One-Man Miracle

Summoned to Congress by a Senate debate on the bloody civil war plus banditry that has scattered nearly 300,000 bodies across Colombia (pop. 13.5 million) in eleven years, Minister of Government Guillermo Amaya last week coolly proved that the flow of blood is ebbing. During the first six months of 1958, said Amaya, 3,198 people were slaughtered in backlands violence--an average of 15.2 a day.* In the past six months the death toll shrank to 841, and by March the daily killing average was down to four. .

Dramatic by itself, the fall in fatalities is even more startling in light of the fact that Colombia's government is only half functioning. Forced into a 1957 alliance to overthrow Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, the perpetually warring Liberal and Conservative parties invented a rigid agreement to divide political power equally for the next 16 years. Every political organism, from Congress to town councils, was neatly bisected. Liberal Leader Alberto Lleras Camargo last August took the first four-year stint as President, with the understanding that he would be succeeded by a Conservative.

Presidential Remodeling. The ironic upshot is that Congress bickers impotently, and President Lleras is free to rebuild Colombia. He sent peacemaking commissions into the hinterland to patch up Liberal-Conservative feuds. Where the fighting had degenerated into nonpolitical banditry, he used troops. By last week only the coffee-rich Andean department of Caldas remained to be pacified.

Lleras also rebuilt his nation's international fiscal rating, driven into shabby disrepute by Spendthrift Rojas. He choked off unneeded imports so decisively that Colombia was one of five Latin American nations to show a 1958 favorable balance of trade in spite of tumbling prices of coffee, source of more than 80% of Colombia's export income. Lleras cut the $500 million commercial debt left by Rojas to $150 million. He also held down government spending and tightened credit. Cost of living, which jumped 23% in 1957, climbed only 8% in 1958.

Bus Rumble. Aside from the problem of keeping Liberal and Conservative hands off the pistols, Lleras faces the inevitable beginning of grumbling among the havenots. Some 5,000,000 Colombians live in hunger, another 6,000,000 barely manage to cling to the lower fringes of an adequate living standard, while an elite 4.6% of the population has 40% of the national income. Spearheaded by a small but boisterous band of Communists and abetted by students, Bogota's hungry took to the streets in March to protest a bus-fare increase from 1.87-c- to 3-c-. For hours, they pelted soldiers with stones and curses.

To restore calm, Lleras canceled the increase. To keep the calm, he will have to pull another miracle of statesmanship --a miracle that will build new industries to put Colombia's hungry manpower, currently growing at the rate of 70,000 a year, to work.

*Average number of murders in the U.S. (pop. 175 million) per day: 18.

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