The Expected Plot

That there would be a rebellion against Argentina's military government was an open secret, and it was awaited with grim relish by the ardent young officers who fought in last September's revolution to bring down Dictator Juan Peron. They and their leader and hero, Admiral Isaac Rojas, itched to inflict a lesson in hot lead on the endlessly plotting Peronista party chiefs, labor leaders and pro-Peron officers cashiered by the revolutionary government. As luck would have it, when the plot popped this week, hard-boiled Vice President Rojas was in top command of the armed forces while amiable President Pedro Aramburu was returning by river minesweeper from an interior tour. The uprising was relentlessly crushed.

In Buenos Aires the attackers, mostly former noncommissioned officers, stormed the downtown War Arsenal and the neighboring Army Mechanics' School. Meeting brisk fire coolly directed by the school's commander, Colonel Pizarro Jones, they fell back and were captured. In suburban Lanus, armed civilians attacked a police station; 18 of them and the two retired army officers who commanded them were executed on the spot.

At La Plata, the meat-packing city just downriver from the capital, the plotters successfully subverted the 7th Infantry Regiment. But soldiers and marines held the rebels at bay in the barracks until after dawn. Then the admiral sent jet planes to bomb and strafe the barracks, and the insurgents surrendered. Deeper in the pampas, plotters captured government buildings and a radio station at the cattle capital of Santa Rosa. Over the radio, for three hours, they demanded "freedom for all political prisoners, elections in six months, the cancellation of the Prebisch [economic recovery] Plan, lower living costs." As Rojas' 13th Cavalry retook Santa Rosa with air support, the radio abruptly ceased its clatter. Fourteen hours after the uprising began, Rojas, gaunt and tired, appeared on the balcony of Government House to announce victory and praise the "indestructible union of the armed forces."

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