Biggest Revolution

Seventy-three years old and wracked by a fever of 103, South America's greatest champion against North America tumbled tragically last week from Power. He fought the Monroe Doctrine. He would have no truck with the Kellogg Pact. He flouted the Pan-American projects of Calvin Coolidge, did his best to blight the effect of Herbert Hoover's South American goodwill tour. Yet few U. S. citizens ever knew the name of their Great Enemy: Dr. Hipolito Irigoyen.

Argentina called him merely but sufficiently El Hombre ("The Man"). That she thought him her greatest hombre was proved barely two years ago. Without making a single campaign speech, refusing to have his picture taken for electioneering purposes, he announced eight days before the polling date that he wished to be again elected president--and was swept into of fice by the largest majority in the history of the republic.

Last week this hero's wheel of Fortune gyrated madly, splintered, cracked and broke. The people of Buenos Aires, the Army and Navy of Argentina rose in a joyous rather than bloody revolution, cast their sick and aged hombre out and down. They had watched him take their overwhelming vote of two years ago as a lcense to behave as an autocrat, as a dictator more absolute and infinitely more unreasonable than Signor Benito Mussolini. Being staunch Democrats, the people could stand such tyranny no longer--especially in view of Argentina's current business slump, "hard times," and the provokingly low price Argentines now get for grain.

"El Hombre Has Resigned!" When big news breaks in Buenos Aires her potent newsorgans La Prensa and La Nacion explode upon their roofs tremendous bombs--which may mean anything. As explosion after explosion tore the air last week. thousands of people rushed joyously into the streets, shouting as they embraced each other: "El Hombre has resigned!"

Not so.

There had been no revolution yet, only some weeks of brawling between police and minor mobs which shouted, "Down with The Man! Down with The Man!" The explosions meant that Dictator Irigoyen's minister had finally screwed up their courage to the point of telling him unanimously that he must do something to appease popular wrath. What he had done was to hand over the executive power to Vice President Enrique V. Martinez, trusty henchman. Under the Argentine Constitution a president can do this whenever he feels like it, can also resume his full original powers by a stroke of the pen. First act of Temporary President Martinez was to declare martial law and clap on iron censorship--but no rigor could conceal the angry disappointment of the people. Those bombs should have meant the end of El Hombre's dictatorship, and they were going to mean it yet!

"Lords of the Pampas." As man of the hour emerged General Jose Evaristo Uriburu, retired. Scion of the rich, land owning classes--the "Lords of the Pampas" against whom Dr. Irigoyen fought his way to power as the champion of the working class--General Uriburu was nevertheless supposed to have been a personal friend of El Hombre, to have owed to him his rank of general.

But blood is thicker than gratitude. In the night after Dr. Irigoyen's temporary retirement, General Uriburu secretly joined a group of wealthy and aristocratic brother officers, all bent on revolution, at the Campo de Mayo barracks. By dawn their troops were on the march. Ahead of the columns flew battle planes, zooming and thundering over Buenos Aires, raining down leaflets. One plane dived low over Argentina's Casa Rosada ("Pink House"), peppering the Executive Mansion with machine gun bullets. Frantic crowds snatched the bulletins with joy, read an exhortation to "rise" signed "Military Junta." They rose.

Contrary to early, exaggerated reports 1,000 people were not killed but 17. The capture of Buenos Aires by General Uriburu was a parade. Swinging cheerfully down the city's wide (and prodigiously long) avenues, his troops parried hugs and kisses from both male and female citizens. All local soldiery had at once gone over to General Uriburu who now styled himself "Supreme Revolutionary Commander."

White Flag! Up the staff of the "Pink House" as General Uriburu approached rose jerkily a white flag. But inside tern" porary President Martinez had not quite surrendered. As the sword-rattler clanked into the President's office with his staff the civilian faced him calmly.

General Uriburu: Well, Martinez, the Revolution is a success--complete! I demand your resignation.

Senor Martinez: You may kill me, but I will not resign.

Uriburu: Nonsen! I am not simple enough to make a martyr of you--but your resignation is necessary to prevent bloodshed. Resign or you will be imprisoned!

