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Argentina is not yet seriously threatened, but the country's military regime has been under siege by half a dozen different terrorist groups. Most of them style themselves not as Maoist or Castroite but as Peronist "protectors of the people," and they number no more than 100 or 200 men each. Last July, former President Pedro Aramburu was killed by a Peronist group calling itself the Monteneros (for "hired guns"). The generals are now talking about outflanking the "Peronists," many of whom are downright bandits, by inviting old Dictator Juan Perón himself to return from Madrid after 15 years in exile.
In Chile, a budding urban guerrilla outfit known as the M.I.R. was making considerable headway on the argument that Chile's traditional political approaches were not answering the country's social needs. M.I.R.'s march has been stalled, temporarily at least, by the election of Marxist Salvador Allende as Chile's President.
In the Dominican Republic, it is brutal business as usual. Since conservative President Joaquin Balaguer was elected to a second term last May, there have been at least 60 political killings, by both the left and the right. Most of the radical M.P.D. (Dominican Popular Movement) leaders have been killed or have escaped to Cuba. That has left the field open to so-called "clandestine commandos," M.P.D. dropouts and bandits who have been known to shoot a policeman just to get his gun.
In Guatemala, troops have crushed the rural-based guerrillas who once owned the mountainous northeast, but now the survivors are operating in Guatemala City. As many as 500 F.A.R. (Rebel Armed Forces) terrorists specialize in kidnaping and assassinations. The 1968 murder of U.S. Ambassador John Gordon Mein by F.A.R. terrorists was the brutal inaugural of the diplomatic kidnapings in Latin America. Last April, when the government balked at freeing 24 jailed terrorists in return for the kidnaped West German Ambassador, Karl von Spreti, the F.A.R. proved itself ready to kill again.
A Mild Revolution
Compared with such goings-on, events in the U.S. still seem relatively tame. But for a year or more, there have been almost daily attacks upon police, military facilities, corporations, universities and other symbols of the institutions that underpin U.S. society. Since the beginning of 1970, there have been nearly 3,000 bombings and more than 50,000 threats of planted bombs. At least 16 police officers have been slain in unprovoked attacks. In San Francisco last week, as some 400 friends, relatives and fellow policemen gathered for the funeral services of a patrolman who was shot to death during a bank robbery, a bomb exploded, hurling lethal nails into the air. Astonishingly, no one was hurt. In racially tense Cairo, Ill., one night last week, as many as 20 rifle-carrying blacks in Army fatigues attacked the police station three times in six hours. Near by, arsonists set two stores ablaze, and when fire equipment failed to appear, anonymous callers phoned police and fire officials, demanding to know, "When are you going to send in the pigs?" Says San Jose Police Chief Ray Blackmore, "You hate to use the word, but what's going on is a mild form of revolution."
It is easy to forget that most violence is still committed by individual criminals and