Act of Revenge

"Human lives are the main thing. If there is a way to save them, it should be done, no matter what the cost." Thus wrote Argentina's onetime President (1955-58), retired Lieut. General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, after the recent rash of political kidnapings that have shaken Latin America. Last week there were fears that the stern, uncompromising Aramburu, 68, had lost his own life to a band of terrorists.

After whisking Aramburu from his modest Buenos Aires apartment, the kidnapers advised the military government of Juan Carlos Ongania that a "revolutionary court" had decreed death for their captive. He was guilty, they claimed, of sending 27 Peronists before firing squads for having attempted a coup against his government in 1956. (In fact, Aramburu was on a back-country trip at the time; his Vice President, Isaac F. Rojas, ordered the executions.)

The terrorists called themselves the "Juan Jose Valle Command," in memory of the Peronist general who led the abortive 1956 coup. But their actual identity and political orientation remained in doubt. Peronist leaders hotly denied involvement, and from his exile in Madrid, 74-year-old Juan Peron warned that the killing of Aramburu could plunge Argentina into civil war, which is exactly what the terrorists seemed to want. Taking advantage of the disorder, 6,000 workers in Cordoba seized eight automobile plants to dramatize their demands for higher wages. In Buenos Aires, Dictator Ongania dramatically reinstated the death penalty --banned since 1921--for kidnapers who kill or seriously wound their victims.

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