Argentina: The Return That Wasn't

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To the bored cluster of newsmen posted outside his lavish villa in suburban Madrid, it looked like any other day in the life of Juan Domingo Perón. There had been the usual trickle of callers in the afternoon and evening. At 8 p.m. the exiled dictator went to dinner with Isabelita, his pretty young wife, a Spanish police officer assigned to guard him. and a few Peronista visitors from Argentina. Later, as always, Perón went upstairs to watch television, which invariably occupies him until Spain's only channel goes off the air at 12:30 a.m. Instead, with The Untouchables turned up full blast inside, Perón suddenly embarked on a hugger-mugger exploit of his own that was to make world headlines, involve half a dozen governments, and end in a greater deflation for Perón than any event since his ouster from Argentina nine years ago.

Another Eva. Perón's great misadventure began shortly before midnight when a Mercedes sedan pulled out of his underground garage. Inside were Jorge Antonio, Perón's financial adviser, and Delia Parodi, a Peronista spitfire from Buenos Aires; the guard waved them briskly through the gate. Then, out of sight a few miles up the road, Jorge Antonio stopped the car and bustied around to the trunk. And who popped out? Of course. Even with a hat tugged over his eyebrows and a vicuña scarf pulled up tightly around his chin, the sportily dressed figure who took his place in the back seat was unmistakably Juan Perón, now 69. Secrecy and surprise were his watchwords—and his only hopes of success. When the Mercedes roared into Madrid Airport, Iberian Flight 991 to Rio was warming up on the takeoff strip. Shielded by a waiting cordon of police, Perón, Jorge Antonio and Delia Parodi scrambled aboard the DC-8, where six other Peronistas were waiting for them.

So, at last, began El Retorno, fulfilling the dictator's endlessly repeated vow to come back some day to the troubled country where the name of Perón still commands the almost religious adulation of 3,000,000 followers. His pledge to return was originally proposed by Peronista leaders as an expedient to help reunite their slowly splintering movement. At first, El Lider was lukewarm to the idea, but gradually, as Perón talked more and more about it, the vision of a triumphal recovery of power became an obsession. Isabelita, too, became infected, soon dreamed of replacing her old rival Eva. By last week, when several key Perón aides advised him against El Retorno, the mirage had gripped Perón's brain like a drug.