The Firing Squads

The Argentine uprising (TIME, June 18) was planned as no mere harassment of the government, but an all-out revolution. As President Pedro Aramburu reconstructed it, the plot's recruits came from groups that supported ex-Strongman Juan Peron: labor leaders, diehard Peronista bullyboys, cashiered officials. Communists helped, and Peron sent funds. The uprising failed mainly because the government uncovered enough of it a fortnight ago to panic some hotheads into striking six days early. As a result, the twelve-hour revolt had only a fraction of its plotted impact; e.g., the planned wave of strikes never got started.

The dead seriousness of the plot explained the rough repression-by-execution that followed. The first 20 or so killings took place so soon after the shooting that they could be blamed on the heat of the battle. But the last score were formal executions, carried out mostly against insurgent military men. The condemned, blindfolded, stood against the wall late at night in barracks' squares or the yard of the National Penitentiary, and eight-man volunteer firing squads (four with live ammunition, four with blanks) shot them.

One of the two top plotters, General Juan Jose Valle, died in front of the rifles. The other, General Raul Tanco, escaped in disguise to asylum in the Haitian embassy. Pro-government vigilantes, waving machine guns, kidnaped him from his refuge and turned him over to the army for execution. But Aramburu, respecting the right of asylum, ordered Tanco to be sent back to the embassy, from where he will probably take safe foreign exile.

The executions, which pointedly disregarded long-standing laws against capital punishment, stirred misgivings among many Argentines, but no impressive wave of public criticism. Yet to be seen was whether the stern punishment would slow down the pace of plotting.

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