A State of "Anarchy"

To judge by the headlines, Latin America's two largest nations lurch from one political crisis to another; and to judge by their falling currency, both Brazil and Argentina are in an economic mess. The headlines are true and the financial crisis is real, but people long inured to trouble develop their own saving methods of endurance, apathy or escapism. Citizens of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro went about their affairs with a benumbed kind of ordinariness last week. Argentines flocked to the horse races at Palermo Hippodrome; Brazilians poured into Maracana Stadium for a futebol match. While they played, or worked at their jobs, the political disputation went on.

Argentina. The country's military rulers, having unconstitutionally taken power, were now fighting among themselves. Rival cliques sent their tanks through the streets of Buenos Aires to make menacing gestures at one another; three new War Ministers were appointed in the space of four days, until finally a "neutral" general was found who for the moment satisfied both sides. Argentina's dogged Economics Minister Alvaro Alsogaray, who recently returned from the U.S. with $500 million in loans, warned that the nation could not continue much longer in a state of "anarchy." Alsogaray has not been able to put into practice most of the reform measures he insists are necessary. Prices rise daily, and last week the peso sank still lower to 129 to the dollar, while the foreign debt climbed to above $4 billion and gold and cash reserves in the treasury dwindled to a meager $170 million. And how does all this affect the run of the people? Said a Buenos Aires housewife with a shrug: "We don't worry any more. We live from day to day."

Brazil. After a six-week testing of wills with the country's fractious Congress, President Joao ("Jango") Goulart and his Prime Minister, Francisco Brochado da Rocha, finally managed to achieve a kind of truce. In the Brasilia capital, Brochado da Rocha bluntly told Congress: "We are living at the door of a revolution. This government lacks the power to govern." That, plus his threat to resign, seemed to sink in. Legislators granted the government a package of emergency powers to keep the country together until next October's congressional elections, plus a promise to vote on returning Brazil from its unworkable parliamentary system to a strong presidency. "No more problems in Brasilia," crowed Goulart. There were plenty elsewhere. Food-hoarding speculators pushed the cost of living higher still, and the cruzeiro was down to almost 600 to the dollar. Off to Washington, on the same route as that taken by Argentina's Alsogaray, flew Brazil's Finance Minister, Walther Moreira Salles, to seek still another stretch-out in his country's $3 billion foreign debt.

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