Per

Posters spotted the kiosks and bill boards of Buenos Aires. "Don't buy La Prensa!" they shrilled. "Don't advertise in La Prensa, the No. 1 enemy of the news vendors and workers in general." The posters bore the imprint of the Argentine Ministry of Information.

Once again Juan Peron was sharpening his ax for the stately, 77-year-old royal oak of Latin American journalism. He had an old score to settle. In October 1945, just before Peron's two-day fall from power, La Prensa had thundered that the Government should be turned over to the Supreme Court. Furious, Juan Peron had replied: "I shall not permit La Prensa to shout the Government down." He has never forgotten. It would have been hard to forget, for La Prensa has been the oak around which much of Peron's opposition has rallied, perhaps without a full realization that it is in the midst of social revolution.

Pinprick Campaign. Last fortnight, at B.A.'s Teatro Colon, Peron listed the Government's enemies: the "oligarchy," Opposition politicians, Communists -- and La Prensa. Next day the News Vendors' Union, newly organized and recognized by Peron's Labor Ministry, demanded that the paper stop delivering copies straight to subscribers. Home deliveries account for less than a tenth of La Prensa's 387,384 circulation, but to have cut them off would have thrown 250 employees out of work and cost $400,000 in severance pay.

Last week a Peronista deputy introduced a bill prohibiting the sale of any article at less than its production cost.

That too was aimed at La Prensa, whose, ads alone make possible its 2 1/2-c- sale price.

Of all Latin American newspapers, La Prensa is about the hardest to coerce. It regularly prints more classified ads than any paper anywhere -- an average of six pages a day, all bought in cash across the counter before publication. Display ads get the back pages. Thus, up to a point, La Prensa can tell industry and commerce as well as Government what it thinks of them.

In 1930, when Dictator Jose Uriburu threatened to close La Prensa unless it stopped attacking him, the paper's tough old owner and publisher, Ezequiel Pedro Paz, told him that he would move the paper to Paris and keep up the fight from there. General Uriburu piped down. That was 16 years ago, and Don Ezequiel, paralyzed by a stroke in 1943, has never known that his paper was closed for five days in April 1944, for opposing the militarist Farrell regime.

Muffled Thunder. Today La Prensa is not the paper it used to be. In the face of Peron, it has muffled its thunder. Its voice has become more & more the voice of the oldtime Jockey Club oligarchy, an echo of the dead past in the very much alive present.

Nevertheless, La Prensa is still a formidable institution. Foreign governments implicitly accept its news. Reporters work gladly in its clublike editorial rooms for less than they could get elsewhere. Its circulation paces the field in Latin America. Portenos guess that despite skying costs the paper makes a million and a half a year.

Last week La Prensa, though no longer the oldtime thunderer for constitutional liberties, still had voice to answer the latest Peron attack:

"This ... is not an isolated move. It is a new episode stemming from the same cause as other attacks. That cause is a false concept of the freedom and mission of the press in a country with democratic institutions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.