ARGENTINA: Spellbinder

Peronistas were all set. For next month's congressional elections, they had picked their candidates, including Father Virgilio Filippo, 52, a spellbinding parish priest from the Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano. They planned to keep the padre under wraps; the final rally would be his only speaking date. Last week that plan died quickly in a party squabble.

After the nominating convention, Hector Campora, Peronist chief of Buenos Aires, took party workers to a midnight dinner at barn-sized La Estancia. When Campora got up to praise newsmen guests for their "objective cooperation," Eduardo-Colon, peppery publisher of the rabidly Peronist La Epoca,...