Peron's Real Aim

Behind locked doors for five days last February, President Juan Peron and top advisers met with Argentina's 16 provincial governors. Last week a report of their candid conversations leaked out.

"The Rest Are Barbarians." "Just think what I have accomplished with the Argentine people," said Juan Peron. "In 1944, if I had asked who thought as I did, the immediate answer would have been: 'Nobody. We all disagree with you.' But then I began to work . . .

"Now, it would be difficult to imagine a more advantageous situation than ours--a national government composed entirely of

Peronistas, 16 provincial governments composed entirely of Peronistas, and all the national territories run entirely by Peronistas . . ." The time had come, the President suggested, for consolidation: "We must gradually convert [the Peronista movement] from a mass movement into a political institution."

To do this, Peron explained, "It will be necessary ... to carry out the permanent task of indoctrinating the mass. If we aren't capable of forming a mass that thinks in the same manner, has the same aim, and acts in the same way, it would almost be better not to try; because when men think differently, then they fight . . . According to the results of last November's election Peronism has 70% of the population ... We shall eventually be able to say 70% of all Argentines are Peronistas, the rest barbarians."

What to do about the barbarians? "We must leave the revolver," said Peron, "and try the violin, to see if it gives better results. Later there will be time to return to the revolver . . .

"There must remain not one single official who fails to share our way of thinking and feeling absolutely and totally. One goes to the government offices . . . and finds that half the employees are reading a newspaper or racing form."

The theme was further developed by Dr. Raul Mende, Minister of Technical Affairs, and the regime's top theoretician. "There remain some who . . . believe in divergent doctrines . . . These must be expelled ... We must follow the procedure laid down by General Peron: The first requirement is that [officials] be Peronistas, second that they be honest and thirdly, if possible, competent."

Peron & Christ. Mende continued: "In all the great religious doctrines, the men who created them--Christ, Mohammed, Buddha and Confucius--worked for a popular human idea. They could not help that the doctrines they preached without personal ambitions came to be known by their names . . ." Mende warned the leaders to get their guidance from on high and to beware of "pseudo doctrinaires," who try to fashion their own Peronism. "The thoughts of General Peron and the thoughts of Madam Eva Peron, these can be ascertained instantly, because we have all their speeches from 1943 to date, duly classified in an ingenious index . . .

"If we take advantage of this historic moment, we shall impose Justicialism* on the world and the coming century will be Justicialist. And men & women will say that they owe their material and spiritual happiness not to Justicialism but to Peron and Evita. This will be our greatest glory."

_ Last week, in her first full-dress speech since her November operation, Evita Peron accurately reflected this policy. To a crowd in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo, she said: "There are traitors who in the darkness of night want to poison the soul and body of Peron, which is the soul and body of the country. I pray to God not to let these fools lift their hands against Peron, because, beware, the day they do, I shall march with the women, with the workers and with the shirtless ones, and no brick shall be left standing that is not a Peronista brick!"

* Peron's label for his "third position" between capitalism and communism: a kind of welfare state backed by police power which, in Peron's reckoning, adds up to "social justice."

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