ARGENTINA'S CLEANUP MAN

AFTER every debauch, someone must pick up -- the pieces and arrange to pay the damages. In Argentina, nearly bankrupt after a giddy decade under Dictator Juan Peron, the cleanup man is dour, professorial Arturo Frondizi, 50, the country's 31st President. Frondizi is the successor to Provisional President Pedro Aramburu (TIME Cover, June 3, 1957), the general who restored Argentina's democratic political system and presided over the free election a year ago that gave Frondizi a victory. In six months, Frondizi has sharply lifted Argentina's prestige and credit by a stern, undemagogic economic program that embodies the same patriotic austerity De Gaulle proposes for France. Next week, taking his first breather, he reaches the U.S. for a ten-day state visit.

Unpopular Task. Frondizi won office with Peronista votes, and his first political instinct was to repay the favor with such spendthrift sops as massive wage rises. But Frondizi, son of an Italian immigrant roadbuilder, is a responsible lawyer and political economist, and he soon made a different choice. He swapped Peronista support for army backing and began the dangerous, unpopular job of making Argentina live within its means. First, he coolly downgraded the ineffectual, sacred-cow national oil monopoly, by inviting foreign oilmen to develop Argentina's petroleum resources. The first new well came in last week, beginning a program that eventually will save Argentina the $300 million it spends each year for foreign oil, a sum roughly equal to its whole trade deficit. Then Frondizi freed the artificially pegged peso to find its true value, discarded much red tape that distorted and paralyzed Argentina's foreign trade. A fortnight ago, to help shore up the peso and make the economy more productive, U.S. Government and private banks, as well as the International Monetary Fund, announced a $329 million loan to Argentina. The loan soothed many Argentines, who tend to blame Frondizi for the discomforts of living within their means, but the program is not popular and enforcing it will take all of Frondizi's skill.

With Ike & Rocky. His trip to the U.S. will be the first state visit ever made to the U.S. by an Argentine President (although Frondizi saw the country as a tourist in 1948). He will be met at Washington's National Airport by President and Mrs. Eisenhower. In three days in Washington, Frondizi will dine with the Eisenhowers and Secretary of State Dulles. A longtime Congressman himself, he will address a joint session of Congress. Also on the ten-day itinerary: a weekend in colonial Williamsburg; a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan, talks with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, flying trips to Detroit and Chicago.

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