The Plot of the Grey Suits

Bomb blasts, loud but mostly harmless, have shaken Buenos Aires 15 times in the last 2 1/2 months. Juan Peron, foiled in his frantic attempts to catch the culprits, lashed out at all his enemies, even hinted that the U.S. supplied the explosives. But last week Peron got his hands on some authentic terrorists.

The cops caught them through sheer good luck. Two Argentinians had decided to blow up the black Cadillac customarily used by Foreign Minister Jeronimo Remorino. Under cover of darkness, they carried a grapefruit-size grenade toward the lonely curb where the car was parked, only to find that two cops had settled down in the car to escape a steady drizzle. The policemen chased and arrested the pair, winning $10.000 in rewards from Peron.

The arrested men turned out to be wealthy conservatives in opposition to Peron's regime. They were hauled off to the 17th precinct station, where the electric needle is one of the approved methods for extracting information. Soon they implicated other Buenos Aires socialites. who apparently thought amateurish bomb-throwing would somehow shake Peron (actually it seems to have strengthened his regime). The cops arrested about 225 other solid Argentine citizens--"oligarchs," the press called them--seizing many plain and fancy weapons (military rifles, big-game guns, nitroglycerin). The police reported that the "oligarchs" had ordered 1,000 identically cut grey suits, supposedly for use as uniforms in some future uprising. The 17th precinct station became a sort of society resort. One Buenos Aires matron, unable to send wine to her son because "liquor is not allowed in the jail," was heard to cry, "How barbarous!"

Peron had by no means captured all Argentina's bomb-setters, as another noisy burst at week's end showed. Nor was it yet known who--in or out of the government --set off the bombs in mid-April which inspired the burning by Peronistas of the famed old Jockey Club (TIME, April 27). Said the President: "Other terrorists can always rise. I will combat them with all my force. My job is being a general, and therefore, to fight, and my only desire is to die with my boots on!"

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