Damage Control

In happier circumstances--for Argentina, at any rate--Juan Domingo Peron might have made an excellent naval damage-control officer. Last week he set coolly about the job of containing and repairing his losses from the June revolt. For President Peron, the single worst damage from the explosion was public outrage at the burning of nine Roman Catholic churches by Peronista arsonists (see below). It was to the task of conciliating the church, with the least possible loss of face, that he turned first.

Peron had already called for the election of a constituent assembly with the sole task of divorcing the church from the state. Before the ugly church-burnings. Peron would probably have won his point; now he wants to avoid a test of strength. His solution apparently is to seek a concordat, i.e., a diplomatic agreement with the Vatican regulating church-state relations. Even negotiating for a concordat might be pretext enough to postpone the election, which was to have taken place by November.

Men Overboard. To pave the way. Peron last week employed a familiar technique: lightening ship by throwing overboard once useful cronies.* Out went the two front men of his anti-church campaign: Minister of Interior Angel Gabriel Borlenghi (who departed in haste to Uruguay) and Minister of Education Armando Mendez San Martin. To replace them he swore in ("by God, the Fatherland and the Holy Gospels") a pair of party hacks: Oscar Edmundo Albrieu, 40, as Interior Minister, and Francisco Marcos Anglada, 38, as Education Minister. Both were moderate enough to represent a concession to the church, but Peronista enough to make it clear that Peron was not surrendering abjectly. Peron also dumped overboard Eduardo Vuletich, head of the Peronista labor unions who had ardently urged disestablishment of the church.

Church officials preserved strict silence on political matters, but several thousand of their communicants staged a spontaneous procession to the burned churches, and shouted for the return of Bishop Manuel Tato, one of the high-ranking prelates exiled by Peron just before the revolt. In another effective gesture. Buenos Aires' Bishop Miguel de Andrea, the only high-ranking Argentine prelate who steadfastly opposed Peron during the 1945-54 period, threw off his colorful vestments at the altar in burned San Miguel Church and told the congregation that henceforth he would wear only simple black as a sign that his soul was in mourning. But the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador, began quiet talks with Peron's Foreign Minister. The presumed topic: a concordat that would separate church from state in the manner of most of the rest of the world.

Minor Repairs. Peron meanwhile went on to repair some lesser damage. By pointedly refraining from filling the Cabinet vacancies with army officers, he kept the army in its place, which (for the higher officer corps) seems to be that of a dictator-admiring gang, happy with the pay, perquisites and polite graft that Peron provides. Despite persistent reports that the rebellious elements of the navy still had some bargaining power, he removed revolt-leading Rear Admiral Anibal Olivieri from comfortable barracks arrest to the National Penitentiary, and arrested officers at the Belgrano naval base. Then Peron called off the state of siege declared at the height of the revolt.

That, of course, meant no new birth of freedom for troubled Argentina. Things just reverted to the usual "state of internal war" under which Peron has wielded unconstitutional powers of arrest and repression for four years.

*Some notable pals who walked the plank in earlier years: Cipriano Reyes, who mobilized packinghouse workers to catapult Peron to power in 1945, arrested (and still jailed after seven years); Miguel Miranda, Peron's onetime economic czar, ousted: Juan Bramuglia, Foreign Minister who incurred the wrath of Eva Peron, and Oscar Ivanissevich. Education Minister who wrote the pep song Peronista Boys, both forced to resign: Domingo Mercante, governor of Buenos Aires Province, humiliated and ousted; Juan Duarte, Peron's own brother-in-law and private secretary, repudiated and fired (he committed suicide).

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