Justo, Justice & Joust

With the zero snap of an Argentine winter in the air last week, Buenos Aires correspondents shivered over a decree from big, harsh, faultlessly attired President Agustin P. Justo which seemed likely to cost many of them their jobs. The President's skin is tissue-thin. In a fury last year he ripped out an order to "sue the Government of the United States for reparations for besmirching Argentineans' reputations!" after the U. S. Senate's munitions probe charged the acceptance of bribes by Argentine Army munitions buyers (TIME, Oct. 8). Scared underlings finally broke to General Justo the extreme difficulty of persuading the U. S. Government to let itself be sued, the virtual impossibility of collecting reparations from Washington. Such might be the facts, General Justo admitted, but he would find a way to get the "damned Yanquis" yet, and anyone else who took Argentina's unsullied and inviolate name in vain. With extreme satisfaction the President finally thought up and signed his new decree.

It provides that no correspondent or news service may send dispatches out of Argentina without posting a bond of cash or federal bonds of from 5,000 pesos ($1.656) to 50,000 ($16,560) with the Bank of the Nation. This bond is to remain on deposit until three years after the bonded news purveyor has sent his last dispatch. All dispatches, whether cabled or mailed, must be signed by the bonded sender and filed in scrapbooks at the disposal of the Argentine Post Office. No dispatch will be passed or approved by an Argentine censor in advance, but the Post Office can levy fines against the deposited bond "if the news is false, or contrary to public morals or public order or tending to discredit Argentina."

Since no Argentine from the President down could have taken a step more likely to discredit Argentina than the promulgation of this decree, intelligent Argentines were left gasping in amazement. The highly literate and weighty newsorgans La Prensa and La Nation, models of Latin journalism and traditional adversaries on almost every issue, united for once and for three days printed editorials hurling against President Justo every weapon of argument, deprecation, criticism, sarcasm, invective and ridicule. They added that the decree flatly violates the Argentine Constitution's pledge of freedom of the press.

In vain.

The President squared his general's jaw. It meant nothing to him that the New York Times and William Randolph Hearst at once announced withdrawal of their correspondents if the decree was enforced. General Justo is shrewd enough to know what the South American news game really is. In its profitable aspects it has always consisted in selling to South Americans from a hundred to a thousand times more news about the rest of the world than foreigners have the slightest desire to buy or even receive gratis from South America. Therefore the big news services must and will maintain their Buenos Aires branches to sell news; they can be depended on to post any bonds however large; now & then the Argentine Post Office can have fun collecting a fine; and hereafter news from Argentina will consist almost wholly of Government handouts. The newsorgans of the world will throw most Argentine news into the wastebasket and Argentina will not be missed, but she will continue to pay high for her foreign news of which earnest Argentineans are avid readers.

With the Post Office of Buenos Aires somewhat bewildered by its new powers, correspondents were not forced to post bonds last week, took a chance and cabled for perhaps the last time a spate of proceedings in the Argentine Senate. Subject of debate was the Senate probe into bribery by Argentina's great meat packers to evade income and excess profit taxes. Cried the senior Senator from the province of Santa Fe, bristling Lisandro de la Torre: "I repeat my charge that the packers paid higher prices for the cattle of His Excellency the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Duhau, than for other people's cattle. I also repeat that the Minister of Finance, His Excellency Frederico Pinedo, knew that these packers successfully evaded the income and profits taxes!"

As the grey-bearded Senator returned from the tribune toward his seat, he was attacked from the Government bench by the Minister of Agriculture who knocked him down into the aisle. When the junior Senator from Santa Fe, Enzo Bordabehere, sprang up to aid his old provincial colleague, he was instantly assassinated by three expertly aimed bullets from the visitors' gallery. Fourth bullet entered the hand of Minister of Agriculture Luis Duhau after piercing the abdomen of a Deputy from Santa Fe, Rafael Mancini.

Police promptly shooed all reporters out of the Senate. They dawdled in arresting the assassin, but finally a onetime suburban police commissioner, Ramon Vasquez Cora, who was sitting in the gallery and possessed a warm automatic with four empty shells, was taken into custody. The crime appeared to duplicate that at Belgrade in 1928 when the opposition Deputy Stefan Raditch was assassinated in open Parliament by a Government sympathizer, since which crime Yugoslavia has been under a Dictatorship.

In Buenos Aires shooting was not over. Minister of Agriculture Luis Duhau and Minister of Finance Frederico Pinedo temporarily resigned their Cabinet posts for the purpose of challenging their accuser, 70-year-old Senator Lisandro de la Torre, to duel. The greybeard, a great rapier expert in his youth, promptly agreed to fight the Minister of Finance who had challenged first and, having the choice of weapons, picked pistols. Over 100 Argentineans, mostly prominent, watched. Hoary Senator de la Torre, his grey beard whipped by the winter breeze, drew himself up and fired into the air. Minister of Finance Pinedo, after taking careful aim, squeezed the trigger, missed.

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