"Thirty Years Behind"

Two freely elected bodies of Argentine citizens were trying--painfully, confusingly--to shape a democratic future for a nation still rent by a decade of dictatorship. At the inland city of Santa Fe last week, 205 members of a constituent assembly gathered to write a constitution to replace the dictatorial charter used by deposed Strongman Juan Peron. In a Buenos Aires dance hall, Peronista and anti-Peronista labor leaders fought for control of the all-embracing General Labor Confederation (C.G.T.). President Pedro Aramburu, the uncompromising general who heads the provisional regime, spurred them on with urgent warnings. "While the world marches rapidly ahead," he said, in one of a series of speeches, "we continue mentally and materially living 30 years behind the times."

"Slipping Backward." Aramburu scornfully blamed Peron's dizzy, spendthrift economic policy. "If Argentina today had the foreign trade it had in 1943," said Aramburu, "it would be the first country of South America." Instead, workers continue to demand wage hikes without boosting productivity, creating a "vicious circle" of rising prices. Unlike Brazil, which is developing "great industries with modern techniques and foreign financial aid." too many Argentines still spout "wornout slogans about nationalism, about the oligarchs, about statism. We are slipping backwards every day."

The President placed much of the blame on irresponsible politicians, but he also had words of warning for his own military comrades, who might be thinking of delaying the return to democracy. "We did not overthrow one man.'' he said, "to substitute another. We would rather have a mediocre government as long as it represents the will of the people." The plan to hold presidential elections Feb. 23 and turn over power in May "will be inexorably carried out," and any interference by power-hungry men would meet "the granite wall of the people's will."

Stumbling Ahead. At the constituent assembly the granite will was none too evident. Instead of settling down to work on the constitutional reforms--mostly curbs on the executive power, designed to prevent another Peron--the delegates erupted in squabbles. The Intransigent Radicals, hot after the Peronista vote, provided a casebook example of the demagoguery that Aramburu deplored by denouncing the assembly's legality. The chairman clamped down on the tirade, and the 77-man Intransigent bloc stormed out of the hall. And the 75-man bloc of the People's Radicals were too split among themselves to assume their hoped-for role of leadership in favor of reform.

But from the labor-union Congress came evidence that Peronista influence is on the wane. When Aramburu & Co. bounced Peron, they also tossed out Peronista labor leaders down to the local level, replacing them with government interventors. In the elections in the locals this year, some of the old Peronistas came back to power, gaining control of the meat, textile and metal workers' unions. But other big groups, notably printers, railroadmen and office workers, remained anti-Peronista. The two factions clashed at the C.G.T. Congress last week, and in the first test of strength--selection of a credentials committee--followers of the ex-dictator took a licking. Anti-Peronistas won 20 out of the 25 seats. If this power alignment holds, the anti-Peronistas can write a strong national constitution for the C.G.T.--and perhaps thereafter help pull Argentina into the second half of the 20th century.

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