Alone on the Job

President Juan Peron, a wide black mourning band on his left sleeve, sat for the first time last week behind Evita's old desk, ready to take up his duties as the new head of the Eva Peron Social Aid Foundation. As always, hundreds of applicants were waiting outside the Ministry of Welfare & Labor to beg favors. Though only a few were admitted, the President was at his smiling best.

"How are you, my daughter?" he asked his first petitioner, a mother with five children clustered round her. "Pretty good, my general," the woman replied. "I'm out of work and have five children and my landlord is about to throw me out because I'm seven months behind on the rent." And her husband? "He's out of work and can't get a job because he's just out of jail." When the President asked why he had been in jail, the woman began to cry. Peron said: "After all, what can a man out of work and with five children be but a thief?" Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out a fistful of banknotes. He gave the woman 2,000 pesos ($141), plus 500 pesos for each child and a 350-peso check to pay the rent, and promised to find jobs for both her and her husband.

Partly because of his added duties as boss of Evita's Social Aid Foundation and her Women's Party (whose presidency he also assumed last week), Peron has been working harder than ever now that he is alone on the job. Each morning he arrives punctually at 6:25 at the door of the Casa Rosada and gives the captain of the guard a hearty handshake before entering the building. By 6:30 he is busy signing papers. Since his wife's death, he has made no public statement, attended no public function.

If Evita is now a legend in the land, Peron is doing his best to make the legend work for him. Men like Jose Espejo, chief of the General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), might have made use of the legend for their own purposes were the C.G.T. a real union movement. The fact is, the C.G.T. is a tightly disciplined political party completely dominated by Peron. As a weapon in Peron's hand, the Evita legend can protect him against the enemies of the regime; critics of Peron can be shouted down by cries of treason against Evita. Whatever the loss of his wife has meant to Juan Peron, the loss of his co-ruler has not yet affected the power of Argentina's dictator.

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