LATIN AMERICA: Great Day

ARGENTINA

Buenos Aires had never seen anything like it. The day Juan Domingo Perón became their legal President, a million Argentines unleashed their last reserve of enthusiasm.

Hours before the ceremony, Perón’s descamisados (shirtless ones) had packed in behind the double row of steel-helmeted, bayonet-bearing soldiers who lined the 14-block Avenida de Mayo from the stone-columned Chamber of Deputies to the pink-plastered Casa Rosada. Some had camped there the night before. One Perón idolater had dragged a great, 100-lb. wooden cross from seaside Mar del Plata 300 miles away.

Hides & Oil. At the stroke of midday, resplendent in the blue, gold encrusted dress uniform of a brigadier general (his new rank), Perón strode into the great hall of Congress. Floor and gallery gleamed with the brass of generals, the polish of diplomats—come to honor a man whose name few of them even knew three years ago.

Smiling regally from her box was the new first lady, Eva Duarte de Perón, who had also come a long way up. Near her sparkled medal-spattered Constantin V. Shevelev, commercial representative of that same Soviet Union which had so bitterly attacked Perón at the U.N. Conference in San Francisco. He had come for hides and linseed oil, had stayed to announce the long-predicted resumption of diplomatic relations between Russia and Argentina.

“God and country can judge me if I fail,” said Perón, as he swore to defend constitutional government. Then he outlined his national program: 1) “unshakable maintenance—firm and intransigent —of our sovereignty”; 2) “social improvement”; 3) a new “dynamic” system of justice. He said no direct word about Argentina’s Chapultepec and United Nations promises to toss out his Nazi friends; that he would leave to Congress.*

Cheers & Boos. The next act in the show was the drive to the Casa Rosada, between blue & white striped Argentine flags springing from Buenos Aires’ handsome, grey stone buildings. The packed throngs, who saw Perón as a modern knight in the shining armor of socialistic endeavor, shouted “Perón! Perón!” again and again. The diplomats, too, got cheers —except Yanqui George S. Messersmith, who got boos and whistles. (Foreign Minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia next day called at the U.S. Embassy to apologize for his countrymen.)

In the Casa Rosada’s White Salon (which is light blue), grenadiers in uniforms of the Napoleonic period—red pompon-topped shakos, blue tunics, red-striped trousers—lined the walls as outgoing President Edelmiro Farrell tearfully handed Perón the mace and threw the colors of office across his shoulders. Then the President, who had seldom ruled, slipped quietly out to the street, hailed a passing cab and went home.

And Dollars. The new President’s next move on the international chessboard was his own secret, if even he knew it. Perhaps, as the crowd seemed to think, Perón was going to let Ambassador Messersmith stew in his own State Department’s juice—at least for a while.

Meanwhile a strictly unofficial U.S. visitor—bluff, bourbon-drinking Andrew J. Higgins, the New Orleans boat builder—was getting along fine with the boss. He came to Buenos Aires, in a green corduroy suit, determined to do business with Perón, and got a personal glad hand from Perón himself at the airport. Andy Higgins reciprocated by damning, in a press interview, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden’s anti-Perón attitude.

The U.S. government had already short-circuited, by actions if not words, the Braden policy of intransigent opposition to Perón. That policy had not worked. Now the State Department has dropped restrictions on trade with Argentina, and the flag would doubtless follow the dollar south.

*The Argentine Congress’ 45-year record on approving Inter-American agreements: of 101 proposed, just twelve fully ratified.