An Old Dictator Tries Again

The watery brown eyes stare out from sockets sunk into folds of flaccid flesh. Thin purple veins straggle across the high cheekbones, so close to the surface that they almost seem etched on the first layer of skin. The second chin sags into a second throat. Black dye has been used on the swept-back hair, but the cosmetic is not enough. Juan Domingo Peron, almost 78, looks his age --and feels it. He tires easily; he has trouble concentrating. Yet he must try to marshal his failing faculties. Nearly two decades after he was run out of Argentina, a deposed, despised despot, Peron is home again, exalted again, in charge again of one of the richest countries in Latin America.

The aging caudillo's comeback may well be the political feat--or at least phenomenon--of the century. It is rare enough for a failed leader to get a second chance in a stable democracy, even if he is relatively young. But overthrown dictators hardly ever return to the scene of their prime, unless it is behind guns pointed at their successors. Though no stranger to force, Peron has used none directly to regain his power.

He is back--with his third wife Isabel at his side, trying to fill the role of the revered Eva--because the people of Argentina want him back. He is back --seeking to formalize his power by running for President this month--also because the military that ousted him finally let him back. Most of all, Peron is back because Argentina is in a state of chaos, racked by terrorism and factional clashes that threaten to engulf it in civil war. Both the masses and the military look to him in desperation. He seems to them to be the only man who can somehow pull together a nation that has never fulfilled its potential and has seldom experienced darker times.

Thus the triumph of Peron's return is conditional. The walls of Buenos Aires are plastered with posters from the past, showing a robust, smooth-faced Peron. But it is the future that will determine his ultimate place in Argentine history--and, more crucially, the destiny of the country itself. If he fails his second chance, Peron will be worse off than he was after his first, and so will Argentina. In short, the man and the country are on the same spot, their destinies and fortunes inextricably entwined.

The problems they face are immense. The nation is much more complex, much more politicized, much less tractable than it was when Peron last ruled. Marxists and fascists fight in the streets. Leftist guerrillas roam the cities and countryside alike, terrorizing public officials and business executives. In the past two years, there have been more than 200 kidnapings and about $80 million has been extorted in ransom money, chiefly from big business concerns. Some multinational corporations, such as Coca-Cola and Otis Elevator, have evacuated their executives. The economy is blighted. Between January and May, the cost of living had risen 67%; though emergency measures have arrested the climb for the moment, inflation remains a specter. Beef exports, the biggest source of income, have slumped despite the fact that world markets are begging for meat.

Like the country, Peron, too, is ailing. Concerned about the condition of his heart, doctors have warned him that the rebirth of his political career could hasten his death. Just as ominous, though, is the problem that Peron faces within his own political movement, which is sharply split between the right and the left. The rightists, reports TIME Buenos Aires Bureau Chief Charles Eisendrath, seem as loyal as ever, willing to follow el Lider virtually wherever he takes them. But the leftists, who include many youths barely born when Peron was ousted by a military coup in 1955, are relying on him to create a "socialist fatherland." They give indications that they may settle for nothing less. "Peron promised youth a revolution," warns Ernesto Giudice, 65, a member of the relatively conservative Communist Party's central committee. "If he doesn't transform society quickly and fundamentally, youth is going to do it--with or without him."

Already the bitter division has tarnished the old dictator's second coming. On the very day he returned, less than three months ago, to live again in Argentina, the factions turned a mammoth welcoming party into a mutual massacre. More than 100 people died and hundreds more were injured as rightist and leftist elements raked each other with gunfire in a huge meadow near Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport.

The incident clearly shocked Peron. Shortly afterward, he closed the door of his suburban Buenos Aires home and did not emerge for 23 days. Officially he had the flu, but he may have been more anguished than ill. No doubt Peron was agonizing over whether it was really worthwhile at his age to try again. He decided that it was, and pleased his supporters by agreeing to run formally for the presidency in a new election called for Sept. 23.

At the same time, he displeased many of his followers, particularly the leftists, by choosing Isabelita as his vice-presidential running mate. The nomination of the 42-year-old former cabaret dancer, bolstered by a publicity campaign extolling her virtues, struck some as a crass attempt by Peron to cast her in the image of his late second wife, the mass-adulated Evita.

As posters appeared throughout Argentina hailing Isabelita as "the perfect Peronista" and "Evita's successor," the lady herself tried to look and act like "the little Madonna," as Eva was called. She has dyed her chestnut hair blonde like Evita's, she wears a silver mink coat like Evita's, she is making good-will tours like Evita's. But when Isabel accepted the vice-presidential nomination, an honor that Eva had declined in 1951, angry Peronistas began tearing out the eyes on her posters.

