Love in Power

ooARGENTINA

(See Cover]

Buenos Aires' great independent newspaper La Prensa was dead last week, its life snuffed out by Juan Peron. By act of the rubber-stamp Argentine Congress, the world-famed paper had been expropriated and, in Peron's cynical words, "handed over to the workers for whatever use they think best." La Prensa will soon appear as the mouthpiece of the Peron-dominated General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.).

From his favorite balcony at Buenos

Aires' Government House, Pern shouted: "This newspaper, which for so many years exploited the workers and the poor, which was a refined instrument serving national and international exploiters in the crudest treason to our country--this newspaper shall make up for its crimes by serving the workers and defending their gains and rights. This has been done by the free and sovereign decision of the Argentine people."

Thus Juan Peron exhibited one of the qualities that distinguish him from most other dictators. Argentina's lawfully elected President is passionately addicted to legalising he will go to any lengths, however ludicrous, to accomplish his ends in a "legal" way. As a result, his five-year regime has been marked by surprisingly little rough stuff; his formula has been approximately 90% cloak and 10% dagger.

Though Pern operates a state essentially modeled on the classic Nazi-Fascist pattern, his regime is different in one other major respect. The handsome, strapping six-footer, whose athletic figure now sags just a bit with the weight of middle age (55), does not govern alone. Beside him rules his glittering wife Evita, a 5 ft. 2, pale-skinned, dark-eyed, dazzling blonde of 32. Their man & wife dictatorship has few precedents. Some have compared it with the dual reign of Spain's Ferdinand & Isabella. Perhaps a closer parallel in history was established by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian, who married Theodora, onetime actress and reputedly the most beautiful woman in Byzantium, and enthroned her as co-ruler at his side.

Peron himself thinks in terms of more recent history. "Mussolini," he once said, "was the greatest man of our century, but he committed certain disastrous errors. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his mistakes." On the record so far, Peron has done just that. His regime has the authoritarian marks--extreme nationalism, the leader principle, an all-powerful state, a militant single party, intolerance of opposition and retention of the form of democracy without any of ts substance. But the Perons have not yet followed Mussolini all the way along the lines of violence and overconfidence. They still act at times with a jerky uncertainty that betrays both lack of skill in governing so big a country and nervousness at the forces they control.

The Good Earth. Argentina itself is partly responsible for this. Argentina is far from other major world centers of power. It is also twelve feet of black earth lying flat and rich on vast plains around one of the world's great rivers, the Plata. Argentina automatically renews its fabulous grain and cattle wealth with every cycle of the seasons, and no amount of mismanagement on high can seem to ruin it. When citizens knock off work at midday in the capital city of Buenos Aires (pop. 3,200,000), the sizzle and crackle of broiling beef is heard all over the town, and almost anybody who wants to can lunch on a saddle-sized steak for as little as 25-c-. Argentines, mainly of Spanish or Italian descent, accept their good fortune with dignified complacency. They have not gone to war in 81 years. They are not the kind of people who can be led on adventures of foreign conquest; but while the good life stays reasonably good, they are equally unlikely to revolt against Peron at home.

The son of a bailiff and great-grandson of a Sardinian Senator whose name may have been Peroni, Juan Peron was born in the heart of the richest pampas, at Lobos, just 60 miles south of Buenos Aires. Rugged outdoor upbringing made him a standout in sports by the time he was appointed to the military academy at 16. He was the army's champion swordsman, and one of its best shots. Sent to Italy as attache just as World War II broke out, he caught the fever of Fascism, skied with Italian Alpine regiments, listened to // Duce thunder from his balcony.

Back in Argentina, he helped found a secret Group of United Officers (GOU), and began a "crusade for spiritual renovation." Generals fronted for the 1943 revolution, in which the army overthrew the landholders' regime of the moss-backed Conservative Party, but Colonel Peron using his power as boss of the GOU assured the revolt's success. Named to the key post of Under Secretary of War, Peron skillfully juggled assignments and slipped his own men into all the important army commands.

The day came when President Pedro Ramirez sent a messenger to demand the cocky colonel's resignation. Peron coldly replied: "Tell the wretches who sent you that they will never get me out of here alive." That night, six GOU men burst into General Ramirez' study and forced him at gunpoint to sign over his powers to Peron's special front man, General Edelmiro Farrell; Peron, the real boss, became Vice President and Secretary of War.

Juan Peron was too smart to remain merely an army strong man; he set to work building political power. Generations of farm-minded governments had ignored the country's underpaid workers. Announcing, "I am a syndicalist," Peron created a new Department of Labor and began courting members of the sindicatos (trade unions). He drank scratchy red wine with them in sweaty waterfront bars. He talked their language and listened well. Using the Argentine governmental power to appoint legal "interventors" in almost any field, he installed leaders loyal to him at the heads of the unions.

