Argentina: Ghost from the Past

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For hours on end, a solitary figure sat stiffly in an ornate office in Buenos Aires' presidential Casa Rosada. A few lifelong personal friends kept an uncomfortable vigil in an ivory and green anteroom. Outside the door, a pair of knee-booted grenadiers of the palace guard stood, like life-sized toys, with ceremonial sabers bared. A stream of messengers came and went, bearing bulletins. Arturo Frondizi, 53, President of Argentina and currently his country's most unpopular man, was waiting to see whether he would be allowed to remain as elected Chief Executive of South America's second big gest nation. Frondizi swore he would remain: "Only my person stands between order and chaos." The decision was not his to make. It lay in the uncertain outcome of events he himself had set in motion across Argentina — a crucial congressional election whose terms he had set in expectation of victory and in defeat had been unable to honor. In protest, 2,000,000 workers, whose ballots had been summarily invalidated, were called out on strike across the land. Banks were closed, stock exchanges locked. In Buenos Aires, the country's dominant, deeply conservative military men held a series of nonstop meetings trying to decide what to do about the chaos and Frondizi — whether to keep him on or depose him in favor of a flat mili tary rule.

Unlikely Leader. Upheavals are not rare in Latin America, but the time and place of this one caught almost everyone by surprise. It took place in what is perhaps the most economically advanced nation on the continent—a rich land of spreading pampas, beef and grain, in which no Gaucho or laborer needs to go hungry. It is a land whose 20 million people, mostly of European immigrant descent, consider themselves infinitely superior to the citizens of neighboring Latin countries. It is urban and modern: one-third of the nation live within the capital city of Buenos Aires, a Parisian city whose aristocracy is the most sophisticated in Latin America. More than half of the nation live either in the capital or in surrounding Buenos Aires province.

Argentina is one of the nations President Kennedy has chosen as a showcase for his Alliance for Progress, and only three weeks ago he committed $150 million to it. Argentina had once recklessly squandered its patrimony under Dictator Juan Per&243;n. But now, unlike Brazil—its chief rival for attention in Latin America —Argentina was showing many of the elements of sensible development. And in Arturo Frondizi it seemed to have found a leader who was willing to do the hard things to make his country economically sound.