The Patient and the Doctor

...The estimated budget deficit for 1964-65, at $367.5 million, is a marked improvement on last year's estimated $640.5 million (the actual deficit is not yet known because Argentina's financial year begins in November...

...Argentina's is a consumption economy...

...This might be a fair summary of Argentina's condition after a year under the care of Dr...

...This was the first essential of the economic progress he hoped the country would make under its new five-year plan...

...This year's external debt servicing comes to $520 million, while indebtedness maturing next year and in 1966 will mean outgoings of $474 million and $364 million, respectively...

...This "struggle peso" policy, grotesquely named the "Alsogaray miracle," was made possible only because foreign credits and investments were pouring in, encouraged no doubt by the prevailing atmosphere of financial rectitude...

...President Illia's inheritance of problems, both short- and longterm, is heavy...

...This is as true of the business community, which accuses him of the incompatible vices of dirigisme and indecision, and of the intellectuals, who complain that peace and quiet do not constitute a program...

...dollar at a time when its free market value was between 200-300—a gift to the speculators...

...They are, of course, divided (every group, in Argentina, fissiparates...

...The "Blues" in the Army, who might be described as Kennedytype moderates, under the present commander-in-chief, General Carlos Organîa, certainly don't...

...During the Frondizi government, the short reign of Señor Alsogaray as Economics Minister (1959-61) brought a brief but illusory euphoria...

...Perhaps that is why he threw down his threat to return before the end of the year...

...But the short-term financial problems are already less acute than they were when Dr...

...It seems inconceivable that the Army would allow Peron to return unharmed...

...this is an invariable rule...

...The persistence of Peronism nine years after the dictator's downfall is indeed one of the significant facts of Argentine politics...

...But it cannot be ignored, for it represents the views of about 30 per cent of the electorate...

...He is wanted for alleged crimes in common law as well as for alleged constitutional offenses...

...Pillaging the State's bulging reserves, built up through non-involvement in two world wars, and in the end dipping into hitherto sacrosanct pension funds, he criminally neglected agriculture, launched into grandiose but ill-prepared industrialization schemes (which mostly failed), and virtually created the shanty-town villa miseria around Greater Buenos Aires by calling on the peasants to drop everything and join in Argentina's bright new industrial future...

...Brian Crozier, a British journalist currently traveling in Latin America, is the author of Morning After: A Study of Independence...

...Andres Framini, who runs the Textile Workers' Union, is more flamboyant and talks of revolutionary action...

...They may know in their hearts that the unspectacular doctor is right, but they are impatient with the deliberate pace he has chosen...

...That there is a nostalgia for Peron, despite the excesses of his last years in power, is undeniable...

...Then the balloon burst, and inflation resumed its course...

...But at least he knows that his very presence is a sedative: He is demonstrably honest and poor, he is held in general esteem, and he has the Army's backing...

...If he landed in Buenos Aires, there would be serious disorders, but he himself would probably be the first to suffer...

...There was little comfort in this for either Peronist faction among the workers, for after receiving Vandor at length in Madrid, he proceeded to be host to Framini...

...Perhaps Britain, which built Argentina's railways, should now send her Dr...

...In economic terms, Argentina's fundamental problem is under-investment (in Peron's time, when productive investment reached the healthy figure of nine per cent of gross national revenue, much of the effort was misdirected...

...Illia will have to tackle, if not in time for the partial Congressional elections next March, then before his term of office expires in five years, is that of parliamentary representation for the Peronists...

...It is not in any normal sense an overpopulated country, with only 21-22 million people in an area five times the size of France, much of it rich but neglected land...

...But only a tenth of this has been true capital investment...

...Now he must either live up to his threat or promise, which was authentic and was brought back from Madrid by Vandor in the form of a taped message, or lose his hold on his own movement—and perhaps that place in history to which he, at least, feels he is entitled...

...The armed forces, and the Army in particular, are of course divided, but neither of the main factions wants Peron back...

...in services and communications, Argentina has been living on past efforts, the most striking example being the State railways, whose accumulated deficit now stands at $299 million...

...Defending the peso in the face of all evidence, Alsogaray kept it pegged at 83 to the U.S...

...It has gone cheerfully for several generations eating up more and more of its own meat against a production long stagnant and now actually declining...

...Beeching there to continue the surgical job he has been performing on Britain's rail network...

...In August, however, the exiled dictator threw his followers into confusion, and the country as a whole into dismay by a message to the CGT (General Confederation of Workers) announcing his return as "national conciliator" before the end of 1964...

...Whether Peron's followers really want him back is a debatable point...

...Illia took office...

...So long as the threat of Peron's return persists, the physician-President of Argentina (himself the leader of one faction of the inevitably divided Radical party) will not even know whether the fever, which he seems to have cured, has gone for ever or is about to break out afresh...

...Arturo Illia, the quiet country physician from Córdoba province, who took office as President of the Argentine Republic on October 12, 1963...

...Now the Justicialista party, which represents Peronism, though not actually suppressed, is not legal either, since it does not have the formal right to put up candidates for election...

...By normality, he explained, he meant democracy and the respect for law and order...

...Illia had put his finger on the political soft underbelly of so many economic hopes, his first, cautious prescription is too tame for many Argentinos after long years of Peron's demagogy, followed by the painful austerity of the interim governments and the Machiavellian daring of ex-President Frondizi...

...The rest has gone in maintenance and repair...

...As President Illia told me when he received me in the ornate Palacio Rosado in Buenos Aires, a general return to peace and normality after 20 years of poisonous excitement is what the country needs most...

...However, Juan Peron, in 12 years of dictatorship from 1943, plunged the country into a riot of extravagance and corruption that brought the day of reckoning dramatically nearer...

...Figures can be made to show that for a quarter century, investment has averaged between 25-30 per cent...

...To a large extent, it is the emotional reaction of the workers and some sections of the middle class who personally benefited from Peron's rule and do not see why the process of increasing affluence (at other people's expense) should not continue...

...What both of them wanted most, perhaps, was the right to fight to the finish for the control of the Peronist unions (in which Vandor, for the time being, is the victor...

...Though Dr...

...Sooner or later, then, this land of rich absentee estancieros and futbol-mad proletariat would have run into trouble...

...A POLITICAL PROBLEM Dr...

...Augusto Vandor, boss of the Metallurgical Union, who has come to dominate the Peronist movement both in industry and in Justicialista politics, stands, or says he stands, for "legalism"—that is, for the party's right to stand for elective political office...

...Peron, rich with the spoils of office, presumably has little taste for peronismo without Peron...

...It was Frondizi's insistence on allowing Peronist candidates to stand in the Congressional elections of March 1962 that led to his deposition by the Army...

...But two per cent at compound interest mounts up if no more food is coming onto the market...

...In a country in need of calm, these are great assets...

...Nor does the annual net population growth of two per cent constitute an explosion...

...Neither do the extreme conservative "Reds" (corresponding roughly to England's true-Blues of the Suez group), also known as the Gorillas, whose leader, General Torazo Montero, is now in premature retirement...

...The long-term predicament is much more serious...