Swiss Family Arbenz

Guatemala's deposed President Jacobo Arbenz arrived last week with his family at Zermatt, five miles from Switzerland's Matterhorn, and announced that he was negotiating for recognition of his Swiss citizenship. His father operated a drug-store in the village of Andelfingen until he left for Guatemala in 1899, and was indisputably Swiss. Under the laws of the little democracy, no descendant of a Swiss loses his right to citizenship unless he specifically renounces it -- not even foreign Presidents.* Once he gets his Swiss passport, Arbenz will be able to bounce freely around the world, something that was impossible earlier, when he was under wraps in Mexican exile. Freedom to travel would be indispensable if he were planning a comeback -- and, as he told reporters in Paris: "In politics, only the dead don't come back."

*As a reinstated citizen, ex-Colonel Arbenz will be technically due for compulsory service in the Swiss army. But he is 41, and would probably not be called up unless a new European war broke out.

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