ARGENTINA: Smoke & Rumbles

Strongman Juan Perón changed his Foreign Minister and shook up his police command last week, leading some observers to think they smelled the smoke of a flaming crisis. One rumor even had it that Perón himself might resign the next day. But there was no flare-up, only the volcanic smoke and rumbles normal to Perón’s Argentina.

After the brief, bloody revolt of June 16, the jolted strongman herded four scapegoats out of his Cabinet. Jerónimo Remorino, Foreign Minister since 1951, was a logical Scapegoat No. 5. As Minister of Worship (the Foreign Minister wears two hats), he had official jurisdiction over church-state relations during Perón’s bitter pre-revolt feud with the Roman Catholic Church. But Perón deferred action on Remorino’s tendered resignation for a while, possibly to keep the herding from looking like a stampede. Last week, with Remorino disabled by a liver ailment, Perón at last decided to act. Into the ministerial chair slipped Lawyer Ildefonso Félix Cavagna Martínez, 50, lately a special ambassador charged with working out Perón’s proposed economic hookups with neighboring Chile, Paraguay and Bolivia.

Tightening the command of his internal-security forces, Perón shifted the federal police from the Interior Ministry to a new Federal Security Council headed by General Félix Maria Robles, a trusted chum. In his new post Robles also bosses the coast guard, border patrol and provincial police.

Robles & Co. had plenty of work to do in his first week. A smoke bomb exploded in the foyer of a theater where Perón’s fascist Alianza Popular Nacionalista was holding a meeting. The police announced discovery of an arms cache and two cases of railway sabotage. Unidentified gunmen speeding by in a car fired a dozen shots at two federal policemen guarding the residence of U.S. Ambassador Albert Nufer. It was reported to be the thirteenth mysterious attack on policemen in four weeks.