General Leonidas Plaza, twice the country's President and strong man. He was also well known in North America. He had fought bulls in Ecuador, played football at the University of California, sold apples on Manhattan streets when his father cut off his allowance, and shipped as a junior purser with the Grace Line.

Back in Ecuador in 1933, he settled down, married a local society belle--and found the family fortunes in low estate. He proceeded to make the vast Plaza ranch north of Quito a model for Ecuador, brought in the country's first combine, six tractors, and blooded Holstein--Friesian herds. In 1938 he became Defense Minister. Galo Plaza quelled one students' strike by ringing the university with troops, entering and dragging out the two ringleaders by the scruff of their necks, then persuading the rest to quit.

When he went to Washington as Ambassador in 1944, he said: "I have never worn striped pants and I never will." Fellow diplomats got to know him as a genial, hard-drinking six-footer who preferred, in the Spanish phrase, "to talk with his pants off" (i.e., frankly). But he worked well with U.S. diplomats at San Francisco and Chapultepec. In 1946 he resigned in disapproval of President Velasco Ibarra's erratic domestic policies. Last week, Ecuadorians heard that he might not take his Senate seat, but declare himself at once as a candidate for President in 1948.

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