The Harassed Advocate

A better life for Latin Americans, said Argentina's President Arturo Frondizi in Washington last week, is fundamentally up to the Latin Americans. To get it in Argentina, he is demanding hard work, sound money and conditions that attract productive capital. The U.S. officially agrees (it provided a major portion of a massive $329 million aid package last month), and this fact gives Frondizi's opposition -Peronistas and Communists -the chance to cry that he has "sold out" to Washington.

The charge may well provoke a wry smile in Frondizi -for he thinks that the U.S., far from "buying" any Latin American, neglects its obligations to its neighbors. Saying so, diplomatically but succinctly, to Congress and the press was his major mission as he visited the U.S. And even as he served as his people's advocate, his government had to fight back his misguided opponents at home.

Breaking the Chains. During the last week in December, seven top Argentine Peronistas traveled to a strategy rendezvous with exiled Strongman Juan Peron in the Dominican Republic, worked out plans for a strike-and-riot attack against Frondizi. Returning to Buenos Aires, they put it into effect three days before Frondizi flew north. The trigger was a Frondizi bill, passed by Congress, giving the government permission to sell or lease a featherbedded, government-owned meatpacking plant. Workers at the plant listened to a harangue by a top Peronista, then chained the gate and barricaded themselves in. Frondizi did not hesitate. Using a Sherman tank as a battering ram, his troops marched in and took back the plant. Sixty-two Peronista-dominated unions went out on a protest strike, followed by 19 Communist-dominated unions and 32 independent unions.

Almost all business, transport and industry began to slow down, but Frondizi's Labor Minister declared the strike illegal, and police quickly rounded up 350 Communist and Peronista labor leaders. Frondizi calmly boarded a DC-6 to keep his date in the U.S. By the time he arrived in Charleston, S.C., Argentina was at a standstill, except for troop-guarded public-utility plants, and the nation's oil workers had been drafted into the army.

Poverty v. Freedom. Next day, as Frondizi and his wife were being welcomed to Washington by the Eisenhowers (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the strike began to ease. Shops removed their shutters; factories reopened. The victory was Frondizi's. He quickly wrote off the win as a consolidation of his austere leadership, and rose before a joint session of the U.S. Congress to have his say about a proper attitude for the U.S. toward Latin America. "Peoples that are poor and without hope," he told a well-filled House chamber, "are not free peoples. A stagnant and impoverished country cannot uphold democratic institutions. On the contrary, it is fertile soil for anarchy and dictatorship." At the National Press Club he made his point again: "The United States cannot stand aloof from the fact that almost 200 million individuals live in poverty on our continent."

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