The Good Companion. By the early autumn of 1945, Peron was taking dead aim on the following February's presidential election. But World War II had just ended; a powerful tide of Argentine democracy suddenly welled up and threatened to swamp him. In the press,_in the street, in the universities, the voices of freedom stilled under the war-long state of siege now spoke up, loud & clear. Peron's reply was to arrest 1,000 leading Argentine liberals, conservatives and intellectuals. In the resulting outburst of public indignation, President Farrell was compelled to arrest Peron and free his opponents. Stripped of his titles, the colonel was carried off to prison on Martin Garcia Island. By all normal standards of Latin American politics, Peron was through.

Then Evita and his friends in the labor movement came to the rescue. Eva Duarte had run away from an impoverished household in rural Junin to seek a career in the Buenos Aires theater. Though at first she wangled only a few small parts in radio and the movies, she got around in cafe society and made many an influential friend. One night in 1943, she met Juan Peron, then an eligible widower, at a radio party. Before many months, Colonel Peron moved into a new apartment in fashionable Calle Posadas; Eva Duarte had an apartment there, too. Evita's radio salary presently zoomed from a niggardly $35 a month to a whopping $6,000. She suddenly became interested in trade unionism, and worked hard organizing a new Union of Public Entertainers.

The night Peron was arrested, Evita and the union bosses began scheming to free him. The chance came when Peron was brought back to Buenos Aires' military hospital for a lung examination. Next morning, Oct. 17, 1945, some 50,000 trade unionists streamed across the bridge from the packinghouse quarter of Avellaneda. Most of the mob were coatless--a shocking sight in staid Buenos Aires--and some, even worse, were shirtless. They marched to the hospital and to the palace, ominously bellowing, "Pay-ron!Pay-ron!"

The Good Guesser. While the police stood by passively and the army held back, they took control of the city. Toward evening a car fetched Peron from the hospital. Finally, Pern and President Farrell appeared together on the palace balcony. The crowd roared. An afternoon newspaper had printed pictures of the demonstrators sneeringly titled: "The shirtless ones [descamisados] who roam our streets." Now Peron caught up the sneer as a weapon, shouted that he wanted to clasp all such descamisados to his bosom. Ever since, Peronistas have celebrated the day of the descamisados' loyalty. It was Peron's March on Rome. Four days later, Juan and Evita were married in a Secret civil ceremony. She was 26, he 50.

Back in power, Peron did not repeat the mistake of mass-jailing the liberals; instead he launched straight into a steamroller campaign for the presidency. His opponents were ineffective; Peron controlled the radio, and his police and bullyboys broke up opposition meetings. At Christmas the government decreed that employers must pay all workers a 13th month's wage as a bonus. In the opinion of most observers, this assured Peron's victory. When election day came, the months of government intimidation abruptly ceased; after such an efficiently unfair campaign, there could be a free--and legal--election. Peron won 55% of the vote, and captured two-thirds of the Chamber of Deputies.

The Good Helpmate. Soon after moving into the presidency, Juan Peron gave his wife a desk and a few chores to do at the Secretariat of Labor, his old post. Within weeks, the Secretary of Labor was running Evita's errands, and Evita was running the show. Politicians who had ticked her off as a giddy blonde, clinging to Peron's coattails, found instead that she was an energetic young woman with a will of iron, a rudimentary political sense Aid all the nerve in the world.

Picking up the same dawn-to-dark work routine as her husband, she interviewed hundreds of people daily, made speeches at union rallies all over Argentina. Taking over the management of the rowdy descamisados from her husband, Evita tickled them into submission. When the railway union asked for a 40% rise, Evita said: "I think they should get 50%." They did. When the telephone workers asked for 70% in the pious hope of getting half, Evita got them the whole 70%.

The unionists, who knew a good thing when they saw it, acclaimed Eva wildly. Instead of just "Peron! Peron!" the people cried: "Peron! Peron! Evita!" in the big square before the palace. Under her driving command, the big General Confederation of Labor became a docile Pe-ronista instrument, its main function reduced to carrying out orders and staging periodic mass demonstrations in the square. To a friend, Peron confided: "Evita deserves a medal for what she's done for labor. She's worth more to me than five ministers."

Peron's own way in office was to take care of almost everybody. He spent lavishly on the army, kept businessmen busy, granted suffrage to women. He told his nationalist backers that the new Argentina occupied a "third position" midway between the equally despised "imperialisms" of capitalism and Communism. At the same time, he soft-soaped a succession of U.S. ambassadors with private assurances that Argentina would fight beside the U.S. in any new war.

