The Rocky Road Back
(See Cover)
Cool autumn winds off the River Plate stirred fitfully through Buenos Aires this week, fluttering bright political posters on the walls, wafting a rich aroma from the stand-up coffee bars, riffling the leaves of the acacia trees. Steamers hooted in the harbor, cattle bawled in the stockyards, streetcars clanged and creaked. In the restaurants, solid citizens, their appetites renewed by the crisp air, tucked napkins into collars and turned with sober and fastidious attention to platter-size steaks and tall bottles of red wine. At night, in the tango palaces, unsmiling couples danced as black-suited singers mourned:
You will see that everything is a lie, You will see that there is no love . . . Even though you are gnawed with pain, Never expect any help, Nor a friendly hand, nor a favor.
Across the pampas, tractors towed combines out of the fields. Twenty million liters of wine mellowed in gigantic oak casks in western Mendoza. Off toward Cape Horn, coats thickened on 19 million sheep. In the subtropical north, the machetes of the cane cutters flashed in the sun.
Dictatorship in Bankruptcy. In Argentina, life--as the tango writers are prone to put it--went on. Few people starved or lacked a roof. But the superficial signs were misleading. A decade of Dictator Juan Domingo Peron had cost
Argentina heavily, and the price was clearly written in arrested economy, political breakdown, unfavorable international trade and demoralization of the people.
The receiver of the bankrupt dictatorship is Provisional President Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, 54, a two-star general. His lot has been an economic migraine headache compounded by unending plots against him and dismaying political anxieties. Because he is unexcitable and firm, he has not only survived for 18 months but has also turned his nation around and faced it toward political and economic revival. Even more notably, he has made an articulate, reiterated, unequivocal promise to liquidate his own regime as well as Peron's, and give the government back to elected civilians.
"Ours was a revolution against the dictatorial state system," says Aramburu. "We could not live in it. We were suffocating. We fought for the right to live." Of himself and the four military commanders who help him run his government, Aramburu says: "It is not a new thing in our country, and it seems to be a Latin American evil, that military personalities seek to make themselves dictators through recourse to the arms that the people themselves pay for. We shall so conduct ourselves that the army, in a democratic spirit, as in such other countries as the U.S., England and France, may remain aloof from partisan political strife."
Oranges & Icebergs. The land where totalitarianism made its most ominous inroad in the Americas is the world's eighth largest. Argentina stretches 2,300 miles from orange-grove regions in the north to end-of-the-earth Tierra del Fuego and its iceberg-dotted seas in the south. The heart of the country is a Texas-size plain--the pampas--covered with stoneless black loam three to eleven feet deep. The piney lake country of the southern Andes boasts boar-hunting and skiing. Buenos Aires, the capital, with 5,900,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area, vies with Los Angeles as the Hemisphere's third largest city.
Snobs in Argentina call their country "the only all-white nation south of Canada." A century ago it was the home of hardly more than 1,000,000 people, notably Spanish-and-Indian Gauchos. Then, with a rush of immigration, Argentina populated itself. In came Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Frenchmen, Armenians--and an influential trickle of Britons. The immigration was choked down in 1930, but the nation was shaped; this year the population will top 20 million.
The Britons brought barbed wire, railways, blooded cattle, banks, sheep-dip, polo, afternoon tea, insurance companies and soccer (one Argentine soccer team is still called NewelPs Old Boys). The European Latins, combining in Argentina, gave the nation an awe-inspiring sense of dignidad and a national melancholy. But as if to temper these characteristics, they also developed a sneaking admiration for the vivo, the crafty "live one," the type who knows where to get it wholesale, how to find the loophole in the law, when to bluff and when to bribe.
