El Tio in Trouble

Hector Campora's first week as Argentina's new civilian President was marred by bloody rioting that left four dead and dozens wounded. Things have gone downhill since then. Despite his well-meaning efforts to chart a moderate direction for his new Peronist government, Campora now seems to be on a collision course with the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), 30,000 Trotskyite terrorists who are responsible for most of Argentina's recent wave of kidnapings and murders.

Campora, whom Argentines have nicknamed "el Tio" (Uncle), is largely responsible for the confrontation. He made a fumbling attempt to laud right wing montonero (meaning bushfighter) guerrillas as a sort of Peronist resistance vanguard, calling them "a marvelous youth movement which knew how to meet violence with violence." Thus he managed in his inaugural speech to leave the impression that the terrorist acts of the ERP were justified.

The President's inadvertently provocative speech was broadcast to 250,000 restless young Peronists who had gathered in and around Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo. Campora's words led to a paroxysm of rioting and looting, during which outgoing President Alejandro Lanusse was spat upon and Antonio Cardinal Caggiano, the 84-year-old primate of Argentina, was jostled when demonstrators rocked his car.

That night, 40,000 guerrilla sympathizers threatened to storm Buenos Aires' Villa Devoto prison unless all political prisoners were pardoned. Campora, who had promised conditional amnesty, caved in. About 500 prisoners in ten jails were released. Among them: Carlos Maguid, a guerrilla who in 1970 kidnaped and murdered former President Pedro Aramburu.

No sooner were the freed prisoners on the streets and vowing to "revenge the revolution" than a rumor spread that more political prisoners were still inside Villa Devoto. With that, the crowd stormed the gates and the guards opened fire, leaving two dead, nine wounded. Their authority compromised, government officials subsequently found themselves in the ludicrous position of having to haggle with all kinds of prisoners, including psychopathic murderers who demanded that they be released from a Buenos Aires asylum.

As the situation deteriorated, Campora's guide and mentor, Juan Peron, issued a statement from Madrid rebuking both rightist "gorillas" and leftist "Trotskyites" for the violence. The ERP responded by calling on both Peronists and non-Peronists to "fight steadfastly for the socialist revolution" and accused the new government of "respectfully accepting a subordinate and capitalist system."

That direct challenge was too much for the Campora government and its allies. A Peronist group called the Central Security Command of the Justicialist Movement announced that "for every Peronist who falls, ten [Trotskyites] will fall." Other Peronists, alarmed that the ending of their 18 years in the political wilderness might be jeopardized by ERP excesses, have discussed adopting South Vietnamese anti-guerrilla tactics. "The most effective way of stopping this," said one angry Peronist, "would be to take ten of the ERPS up in a plane, throw out eight, and let the two survivors tell their friends."

Before last March's election, the Trotskyites were more or less united with the Peronists in opposition to Argentina's military government. Conceivably the breach could be repaired --although perhaps only by the personal intervention of Peron himself.

Meanwhile, the postinaugural uproar overshadowed Campora's efforts to establish a Peronist social system for his country. As first steps toward a new populist economic policy, Campora called for pay raises of between 10% and 50% for laborers and lower taxes on such consumer items as sugar, wine and tobacco, and warned that bank deposits would be nationalized to ensure "correct" investment policies.

On the diplomatic front, Campora established ties with Cuba and announced his intention of recognizing East Germany and North Korea. Campora also decided to restore the Eva Peron Foundation, which, during El Lider's heyday in the late 1940s and early 1950s, funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the poor.

Not everyone is willing to wait for the arrival of the new golden age. Convinced that Campora is either unable or unwilling to control the guerrillas, dozens of foreign executives, who have been the favorite targets of leftist terrorists, have begun fleeing the country. Last week the ERP threatened to kill Otis Elevator Co. executives unless the company would agree to "donate" $500,000 to a children's hospital and other institutions, and increase the wages of its Argentine employees by 100%. At week's end, Otis had not decided whether to bow to the threat, as did Ford of Argentina (TIME, June 4). The company did, however, evacuate all its executives and their families. The mood of those remaining behind in Argentina's international community was grim. Said one American businessman: "We've been getting threatening calls for months. Now we're listening to them."

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