Change in the Script

At 77, Ecuador's President Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra is indisputably his country's most successful politician. Without benefit of a party or a program, the old demagogue has been elected President of his poor nation of 6,000,000 no fewer than five times. The trouble is that, by general agreement, Velasco is also the worst administrator that Ecuador has ever had. Three of his four previous presidencies fell into such political and economic chaos that they were abruptly terminated by military coups. Recently, Velasco's fifth try at governing Ecuador seemed to be following true to form: the treasury was near bankrupt, the country's mercantile elite was up in arms over tough new tax policies, and Ecuador's 30,000 mostly leftist students were running wild in the streets.

Tax Troubles. Last week the sounds of stress seemed all too familiar and ominous to Velasco. In Quito, the capital, seven consecutive days of student violence ended in a three-hour battle involving tanks, tear gas and the chatter of machine guns. As if on cue, Velasco summoned his military chiefs. "I quit," he announced. This time, however, there was a change in the script. At the urging of Defense Minister Jorge Acosta, 49, who is Velasco's nephew, the generals refused to accept the President's resignation. Instead, they urged him to accept the backing of the barracks and rule with dictatorial powers. Velasco was agreeable. Three days later, he spoke to the country on the radio: "I assume command of the republic."

It was not hard to see why the brass did not want to be stuck with the job. Under Velasco, Ecuador has been saddied with almost overwhelming problems, most of them economic. Faced with an astonishing 50% deficit in his 1970 budget of $250 million, Velasco sought desperately to raise extra funds through a series of decrees designed to step up tax collections. But Ecuador's powerful and long-entrenched oligarchy of agricultural and industrial families, which dominates the country's finance and trade, resisted his efforts.

Full Jails. Because of the country's reeling disarray, most Ecuadorians greeted the dictatorship calmly. More than just a few regarded its tough stance with approval. Velasco shut the universities, dissolved Congress and promised a shake-up of the Supreme Court, which has sided with his opponents in the tax-collection disputes. Many Ecuadorians hoped that Velasco's attempts to tighten tax policies and end private speculation in foreign exchange might help loosen the oligarchy's stranglehold on the country's economic life. The military took advantage of the takeover to crack and shave student skulls and to fill the jails with indiscriminate arrests. Among those seized was TIME Correspondent Mo Garcia, who was arrested without explanation in Quito and then expelled from the country after spending a night confined to a 6-ft. by 9-ft. cell in a Quito penitentiary.

For his part, the new dictator-president was making no promises. Could he count on continued popular support? a reporter asked. "Look, sir," Velasco replied, "owner of the future I am not. What will happen? I don't know, but for the moment I have the multitudes behind me." So far, the net effect of Velasco's fifth presidency has only been to put more of South America's multitudes under authoritarian rule. Six South American countries, accounting for nearly 75% of the continent's 200 million people, are now governed by military or military-backed regimes.

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