If Peron is to be the savior of Argentina this time round, he must first do a better job than he has to date of pacifying the Peronistas. It looms as a major undertaking. Yet it is small compared with the task of inspiring Argentines as a people to unite in a common, selfless cause. Historically, Argentina has been victimized by selfishness, on the part of both its leaders and its people. "There is no community in Argentina," laments H. A. Murena, a noted Argentine novelist. "We do not form a body, though we may form a conglomeration. Instead of stability, Argentina has rancorous, factious chaos, periodically illuminated by coups d'etat." Adds Eduardo Roca, an eminent jurist and diplomat: "Argentina has no soul."

A vast land nearly three times the size of Western Europe, Argentina did not begin to develop until the 19th century, when there was large-scale immigration from Western Europe. On the pampas, a flat plain stretching out in a semicircle from Buenos Aires, the immigrants found the richest, deepest topsoil in the world. It was ideal for raising cattle and crops, and still is. The number of cattle on the hoof today is more than double the country's population of 25 million.

The living was perhaps too easy. Collective action was not needed to conquer the elements; they were already friendly. Individuals could make a comfortable life on their own. Politics seemed irrelevant. So did a national, even a community spirit. Many immigrants planned only to make their fortunes and return to Europe. Even when they stayed, many never quite thought of themselves as anything but transients. The same mood prevails today. Says Novelist Murena: "I was born here. But sometimes I find myself asking: Am I really going to die here among these strangers?"

Contributing to the lack of national identity and community concern is the fragmentation of the classes. The wealthy oligarchs, the middle class and the workers are not only separated from one another but are all deeply divided within themselves. In sum, it is a situation much easier for a shrewd politician to exploit than solve, as Peron proved in his first rise to power.

Born on Oct. 8, 1895, in the pampas town of Lobos, Peron never longed to become a farmer like his father. At an early age, he chose a military career. As a military observer in Europe in the late '30s and early '40s, he became spellbound by both Hitler and Mussolini. After meeting Hitler, Peron wrote: "As in Germany, our future will be an inflexible dictatorship." When il Duce died, he said: "Mussolini was the greatest man of our century."

Back in Buenos Aires, Peron joined the G.O.U. (Group of United Officers), a cabal of extreme-right-wing colonels who shared his belief that Argentina was destined to become the Germany of Latin America. In 1943 they staged a coup against the bumbling government of Ramon Castillo (who, ironically, was pro-Nazi himself). Peron backed the naming of General Pedro Ramirez as a figurehead replacement. For himself, he cannily took the directorship of the moribund Department of Labor. Turning it into the government's most active branch, Peron used the department to help win the political support of Argentina's workers, a long-neglected group with great potential power.

As his own power grew (especially after he engineered the replacement of Ramirez in 1944 with another general, Edelmiro Farrell), Peron's fellow officers cooled toward him. His romance with Maria Eva Duarte, then a third-rate actress of questionable reputation, did not help matters. Peron was a widower when he met Evita in 1943. His first wife, Aurelia Tizon, had died of cancer in 1938. Peron's ungallant epitaph: "Poor thing, she always bored me." Evita never bored him, but her captivation of Peron angered his moralistic, status-conscious colleagues.

To censure both Peron's political ambitions and his affair with Evita, the officers finally demanded and got his resignation from the government in October 1945. The maneuver backfired. The unions, abetted by army officers still friendly to Peron, called a general strike and staged a massive demonstration outside Government House on Oct. 17 (since celebrated as Peronist Loyalty Day). As they shouted, "Our lives for Peron!", he suddenly appeared on a balcony. "Where have you been?" they cried. Peron replied with the first of many demagogic harangues he would deliver from that same balcony. Four days later, Peron and Evita were wed secretly in a civil ceremony. Four months later, after Farrell dutifully stepped aside, Peron was elected President.

For the first few years of his regime, Peron rode high. He continued to cultivate the workers, granting them more pay raises and awarding them unprecedented social security and vacation benefits. At the same time, Evita became the wife-mother of the poor, "the little Madonna" who spread millions of dollars in largesse among them from a loosely audited cache of government funds and forced "donations." The Evita cult grew alongside that of Peron himself. When Evita died of cancer at the age of 33 in 1952, there was an unsuccessful campaign to get the Vatican to proclaim her a saint.

Shortly after Evita's death, it became apparent that Peron was spending much more than the government was taking in. In fact, he had been squandering the huge profits that Argentina had accumulated as a neutral supplier of foodstuffs during and after World War II (making it then the richest country in Latin America, with foreign-currency reserves totaling $1.7 billion). The nationalized industries stagnated; inflation soared. Even the workers began to have second thoughts about el Lider as their paychecks purchased less.