In consolidating his power, Peron avoided some obvious authoritarian pitfalls. Though some of his noisy followers were antiSemitic, Peron repudiated Jew-baiting. Instead of putting opponents in concentration camps, he simply ruined them economically. If newspaper publishers criticized his regime, he might close them for poor lighting, or sanitary conditions in their printing plants. (In all, 100 papers and magazines were shut down.) If a drug manufacturer refused to cooperate, the Health Ministry padlocked his plant on a charge that his drugs were impure. Since most of Peron's opponents were well-to-do, the mere threat of being cut off at the pockets was often enough.

Peron packed the courts and universities with his stooges. Congress voted him absolute powers over his 17 million people, including the right to jail them for "disrespect" to any official from President to dogcatcher; but Peron used the powers sparingly. When he switched constitutions so that he could run for reelection, it became necessary to arrest a few opponents; more often he bullied obstinate critics into fleeing across the river to Uruguay, where they lapsed into total ineffectiveness.

"Vivo Peron Viudo!" But while Peron was emasculating his political opposition, he ran into economic storms. By the middle of 1948, his regime had dissipated some $1.2 billion in foreign exchange that Argentina had piled up during World War II. Some of it went to buy the British-owned railways and the U.S.-owned telephone system and to build up a creditable merchant marine. But millions went down the drain in a reckless buying spree to round up foreign equipment for the President's grandiose five-year industrialization plan. On top of that, IAPI, the state trading agency, demanded such extortionate prices for Argentine products that the country lost a large part of its foreign market. Grafting and fumbling bureaucrats came close to wrecking the economy. The peso sank lower & lower. The cost of living mounted. Peron, who had once shouted: "I would cut off my hand before accepting a loan!" sent envoys to the U.S. early in 1950 to wangle a $125 million credit on admittedly tough terms.

As inflation ate up their original pay rises, the workers turned again to the Perons for help. Last November, the railway union, a much-favored Peronista outfit, demanded new increases. They were stalled off. Despite blarneying speeches by Evita, a rank & file strike started. The official press charged that the strikers were Reds. "We're not Communists," shouted pickets. "We're hungry Peronistas!"

The situation grew ugly. Trains stopped running in Buenos Aires, and on the walls appeared an ominous phrase: "Viva Peron Viudo! [Long Live the Widower Peron]." Finally, Peron announced he could not tolerate such worker insubordination. For the first time since 1943, the Argentine army was used in a labor dispute and the strike was broken. Whether this tough treatment produced any subsurface cracks in the Perons' all-important labor support may not be known for months or years.

Olympian View. For Juan Peron, such personal interventions have grown increasingly rare. Nowadays he prefers to cultivate an Olympian air that keeps him somewhat above the humdrum scene. When he steps forward, it may be for some such purpose as opening the Pan-American games, or announcing that an Argentine laboratory has produced atomic energy.

Peron still makes the decisions in Argentina, but now it is often Evita who follows through. In daily action the two of them constitute a smooth-working team whose wires seldom get crossed. Peron likes the role of the greathearted, affable male. He can afford to play it as long as he has Eva, who is equally at home in the role of the vengeful, bossy female. She draws the fire of cartoonists in neighboring countries (see cut). It is Evita, not her Juancito, who performs most of the hatchet work in Argentine officialdom. Evita, not Juan, slings great, vulgar sums of money around. Some people in -Argentina may be able to look upon Peron with a certain amount of detachment; nobody can be neutral about Evita.

The Good Angel. As Evita has moved in, she has surrounded the President more & more with her own men, most of them servile mediocrities ready to leap at her bidding. She gives daily orders to ministers, governors and Congressmen, patches up party squabbles, runs her own Peronista women's party (a potential 4,000,000 new votes), bosses the C.G.T., receives workers' delegations, inaugurates public institutions, and--three times a week at the Labor Ministry--dishes out sympathy, advice and loo-peso notes to the poor.

Along with these manifold activities, Evita runs her vast Social Aid Foundation. Before Evita, Argentine charity was_ the special preserve of Buenos Aires' aristocratic Sociedad de Beneficencia, whose honorary president was traditionally the President's wife. When the Beneficencia's haughty dowagers decided that Evita was not good enough, Evita set out to show them. In less than three years, the Beneficencia has vanished, while the organization that Evita founded with $2,092 of her own money has grown into the country's biggest single enterprise.

