Catch Me!

Argentina's predominantly democratic people may have found a leader. At least, they have found one man who dared defy the blustering military Government. He was Jose Aguirre Camara, former deputy in Congress.

Last March, Police Chief Colonel Filomeno Velazco suspected Aguirre Camara of being editor of the famous underground newspaper Himno National (National Anthem). Arrested and imprisoned, Aguirre Camara won his liberty by promising not to attack the Government without telling the police beforehand. Last month, astonished Police Chief Velazco got Aguirre Camara's warning. Soon, wrote the cheeky ex-deputy, he would publish a scathing pamphlet. He would print it in Argentina. He would remain in the country "until I am convinced that the people do not want to be saved."

Velazco mobilized the entire police force, hunted high & low. He did not find Aguirre Camara or his printing plant. On schedule, the pamphlet appeared. Entitled Demagogia, Inflacion y Armamentismo (Demagoguery, Inflation and Militarism), it passed through the mails in envelopes like those used by Government agencies. Before the police woke up to the trick, it had reached a wide audience. A single copy now brings as much as 1,000 pesos ($250).

Cheap Demagoguery. Aguirre Camara pulled no punches. Damning the Government as totalitarian, he predicted that it would lead Argentina into inflation and militarism. Blasting powerful Vice President Juan Domingo Peron, he deflated his "love of the workingman" as demagoguery.

Aguirre Camara comes of an old family in Cordoba Province. In both political and private life his record is so blameless that even the slugging nationalist press of Buenos Aires has not been able to smear him. His aged patrician mother still chooses his clothes. When he was Finance Minister of Cordoba, he gave her his paycheck every week, like a boy on his first job.

Many Argentines are inclined to be contemptuous of the oppositionists who thunder at the Government from safety across the river in Montevideo. They admire Aguirre Camara for remaining in Argentina. Last week the police had not caught him yet. When they questioned his mother, she drew herself up proudly. "Go ahead and look for him," she said. "You won't find him. I've put him in the hands of God, who knows he is fighting for the salvation of his country."

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