Unique Irigoyen

Only Argentina has a President like Hipolito Irigoyen. In Buenos Aires last week six policemen pumped bullets into the limp body of an Italian assassin, called world attention to Argentina's President.

Early last week United Press correspondent Emilio Aguidino strolled along Buenos Aires' Calle Brazil smoking a morning cigaret, enjoying the warm December sunshine. Opposite the cigar store above which unique President Irigoyen lives in a modest apartment waited the Presidential automobile with its usual accompaniment of escorting automobiles, aides, detectives. Correspondent Aguidino gave a casual glance at a dingy little man in a faded brown suit who lounged nearby. He saw the dingy little man pull a large pistol from his pocket, run into the middle of the street, fire once. President Irigoyen's chauffeur, quick-witted, sent the car zigzagging from curb to curb as the little man fired again and again. Other pistols banged in the bright sunlight. Members of the President's bodyguard were on all sides of the would-be assassin after his fifth shot. He dropped, then lay on the pavement while detectives and firemen closed in and sent 20 bullets crashing into his kicking, bleeding body till muscular reaction ceased. A block from the scene of the shooting the President's car stopped to let out two victims of the assassin's bullets: Police Commissioner Pizzia, shot in the stomach; and Carlos Maria Sicilia, employe in the Investigations Office. Police discovered that the dead assassin was one Gualterio Marinelli, 44, an Italian dental mechanic listed as a member of several anarchist societies.

Dental Mechanic Marinelli worked but a few doors from the scene of his death. Startled neighbors were unable to find reasons for his attempt at assassination.

"It is true that poor Gualterio believed in Anarchism," said a corner greengrocer, "but always he spoke well of President Irigoyen. But always!"

Living above a cigar store is only one of President Hipoelito Irigoyen's minor idiosyncrasies. Aged 76, he looks about 60. He quit law school as a young man to become a cattle rancher, became independently wealthy before entering politics. Twice elected President (1916 & 1928) he is today virtual dictator of the Argentine. Because of his beef income, he gives his salary to charity. He has been aptly called a "Radical Autocrat."

As a Radical, Senor Irigoyen has put through such advanced legislation as the bill providing full-pay pensions for all middle-aged workmen. As an Autocrat, he holds every week a semifeudal and entirely unofficial court before which any Buenos Aires bootblack or beef baron who dares to do so may appear and tell his troubles. As an "original," Hipolito Irigoyen is rapidly turning white the hair of Argentina's more orthodox statesmen.

Because of his quixotic, personal resentment at the high tariff utterances of Calvin Coolidge and his successor in the White House, President Irigoyen still refuses to send an Argentine Ambassador to Washington, seemingly in the hope that by persisting in this snub he will sooner or later make President Hoover unhappy. Though the Argentine Treasury has ample funds, quixote Irigoyen's dislike of paying bills is such that for months he has held up payments to the State's legitimate creditors. In British shipyards lie two destroyers, ordered and approved by the Argentine Government. Congress has voted the money to pay for them, but the Radical-Autocrat will neither pay nor explain. (TIME, July 29.)

Shortly before the attempt on his life last week, President Irigoyen utterly nonplussed Argentine bankers and financiers generally by closing and locking Caja de Conversion (the Treasury exchange office where gold and silver may be had for Argentine paper money). Technically this order did not "suspend" gold payments, merely made them impossible. Ordinarily such a step would mean, at the very least, that Argentina was about to abandon the gold standard. Yet the gold coverage of Argentine currency issued by the Nacional Bank stood at 82% last week. Canny bankers discounted the President's amazing order as the latest greatest Irigoyen eccentricity. Argentine bonds and currency took a rapid dip on the Buenos Aires exchange, quickly recovered. In Argentina it is of course thoroughly unsafe to ask: "Is the President mad?"

In March must come a showdown. Though Argentina is prosperous, though President Irigoyen's Radical Party has a virtual strangle hold on the country, half of the Chamber of Deputies must be re-elected at the March elections. Much of unique Irigoyen's strength comes from the country districts and Argentine farmers are glowering under a bad wheat crop, a crop which left them with an exportable surplus of less than 2,000,000 tons (66.6 million bushels), about half as much as the Ministry of Agriculture's early predictions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.