ARGENTINA: First Mate

To the polls this week went the Argentine people, among them—technically, at least—the late Eva Perón, who was voted “electoral immortality” by Congress after her death. Juan Perón was not running for office; his term as President lasts until 1958. But Perón campaigned actively. He wanted an overwhelming endorsement—preferably topping the 66% of the vote he got in the 1951 election—of his hand-picked candidate for Vice President, Rear Admiral Alberto Teisaire. Also at stake were half the seats in Congress, in which Perón wanted to keep or better his present majority of 175 Peronistas to 14 oppositionists.

One Perón speech contained a major surprise. Coolly blaming Argentina’s meager development of its oil resources on the conservation policies of his opposition when it held power, Nationalist Perón announced that he was going to let foreigners “extract oil and Deliver it to us.” When the producer gets the oil out, Perón VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT TEISAIRE Also a vote from Eva Perón. explained, “I will come and say ‘Hey! Hold on, boy. Now it’s mine!’ He will say it cost him money . . . Then I will pay him what it has cost.” Thirty thousand Peronistas cheered lustily.

The Radicals, holders of all the opposition seats in Congress, staged even bigger rallies, one of them drawing 100,000 listeners. But Perón had all the heavy weapons, notably the press and radio. Buenos Aires districts were freshly gerrymandered to reduce Radical chances. And Peronistas disrupted Radical rallies by jeers and interruptions that led to fights, knifings, gunfire and teargassing, with one dead and 62 hurt.

Three more were killed in election-day battles in Corrientes Province, but the voting turnout everywhere was huge. Nearly complete returns gave Teisaire 66% of the vote. The Radicals lost one or two seats in Congress.

No typical descamisado (“shirtless one”), the Vice President-elect is a graduate of Argentina’s Naval College and U.S. Navy submarine and destroyer schools (he speaks idiomatic English). He was a professional naval officer until 1944. when he was made Navy Minister. Two years later he got into politics. Now 63, he is a top Peronista Party official. Because the election made him Argentina’s No. 2 man, high officials gathered at Government House in a festive mood to congratulate him. One minister termed the voting “brilliant.”

The day after the brilliant election, Argentina went back to being a dictatorship as usual. Radical Party headquarters called in foreign correspondents and gave them the word that four top leaders, including the unlucky Radical who opposed Teisaire for the vice presidency, had been arrested.