Presidents' Week

Brazil. President Getulio Dornellas Vargas went for an afternoon drive along Petropolis Highway near Rio de Janeiro last week. Down a steep embankment bounded a bulky boulder, crashed a window of the car. At one stroke it broke both the President's legs, one of his wife's legs and killed his naval aide, Lieutenant Alfredo Celso Pestana. Peru. To shoot at tough little Luis M. Sanchez Cerro was an old Spanish custom, to hit him was a fairly common occurrence, but to kill him was News. Martial law was declared throughout Peru last week and the nation went into mourning for three days. Five-foot flat and mostly Indian, a pocket wildcat of a man, President Sanchez Cerro was wounded in five places and lost three fingers of his left hand when he seized the spitting muzzle of a machine gun in his bare hands and turned it on the Government forces in overthrowing President Billinghurst in 1914. In 1921 they shot him full of holes again when he captured Lima in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow President Leguia. In semi-exile abroad he served with the Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco, was wounded; served with the Italian army in 1925, took advanced military studies in France in 1926. In 1930 came one more revolution and he swept into office, a popular hero, promptly acted like all the Dictators before him, was kicked out, came back legally elected in 1931. His most recent puncture occurred last March when he was shot through the chest by one Jose Melgar. Until last week Luis M. Sanchez Cerro had been shot just 16 times. At Santa Beatriz racetrack last week he had just finished reviewing 20,000 young recruits for Peru's undeclared war with Colombia when up stepped a little man in black and shot him through the heart. Pandemonium. Aides, police, guards lining the way, all opened fire at once. Two soldiers were killed; six soldiers and a civilian were wounded in the scrimmage. The assassin, one Abelardo de Mendoza, member of the suppressed Apra revolutionary party, fell riddled with bullets and pierced by a lancer's spear. Chosen Provisional President to succeed Sanchez Cerro was cautious General Oscar Benavides, who has already served a term as Provisional President of Peru. Foreign correspondents wagered that one of his first moves will be to accept the League of Nations decision and end the Leticia war.

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