The Interventionist

Juan Peron went right on using food as an instrument of policy. Peru, dependent on Argentina for its meat, got some 40 tons last month, and Lima shoppers spent hours hacienda cola (sweating out the line) outside butcher shops. Last week, as a result of Argentine manipulations, the wheat stocks were down to a thin ten days' supply when the U.S. freighter Bert Williams brought in a timely 7,900 tons. Peron was after Peruvian oil, rubber, cotton--and an Argentina-oriented Peru.

Such tactics had already wrung from the Brazilians a verbal agreement to barter 3,000 tons of rubber for wheat. Juan Peron first drove Uruguay to rationing bread, then told Montevideo bakers that they could have all the wheat they wanted after he took office next month. Uruguay's elections come next fall, and Peron, who has never had much good to say for intervention, would regulate the flow of wheat to make sure that his candidate--Senator Eduardo Victor Haedo--won.

Toward other neighbors Peron's weapons were different, his aims the same. A month and a half ago Argentina abruptly closed the Paraguayan frontier. The reason given: a yellow-fever outbreak in Paraguay. It turned out to be malaria, but Paraguayans got the point, agreed to a customs union with Argentina. Bolivia was already on the hook: the Peron-minded Villarroel government felt strong enough to crack down on the Democratic Front opposition, jail leaders and handcuff the press. Chile, with a long Argentine frontier, read that Peron had come out for a Chile-Argentine customs union, and appointed its Foreign Minister to attend the Strong Man's inauguration.

With Peron moving swiftly, confidently to create Argentine leadership in South America for the old scheme of a bloque austral (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru), last week's U.S. proposal for hemisphere military cooperation came none too soon. But it pointed to fresh U.S. initiative in Latin American affairs (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

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