Within ten minutes the formal resignation was in General Uriburu's khaki pocket. Within 30 minutes Argentina's "Pink House" was overrun by a merry mob. Portraits of Dr. Irigoyen were hurled from the windows, burned. Two busts of him were dragged forth, one decapitated, the other paraded through the streets in a coffin with the placard: "He's finished!"

Black Derby. In his famed and battered old black derby, Dr. Irigoyen, sick to the point of lethargy, was rushed by friends in a motor car to the city of La Plata, some 35 miles from Buenos Aires. Arrested there by troops of General Uriburu, the old man took off his hat, stood fiddling with it before the officer who had arrested him.

"Put on your hat!" barked the fallen Dictator's doctor who had accompanied him. Then to the officers, "He must wear his hat--pneumonia."

"Well, if I may?" said once omnipotent Dr. Irigoyen humbly and, as the officer nodded, he put on his hat. On certificate of the garrison physician that he really had pneumonia, El Hombre went not to jail but into a barrack bed. Pen and paper were brought. Feebly but without hesitation the sick man wrote his resignation.

Taking this paper the commanding officer said:

"Sir, because of your resignation and the state of your health you are no longer a prisoner. You may remain here or go where you please, with a military escort if you desire it." The sick man stayed in bed, improved somewhat.

"Let Ballots Rule!" Meanwhile slim, wiry General Uriburu, by this time "Head of the Provisional Government." was orating from a balcony of the "Pink House": "Fellow countrymen, the Army . . . true to Democratic tradition . . . has performed its duty! . . . Now it is up to you to fulfill the mission begun by the National Army. The Saenz Pena electoral law has given you the most powerful arm of Democracy [voting by secret ballot]. . . . Let us now sheath our swords and let ballots rule!"

Argentina's secret ballot was the first great reform fought for and won by Dr. Irigoyen a generation ago. It destroyed the monetary control of the "Lords of the Pampas" over elections, led directly to El Hombre's first triumphal election as President in 1916.

But before the secret ballots had opportunity to show their potency, if any, the streets of Buenos Aires were again bullet-spattered. It was the night after the new Uriburu cabinet had been sworn in. Avenue de Mayo was a river of paraders and merrymakers glittering in the light from ten thousand windows. Suddenly from sidestreets groups of soldiers attacked. No one knew why. Women screamed. Men cursed. Confusion. But next morning it appeared that Pampas Lord Uriburu was still, for a while at least, Lord of All Argentine.

Washington v. London. In Washington the President and Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson were officially "shocked" by Argentina's revolution but not even officially grieved. As one official frankly said, "Dr. Irigoyen's fall has eliminated the outstanding menace to the prestige of the United States in Latin America."

London was as worried as Washington was relieved. El Hombre signed with Viscount D'Abernon in Buenos Aires last year a $38,880,000 mutual trade agreement highly advantageous to Britain, distinctly menacing to U. S. trade. Does that still stand? Worried, the London Daily Herald, organ of James Ramsay MacDonald, called up General Uriburu to ask. Over a radio telephone span of 7,000 miles the General answered slowly, loudly in English:

"I have not had time to think about that yet."

Epidemic of Revolutions? What did worry Washington last week, was the fact that Argentina's is the third and biggest South American revolution since early summer. Bolivia popped first (TIME, July 7), then Peru (TIME, Sept. 1 et seq.), while earlier in the year threatened revolutions forced a peaceful but sudden change of presidents in the Dominican Republic (TIME, March 10) and later Haiti (TIME, March 24).

What next? Cuba is ripe for revolution, her President Machado being considered by large sections of the population as a mere puppet of Wall Street. In Venezuela, where the U. S. has enormous oil interests, rules senile Political Boss Juan Vincente Gomez, a more cruel tyrant than Dr. Irigoyen ever was. Brazil is saddled with the worst overproduction situation (coffee) in the whole western hemisphere. Chile with her nitrates is apparently quiet in a dictator's iron hand. In any of these countries revolutions might result in the seizure of power by a group determined to resist what so many South Americans call "Yankee Imperialism."

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