Boondocks Uprising

Steamy Iquitos, Peru's chief Amazon River port, was sleeping under a velvet equatorial sky when military boots first began to scrape along the streets. Tough little soldiers in suntans deployed briskly. In less than an hour, without firing a shot, they occupied the city's radio stations, telegraph office, and the big, grey prefectura building, Capitol of the jungled, Arizona-size department of Loreto.

Soon after sunup the rest of the garrison was standing at attention in the treelined Plaza de Armas. Brigadier General Marcial Merino Pereyra, their commander, read off a manifesto explaining to his men why he had led them into rebellion against Strongman Manuel Odria. They would, he promised, "open the front door for democracy in Peru, and guarantee absolutely free elections." Townspeople gawked, then drifted off to work.

Waiting Game. General Merino, 51, an able infantry officer, then sat back to wait. His boondocks uprising was shrewdly conceived. By merely proclaiming a rebellion, Merino forced Odria to retaliate or lose his strongman's prestige. But Odria was denied any chance of easy attack. Merino claimed the whole Second (Jungle) Division of 12,000 men (the whole army numbers 55,000 to 60,000). He also claimed the navy's Amazon fleet: seven 200-to 500-ton gunboats, and about thirty 10-to 50-ton river patrol craft. Moreover, most of the troops were inaccessibly camped in scores of jungle outposts, and even the Iquitos headquarters was isolated from Lima by 700 miles of mountains and jungles. Merino's strategy obviously was to sit tight, with an impressive force-in-being that other garrison commanders all over Peru might decide to join. When and if rebels outnumbered loyalists, Odria would fall.

General Odria got the point fast; his first act was a doublecheck on other garrisons. Apparently reassured, he slapped on a state of siege, denying Peruvians the right to travel or hold meetings.

Then the President set out to round up the political leaders presumably linked with the revolt. His eye lit on one of Peru's most powerful men, Pedro Beltran.

Distinguished Prisoners. Aristocratic Pedro Beltran, businessman, cotton planter, publisher, and onetime Ambassador to Washington, paid the bills for Odria's successful 1948 revolution, but soon broke with Odria. Lately, Beltran has been booming a wealthy fellow businessman, Pedro Rosello, as an anti-government candidate in elections set for June. Beltran's newspaper La Prensa has loudly accused Odria of plotting to steal the elections for a hand-picked successor. To the dictator, this charge was suggestively reflected in Merino's manifesto. Cops raided and closed La Prensa. They arrested Beltran, Rosello, scores of others.

The dictator then turned back to military problems. At week's end he was reportedly concentrating his eight Thunderjets and 20 Hawker Hunters at northern bases in readiness for an air strike at the rebels. With Merino still sitting tight and hoping for the time factor to operate, it was clearly Odria's move.

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