Not for Goats

At Puerto Madryn, a small town on the coast of Patagonia, a lone freighter was unloading one day last week. A big wooden crate slipped from its hoist, splintered on the docks, and out tumbled a bright pile of costume jewelry from Japan. "Enough trinkets," said a bored customs officer, "to adorn every nanny goat in Patagonia." The jewelry, as the customs officer well knew, would soon be heading north from barren, duty-free Patagonia as a routine part of Latin America's most wide-open smuggling operation.

Ever since 1880, all of Argentina south of the 42nd parallel has been an on-again-off-again free zone. The motive of President after President was to encourage settlement of the empty, rocky area, once regarded hungrily by land-poor Chile as a possible zone of expansion. The result every time has been smuggling on the grand scale from the free area past the sparsely guarded parallel. Patagonia's population has continued to be mostly sheep (14 million in 1955) and goats (1,000,000).

Dictator Juan Peron let Patagonian smuggling flourish from 1945 to 1953. In July 1956 President Pedro Aramburu revived the free zone with the old, futile hope that it could make an eroded wasteland blossom. Instead, refrigerators, watches, lingerie, television sets and bubble gum began moving across the border. Wooden handles stamped "made south of parallel 42" were slapped into imported shovels, wooden bases with the same markings were attached to Japanese sewing machines, and all the loot found its way north to market. Most lucrative item of all was the automobile, legally subject to duties of six times or more its U.S. market value. Second-hand cars shipped to Patagonia from the U.S. were driven north across the border, repainted, equipped with forged papers and sold for profits of 800%. Total contraband within the first year: an estimated $60 million worth of cars, $70 million worth of other luxuries.

With such profits available for bribes, no crackdown short of abolishing the free zone is likely to work. Aramburu made a token start by banning importation of a few luxury items to Patagonia. Last week customs announced the arrest of three leaders of one car-smuggling ring. But in Puerto Madryn the steamer went on unloading the jewelry, 5,000 cases of whisky, 1,000 cases of rum, bales of Brussels lace, crates of fireworks. As every Patagonian knew, such choice merchandise was not going to the goats.

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