Path to Tyranny. It was a strongman as vivo as they come who took over the rich Argentine nation and its. literate, well-fed, proud people in the middle of World War II. In 1943 Colonel Juan Domingo Peron was named Labor Minister of a military government so inept that it had changed Presidents three times in a year. By ramming through higher wages for the forgotten-man industrial workers, he formed a howling group of backers big enough to defy the rich and powerful "oligarchs." His government won over the Roman Catholic clergy by restoring compulsory religious instruction in state schools. He gained the presidency in a fair election in 1946.
In office, Peron molded the descamisados* into a huge General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), gave raises with the generosity of a Gaucho on a spree. As Aramburu now puts it, Peron made labor think that the "supreme social achievement is well-paid laziness." He kept the support of the armed forces by coddling them with arms, perquisites and pay raises. To the vast distaste of his rich and cultured opponents, he turned organized charity over to his wife Eva, a shrewd, ambitious onetime radio actress. Evita made it into a $100 million-a-year business, handed out pesos by the fistful at great-lady sessions with the poor.
Massively backed, Peron razed Argentine democracy. He turned Congress into a Peronista rubber stamp, had it impeach and convict the balky Supreme Court. In a rewritten "social-justice" constitution, he legalized the re-election of Presidents for his own benefit, gave the state power to "intervene in the economy." He deluged the country with billboard propaganda: "Peron Fulfills, Evita Dignifies." With malicious glee he seized Buenos Aires' La Prensa, long famed as one of the world's topflight newspapers, turned it into a mouthpiece for the C.G.T. And with engaging buffoonery, he joked at his own career: "As the man who fell from the skyscraper said upon passing the third floor, so far I'm doing fine."
Path to "Self-Sufficiency." Peron's take-over of the economy was a casebook example of dictator-knows-best fumbling. His goal was industrialization--nationalistic "self-sufficiency." The main tool was a state foreign-trading agency called (from its initials in Spanish) IAPI.
By manipulating exchange rates, IAPI bought meat and grains from farmers at low prices, sold the commodities abroad for whatever the traffic would bear. In the famished postwar world, lAPI's profits were immense; it used the income to buy industrial machines and raw materials abroad for resale cheap to Peronista manufacturers. Industry--subsidized, tariff-protected and inefficient, but nonetheless industry--grew 63% between 1943 and 1956. Argentina began or expanded the production of chemicals, canned goods, paint, paper, machine tools, motorcycles, tires, tobacco, plastics, plywood, surgical instruments, steel furniture, motors, matches, cement, batteries, refrigerators, TV sets. At length industrial production topped farm production.
But as Europe's war-torn farmlands came back into production, world commodity prices fell. LAPI's income tumbled. Peron had to dip into Argentina's gold and foreign-exchange reserves, a fabulous $1.6 billion piled up during the war, to pay for the raw materials that the new industry was gobbling up. Next, he set the Central Bank's currency printing presses to work. In the chain breakdown:
P:Nine million acres of land went out of production.
P:Money in circulation multiplied eightfold, the cost of living sixfold.
P:Productivity sagged, and the gross national product stayed nearly stationary for ten years.
P:Graft became a significant economic hemorrhage.
The zany industrialization plan neglect ed to provide either a basic heavy industry or sufficient power for itself. Electricity shortages cut production, ruined equipment, half-darkened Buenos Aires. As for fuel, Peron left the job of producing oil in the hands of the government-owned State Oilfields (Y.P.F.), which failed so badly that home production dropped from 75% of needs ten years ago to 35% now.
At last the dictator saw that his haywire economic development lacked those prime essentials of productivity--labor efficiency and capital investment. He appealed to the C.G.T., but the unions had made their featherbed and were happy to lie in it. Seeking investment, he signed a contract for Standard Oil of California to explore and develop a null chunk of Patagonia. Because it was dealing with arbitrary Juan Peron, Calso insisted on the right to appeal deadlocked company-country disputes to the American Petroleum Institute. Even loyal Peronistas grumbled at that. At the same time, Peron turned angrily and senselessly against the clergy. He abolished religious instruction in public schools, and his toughs set fires in nine big Buenos Aires churches. His end was at hand.
