Tar on the Screen

Before last week, orderly, freedom-loving Uruguayans had about persuaded themselves that their Communists were different. Then the U.S. movie, The Iron Curtain, story of the Soviet spy ring in Canada, came to Montevideo, and Uruguay's Commies broke the spell. About 200 of them turned up at Montevideo's Trocadero theater and made an unseemly rough house. They lobbed tar at the screen, dropped stink bombs, and smashed some seats. As dismayed citizens rushed for the exits, the police arrived, went after the demonstrators, carted off 70 prisoners. Finally order was restored. The citizens drifted back to the theater, and after everybody had stood up and sung the national anthem, the showing of the movie was resumed.

Actually, shocked Montevideo had seen no more violence than Cuba and Venezuela saw when The Iron Curtain was shown in Havana and Caracas. But Uruguay is a republic where order and freedom of expression are part of the national creed.* Even the Uruguayan Communist party, which polled 4% of the votes at the last presidential election, has been accepted as a legal, peaceful political movement.

The affair at the Trocadero theater made Uruguayans, including President Luis Batlle Berres, think again. Said the President in a ringing speech next day: "It is odd to think that there are Uruguayan citizens who would use force to impose their ideas on others. As citizen and President, I respect the beliefs of different men and different parties, but also as citizen and President, I say there must be respect for different opinions . . . This is not a challenge but a warning. If this is the first episode of a series, democratic government will meet it with the necessary force."

Brazil continued its policy of cracking down on Communists. Sao Paulo police called on the federal Justice Department last week to deport twelve citizens of Russia and other Iron Curtain countries who had been arrested for passing out illegal pamphlets. The twelve were described as "skilled spies with great experience in this field." The pamphlets, added the police, came from Montevideo.

* For example, when Argentina's President Juan Peron complained to Uruguayan Ambassador Roberto E. MacEachen last month that Montevideo radio stations were reporting the alleged plot against him in an unfriendly manner, MacEachen replied: "But in Uruguay we have a free radio."

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