The Light Went Out

Just at the rush hour one afternoon last week, a group of men turned out of Buenos Aires' honking, bustling Avenida de Mayo into the quiet courtyard of the government-closed newspaper La Prensa. Five of the men were members of the congressional committee ordered to take over the paper and examine its books; the rest were cops and minor legal officials. In the courtyard, knots of employees fell silent as the government men went by.

At the paper's reception room, the group was met by Manuel Constenla, La Prensa's business manager, and Dr. Manuel Ordonez, its chief counsel. A police official ordered the building cleared and posted guards at the entrances. An editorial employee reported to Editor Jose Santos Gollan that a United Press messenger carrying cable dispatches had been refused permission to enter. Said Gollan softly: "Send the cables back. We are no longer giving orders here."

Under protest, La Prensa's representatives signed papers delivering the world-famed newspaper to the government (see PRESS). The congressional committee closed the books, impounded 800,000 pesos cash in the safe and ordered police to seal all doors save one. That night for the first time in the paper's 81-year history, the permanent light atop La Prensa's building--intended to symbolize reason and truth--was out.

One important figure who had not taken part in the government's closure of La Prensa was its owner and editor in chief, Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz. The morning after the takeover, Gainza Paz sent off a defiant letter to the congressional committee charging that it had exceeded its powers. Then he tried to board a plane to visit his mother, across the River Plate in Uruguay. Police told him his papers were not in order, held him till the plane had left and then let him go. Then Alberto Gainza Paz disappeared.

The disappearance of their main scapegoat, under indictment for "crimes against the state," threw the congressional committee into a boiling rage. For three days, every spare cop was flung into the chase, and government patrol craft nosed into every cove and inlet along the river coast. But their quarry got away. At week's end, Gainza Paz turned up safe at his mother's estate, 150 miles west of Montevideo.

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