ARGENTINE HOPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000400110001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 1, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 20&f11gRDP80-01601 R00
! i' f'...Y R p ~ t;'9
The The first and most spectacular
k'I,- "-,i v L L L' if' prize of the Central
Intelli-
gence Agency is about to
u a -a escape the clutches of the cor-
ruption-intimidation-and-assassination outfit. That
prize is Argentina, where, back in September 1955,
a CIA-sponsored military clique overthrew Presi-
dent Juan Domingo Peron, who had been re-elect-
ed to a second term of office in 3.951. The crime of
Peron, to whom the "responsible" news media' in
this country kept referring as "dictator,' in spite
of the overwhelming support his fellow-country-
men repeatedly gave him at the polls, was that he
had refused to join in the "crusade" against Na-
tional Socialist Germany and had told President
Franklin Roosevelt to mind his own business,
when F.D.R. sought to dictate his policies ' to
Argentina.
For 18 years the various CIA-sponsored regimes,
including military jtmtas and presidents elected
while Peron was barred, have tried hard to make
the Argentine people forget the swashbuckling
colonel who had become a social reformer, but all
in vain. Economic deterioration has equated na-
tional demoralization and has now grown into
desperation leading to an incipient revolt. Presi-
dent Alejandro A. Lanusse and his junta, in an
effort to appease the populace, have scheduled
presidential elections for March 25, 1.973 and have
arbitrarily ruled tha G all presidential candidates
must be in Argentina by August 25 this year.
Peron, who barely escaped the CIA noose in 1955,
has refused to fall into their entrapment scheme
and has declared from his Madrid exile that he is
ready to return home if the Argentine people want
him. This puts the regime of Lt.-General Lanusse
on the spot: absence makes the heart grow fonder
and if Peron's name is kept off the ballots, he
VI
will get in write-in votes the biggest landslide of
his career, according to an astute Argentine diplo-
mat in Washington.
This counter-move of Peron was not anticipated
by Mr. Nixon's foreign policy mentor, Dr. Henry
A. Kissinger, in spite of his control of the CIA and
of the availability to him of all their information
and evaluations.
Approved For Release 2006/01/03 : CIA-RDP80-01601 R000400110001-8
 Approved
r "rl~ly('rig'. Tll1 t
The Hour of-
the Furnaces
(Third World Cinema Group
n
Overthrow O or D, i )
.pro-delnocratic 1hove, actually to in- better if and when they triumph; but
stall a regime more friendly .to its in- that's hardly a reason for the-oppressed
fluenee. Post-Peron governments, like to -accept things as they -are, pa;rtictt-
earlier ones, . have _ been oligarchic, lady if they are the majority.
plutocratic, militaristic, and brutally So we conic to the nub of the matter:
repressive, and have depended heavily the advocacy of violence. In politics,
on outside cultural and economic re I don't see how a view on violence can
sources. The largest political party in be held as a universal absolute, which
Argentina is still the Peronist one; it is why many of us who object to the
can be the spearhead of a people's Vietnam war still do not call. ourselves
revolution which. is what is needed in pacifists. The Argentine peasant, who
all Latin America. "Two, three, more- has inherited generations of wretched-
Vietnanls," as Clio said. ness, who has seen women and children
All the above is subject to some machine-guiinecl by police, is in a very
er different emotional and, I think, moral
f su
i
h
b
p
s o
as
e
r; Clay uestion, even on t
Ramparts Oi Clficial knowledge like mine. But tile position, in regard to violence, from
size of the Peronist bloc (3o to .1o per- the American university student who is
(Cinema V) cent of the population) and the possible (rightly) protesting the campus pres-
alliance between Peronism and the far once of 'Dow Chemical. Although it is.
The Hour of the Fur?laces is a film plhe-. r chilling to see this film come three
noiihenon and . a' phenomenal film. This left were reported in The Neu York v
Argentine ?documeritar runs four Times, by Malcolmn W. Bro?,vne, on Oct. times to a climactic call for violent revo-
y i o. Anti-Ajhhericanisin is a great
termis sions? gild is a c cllew arun