Durable Dictator

"I would abandon the government this very day were I not fortified by the loyalty of the people and of my comrades in the army," declaimed Juan Peron last week. It was, perhaps unconsciously, a rather accurate statement of his position a week after the navy-managed attempt to bomb him to death and take over his government. Peron's top army officers, after some doubtful days, had stayed loyal; his labor-union support, though less important in this crisis than the army's backing, had hardly wavered. At week's end the Argentine dictator was again a power to reckon with.

He had nearly lost out, not to his navy rebels but to his army saviors. They had an inviting pretext to dump him: his politically embarrassing and unprofitable quarrel with the Roman Catholic Church.

But Peron still had 1) a strong will, 2) a shrewd ability to play men off against each other, and 3) the loyalty of the big unions. For the moment that was enough.

Portraits Down. By showing, with the blast of bombs on Government House, that Peron was not above challenge, the rebels cut his prestige to a doubtful quantity at the beginning of the week. Already the church had excommunicated him, and he found it prudent to turn the post-revolt mop-up entirely over to Army Minister General Franklin Lucero. In some offices government employees discreetly took down his portrait from the wall. Ominously, the official evening newscast failed to start at 8:25 p.m. with the requisite explanatory phrase that it was "the moment [one night three years ago] when Eva Peron entered immortality." Argentine athletes dropped the familiar routine of dedicating their victories to Peron.

The dictator-in-trouble stayed in his town residence; he was seen there walking in the garden. Generals, admirals and politicos talked in private about a military junta. Then the papers began to mention Peron again: top officers and Cabinet ministers began driving out to see him.

What they talked about was top secret--and stayed that way. But Peron may have touched on his union strength, or the vote-getting power he could swing for the next presidential election, or the good standing with the U.S. that he demonstrated by getting a $60 million loan this year. Whatever happened, the 8:25 news program dedicated to Eva went back on the air, and Peron's portraits went back on the walls. Lucero began to look less like a new strongman and more like an old pal.

Market Up. Already the bomb craters in the Plaza de Mayo were filled in and paved over. The jittery stock market picked up. The Colon opera house found the tension relaxed enough to present Giordano's Andrea Chenier, which sings of a French revolutionary's doomed, gallant fight for what many Argentines still wish they had: liberty. By midweek the army troops who had occupied central Buenos Aires were back in their barracks, and General Lucero publicly handed back the special "repression" powers that for another, more ambitious man might have been an admirable springboard to total power.

Gathering some of his closest associates around him, Peron consolidated his gains in a radio speech. It was sweetly reasonable in tone, but both his words and his voice were strong and confident. He bore down hard on an effective point: the rebels' disregard for the lives of bystanders in their attempt at assassination by aerial bombing. (Agreed a chauffeur: "If they'd had one man with guts, they'd have assassinated Peron openly.") "In the face of such infamy, disloyalty and treason," Peron said sadly, "a man of my age and position needs a great sense of duty and a very solid patriotism to overcome the wish to resign." He praised the Argentine people. He praised the army. He praised the police.

Concessions. But Peron got back his grip only at the cost of at least one implicit concession. His knockdown battle with the church became a wary standoff, not even mentioned in his speech. Said Hugo di Pietro, Peronista labor boss: "This is a time for reconciliation. There will be no church issue." Though most priests still wore cautious mufti in the streets (Argentines vied in trying to spot them by their black socks and clumsily knotted neckties), some ventured boldly out in cassocks. Most of the arrested priests were hastily freed. The government sent policemen to guard churches, including those burned by angry Peronista mobs after the revolt, and the guards amiably let the devout decorate the ruined churches with lovingly placed bouquets of carnations and chrysanthemums.

Catholic authorities, to keep emotions down, refrained from announcing Peron's excommunication in the churches. That fact remained largely a matter of word-of-mouth information in Argentina; a radio station, endlessly playing tangos, jammed broadcasts from Uruguay.

The Tipoff. Peron received the resignations of his entire Cabinet. Was that the post-revolutionary gesture, customary in Latin America, to "free the President's hand," or had the army forced it? Buenos Aires believed that the key question would be answered this week when the new Cabinet was named. If it were packed with generals, the significance might be that the soldiers had to some degree boxed in the No. 1 general, that the revolt had cost Peron some of his power. But if the Cabinet included Peron's chosen cronies--Minister of Education Mendez San Martin, a spark plug of the anti-church campaign; Minister of Interior Angel Gabriel Borlenghi, the old Cabinet's boss policeman; and Minister of Technical Affairs Raul Mende, top political hatchetman--then Peron would be announcing to the world that he was firmly and defiantly back in full control.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.