Milestone

After eleven months in office, Ecuador's dapper President Galo Plaza Lasso last week passed a political milestone: his regime survived its first noteworthy revolutionary plot. At Aguas Hediondas (literally: Stinking Waters), a sulphurous spa just outside Ecuador's southernmost city of Loja, army officers arrested Bolivar Galvez, a member of Quito's City Council and the president of the Quito Student Federation. In Loja itself, they picked up Lawyer Julio Moreno, director of Ecuador's opposition Liberal Party. Farther north in Cuenca, the country's third city, several army officers were taken into custody. All were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Liberals the country over protested their leader's arrest. In Quito mounted troops broke up a demonstration of students and socialists shouting "Down with Plaza!" The President, following his policy of ignoring or minimizing plots, immediately ordered the release of students arrested in the demonstration, and requested that the judge assigned to the conspiracy trial free the defendants if there was any legal way to do so.

Interior Minister Eduardo Salazar Gomez declared that the country was completely tranquil--so tranquil, in fact, that he permitted himself a jest: "We have jailed only those caught with their hands in stinking water."

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