Professor Paz Takes Over

Latin Americans sometimes call Bolivia the "loose kidney of South America." This week she underwent a minor operation: a pre-dawn revolution staged by Army and Nationalist groups. President Enrique Penaranda was deposed, and a junta led by bespectacled Professor Victor Paz Estenssoro took over. "The new government," said Professor Paz quickly, "in no case will alter the position [of Bolivia] on the side of the United Nations."

The professor's record was not reassuring. Once Minister of National Economy, he was arrested July 20, 1941, for implication in a German plot to Nazify Bolivia (TIME, July 28, 1941). He has recently been in Argentina, where he could hardly help hearing about her anti-U.S. "Co-prosperity Sphere" (TIME, Nov. 29).

The U.S. State Department made no comment.

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