Plot's Roots. The stern lines of disapproval that are the normal set of Pedro Aramburu's face deepened as he watched his country's political and economic slide. In 1950, as a colonel, Aramburu joined three other army officers in the beginning of the plot that finally dethroned Peron. Over the years the plotters brought in officers from the other services. They drew first blood from the dictatorship on June 16, 1955, when navy and air force planes bombed the Casa Rosada, the downtown presidential office building, killing 360. But Peron had fled minutes before to the neighboring Army Ministry.
Militarily, the next try, just three months later, was even less brilliant. The rebels under General Eduardo Lonardi took inland Cordoba, but General Aramburu, attempting to subvert the garrison at Curuzu Cuatia, had to get out afoot when Peron poured reinforcements against him. After three days of fighting, Peron's general staff in Buenos Aires correctly concluded that it could contain the uprising--and it probably would have, except for a rebel admiral named Isaac Rojas, who had commanded the uprising at a naval base, was now heading for the capital in the captured cruiser General Belgrano, once the U.S.S. Phoenix. Rojas' fighting reputation had gone ahead of him. "Damnation!" growled Peron, "he's likely to shoot!"--and scampered for refuge in the Paraguayan embassy. Says Aramburu now: "We never expected him to prove such a coward. If he had taken the field against us, the revolution would have been crushed."
Deperonization. The luck of the struggle dictated that Heroes Lonardi and Rojas should be the new President and Vice President. Because the revolution had no goals beyond liberation, the succeeding days became a time for opportunistic maneuvering by the political forces of right, center and left. The right soon captured Lonardi and sold him a policy of appeasing Peronistas in the hope of forming them into a right-wing political party. Item: Lonardi refused to take La Prensa away from the C.G.T. Other revolutionary leaders watched in rising dismay. One Sunday afternoon two months after Lonardi took office, the revolutionaries gently eased him out and installed Aramburu, who, as army chief of staff, had been impressively deperonizing the officer corps. President Aramburu never saw his plotting companion again. Lonardi died within four months of a cancer that had begun to weaken him even before he was deposed.
Aramburu and Rojas brought the rudder back from right to dead ahead, and got on with their mission. The government restored the U.S.-style constitution that had served, until Peron emasculated it, since 1853. The regime wiped Peron's name from public display in Argentina, except for curbstone scribblings and his father's tomb. An expedition was sent up Aconcagua, the Hemisphere's highest (alt. 22,835 ft.) mountain, to topple a bust of the dictator. A team of clerks screened thousands of references to his name from the Buenos Aires telephone book--but recently discovered that the listing of the "Committee to Obtain the Nobel Prize for Peron" had somehow slipped through.
The liberators freed the press and the politicians. La Prensa was restored to its owners, reappeared as a free paper. The new government unfettered the courts, named high-caliber judges, staged free union elections, stamped out most corruption. Most important, without the incessant dawdling of most Latin American military governments, the regime scheduled presidential and congressional elections, set next Feb. 23 as the hard-and-fast date for them. Aramburu barred any official of his government, including himself, from running in the elections. He also called for the election on July 28 of a Constituent Assembly to enact constitutional amendments aimed at curbing presidential powers and strengthening Congress, to head off future dictatorships.
To any challenge of violent opposition by bitter-end Peronistas, Aramburu has been harsh. A year ago, when Peronista General Juan Jose Valle, Aramburu's classmate at the Military Academy, led a shooting attempt at counterrevolution, the President, weeping, signed an order for Valle's execution by firing squad.
Reconstruction. The conquering generals quickly sought expert economic advice from Raul Prebisch, who was general manager of the Central Bank before Peron. Almost at once they scrapped IAPI, devalued the peso. Farmers were again able to keep, with some exceptions, what their -exported crops earned. The effect: a fattened peso return for agriculture. Planting and animal breeding zoomed. The cattle population is up from a low of 40 million to 49 million, i.e., 2 1/2 head for every Argentine v. one-half in the U.S. This year's wheat harvest was 36% greater than last year's. Exports poured out, earned Argentina $944 million in 1956 v. $928 million in Peron's last year.
