Word: strongmanism
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...Peru, Brigadier General Marcial Merino rebelled with his 10,000-man Jungle Division on the upper Amazon (TIME, Feb. 27), and said, in effect, to the country's other garrison commanders: "I move that we overthrow President Manuel Odria." Strongman Odria hastily shifted several doubtful generals out of high command. By last weekend it was clear to Merino that no one was going to second his motion. In a voice choked with suita ble emotion, he surrendered to the government by long-distance telephone from his headquarters in the river port of Iquitos, then took asylum in the Brazilian...
...Rojas Pinilla, popped up again last week under pen names. Internationally respected El Tiempo reappeared as El Intermedia (Interlude), and El Espectador as El Inde-pendiente. In makeup, typography and content, down to the smallest detail, both papers were identical with their forerunners. Such transparent disguise presumably meant that Strongman Rojas, smarting under criticism, was willing to let them start up again with only a legalistic switch in names to get him off the hook. But censorship went right...
...event in Latin America last year made jittery reading for the hemisphere's military strongmen. The crash of Argentina's Juan Peron showed with unnerving clarity how swiftly the most deeply entrenched tyrant can be destroyed by aroused public opinion and disenchanted military leaders. By last week strongman regimes in four other nations were showing signs of strain...
Soon after sunup the rest of the garrison was standing at attention in the treelined Plaza de Armas. Brigadier General Marcial Merino Pereyra, their commander, read off a manifesto explaining to his men why he had led them into rebellion against Strongman Manuel Odria. They would, he promised, "open the front door for democracy in Peru, and guarantee absolutely free elections." Townspeople gawked, then drifted off to work...
Waiting Game. General Merino, 51, an able infantry officer, then sat back to wait. His boondocks uprising was shrewdly conceived. By merely proclaiming a rebellion, Merino forced Odria to retaliate or lose his strongman's prestige. But Odria was denied any chance of easy attack. Merino claimed the whole Second (Jungle) Division of 12,000 men (the whole army numbers 55,000 to 60,000). He also claimed the navy's Amazon fleet: seven 200-to 500-ton gunboats, and about thirty 10-to 50-ton river patrol craft. Moreover, most of the troops were inaccessibly camped...