For those who had never liked Peron, the grievances intensified after he overwhelmingly won a second term as President in 1951. Concern rose over his failure to press for agrarian reform, his purging of liberals and personal opponents from the courts and universities, his clamping of rigid censorship on the press, his throttling--through firing, jailing and other persecution--of all dissent. Peron angered the Roman Catholic Church by ending religious instruction in the schools, initiating a divorce law and taking steps to legalize bordellos. In addition, reports circulated about Peron keeping a 14-year-old girl as his mistress.

In September 1955, all three branches of the armed forces combined to seize control of the floundering country. Auditors later discovered that during Peron's years in power, Argentina's treasury had been drained of $1.25 billion. After bouncing around in exile from Paraguay to Panama to Venezuela to the Dominican Republic, Peron finally settled in Madrid in 1960, where he bought a $500,000 villa that he called "17 de Octubre." There Peron kept in touch with his loyalists in Argentina, goading them to civil strife with taped messages, letters and personal envoys.

His efforts were encouraged by a succession of five military and three civilian governments that stumbled and fell from power. With the failure of each new government, the people were reminded that there was always another alternative: Peron. Last year, amid increasing terrorism and public clamor, the military government of Alejandro Lanusse decided to allow free elections. Lanusse, a general who had once been imprisoned by Peron, challenged the old caudillo to return and run for President.

Peron returned, but only after the deadline for qualifying as a candidate had passed. If he needed a test of his popularity, the trip provided it. During a 28-day visit to Buenos Aires, Peron attracted huge crowds of cheering supporters to his suburban villa. He also tested his strength by conferring with leaders throughout the Argentine political spectrum. As he headed back to Madrid, he endorsed the candidacy of former Dentist Hector Campora, who described himself as Peron's "obsequious servant." Last March, Campora won the election handily, and the stage was set for Peron to strut again.

To date, he has mainly strutted in the wings. Since moving his household to Buenos Aires eleven weeks ago, he has wavered between spells of puzzling inertia and bursts of curious action. Toward the end of his initial 23 days of illness and introspection, Peron sacked his "servant" from the presidency. Yet the master did not assume the post himself. Instead, he appointed another surrogate, Raul Lastiri, whose major claim to minor fame was his relationship (son-in-law) to Peron's personal secretary and astrologer, Jose Lopez Rega.

The firing of Campora was hailed by "orthodox" Peronists as evidence that their leader was finally taking a hard line against the left; they felt that Campora had been too gentle with terrorists and demonstrators. Peron pleased his right wing even more by also dismissing Vice President Vicente Solano Lima and two moderately leftist Cabinet ministers. Campora and Lima were appointed ambassadors abroad, touching off speculation that the Peronist left wing was undergoing a purge.

Last week, though, Peron shuffled somebody else out of circulation, and this time the move delighted his left wing. Peron told the ubiquitous Lopez Rega, who also triples as Argentina's new Social Welfare Minister, to take a month's vacation from domestic politics and attend a nonaligned nations conference in Algeria. Temporarily at least Lopecito had been effectively removed from what the leftists derisively call Peron's "celestial court." The remaining members: Isabelita and Finance Minister Jose Gelbard. Of the courtiers, only Gelbard has spent more than a few weeks in Argentina since 1955; yet Peron has been listening and talking more to his "court" than to anybody else since returning from Madrid.

Economic Curbs. Gelbard, an aluminum tycoon who immigrated from Poland, is instituting Peron's economic policies, which so far include price controls and cutbacks as well as restrictions on foreign investment. U.S. business interests, with a total $1.3 billion in direct investment, are nervous about the curbs. But the U.S. Government, which opposed Peron's first election bid in 1946, has been treading softly this time. It has even leaked stories indicating its acceptance of him as the best hope for his country's stability.

How much Peron has changed remains to be seen. His puppet government has already announced press restrictions reminiscent of the censorship imposed during his first regime. More encouragingly, Peron has issued tough statements against terrorists. Yet the level of terrorism has actually risen since his return; the rate of kidnapings recently jumped from one every three days to two a day. Internecine labor violence is also increasing, and last week Peronist youths "occupied" the Botanical Gardens in Buenos Aires. Without offering any explanation, surly, self-appointed young "guards" prevented thousands of ordinary citizens from strolling the pathways.

The real test of whether Peron can restore stability to Argentina will not come until he officially takes over the reins of government. Speculation grew last week that he may yet ascend to the presidency without another election. His succession could be decided by the Peronist-controlled Congress, in which case Isabelita could conceivably be passed over for the vice presidency. Clearly, the new era of Peron has begun with more questions than answers. Yet it is a measure of the country's anguish that uncertainty can be a source of solace. "The only hopeful thing about the present situation," says an Argentine intellectual, "is that everything is unexpected."

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