ARGENTINA: Elect of God

Through the Venetian blinds of his fifth-floor office in the Ministry of War. Juan Domingo Perón last week looked down upon half-a-million of his countrymen. They shouted “Down with Perón!” “Death to dictatorship!” For three hours, they marched through Buenos Aires’ Calle Callos. They whistled, hooted and catcalled. It was Perón’s longest raspberry.

Conservative, Communist. Socialist and Radical Party leaders, arms linked, strode together in the crowd’s vanguard. Young students and elderly aristocrats, Army and Navy officers in mufti, even women had broken through social and professional barriers to demonstrate their common disgust with Colonel Perón and his heavy-handed military dictatorship.

A weaker or more rational man might have conceded by now that the jig was up. But Argentina’s Vice President, Minister of War and Secretary of Labor conceded nothing. By hook or by crook, he was still determined to be elected President.

To 16 officers who had petitioned for a return to constitutionality (and had consequently been “retired”), a Perón henchman had given the official line: “God has elected one man to save the Republic. This man has already saved the Republic several times and will also be the savior of Latin America. This man, elected by God, is Juan Domingo Perón.”

Come hell or high water, Perón was determined to be South America’s strong man. He refused to believe that he had entered history a decade too late and in the wrong hemisphere.