DECLINE OF THE STRONGMEN

Perez Jimenez' downfall was the latest in a series of spectacular overturns that have thinned the ranks of Latin America's caudillos in the past four years:

sb Argentina's Juan Domingo Peron, 62, having seized power in a 1943 military coup and put a stranglehold on the country that lasted until his wastrel ways brought economic distress and the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church, was dumped in a military uprising in September 1955, fled to Paraguay, then to Venezuela.

sb Brazil's Getulio Vargas, a dictator for 15 years, was forced out by the army in 1945, made a comeback as an elected President in 1950, but proved such a failure without dictatorial powers that he got a military ultimatum to step down in August 1954. Instead, aged 71, he put a bullet through his heart.

sb Panama's Jose Antonio ("Chichi") Remon became national police chief in 1947, made and unmade five Presidents, won a free election himself in 1952, was chopped down, at 46, by machine gun bullets at Panama City's old Juan Franco race track in January 1955.

sb Promising to "give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to do it," Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza took command of the Nicaraguan National Guard when the U.S. Marines pulled out in 1933, parlayed his talents into dictatorship, a string of coffee plantations and cattle ranches into a $60 million fortune, was killed, at 60, by an assassin in September 1956.

sb Honduras' Julio Lozano seized power during an election mixup in 1954, two years later claimed victory in a fraudulent election even before the ballots were counted; when his cops capped the fraud by firing into a crowd of demonstrators, he was ousted by a military junta, died in Miami last August at 72.

sb Haiti's Paul E. Magloire, 50, broke two other Presidents before taking over himself in 1950, reportedly raked off about $12 million on public-works projects, was ousted in December 1956, now lives in Manhattan.

sb Peru's Manuel Odria, 60, seized military power in October 1948, headed a junta until 1950, when he had himself elected President. He ran off what was supposed to be a well-planned election in June 1956, watched in dismay as his hand-picked successor lost, then slipped off into obscurity in the U.S.

sb Colombia's Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, when he grabbed power four years ago at 53, was touted as the man who could end his country's bloody backland guerrilla war; instead he cracked down on newspapers and political opponents, grabbed huge ranches at his own bargain prices. In May last year the military, clergy and businessmen turned on him, sent him on his way to exile in the Canary Islands.

Two full-fledged strongmen are left. Cuba's Fulgencio Batista, 57, who took power in a comeback coup when it became obvious that he could not win the 1952 election, is insecure in the saddle after trying for 14 months without success to smash an ever-strengthening guerrilla revolt in Cuba's eastern mountains. Only the Dominican Republic's Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, 66, now playing host to exiled Perez Jimenez and his crew, still keeps the lid clamped shut on his rich, thoroughly cowed little island nation.

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