ARGENTINA: The Velvet Glove

Buttoned up in a tan plaid overcoat, President Juan Perón stepped onto a balcony in Buenos Aires one wintry evening last week. In the street below, a crowd of 10,000 stood near a floodlighted, 24 ft. by 12 ft. photograph of the late Eva Perón. One minute went by. At 8:25, exactly three years after Evita died of cancer, bugles blared. After listening to a four-minute panegyric read by a dolorous radio announcer, the crowd shuffled silently past the balcony. Peron made no speech. There was none of the tone of totalitarian frenzy that usually went with Peron's balcony scenes in the past. The word had gone out to the followers: no shouting, no torches, no banners.

Much else besides balcony scenes has changed in Argentina since the bloody navy-led revolt of June 16 rocked Perón & Co. Members of opposition parties openly passed out propaganda leaflets on the streets. Jails are slowly regurgitating political prisoners. Argentines no longer glance over their shoulders before reciting an anti-Perón joke. Last week's Perón's press secretary announced that a shutdown Catholic newspaper, El Pueblo, may publish again, added that the authorities will no longer ban foreign magazines, no matter what they print about Argentina.

Ever Louder Tones. The most striking evidence of change was a radio speech. For the first time since Perón achieved the presidency in 1946, the government let an opposition politico speak to his countrymen on the air. Over a nationwide network. Radical Party Leader Arturo Frondizi declared that Perón's announced program of pacification "must not be a new form of submission. We want peace, but not at the price of our freedom." Boldly, he called an end to the state of internal war decreed by Peron in 1951.

Another conspicuous sign was the Ingalinelia case. Among the Argentines of various political colorings rounded up on June 16. was one Dr. Juan Ingalinella, a physician and an admitted Communist. According to the police in his home city of Rosario. he was released the day after his arrest. But his wife never saw him again. All over the nation, Argentines demanded, in ever louder tones, that the police produce Ingalinella. Radical deputies in the federal Congress insistently called for an investigation.

A Revolution After All. Under the pressure, the government announced almost shamefacedly that Ingalinella had "died of a heart attack during an interrogation in which violence was used." To Argentines familiar with the methods of Perón's police, this suggested that the Rosario cops had tortured him with the picana, an electric goad applied to sensitive parts of the body. The seven cops involved, said the government, were awaiting trial. Some wondered: was it merely a searching for scapegoats, or something more significant, when a police state be gins calling policemen to account?

So went Juan Perón's "pacificator" program, the relaxation and concessions spill ing out almost daily, but always in a way that suggested that there was still steel inside the velvet glove. Whatever the true explanation, it appeared that the June 16 revolt, though a military fiasco, may have been something of a revolution after all.