SALVADOR: Bijou Revolt

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A little gem of a Central American revolution occurred in El Salvador last week. There were no obscure causes. The government of President Arturo Araujo, in its anxiety to economize,* had simply forgotten to pay the army officers' salaries for three months. Chief of Salvadorean Police was President Araujo's brother-in-law. The police were paid. The police remained loyal.

Abruptly in the middle of the night the guns of San Salvador's Fort La Artilleria began blazing away at the handsome colonnaded Presidential Palace. Officers of Fort El Sapote on the other side of the city, unaware of the revolution, tumbled out of bed to return the fire, but soon a messenger broke through with the big news. Then El Sapote too blazed away at the Palace. Policemen with their pay in their pockets bravely tried to defend the chief of state, as did a few loyal troops. Whether it was true or not, a rumor circulated that Finance Minister Francisco Jose Espinosa had something to do with the hold-up in the officers' pay. Finance Minister Espinosa was promptly killed.

President Araujo. whose British wife is the former Miss Dora Morton, seemed disinclined to listen to reason. Revolutionary troops chased him to Santa Ana on the Guatemalan border where he signed his resignation.

A military junta of twelve officers, the oldest of whom is 42, the youngest 18, took over the government, inaugurated Vice President General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez as Chief of State. General Martinez, a model General, is not only an officer: he is a vegetarian, a temperance advocate, an authority on agricultural reform. Even so the U. S. State Department refused to recognize him last week. Within 48 hours after the revolution the only visible signs were gaping holes in the Presidential Palace and the fact that cautious motorists traveled about the streets with flags of truce on their radiators.