Theosophist's End Firecrackers popped, sirens screamed in El Salvador last week as hated Theosophist-Dictator. Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez resigned the Presidency, fled to Guatemala. Said Martinez (who has slain his thousands): "The curtain has fallen. I have played my last chess game. I shall devote my life to agriculture and spiritual activity in Theosophy."

It was one of the few times in history, when the "civil disobedience" of an unarmed people had overthrown a ruthless tyrant. After military revolt failed last month, practically the entire population of El Salvador rose in a spontaneous general strike (TIME, May 15). Led by students and professional men, the nation stopped like a clock. The Dictator's army deserted him; his cronies scuttled away.

Andres Ignacio Menendez, the Dictator's Minister of War, fell heir to the government, appointed some new Ministers, but had yet to clean out all Martinez' men from Cabinet and lesser posts. He gave general amnesty to all political prisoners, freed the press, agreed to keep power only until elections could be held. Exiles and refugees hoped that the heirs of the Dictator had no dictatorial ideas of their own. They flocked back to El Salvador, determined to give their country a democratic government.

Most likely candidate for the presidency in the coming elections is Dr. Arturo Romero, who was wounded in last month's abortive revolt. A psychiatrist, he had studied the terrible Dictator as a psychiatric case.

The fall of El Salvador's Martinez opened the second breach in the line of Central American dictators. The first breach was an old one--democratic Costa Rica, where a new President peacefully took office last week. No army puppet, no revolutionist, President Teodoro Picado had won a fair election.

Excepting Costa Rica (and Panama, overshadowed by the Canal Zone), Central America has long been dictator territory. Until recently the tyrants of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador guarded each other's frontiers, hunted each other's refugees. When the upset in El Salvador broke their united front last week, the three remaining dictators must have readied their firing squads.

Honduras is ruled by massive President Tiburcio Carias, whose gorilla-like arms in their prime could break a rifle in two. He started as a revolutionist in 1892, attained the presidency in 1933. Hated by his people, he is on excellent terms with the U.S. fruit companies which dominate the economy of his country. Up to now he has quelled every revolt.

Nicaragua's President Anastasio Somoza keeps his turbulent people in line with the help of a well-paid, wellarmed, brutal National Guard (originally trained by U.S. Marines who occupied the country in 1926). Governing more by corruption than by violence, he gets a financial cut on nearly every profitable enterprise in the country. Loudly "pro-democratic," he stands well with the U.S. Government.

Guatemala resembles a neat, well-run model prison under President Jorge Ubico, who thinks that he looks like Napoleon and postures accordingly. Foreign interests find him cooperative, admire the trembling honesty of his minor officials. Guatemala's atmosphere of all-pervading terror is probably the worst in Latin America,

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