The Second Coming of Per

The stage was set for the biggest welcoming party in South American history. Ex-Dictator Juan Domingo Peron, now 77, was coming home, and for the better part of a week the faithful descamisados (shirtless ones) streamed toward the huge meadow near Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport. They numbered in the millions, perhaps one. perhaps three--nobody could count how many. The orchestra and chorus of Buenos Aires' Colon Opera House were on hand to sing Peronist hymns; kites bearing Peron's image flew overhead, and from the massive crowd came the chant: "Wake up, be happy! Our general is coming home!"

Some 18,000 pigeons (1,000 for each year of Peron's exile) were to be released. But by the time they were set loose, the 50-acre meadow below had turned into a bloody battlefield. Volleys of shots rang out, and thousands of people fell to the ground or scrambled for shelter, screaming. When the shooting stopped, 34 Argentines lay dead and 342 were wounded. They were victims not of police or army violence but of bitter hatreds within the movement that calls itself Peronism--a polymorphous organization that encompasses old-line union chiefs, Trotskyite students and brown-shirted thugs.

Dividend Movement. The slaughter at the airport, cabled TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath, rose from the fact that "in important respects Argentina today resembles Germany just before Hitler. It has been ravaged by an inflation that has impoverished the workers and terrified the middle class. Fascists and Marxists have begun fighting in the streets. Millions of Argentines looked to the return of Peron for both change and national unity, but the battle near Ezeiza Airport shows that the Peronist movement is as deeply divided as Argentina itself."

Even as Per--n's chartered Aerolineas Argentinas 707 neared the meadow, there were signs of trouble near the dais, where the returning general was scheduled to speak beneath a 100-ft.-high portrait of himself. Right-wing union leaders dominated the dais, and young leftists wanted a bigger role for themselves. "A Socialist motherland!" they shouted. "A Peronist motherland!" the rightists shouted back.

Just below the dais, TIME Photographer Francisco Vera saw the fighting start:

"At about 2 p.m. the loudspeakers ordered that some people who had climbed into the surrounding trees must come down. I wondered why, and then I saw that there were sharpshooters in the trees. Just as the orchestra began to play the Peronist march, the first shots were fired. Then they began coming from every which way. We on the journalists' platform threw ourselves to the ground. At first the orchestra conductor did not stop the music but got onto a chair and conducted all the more vigorously. Then the sound system went off. I remember seeing a bass-fiddle player lying on the floor, still putting bow to strings. There was a priest standing up, holding a Cross in one hand and an Argentine flag in the other. Then I saw a young man handed up over the heads of the mob, being dragged up by his hair onto the platform. I think he was beaten to death up there."

Detoured Flight. Hearing radio reports of the carnage, Peron instructed his pilot to fly to the heavily guarded Moron Air Force Base ten miles away. Only that night did he appear on nationwide television to "beg of you a thousand pardons for not having the opportunity [to talk] to you personally."

Despite the ugly violence that marred his homecoming, despite the rumors that he himself was in failing health, Peron now appears to be at a peak of political power. Just last November, when he first returned briefly to Argentina from his refuge in Spain, he was snubbed by then President General Alejandro Lanusse, who used armed troops to keep crowds from greeting him at Ezeiza Airport. Disqualified from running for the presidency himself, Peron negotiated with politicians on both the left and the right, gathering the widest possible support for his puppet candidate, Hector Campora, 64, whose only qualification for the presidency seemed to be his declaration that he was the "obsequious servant" of Juan Peron. In the month since Campora's inauguration, however, he has appeared totally unable to halt either the intraparty fighting or the continuing attacks on foreign businessmen.

Terrorists, most audaciously those of the Trotskyite People's Revolutionary Army or ERP, have been staging kidnapings at the rate of one every 72 hours since the first of the year. Last month two Ford Motor Co. of Argentina employees were wounded by ERP gunmen, and under threat of further violence. Ford agreed to give $1,000,000 to hospitals and the poor. Within a fortnight of Peron's second homecoming, guerrillas kidnaped a West German clothing manufacturer, the American head of Firestone of Argentina, and a British banker. A $10 million ransom for the three has been demanded. One Buenos Aires businessman groaned about the banker, for whom Peronist guerrillas are asking $8,000,000: "We may lose him. Who has $8,000,000?"

Though the kidnapings are the most spectacular crimes, violence now seems to pervade almost all levels of Argentine society. Shortly after Campora's inauguration, hundreds of government offices and institutions were taken over by young Peronist organizers and students on charges that administrators were politically "unreliable."

Two weeks ago, Public Works Under Secretary Jorge Horacio Zubiri, a Campora appointee, was actually forced to resign by maintenance work ers who invaded his office (he was later "reinstated" by the government). Peronist youths went to the American school in Buenos Aires' posh foreign community to announce a project to nationalize it.

Troubled Pampas. Not even the traditionally quiet pampas are safe. Thomas Rattagan, 53, a rancher not far from Buenos Aires, predicted that at least part of the estancia that he has worked for 25 years will be expropriated. "A delegation of Peronistas came and demanded I give them a steer for their political fiesta," he said nervously. "Last time around, in the 1950s, I would have thrown them out. But this time there is no choice. I have to admit that I gave them the animal. You see, nobody controls Peronist youth."

The only man who can put Argentina back together is the man whose legacy has helped to tear it apart. But what Juan Peron can do is still uncertain because the role he will take in the Campora government has yet to be determined. Campora, summoned to Madrid by Peron on the eve of the homecoming, discussed various future positions for his mentor, ranging from "roving ambassador" to prime minister. Peron declined to make a final decision. During those touchy discussions in Madrid, Peron several times said that he was too "indisposed" to see Campora at all, then went out for highly visible promenades to show himself in fine health.

Legally, it is up to Campora to translate the Peronist policy--whatever it may be--into action. He has therefore presented to the Legislature an ambitious economic package that aims to increase workers' buying power (a $20 monthly raise for everybody), control foreign holdings (no more than 12% of earnings may be repatriated), and roll back inflation (70% last year) by slashing the prices of 55 basic commodities.

No economic program will work very well in an atmosphere of street fighting, however. At week's end, venturing from his heavily guarded home in Buenos Aires' Olivos suburb, Peron returned to TV to deliver his most stinging rebuke to the militants. "We are not in a condition to continue destroying ourselves," he declared, promising stern measures against "those who think that they can capture our movement."

Should Peron fail to control his followers, the days ahead will be grim. But at least Peron has an escape hatch. Back in Madrid, he has left his villa intact, presumably including the telex that used to send instructions to the faithful from afar.

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