Rising Tension

Is Juan Peron, from exile in tolerant Panama, running a campaign of sabotage and harassment against the revolutionary government that threw him out? Last week, after at least seven brush-fire in surrections in 24 days, many Argentines were beginning to think so.

In Chaco Province, bordering on Paraguay, ten Peronista politicos were arrested for "disturbing law and order." In the central province of San Luis 27 noncommissioned officers routed out draftees for unscheduled "night maneuvers" that the government said were part of a plot with links to other provincial garrisons. Using information the noncoms spilled, police and loyal troops besieged the estate of a Peronista ex-Congressman, met brisk gunfire that killed one soldier before they arrested twelve plotters.

Major General Pedro Aramburu's government followed up with large-scale jailings. An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Peronistas were behind bars; 125 labor leaders were loaded aboard a navy transport to be sent to distant Patagonia, Argentina's more than adequate substitute for Siberia.

Peron's direction of the plotters was understandably hard for the government to prove, but some evidence existed. In Uruguay a fortnight ago, his private secretary, Luis Radeglia, who had flown in from Panama, was detained and found to have tape recordings of Peron speeches, presumably for broadcasts to the homeland. In Buenos Aires Peronistas were peddling phonograph records labeled as tangos but really pep talks by Peron.

The vigor and persistence of the disorders evidently alarmed Aramburu. At week's end the government hastily freed 66 former Peronista Congressmen "in keeping with a healthy policy of pacification." It was the first time the regime had spoken of pacification.

The new regime's headaches have economic as well as political roots. In recent weeks Aramburu has given Argentina an unpalatable dose of austerity to try to clear up the economic mess inherited from Peron. The country's best-known economist, U.N. Official Raul Prebisch, reported that government interference under Peron had crippled economic development and kept the country's average per capita income almost stationary for ten years. He recommended stripping off many controls, e.g., an artificially high peso exchange rate, and taking anti-inflationary fiscal measures. A healthy if painful readjustment is taking place.

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