Crackdown Continued

Major General Pedro Aramburu, who took over as President of Argentina a fortnight ago on a platform of tougher crackdown on Peronismo than his go-slow predecessor, last week cracked down in measures both symbolic and practical.

Suddenly two of the ten heroic statues atop the Buenos Aires building that was to have been headquarters for the huge Eva Peron Charity Foundation appeared shrouded in burlap. The pair: a complacent Juan Peron, hand on hip, surveying Buenos Aires in an open-collared shirt, and a saintly Eva Peron, in a plain dress with outstretched hand. Thus, with monumental effrontery, had Peron ranked himself and his wife with Argentina's Washington, General Jose de San Martin (the seven remaining statues symbolized old age, children, various typical workers). Aramburu's government planned to lower the 2O-ton statues of the Perons with heavy cranes, cut up the costly Carrara marble into useful blocks of raw material for art students.

Also removed from public view were some live Peronistas. Major General Franklin Lucero. the Army Minister who shored up Juan Peron after last June's unsuccessful revolution, and Major General Jose Humberto Sosa Molina, Peron's Defense Minister, were jailed. So was Hugo de Pietro, last Peronista boss of the General Confederation of Labor.

But if dismantling Peron's works meant less freedom for a few of the strongman's collaborators, it meant a welcome extra measure of freedom for the majority of Argentines. President Aramburu abolished Peron's most oppressive legal tool, the State Security Law that for ten years provided pretexts for arresting the dictator's enemies. And having closed up the hated, Subsecretariat of Press. Peron's main propaganda mill. Aramburu started news flowing freely out of the government once again.

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