Grumbling in the Barracks

The man most responsible for the existence of constitutional civilian government in Argentina last week abruptly handed his resignation to President Arturo Illia. Juan Carlos Ongania, 51, the austere general who made Illia's 1963 election possible, stepped down as army commander in chief. Ongania said that he was leaving because he objected to the President's choice for a new Secre tary of War. But insiders knew that the resignation climaxed months of behind-the-scenes friction between Illia and his army chief--and was a sign of trouble ahead.

Three years ago, in the months that followed the military overthrow of President Arturo Frondizi, the country ricocheted from crisis to crisis as rival army factions fought bitterly for control. Ongania, then commander of the army's crack motorized cavalry corps, emerged as the muscle behind a group of enlightened officers determined to reestablish constitutional government. He sent tanks rumbling into the city and, after a series of sharp, bloody clashes, routed the army's Colorado faction, which stood for old-style, jack-booted dictatorship. Illia's peaceful election ten months later consolidated Ongania's triumph. Since then the general has kept the troops in the barracks and himself in the background--until even the most loyal of officers started grumbling at the way Argentina was being run.

Illia and his People's Radicals party have let the country drift aimlessly along, doing little or nothing about a chaotic inflation that has pushed the cost of living 63% higher in the past two years. Illia's one real action--cancellation of the foreign oil contracts-has proved a disaster; Argentina, once virtually self-sufficient in oil, now spends $100 million annually on petroleum imports. What irked Ongania more than anything was the regime's soft line, principally Illia's refusal to send troops to join the OAS in Santo Domingo. Ongania grew angrier still when the President ignored his plan for a series of collective security pacts, starting with Brazil, to fight Communism in the hemisphere.

Ongania could hardly endure such slings and arrows forever. When Illia refused to appoint Ongania's candidate to the War Secretary's job, there was nothing left to do except quit. For Illia now, as one officer said ominously, "the real question is whether Ongania will be more trouble out than in."

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