Insane Asylum

Never in Latin American history had the tradition of diplomatic asylum been so heavily used or so flagrantly abused. With the collapse of Jacobo Arbenz' Communist-manned government, about 900 people fled to nine embassies, taking the time-honored escape route after losing a revolution. Some of the refugees were top officials of the old regime, notably Arbenz himself, most of his Cabinet and a quorum of Congress. Others were panicky henchmen, fearful that they might be held responsible for the last month of Red terror, beatings and killings. In bad conscience, many thought it prudent to take with them wives, children, and even servants.

Bedless Bedlam. Mexican Ambassador Primo Villa Michel had never troubled to hide his sympathy for the Red-lining old regime. As a reward, his midtown embassy got 416 of the new refugees. The building is a high-ceilinged old house of 20 offices and rooms but without grounds or garden. Together with a hastily rented house next door, it soon took on the look of an 18th century slave ship. Asylum seekers, including 60 squalling babies, sprawled on mattresses spread in halls, offices and reception rooms. There was no privacy; on the stairs, people slept, read, quarreled or flirted, oblivious to the constant traffic. Long queues stretched back from the four bathrooms.

Ambassador Villa Michel chivalrously gave his own bedroom to Arbenz, who fell off the wagon and went on a thundering three-day bender, after which a doctor straightened him out with glucose injections. Former Foreign Minister Guillermo Toriello visited the ex-President from time to time, but most of the other inmates never saw him. Jose Manuel Fortuny, No. I Communist and longtime Arbenz adviser, had an urgent personal problem: his wife was at the point of giving birth. The former Health Minister, also in asylum, delivered the baby, a boy, whom Fortuny gratefully saddled with the name Cuauhteemoc, in honor of Mexico's last Aztec prince.

In sharp contrast to this crowding, the Argentine embassy offered relative luxury. Its huge downstairs rooms provided ample mattress room for 175. All had the run of two acres of lawns and gardens.

One of the asylum seekers at the Chilean embassy turned out to have typhus--and was hastily turned out.

Final Freedom. As though sheer numbers had not already strained the controversial custom of asylum, the guests abused it further. Violating conventions that require them to stay incommunicado, they phoned, received visitors, talked through doors and windows. Money and arms were passed in and out. The new government, convinced that the cash had been filched from the treasury, tried to stop the traffic with a warning to the ambassadors concerned, finally ringed the embassies with cops.

Castillo Armas also announced that his "determination in general is not to allow the departure of any refugee guilty of common crimes," and said he thought he could show that Arbenz was the "author of a common crime." But to deny safe-conducts, at least for the important refugees, would be to defy both the generous interpretation of the right of asylum that Guatemala has traditionally held, and the government of Mexico. Guatemala's traditional friend. Worse, seizing Arbenz might enable him to pose as a martyr.

Castillo Armas may stall long enough to make Arbenz and friends cough up some of the public funds they have stolen.

Eventually, he will probably let them go.

To that end, Mexico last week officially requested safe-conducts for Arbenz and his family.

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