Buttons & Business

Juan and Evita Peron were waiting on the terrace when the Cadillac turned in at the presidential residence. Before U.S. Ambassador and Mrs. James Bruce could get out of the car, Evita's toy poodle hopped right into Mrs. Bruce's lap.

From start to finish, last week's farewell party for the retiring ambassador* and his wife was a happy get-together of good friends. Evita brought a new portrait down from the second floor to show her guests. Peron gave his friend Don Jaime a hand-tooled Belgian automatic shotgun, just the gift for an ambassador whose favorite Argentine sport has been weekend partridge shooting (in the Gaucho getup given him by Defense Minister Humberto Sosa Molina).

Gifts for a Friend. Peron also wanted to give his guest the Order of the Liberator San Martin, but Bruce begged off. Ambassadors, he said, ought not to take medals from foreign governments. "The main thing I want from you," he said, "is your autographed photograph." At dinner he got it, a huge picture inscribed to "mi gran amigo." He also got a Peronista button for his lapel and a small "loyalty medal," an unofficial Peronista emblem which the President had previously given only to members of his household.

During his two years in Buenos Aires, big Jim Bruce had seen U.S.-Argentine relations hit bottom, then start an upward climb. With dogged good will he had brushed aside one anti-U.S. press campaign after another. Peron and Bruce seemed to hit it off well together. Bruce, a millionaire who knew how to run a business, never lost a chance to lecture the President on economics. "Let the Argentine economy alone," he kept repeating. "Don't tinker with it."

A Dose of Free Enterprise. The turn may have come last winter when, with almost no dollars left, the Argentine state-trading system cracked up. Bruce insisted that there was nothing wrong that a small dose of free enterprise could not correct. Cautiously, the government moved to ease some state trade controls.

Since May, U.S.-Argentine trade has increased roughly 50%. The Argentines are gradually paying off their short-term U.S. debt. Peron has told Bruce that Argentina, which once more is trading at world prices, will shortly fold up its state-trading agency.

Last week, as Peron bade him goodbye at Moron airport, Ambassador Bruce could tell himself that he had fulfilled Harry Truman's 1947 orders to "go down and make friends with those people." He could also say that he had made some dent in Argentine economic thinking.

* Probable successor: Stanton Griffis, ex-ambassador to Poland and Egypt.

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