Reprisal

One of the most carefully chiseled pieces in Juan Peron's "southern bloc" of republics was the Bolivian Government of the late President Gualberto Villarroel. But just as his deputies were about ready to sign the trade treaty with Argentina that would have sealed the Bolivians in for good, Villarroel was lynched, last July.

That only made Bloc-Builder Peron chip harder. Following the practice made familiar in Uruguay and Brazil, wheat and cattle shipments to Bolivia were virtually cut off. In the last two months it was estimated that barely a fifth of normal imports crossed the frontier from Argentina. In La Paz the price of butter tripled. Bolivian officials, loth to antagonize their big neighbor further, kept quiet, but a La Paz housewife said: "When I saw Villarroel hanged, I never thought our beef had been hanged."

Peron's purposes were plain: to win the new regime to his treaty for customs and passport union, perhaps then to put Bolivia in almost the same relation to Argentina as Austria was to Hitler's Germany. Last week he was reported demanding tin and rubber from Bolivia to implement his new five-year plan (TIME, Oct. 14).

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