PERU: Ya Ha Firmado

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Hero Cerro. Once in -jail, Augusto Leguia was quickly forgotten by the Peruvian man-in-the-street. Hero of the week, cheered to the echo on his every appearance was the President of the Junta, Colonel Luis Sanchez Cerro, in many ways an even more spectacular figure than deposed Dictator Leguia. If five-foot-three Dictator Leguia is a bantam, pugnacious Colonel Cerro, five-foot-flat, is a molecule of a man, an explosive molecule. Brown as a berry, he has been fighting all his life. He is scarred with 16 gunshot wounds. In 1914 leading a revolution against the then President of Peru (who bore the good Nordic name of George E. Billingshurst) three fingers of his left hand were shot away. In 1921 in an unsuccessful revolution against President Leguia his right arm was crippled and part of his skull crushed. Singlehanded this pocket wildcat silenced a machine-gun nest, received 14 more bullet wounds. Exiled in 1922, he filled in his spare time by serving in the Spanish Army in Morocco against the Riff. Last week he flew from Arequipa to Lima to take charge of the government. At the flying field, cheering followers tossed him to their shoulders, carried him three miles to the city gates, where, balanced precariously on the roof of a motor truck, he rode through the streets in triumph. At the gates of Government Palace he cut reporters short.

"I am a doer, not a talker," he snapped. "In the words of the great Lord Nelson Peru expects 'every man to do his duty.' "

Pounding a table with his clawlike left hand he thundered denunciations against "Tyrant" and "Traitor" Leguia, accused him of selling the country's petroleum reserves to foreign capitalists, raising the national debt from 80 to 600 million soles (i sole—4Oj/). Bluntly he referred to the President's Civil Guards as "Jackals" and "Terroristic Instruments."*

Hat in hand, a delegation of Callao dockworkers called on Colonel Cerro at his new official residence, the 16th Century Palace of that superb ruffian Pizzarro, conqueror of Peru.

"Free us, sir, from Yankee imperialism,"† said the spokesman. "Peruvians don't hate foreigners who come to work with us. We hate those who come to exploit us."

"Give me time, gentlemen, give me time!" said Sanchez Cerro. "At least I promise that I will not become contaminated with the vices of the politicians."