Checking the urge to buy foreign luxuries, the new regime confined its imports chiefly to essentials, raw materials for the industrial machine unwillingly inherited but impossible to shut down. Despite austerity, purchases last year cost $184 million more than Argentina's foreign sales brought in. That left not a centavo to spare for catching up on power and fuel needs. Both were jobs that private foreign capital, if welcomed, would like to try. But Aramburu, feeling the hot breath of prideful nationalism, has not given the invitation. The $500 million, U.S.-owned American & Foreign Power Co. Inc. offered last December to invest $145 million and double Buenos Aires' power supply. Argentina declined. With all too little exaggeration, one power expert predicts: "By 1960 you'll be going around Buenos Aires with a candle."
Nowhere does emotion defy statistics more than in the case of oil. Argentina has reserves estimated at 882 million bbl., yet last year it paid out $220 million, a sum greater than its foreign-trade loss, to import oil from Venezuela and elsewhere. The Suez crisis cost the country a cruel $100 million in higher crude prices and freights. Foreign oil companies would get the oil out of the ground or spend millions in Argentina trying. Instead, oil-is-ours nationalism assigns petroleum development to the capital-short, bureaucratic Y.P.F.
Rule by Junta. President Aramburu does not want to be a strongman, and he is by no means free to be one. He is the head of the military junta which includes Admiral Rojas and the Ministers of Army, Navy and Air. The junta makes the government's decisions by majority vote (until elections, there is no Congress). Aramburu guides the debate and breaks ties. Any single member, if he balks hard enough, can veto any measure. And if the junta were to tell Aramburu that he had lost its confidence, he would step out at once.
Early in the life of the regime, many Argentines suspected that Admiral Rojas was the strongman, the brain and nerve behind Aramburu. Since then, the President has shown abundant forcefulness and leadership, and Rojas has proved willing to remain the loyal subordinate. One reason is that the two men are personal friends, dedicated to the same ideals. Another is that the army (100,000 men) and the air force (20,000) might become ominously restive if an admiral of the navy (20,000) were made President. "Between the admiral and me," says Aramburu, "there is great understanding. He is always at my side, seconding me. I consult him on every decision."
Formal, Frugal. The President of Argentina is stiff, shy, occasionally gloomy, gravely formal, sparing of speech. He is a professional soldier, a graduate of Argentina's Prussian-style Military Academy. He is not one of the generals Peron used to corrupt with favors, and he lives frugally and simply. "I don't like social affairs," says Aramburu. "Never did. I am one of those men who do not fear to be alone." His only hobby, dropped for now, is attending auctions of household goods with his wife Sara--and they have never had enough money for serious bidding. The Aramburus have two grown children, Sara Elena and Eugenio Carlos. The President never belonged to a political party, calls himself a "man of the center."
He finds the rough-and-tumble of politics a noisy bore. Once, during a particularly tedious Cabinet session, he murmured something about having to leave "for urgent reasons," went to a side door of the Casa Rosada and hailed a taxi. He rode to a teashop, had a leisurely dish of ice cream, taxied back to the office, gravely rejoined the session. Junta meetings seem more natural to him. Aramburu greets his high military counselors casually: "Hello, Rojas. Afternoon, Admiral. General, how are you?" To them he remains "Senor Presidente." There is always some banter and small talk before the junta gets down to running Argentina.
The Other Man. A nuisance that often faces the junta from afar is Juan Peron in exile.
