The Senate Assents

Determined to strike a deal with the U.S., President Juan Domingo Peron ordered his stooges in Congress to ratify the 1945 hemispheric Act of Chapultepec* and the United Nations Charter too). That made it word-eating week in Argentina.

Only three days earlier Peron's wheelhorse, Senator Diego Luis Molinari, had told fellow nationalists in a Buenos Aires cafe: "We have won, sovereignty is saved" (i.e., the treaty was out). Now he rose in the Senate to ready the majority decision on Chapultepec: "When we are asked if we want this to be a free and independent nation, we cry full of the holy spirit of justice, unanimously and spontaneously yes, for the independence of the Argentine nations." The nationalist gallery clapped thunderously.

Then the Senator lowered his voice, rapidly read the Senate's approval of Chapultepec. A roar rose from the gallery:

"Traitor," "Cretin," "What about our sovereignty?" The Senate adjourned in a hurry.

Outside noisy nationalists started the first real political demonstration since Peron's election. Somebody climbed the Senate flagpole, lowered the flag to half-mast. Small bands roamed the streets shouting "Peron betrayed us." Police pinched 45, and cracked skulls as of old--this time nationalist skulls.

When Foreign Minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia took the air to explain the Government's decision, eight machine-gunners seized Radio Argentina, cut the wires, and stopped his broadcast there (though not over the rest of the network).

At week's end the lower house had not got round to debating the treaty. But ratification was assured. Juan Peron was also reported to have promised U.S. Ambassador George Messersmith: 1) to nationalize six Nazi businesses; 2) to sell 30 more to Argentine citizens; 3) to deliver at least some of the wanted Nazis to the Allies. This last was the nub of the business, and the State Department wanted action, not paper promises.

* Wherein the 21 republics agreed to take joint action against any state that might attack, or prepare to attack, one of them. In supplementary resolutions, the republics resolved to smash Nazi activity and, at request of a U.N. member, turn over Axis agents to the Allies.

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