Word: velasco
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...chances of wearing it long seemed woefully slim. Of his country's last 20 Presidents, only three served full terms. He himself was the playboy offspring of a rich Guayaquil banker, and rode into the vice-presidency in 1960 on the coattails of President Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra. He got the top job after Velasco Ibarra proved powerless to curb runaway inflation and left-led strikes, and was turned out by the military. Once in office, Arosemena baffled his countrymen by his politics, and his personal habits became the talk of the nation. Yet after 16 months...
...Leader of the Band. No one can be quite sure where Arosemena stands between left and right. Taking office, he spoke earnestly of his love of democracy, but refused to join other hemisphere nations in condemning Fidel Castro. Not until the military threatened him with the same fate as Velasco Ibarra did he agree to sever relations with Cuba...
...Divine Mob." For Velasco Ibarra it was an old story. First elected in 1934, he has been President four times, has completed only one term. A spellbinding orator who swings from right to left to suit his audience, he was elected last year by the votes and demonstrations of what he calls "the divine mob." But in office, he did little to ease Ecuador's chronic problems. Promised campaigns for land reform, slum clearance, roads and industrial development were slow in coming; living costs rose 30% in six months, wages failed to keep pace. The final straw...
Early this year, Klein & Saks, a U.S. consultant firm, recommended an overhaul of Ecuador's antiquated tax structure, under which the rich minority get off easy. Three months ago, angling for Alliance for Progress aid, Velasco ordered new taxes. But instead of increasing the burden on the aristocracy, he slapped the little man with a series of excise taxes on 37 consumer items from soft drinks to lard. One levy even set tolls for the country's few paved roads, many of which were built with the $121 million in U.S. aid that Ecuador has received since World...
...figure, Ecuador's Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena, 42, an aristocrat turned leftist, who pointedly ignored Adlai Stevenson's visit last June, flew off instead to Moscow and returned calling Nikita Khrushchev "my friend." From his seat presiding over the Senate, Arosemena denounced the taxes and called Velasco Ibarra "a dictator." As the mobs grew more threatening, police fired on the rampaging demonstrators; in Guayaquil one day they killed eight students, a newspaper reporter and two day laborers...