The dictator left Argentina with his reputation thickly spattered. The Calso contract had been turned effectively against him. He had funked when attacked. The story came out of how the 61-year-old dictator had taken Teen-Ager Nelly Rivas as his mistress after Evita died. (Argentines joked that someone asked Peron: "Didn't you know she was only 13?" His answer: "Yes, but I'm not superstitious.") "Daddykins" was shown upon his fall to have had a flair for bearskin rugs, gold-plated phones, mirror-lined boudoirs. His loot in dollars, according to Argentine Economist Rodolfo Katz, totaled $500 million.
But to millions of Peronistas, looting, wenching and taking a powder only proved Peron a vivo. The shirtless ones have forgotten his crimes and peccadilloes, remembering his government-ordered wage increases and job security. Now, from
Venezuela,-he runs clandestine campaigns of sabotage and propaganda. Peronistas chalk on walls:
Ladron o no ladron, Queremos a Peron! (Thief or not, We want Peron!)
Attended by a faithful army major and a chauffeur-valet, Peron lives in a $195-a-month, modernistic Caracas apartment. From one wall, a picture of his late wife'Evita faces a colored snapshot of his newest girl, 23-year-old Isabel Martinez, an Argentine dancer he met in a Panama rum mill. In his room is a red-quilted bed of the size Latin Americans call "matrimonial." Peron has a steel desk and revolving chair, keeps a huge correspondence going to Argentina by couriers. "I have a better diplomatic service," he jokes, "than the Argentine government."
Minority to Majority. Peron's money, his propaganda and his diehard, plotting followers have made running trouble for Aramburu. But ironically enough, hotheaded, ambitious underlings from among the revolutionaries have been nearly as difficult a problem. In the last three months the President has had to knock heads together in all three services, only last week resolved an army squabble by arresting or shifting half a dozen officers who had fought with him against Peron. Equally ticklish times lie just ahead.
Staging the election of the Constituent Assembly in July is sure to be a perilously hard-fought trial heat of the main race next February. Once in session, the Assembly may 1) go wild and declare itself sovereign, 2) attempt a sweeping rewrite of the whole constitution, or 3) haggle so long as to overrun the general elections. Aramburu might conceivably be forced to close down the Assembly.
If the Assembly comes off in good order, the minority regime that ousted the Peronista majority will then face the task of returning the government, remodeled and deloused, to the majority. The obvious danger is that the majority, at elections, will choose a government so near Peronism as to thwart the major objective of the revolution. To keep some neo-Peron from winning, Aramburu has applied to former Peronista officials the same ban on running for office that he applies to those of his own regime. He has also burned Peronista Party registrations (partly as a wipe-the-slate measure). But the government will let former Peronistas vote--as no one understands better than the present front-running candidate, Arturo Frondizi.
Lanky Arturo Frondizi is the leader of the biggest faction of the Radicals--the citified, middle-class party that used to contest elections with the land-owning Democrats, i.e., conservatives, before Peron took power. He was one of the little band of Peron fighters in Congress in the late '40s. Grabbing control of the Radical Party machine after the revolution, he rushed through his own nomination for the presidency. To former Peronista voters, who may number as many as 4,500,000, Frondizi preaches a line sure to please the disgruntled: everything is wrong and it's somebody else's fault. Privately, he assures alarmed critics that he would be a sensible middle-of-the-roader.
Some officers favor canceling the election if Frondizi wins, and favor ousting Aramburu if he fails to head off a Frondizi victory. Friends say that Aramburu himself deeply deplores Frondizi's demagoguery, and fears what it may do to Argentina. But the President takes paradoxical pride in Frondizi's confident attacks as the best proof of Argentina's conviction that Aramburu will not try to perpetuate himself. "We think that there must be a great national debate in which ideas can be freely expressed," says Pedro Aramburu. Then he adds: "The day when I hand over power to an elected government will be the happiest of my life."
-Literally, "shirtless ones." A term used as a sneer by an anti-Peron newspaper and picked up by Peron as a propaganda weapon. - Where last week his waiting car was demolished by flames set off by a mysterious bomb five minutes before he was to enter it.
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