Familiar Faces

Voters in two backward Andean countries last week brought back a pair of ex-Presidents to office.

P: Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, 67, was the only one of Ecuador's four candidates who correctly sensed the sharply heightened appeal of learning, land, and a thicker slice of the national economy in an agricultural nation where nearly half of the people are illiterate and the annual per capita income is $172. The Sorbonne-educated professor of government, ascetically lean and given to wearing natty waistcoats, called to him "all the multi tudes who dream of a new life with jus tice and real democratic equality, without privileged parties." He recalled the roads and schools that he lavished on the coun try during his previous three presidential terms (1934-35, 1944-47, 1952-56). This time he promised to tax large property holders into selling out in favor of a land-reform program, and to spend heavily on public housing and highways.

P: Victor Paz Estenssoro, 52, the President who led Bolivia through a sweeping revolution from 1952 to 1956, smashing the army and giving illiterate Indians guns and votes, will take over a bankrupt country on Aug. 6. Bolivia has no treasury reserves, is almost wholly dependent on the U.S., whose $150 million subsidy has kept the country going for the past seven years. Per capita annual income has fallen 10% (to $60) since 1956; the tin mines that Paz Estenssoro nationalized in 1952 are now losing Bolivia $9,000,000 a year, cannot fill their quotas under the inter national tin agreement even though they employ more men than ever. In his victory statement Paz Estenssoro called for "revolutionary order." But his incoming Vice President and revolutionary comrade, Juan Lechin, the Lebanese-descended onetime auto salesman who bosses the miners' un ion, will stand squarely in his way; Union Boss Lechin opposes firing unnecessary workers or demanding more production. Sooner or later, if he is to achieve his aims, Paz Estenssoro will presumably have to clash with Lechin -- and Lechin has be hind him the miners' militia, the country's best armed force.

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