Though the Foundation's income from taxes, casino profits, company and union contributions and other sources now exceeds $100 million a year, Evita runs the enterprise as casually as a bride's personal checking account. She is not required to make any accounting, and operates a capricious charitable monopoly with strong overtones of propaganda. In Buenos Aires, she has a warehouse bulging with clothes, shoes and Peronista tracts for the deserving. On the theory that nothing is too good for the poor, she has built wastefully expensive homes for the aged, for working girls, for indigent mothers.

One prize exhibit is her model Children's Village, a compound of small-scale houses, villas, shops, a bank, school_, church and jail--plus luxurious dormitories, dining rooms and playrooms. In theory, 200 poor children from two to five live there and 800 more come in by the day. In fact, after almost two years, the place still has the air of a period living room preserved in a museum. After visiting the village, a diplomat's wife commented: "The wish fulfillment of a little girl who never had a doll house of her own."

When Juan Peron inaugurated the village, he praised it so highly that tears welled in Evita's eyes. The strapping President stopped his speech to kiss her. "These two tears," he said, "point to the great merit in this work, namely, human emotion." Emotion unquestionably moves Sennra Peron. But it is equally true that ( she is one of the country's biggest property holders, the boss of six Buenos Aires newspapers, the radio station El Mundo, and at least two manufacturing plants. It is commonly believed in Buenos Aires that these properties were acquired as "investments" for some of the millions that pour into the Social Aid Foundation.

By the Hearth. Evita spends $40,000 or more a year just for dresses from Paris' top designers.*In 1950, she ordered gowns from Balmain, Dior, Fath and Rochas. She has the furs of a czarina, the jewels of a maharani. Last year Peron took a fancy to a U.S. visitor and volunteered to show him around the presidential mansion. While displaying roomful after roomful of Evita's clothes the President guffawed: "Not exactly a descamisada, eh?" Evita herself is not a bit abashed. She is quite likely to appear at a streetcleaners' rally dressed in a Paris frock and glittering with jewels. She is well aware that in the eyes of many a descamisado she is Cinderella in the flesh. With sound political instinct, she dresses the part.

Despite the glitter of her trappings, Evita leads an almost austere life. She and her husband live simply; they rarely go out at night except to official ceremonies. El Presidente has always been an early riser and hard worker; La Presidenta keeps the same pace. From time to time, they retire briefly to San Vicente, their country place, where Peron likes to put on gaucho's trousers and stroll among his dogs, ostriches and chickens. Evita knocks around in slacks and cooks an occasional omelette.

These are dedicated days for Evita. Other Peronistas may be in the movement for what they can get out of it, but Evita lives as one convinced that her husband's regime is a new and revolutionary force in the world. "I have dedicated myself fanatically to Peron and to Peron's ideals," she says. "Without fanaticism one cannot accomplish anything." In public speeches she has coupled her husband's name with the name of Napoleon and Alexander the Great. Last fortnight, while he stood beaming at her side, she compared him, not unfavorably, with Jesus Christ.

In Juan and Evita Peron's Argentina, events are marching decisively in 1951. Inflation remains the country's greatest problem and peril, but the threat of World War III has given the economy a temporary lift. The war, Argentines feel sure, will not be their war; ever since sentiment flared up last summer against sending even token forces to Korea, Peron has proclaimed that Argentines will defend their own black soil, and no more.

But for the ruling couple such matters as inflation or war are secondary; the all-important thing is next February's elections. They want nothing less than overwhelming victory--not just 55% but 90% or 95% of the votes.

Tools of Power. Peron recently told a friend: "These are my three instruments of power--the C.G.T., the Peronista Party, and the Peronista women's party." The two significant things about this statement: i) Ex-Colonel Peron did not even mention the army, and 2) Evita bosses two of the three key groups.

Already an informal campaign is under way for Evita as Vice President. Last week Hector Campora, president of the Chamber of Deputies, gave the word to Peronista Congressmen to start work for Mr. & Mrs. in '52. The only doubt seems to hinge on whether the idea is too shocking to the Argentine tradition of male superiority. If Eva gets the green light, there may be no limit. She has already risen to greater heights of power than any woman in Latin American history.

Barring a major economic crackup, the Perons are probably going to be around for some time. What can the U.S. do about it? In the past the U.S. has tried pressuring them and it has tried gentling them. Neither course stopped the Perons from building up their Fascist-model state. Now, when the great North American republic has its hands full all over the world, it can do little more about the problem of the Perons than: 11) maintain correct surface relations with them; 2) ask them for nothing; 3) give them nothing. Meanwhile, the dictatorial partners of the pampas can go on working out their unique formula, based on the power of love plus the love of power.

*The Argentine President's official salary: 8,000 pesos ($576) a month.

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